The Curse of Liberalism

Guest post by Alan Caruba


“Liberalism has become an ugly blend of sanctimony, self-interest, and social connections,” writes Fred Seigel whose credentials include being a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. He has written “The Revolt Against the Masses: How Liberalism Has Undermined the Middle Class”, but you won’t be able to read it until it is published in January. As a reviewer, I received an advance copy from Encounter Books.

It hardly needs to be said that today’s liberals and conservatives loathe one another, nor that the nation is as sharply divided politically as in the days before the Civil War. Politically, America has swung back and forth between liberal and conservative administrations as evidenced by the elections of the previous century and this new one.

Moreover, many have noticed that there is often scant distance between Democrat and Republican administrations. Both have been led by patricians, often the graduates of Harvard and Yale. Seigel refers to them as the “clerisy” defined as educated people being a class unto themselves.

Liberalism has been a very expensive failure

“Liberalism has been a very expensive failure,” says Seigel and points to the Obama administration as an example of “the apparent disdain for the copybook maxims of faith, family, and hard work.” When liberals go to court to force schools to remove a daily prayer or a pledge of allegiance to start the day, support abortion on demand and gay marriage, seek to expand so-called “entitlement programs” and put as many people as possible on some form of government dole, this should be obvious to anyone.

The seizure of one-sixth of the nation’s economy in the form of Obamacare is yet another example and the failure of this program, passed near midnight by a straight party vote by Democratic legislators who had no idea what was in the bill, demonstrates the liberal preference for a massive central government.

“Liberalism has been dedicated to preserving the problems for which it presents itself as the solution.”

Seigel traces the beginnings of liberalism in America. “American liberals don’t like to compare themselves with other twentieth-century ideologues. But, like all ideologies that emerged in the early twentieth century—from communism and fascism to socialism, social democracy, and its first cousin, British Fabianism—liberalism was created by intellectuals and writers who were rebelling against the failings of the rising middle class.”

Among the intellectuals who advanced liberalism was Herbert Croly, the editor and co-founder of The New Republic whose 1909 book, “The Promise of American Life”, was the first manifesto of modern American liberalism. Croly “rejected American tradition with its faith in the Constitution and its politics of parties and courts.” This reeks of the intellectual snobbery that has dominated liberal thinking for more than a century at this point.

A distinguishing element of liberalism has been its admiration of autocratic leaders and this explains its embrace of dictators from the likes of the German Kaiser, Lenin and Stalin, through to men like Fidel Castro and his murderous sidekick, Ernesto “Che” Guevara. The appeal of communism has always played a large role in the ideology of liberalism.

What distinguishes liberalism today in the minds of conservatives is its rejection of the utter failure of communism and its cousin, socialism. One need only look to Russia and Europe for evidence of this, but it is manifest in America as it struggles to deal with the costs of New Deal creations such as Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, absorbing and redistributing some sixty percent of the national budget. The liberal belief in Keynesian economics whereby the government maintains the economy through massive expenditures has left America today with the largest debt in his history.

Liberalism has been driven by its disdain for America’s middle class

Liberalism has been driven by its disdain for America’s middle class that emerged from the large wave of immigration in the early 19th century and the success it has had in the business sector, entering the professions, and raising incomes. Liberalism has a deep distrust of “the masses” while claiming to represent them.

Liberal ideology produced Lyndon Johnson’s failed “War on Poverty” and embraced environmentalism with its doomsday predictions, none of which has come true. It explains President Obama’s rejection of American exceptionalism. “Liberal interests never reexamined their assumptions, even when faced with social and political failure. They never asked why, despite the vast sums expended, poverty had become worse rather than better.”

At the same time, in the latter half of the last century, liberals invented a laundry list of “rights” you will not find in the Constitution such as women’s rights, gay rights, children’s rights and even the Gaia concept of the Earth’s right to be protected against human activity.

“It was attitude and intentions—not outcomes—that matter to liberals,” says Seigel.

Liberalism is the ideology of intellectuals who looked down on the masses that became America’s middle class and produced the greatest economy the world had ever known. Now they exist to live parasitically off of it.

The great frustration of conservatives is the inability to have a rational debate or discussion with liberals. They don’t make sense. It is the curse of liberalism.

Alan Caruba writes for a variety of periodicals and his daily blog is called Warning Signs.

When it comes to obscenity, Eric Holder trumps Miley Cyrus

Guest post by Larry Sand

When it comes to obscenity, cheating kids out of a good education is far worse than a salacious dance act.

While it is a sad spectacle to watch a gawky 20 year-old stick out her tongue and sex it up in front of millions on national television, the 62 year-old U.S. Attorney General’s act is far worse, as his will do much more lasting harm. He waves his magic wand and poof – thousands of poor children are chained to the confines of failing schools in Louisiana.

Miley Cyrus would appear to be a lost puppy whose father claimed in 2011 that she was influenced by Satan. On the other hand, Eric Holder would seem to be under the spell of the teachers unions and the overrated god of diversity.

The Holder story has its roots in May when the Louisiana Supreme Court ruled that:

the current method of funding the statewide school voucher program is unconstitutional. Act 2, part of Gov. Bobby Jindal‘s 2012 package of education reforms, diverts money from each student’s per-pupil allocation to cover the cost of private or parochial school tuition. The act authorizes both the Louisiana Scholarship Program and the new Course Choice program.

In other words, the voucher program is sound, but the court thought its funding mechanism wasn’t constitutional. So on June 6^th, the Louisiana House and Senate compromised on a budget that allowed the program to use funds not allocated through the state’s funding formula.

Problem solved, right?

Not quite.

Later in June, the teachers unions – School Choice Enemy No. 1 – promptly swung into action.

The Louisiana Association of Educators and several local teachers associations have filed a class-action suit charging that the state owes local school boards $199 million as a result of the Louisiana Supreme Court decision striking down part of the state’s voucher law.

Okay, so we are still dealing with funding issues, not the legality of vouchers.

But then in August, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder dropped the bomb and The Wall Street Journal pointed out its stunning irony,

On nearly the same day the Attorney General spoke in Washington to honor the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I have a dream” speech, his Justice Department sued to block the educational dreams of minority children in Louisiana.

