Looking for Answers to the Autism Epidemic in All the Wrong Places

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Just last week, on March 24, 2014, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta (CDC) released its latest data on autism. After surveying medical and school records from 11 states, the CDC found that autism has more than doubled since the new century began only 14 years ago. Today the condition affects one out of 68 children – five times as many boys as girls. Alarmingly, there was a 30 percent climb in its incidence between 2008 and 2010.

Maybe you missed the story, since the day it broke, and the following day, the media –TV, radio, print – devoted about 30 seconds and just a few articles to this horrific report, significantly less time than is still spent endlessly speculating on Flight 370 or debating the use of the word “bossy,” both of which pale in comparison to the marathon of unendurable daily ads for Cialis and Viagra! Exhibit Number One in America’s priority system!

The powers-that-be at the CDC once again trotted out the age-old rationales to explain this bizarre finding:

  • Greater awareness and therefore earlier and more accurate diagnoses
  • The role that being an older parent plays not only in the incidence of autism but also Down syndrome and other developmental disabilities
  • Genes
  • “Something” in the environment

The study found that the incidence of autism in blacks “continues to lag behind whites and Hispanics,” which some experts attributed to racial bias (i.e., blacks lack equal access to medical care), but other experts said that blacks may simply be less vulnerable to autism for some unknown reason.

What is consistently omitted, however, is the role that ultrasound exams during pregnancy may and probably do play not only in this seeming black/white disparity, but in the rapidly-escalating incidence of the condition. More about that below.

WHAT WE KNOW TODAY

Autism is a neurological disorder that affects the normal development of the brain, causing self-defeating behaviors and an inability to form social relationships. It usually appears before the age of three. Most scientists believe that autism is strongly influenced by genetics but allow that environmental factors may also play a role.

To be diagnosed on the autistic spectrum, a child must have deficits in three areas:

  1. Communication (most children can’t make eye contact; others can’t speak)
  2. Social skills (typified by disinterest in both people and surroundings)
  3. Typically “normal” behavior (many autistic children have tics, repetitive behavior, inappropriate affects, et al)

Those diagnosed on the autistic spectrum range from high-functioning, self-sufficient people, even geniuses, to those who need lifelong supportive help.

Newsday reporter Delthia Ricks interviewed Coleen Boyle, the Director of the National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities (a division of the CDC), who said that “8-year-olds [were chosen for the study] because, by that age, everyone with an autism-spectrum disorder usually will have been diagnosed.”

According to New York Times writer Benedict Carey, the study revealed “a huge range in autism prevalence… from one child in 175 found with autism in Alabama, to one in 46 in New Jersey.”

Other sites in the study, Carey reported, were in Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Georgia, Maryland, Missouri, North Carolina, Utah and Wisconsin.

After the CDC announced the horrifying results of its study, several members of Congress and advocacy groups called for more funding for research and support services.

A LARGELY-DEBUNKED THEORY

The increased incidence of autism has been attributed by legions of parents and a number of professionals to the mercury-containing preservative thimerosol, used to prevent bacterial or fungal contamination in the vaccines babies and children routinely receive.

This is not backed up by hard science.

Thimerosol, which has been used in vaccines since the 1930s, has not been used in the U.S. since 2001 and the vaccine dosages containing the preservative that were given before then had about the same amount of mercury found in an infant’s daily supply of breast milk.

Numerous studies – by the Centers for Disease Control, the Institute of Medicine, American Academy of Pediatrics, the World Health Organization, and the National Academy of Sciences, among others – have found no autism-vaccine link, while other studies have shown an increase in autism in countries that have removed thimerosal from vaccines.

Nevertheless, aided by salivating personal-injury lawyers, parents have filed thousands of lawsuits claiming that thimerosol “caused” their children’s autism. Between late 1999 and late 2002, mercury was removed from most childhood vaccines, including DPT (Diphtheria, Tetanus, Pertussis), Hepatitis B, and Hib [Haemophilus influenza b]. The MMR (Measles, Mumps, Rubella), which is a live vaccine, is not compatible with thimerosal.

Also abetting the quack science are figures like Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who wrote an article, “Deadly Immunity,” for Rolling Stone magazine, which was reprinted in Salon.com. But Salon ended up removing the article from its website because of the scorn it received from the scientific community. Kennedy’s articles were “rife with factual errors and distortions,” wrote Robert V. Fineberg, M.D, president of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies.

What appears significant, however, is the degree to which diagnoses of mental retardation and learning disabilities throughout the country have decreased at the same time as diagnoses of autism have risen, as reported in a May 2006 issue of Behavioral Pediatrics. Some experts theorize that “diagnostic substitution” may explain this phenomenon. Diagnostic Substitution means that children who were diagnosed with other conditions – including ADHD and learning disabilities – are now diagnosed with autism.

MY THEORY

In the early ‘70s, I worked as a delivery-room nurse at a university-affiliated hospital near my home on Long Island. It was a revolutionary time in obstetrics, when the Lamaze method of “prepared childbirth” and the use of sonograms to visualize fetuses were gaining popularity.

Actually, ultrasound technology was first developed in Scotland in the mid-1950s by obstetrician Ian Donald and engineer Tom Brown to detect industrial flaws in ships. By the end of the ‘50s, ultrasound was routinely used in Glasgow hospitals, but it was well into the 1970s before it was used in American hospitals to check that the developing baby, placenta, and amniotic fluid were normal and to detect abnormal conditions such as birth defects and ectopic pregnancies, et al.

At the end of the ‘70s, I became a certified Lamaze teacher and spent the next 22 years giving classes in my home. In a very real way, I had my own laboratory, as I learned directly from my clients about the increasing escalation of sonogram exams they had as the decades elapsed.

In the early 1980s, it was common for only one or two out of the 10 women in my classes to have a sonogram. In just a few years, every woman in my classes had had a sonogram. And in the late ‘80s and ‘90s, almost every woman had not one sonogram, but often two or three or four or five – starting as early as three or four weeks gestation and extending, in some instances, right up to delivery!

It was in the ‘90s, in fact, that it began to occur to me that the scary rise in the incidence of autism might be linked to the significant rise in ultrasound exams. Over the years, I’ve posited my theory to a number of people, written letters to the editors of newspapers – including the NY Times, for which I wrote for over 20 years, but they still refused to publish my letter – and e-mailed my idea to one of the top news people at the Fox News Network, but the we report/you decide powers-that-be on that station strangely decided not to report on this subject.

I contacted autism researchers Dr. Marcel Just and Dr. Diane L. Williams, who told me via e-mail that Dr. Pasko Rakic at Yale was, indeed, exploring the autism-ultrasound link.

Then, in 2006, I found an article in Midwifery Today, “Questions about Prenatal Ultrasound and the Alarming Increase in Autism,” by writer-researcher Caroline Rodgers.

“The steep increase in autism,” Rodgers wrote, “goes beyond the U.S.: It is a “global phenomenon”… that “has emerged…across vastly different environments and cultures.”

“What do countries and regions with climates, diets and exposure to known toxins as disparate as the U.S., Japan, Scandinavia, Australia, India and the UK have in common?” Rodgers asked.

“No common factor in the water, air, local pesticides, diet or even building materials and clothing can explain the emergence and relentless increase in this serious, life-long neurodevelopmental disorder,” she stated.

However, Rodgers added: “What all industrial countries do have in common is …the use of routine prenatal ultrasound on pregnant women. In countries with nationalized healthcare, where virtually all pregnant women are exposed to ultrasound, the autism rates are even higher than in the U.S., where due to disparities in income and health insurance, some 30 percent of pregnant women do not yet undergo ultrasound scanning.” Aha! Could this be why blacks and Hispanics in America continue to lag behind whites in the development of autism?

Even in remote, rural regions of developing countries like China, ultrasound is in common use because sex determination is so important to their one-child – preferably male – policy.

The cause of autism, Rodgers continues, “has been pinned on everything from `emotionally remote’ mothers…to vaccines, genetics, immunological disorders, environmental toxins and maternal infections – a far simpler possibility…is the pervasive use of prenatal ultrasound, which can cause potentially dangerous thermal effects.

ENTER HARD SCIENCE

In August 2006, Pasko Rakic, M.D., chair of Yale School of Medicine’s Department of Neurobiology, announced the results of a study in which pregnant mice underwent various durations of ultrasound. The brains of the offspring showed damage consistent with that found in the brains of people with autism.

The research, funded by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, also implicated ultrasound in neurodevelopmental problems in children, such as dyslexia, epilepsy, mental retardation and schizophrenia, and showed that damage to brain cells increased with longer exposures.

Dr. Rakic’s study, Rodgers said, “… is just one of many animal experiments and human studies conducted over the years indicating that prenatal ultrasound can be harmful to babies.”

In thedailybeast.com, Jennifer Margulis, author of Business of Baby: What Doctors Don’t Tell You, What Corporations Try to Sell You, and How to Put Your Baby Before Their Bottom Line, writes that Dr. Rakic “concluded that all nonmedical use of ultrasound on pregnant women should be avoided.”

In her research, Margulis said, she discovered that “there is mounting evidence that overexposure to sound waves – or perhaps exposure to sound waves at a critical time during fetal development – is to blame for the astronomic rise in neurological disorders among America’s children.”

PROBLEMS WITH SOUND AND HEAT

A 2009 article in Scientific American by John Slocum explains that sonar (Sound Navigation And Ranging) systems, which were first developed by the U.S. Navy to detect enemy submarines, “generate slow-rolling sound waves topping out at around 235 decibels; the world’s loudest rock bands top out at only 130. These sound waves can travel for hundreds of miles under water, and can retain an intensity of 140 decibels as far as 300 miles from their source.”

This is relevant because many mass deaths and strandings of whales and dolphins have been attributed to the sonar waves emitted from Navy ships. Slocum writes that a successful 2003 lawsuit against the Navy brought by the nonprofit Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) to restrict the use of low-frequency sonar in waters rich in marine wildlife was upheld by two lower courts, but the Supreme Court “ruled that the Navy should be allowed to continue the use of some mid-frequency sonar testing for the sake of national security. “

There are hundreds if not thousands of cases that point to the dangers of sound waves. As many as 3,000 dead dolphins were found in Peru during the summer of 2012.  Researchers at the Organisation for the Conservation of Aquatic Animals (ORCA), a Peruvian marine animal conservation organisation, attributed the mass deaths to the use of deep water sonar by ships in nearby waters. In June of 2008,  four days after a Navy helicopter was using controversial sonar equipment during training exercises off the Cornish coast in Great Britain, 26 dolphins died in a mass stranding.

Two quick questions: If sonar beams can kill fully-developed dolphins, what effect, then, do they have on the developing brains of in-utero embryos and fetuses? And why is this never discussed or debated or mentioned on TV broadcasts like the ones last week that reported the CDC’s latest and quite disastrous findings?

Getting back to those embryos and fetuses, Rodgers explains that an ultrasound used in fetal imaging emits short pulses of high-frequency sound waves that reflect off the tissues of the fetus, and the return echoes are converted into images. In addition to vibration, ultrasound waves can cause heating of the tissue and bone.”

“When the transducer from the ultrasound is positioned over the part of the fetus the operator is trying to visualize,” she continues, “the fetus may be feeling vibrations, heat or both.”

