My Beauty Best Teacher

A couple weeks ago I read an interesting article in the Telegraph- in it, longtime journalist Janet Daley suggests that the best thing that the British government can do to improve the economy and make people more wealthy and happy and free is to work really hard and be very productive in DOING LESS. The truth of the matter is that politicians have to have real guts and strength to simply say 'no, I will not spend taxpayer money trying to control people and the market,' but that may be exactly the kind of strength and guts we need today- politicians who promise to do more of less. From her article A daring idea to fix the economy: try doing less:

...the myth of government activism – the idea that intervention by the state is the answer to every economic and social problem – had been definitively routed. Apparently not: Mr Osborne and, we must assume, his boss still seem to believe that any unacceptable national situation must require direct action from them.

Or maybe they don’t believe that at all. Perhaps they just lack the political courage to admit that, in our present crisis, the best thing that the Government can do is to get out of the business of running (or subsidising, or initiating, or incentivising) things altogether – not just in the interests of saving money, but because the effects of such interference are counter-productive. What the economy is suffering from is not an insufficiency of overweening, fussy, bureaucratic initiatives that inevitably unleash an avalanche of unintended consequences, but a lack of cash in the hands of people who might spend it in ways that would actually create wealth and stimulate (in the proper sense of the word) economic growth.

If ever there was a time for radical proposals by a governing party, this is it. Rather than the imitative, mealy-mouthed shuffling of dollops of money from one departmental scheme to another, in what will inevitably look like panic in the face of rising youth unemployment and disappointing growth figures, what we need is a display of real insight and nerve...

...There is an urgent need now to rethink the whole relationship between government and populace while there is still the possibility of discussion. In Britain, Europe and America, the questions are remarkably similar. Can a free-market economy support an infinitely growing state? We will have to choose, quite soon, between liberty and the “security” of a society in which government controls the levers of economic life. Washington politicians are getting a terrible drubbing for failing to resolve their implacable differences over the size of the state (to the extent that they are unable to agree a federal budget). The US national debate may seem rough and ready to European ears – but at least they are engaging in the real argument.

She is right- the argument has been joined, and today via memeorandum I read in the Wall Street Journal an article that echo's the very ideas of Ms. Daley. From former Florida Governor Jeb Bush's article Capitalism and the Right to Rise:

...Increasingly, we have let our elected officials abridge our own economic freedoms through the annual passage of thousands of laws and their associated regulations. We see human tragedy and we demand a regulation to prevent it. We see a criminal fraud and we demand more laws. We see an industry dying and we demand it be saved. Each time, we demand "Do something . . . anything."

As Florida's governor for eight years, I was asked to "do something" almost every day. Many times I resisted through vetoes but many times I succumbed. And I wasn't alone. Mayors, county chairs, governors and presidents never think their laws will harm the free market. But cumulatively, they do, and we have now imperiled the right to rise....

....We either can go down the road we are on, a road where the individual is allowed to succeed only so much before being punished with ruinous taxation, where commerce ignores government action at its own peril, and where the state decides how a massive share of the economy's resources should be spent.

Or we can return to the road we once knew and which has served us well: a road where individuals acting freely and with little restraint are able to pursue fortune and prosperity as they see fit, a road where the government's role is not to shape the marketplace but to help prepare its citizens to prosper from it.

In short, we must choose between the straight line promised by the statists and the jagged line of economic freedom. The straight line of gradual and controlled growth is what the statists promise but can never deliver. The jagged line offers no guarantees but has a powerful record of delivering the most prosperity and the most opportunity to the most people. We cannot possibly know in advance what freedom promises for 312 million individuals. But unless we are willing to explore the jagged line of freedom, we will be stuck with the straight line. And the straight line, it turns out, is a flat line.

What Governor Bush is talking about is the same kind of thing that I personally observed during my time as a policy adviser in the state's capital. I remember distinctly one time when a young Republican 'conservative' staffer came in to work one day, upset that the car that she had recently bought turned out to have been a bad purchase. She set about writing a law that would force the state to regulate and control all sellers of automobiles in the state and then tried to convince legislators to sponsor this piece of legislation- she wanted the state to immediately do something, to step in and spend lots of money and time and effort controlling thousands of people's individual decisions just to protect several people from their own stupidity. She proposal was met with great hostility towards me, and I countered her proposal by suggesting that rather than the state doing something about used car dealers, it instead loosen regulations and fees and taxes on all car dealers, making the market more free, so that more fools like her could be separated from their money, as the hand of God in its infinite wisdom is wont to do. I wasn't joking though.

The real courage and intelligent thing to do to create a more vibrant, free market by cutting back government regulations and fees and enabling people to be people, in all their glorious faults and warts, because only by doing so can we also unleash the amazing potential for great and good things that humans contain in them. The safe, stately downward path of state control is not the path for me and is not the path that successful, free, and prosperous people- no, we choose the jagged and uneven and unpredictable path that is the path of less government regulation, taxes, fees, and supervision- that is the only true path for better protection and encouragement of life, liberty, and property.

