Author: VD

DW writes: What started as a “what if” rolled into “hey, I was reading that…” and trading stories about junior high school and rumors of unpleasantness at our city’s JHS. We determined to get our act together before the older started 8th grade. Then make that 5th grade, since grades 5-8 share the same building (albeit separate hallways). So that gave us two more full years. More talks, more incidents – such as watching in shock as a pickup truck blasted through the school bus flashers in front of our house; fortunately our little one had not started crossing yet. And the instance in which our older child warned her younger sister not to put Jesus’ picture on her collection of J-words because she heard the principal telling other students that they weren’t allowed to talk about Jesus inschool. (We encouraged her to include it anyway, and she did happily).

Well, that did it. We are riding out the last two weeks, and that’s it. We are wresting our wards of the state back and educating them properly,about life, facts, and the real things of importance. The search for how to go about it led to many web sites, magazines, and the library. While [my wife] was standing in line with a stack of homeschool books in her arms, the PTA mom behind her struck up a conversation, eyeing but never mentioning the books in my wife’s arms. Word must spread quickly, because recently our older girl was questioned when turning in a paper if she was returning to that school next year – this despite us turning in the form sent home to all asking where our child will be attending school next year. At that time, we hadn’t decided, so we said ‘undecided.’ Since the form was for ‘planning and staff estimating purposes only’ we didn’t think much of it. We’ve talked to the girls and told them of our plans and goals and dreams and they are both excited and looking forward to beginning school withMommy. So she told the truth – no.

The teacher confirmed that, yes, she was going to be taught by Mommy at home, then started the subtle game, “Well, I’m really going to miss seeing you.” And, ‘You know, you needspecial materials to teach at home. Does your Mommy have those? What will she be using?’ And, ‘Oh, is your Mommy a teacher? Has she done teaching before?’ Then she promptly dashed off a note to our younger’s teacher, and had it delivered by a student without delay. Later, we learned that our younger daughter received the same questions. Fortunately, 2nd graders that have just learned to read cursive feel no qualms about opening teacher’s notes and sharing their contents with their friends. Days later, the question comes from the teacher to our child — “Has your Mommy changed her mind about teaching you at home yet?” Nope. And on the third strike from Teacher we’re pulling them out with a week to go in the year.

This should illustrate why it’s important to keep your kids out of the system from the start. Don’t mess around with it at all. But I salute DW and his wife, and I have no doubt that this little bit of ominous weirdness will serve well to help them realize that they are doing the right thing.

I just turned in next week’s column. Since some of you will probably be out and about, I thought I’d give you a hint of what it is. Feel free to guess what they are; the answer will be revealed on Monday.

And, as always, by “liberal” I mean American left-liberalism. Language transforms over time, better to light a candle and deal with it than curse the linguistic darkness.

Papapete backs into a corner:Vox, did they have the right to secede? Maybe. Did they have the right to keep slaves? Never….the law is what it is, not what we want it to be.”

This makes no sense. Clearly, the Southern states did, at one point, have the right to keep slaves. George Washington and other Founding Fathers owned them. If individuals in the South did not have the right to keep slaves, and the law did not change, at what point did they lose this right? Furthermore, if they had the right to secede, being sovereign, at what point did they lose their sovereignty prior to being invaded?

Keeping the Union together – by force – was far and away the strongest message given out by the North. If the war was only about slavery, not independence, then is there any reason that the South cannot secede today since it no longer practices slavery? Will the federal government permit it since the issue has, according to the single-minded slaveryists, never been examined, much less settled?

Drawing on Papapete’s early points about case law, if the law is nothing but what those in authority declare it to be, there is no justice or human rights to be found in it. This is the Nietzschean mentality which declares that there is only the will to power, and that might makes right. It is totally contrary to the stated aims and goals of the American Revolution and tends to support the concept that the war to keep the Union together by force, not free association, marked the end of the original American experiment.

Ultimately, the superficiality of the slaveryist concept is being eroded by current events in the European Union. There, as in 19th century America, independent state sovereignty is being insensibly engulfed by Brussels. A potential repeat of the American Civil War is entirely possible, and would clearly illustrate the concept of free association and union by force being entirely distinct from slavery. In this potential case, the sparking issue would probably be tax harmonization.