Rodgers then cites a warning the Food and Drug Administration issued in 2004: “…even at low levels, [ultrasound] laboratory studies have shown it can have…”jarring vibrations” – one study compared the noise to a subway coming into a station – “and a rise in temperature.”

Imagine how these assaults affect the developing brain of a fetus!

Just as concerning, as far back 1982, the World Health Organization’s (WHO) study, “Effects of Ultrasound on Biological Systems,” concluded that “…neurological, behavioral, developmental, immunological, hematological changes and reduced fetal weight can result from exposure to ultrasound.” Two years later, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) reported that when birth defects occurred, the acoustic output [of sonograms] was usually high enough to cause considerable heat.

And yet, in 1993, the FDA approved an eight-fold increase in the potential acoustical output of ultrasound equipment! Ostensibly, this increase was done to enhance better visualization of the heart and small vessels during microsurgery. Clearly, the health and well-being of developing fetuses was not a consideration!

“Can the fact that this increase in potential thermal effects happened during the same period of time the incidence of autism increased nearly 60-fold be merely coincidental?” Rodgers asks.

Pregnant women are always warned to avoid steam rooms and saunas, based on studies published in numerous prestigious journals in which an irrefutable relationship between elevated maternal temperature and the development of brain defects in their infants has been established.

Again, Rodgers asks the question every woman must be asking herself after hearing of the disastrous results of the new CDC study:

“Using common sense, why would anyone think that intruding upon the continuous, seamless development of the fetus, which has for millions of years completed its work without assistance, be without consequences?”

KEEPING THE HEAT ON (so to speak)

In October of 2010, Ms. Rodgers participated in a forum sponsored by the Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. In PDF format, she presented a lecture about autism and ultrasound entitled “The Elephant in the Room,” which included the following information:

  • Worldwide autism boom identified by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) began with children born only 22 years ago in 1988-1989.
    • Since the FDA approved an allowable eightfold increase in acoustic output in the early ‘90s, only one prospective study has been undertaken. The study design did not expose fetuses to the first-trimester scans that are common today.
    • Ultrasound use and autism are more prevalent among higher socioeconomic groups.
    • Several studies have shown increased prevalence of autism among better-educated, more affluent communities. Women in these communities undoubtedly have health insurance and other resources to allow access to good nutrition, prenatal vitamins and excellent prenatal care, which, according to current practice, includes more ultrasound.

Autism surveys and studies have found the following groups of women are at higher risk of bearing children with autism:

  • Mothers who receive first-trimester care
  • Mothers with higher educations
  • Mothers with private health insurance
  • Older mothers

Rodgers concludes: Only increased exposure to prenatal ultrasound can explain all of the above.

Rodgers also elaborates on how things have changed since the FDA approved an eight-fold increase in the potential acoustical output of ultrasounds in 1993.

  • The number of ultrasound scans conducted during each pregnancy has increased, with women often receiving two or more scans even in low-risk situations
  • The development of the vaginal probe, which positions the beam of sound much closer to the embryo or fetus, may put it at higher risk
  • The use of Doppler ultrasound, which is used to study blood flow or to monitor the baby’s heartbeat, has increased. According to the 2006 Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, “routine Doppler ultrasound in pregnancy does not have health benefits for women or babies and may do some harm.”

Currently, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) are researching this issue in their Study to Explore Early Development (SEED).

There is a vast human tragedy – a true man-made disaster – taking place before our eyes.

For whatever reasons – follow the money? – the mountain of evidence that points to a causal relationship between prenatal ultrasound exams and an escalating pandemic of autism is being systematically ignored.

Could it have anything to do with the huge investments doctors and scientists have made in ultrasound technology, which, according to Jennifer Margulis, “adds more than $1 billion to the cost of caring for pregnant women in America each year”?

Could it have anything to do with the revenue now pouring like an avalanche into the coffers of diagnostic and treatment centers and classrooms?

Could it have anything to do with modern journalism’s almost complete abandonment of hard-nosed reporting and life-saving exposés?

As Caroline Rodgers said, there is an elephant in the room when it comes to the subject of autism – and that elephant is the worldwide blitzkrieg of ultrasound exams on pregnant women, exams that have bombarded the babies they’re carrying with the brain-warping sound waves and heat that will affect them every second of their autistic lives.

EDITORS NOTE: The featured photo is of children enrolled in Camp Pendleton’s Exceptional Family Member Program play with sensory balls during the program’s annual holiday party at the Abbey Reinke Community Center, Dec. 6. Sensory toys stimulate the senses of those who are diagnosed with autism. The photo is courtesy of the US Marine Corps.

Pro-Homosexual Group Targets LaBarbera’s Speaking Appearance at Saskatchewan, Canada Pro-Life Conference

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It doesn’t get much more Orwellian than trying to pressure an independent organization to disinvite a speaker–in the name of “anti-bullying” and “tolerance”! Yet that is precisely what’s occurring and this time I am the target. Next week, April  11-12, I am scheduled to speak at a pro-life, pro-family conference in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada put on by the Saskatchewan Pro-Life Association (SPLA) [see flier HERE]. But on Monday, I learned that a pro-homosexual group, Intolerance Free Weyburn, is working with the leftist petition site Change.org, to get me knocked off the dais as a speaker at the conference.

You can read about this in this pretty fair article in today’s Regina Leader Post. Following is the language in the Change.org petition targeting yours truly:

Peter LaBarbera is using this pro-life convention as a medium to advocate his personal anti-gay agenda.  His claims to do this using a “spirit of love and truth” are anything but factual considering he is recognized as the president of the anti-gay hate group “Americans for Truth About Homosexuality”.  This may lead to people unknowingly (people only interested in the pro-life aspect) be subjected to his message of hate and be influenced to correlate the ideas that being anti-gay and being pro-life are the same idea.  His religious overtones in his message are a danger to any person/s attending the conference for personal religious reasons.

The community of Weyburn, Saskatchewan wants to make it known that they do not condone his message of hate nor do they respect his wants to spread it.  In a world where basic human rights are just recently being recognized for the LGBT community, people such as Peter LaBarbera are counter productive to the evolution of society’s human nature.

As the “Opportunity City”, we need to be clear that all people will be fre”e from intolerance.  Freedom to opportunity means that EVERYONE has equal rights even if they don’t coincide with your own personal beliefs.  You don’t have to be “PRO”-anything in order to be anti-intolerance.  It just makes sense.

Wow, I don’t think I’ve ever been called “counter productive to the evolution of society’s human nature” before! I am dumbstruck at the Left’s brazen hypocrisy and shameless attempt to censor speech in the name of “freedom.” Read the simplistic and jingoistic comments under the petition to see how liberals justify their peculiarly intolerant brand of speech-stifling, “anti-hate” ideology. Here are a couple of comments:

  • Jan Stout CUPAR, CANADA about 20 hours ago  – I don’t live in Weyburn but I don’t even want one more person spreading poisonous words of hate in my province. Keep him out!
  • Penny Adams LAMPMAN, CANADA, 2 days ago – It’s never OKAY to promote hate.

SPLC’s handiwork

Behold the fruits of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s nefarious campaign to demonize AFTAH and other opponents of organized “gay” activism as “hate groups.” THIS is exactly what the SPLC sought to achieve with its spurious “hate” designation against AFTAH [see our listing on the SPLC’s bogus“Hate Map” HERE], Family Research Council, AFA, Mission America, Mass Resistance and many other noble pro-family groups. As the saying goes, “Those who hate the Truth call Truth hate.”Hopefully, the SPLC’s influence will wane as Americans learn about its hard-left bias and hack political nature, and come to perceive it at the malicious tool of the Left that it is.

Lastly, I am saddened that some pro-life individuals have signed the Change.org petition. Perhaps they are unaware that the same socially Left activists who promote the acceptance of homosexuality, bisexuality and transsexuality also promote abortion-on-demand. Did you know that the world’s largest pro-homosexual organization, Human Wrongs Rights Campaign, includes pro-abortion votes in its “Congressional Scorecards”? The second biggest “gay” group, the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, also promotes abortion-on-demand at its annual “Creating Change” conferences for LGBT activists.

Furthermore, as AFTAH has covered extensively, homosexual behaviors are disproportionately linked to a myriad of Sexually Transmitted Diseases including but not limited to HIV. Hundreds of thousands of “gay” men have had their life cut short because they practiced immoral and high-risk same-sex behavior. So of course promoting the sin homosexuality is anti-life, in addition to being anti-God. Thankfully, men and women are leaving homosexuality behind, many with the help of our Savior Jesus Christ. Homosexuality is not who you are, it’s what you do–and like any other misbehavior (sin), it can be overcome. Please give that loving and truthful message to anyone you know who has claimed a false identity of “gay,” “lesbian” or “transgender,” and pray for them.

This present hubbub is nothing compared to the oppression suffered by Christian Canadians over the years–people like Pastor Stephen Boissoin who had to spend years and tens of thousands of dollars to clear their name after being targeted for alleged “discrimination” by Canada’s notorious “Human Rights Tribunals”–merely because they spoke out against homosexuality. These “human rights” tribunals became kangaroo-courts for the Left to target pro-family speech and punish Christians.

The following is an Alert by my friend and pro-life. pro-family activist Bill Whatcott, who is on the SPLA’s board. You might remember Whatcott as the culture war hero who was convicted of disseminating “hate speech” by the Canadian Supreme Court. He is one of the most fearless truth-tellers I have ever encountered and it will be my honor to appear with him in Canada–that is, unless the local “Gay Thought Police” succeed in their “homo-Marxist” (or homo-fascist) attempt to shut down my speech. Please pray for the SPLA and me in this bizarre situation. God bless you. – Peter LaBarbera, AFTAH.org

Canadian Bill Whatcott writes:

Peter LaBarbera is being targeted by a Weyburn pro-homosexual hate group that is trying to prevent him from speaking at our Saskatchewan Pro-life conference

Dear Friends,

Please keep our Saskatchewan Pro-life convention in your prayers. It appears my mass flyer delivery advertising the conference has raised the ire of hundreds of folks, mostly in Saskatchewan, but also around the country, who support homosexuality. Paradoxically, as one reads the petition and Facebook comments they can quickly see the pro-homosexual activists protesting Peter LaBarbara only want tolerance to go one way, they don’t support Christians having the right to exist if the Christian disagrees with homosexuality.

Here is the flyer I mass distributed. It is not nearly as bombastic as my usual flyers, but just the mere mention of a workshop dealing with homosexuality from a Biblical point of view was enough to set off a firestorm of protest!

viewtopic.php?f=16&t=9972

In response to our conference a Facebook group called “Intolerance Free Weyburn” has been set up and it seems to be co-ordinating media interviews and is planning a demonstration against our conference. They also have an article on their Facebook page about my Supreme Court case.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/230098367194611/

Here is their petition. As of my posting it has 400 signatures. The comments below are very typical of the dozens of comments I went through while reading the petition. Sadly, the petitioners completely misunderstand Peter LaBarbara’s message and they spectacularly fail to understand the grave harm homosexuality does to those acting out the lifestyle and they seem quite unaware of homosexual activist assaults on our country’s freedoms, especially though our courts and human rights commissions.

http://www.change.org/en-CA/petitions/s … -labarberaJan Stout CUPAR, CANADA about 16 hours ago Liked 0
I don’t live in Weyburn but I don’t even want one more person spreading poisonous words of hate in my province. Keep him out!Cory Johnston WEYBURN, CANADA about 19 hours ago Liked 0
I find the religious fundamentalist attempt at controlling women’s right to choose reprehensible already. When they also attack homosexuality and spread misinformation about it I get even more incensed. I’m glad that someone is protesting this event and I’m glad this petition exists.Chelsa Broom SASKATOON, CANADA 1 day ago Liked 0
Everyone deserves the right to love. This man is about hate, pure and simple.