One of the cornerstones of modern-day conservatism is the belief that America's energy resources can and should be responsibly exploited. This means that the United States should allow private companies to drill for oil, mine coal, build nuclear power plants, tap into natural gas reserves, get shale oil, and utilize whatever other energy resources that these companies wish to use, provided that they respect the property rights of others.

Oh, I know what liberals and left-wingers will say- the horror of pollution! But the faults of energy development do not lie with the companies themselves, but rather with the government for not establishing clear and defined property rights- for example, rather than having the government act as police to safeguard public water, the water rights should be more clearly defined and if companies destroy or harm the property (the water) of others, they should be forced to pay in a court, much as if they destroyed other private property. The faults with 'pollution' then lie not in the companies for breaking ever expanding government rules and regulations over ever expanding public lands, but for the government for not putting in place limited and clear rules regarding private property rights and then divesting itself of public lands by selling these lands off to private entities that can then do a better job of protecting. Like most problems in our society, the solution is less government, not more.

With the main liberal concern out of the way, our nation would be free to exploit and use its vast resources- enough oil for 30 years, enough natural gas for 575 years, enough coal for 500 years, etc. With oil, gas, and coal be utilized to its fullest extent, our nation will have cheap and plentiful energy, enabling it to develop some of the most amazingly energy intensive industries there are- 'renewable resources'. The horse needs to go before the cart here- we  need to have cheap and plentiful energy in order to build the energy intensive operations and industries like building solar panels, developing batteries, building geothermal plants, etc. A wealthy, productive society thriving on cheap energy can afford to become environmentally friendly, as opposed to a cheap, declining society that the liberals and Democrats appear to be pushing us towards with their anti-energy policies.

In a free market, one in which the government is not subsidizing any of the industries (and this includes cutting subsidies for oil and gas and coal), the most efficient energy resources will be developed in an environment that encourages private property ownership and protection. American can be great again, if it moves away from the liberal model of public ownership of lands and public protection of the environment with restrictive regulations and rules and taxes on energy production combined with subsidies for 'favored' industries and campaign donors. It can be great again if it moves towards a more conservative model of private ownership of lands and private protection through impartial courts of the environment, with few restrictions and regulations and subsidies on energy production, encouraging the most efficient producers and users of energy in a free market.

Via Powerlineblog's post AMERICA’S VAST ENERGY RESOURCES I read this quote from the Institute for Energy Research. IER describes the problem (and the opportunity) bluntly:

Access to affordable, abundant energy is, fundamentally, a means of freedom. But for those seeking to create a crisis that provides an opportunity to direct the way we live, work and act, affordable, reliable, abundant, domestic energy is a threat. In a very real sense, the more energy we have, the less power they will have. Energy abundance ends the justification for central energy decision-making.

As it turns out, many of the problems of energy scarcity and rising costs in the United States have been caused by the government itself. In 2004, the U.S. Department of Energy issued a report that outlined many of the policy and regulatory constraints that impact domestic energy production. While the report focused on natural gas specifically, many of the laws and procedures also represent roadblocks to any form of safe and responsible energy production. The list of energy barriers included the following policies, all of which can limit access to U.S. resources, increase delays related to exploration and production, and/or increase costs of development:

(John from Powerlineblog)The list of statutes and other legal impediments that follows is three pages long. Only liberal politicians stand between the American people and development of our vast energy resources.

A a recent article that Charles Moore wrote, I think he put his finger on exactly what is going on today- the success and advance of the twin threats of fear and doubt. Moore, who is a British journalist and former editor of The Daily Telegraph, in an article about Margaret Thatcher, wrote that after the long boom and success of capitalism and free market economics that "the worm of doubt entered the system":

You borrowed all the money needed for the price of a house. This made you, in your mind, though not in full fact, an owner. Because the value of the house was rising, it also made you, again in your mind, richer. The bank, which actually owned the house, found clever ways of mixing and selling on the loans it had granted so that it, too, felt richer. Governments, happy at rising revenues, thought it was their business to make sure that when the symptoms of high risk began to present themselves, they were suppressed.... (then) the roof fell in... (and now) when people now hear words like globalization or capitalism... they feel slightly sick.

Free market economics and capitalism did not lead our nation to failure- rather, during its wild success at making millions around the world more prosperous over the past centuries, communism and socialism and fascism latched on to it, sucking from its prosperity to feed its sick aims like parasites, and over time, many smart people began to become confused and unable to see the parasites from the concepts that they latched on.

Where free markets and capitalism created wealth and encouraged personal responsibility, governments and elites put in place rules and regulations which weakened the foundations of the system, subsidized risky behavior such as sub-prime mortgages and leveraging investments, and gave out handouts to favored industries and distorted the market by doing so. When banks, businesses, and corporations operated in a free market of capitalism, they could succeed or fail based on their own efforts and innovation; but in the new markets, which were no longer capitalistic or free, government subsidies and spending and lobbying and regulation and rules determined whether or not a business, corporation, or bank was successful or failed. And although this was no longer capitalism or free markets, but rather markets once free now twisted to the aims of elites and socialists and communists and fascists, many smart people became critical of the markets or capitalism because of the failures of the government bureaucrats who were twisting and corrupting the system.