Late last week, Justice asked a federal court to stop 34 school districts in the Pelican State from handing out private-school vouchers so kids can escape failing public schools. Mr. Holder’s lawyers claim the voucher program appears “to impede the desegregation progress” required under federal law. Justice provides little evidence to support this claim, but there couldn’t be a clearer expression of how the civil-rights establishment is locked in a 1950s time warp.

Passed in 2012, Louisiana’s state-wide program guarantees a voucher to students from families with incomes below 250% of poverty and who attend schools graded C or below. The point is to let kids escape the segregation of failed schools, and about 90% of the beneficiaries are black. (Emphasis added.)

Impeding desegregation? On what grounds does the Justice Department make this claim? Cato’s Jason Bedrick explains,

In Tangipahoa Parish, for instance, Independence Elementary School lost five white students to voucher schools, the petition states. The consequent change in the percent of enrolled white students “reinforc(ed) the racial identity of the school as a black school.”

Five students! According to the National Center for Education Statistics, there were 143 white students out of 482 students at Independence Elementary School in 2010-11 (the most recent year for which data is available). Assuming that recent enrollment and racial composition is the same and that no black students received vouchers as well, that’s a shift from 29.6 percent white to 28.9 percent white. Though the students at Independence almost certainly would not have noticed a difference, the racial bean counters at the DOJ see worsening segregation.

But the DOJ is not content merely to prevent white students from exercising school choice. The petition also cites Cecilia Primary School, which in 2012-13 “lost six black students as a result of the voucher program,” thereby “reinforcing the school’s racial identity as a white school in a predominantly black school district.” In the previous school year, the school’s racial composition was 30.1 percent black, which the DOJ notes was 16.4 percentage points lower than the black composition of the district as a whole. According to the NCES, in 2010-11 there were 205 black students out of a total enrollment of 758, so the school was 27 percent black. Assuming a constant total enrollment, the DOJ’s numbers suggest that there were 228 black students in 2011-12. The loss of six black students would mean the school’s racial composition shifted from 30.1 percent black to 29.2 percent black as a result of the voucher program. Again, imperceptible to untrained eye but a grave threat to racial harmony according to the Obama administration’s Department of Justice.

These are the only two schools cited directly in the DOJ’s petition, so presumably they represent the two cases with the largest impact. A footnote reveals that “The net loss ranged up to thirteen students per school.”

Why is Holder doing this obscene dance?

Is he so smitten with the concept of diversity that he is letting it take precedent over the needs of poor kids in failing schools? Could be, but then again, as noted above, the voucher-driven diversity realignment is miniscule. Or, is he doing the bidding of the teachers unions who are powerful political allies? Maybe both. But whatever the motivation, the lawsuit stinks, and the harm it will inflict on mostly underprivileged, minority children is tragic.

What Holder and his ilk don’t seem to understand is that most parents are not stricken with the diversity obsession, and simply want the best education possible for their kids. If you ask any parent of any ethnicity if they rather their kid get a first class education at single-ethnicity school or a mediocre-to-lousy one at a rainbow-school, we all know what the answer would be.

Louisiana’s gutsy governor Bobby Jindal put it all into perspective in an interview with Neil Cavuto,

My parents came here over 40 years ago in search of the American dream, confident if you worked hard, it didn’t matter what race you were, didn’t matter who you knew. That’s what we’re trying to deliver for our kids. And that’s why it’s just ridiculous to me that the Obama administration would side with teachers unions over these young children.

Cavuto then asked Jindal if he thought that the teachers unions were pushing the issue because vouchers endanger their jobs. Jindal responded,

Oh, absolutely. Look, they tried, they tried to take us all the way up to the state Supreme Court to stop this program. The teachers unions did. The program is still here. They tried recalling our speaker of the House and me and some others. And we’re still here. The reality is, teachers unions, when we started this statewide, said that parents don’t have a clue when it comes to making choices for their kids. (Emphasis added.)

That’s their world viewpoint. These government unions think the bureaucrats know better. I have met with the moms. And, Neil, it would break your heart that they’re working multiple jobs. They want their kids to have a better quality of life than they have had. They’re trying to do the right thing. They’re telling me this is the first time my kid is bringing home homework, my kid is going to school with discipline. My kids are talking about for the first time thinking about going to college, the first one in our families to graduate from high school. They’re talking about becoming the first ones.

As we all know, Martin Luther King concluded his famous speech 50 years ago with the inspirational words, “Free at last, Free at last, Thank God almighty we are free at last.” But if Mr. Holder and the teachers unions get their way, a bunch of school kids and their families in Louisiana will remain shackled to their failing schools, guaranteeing that their shot at achieving the American dream and true freedom will be next to impossible. Dr. King would be outraged.

 

Larry Sand, a former classroom teacher, is the president of the non-profit California Teachers Empowerment Network – a non-partisan, non-political group dedicated to providing teachers with reliable and balanced information about professional affiliations and positions on educational issues.

Barack Obama and Eric Holder Bar the Schoolhouse Door, Blocking Minority Children From a Quality Education

Guest post by Investors Business Daily


Pro-Choice: The Justice Department has asked a federal court to stop 34 school districts in Louisiana from handing out private-school vouchers so kids can escape failing public schools, just like the president's daughters.

He didn't say it on the 50th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream Speech," but President Obama, along with Attorney General Eric Holder, also has a dream — one of leaving every black child in the Pelican State behind, trapped in schools that cannot educate them.

Almost simultaneously with the president's speech, Holder's Department of Justice filed suit in federal court to stop Louisiana's statewide voucher program.

Passed in 2012, the program guarantees a voucher to students from families with incomes below 250% of poverty and who attend schools graded "C" or below.

Liberals are all for choice when it comes to having children, but not when it comes to educating them. The irony of Obama's speech is that he pretended to honor a man who fought to have black children attend schools they were barred from as his administration fought to keep them in schools they can't escape from, a form of educational apartheid that's both separate and unequal.

White liberal hypocrite Matt Damon is typical of the elitists who don't practice what they preach.

Son of a public school teacher, the Hollywood actor has often sung the praises of public education, yet has chosen to send his four daughters to private schools that few of us non-movie stars can afford.

Chelsea Clinton benefited from attending D.C.'s most prestigious private school, pricey Sidwell Friends, where both of the Obamas' daughters, not to mention Vice President Biden's granddaughters, matriculated.