Several media outlets have contacted SPLA and Peter LaBarbera. I expect a firestorm when I wake up tomorrow. Weyburn 1190 AM radio called me and asked me to go into their studio at 10:00 AM (Saskatchewan Time).

You can hear the interview live here at 10:00 AM Saskatchewan Time: http://streema.com/radios/play/37402?player=external

Please pray for the Holy Spirit to be with me and to give me the grace to present our case well, as I defend our decision to invite Peter La Barbara to speak at our conference.

In Christ’s Service
Bill Whatcott

“You will be hated by all for My name’s sake. But he who endures to the end will be saved.” – Matthew 10:22

America in Decline

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When Obama was running for president he promised, some say threatened, to fundamentally change America. The doubters now say he has fundamentally ruined America. Whichever way one views it, America is in serious decline.

For a president that promised to reduce the national debt Obama has added a massive seven trillion dollars to that debt. Under his presidency, America has accumulated as much new debt as it did in its first 227 years.

He heads an Administration that produces food stamps, legalizes marijuana, pries into people’s private lives, and sets government agencies against political opponents. Obama is following the guide book of Saul Alinsky “Rules for Radicals” and putting Alinsky’s primer into practice from the White House. The results of his experiment are devastating.

Under Obama, prices and taxes rose while take home pay fell 7%. Government hand-outs increased dramatically as the national debt has exploded. Recent estimates put 50 million Americans on food stamps, and millions without healthcare.

Obama, the community organizer, preferred social justice over a robust market place, but, under his presidency, people are worse off today than they were back in 2009 when he promised them change. By the end of the first quarter of 2014 America had six million people not only unemployed but also not on the labor list, the vast majority under the age of 55. This implies they had given up all hope of finding work. More than forty million Americans lived below the poverty line.

Increasingly, America is becoming a nation of dysfunctional families. 41% of babies are born out of wedlock. Under America’s first black president, American blacks are increasingly unemployed, and 72% of black kids are born out of wedlock, a terrible indictment on American society. The corrosive results of government hand-outs are now rampant in America. A nanny-state produces a population of dependency, not independence or an entrepreneurial spirit.

Obama has ratings in the 30s and falling on issues such as security, healthcare, economy, jobs, transparency in government, and the US image abroad. It seems that Obama doesn’t care. Deep into a second term, this lame duck president is determined to press on with his failed agenda, even if it takes executive powers to do it. American democracy is in jeopardy as Obama takes steps that are clearly unconstitutional.

The president’s credibility is trashed, and a major part of that is his failure to launch the unpopular healthcare policy that carries his name, “Obamacare.”  March 2014, saw the thirty first delay in a public display of total inefficiency.

Scandals follow in the wake of Obama appointees to key governmental jobs. Kathleen Sebelius, Obama’s Health and Human Services Secretary, apologized, last October, for the abject failure of the computer system that was supposed to deliver the Obamacare plan to the American public.

“In these early weeks, access to health care has been a miserably frustrating experience. You deserve better,” she said. It wasn’t weeks. The planning team had been working on the computer system for years.

On the nationally popular “The Daily Show,” Jon Stewart accused Sebelius of lying about parts of Obamacare. When that happens, you know you’re in trouble.

There is an ongoing investigation into wrongdoings by America’s tax authority, the IRS. They are accused of targeting opposition groups. In a TV interview with Fox News, Bill O’Reilly, President Obama claimed there was “not a smidgeon of evidence” about tax attacks on conservative and libertine groups. However, Obama appointee, Lois Lerner, head of the IRS Exempt Organization division, twice took the Fifth while refusing to divulge information to the Congressional Oversight Committee. Chairman Darrell Issa complained, “In the wake of Ms. Lerner’s refusal to testify and answer questions, this report offers detailed evidence about steps she took to crack down on organizations that exercised their constitutional rights to free political speech.”

Obama’s nomination of Demo Adegbile to head the Justice Department’s Civil Rights division sent shockwaves through the American political system. Adebile represented an unrepentant cop-killer in 1981. This brought vocal opposition from national law-enforcement officials. The president’s judgment was badly flawed in selecting this poor choice of candidate. It was based more on Adegbile’s far left political activism rather than someone steeped in legal experience.

Obama followed up with yet another dubious choice of Vivek Murthy to be the next US Surgeon-General. Murthy, yet another political activist and the founder of “Doctors for Obama,” repeatedly described gun ownership as “a public health issue.” He is opposed by the National Rifle Association, a powerful lobbying force in America. He is also facing strong opposition by many Democrats. The right to bear arms is an integral part of the US Constitution.  The job of Surgeon-General is not gun control. It is about disease and disease prevention. The usual criterion for Surgeon-General is someone who has run a major hospital or headed a state healthcare system. Murthy has only been an attending doctor for eight years. His political activism far outweighs his public health experience.

Obama’s record of nominating radical politocos, rather than efficient and successful technocrats, particularly at the expense of the US Constitution, is a symptom of the demise of America.

It goes on. Recently, Obama nominated several of his campaign donors to ambassadorships. The problem was that they had never visited their nominated countries, Iceland, Norway, and Argentina. The nominee for Norway, George Tsunis, didn’t even know that country had a king, and not a president. Such is the level of presidential incompetence in Obama’s personal nominees to major positions of government.

Revelations concerning widespread governmental electronic surveillance of law-abiding citizens set alarm bells ringing when whistleblower, Edward Snowden, divulged that the National Security Agency had been snooping on 340 million cell phones in the United States.  A Federal judge described it as “almost Orwellian.”  It is, in fact, a direct violation of the Fourth Amendment.  

A Guardian newspaper report on March 5, 2014, divulged that President Obama knew the CIA had spied on the Senate intelligence committee using agency computers.  “I find these actions to be incredibly troubling for the Committee’s oversight powers and for our democracy,” Democratic Congressman Mark Udall wrote to Obama.

President Obama lied to the people. The mid-term elections in November will hinge on which Democratic candidates echoed the Obama mantra “under Obamacare you can keep your health plan and you can keep your doctor.” Neither of these claims is true.

When you have a foreign policy of “leading from behind” you lose the political momentum to advance values.

With Obama, it began with his apology tour to Muslim nations which included his bowing to the Saudi Arabian king, a gesture interpreted in the Islamic world as submission. From that point it spiraled downward.

On his watch, and that of his Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, an American ambassador and three CIA operatives were murdered in Benghazi, Libya. They claimed, for weeks, that their deaths were caused by a mob angry at an amateur video, when, in fact, it was an organized terror attack that killed them. It was revealed that repeated calls for help were ignored by both the White House and the State Department. Knowing the truth, according to recent evidence, both Obama and Clinton lied to the nation, and worse, to the families of the dead Americans.

Since Benghazi, Obama touted Al-Qaida’s demise thirty two times, according to White House transcripts. “Decimated” is a word that Obama likes to use to describe Al-Qaida. However, on January 29, 2014, the Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, testified on Capitol Hill that the threat from Al-Qaida is not less than it was a decade ago and that it is “much more globally dispersed.”  The question arises, how is it that the president is out of touch with his national security advisors?  Al-Qaida is on the rise because of a feckless American leadership.

Back in September, John Kerry told Democrats that America faced “its Munich moment” over the Syrian use of chemical weapons. Considering that, six months later, Assad still possesses the vast majority of his stockpile it appears that this has been a failure of American leadership. Another “Munich moment” is taking place with the smiley, touchy, talks that are taking place with the Iranians over their nuclear ambitions. Neither Israel nor Saudi Arabia is convinced that the softly-softly approach with Tehran is the way to prevent Iran from getting the bomb. A third “Munich moment” is taking place over the Russian domination of the Ukraine. This also looks doomed to failure in light of a massive vote in the Crimea for Russian patronage. With the Israeli-Palestinian talks about to crash into the buffers of failure, the Kerry-initiative looks impressive in its impotence to persuade Mahmoud Abbas to recognize the Jewish State. Kerry even called it a “mistake” for Israel even to make this elementary condition a demand, thereby showing his total lack of understanding of what lies as the root cause of this conflict.

We know what happened post-Munich. We are witnessing American Munich moments on a global scale. We dread for the future.

The Wall Street Journal printed an article written by Mitt Romney. Although he can be seen as a biased observer, he stated something that is patently obvious.

“President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton traveled the world in pursuit of their promise to reset relations and to build friendships across the globe. Their failure has been painfully evident. It is hard to name even a single country that has more respect and admiration for America today than when President Obama took office, and now Russia is in Ukraine. Part of their failure is due to their failure to act when action was possible and needed.”

When American power draws back it leaves a dangerous vacuum.  With the US withdrawing from Afghanistan, Afghanistan’s Karsei will pivot to whoever keeps him in power. US out. Taliban in!

Mishandling by President Obama of several foreign issues has also led to a power vacuum that is being filled by a resurgent Russia. His “lead from behind” policy allowed the Russians to dictate negotiations with their ally, Assad. Obama’s sanction regime on Iran is badly fraying at the edges as the Iranian negotiators waltz the clock to midnight on their nuclear ambitions. With the serious crack in tenuous relations with Russia over the Ukraine, Russia is sure to throw even more support behind Tehran as a further poke in Washington’s eye. The tense situation with Russia points to the potentially dangerous result of America’s shortsighted 2009 refusal to establish a missile shield to protect eastern Europe, particularly Poland and the Czech Republic.

This vacuum allowed Russia to become high profile and active in the Middle East.  In August, 2013, the White House cut off military aid to Egypt. This was a misreading of the political map in Egypt. Egypt refused to take phone calls from Defense Secretary Hagel and turned to Russia for aid. Al Tahrir newspaper ran the headline, “Let the US aid go to hell!”  So much for the Obama apology tour, that began in Cairo.

Russia is emboldened to assert itself in Europe. Crimea is a Russian test of the extent of American weakness. The White House sanctioned seven Russian businessmen. They shrugged off that threat causing Putin’s deputy Prime Minister to tweet that he thought some joker wrote the US Presidential order.

With Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Syria, and Iran turning to Russia, with major oil-trading nations negotiating deals in a currency other than the US dollar, with the contempt felt for America’s weakness in foreign policy, with Iran, Al-Qaida, and the Taliban resurgent in Iraq, Afghanistan, the Middle East and Africa, can anyone doubt that America is in decline?

There is no reason to assume that a Hillary Clinton presidency will improve America’s foreign strength. She flunked the 3 a.m. phone call test as Secretary of State when Benghazi called. She simply turned over and went back to sleep. Her tour of duty did nothing to affirm US values. It is doubtful she will move away from Obama’s bad habits of upsetting allies and cuddling up to their enemies.