And then the parasites of leftism began to weaken and kill the free market and capitalism, and the people cried out 'capitalism and free markets are failing us'- when it wasn't the free markets and capitalism that failed, but rather the people who failed the system.

They were led to this failure by fear and doubt- they did not believe in the hand of the God and the freedom of individuals and life, liberty, and the protection of private property.

The people (or The People, as leftists call them) feared that although they were becoming prosperous and their lives were rapidly improving, they were somehow falling behind others who were advancing more rapidly. Rather than looking at why they were successful in the free market capitalism- because of their hard work, innovation, and yes, luck- they instead demanded government policies to hold back others and help out themselves, corrupting the very system that had brought them so far. They doubted that if people were free and made free decisions, they would make 'the right decisions'- that is, the decisions that they would make if they controlled the other people and had power over them (their definition of 'right decisions').

Rather than just letting go and trusting that the unseen hand of God, trusting to the thousands and millions of individual decisions, and working to ensure that private property rights are strengthened and respected, they doubted that this giant experiment of capitalism and a free market would work, and feared that they would somehow fall behind others in material wealth if they didn't vote for and support people who promised to corrupt the system and abuse the system and circumvent the system. Many people trusted and believed in the power of men to control other men and redistribute property to other men, and in so doing rejected free markets and capitalism.

Fear and doubt came to the people's mind every time there was a recession, or even during periods when great wealth was created but wasn't immediately distributed evenly. The people reacted to the Great Depression by doubting that the free market would correct (as it had done in the 1920's and dozens of times before in the 1800's) and feared that he return to prosperity wouldn't come fast enough- and so they worked to destroy the system, corrupt the system, and make the market less free- and the results were a slight recession during into a decade long destruction of wealth.

And today, government policies and regulations and taxes and laws which corrupted the free market and corroded private property rights have let the worm of doubt creep once more into the people's minds, and in their fear that maybe they won't get to loot the dying Republic of its wealth they vote for Democrats who promise to manage the downfall and distribute the ever-decreasing wealth in the system to their supporters and voters and friends.

To return to success and advance again as a nation in wealth and happiness, we must reject doubt of the free market system and capitalism and trust the people- we need to trust and believe again that the thousands of decisions of free people will create more wealth and make more people happy, and reject those who suggest that having a smaller number of elites make those decisions for us is better. We need to let go of our fear that if we don't control the market and the system that you'll lose out, and instead work hard, innovate, save your money, and invest wisely.

UPDATE 12/7/11: President Obama delivered a major speech today on the economy, in which he expressed his doubt that the capitalist system could continue to provide wealth and prosperity for many and work to make society more equal, and from this place of fear he instead wants to trust himself and his fellow men to run a better system that will somehow do a better job of creating wealth and distributing it than having free people make free decisions.

Via memeorandum, in his Remarks by the President on the Economy in Osawatomie, Kansas, we read the following fear and doubt from US President Barack Obama, one-term Democrat. These are selections from the speech- (you can read the whole thing yourself here if you want):

My grandparents served during World War II. He was a soldier in Patton’s Army; she was a worker on a bomber assembly line. And together, they shared the optimism of a nation that triumphed over the Great Depression and over fascism. They believed in an America where hard work paid off, and responsibility was rewarded, and anyone could make it if they tried -- no matter who you were, no matter where you came from, no matter how you started out.

And these values gave rise to the largest middle class and the strongest economy that the world has ever known. It was here in America that the most productive workers, the most innovative companies turned out the best products on Earth. And you know what? Every American shared in that pride and in that success -- from those in the executive suites to those in middle management to those on the factory floor.

In this passage, Obama communicates to us that his parents believed in capitalism and free markets and personal responsibility and liberty and protection of property. And furthermore, Obama knows that this system worked. But yet, he has this nagging doubt and fear...

But for most Americans, the basic bargain that made this country great has eroded. Long before the recession hit, hard work stopped paying off for too many people. Fewer and fewer of the folks who contributed to the success of our economy actually benefited from that success. Those at the very top grew wealthier from their incomes and their investments -- wealthier than ever before. But everybody else struggled with costs that were growing and paychecks that weren’t -- and too many families found themselves racking up more and more debt just to keep up.

He doesn't BELIEVE in capitalism. He has no faith in people, freedom, liberty, and rights. It's clear he doesn't have any hope that people will make the 'right decisions' (the decisions he would make) and he wants to therefore control other people. He continues:

But Roosevelt also knew that the free market has never been a free license to take whatever you can from whomever you can. (Applause.) He understood the free market only works when there are rules of the road that ensure competition is fair and open and honest. And so he busted up monopolies, forcing those companies to compete for consumers with better services and better prices. And today, they still must. He fought to make sure businesses couldn’t profit by exploiting children or selling food or medicine that wasn’t safe. And today, they still can’t.

We simply cannot return to this brand of “you’re on your own” economics if we’re serious about rebuilding the middle class in this country.