This is me, blog-flexing. – GAH!- I just received an email from Opera, informing me that the Blogger bug of which I had informed them has been fixed and will be incorporated into the next release. Caloo Calay!

Vox Popoli, making the world just a little bit better, one step at a time. (Space Bunny enters, whispers something into my ear.) Excuse me, make that just a little bit STRANGER, one step at a time.

A 13-year-old Denver girl said she was threatened with a knife at her middle school and her hair was set on fire, yet she was the one who was told to stay home for the remainder of the school year while her alleged attacker wasn’t suspended or even investigated. Courtney Glowczewski has a small right arm and leg because of cerebral palsy, a disability that her teachers say has not kept her from working hard in school and being a good student…. But her physical appearance has made her a target of taunting and of physical attack, which she said has never been addressed by the administration at Martin Luther King Middle School. Last week, she said the bullying got worse when she said she was threatened and assaulted by a seventh grade boy.

There’s your pack mentality at work. I’m guessing that the boy ranks rather low on the totem pole, and scenting a victim, took advantage of the opportunity to score a few cruel points to ensure that he stayed on the abusers side of the fence instead of the abused.

It’s amusing to me that the school systems work so hard to try to get homeschoolers in school, and yet anyone determined to get out of the system could arrange to get sent out of it in a heartbeat. Granted, it’s a little harder now that they kick out the victims instead of the perpetrators, but it’s still doable.

Papapete rants: All you Civil War history rewriter, YES, IT’S ABOUT SLAVERY!!! You can say “States Rights” like a mantra as much as you want, but the South didn’t secede because it didn’t like the current OSHA regulations. The “States right” that we’re talking about was the “right” to OWN other human beings. What do you think the Missouri Compromise was about? Have you ever heard of “Bleeding Kansas”? The South seceded because they were afraid that they would lose the right to keep other people as property. Period. End of story. The rest of the argument is smoke and mirrors.

That’s a pretty silly argument. I’d be interested in hearing an explanation of why the New England nations were discussing secession in the 1820s if the Civil War was about nothing but slavery.

The underlying motivations are actually unimportant. The simple fact is that the states had a right to secede, regardless of why they wanted to do so. This right was abrogated by military force. Therefore, the war was over states rights. This is supported by the post-war fact that secession is now no longer considered a states right.

What mystifies me about the hysterical SLAVERY SLAVERY shouters is that it is not as if slavery is an automatic casus belli. The institution has been practiced continuously throughout human history and is being practiced today in more than a few countries. The fact that the South wished to continue what had been a legal institution throughout the entire nation since its founding is hardly outrageous. Furthermore, it ignores the economic realities of the time, which is that the North was forbidding the South to trade with England and France through the use of severe import taxes.

Remember, war is always about exerting power and resisting the exertion of power. Always. The very notion that the North went to war to free the poor black slaves is downright laughable when viewed through the dispassionate eye of a military historian, particularly considering that the Northern slave states did not free their slaves until after the war.

Consider an analogy. A state which has always permitted abortion suddenly votes to ban it as infanticide. The mores have changed with the development of prenatal technology, and it is now viewed as a disgusting procedure by the majority of the populace. The large city in the center of the state, with a high population of morally suspect women who can’t figure out how to use birth control, is shocked by this ban and decides to exercise its right (postulated here) to secede from the state. Does the state have the right to invade, pillage and prevent the city from seceding, even if the city has the right to secede and the state has no written or explicated power to stop it from doing so? After all, these people are murdering babies!

Papapete writes: Case law is what determines what the law means. You may disagree with the result, you may not like it, but reality is what it is, not what you want it to be. Right now the Constitution is what the Supremes say it is, like it or not. Try that argument in a court of law. I guarantee that your butt will be in the slammer so fast your head will spin. That’s reality, deal with it.

As in all cases, the fact of a need for an adjective substantively changes the meaning of the noun. Case law is not law. Case law is a modern substitute for law, completely changing the nature of a system that was originally conceived to be “a nation of laws, not men”. So now, once more demonstrating that the American Revolution is over, (or, alternatively, has gone full circle), we have a nation of men making dictates.