Political bungling at home and abroad is appalling. When his record is etched, Obama will go down as the worst, most damaging president, in American history until, perhaps, the next one.

Muslim Refugees Take Over Former Catholic Church in Syracuse, New York

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With the drop in church attendance in Europe amidst mass Muslim immigration we have witnessed conversions of empty churches into Mosques.  Historically,  we saw the ancient Greek Orthodox patriarchal basilica of Hagia Sophia converted into an imperial Mosque following the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople (Istanbul)  in the  15th Century and then into a Museum in the 20th Century. Perhaps given the rise of a neo-Ottoman Caliphate under Premier Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey, the Museum might be reconverted to a Mosque.

In Spain, the Mezquita Cathedral in Cordoba, once the site of a pagan temple under the Visigoths, was converted by the Umayyad Dynasty into the fabled Great Mosque. Then following the Reconquista in the 13th Century by Ferdinand 1st the Mezquita became a Cathedral once again.   Since 2004, The Islamic Society of Spain has petitioned both Spain and the Vatican to permit Muslims to once again roll out their prayer rugs in the Mezquita and pray in a venue they once held in Al Andaluz. Those requests have been rejected. In March 2010 118 Austrian Muslims  staged a dramatic event at the Mezquita Cathedral.  Unrolling their prayer rugs,  praying loudly, they attacked security guards when  told by them  to stop injuring two.  In March 2013, Spanish Court acquitted eight of the Muslim assailants.

In the US we have witnessed churches and even synagogues sharing worship space with Muslim communities. However, we have also witnessed a dramatic rise in mega-Mosque construction projects roiling many communities across the US from lower Manhattan to the Buckle of the Bible Belt in Tennessee and Orange County in California.  Notwithstanding that groundbreaking trend, some abandoned churches have been purchased by Muslim communities and converted into Mosques.

There is an abundant supply of closed or excess former churches. The Barna Group estimates that upwards of 4,000 Protestant churches are closed annually. While the US Catholic population has grown by more than half to 69 million according to Catholic World News, nevertheless 1,800 parishes have closed over the past 20 years.

One of those parish churches that closed is Holy Trinity  Roman Catholic Church in Syracuse, New York, that held its last Mass in February 2010.  Now, it is being purchased and converted into a Mosque by the burgeoning refugee population in Central New York.  The irony is that this is being abetted by the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, one of the leading voluntary agencies ,VOLAGS,  engaged in processing refugee resettlement. It and other contractors are  funded by US taxpayers under programs administered by our State and Health and Human Services Departments.

Our colleague at Refugee Resettlement Watch, Ann Corcoran, wrote about the conversion of  Holy Trinity parish in Syracuse in a recent blog post, that bears witness to this latest development, “Syracuse: Refugee group buys Catholic Church, will be converted to a mosque”.

Corcoran writes:

….because Muslim refugee population is growing.

It is a cold and rainy Sunday morning and I’m not easily discouraged, but I have to say this story is depressing.  Most people don’t understand that Islam marks its victories by turning Christian churches into mosques.  Surely there are other buildings available in Syracuse.

***Update*** American Thinker has published a post on this travesty.  From CNY Central:

For close to six decades, Holy Trinity Roman Catholic Church on Syracuse’s north side was Anna Giannantomio’s church. She fought the Catholic Diocese decision to close it in 2010. While she believes everyone should be free to practice the religion they choose – she doesn’t understand why a new Islamic society wants to remove the crosses and move into the historic Catholic Church.

“This place was put into historical preservation and rightfully so,” said Giannantomio.

Crosses to be removed:

Holy Trinity was recently purchased by the North Side Learning Center, a volunteer group that assists refugees and immigrants. Northside Learning Center will lease the church to an Islamic society which would rename it Mosque of Jesus the Son of Mary. The North Side Learning Center has also filed a request with the Landmark Preservation Board to remove the crosses on the steeples and grounds.  [Those who care in Syracuse should file a protest with the Preservation Board—ed]

Professor Margaret Thompson from Syracuse University’s Maxwell School says nearly 75% of refugees settling in Syracuse are Muslimand that religious freedom has been bringing immigrants to America for hundreds of years.

“Holy Trinity was founded to welcome German immigrants to Syracuse when it was originally built and now it’s welcoming a new cohort of immigrants,” said Thompson.

Anna Giannantonio wants everyone to have a place to worship. She emigrated from Italy as a teenager and understands the discrimination many Muslims face in America but Giannantonio wishes the church that welcomed her to the U.S. would stay a Catholic church.

“I don’t want to hurt anybody but the building should remain as it is,” said Giannantomio.

The North Side Learning Center is now making repairs to the buildings. They hope the mosque will be ready to open in June.

Syracuse refugee program is changing and we recommend if you live there you need to start researching and reporting to your local community. The Northside Learning Center is probably operating on taxpayer dollars so you have a right to demand more information about their activities.

Syracuse is a preferred resettlement site chosen by the US State Department, the Office of Refugee Resettlement (HHS) and the contractors.

New York is one of the top states with a large African and Middle Eastern Muslim population, here.  Demographic change is what it’s all about.  Once they get the population numbers almost nothing else matters.

Ironically the largest resettlement contractor, bringing the most Muslims to your towns and cities, is the US Conference of Catholic Bishops.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared on The New English Review.

Religious Freedom: What the Hobby Lobby case is all about

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Photo of the Thomas Jefferson Memorial built in 1943 honoring the third President of the United States, Author of the Declaration of American Independence and of the Statute of Virginia for religious freedom, and Father of the University of Virginia.

Planned Parenthood put together a graphic to express one argument—that Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood want to “deny their employees access to birth control.” As Heritage expert Sarah Torre explained in the below video, nothing could be further from the truth. The companies actually pay to cover 16 different types of contraceptive drugs.

[youtube]http://youtu.be/dBoJfwB2L3I[/youtube]

 

RELATED STORY: 9 Ways the Left Tried to Make Obamacare Cool

 

FINALreligiousfreedominfographic_640px

EDITORS NOTE: The featured picture is by Bobt54. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license.

A Liberal Dose of Intolerance

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Our nation is about to commemorate the 46th anniversary of the assassination of the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (April 4, 1968). He gave his life so that we could fully participate in all that America has to offer.

Since his death, America has made major strides towards freedom and equality for all. Blacks no longer face the same degree of racial hostility and hatred from Whites like in the days of old. To that end, Dr. King’s death was not in vain.

But within the Black community, I can no longer say with confidence that Dr. King’s death was not in vain. Many believe that Dr. King’s strong opposition to the Vietnam War was the final straw that broke the proverbial camel’s back. We have gone from the Vietnam War to the war of words. The Vietnam War killed many thousands of Americans, but the war of words are destroying the very soul of a people.

Rappers are calling our women bitches and hos. Our athletes and entertainers rarely take a principled stand on any relevant issues affecting our community. Many of our own movies do nothing but show the worst in us.

We justify this behavior with the mantra of “I have a right to do whatever.” Well, along with your right comes a responsibility, a responsibility to show our community that through the sacrifice of Dr. King, we have become the embodiment of his dream.

But, it wasn’t his dream alone. The dream was fueled by the likes of Fannie Lou Hamer, Claudette Colvin, and Rosa Parks. The dream was bankrolled by the likes of Harry Belafonte, Bill Cosby, Dick Gregory, Jim Brown, and John Johnson.

Johnson died at the ripe old age of 87 in 2005. But his legacy lives on through his two flagship publications, Jet and Ebony magazines. From their beginnings, these magazines showcased the best in Black America.

That’s why it pains me that one of their current employees has brought so much shame and disgrace to the legacy of Johnson.

Jamilah Lemieux, Senior Editor for Ebony magazine brought so much shame to this prestigious publication that Johnson has to be turning over in his grave. Based on her behavior, it is quite obvious that Lemieux has absolutely no understanding or appreciation for the sacrifice that Johnson made to build his media empire, Johnson Publishing Company. The ironic thing is that she is from Chicago, which is where Johnson Publishing Company is headquartered; and she attended Howard University, which has a building and a program named after Johnson (The John H. Johnson School of Communications).

Obtaining a college degree does not mean you are educated, it simply means you passed certain courses. Being educated is indicated by an ability to engage in critical thinking and conversation; Lemieux has proven that she is quite incapable of engaging in either.

Last week she was engaged in a twitter conversation about a new conservative magazine, American CurrencySee, that is being headed up by neurosurgeon, Dr. Ben Carson and Armstrong Williams. I am also one of their columnists.

In her twitter feed she begins to cast aspersions at Dr. Carson. My friend and colleague in the battle for the heart and soul of the Black community, Raffi Williams, sent her a tweet suggesting that she get to know about Dr. Carson’s life, which she stated in no uncertain terms, “I 100% do not want to know more. I wish I knew less!” In referring to Raffi, she continues, “Oh great, here comes a White dude telling me how to do this Black thing. Pass.” I have known Raffi for many years and I know for a fact certain he has been Black most of his life.

Furthermore, his race should have had nothing to do with her response to his suggestion of valuing diversity of thought. Isn’t that central to the whole notion of being educated? Obviously, she failed that course.

You can google Lemieux to read the complete twitter exchange.

Isn’t it amazing that Dr. King died because of racism and now people like Lemieux have become the very thing that King fought against?

Blacks like Lemieux are totally incapable of displaying any intellectual scholarship and engaging in a vibrant give-and-take with Raffi, a rising star in the Republican Party.

Two weeks ago, liberals lost their minds over a statement Congressman Paul Ryan made about poverty. These same critics have yet to utter one word of support to Raffi and have not uttered one word of criticism to Lemieux.

Congresswoman Barbara Lee, Congressional Black Caucus, NAACP, Melissa Perry, Joy Reid, Rachel Maddow, Chris Matthews, where are your denunciations of intolerance. The Human Rights Campaign, National Council of La Raza, Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, could I just one time hear your voice filled with righteous indignation over the intolerance that Blacks in the Republican Party face every day from liberals?

EDITORS NOTE: The featured photo is of President Lyndon B. Johnson meeting with Martin Luther King, Jr. on August 6, 1965.

Boys Beware: Classic Film warns against Homosexuals, Pedophiles and Pederasts

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This classic film warns young boys and men of the dangers of homosexuals, pedophiles and pederasts, and how to spot them. Perhaps it is time to do an updated version of this 1961 film and use current examples like Penn State’s’ Jerry Sandusky and Jimmy Savile who raped 1,000 boys in the British Broadcast Corporation’s (BBC) studios. Savile was the star of BBC’s Top Of The Pops and Jim’ll Fix It . Savile died at the age of 84 in October 2011 – a year before allegations that he had sexually abused children were broadcast in an ITV documentary.

Dr. Miriam Grossman, M.D. in her column A Brief History of Sex Ed: How We Reached Today’s Madness writes:

Today’s sex ed curricula are based on the widely-accepted teachings of depraved human beings.

Once upon a time, sex education was a simple biology lesson. Students learned the facts of life, and, with those facts, that sex is part of something bigger, called marriage. Teachers explained that this was the moral and healthy way to live.

In those days, people understood that men and women are different, and that their union is unique, unlike any other relationship. It went without saying that boys grew up to become men, and girls, women.

There were only two sexually transmitted diseases, and having one was a serious matter. Certain behaviors were not normal; individuals who practiced them needed help, and a child’s innocence was precious.