And it is around here that we get to the heart of the matter- in the last quarter of his speech, after ripping on capitalism and freedom for 3/4's of the speech, that we finally here what he wants to do...

So what does that mean for restoring middle-class security in today’s economy? Well, it starts by making sure that everyone in America gets a fair shot at success. The truth is we’ll never be able to compete with other countries when it comes to who’s best at letting their businesses pay the lowest wages, who’s best at busting unions, who’s best at letting companies pollute as much as they want.

We need to remember that we can only do that together. It starts by making education a national mission -- a national mission. (Applause.) Government and businesses, parents and citizens. We need to remember that we can only do that together. It starts by making education a national mission -- a national mission. (Applause.) Government and businesses, parents and citizens. They should be rebuilding our roads and our bridges, laying down faster railroads and broadband, modernizing our schools. Of course, those productive investments cost money. They’re not free. And so we’ve also paid for these investments by asking everybody to do their fair share. And so we have to set priorities. If we want a strong middle class, then our tax code must reflect our values. We have to make choices.

So, in summary, here is Obama's alternative to free markets and capitalism- give him more power. Give him the power and authority to tell employers what to pay their employees, give him the power and authority to combine big government with big business and big labor (ie, fascism), give him and his cronies the power to give money to favored constituent groups to fund pet projects of vanity (palaces, statues, etc), and the power to demand that all of these decisions are paid for by someone else who does not want to pay for it- to use the power of guns to the head to make people give up cash to Obama and his people to feed their wrong ideas about the power of men to control others for their benefit.

Obama is wrong. He needs to be defeated- not just politically, but his ideas and beliefs need to be rejected by all good people and good citizens and patriots and he and his policies need to be forever rejected in decent society. We must instead look to capitalism and freedom and liberty and property protection to our future, and not look backward to the sort of tyranny that Obama is proposing.

When putting together a list of the best Presidents in the history of our nation, that list would likely include Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, James Madison, Grover Cleveland, and Ronald Reagan. To that list I would like to also include Calvin Coolidge.

Most polls rank Coolidge somewhere in the middle, but this is because most people rank greatness by the number of actions that Presidents make and the number of policies that they as executives force on the nation that are usually contrary to our Constitution. For example, most lists put FDR at the top of the list, but he pushed through unconstitutional policies, dropped our nation into another Great Depression, didn't respond early enough to the rising fascism in the world, and then did the only thing I'll give him great credit for and won WWII. Oh, some great Presidents had to respond to crisis forced on them by others (like Lincoln), but most other so-called 'great' Presidents simply used the office of the President to jam policies on people that moved power and freedom away from them to the government and supervised a nation in crisis.

The best Presidents are those who did very little, ran the executive office smoothly and without problems or corruption, and conformed to the Constitution as closely as possible. Jefferson was President for two terms, and other then the Louisiana Purchase, his administration happily has little to note other than peace and prosperity. James Madison had to respond to the War of 1812, yes- but other than that, peace and prosperity. Calvin Coolidge was like this too- nothing to note during his time in office other than nothing to note- peoples lives were protected, the nation was prosperous, and property was well protected.

Here are some of the reasons that Calvin Coolidge should make the list of one of our greatest Presidents:

1. Coolidge was (for the most part) an opponent of government regulations. “I am in favor of reducing, rather than expanding, government bureaus which seek to regulate and control the business activities of the people,” he explained in the same State of the Union address. During his time in office, he attempted to allow private development of Muscle Shoals, made conservative appointments to federal offices over the objections of liberal Democrats and Progressive Republicans, was opposed to a veterans' bonus, and blocked and to the proposed McNary-Haugen farm legislation.
2. Coolidge criticized the left for its money-spending habits, stating, “Nothing is easier than spending the public money. It doesn’t appear to belong to anyone.” His policies led to a booming economy and increased tax revenues, but Coolidge knew that these additional 'revenues' wasn't the government's money- it was the peoples. So instead of bowing to progressives and liberals and using the surplus funds to create new programs, he put in place tax cuts. His tax cuts targeted largely the wealthy (he believed that the rich would invest their extra funds in ways that would increase production and therefore jobs and wealth at home, and also that American trade would expand abroad which would benefit the domestic economy and help stabilize the world economically and politically), but taxes were also cut on all taxpayers as well, the gift tax was repealed, and the death tax cut in half. These tax cuts led to increasing economic growth in America (and more tax revenues).
3. Coolidge believed that the role of the government was to step out of the way and allow the market and business to prosper. “The business of America is business,” Coolidge famously declared. But unlike many Republicans and almost all liberals, he did not believe the business of government was to control and direct and subsidize business- he believed in the free market and that removing regulations would encourage business more so than subsidies and targeted tax code help.