Can't have the working poor they pretend to care about have the same opportunity to exercise the same school choice with those gimmicky vouchers, can we?

DOJ's argument is that many of the schools affected remain under desegregation orders imposed 50 years ago and that, essentially, letting poor blacks leave these schools for better ones upsets the politically correct racial balance DOJ wants to achieve.

The DOJ complaint says that in several of the 22 districts involved "the voucher recipients were in the racial minority at the public school they attended before receiving the voucher."

So letting black kids leave makes these schools more white, which is bad, but getting a bad education while sitting next to a white child is apparentlay good.

According to the complaint filed in New Orleans federal court to block 2014-15 vouchers for students in public school systems under federal desegregation orders, the first year of private school vouchers "impeded the desegregation process."

How about the kids who end up not being able to read Dr. King's speech or spell "desegregation"?

Education is the enemy of the left, for with knowledge comes power, a power that does not come from the government. May we be so cynical as to suggest that an administration that fosters and feeds on dependency wants to perpetuate it by ensuring that poor black kids grow up to be poor black Democratic-voting adults?

And don't forget the necessity of letting teachers' unions feed at the public trough while babysitting the next cohort of functional illiterates.

Republican Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal actually does something to help these kids with more than boilerplate rhetoric, while Obama and Holder use the full weight of the federal government to try to stop him.

Please, Mr. President, don't stand where Martin Luther King stood, in the shadow of the statue of the first Republican president, Abraham Lincoln, leader of a party formed to fight slavery, at a gathering the only black U.S. senator, Tim Scott, was not invited to speak at, and preach about racial injustice.

What you and your attorney general are doing in Louisiana is racial injustice.


Read More At Investor's Business Daily

Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis: "Rich White People" to Blame for My Union's Catastrophic Failures

Guest post by Investors Business Daily


Education: The president of the Chicago Teachers Union charges that racism and "rich white people" are to blame for the immense financial and educational crisis facing the Chicago Public Schools.

The Chicago Public Schools (CPS) represent everything that is wrong with public education in America. They are in thrall to the unions that run the system and bankrupt it through bloated salaries and pensions while too many of the students trapped inside graduate as functional illiterates, if they graduate at all.

Poor academic performance generally, a huge budget shortfall and poorly attended schools in declining neighborhoods recently forced CPS to close 49 schools in an attempt to close a $1 billion budget gap. But according to CTU President Karen Lewis, the root cause is not the lack of educational competition or the inability to fire or reward teachers on the basis of student academic performance.

In a speech Wednesday before the upscale City Club of Chicago, Lewis asked, "When will we address the fact that rich, white people think they know what's in the best interest of children of African-Americans and Latinos — no matter what the parent's income or education level."

She decried members of the "status quo, the people who are running the schools and advising the mayor on how to best run our district, know what good education looks like because they have secured it for their own children in well-resourced, public and private institutions."

As we have noted, the unions run Chicago schools and seek to preserve the status quo of a virtual education monopoly. Lewis has fought the use of any objective analysis of teacher performance despite the fact that just 15% are proficient in reading and that four of 10 CPS students do not graduate from high school.

Lewis is also no fan of charter schools, despite the fact Chicago's charters regularly outperform their public school cousins. In 2012, nine of the top 10 performers were charter schools based on the ACT scores of their students.

Of course when you mention things like charter schools, liberals like Lewis say they get to cherry-pick their students. Yet some 60% of Chicago charter-school students are minorities and 35% are Hispanic.

Ninety-one percent qualify for free or reduced-price lunch. Doesn't sound like cherry-picking to us.

School choice and vouchers would seem to be the answer to Lewis' lament that "rich white people" call the shots while sending their kids out of the system to well-endowed, private schools, like President Obama did.

Obama, who is rich but only half-white, closed the Washington Scholarship Fund that for 17 years had allowed students trapped in D.C. public schools, even worse than Chicago's, to attend the same private schools as the Washington elites.
Lewis opposes the idea of giving all students vouchers and letting them attend the schools of their choice. In every other area of human endeavor, competition reduces costs and breeds excellence. Parents and students, like other consumers, should be free to reject poor service and take their business elsewhere.

Lewis prefers the statist solution of "investing" through higher taxes on the rich and new taxes on consumers plus financial transfers that would be redistributed to the public schools and the teacher's unions from those who can afford to leave the city with their kids.

This is not surprising since she is a socialist who has marched with Occupy Wall Street and thinks and "the whole concept of the 99 percent" (vs. the richest one percent) is "an important movement."

She has earned praise as a "fist-in-the air, crowd-rousing, dynamic union leader" from former Communist Party revolutionary-turned-school-reformer Michael Kronsky Lewis should embrace school choice. If it saves only one child, wouldn't it be worth it?


Via: Investors Business Daily.

Bill Ayers and the Bombings in Boston [Alphamail]

Guest post by Alphamail


The major media outlets and their on-camera newslings, have now interpreted the Boston Marathon bombing as a new era in the ground assault on America.

“We’ve entered a new phase in the kind of tactics the enemy is willing to use against us,” they profess. “They’re resorting to a new unusual street warfare and we should be prepared for this new type of attack.”

Excuse me…? Is that some kind of confused ostrich disconnect? Were you alive in the 1970’s? Do you know your history? Do you have a pulse?

This is one bombing! Yes, it is tragic. Yes, we need to pray for and support the victims and their families. May God comfort and be with them all.

But this is one bombing! Have you forgotten…?

The esteemed American professor Bill Ayers and his Weather Underground bombed – are you ready? – nearly forty (40) American institutions in the 1970’s.

The Boston bombing is not new by any means – it has an evil precedent - produced by similarly evil people.