Things have changed.

“Before things changed”, this film was shown in public schools as a warning to children, should they come into contact with a pedophile or pederast.

Dr. Judith Reisman in her column How teachers’ “attitude restructuring” is hypersexualizing your kids writes, “The whole purpose of these ‘sex positive’ programs [in schools] is not to liberate adults from their Victorian moral prisons but to indoctrinate children into an unrestrained, sexually available lifestyle. Even if such ‘programs’ are not being taught in all schools yet, this material has been made available on multiple websites and are widely promoted to all, regardless of age. The Kinsey Institute, SIECUS, Planned Parenthood, AASECT and others all provide, or recommend, sites that extoll the virtues of unrestrained sexual experimentation.” Reisman asks, “Is it any wonder that youthful STDs, pregnancies, abortions and abuse are pandemic?”

“Boys Beware” was shown in public schools to warn children of the dangers they face. Perhaps it is of renewed interest to School Boards, as nothing has changed. Homosexual, bi-sexual and heterosexual predators remain, their victims are young girls, women, boys and men:

[youtube]http://youtu.be/H2zikCUPPxw[/youtube]

The State as a Metanarrative: How the postmodern critique can augment the libertarian one by Casey Given

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Most people don’t see postmodernism and libertarianism as sharing much in common. After all, the former refers to a philosophical trend embraced by largely leftist academics over the past half-century, while the latter refers to a political ideology of limited government that many characterize as center-right, originating to a great degree in the Enlightenment. One would be hard pressed to find someone subscribing to both schools of thought.

But have libertarians too quickly dismissed postmodernism without critically examining the philosophy in depth? Some of its elements are compatible with libertarianism and can enhance the libertarian critique of the State.

What Is Postmodernism?

Libertarian stereotypes of postmodernism have a grain of truth. Foremost, postmodern philosophers are notoriously obscure in their writing. Trying to comprehensively understand the work of thinkers like Jacques Derrida or Judith Butler is extremely strenuous, leading many who undergo the task to abandon the project altogether. Such opacity is the unfortunate result of a French intellectual culture that emphasizes density over substance. As Michel Foucault famously remarked to the American philosopher John Searle, “In France, you gotta have ten percent incomprehensible, otherwise people won’t think it’s deep—they won’t think you’re a profound thinker.”

Furthermore, it’s difficult to pinpoint an exact definition of postmodernism, since most so-called postmodern academics deny that they’re such. Derrida, Butler, and Foucault have all shunned the term at one point or another, despite their work being largely classified into the same school of thought. Adding to the confusion, historians have trouble distinguishing postmodernism from modernism, its supposed predecessor. As literary critic Andreas Huyssen once said, “One critic’s postmodernism is another critic’s modernism.”

But a comprehendible explanation of postmodernism does exist. The clearest definition probably comes from the French philosopher Jean-François Lyotard, who wrote in 1979, “Simplifying to the extreme, I define postmodern as incredulity towards metanarratives.”

As the word’s etymology implies, metanarratives are narratives about narratives, giving a grand structural story to human history. In plain English, they’re the tales we’ve been told all our lives about existence from various perspectives. Christianity’s metanarrative, for example, is that humans have been sinful since Adam and Eve’s fall in the Garden of Eden, but there is hope for salvation in accepting Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior. The Enlightenment’s metanarrative is that rational thought grounded in empiricism leads to human progress. Marxism’s metanarrative is that the history of the world has been one of class oppression, and a revolution of the proletariat is the only solution to end poverty, scarcity, and injustice.

Postmodernism, as Lyotard explains, is fundamentally defined by skepticism toward these metanarratives. The postmodernist examines, scrutinizes, or “deconstructs” such metanarratives (as Derrida would say), calling into question the premises behind metanarratives’ assumptions. Contrary to the common stereotype of postmodernism muddling philosophical thought, the underlying aim of the school of thought is ultimately to bring greater clarity to our complex world.

How Can Postmodernism Be Libertarian?

Much like various religions and philosophical schools, the government tells its own metanarratives to justify its purpose in exercising a monopoly on violence. Every citizen is familiar with the State’s metanarrative, especially if they’ve read a little Hobbes. Namely, the government monopolizes violence in order to prevent society from devolving into chaos.

Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren provides a contemporary example of this metanarrative in a 2012 speech that President Obama famously regurgitated later that year:

You built a factory out there? Good for you. But I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn’t have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory—and hire someone to protect against this—because of the work the rest of us did.

A good postmodernist, therefore, would challenge this metanarrative, questioning Warren’s underlying assumptions about the State being a necessary force of protection and progress in a cruel, Hobbesian world.

Do roads have to be publicly funded, or do contemporary examples point to the possibility for large-scale networks of private thoroughfares? Does education have to be a function of the State, or would a truly free market provide schooling? Do police always serve to protect, or do they create more violence than peace? Would life truly be “nasty, brutish, and short” without the State, or can market coordination provide the peace and prosperity needed for individuals to flourish?

In this way, a postmodern outlook on politics could be a libertarian one, calling into question the government’s power structure, which has been thoroughly rationalized and accepted for centuries. While most left-leaning postmodernists may shudder at the thought (and libertarians for that matter), these two schools of thought can indeed be compatible.

Postmodernist Libertarianism?

A postmodern political outlook, however, would not simply reaffirm libertarians’ radical questioning of the State. Many postmodern philosophers like Foucault have pushed beyond this, toward analysis of society, in ways that can add meaningfully to traditional libertarian analysis.

Foucault, for instance, was interested not just in how the State directly regulated society through coercion, but also how indirect arms cultivated citizens to regulate themselves—what he coins “biopower.” According to Foucault, the State has “numerous and diverse techniques for achieving the subjugations of bodies and the control of populations” beyond the traditional institutions of coercion (like the police, the military, and the judicial system).

Hospitals, for instance, regulate a social norm of how to care for one’s own body. Mental institutions regulate what “normal” behavior is. Schools regulate what historical knowledge and political attitudes citizens should be taught.

As German sociologist Thomas Lemuke summarizes Foucault’s view, “What we observe today is not a diminishment or a reduction of state sovereignty and planning capacities but a displacement from formal to informal techniques of government and the appearance of new actors on the scene of government (e.g., NGOs) that indicate fundamental transformations in statehood and a new relation between state and civil society actors.” The government’s reach into civil society has become so broad through indirect means like grants, tax breaks, accreditation, and regulations that it is constantly creating and reinforcing norms of how a citizen should act—and, in turn, justifying itself as society’s protector.

What’s interesting about this analysis from a libertarian standpoint is that these indirect institutions of the State have so often been wrong throughout history. Hospitals once displayed posters of a Department of Agriculture-approved food pyramid that encouraged citizens to eat largely grains and less meat, only to replace it in 2005 because of nutritional concerns. Mental institutions once used severe shock treatment for a number of psychological ills such as depression. Public schools once showed their students public service announcements warning children of the danger of homosexuality.

The underlying point is that the State’s metanarratives allow it to exert control over the population. Even that point is something we can draw from postmodernism, though it’s not the only source of that insight. But the analysis—and even deconstruction—of metanarratives is postmodernism’s bread and butter. Libertarians can learn a thing or two from this. What’s more, it’s consistent with more familiar thinkers in our tradition, like F. A. Hayek, who saw government power as being at odds with a complex, emergent social order. (In fact, Foucault is believed to have developed an interest with Hayek’s work later in his life and encouraged students to read it.) Liberal economics and postmodern philosophy, then, can be seen as two sides of the same coin. Both call us to expose problems with the ways the State justifies its existence and perpetuates its own power.

ABOUT CASEY GIVEN

Casey Given is an editor and political commentator with Young Voices, a project aiming to promote millennials’ policy opinions in the media.

EDITORS NOTE: The featured image is courtesy of FEE and Shutterstock.

Massachusetts: Scott Lively upends LGBT gubernatorial candidate forum!

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We have now sunk to a depth at which restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men. – George Orwell

Candidate Scott Lively shocked the politicians and audience at the Massachusetts LGBT gubernatorial debate. Doesn’t flinch from the truth! A lesson for the pro-family movement.

Pastor Scott Lively, an independent candidate for Governor of Massachusetts,  shocked the other politicians and audience members at a televised candidate forum on “LGBTQ issues” at the Boston Public Library on March 25. Rather than join in the pro-“gay” chorus, Lively described the truths about those behaviors from a medical, sociological, and biblical standpoint. It was a cold dose of common sense that few there had likely heard before.

The forum was held in the Boston Public Library on March 25. It was jointly sponsored by the homosexual lobby group MassEquality and the left-wing public television station WGBH. All of the declared candidates for Governor participated except the two Republicans, Charlie Baker and Mark Fisher.

Candidates for Governor (left to right): biotech executive Joe Avellone (D), former Medicare and Medicaid administrator Don Berwick (D), Attorney General Martha Coakley (D), health care executive Evan Falchuk (I), State Treasurer Steve Grossman (D), former Homeland Security official Juliette Kayyem (D),Scott Lively (I), venture capitalist Jeff McCormick (I).

Pandering vs straight talk

All seven of the other candidates for Governor — both Democrats and Independents, including the current state Attorney General and Treasurer — enthusiastically voiced their support for the homosexual and transgender agendas  and their willingness to advance them in the state if elected.

For most people it’s particularly frightening to see the extent that many politicians are willing to bow to the radical homosexual and transgender movement without seemingly any second thoughts. Few pro-family people realize that.

But Lively told the group that as governor he “would ban LGBT propaganda to children.” Regarding laws supporting transgenderism he said, “It’s perfectly rational and reasonable to exercise discrimination on those grounds . . . We should be helping people to overcome this and not encourage those who persist in the delusion.”

Attorney General Martha Coakley (left) and Scott Lively.

Very hostile environment

The hostility during the event against Lively was fairly dramatic. The crowd of about 150 appeared to consist overwhelmingly of pro-homosexual supporters. There were also about 6-12 Lively supporters there. But just about every time he spoke he was interrupted by loud, rude noises from the audience, which the moderator made little effort to stop. It’s been observed that homosexual activists are emotionally much like 10-year-olds, and that was certainly evident there. (Even then, this was actually more orderly than other venues. At least the activists stayed in their seats this time!)

The audience entering the auditorium just before the forum begins.

In addition, the other candidates were visibly annoyed with Lively’s straight talk. At one point during the debate, Independent candidate Jeff McCormick, who spoke right after Lively, sneered at him and said, “I should win an award after this. Someone owes me a martini.”

But watching this was a clinic on how to fight back in a seemingly overwhelming situation. It wasn’t an easy venue for any pro-family politician. But Lively took it in stride. He did not take any of the hostile bait thrown at him, nor did he veer from his calm but forceful demeanor. This seemed to make his message all the more powerful.

Watch the video of the forum. (1 hr 25 min.) Just watching the first several minutes shows you all you need to see!

[youtube]http://youtu.be/K547pmAoz1I[/youtube]

A few of the questions and answers from the forum

Here is a sample of three of the questions, and how various candidates (and Lively) answered them.

Q. How do you plan to use your role as governor to make Massachusetts the best place for LGBTQ people to live? And how would you tout these initiatives across the country? And how would you use the governor’s office as the bully pulpit?