Coolidge’s tax cuts and deregulations resulted in a budget surplus and the economically booming “Roaring Twenties,” which came to an end during the progressive regulatory administration of his successor President Herbert Hoover. Coolidge said after leaving the White House, "Perhaps one of the most important accomplishments of my administration has been minding my own business"- but this is the very thing that I love about Coolidge, that as President he minded his own business, operated the machinery of the White House with cool and competent handling, and minded his own business as President. No crisis, no television appearances, no major policy changes, no crazy plans, no wild new ideas- simply doing his job, doing it well, and leaving when he was done with the nation in a better place than it was before.

President Calvin Coolidge may be the first U.S. president appeared to also appear in a "talkie" -- a movie with sound.In this four-minute clip (viewable on YouTube), Coolidge says that he wants to

"cut down public expense. I want the people of America to be able to work less for the government and more for themselves. I want them to have the rewards of their own industry. This is the chief meaning of freedom. Until we can re-establish a condition under which the earnings of the people can be kept by the people, we are bound to suffer a very severe and distinct curtailment of our liberty."

Before we go to the polls in 2012 to pick nominees for political parties and for President, I just want everyone to re-examine Calvin Coolidge and his Presidency and decide for themselves what exactly makes a President great.

UPDATE: The Calvin Coolidge Memorial Foundation contacted and reminded me of another reason why Coolidge is possibly one of the better Presidents that we've ever had- his views on education. Coolidge believed strongly in education and he often commented on the subject throughout the course of his political career, believing in the importance of having an educated citizenry and impressing on young people the importance of lifelong learning. Here is one of his quotes from a newspaper column in 1930:

"While it is easy to waste money on education, it is the one thing which we cannot afford to curtail. The true ideal would seem to be a system that supplies those in the lower grades with certain basic information and those in the upper grades with the power to think… The school is not the end but only the beginning of an education. Yet its place cannot be filled in any other way. The best thing the millions of our youth can do to assure their future success is to work faithfully at their studies. That opportunity for improvement and discipline will never return.”

For your next vacation, take a trip to Plymouth Notch, VT to see the President Calvin Coolidge State Historic Site for yourself and experience the world in which President Coolidge was born and raised.

For good books about President Calvin Coolidge, check out Silent Cal's Almanack: The Homespun Wit and Wisdom of Vermont's Calvin Coolidge, The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression, or Autobiography of Calvin Coolidge, The.

Today let's learn about our Science Czar, the Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, John Holdren.

As the United States of America continues its descent under President Obama and his New Democrat Party into a third-world dictatorship, I still find myself unfamiliar with the overlords who now control my behavior and distribute to me gifts and favors. Oh, I know who is elected into office, and being a teacher of this sort of stuff I understand the bureaucracy and how it works. But who the heck is John Holdren, what role does he play in our political system, how did he get that role, and what sort of a person is he to be controlling me?

It's tough to keep all these czars straight, you know, since under Obamathe number of unelected, unconfirmed offices who go by the old imperial Russian title of Czar has gone up quite a bit (although to be fair, the number of people who have been considered czars under Obama is still just under the number of people who were considered czars under Bush, a two-term President roundly criticized by both the right and left as being undemocratic and statist). Still, I'm determined to get to know all of them- from Kenneth Feinberg, Head of the Deutsche Arbeitsfront and Pay Czar who although being a long-time Democratic operative and chief of staff for Democratic Senator Kennedy was put in charge of determining how much CEO's should be paid in once-free America, to Gary Samore, former US Communist party member and current WMD Policy Czar, to Ed Montgomery, auto-worker czar and distributor of gifts and favors.

It's going to be important for all of us to become more familiar with how things work in America now- after the change- we'll need to know how to curry favor with royal envoys, how to avoid being intimidated and bullied by bowing low and saying the right things, and how to bow get gifts from to our new overlords, who now tour around the land giving gifts to favored people.

So today let's get to know a little bit better our Science Czar, John Holdren. From Who Runs Gov:

Holdren is a powerhouse in the world of science and public policy. As director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) and co-Chair of the President’s Council of Advisers on Science and Technology (PCAST), he is the top adviser to President Barack Obama on science and technology, issues that are increasingly relevant to homeland security, energy and the environment. Holdren casts all of the above as priorities.

He also leads interagency efforts to develop and implement sound science and technology policies and budgets, and works with the private sector, state and local governments, the science and higher education communities, and other nations to advance his policy initiatives.

Although a lot of conservatives may focus on other aspects of John Holdren- for example, in a book he published in 1977, he wrote about and appeared to be supportive of forced abortions, mass sterilization, a "Planetary Regime" with the power of life and death over American citizens, populations that would be sterilized by infertility drugs intentionally put into the nation's drinking water or in food, and other similarly frightening ideas. This research is important and should be realized, but I want to focus instead on another aspect of Holdren- his belief in a benevolent world dictatorship of the enlightened elite that will forcibly transfer wealth for some reason or another.

Holdren is a believer in the so-called Unified Theory of Left-Wing Causes. This theory is that all left wing causes- including global warming, global cooling, overpopulation, endangered species, poverty, diversity, and many others- can all be solved by a benevolent world dictatorship of the enlightened elite that will force others to live their lives differently and will redistribute their property as they see fit.