Here is a short list of Ayer’s groundwork:

• The South African Consulate in New York City
• ROTC buildings
• ITT Latin American Headquarters
• Draft and Recruitment Centers
• The Pentagon
• The National War College
• Israeli Aircraft Industries Building
• The US Capitol
• MIT Research Center
• Harvard War Research Center for International Affairs
• National Guard Headquarters, Washington, DC
• Presidio Army Base and MP Station
• Federal Offices of H.E.W.
• Long Island City Courthouse
• New York City Police Headquarters
• 103rd Precinct of the New York City Police
• Haymarket Police Statue (honoring officers killed in the line of duty)
• Department of Corrections, Albany, N.Y.
• Office of California Prisons, Sacramento
• Marin County Courthouse, California
• Department of Corrections, San Francisco

Add to this the killing of a San Francisco police officer; the murder of two Brink’s guards during a NY robbery attempt, to fund their malicious spree; the firebombing of Chicago police cars; abetting the escape of Timothy Leary from the California Men’s Colony; and the firebombing of a New York City judge’s home (the judge, his wife, and his children were forced to flee for their lives).

Bill Ayers set the stage – the precedent if you will – for American bombings. And for the Boston bombings.

To deny this would be to deny the following:

Both the Boston bombers and Bill Ayers want the worst possible outcome for America. We all agree the Boston perpetrators do not embrace American ideals. Well, neither does Bill Ayers, and he states that repeatedly.

Consider what anti-American, anti-Boston vitriol Ayers – the same man who is supplying the ideology and drive behind Obama’s national Common Core school curriculum - has adamantly and arrogantly proclaimed, has yet to refute, and has re-emphasized in recent months and years.

His own statement is self-condemning and suggests serious moral reassessment:

The only path to the final defeat of imperialism (America) and the building of socialism is revolutionary war.... Socialism is the violent overthrow of the bourgeoisie, the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat, and the eradication of the social system based on profit.... Revolutionary war will be complicated and protracted.... It includes mass struggle and clandestine struggle, peaceful and violent, political and economic, cultural and military, where all forms are developed in harmony with the armed struggle. Without mass struggle there can be no revolution. Without armed struggle there can be no victory.

And his lovely wife Bernardine has chimed in with like-minded ill will:

...we’ve been trying to show how it is possible to overcome frustration and impotence that comes from trying to reform this system. Kids know the lines are drawn: revolution is touching all of our lives. Tens of thousands have learned that protest and marches don't do it. Revolutionary violence is the only way.

Did you catch the part where Ayers is instrumental in reforming a new American educational system for your kids?

How long will it be before the madmen who blew up and murdered and maimed the innocent kids and families at the Boston finish line, will be forgiven, forgotten, and will be allowed back into society – into our schools – to instruct our children?

If we forgive a demon like Ayers, why pursue the Boston bombers at all?

The callous indignant Bill Ayers once proudly boasted, “'I don't regret setting bombs - I feel we didn't do enough.''

No, you remorseless ass.

Just ask the victims in Boston – they’d say you did plenty.


Illustrations from: Just a guy from the neighborhood.

MSNBC's Melissa Harris-Perry: children are property of the state

In what passes for intellectualism at the failed MSNBC network, Melissa Harris-Perry articulates one of the more ironic and bizarre messages ever uttered by a woman of color. That is, children are the rightful property of the state.

Narrating a new MSNBC "Lean Forward" spot, the Tulane professor laments that we in America "haven't had a very collective notion that these are our children ... [W]e have to break through our kind of private idea that kids belong to their parents or kids belong to their families, and recognize that kids belong to their communities," Harris-Perry argued.

"Once it's everybody's responsibility and not just the households, then we start making better investments." By "investments," of course, Harris-Perry means things like spending "as much in public education as we should have."


Of course, if as Harris-Perry holds,"[t]he cost to raise a child [is] $10,000 a year up to $20,000 a year," and if children should be viewed as collectively "owned" by "society," then taken to its logical extension, a woman's choices about having a child should be informed by the economic considerations of the "community"...

What's more, the notion of collective responsibility for children was a philosophy that undergirded the Cultural Revolution in Communist China under Chairman Mao. I bring that up because, as you may recall, another Harris-Perry "Lean Forward" spot contains a reference to a "great leap forward," which calls to mind the disastrous agricultural reform plan which starved millions of Chinese to death in the 1950s.

History teaches us -- not a malevolent crackpot like Harris-Perry, but the rest of us -- that once children are "everyone's" responsibility, they are no one's.


We've never spent more on education and received less. That the execrable Harris-Perry receives a forum on MSNBC to spout this dangerous Utopian propaganda reveals just how far-gone that network is.


Hat tip: Zero Hedge.

Department of Education Quotes Genocidal Maniac on its Website

But there's nothing to cut in the federal government!

The Department of Education has come under fire for showcasing an ‘inspirational quote’ from the Chinese dictator Mao Zedong on its site ‘Kids Zone’ which is produced by it’s auxiliary organization the National Center for Education Statistics.

‘Our attitude towards ourselves should be ‘to be satiable in learning’ and towards others ‘to be tireless in teaching.”


Red State, a conservative blog, took to Twitter to point out that Mao Zedong ‘murdered 65 million people...'

After a ruckus was raised, the quote was quickly expunged.

You may recall that former Obama Communications Director Anita Dunn was also an unabashed admirer of Mao. Whether she found his human rights record or his commitment to religious tolerance most appealing is currently unclear.


Hat tip: BadBlue Uncensored News.

Florida Atlantic University Prof Makes Students ‘Stomp On Mohammed’

The cojones on this guy!

Prof Deandre J. Poole, Florida Atlantic Univ Makes Students ‘Stomp On Mohammed’

(Fox) – A Florida Atlantic University student said he was punished after he refused a professor’s directive to stomp on a piece of paper with the word “Mohammed” written on it. The university, meanwhile, is defending the assignment as a lesson in debate.

“I’m not going to be sitting in a class having my religious rights desecrated,” student Ryan Rotela told television station WPEC. “I truly see this as I’m being punished.”

Rotela, who is a devout Mormon, said the instructor in his Intercultural Communications class told the students to write the name “Mohammed” on a sheet of paper. Then, they were told to put the paper on the floor.

“He had us all stand up and he said ‘Stomp on it,’” Rotela said. “I picked up the paper from the floor and put it right back on the table.

The young college student told the instructor, Deandre Poole, that the assignment was insulting and offensive.

“I said to the professor, ‘With all due respect to your authority as a professor, I do not believe what you told us to do was appropriate,’” Rotela said. ‘I believe it was unprofessional and I was deeply offended by what you told me to do.’”

Rotela took his concerns to Poole’s supervisor – where he was promptly suspended from the class.