Joe Avellone. I’m going to have an LGBT Summit yearly to understand the evolving positions and create an LGBT agenda from the governor’s office that we will use in the Legislature to make sure that we keep advancing the agenda.

Attorney General Martha Coakley. We just passed the amendment to the bullying bill and we’ll make sure it’s implemented in the corner office to make sure that LGBTQ children get all the help they need to be good students and have a good future.

Evan Falachuk. The Mass LGBTQ Commission for Youth laid a pretty thorough agenda of items that need to be taken care of. As governor I’ll appoint an assistant secretary and someone who’s a program manager. You need someone in charge of quarterbacking to make that happen, and that will be a big part of my agenda.

Scott Lively. As governor I would ban LGBT propaganda to children. This is a law that I advocated for in Russia. They have found it to be successful for their society. There remains no objective proof that homosexuality is innate and unchangeable despite decades of effort which means that it is an acquired condition. We must assume that that’s true and if that assumption is true, then it is extraordinarily irresponsible to be treating our children as guinea pigs in a massive social experiment. They should be protected from the promotion of homosexuality as good, normal alternative choice for themselves.

Q. Do you support non-discrimination protection for transgender people in public places or accommodations? If so, how do you respond to arguments opposing these protections that provoke controversy and allege public safety issues?

Jeff McCormick. Absolutely I support that. It actually makes my skin crawl to understand how some people can take a segment of our population [and discriminate against it] . . . If I’m having a Catholic wedding or if I’m having a bar mitzvah, it doesn’t make sense to me how someone can selectively discriminate in our society at all. To me this is an absolute no-brainer.

Scott Lively. Discrimination based on race, ethnicity, or nationality is completely irrational because those things are morally neutral. But sexual conduct is not morally neutral. And has serious public health, sociological, moral implications. Its perfectly rational and reasonable to exercise discrimination on those grounds. So all the arguments attempting to compare race with homosexuality and transgenderism are simply comparing apples and oranges. I think transgenderism is clearly self-evidently dysfunctional and this it is simply insanity for our society to be embracing it as a normal variant of human sexuality. We should be helping people to overcome this and not encourage those who persist in the delusion.

Juliette Kayyem. Absolutely I would support an inclusion of transgender. Let me be clear on the transgender issue. We can respect other view points, but we’re on the right side of history here. Anyone who has lived the last 20, 30, 40 years know that we are on the right side of history. There is only one way forward in Massachusetts, let alone the United States, and its going to be to include transgender, non-conforming gender, however you want to describe the anti-discrimination statute. We should be ahead of this and we are not.

Q. May 2014 is the ten year anniversary of marriage equality. Yet state data shows persistent disparities for LGBTQ youth, especially for LGBTQ youth of color and transgender youth. What do you see as the most urgent needs of this most vulnerable population and how will you measure your success as governor in addressing these disparities?

State Treasurer Steve Grossman. I’m very proud of the Governor who has $38 million in the budget for a variety of mental health services, many of which directly affect LGBT youth and homeless youth and I think that’s a budget that we can build on. Even during tough economic times we have to recognize that our most vulnerable populations need to be served on mental health and behavioral health need to be funded adequately.

Juliette Kayyem. I believe a lot of this can be addressed through focusing on kindness. The bullying that occurs against many students that are LGBTQ is unacceptable. It’s unacceptable as a legal matter. And as I told you earlier I brought the federal government’s first anti-bullying complaint against a school district. It was the football players against the cheerleaders — but it had a similar focus which was the schools, and the governments that give them money, have the responsibility to make sure its kids are kind to each other . . . I also think straight children of gay parents are also facing discrimination that we can address as well. It begins with focusing on kindness.

Scott Lively. Frankly I agree, that kindness is what the kids need most. I don’t think its kind to affirm a dysfunctional sexual identity, that our lives are fluid. If an adult decides they want to identify as a homosexual, bi-sexual, or transgender, that’s their choice. But we shouldn’t push that on the kids. We should assume that they have the ability to overcome that problem. I was a street kid myself and I knew a lot of people who were struggling with this. Most of them did not want to have a homosexual orientation and if they had had a chance to have counseling for that, they would have taken it. Regarding bullying, I don’t think that we should be having bullying policies that force all the kids to be pro-gay when we can solve the problem by teaching them to respect each other despite their differences.

Reaction from the liberal press

After the forum finished, most of the press in attendance — predictably biased against the pro-family viewpoint — nevertheless seemed to gather around Lively. If nothing else, he stood out as an independent thinker. The other candidates had generally repeated the same rather mindless pro-“gay” political pandering. As one newspaper reported, “Other than Lively, the candidates agreed on most issues.”

Lively being interviewed by reporter for Boston homosexual newspaper Rainbow Times.

Of all the media coverage, probably the fairest came from the Boston University newspaper, the Daily Free Press. It covered the event without noticeable bias.

On the other hand, the left-leaning Springfield Republican newspaper in Western Massachusetts was over-the-top in its bias and near-hysteria in its coverage.

The Springfield Republican newspaper’s flaming headline.

An important lesson for the pro-family movement

Many conservatives, including us, have stated repeatedly that the major factor for pro-family losses on these issues has been the almost universal reluctance of politicians and pro-family leaders to tell the truth. Instead, under pressure they usually sink into a mushy morass of political correctness and moral compromise (e.g., civil unions, “gay” adoptions). In our opinion, that’s how we lost the major gay-marriage court cases last year and it’s how we continue to lose in legislatures, in courtrooms, and in the public square.

Our people, and particularly our politicians, are deathly afraid of being called names or demeaned by the liberal establishment. It’s the road to hell.

Without the truth there are no weapons for a fight, only gradual capitulation. But telling the truth forcefully and fearlessly over and over again is the basis of victory over a movement that depends on lies and disinformation for its success.

It’s going to be an interesting political summer in Massachusetts.

In a video taken right after the forum ended, Scott Lively gives his reaction. (32 sec.)

[youtube]http://youtu.be/PyXEu6Oaaso[/youtube]

The Deceptive Push to “Implement” Common Core

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I just returned home from speaking at the iRefuse Rally on March 29, 2014, in Port Jefferson Station, New York. My trip was an adventure in many ways, not the least of which was in my managing to get to New York.

In short, my flight to NYC was canceled; I was able to fly to Baltimore on standby and rent a car at 1:30 a.m. to drive through the night to Long Island (250 miles).

(It turns out that the kind individual who anonymously paid for my airfare and hotel approached me after hearing my story and offered to pay for the rental car, as well.)

I was determined to make it to the iRefuse event. It was certainly worth the effort. The rally was wonderful. Several hundred people showed to listen to almost a dozen speakers despite the dreary, rainy weather.

I spoke for about 30 minutes. The title of my talk was The Politics of Standards. I did not use notes, so I cannot post exact, complete content just yet. The rally was video recorded; once I receive the video, I will post my complete speech.

My speech came near the end of the rally; the audience was tired, and so was I (having been awake for 34 hours by then). I polled the audience before deciding upon the content I delivered. I wanted to ensure that I connected with my audience; I did not want to sound too “technical.”

My avoiding sounding too technical does not mean I avoided presenting facts.

In this post, I would like to offer some discussion included in my talk– what I believe to be an important, under-discussed development regarding the push to “implement” the so-called Common Core State Standards (CCSS):

The currently-subtle promotion of a regulatory agency to “ensure” that curriculum “aligns with” CCSS.

Next Stop: CCSS-Approved Curriculum

In the following two publications, I have seen language promoting such an agency. One is this March 26, 2014, Hechinger Report article about a CCSS math problem that went viral. The article argues that the problem is with the selected curriculum, not with CCSS.

One statement caught my attention:

The problem the question highlights is not an issue with the Common Core itself, McCallum said, but rather one of curriculum.  … So far, there has been little qualitycontrol. [Emphasis added.]

Major, looming question:

Just who is supposed to “control” curriculum “quality”??

Why a “CCSS czar”– or a CCSS regulatory board.

I first read about these two horrible concepts in this March 19, 2014, EAG Newsarticle by Ben Velderman, a reflection on this summer 2014 Education Next article by the American Enterprise Institute’s (AEI) Michael McShane. The Education Next article actually proposes among other “implementation solutions” the two “CCSS management” ideas of a CCSS regulatory board and even a single individual in charge of All Things CCSS– a CCSS “czar”:

Former National Education Association chief John Wilson has called for the creation of a “Common Core Czar” to manage the common core. He believes that this person, who would need to have “excellent education credentials including teaching experience, understand a systems approach to education, and have the trust of teachers and parents” and “the respect of both political parties,” could be appointed by the NGA and CCSSO to “oversee the implementation, call out bad practices, and recommend policy changes to the politicians.” Quite a tall order, especially if the “czar” has no government-based authority. [Emphasis added.]

One individual placed in charge of CCSS “implementation.”

Wow. Am I reading Vonnegut? Huxley? Serling?

Perhaps this “czar” idea is too much (tongue in cheek).  Let’s just go for McShane’s next highlighted offering: a CCSS regulatory board:

Patrick McGuinn, a Drew University political scientist, has offered several other possible models for common core governance. Leaders could create a national network of organizations like the NGA and CCSSO, as well as prominent nonprofits and unions, that would serve as revisers, implementation watchdogs, and political advisors. Alternatively, a structure could be developed like the National Assessment Governing Board, which currently oversees the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). Empowered by law, the board is required to represent major constituent groups. States could then enter into a memorandum of understanding to agree to abide by the board’s rulings. 

As Velderman observes:

That (the CCSS regulatory board idea) sounds an awful lot like local school districts and states surrendering their autonomy to some type of centralized authority, whether it be national or regional. [Emphasis added.]

Corporate reform certainly does benefit from the surrendering of local authority (via few signatures, mind you) via so-called memoranda of understanding (MOUs)– not the least of which is the original CCSS MOU.

McShane states that until someone steps up to regulate CCSS, “folks will look to the federal government.”

Allow me to contradict McShane:

“Folks” are fighting the very idea of CCSS, period.

If they were not, there would be no pro-CCSS “call to “rebrand” in an effort to fool the “folks.”

However, it is clear that the public should take seriously the proposed ideas for CCSS “regulation”– and it should know that such “regulation” would certainly include curriculum.

CCSS Curriculum “Regulation”: In the Cards for Years Now

The push for such a CCSS regulatory agency should be expected based upon the declared push for “everything” to “line up”– CCSS, curriculum, and tests– an idea that has been publicized by the National Governors Association (NGA) since 2008.

I discussed this “alignment” in my Common Core, Aligned Curriculum… post:

In June 2008, the Hunt Institute and the National Governors Association (NGA) offered the following information as part of an NGA press release regarding the “need” for “rigorous standards.” Notice the inclusion of curriculum in this 2008 statement:

“High, rigorous standards are the foundation of a strong education system. Content standards specify the knowledge and skills that students need at each grade level. These standards must be supported by an aligned and clearly articulated system of curriculum, assessments, teacher preparation and professional development, textbook selection and appropriate supports for students.“[Emphasis added.]

On July 21, 2009, Bill Gates made the following declaration in a speech to legislators:

…Identifying common standards is not enough. We’ll know we’ve succeeded when the curriculum and the tests are aligned to these standards. [Emphasis added.]