For example, case law in Minnesota dating back to the 19th century has modified the meaning of “private property” to mean “things that grow in the soil”. This has been upheld multiple times by the Minnesota Supreme Court. Orwell didn’t see the half of it.

The silver lining is that since the law is manifestly no longer Law, you are under no moral obligation to pay it any regard whatsoever. One cannot obey something that does not exist. As W. Somerset Maugham wrote: “do what thou wilt, with due regard for the policeman around the corner.” That, too, is reality, and one that always frightens the authorities cowering behind their facade. Abandon the truth and eventually your lies will crumble about your head. This does not bode well for the future of our society, but then, news that the world is fallen should hardly be a surprise to anyone.

Matt Drudge has a link to a British story about a three-year old child who died of heart failure due to her obesity. Meanwhile, today’s Star and Sickle covers the ongoing debate in St. Paul to ban smoking from restaurants, bars and night clubs – all in the name of health.

It seems to me that if health trumps everything, it’s time to shut down the fast food restaurants of America and start arresting everyone who is more than ten pounds overweight. Why should smoking – which isn’t anywhere nearly as bad for you as being fat – be quasi-banned while people walk around openly double-fisting Dunkin Donuts?

Now St. Paul officials are saying that a state-wide ban is needed because St. Paul will be at a competitive disadvantage as people will go elsewhere to eat and smoke, drink and smoke and dance and smoke. Non e’ merde, signor Holmes. I despise totalitarians of all stripes, but the sanctimonious health fascists are particularly annoying.

Why do people so despise freedom? Freedom necessarily involves the ability to make stupid and short-sighted choices too.

I am not surprised by the fainting couch reaction from many people when I suggest that, considering the war has been won, we bring our troops home. They raise a whole host of arguments of how doing so will cause Iraq to somehow become worse than the hellhole it was under Saddam Hussein, which is a bizarre point considering that an Iraq under Iranian or Syrian or Saudi Arabian domination is precisely NO more dangerous in a world that already has Iran, Syria and Saudi Arabia.

But let’s forget Iraq for now. Can we at least agree that Japan is unlikely to fall under the control of neighboring jihadists? Can we bring our troops home from there? No? Okay, how about Germany? No? Italy? Belgium? Can’t we at least bring our troops home from freaking Belgium?

Americans absolutely hate to be told that they have constructed an Empire, but assuredly, future historians will regard it as one. Yes, it’s a virtual empire of sorts, but it’s real for all of that. And, as every student of Rome knows, empire follows republic just as collapse into barbarism follows empire. From economics to shifting social mores, I see absolutely no sign that America is not following this historical progression.

Robert Novak writes: [former OK Congressman Tom] Coburn’s problem is that he takes seriously the professed Republican agenda: limited government, entitlement reform and anti-abortion advocacy. He was a rare sincere GOP supporter of term limits, leaving the House after three terms as he promised to do. The result is scant support for Coburn from the Republican establishment, in the nation’s capital as well as Oklahoma. If elected to the Senate, he will do it largely on his own.

That situation suggests the current realignment cycle in American politics is nearing an end after 36 years, with the Republican Party displaying symptoms of a nervous breakdown. The party’s leadership, from President Bush on down, went out of its way to push the undependable Republican Sen. Arlen Specter to victory against a staunch conservative in the Pennsylvania primary because he was considered a stronger general election candidate. In contrast, dependably conservative Coburn gets no establishment support in the contested Oklahoma primary though he is the best bet in November.

This is some of the best proof that the Bush administration is nothing but ur-liberals in conservative clothing. They fought hard for the liberal Specter over a legitimate conservative in the primary, supposedly in the interest of holding the Senate, but won’t lift a finger for the genuine conservative who is the strongest Republican candidate in Oklahoma. Strange, a Pennsylvania senator has no more votes than an senator from Oklahoma… I imagine the president wanted to have Arlen as chairman of the judiciary committee so the American people could be saddled with more of those great Republican Supreme Court nominees like Souter, O’Conner and Warren.

A person’s motivations can be determined by his actions, not his words.