...A university spokesperson told they could not comment about Rotela’s case due to student privacy laws... However, the university is defending the instructor’s assignment to stomp on the name of Mohammed.

CORRECTION:

Oh, wait: did I say "Mohammed"?

Because I meant to say "Jesus". Sorry about that, the dogs were barking.

OBAMA CLASSMATE AT OCCIDENTAL COLLEGE: Barack sought "revolution, where the working class would overthrow the ruling class"

Well, this certainly helps explain things. Dr. John Drew was a classmate of President Obama at Occidental College. Several years ago, he was interviewed by Paul Kengor on The Glen Meakem Show. The little-publicized interview was previously available only in audio form and it did not receive significant attention. The following transcript offers some fascinating insights into Barack Obama's worldview.

Q: I interviewed you for my book Dupes a year ago and you had contact me a couple of years ago because you read a piece that I wrote for American Thinker and it was called "Dreams from Frank Marshall Davis" and it was on Obama's background and youth.

Frank Marshall Davis was an actual Party member and that's something, John, I spent two or three years on investigating, but there's no question about it... the documentation is there, a 1957 Senate report called him "and identified member of the Communist Party", there's an FBI file that's 600 pages, and I took ten or twelve pages from that report and put it in the appendix of my book. It even lists Davis' Communist Party card number, which was 47544, so very clear. Why is all of this relevant? Well, I think it explains, at least to some degree, that -- if he's not a Communist, he's at least very far to the left -- and has some very left-oriented views. But you met Obama when he left Frank Marshall Davis in 1980 coming from Hawaii and went to Occidental College. So tell us about when Obama got there and when you met.

A: I see myself as Barack Obama's missing link from his exposure to Communism through Frank Marshall Davis and his later exposure to Bill Ayers and Alice Palmer in Chicago. So, as far as I can tell, I'm the only one of Obama's extended circle of friends who's spoken out and verified that he was a Marxist-Leninist in his sophomore year of college, from 1980 to 1981.

I met him because I graduated from Occidental College in 1979 and I was back at Occidental visiting a girlfriend. I met him because of the relationship which I'd started my senior year at Occidental --

Q: By the way, tell us where Occidental is. We're way out here in Western Pennsylvania.

A: Sure, Occidental College is in the Eastern Los Angeles area. It's a very prestigious, very beautiful, sort of very garden, rose-garden sort of college, with three- or four-thousand students --

Q: And pretty competitive, I mean Obama would have had to have good grades and been a good student to get accepted there.

A: Yeah, my sense is because of affirmative action, guys like me were going to Occidental instead of even better schools and guys like Obama were going to Occidental instead of, uh, less challenging schools. A lot of very successful people were there, were part of Obama's social circle at the time.

Q: Now, was Occidental known for radical left politics? Would that have been an attraction for Obama?

A: Yeah, I'm certain that it was. It was considered sort of the "Moscow" of southern California. There were a lot of Marxist professors, many of whom I got to know pretty well, not just there but also at Williams College in Massachusetts. Two of the same Marxist-Socialist professors were on the staff with me at Williams.

Q: So, that might have been an attraction for him? I'm trying to think, what would have made him go to Hawaii to Occidental? Do you think Frank Marshall Davis could somehow have been an influence in having him choose Occidental?

A: I don't have any evidence of that...

Q: Because they won't release his records, I called them --

A: Yeah, I think that's odd. I don't know, I got straight A's my first year, it sounds weird, but I don't talk about it, Paul, you'd think that if Obama did well he'd release those transcripts.

Q: Now, this is speculation, but do you think those files might hold a letter of recommendation from Frank Marshall Davis? Right? Why not?

A: Wow.

Q: Davis was a mentor. Davis writes about him in Dreams From My Father very warmly, in fact Obama writes that Davis gave him advice on women, on race, on life, on college. So, he must have recommended Occidental, but it's sad we have to speculate. If they'd just release these records...

A: Well, this is what I know for sure, and this is why I'd sought you out, to be helpful to the historic record, is to verify that Barack Obama was definitely a Marxist and that, it was very unusual for a sophomore to be as radical, or as ideologically attuned as young Barack Obama was. I think people like David Remnick [a biographer], they make it sound like Frank Marshall Davis had no impact on Obama and that his friend Mohammed Shandu somehow converted him to Marxism at Occidental. And my impression is that Obama was the leader of that group and Obama was already very ardent and committed to Marxism. And Shandu struck me as somewhat more passive. So it doesn't fit the story that I read in Remnick's story The Bridge.

Q: And Remnick did not contact you, did he?

A: No! No! ...Well, Remnick interviewed my girfriend, Carolyn Bosch -- she's on three or four pages -- and they interviewed a guy named Gary Chapman, a guy who was very active in the Democrat Student [Socialists'] Alliance.

Q: I like David Remnick. I use his book in my Compartive Studies class at Grove City College.

A: He's a sharp guy. And he's got some good facts in there, but he didn't want to hear from little Dr. Drew...

Q: ...You said that Obama was introduced to you at Occidental as a Marxist because you were one at that point.

A: Yeah, that's embarrassing, but I had studied Marxist Economics at Sussex College in England. I had a junior year scholarship over there, and did my senior honor's thesis on Marxist Economics when I was at Occidental College. And I actually founded the Democrat Student Socialists' Alliance, under a different name, in 1976... it was as Marxist as you could get, but they come up with a more general name while I was away in England.

Q: ...John, you had told me before, and I'm reading from my book, that "Obama was already an ardent Marxist in the fall of 1980 when I met him. I know it's incendiary to say this, but although he said in Dreams From My Father that he'd 'hung out with Marxist professors', he did not explain in that book or clarify is that he was 100% in total agreement with those professors.

A: Yeah, you've got that exactly right. Obama believed, at the time I met him, this was probably around Christmas time in 1980. I'd flown out on Christmas break from Cornell, where I was in grad school. And Obama was looking forward to an imminent social revolution, literally a movement where the working classes would overthrow the ruling class and institute a kind of socialist Utopia in the United States. I mean, that's how extreme his views were his sophomore year of college.

...I was a comrade, but I was more... the Frankfort School of Marxism at the time. I was, I felt like I was doing him a favor by pointing out that the Marxist revolution that he and Caroline and Shandu were hoping for was really kind of a pipe-dream. And that there was nothing in European history, or the history of developed nations, that would make that sort of fantasy, that Frank Marshall Davis fantasy of revolution, come true.