One month prior to the Gates speech, on June 14-15, 2009, NGA offered the now-loaded word, implementation, in reference to aligning all documents that could possibly control the teacher-student relationship– including curriculum:

Well-planned implementation processes are necessary for success. Standards alone will not ensure student success. Wilhoit cautioned that higher standards will not be effective if teachers and local
education authorities are not prepared to use them. High-quality standards represent the knowledge and skills that states want students to acquire, but this goal cannot be realized without an implementation system that includes curriculum, instructional tools and materials, formative and summative assessments, student supports, and teacher preparation and professional development that are aligned with the new standards. [Emphasis added.]

Thus, those publicly promoting “correct implementation” of CCSS as a “solution” to the undeniable national resistance to CCSS are actually pushing for an agency to regulate an implementation system that includes curriculum– whether such promoters admit as much or even realize as much.

Do not be deceived by the seeming diplomatic promotion of “proper CCSSimplementation.”

Note that a major message my “common core” blog category is that those pushing hardest for CCSS (including implementation) overwhelmingly tend to be those without a direct, personal connection to the classroom. Those pushing hardest for CCSS are not teachers, parents, or students.

The CCSS “push” is nondemocratic.

The CCSS implementation “push” will also be a slap to democracy.

Calling Out the “Implementation” Term

One of the iRefuse attendees (and speakers, though I did not arrive in time to hear him) was New York State United Teachers (NYSUT) President Richard Iannuzzi. We spoke after the rally regarding NYSUT’s position on CCSS. He mentioned his stance against CCSS testing, including a freedom of information (FOIA) request NYSUT recently filed regarding CCSS testing in New York. He also mentioned the botched implementation of CCSS.

I asked if NYSUT planned to file other FOIAs specifically related to CCSS. Iannuzzi said yes.

Iannuzzi told me, “As long as Common Core is carved in stone, I do not support it.”

I told him that he needed to publicize that message– his being against a rigid CCSS– rather than the “implementation” message since “implementation” implies that one believes CCSS is fine as it is– no flexibility needed– and that the public isn’t buying it.

I also know that the “implementation is the problem, not CCSS itself” message leads America down the road toward a CCSS regulatory agency.

Rigidity requires a regulatory agency. Flexibility does not.

I challenged Iannuzzi to publicize the words he spoke to me– that so long as CCSS is “carved in stone,” he does not support it. I asked him to make this message clear via press releases and on the NYSUT website, which needs updating since it still includes the “we support CCSS” message.

He said that his updated stance could be found on the Stronger Together website.

I told him that people looking for NYSUT’s position will not go to the Stronger Together website– they will go to the NYSUT website, as I did– and they will read the “we support CCSS” message.

He agreed to update the NYSUT website, and he agreed to publicize his opposition to inflexible CCSS.

It was a hard-hitting conversation, but a good one.

As I was leaving the building, Iannuzzi stopped his car near me, rolled down the window, and told me that he just tweeted his anti-”carved in stone”-CCSS message.

And so he had:

@RichardIannuzzi · Mar 29 If CC is written in stone then it is unacceptable. NY must have a mind of its own! @beth_dimino @NYSAPE @lacetothetop

Based upon the pushback to All Things CCSS in New York State, it is clear to me that New York does indeed “have a mind of its own”– and that “mind” is fighting hard for its right to the democratic process in public education.

In Closing

Fortunately, this CCSS resistance is not unique to New York. CCSS resistance is nationwide, and we are too smart to be pacified by the “better CCSS implementation” strategy.

We want CCSS gone.

A nonexistent CCSS erases any possibility of a CCSS “czar”– or a CCSS regulatory agency– or the federal government defaulting as a CCSS regulatory agency.

Formal regulation of CCSS curriculum is next on the top-down list.

Kill CCSS, kill curriculum regulation.

EDITORS NOTE: New Yorkers gathered for the 1st Annual NYS iREFUSE! rally, a forum and protest against high stakes testing and Common Core. Featuring Dr. Joe Rella, Mark Ferreris, Nicole Ehrhard, Mary Calamia, Beth Dimino, Dick Iannuzzi, Michael Bohr, Rob Astorino, Tim Farley, Assemblyman Al Graf, Ruth Bryant White, Professor Steve White, Dave Greene, Dr. Mercedes Schneider and Yvonne Gasperino. Following is the full length video taken in Port Jefferson, New York. March 29, 2014:

[youtube]http://youtu.be/gq_H8TF5vLA[/youtube]

How teachers’ “attitude restructuring” is hypersexualizing your kids

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Note: Thomas R. Hampson, chief investigator, Liberty Center for Child Protection, contributed to this column.

“Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves.” – Matthew 10:16

Ira photo1

Ira L. Reiss. Photo courtesy of the Kinsey Institute.

Ira L. Reiss, a sociologist and professor emeritus at Minnesota University, was a charter member of Alfred Kinsey’s Sex Cult. His papers, articles, and audio and video recordings already are housed at the Kinsey Institute, 57 years of his work so far. Reiss, like other Kinsey disciples, advocated the production of pornography and its display for “training” purposes to prepare students entering the new sexuality fields spawned by Kinsey’s supposed revelations on sex. Kinsey gleefully promoted this type of material, which during the late ’60s started to be called Sexuality Attitude Restructuring (later renamed Reassessment), or SAR, sessions.

These training sessions are promoted as sexual desensitization seminars, pornographic extravaganzas of all manner of enthusiastic sexual activities presented to groups of men and women as training to become certified therapists, counselors, educators or researchers. In addition to desensitizing sexologists to the images of heterosexual activities, sado-masochism, group sex, sodomy, the use of sex “toys” and homosexual behavior, the sex leaders also hold small group discussions to explore the participants’ attitudes and biases in order to neutralize any “negative” views.

But the stated purpose of these sessions is not the whole story, or even the real story.

Early on, these sessions were not used to merely desensitize and encourage acceptance of all sex acts but as indoctrination into a “sex positive” mindset. (Such training has been a requirement for certification by the American Association of Sex Educators Counselors and Therapists, or AASECT, from the beginning.) SAR leaders also often pressured participants into sexual experimentation with each other.

Insiders view of sexual science book coverReiss revealed this in his book, “An Insider’s View of Sexual Science since Kinsey,” recounting his experience at an eight-day SAR session in San Francisco in 1972. At the time, Reiss already was a professor at the University of Minnesota where its medical school was one the first in the country to offer SAR training to medical students. But it was a new, untested program.

The director of U of M’s SAR program had secured a grant from the Playboy Foundation to send 25 couples from the University, all expenses paid, to San Francisco to receive training from the group that had followed on Kinsey’s practices, the National Sex Forum (aka the National Sex and Drug Forum). The purpose was to improve the programming at Minnesota. Reiss and wife were among the volunteers for the Playboy-sponsored training of future national sex educators. Reiss reports:

“The view presented by many of the staff was supportive of people trying out the full variety of sexual acts that exist (S and M, gay, extramarital, group sex, etc.). The supposed purpose was to allow people to break through their old restrictive sexual attitudes. I had no objection to offering such options. However, as they elaborated, it became clear that this support of broad experimentation was more than just permission giving – it was presented as a demand to experiment.”

When Reiss resisted, the SAR leaders ridiculed him, one of them saying, “Are you hostile to group sex or gay sex, and is that why [you are] so cautious about trying something new? Are you biased?”

Reiss did not object to the activity. Rather, he objected to demanding it. It should be promoted, not required, according to Reiss. Such promoting, demanding and encouraging of freewheeling sexual libertinism SAR trainers have been doing for over 40 years now.

While AASECT requires SAR training as an element in their certification standards, the Kinsey Institute is still involved, and Planned Parenthood has joined in. SAR trainings are regularly available now.

Mentally and emotionally corrupted graduates of the SAR training become the “experts” who design sex-ed courses and teach our children. Thus, they have “determined” that the anus is a “genital” as it is described in the currently used sex education program in Hawaii, that orgies are natural entertainment, that sex addiction is a myth, that addiction to pornography is not possible, that it’s normal for children of any age to have sex and that they have the right to choose whatever sexual activity they may think to try with whomever they want, and that sodomy (legalized by the Supreme Court in 2003) is a healthy sexual practice for all sexual orientations.

The whole purpose of these “sex positive” programs is not to liberate adults from their Victorian moral prisons but to indoctrinate children into an unrestrained, sexually available lifestyle. Even if such “programs” are not being taught in all schools yet, this material has been made available on multiple websites and are widely promoted to all, regardless of age. The Kinsey Institute, SIECUS, Planned Parenthood, AASECT and others all provide, or recommend, sites that extoll the virtues of unrestrained sexual experimentation.

Is it any wonder that youthful STDs, pregnancies, abortions and abuse are pandemic?

Which brings us to one of the big lies spread by these organizations: safe/safer sex.

Typical of schools throughout the country, the Minnesota AIDS Project experts (SAR graduates) tell youngsters they can cut and use plastic wrap as a “barrier” when a child has oral/anal contact.

What?

To make matters worse, many of these groups have for years been spreading the false advertising that condoms and dental dams are FDA approved for such bizarre and damaging use. They are not. (See my recent column, “Condoms never FDA-approved for sodomy.”)

Do “condoms” and homemade barriers give the protection Planned Parenthood and other groups claim? Or do these groups promote their use merely as cover for the real purpose – to hypersexualize younger and younger children, groom them and leave them increasingly vulnerable to disease, death and sexual abuse by peers and adults?

Isn’t it time we start holding these groups legally accountable for knowingly spreading their junk science? Let us hear from you if you are among the millions who have been harmed by their “grooming” lies.

Where are all our SCHOOL TEACHERS? — Teacher Bullied By Other Teachers Over Common Core

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Has anybody heard any comments from school teachers in regards to Common Core? Has anybody even heard a peep from any teacher – public, private, Catholic or homeschooler? Has the silence that all school teachers strive for in their classrooms actually engulfed them as well?

Back in August – right before the school year was to begin – school teachers from all over the state of Florida were the most vocal – numbers of them coming to me complaining about this “new Common Core thing” and asking me what could I do with my bold activism to “make it go away”. Many of these teachers were up in arms about this unethical set of standards that has taken the nation by storm and some went as far as saying that they were thinking about “boycotting” their respective schools in order to send out a message.

Well, 8 months have gone by; the school year is coming to a close; Common Core is finishing out its Phase III; and it seems like every single one of those very concerned teachers has either “taken the 5th”; has gotten a $50,000.00 raise to keep quiet; or simply just threw in the towel and joined the rest of the herd. Manipulation and deception at its greatest. Teachers are the backbone and foundation of our education system in our country and I personally have the utmost respect for ALL teachers – beginning with my own sister, Ana, who has taught in Miami for over 30 years. A phenomenal teacher. An even better sister…a die-hard Catholic to the bone…my “teacher of the year”.

But, even she appears to have her hands tied, duct tape over her mouth. The “Curse of Common Core” has hit her as well as all of those other teachers who threatened to either boycott their school, raise hell with their school principal, or just quit altogether. Slowly but surely, teachers have been lulled into thinking that this new system is going to save the world and since they do not want to lose their jobs – they just go with the flow and try not to create any waves. It has been a very calculated and stealth attack on our education system, going back to “No Child Left Behind” and “Race to the Top”, and it all seems to be falling right into place.