Basically, Holdren is a run-of-the-mill tyranny supporter, and was appointed to his position by tyrant-in-chief President Barack Obama, and he is to be opposed by all freedom and liberty loving patriots out there.

The worst part about Holdren, aside from the fact that he seizes on the left wing cause of the day to push his tyrannical beliefs, is that his ideas and theories about everything are wrong. From Forbes:

....In keeping with his dogmatic limits-to-growth convictions, Holdren joined his frequent co-author, eco-doomster Paul Ehrlich, in a famous bet against cornucopian economist Julian Simon. In 1980, Holdren, Ehrlich and Stanford colleague John Harte picked a basket of five commodities--chrome, copper, nickel, tin and tungsten--that they were sure were going to rise in price as they became increasingly scarce. They drew up a futures contract obligating Simon to sell Holdren, Ehrlich and Harte the same quantities of five metals that could be purchased for $1,000 10 years later at 1980 prices.

If the combined prices rose above $1,000, Simon would pay the difference. If they fell below $1,000, Ehrlich would pay Simon. Ehrlich mailed Simon a check for $576.07 in October 1990. Simply put, the combined real prices of the metals selected by Holdren and his colleagues fell by more than 50% during the 1980s, confirming cornucopian claims that the supply of resources over time becomes more abundant, not scarcer.....

...Holdren introduced in 1971--with his colleague and perennial population-alarmist, Ehrlich--the concept of the I=PAT identity. Human Impact on the environment is equal to Population x Affluence/consumption x Technology. All of which are supposed to intensify and worsen humanity's impact on the natural world.

History shows that the I=PAT identity largely gets it backward. Population is at worst neutral, while affluence and technology actually promote environmental flourishing. It is in the rich, developed countries that the air becomes clearer, the streams cleaner and the forests more expansive....

...Holdren doesn't appear to have an adequate understanding of the economic process through which these technological advances are achieved. He seems to think new technologies arise full-blown from government agencies and university laboratories....

This is the general flaw to the Unified Theory of Left-Wing Causes- that bureaucrats like Holdren know what they are doing and if they are given more power over others- power that those free people once exercised- and are given more resources- resources taken from the labor of once-free people- that these bureaucrats will make the world a better place for us all to live- a more prosperous, free, and happy place. It turns out though that he is wrong in almost all of his theories- from bets he placed to equations he invented to his general understanding of economics. He is a failed person- perhaps no more failed than the rest of us, but yet given more power and authority and wealth over the rest of us by a government not in any way empowered to do so.

People are not completely 'benelevent', and neither are the governments they create, and there are no 'enlightened' people in charge of our government today, either Democrat or Republican or liberal or conservative. Whatever the cause that you believe in or support, the answer is never the Unified Theory of Left-Wing Causes, and yet the Obama administration has appointed as Science Czar one of the greatest believers in this theory- a guy who is supposed to be a scientist actually at his heart a firm believer in a theory that is demonstratively wrong.

John Holdren is yet another example of a failed administration based on failed theories and ideas putting in placed failed administrators who implement failed policies- and we can see the results of this failure in America today.

Seth Godin, author, change maker

Seth Godin is not God. I don't think he pretends to be but sometimes I think those that read his work don't realize who he is. He is a natural born gift writer / rebel who has made his own rules and had is own career. He is one of a kind. That is great. We need more Seth Godins.

In a recent post, Seth makes a great point that we are going Back to (the wrong) school and that we are educating kids for 1925.

Agreed. Totally.

I agree with this statement.

If you do a job where someone tells you exactly what to do, they will find someone cheaper than you to do it. And yet our schools are churning out kids who are stuck looking for jobs where the boss tells them exactly what to do.

But there is also some sort of insinuation I read into the post that the problem is having teachers/ educators in authority.

Let's make a line here that needs to be very clear:


We need to be promoting higher order thinking.

Memorizing is at the bottom. We aren't teaching problem solving. We're not teaching anything of lasting substance when we continue to see if kids can memorize. We just aren't.

Seth is on the money when he says that the testing environment has put us on the race to the bottom. I'm glad he's saying it.

Kids need to be problem solvers. They don't need to be told what to do at every moment. They need to know how to figure things out. This is exactly why I don't teach point and click software and handle it more holistically. We've already used more than 30 software programs to solve problems in my Computer Applications class as we customize the experience to the individual and the things we are trying to create.

We also need to have a respect for authority in place so we can have safe places to learn.

The one insinuation that I see in this discussion all over the place is the idea we should disregard authority. There is a big difference between questioning what a person in authority says and the fact that a person in authority has authority.

The lack of discipline in schools is one reason that many of my teacher friends are quitting. I know of one local school that talked to teachers about putting bullet proof glass in every classroom to protect the teachers. How about protecting the students? If teachers are afraid, how about the poor scrawny kid who won't go to the bathroom all day because he's afraid of bullying?

As a society, we don't trust people in authority. We don't trust organizations in authority. We've had a complete erosion of the belief in authority.

Never mistake a teacher in authority for a dictatorship.