Q: So you had a realistic sense that, even though you liked these ideas, that you knew they wouldn't really work?

A: Right... [There were some] who were puzzled why they didn't see Marx's predictions come true, and weren't interested in the role of psychology or false consciousness in preventing a revolution from happening. I was a card-carrying Marxist, but I was more of an east coast, Cornell University Marxist at that time.

Q: But Obama thought it was practical. He thought it could happen in America?

A: Oh, yeah! He thought I was a little reactionary... or insensitive to the coming needs of the revolution! He was full-bore, 100% into that very, kind of simple-minded Marxist revolutionary framework.

Q: And, also at this time, this is 1981, Jimmy Carter was President [?] and Ronald Reagan was yet to call the Soviet Union 'the Evil Empire' when he becomes President. Did you have talk about the election, about Reagan. I mean, that must have really upset Obama?

A: You know, it's so long ago. My clearest recollection was that we were more concerned with more U.S. intervention in Latin America and the repression of Communist and Socialist forces like the Sandanistas and things like that... this sound weird, but there was part of me at the time that was ready to go off and fight with the Sandanistas against the Contras. I was pretty crazy, Paul...

Q: Now this gets to a critical point and I know Obama supporters want me to ask this... to be fair, look where you were then and where you are today...

A: Oh, yeah. Now I'm a Ronald Reagan, church-going, Baptist conservative, so...

Q: So, what about Obama. That's the... trillion dollar question? ...We have to know this stuff about our Presidents, you can't leave this about biographies...

A: Well, I think that he, I've challenged President Obama to explain how he evolved this Marxist-Leninist viewpoint he had in his sophomore year of college. And he's just never articulated how he changed. In fact, he's buried and, I think, lied about his ideological convictions of his youth. And we can trace it all the way to Alice Palmer, I think, in 1995 [the Illinois state senator who he replaced]... who attended the Communist Party "Politburo" event. Or she was part of a big international Communist convention in Moscow!

Q: ...And Palmer was with Obama in the living room of Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn when -- and The New York Times even wrote about this -- there was sort of a political blessing, where Palmer identified Obama as his chosen successor...

A: ...Well, I think I can knock down some doors here but stating that he had a very consistent ideology, I think, probably from the time he was in [Hawaii] to the time he was with Palmer and Ayers in Chicago. I think his current behavior demonstrates that he still has some ideological convictions. When ever he talks about taxing the richest two-percent? I think he knows that will harm the economy. To him, the redistribution of wealth is extremely important. And he never took economics or science like I did. He went straight to law school, never had any business experience, never had a payroll to meet. And I think he's locked in a very dangerous mindset, where if he didn't fight to redistribute the wealth that he'd be violating [his] ideology.

...You see people like Van Jones, who's an admitted Communist, you see Anita Dunn, who's praising Mao Tse-Tung, to me, it's like Obama's Marxist-Socialist ideology is hiding in plain sight! It's frustrating to me. It seems to me like people should be up in arms about this!

...I think whenever he talks about people clinging to their guns and religions due to economic stress, that's just the standard Marxist argument... he's still using the standard Marxist architecture, the way he talks about things. I think he's surrounded by people who share that mental architecture!

...I feel like our nation's life is at stake.

Yes. It is. Time grows short to save this republic.

Take the Civic Literacy Exam

The Intercollegiate Studies Institute offers an extremely interesting Full Civic Literacy Exam.

I was feeling really good about my score until I finished reading Dennis's email.


He got 32 of 33.


Note: If your score was disappointing, I recommend regular downloads of The Mark Levin Show. The podcasts are free, you cheap ***.

NO ONE SHOW JOE SALAZAR: The One Chart That Says It All About Women and Safety

One university in Colorado legalized concealed carry on campus in 2003. And here's what happened to sex offenses on campus:


Paging Mister Salazar. Mister Salazar. You have a telephone call at the front desk.

HOW COOL IS THIS? First Grader Becomes Youngest Person Ever to Develop a Mobile Game

What were you doing in the first grade?

Remember the name Zora Ball. At seven years old, she's the youngest person to ever create a mobile game app, which was unveiled at the University of Pennsylvania's Bootstrap Expo last month.

Zora used the Bootstrap programming language, and lest you think her older brother Trace, who was a STEM scholar of the year at Zora's charter school, did the work for her, she reconfigured her app on the fly when asked, according to the Pittsburgh Courier.

This could be the beginning of a long career as a programmer and developer for Ball. But first she has to get through first grade.

Isn't it startling to consider that -- like Zora -- humanity remains in the infancy stage when it comes to computers? What will the next five or so decades bring? Or, for that matter, the next five years?


Hat tip: BadBlue Tech News.

ANOTHER EXAMPLE: Marxist Indoctrination In Our Schools

Well, this can't come as much of a surprise.

This is a page out of a workbook for your government school student. What school and what schoolbook I can’t tell you … maybe the lady who sent this to me will step forward and let us know.

This is how our government schools – and the liberals who run them – effectively brainwash (though indoctrinate is a much more polite word) our children into accepting the liberal philosophy as basic truth... The headline at the top of the document reads “Distribute the Wealth.” And there you have the picture of the pretty little girl with the cute little pony tail.

She’s holding a bag of money in one hand, and giving away some of that money with the other. Yes! She’s distributing her wealth! But if you study the picture you’ll see there’s an even more subtle message. She’s not handing money away from her wallet or her purse. No! That wouldn’t get the real message across! Why pretty much every little girl has a wallet or a purse. No... this little sweetheart has a BAG of money! Not every little girl has BAGS of money … so this girl must be really RICH! And since she’s rich her money needs to be redistributed! So she’s being a good little rich girl and she’s smiling as she hands her money away.

As Thomas Sowell warns us, America's state-run schools are undermining American society."

I'm soliciting other examples: For those parents with school-age kids, please check out their textbooks and study guides. Email me any snapshots of interest, the age and grade of your youngster, your city and state and whether you wish to remain anonymous (my default assumption is to keep all contributions anonymous).