The Common Core system is what “magically” evolved from those two former programs and has now taken over our beloved schools; teachers have been silenced, and just like this fiasco of Obamacare – which keeps moving the field goal posts every other day to accommodate President Obama in order to make him look good – the Common Core Monopoly Game has its own set of rules & regulations. And, you do not collect $200.00 when you pass Go…In the case of our school teachers, they appear to be spending most of their time in “jail”.

And, as long as the Federal Government has control over our beloved teachers and schools – those field goal posts don’t even need to be put up. No contest. Game over. President Obama, Bill Gates, Planned Parenthood, Agenda 21, the United Nations and every single crooked politician and state leader who has pushed for this “socialist disease” (including our own Jeb Bush) – call the shots, make up their own rules, and manipulate the education system to their personal liking…and our beloved children – the future of our country – are the ones who suffer the most…And, that is why I put my neck on the line every single day of the year.

In order to make a difference in our country, state, community, school system and church, one must put his or her neck on the line and be bold about his or her beliefs. That is one reason why I have personally fought Common Core tooth & nail from the very moment that I heard that the Catholic schools were going to implement “the curse” in their schools. That’s when this Christian on a Mission went to work – and I have not stopped since August 1st – and will not stop until we reverse the curse…at least in our Catholic schools in the state of Florida. That is my bold commitment to my Catholic Faith and what I firmly believe GOD has called me to do. Others around the country have fought it as well and even gone as far as taking it to court.

Susan Kimball testified that she suffered from bullying and intimidation from school administrators and fellow teachers because she opposes Common Core. In her testimony, she actually breaks down emotionally while standing up for her beloved students, as she explains to the panel how Common Core has totally crushed her spirit and has left her almost helpless. It takes guts to do what Mrs. Kimball did and I wonder how many other school teachers across this country have experienced the same thing this courageous and compassionate teacher has had to endure. How many teachers have the intestinal fortitude to stand up for what is right and take the stand for their beloved school children like this terrific teacher did? Where are all of those school teachers who came up to me in August ranting and raving about Common Core and how bad it was? Now is your time to stand up and be “bold” about your faith and your beliefs and try to “reverse the curse” and save this great country that we used to refer to as “Home of the Brave/ Land of the Free”.

[youtube]http://youtu.be/JLc_hqVoUuc[/youtube]

“Bullying” – a term we have heard a million times over the past few years. At the school level, it normally occurs when a bigger kid picks on a smaller kid. Or, when a group of kids gang up one single kid. Or, it can occur via the computer or cell phone, known as “cyber-bullying”, where a kid is threatened via the internet or even text messaging. School administrators have placed a great deal of importance on this topic because it is a very serious one. But, what happens when a “school teacher” is bullied, as in the case of Susan Kimball? And, what happens when it is not a bigger kid or a group of kids picking on her? What happens when it is an unconstitutional & unethical set of education standards we refer to as the “Curse of Common Core” who is bullying this teacher? Who does one go to then?

Going to the Federal Government to get help from this Common Core bullying is like a helpless Jew in a Nazi German camp going to Hitler and asking the Fuhrer for a pillow to sleep on because the floor is too uncomfortable.

Carbon Footprint: Using Unborn Fetuses as “Renewable Energy”

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Environmentalists believe that mankind is a scourge, an infestation if you will, upon the earth and must be at the least controlled and at worst eliminated to protect mother earth. Those who are believers in population control embrace the policies of organizations like Planned Parenthood, founded by Margaret Sanger. “The feminist movement, of which Sanger was a major exponent, always identified with eugenics,” wrote Edwin Black.

Edwin Black, author of War Against The Weak, writes, “… Sanger vigorously opposed charitable efforts to uplift the downtrodden and deprived, and argued extensively that it was better that the cold and hungry be left without help, so that the eugenically superior strains could multiply without competition from ‘the unfit.’ She repeatedly referred to the lower classes and the unfit as ‘human waste’ not worthy of assistance, and proudly quoted the extreme eugenic view that  human ‘weeds’ should be ‘exterminated.’ Moreover, for both political and genuine ideological reasons, Sanger associated closely with some of some of America’s most fanatical eugenic racists.” Sanger stated, “My criticism, therefore, is not directed at the ‘failure’ of philanthropy, but rather at its success.” [Emphasis added]

addenbrook hospital

One of England’s leading hospitals used the remains of 797 unborn babies in its own ‘waste to energy’ incinerator, for a savings of £18.50 per cremation. Photo courtesy of the Boston Globe.

Fast forward to today. Jeff Jacoby in his column How unborn babies become ‘clinical waste’, writes, “JONATHAN SWIFT was being satirical when he penned his “modest proposal” that destitute Irish parents alleviate their financial woes by selling their children as delicacies for rich landowners. He assured his readers that 1-year-olds are delicious, ‘whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled.’ That was satire circa 1729. Imagine what Swift at his most scathing would write today — say, a 21st-century “modest proposal” to use unborn fetuses for renewable energy. But this — from a prominent story last week in The Telegraph, a British newspaper — wasn’t satire:

“The bodies of thousands of aborted and miscarried babies were incinerated as clinical waste, with some even used to heat hospitals, an investigation has found. Ten [National Health Service] trusts have admitted burning fetal remains alongside other rubbish while two others used the bodies in ‘waste-to-energy’ plants which generate power for heat. . . . At least 15,500 fetal remains were incinerated by 27 NHS trusts over the last two years alone, Channel 4’s ‘Dispatches’ discovered.”

The Wire’s Phillip Bump writes, “American conservatives are very upset. Breitbart’s new UK outlet picked up the story, with commenters linking the practice to the Nazis, to Hell, to environmentalists, and to Democrats, in some variation of that order. The response was similar on Twitter. (“What’s the carbon footprint of burning dead, aborted infants?”). A columnist at RedState identified as “streiff” did the yeoman’s work of delineating the slippery slope.

This is what happens when a society loses faith. Humans lose their humanity. When that humanity is lost, society feels free to use humans in whatever way it perceives will generate the best Return on Investment. In order to justify abortion, the unborn had to be dehumanized.

“While it always to poke fun at the Brits, this is undoubtedly happening today in the United States,” streiff writes. It is like the film Soylent Green, the writer argues, in which people judged not to be useful to society are turned into food.

Burning fetuses is just the first step on the road to perdition. What’s the carbon footprint for a burned baby? What’s the moral price for burning one?

RELATED STORY: Nancy Pelosi calls pro-lifers ‘dumb’ at Planned Parenthood gala; draws brutal Twitter response

EDITORS NOTE: The featured photo is courtesy of TShirtBordello.com.

College Brats and the Professors who Poison Them

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Some of America’s most disgraceful people are liberal college professors who use their positions to poison the minds of their young students. Here are some thoughts about that.

Dr. Mary Grabar in her column Minding the Campus: “Slut Walks” to Pass USF Freshman Composition writes, “‘Real learning takes place outside the classroom,’ the late communist history professor Howard Zinn famously said.  Zinn practiced what he preached and led his students at Spelman College and Boston University on marches and protests. The 1960s saw plenty of teach-ins and marches by students and some radical professors.  But even then it would have been hard to imagine how the staple of first-year coursework, Freshman Composition, would be used to turn students into activists, subverting the idea of ‘composition” itself and leaving some students free of any ability to write.'”

[youtube]http://youtu.be/FarqKYXkwUo[/youtube]

Dr. Grabar warns, “We have radical professors promoting the idea that students’ own language is good enough, that there are no models for them to read and emulate, that they are to be change agents, participating in mob actions and demonstrating their ‘bravery’ for credit.  The end results are sure to be confused, narcissistic, indoctrinated illiterates.”

Florida: 3-Way Sex Cop busted

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jim bulcher vice may north port

Mayor Jim Blucher, North Port City Commission Seat # 4

The message of North Port Chief of Police Kevin Vespia states, “Our citizens expect and deserve that their police officers will act with honor and integrity at all times.” Well it seems they are not, not by any stretch of the imagination. The City of North Port, Florida and the North Port Police Department (NPPD) have a major and growing scandal on their collective hands.

WWSB ABC Channel 7 reports, “Since we first reported the ongoing scandal involving sexual assault at a party attended by on- and off-duty North Port police officers, multiple people have come forward with stories about previous wild parties involving members of the department. One of these people is a former law enforcement officer here on the Suncoast, and while he wasn’t at the party the night of the alleged assault, he says he has been to several other similar parties hosted and attended by North Port cops where things got out of hand.”

Bill Warner, a Sarasota private investigator, posted a column on his blog titled “Told You So Sarasota: NPPD Swinger Parties With Drugs Headed Up By 3 Way Sex Cop Melanie Turner.” North Port resident Sherry Smart, after reading Warner’s article, sent an email to the City Commissioners. Smart states, “3 Way Sex Cop…. what a great tag line for North Port. Perhaps we would get more visitors to our ‘esteemed’ city with that for our city motto instead of ‘the city where you can achieve anything’… but then again perhaps those are interchangeable like our police officers at sex parties?”

Smart notes, “The article does not elude [sic] to a ONE time event. Good officers (those who don’t do 3 ways with their peers) would be fearful to expose this behavior. They would be fearful of repercussions from those who do not wish to be exposed… or rather, found out. (Exposure doesn’t seem to bother them). Because we now have an officer who has committed suicide rather than go to court and eventually jail, this leads one to question…. what else was there that he didn’t want to come to light and with this dire action, he thought would die with him? So what’s the percentage of exposure — 10%? with another 90% hidden within the department?”

police chief kevin vespia north port

North Port Chief of Police Kevin Vespia

rhonda difranco vice mayor city of north port

North Port Vice-Mayor Rhonda Y. DiFranco

It has been reported by the Sarasota Herald-Tribune that North Port Vice-Mayor Rhonda Y. DiFranco’s female domestic partner is Jennifer S. Cohen. DiFranco, Cohen and former Sarasota City Commissioner Ken Sheilan (who is a homosexual) were the force and faces behind the effort to approve a domestic partner registry in North Port. Vice Mayor DiFranco is the City Commission’s liaison to the North Port Police Department. DiFranco is also a retired Sarasota County Deputy Sheriff.

Smart concludes with, “Houston we have a problem. (Stating the obvious here) So now what are you going to do about it? I do have some thoughts on how to go about routing [sic] out the rotten roots. Am waiting expectantly to hear your thoughts.”

If Smart receives a reply we will post an update to this column. The following questions have been sent to all of the City Commissioners:

1. Who hired Officer Melanie Turner and when?
2. Did the department do a background check on Officer Turner?
3. Did the department know Officer Turner was a lesbian?
4. If so, was this not a red flag to the department?

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Jennifer S. Cohen.

The contact information for the City of North Port Commission is:

Cheryl Cook, Commissioner, Seat # 1, ccook@cityofnorthport.com
Tom Jones, Commissioner, Seat # 2, tjones@cityofnorthport.com
Rhonda Y. DiFranco, Vice-Mayor Seat # 3, rdifranco@cityofnorthport.com
Jim Blucher, Mayor, Seat # 4, jblucher@cityofnorthport.com
Linda Yates, Commissioner, Seat # 5, lyates@cityofnorthport.com

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