Right now many of those in authority in education have led us down the wrong path as a country. So, it is understandable. But let's turn our eyes to the kids for a moment.

The danger of Selective Authority
Many parents have advocated a principle of "selective authority." Selective authority looks like this

"I'm going to learn from you because you can give me something" or
"I'm not going to learn from you because I don't like you." 

What results is punk football players who are very coachable but have no integrity and keep getting in trouble with the law. This problem is everywhere.

This type of philosophy means if a kid can convince Mom and Dad that "my Lit teacher doesn't like me" and the kid knows that suddenly anything I do to that lit teacher is excused and encouraged.

WRONG.

The "rights" of a few who don't deserve it

Rafe Esquith in his book,Teach Like Your Hair's on Fire: The Methods and Madness Inside Room 56,  talks about an incident where a group of fifth graders were interrupting their fifth grade graduation with profanity and trash talk. Rafe removed them from the proceedings and was promptly told by the principal that everyone "has a right to graduate" and that the could do nothing about it.

No! Those kids should get a diploma but they should not have the right to completely ruin the graduation for the other students.

Schools and principals who tolerate such misbehavior look impotent, incompetent, and totally backwards!

Do we encourage disrespect?
PROBLEM. The problem in many schools is that it is impossible to even teach lower order industrial age thinking because our society has so worshipped the young that we are encouraging a total disrespect for authority.

We all have bosses. We all have laws to follow. Lots of times we don't like the boss or the laws but we have to follow them anyway. We need to follow people we don't like sometimes so we can be successful in life. We can respect their authority even if we don't care for them as a person.

We can also be a renegade with cool ideas in the classroom and beyond if we have empowering teachers to bring that out of us. I can be empowering and still have my classroom management act together.


Show up and Keep your Promises
A young man at Walgreen's yesterday was talking to me. He was missing the first half of his family reunion because the manager could not get anyone to work for him. He was at work anyway. I was very impressed and told him so. He said,

'My Momma raised me right. I need to show up where they are counting on me and keep my promises."

Respect for authority does not mean subservience, slavery, or even the worst case, abuse. It means that we have guidelines. It means we treat each other with respect and have character.

Scott Filmer's Photography Journal

We need yellow lines.
We have guidelines like the yellow line in the middle of the road.

Thank goodness for the yellow line in the middle of the road. It is that guideline that keeps us all safe. We need them in school too!

No Discipline Problems
I've had a few discipline problems in my career but not many. Typically, I have to fill out a discipline form once or twice a year. That is because my principal is exceptional at handling discipline. He is consistent (writing up his own son for not having a hair cut) and treats everyone fairly.

I am free to teach. There were times, I admit, under another principal that it wasn't so pleasant. When  discipline is maintained we have freedom to learn.

Appealing versus Arguing
Authority does not mean that a person is always right. The first day of class I always say something completely, totally WRONG. Something everyone knows is wrong. The kids now know my reputation and so they get it more often than not, but I always say.

"This is my classroom and we will work together to learn, but that does not mean that I know everything. I'm wrong quite a bit. You've just let me say something you know is wrong. Why did no one stand up to me? What is the right way to disagree when a person in authority says something is wrong?" (We discuss.) Then I end with, "This is OUR classroom. We learn from each other. If you disagree with me, I respect you if you disagree respectfully in a way that helps me and the others learn and I will treat you the same way. It is ok to make mistakes and sometimes I will say things to make you think that I may or may not agree with. I want your brains and your thoughts not just your blind acceptance of what I say. But you can know that if I do say something wrong like I just did that I will always correct myself in that same class period - you can trust what I say, but I needed to prove a point to you today. Say what you think not what you think I want you to say."

Note that I don't make this a habit to do this very much because I want students to trust what I say. If I say something wrong, I always admit it pretty quickly so they know that I knew it was wrong. I don't think it is a good practice to just "lie" all the time to confuse kids. But to do it once to make a point and to say I intentionally did it is OK.

There is a difference. In this case, I've preserved my authority. My "yellow line in the middle of the road" type authority while also making my classroom a safe place for open dialog, discussion, and learning by everyone.

Our Current Students aren't ready for 1925 work in some cases
A close family member employs some of those "1925 labor workers" as he works in a factory. The problem is that many of the workers he gets aren't even fit for that. They don't know how to show up on time and only 20% of them know fractions. (They ask where the bubbles are for the answers and are told that in the real world you don't have 4 answers for every question.)

Right now, the current public education system, at least down here in South Georgia doesn't really even produce good factory workers. Yes, it is broken, yes we need to fix it.

We need people who can keep their promises. Who can be productive. Who aren't just robots who test well.  We also need students who know basic math and fractions in the real world where there are no bubbles.

We need to improve and change how we are teaching but we also need to restore the guidelines and accountability that keep us safe. According to Maslow's heirarchy of needs - if a student is hungry and feels unsafe they aren't going to learn. Yes, we need to improve our teaching but to have good teaching we also need good discipline.

The danger of the rebellion against "industrial age do what you are told" education is that some people ARE not going to realize that the scripted, step by step teaching, worksheet mentality, and memorization mantras are the problem and in fact will think it is having discipline, order, and guidelines that are the problem.