I BELIEVE IRAN HAS A CLANDESTINE AGENT-OF-INFLUENCE BURROWED IN ACADEMIA: And His Name is Alan Dershowitz

Oh, now he tells us, just weeks after a pivotal election in which he backed the most virulently anti-Israel president in U.S. history.

President's Nomination of Hagel May Encourage Iran's Nuclear Ambitions

by Alan M. Dershowitz - January 7, 2013 at 1:30 pm

President Obama's nomination of Chuck Hagel as Secretary of Defense risks increasing the likelihood that Iran will develop nuclear weapons. It poses that risk because Hagel is well known for his opposition both to sanctions against Iran and to employing the military option if necessary.

These views are inconsistent with the very different views expressed by President Obama. The President has emphasized on numerous occasions that he will never allow Iran to develop nuclear weapons and will use military force if necessary to prevent that "game changer."

The nomination of Hagel thus sends a mixed message to the mullahs in Tehran, who will likely interpret it as a change from a red light to a yellow or green one when it comes to their desire to develop nuclear weapons... This is the wrong time to send mixed messages by nominating a man who has, at best, a mixed record with regard to sanctions and the military option against Iran and with regard to having Israel's back.

I can come to no other conclusion that Dershowitz is a clandestine agent for Iran, with op-eds like these serving as cover.

Well, it's either that or he's a delusional, progressive hack.


Hat tip: BadBlue News.

UK TEXTBOOK FINALLY ACHIEVES AHMEDINEJAD'S DREAM: Wipes Israel Off the Map

Consider this Exhibit 7,038 demonstrating that England is headed down the crapper -- and fast.

Ahmadinejad promised it. Now British textbooks are doing it. Israel has been wiped off the map by Garnet Education, an English-language teaching company in Britain, whose educational textbook 'Skills in English Writing Level 1', aimed at foreign students and immigrants to the UK, contains a map with "Occupied Palestine" in place of the Jewish State.

Speaking to the Algemeiner, the prominent American Jewish newspaper which broke the story, school teacher Liz Wiseman noted that the book is "one of the more popular and mainstream English language teaching (ELT) textbooks published by Garnet, which is quite popular and mainstream itself."

...Using textbooks as propaganda, however, is not a new story. In 2007, it emerged that the King Fahd Academy school in London was using textbooks encouraged by the Saudi Ministry for Education, which described Jews as "apes" and Christians as "pigs". According to the Evening Standard, pupils were allegedly heard saying they want to "kill Americans", praise 9/11 and idolise Osama bin Laden as their "hero".

In the same year, an investigation by The Times uncovered that Mahmood Chandia, a senior lecturer at the University of Central Lancashire, was teaching that music is a way in which Jews spread "the Satanic web" to corrupt young Muslims.

In 2010, it was revealed that the leading geography textbook for British school students encouraged students to ask questions such as "Why did the Jews seize land that is now Israel?" The textbook also sought to excuse terrorism, informing school students that "Palestinians feel powerless. They have no country, no government, no army and few resources - so they resort to bombing to make their point".

Sadly, these are but a few examples from many...

With "friends" like these characters and Egypt's leaders, keep Israel in your prayers.

10 Reasons the University as We Know It is Doomed

Culled from an excellent article at The American Interest (hat tip: BadBlue).

10. In fifty years, if not much sooner, half of the roughly 4,500 colleges and universities now operating in the United States will have ceased to exist. The technology driving this change is already at work, and nothing can stop it.

9. MIT is the first elite university to offer a credential for students who complete its free, open-source online courses. (The certificate of completion requires a small fee.) For the first time, students can do more than simply watch free lectures; they can gain a marketable credential—something that could help secure a raise or a better job. While edX won’t offer traditional academic credits, Harvard and MIT have announced that “certificates of mastery” will be available for those who complete the online courses and can demonstrate knowledge of course material. The arrival of credentials, backed by respected universities, eliminates one of the last remaining obstacles to the widespread adoption of low-cost online education.

8. In 2007 Princeton completed construction on a new $136 million luxury dormitory for its students—all part of an effort to expand its undergraduate enrollment. Last year Yale finalized plans to build new residential dormitories at a combined cost of $600 million. The expansion will increase the size of Yale’s undergraduate population by about 1,000. The project is so expensive that Yale could actually buy a three-bedroom home in New Haven for every new student it is bringing in and still save $100 million... What these universities are doing is pure folly, akin to building a compact disc factory in the late 1990s. They are investing in a model that is on its way to obsolescence. If these universities understood the changes that lie ahead, they would be selling off real estate, not buying it—unless they prefer being landlords to being educators.

7. The biggest obstacle to the rapid adoption of low-cost, open-source education in America is that many of the stakeholders make a very handsome living off the system as is. In 2009, 36 college presidents made more than $1 million. That’s in the middle of a recession, when most campuses were facing severe budget cuts. This makes them rather conservative when it comes to the politics of higher education, in sharp contrast to their usual leftwing political bias in other areas.

6. Student loan debt is at an all-time high—an average of more than $23,000 per graduate by some counts—and tuition costs continue to rise at a rate far outpacing inflation, as they have for decades. Credential inflation is devaluing the college degree, making graduate degrees, and the greater debt required to pay for them, increasingly necessary for many people to maintain the standard of living they experienced growing up in their parents’ homes.

5. The live lecture will be replaced by streaming video. The administration of exams and exchange of coursework over the internet will become the norm. The push and pull of academic exchange will take place mainly in interactive online spaces, occupied by a new generation of tablet-toting, hyper-connected youth who already spend much of their lives online. Universities will extend their reach to students around the world, unbounded by geography or even by time zones. All of this will be on offer, too, at a fraction of the cost of a traditional college education.

4. Recent history shows us that the internet is a great destroyer of any traditional business that relies on the sale of information... The higher-ed business is in for a lot of pain as a new era of creative destruction produces a merciless shakeout of those institutions that adapt and prosper from those that stall and die. Meanwhile, students themselves are in for a golden age, characterized by near-universal access to the highest quality teaching and scholarship at a minimal cost. The changes ahead will ultimately bring about the most beneficial, most efficient and most equitable access to education that the world has ever seen.

