Down With Schools!

The new Fred column is out...

Some years back, while laboring in the grim vineyards of police correspondence for a metropolitan daily, I appeared as a guest lecturer before a class of undergraduates in criminology at the University of Maryland. The idea of a major in criminology struck me as peculiar, but apparently there was one. I was to explain to the students the realities of police work.

The adventure was a revelation. The kids, a scruffy bunch dressed in student tatterdemalion, heavy on minorities, were as lacking in polish as in grammar. Their intelligence seemed low. They had strong, simple prejudices instead of ideas, and no inclination to examine them. The intellectual level was that of a rural high school. They appeared to be bored. They had no business in a university.

If you've never read a Fred column, go to his site now, take a few hours, and edjumacate yuhseff.

Environmental Stupidity

From Kim du Toit's blog:
(some four-letter words in the full posting on his blog; sorry...)

No. We're not trying to hide something. Stop saying that. I mean it.

If an entity bans a second entity from anything, you can be pretty certain the second entity was hitting a little too close to home...

So what we have is just what it appears: The federal government is blocking broadcast of a TV network that was legal a week ago.

Without a hearing.

Without any examples of what's being banned or why.

Without any serious disussion of what's being censored.

(Yes, freedom of speech is for everyone, even if we don't like them. And it's not a privilege allowed by the government, it's a God-given right that the government is charged with protecting.)

Anarchy!? EWWWWW!!!

From Brad Spangler:

Once the truth - that we all really would be better off with no government at all - is more widely recognized and understood, then the market itself will bring to bear the resources and talents to provide the products people will want - private law that is fair and just, private defense that is effective but doesn't embark on missions of conquest and slaughter.

Just one more piece of the "the best government is no government" theory. I happen to believe in this theory, to some degree, although I think there needs to be some form of "judging authority" to settle cerain grievances.

Or maybe not.

Government ("judging authority") will always grow, not shrink or remain the same. It happens in steps: 1) Gov't fashions or exaggerates a "crisis" or "disaster". 2) The sheep (the weak-minded among us) bleat "something must be done." 3) Government passes a law or expands it's power in some way.

There are few ways to reverse the trend: the Pen and the Sword are the only likely candidates. Why do you think the first two amendments to the Constitution protect them? It wasn't to preserve your right to sappy poetry, and if you think the right to keep and bear arms is so you can shoot clay pigeons on Saturday mornings, you're short a few brain cells, Watson. Why would John Adams, George Washington, and Alexander Hamilton go to all that trouble (you know, the whole Revolutionary War thing) to preserve our HOBBIES?

Verse of the Day

Zechariah 3:7 (NASB): "Thus says the LORD of hosts, 'If you will walk in My ways and if you will perform My service, then you will also govern My house and also have charge of My courts, and I will grant you free access among these who are standing here.

And then there were none...

I've read this excellent sci-fi/libertarian short story before; it's a great read, and a great anarcholibertarian idea.

If you never have, go take a look...

Part of the Universe is missing!

Stolen from VoxDay's blog:

If Anyone Reading This Column Finds 85 Percent of the Universe, Please Return It

As Tuesday Morning Quarterback has pointed out before, physicists claim to be able to explain the Big Bang Theory, the very beginning of existence itself, but cannot locate most of the universe. Evidence suggests that about 85 percent of the universe is "dark matter" and "dark energy" that defy detection. The galaxies move as if being acted upon by far more gravity and other forces than could be produced by the matter and energy in all stars and planets, suggesting there must be another category of substantiality, called dark because it's hard to locate. Though "dark matter" and "dark energy" appear to permeate the firmament, no test has ever detected the stuff.

The latest on this front is this report from the annual meeting of the American Physical Society, the professional group of physicists, at which researchers disclosed that the newest, most advanced search for "dark matter" has drawn a blank. The Cryogenic Dark Matter Search, super-sensitive detectors buried deep in an iron mine in Soudan, Minn., ran for two months and failed to detect so much as one particle of dark matter, though trillions of such particles should be flowing through any area the size of a toaster. So we can't find 85 percent of the universe -- but trust us, we're experts!

Hmmm...sounds like a Higher Power is at work here. But we all know that can't be true...

Tsunami death toll nearing 60,000

That's alot of dead people.

Imagine if a tidal wave of this maginitude hit the US. Granted, we're better equipped to handle the aftermath, and our warning system, well, exists, but it would still be very bad.

Our prayers are with the victims, their families, and those trying to help.

Public School (is) for Dummies

Vox Day (my favorite columnist/blogger), hits the nail on the head in his weekly WND column and dismantles one of the many lame reasons parents use to continue to resist homeschooling...link to the entire article is here.

The scientific purpose of the public school, as explained by William Torrey Harris, is to subsume the individual, to suppress the child's natural independence and turn him into an obedient cog in the collective. This is known as "socialization" in the vernacular. Christianity – being focused on the individual soul and its sole accountability to God – is inherently inimical to this concept, which is why homeschooled children often appear as different and alien to their government-indoctrinated counterparts as Midwestern Christians appear to atheist New Yorkers.

Why any Christian parent would purposely send their child into the abysmal pit of public schooling baffles me. Anyone paying attention to the news (the real news, not the content-free, agenda driven slop on TV/Radio) should know the dangers of the welfare education system. Even in the small rural schools here where I live (the ones that everyone says are "good" or "OK"), police are necessary for "security". Why would you send your children into a place where law enforcement presence is necessary to prevent chaos from boiling to the surface?

The whole socialization argument ("But, if we homeschool, our children will be unsocilized and introverted!") is bull: Putting kids in an atmosphere where they are influenced by peers who need to be restrained by the presence of police is, to put it succinctly, wrong. Add to that the fact that the government brainwashing mills have made it policy to deny the existance of God, and you have a recipe for a lost soul--or at least one that will never realize it's full potential.

The Good Book commands parents to "raise up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it", and that includes an academic education, centered on Biblical principles and a Christian worldview. Anything less is disobedience to the Lord, and a callous disregard for the responsibility parents have been given.

Don't farm out the rearing of your children. Some day, you'll stand before the Throne.

Links to more information:

GetTheKidsOut.org

Christmas is over...

...and I'm rather glad. Not only will this mean a reduction of automotive traffic to more normal levels, it also means the end of the constant barrage of commercialized gunk we're bombarded with throughout the "holiday" season.

As a Christian, I think that the true meaning of Christmas, obviously, is Christ's arrival here on earth in human form. Somehow, we've strayed from that. It bothers me that we give each other presents on Jesus' birthday, while giving not much more than lip service to His birth. (I'll not claim innocence here, as I amassed around $180 in cash for my Gun Fund, in addition to gift certificates and other goodies. Were I to strictly practice my preaching and refuse all gifts, well, I shudder to think...)

Were we, as Christians, to spend on Jesus what we spend on others on His birthday, think of the good we could do and the lives we could touch for Him!
Matthew 25:40, NASB:
"The King will answer and say to them, 'Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did it to one of these brothers of Mine, even the least of them, you did it to Me.'"