3. Technology will also bring future students an array of new choices about how to build and customize their educations. Power is shifting away from selective university admissions officers into the hands of educational consumers, who will soon have their choice of attending virtually any university in the world online. This will dramatically increase competition among universities. Prestigious institutions, especially those few extremely well-endowed ones with money to buffer and finance change, will be in a position to dominate this virtual, global educational marketplace. The bottom feeders—the for-profit colleges and low-level public and non-profit colleges—will disappear or turn into the equivalent of vocational training institutes. Universities of all ranks below the very top will engage each other in an all-out war of survival. In this war, big-budget universities carrying large transactional costs stand to lose the most. Smaller, more nimble institutions with sound leadership will do best.

2. What happens when a limited supply of a sought-after commodity suddenly becomes unlimited? Prices fall. Yet here, on the cusp of a new era of online education, that is a financial reality that few American universities are prepared to face.

1. The most important part of the college bubble story—the one we will soon be hearing much more about—concerns the impending financial collapse of numerous private colleges and universities and the likely shrinkage of many public ones. And when that bubble bursts, it will end a system of higher education that, for all of its history, has been steeped in a culture of exclusivity. Then we’ll see the birth of something entirely new as we accept one central and unavoidable fact: The college classroom is about to go virtual.

Big changes are coming, and old attitudes and business models are set to collapse as new ones rise. Few who will be affected by the changes ahead are aware of what’s coming. Severe financial contraction in the higher-ed industry is on the way, and for many this will spell hard times both financially and personally. But if our goal is educating as many students as possible, as well as possible, as affordably as possible, then the end of the university as we know it is nothing to fear. Indeed, it’s something to celebrate.

UNION SUCCESS STORY #7,407: Only Seven Percent of 8th-graders in Detroit Public Schools Read Proficiently

As they say, someone new is blocking the schoolhouse door.

...In the public schools in Detroit, Mich., according to the U.S. Department of Education, only 7 percent of the eighth graders are grade-level proficient or better in reading.

Some public school teachers in the City of Detroit and around the state of Michigan are reportedly taking a vacation or a sick day today to protest right-to-work legislation likely to be approved by the state legislature. Under current law, Michigan public school teachers must pay dues to the teachers’ union. If the right-to-work law is enacted, Michigan public-school teachers will be free to join the union and pay dues to it if they wish, but they will also be free not to join the union and not to pay it dues.

Detroit public-school eighth graders do even worse in math than they do in reading, according to the Department of Education. While only 7 percent scored highly enough on the department’s National Assessment of Educational Progress test in 2011 to be rated “proficient” or better in reading, only 4 percent scored highly enough to be rated “proficient” or better in math...

I blame Bush. And Sarah Palin.

But certainly not the unholy alliance of the Democrat Party and public sector unions, which exist only to fleece the beleaguered American taxpayer.


Hat tip: BadBlue News Service.

KEWL: Google introduces hiring and entrepreneurship courseware for veterans and military spouses

Well, this is a worthy cause made all the more timely because of the devastating cuts to defense spending orchestrated by President Obama.

...we’ve put the powers of Google+ behind a single hub called VetNet. Today, VetNet launches as a partnership with three founding organizations: the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Hiring Our Heroes program, the Institute for Veterans and Military Families (IVMF) and Hire Heroes USA. In the long run, other organizations will be able to offer their services to the veteran community, all in the same easy-to-use place.

Through VetNet, these founding partners offer a full spectrum of employment resources for members of the community. Whether starting a job search from scratch, looking for mentors in a specific industry or starting a business, transitioning service members, veterans and military spouses will be able to connect with career services, job opportunities and each other.

All of the content and resources are organized into three tracks by objective, each hosted on its own Google+ page.

• Basic Training Track (google.com/+VetNetBasic): The place to start. From resumes to interviewing tips to advice from buddies. Dial into our first Resume Workshop today at 3pm EST.
• Career Connections Track (google.com/+VetNetCareer): Walmart, GE and Capital One are just a few of the companies that are participating in VetNet to help veterans and military spouses find civilian careers. Check out today’s Vets In Finance panel at 2pm EST.
• Entrepreneur Track (google.com/+VetNetEntrepreneur): An 8-week college-level course on the fundamentals of starting a business, starting next week, on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

Pass it on to any active-duty and vets you know.


Hat tip: BadBlue.com/Tech.

CHARTERS CRUSH UNION-CONTROLLED SCHOOLS IN CHICAGO: The ludicrous kook Karen Lewis hardest hit

As if you needed more proof -- aside from parents begging to get their kids into charter schools -- that teachers unions are destroying public education, please consider this report from Illinois Policy:

...In 2012, charter schools held the top nine spots for open-enrollment, non-selective public high schools in Chicago. Another charter school ended up in a three-way tie for tenth. The Noble Network of Charter Schools led the pack, with a total of nine schools in the top 10, one of which was included in the tie. The average ACT score for charter schools in the top 10 was 20.6, with Noble Network’s UIC College Prep campus scoring 21.9 – the highest-ever average at an open-enrollment, non-selective CPS high school.

Not only are charter schools outperforming their peers on the ACT, a comparison of Chicago’s top 10 charter high schools to the top 10 open-enrollment, non-selective, traditional public high schools shows that charter schools’ pace of improvement is significantly greater. Since 2007, top charter school scores have increased by 17 percent, while the top traditional schools have gained nearly 5 percent.

Charter school students, like other students in CPS, primarily come from low-income backgrounds (91 percent qualify for free or reduced lunch), represent mostly racial minorities (60 percent African-American, 35 percent Hispanic), and must overcome a range of challenges (9 percent English Language Learners, 12 percent special needs). They are not untouched by the violence plaguing many of the city’s neighborhoods. And, yet, despite all of these obstacles, they are succeeding.

Let me repeat: charter schools are succeeding, despite unceasing attacks by useless, illiterate hacks like Karen Lewis and the rest of the Obama-SEIU-AFT-NEA apologists.

The solution is obvious: public sector unions must be abolished. They are a disease, infecting inner-cities with institutionalized apathy and ignorance. And competition in the form of vouchers is the only known cure.

REVEALING PHOTO: President Obama Draws a Red Line At the U.N.

Spotted on Facebook:

There's a large kernel of truth in this satirical illustration.

No, it's not a conspiracy theory. The Cloward-Piven Strategy is very real, and its results are unfolding before us today.