Seth Godin on Education
So, as smart as Seth Godin is, take his posts on education for what they are. Very well written big-picture critiques of the big-picture problems in education and not a prescription for how to fix education. Honestly, I'm not even sure that some of our current education "leaders" are prepared to fix those problems as they have a self-interest in preserving the current systems that have gotten us where we are.

Whatever the solution - restoring order and discipline and SAFETY is an important part of improving any school. It is called "learning environment" and it is a top indicator of a successful school.

In Conclusion
Let's promote higher order thinking but to get there we do need consistent discipline and respect for authority back in our schools.

Remember your noble calling, teacher. Remember that those who critique a system are critiquing a system.

There are many amazing teachers out there and most likely you are one of them. No one can take away your nobility but when you act beneath yourself, you alone can give away that nobility. Let's teach anyway as best we can until people realize that the Freedom to Teach is one of the best things they could give teachers.

____
Unless noted otherwise, photos are from iStock Photo.

In a recent interview with ABC, President Barack Obama was talking about the fee that Bank of America believes is now necessary to charge customers because of recent changes to bank card fees imposed by Democrats in the Dodd-Frank bill':

“This is exactly why we need this Consumer Finance Protection Bureau that we set up that is ready to go," he said. "... (petty government bureaucrats) can stop (the fees being charged by private banks) because if (petty government bureaucrats) say to the banks, ‘You don't have some inherent right just to – you know, get a certain amount of profit. If your customers – are being mistreated. That you have to treat them fairly and transparently.”

I made some changes- I removed the word 'you' that Obama used and replaced it with what I thought he meant, and I removed the word 'it' and replaced it with what the 'it' was.

As you can see from this statement, the President does not believe that privately owned and operated companies in the United States have an inherent right to create wealth. He believes that wealth did not exist before the government was around and does not exist after government is not around- if Obama and a bunch of hard workers landed on a deserted island that was in a state of nature, he would believe that he would be morally correct to take the fruits of the labor of others since they have no inherent right to what their own labor produces. Obama thinks that government has the right to take from others, whether they created that wealth through their own actions or not, because he thinks that wealth and prosperity is created and sustained by government policies, even though all experience hath shown that this is incorrect.

America was founded on different ideals- our nation was founded on the idea that property existed before the government and will continue to exist after government, and that even in a state of nature with no government, people do have an inherent fundamental natural right to the property that they create through their actions. If a bank charges a fee and gets a profit from this, they have every right to keep that profit, as it is their inherent natural right to create and keep property in our nation, free from government intervention and threats of confiscation. Only in tyrannical governments are the rights of life, liberty, and property not protected, and tyrannical governments then are those which have less happy lives, less free people, and are always considerably poorer in property than those nations which have embraced natural rights philosophy like our founding fathers did.

As we all know, in order to support yourself through reason and stay alive in a society, you must be able to own and use the product of your labor- you must be able to create wealth and keep that wealth in order to live and live free. If the tools of your survival and the products of your hard work are subject to random confiscation by the Obama administration, then your life also becomes subject to possible random destruction- or to put it another way, the tyrannical nature of the Obama administration to target businesses as 'enemies' is making our nation more poor and bit by bit making your life more miserable and less rich in goods and happiness and freedom.

Obama is increasingly by his own statements demonstrating his unfitness for the office of President of the United States of America; 2012 can't come fast enough to get rid of this guy.

Although the media is really playing up the fact that Mitt Romney won the Mackinac Republican Leadership Conference straw poll over Rick Perry 51% to 17%, I was there, and the reality is that most of the people there voted prior to hearing either candidate speak and that after hearing both Perry and Romney speak, the race is a lot more even then the margin in the straw poll.

Romney is playing a defensive game, saying all the right things, hitting all the right spots, meeting with all the right people, and clearly is going to attempt to win the Presidency by not making any major mistakes. This might be the way to play it this election, but I doubt it- Obama sounds like he is getting into campaign mode, and although Obama couldn't manage his way out of a paper bag, he can get his hands on a lot of money and win himself office. So the better candidate for the Republican Party might just be Rick Perry.

In a marked contrast to the coached and artificial Romney, Perry is a lively person and is full of personality. He sounds a little bit like Own Wilson with his southern drawl and has a bounce in his step- I see him as a little more of a wild-card in the race, someone who will say some pretty good lines but will also make mistakes- for example, the stuff about not building a fence and providing in-state tuition for people who crossed the border illegally are important mistakes, although in reality these are peripheral to the job of being President.

He began his speech on Mackinac Island at the Grand Hotel by talking about how once America built things- like cars and bridges and beautiful hotels- and if we elect him, "our best days are still ahead of us." I like that idea- that is a marked contrast to Barack Obama, who appears to be trying to play a zero-sum game of class-warfare in America, where he wants to take the existing/shrinking pie and divvy it up to his supporters and allies rather than growing the pie so we all are happy. Perry is patriotic- he said something like 'the greatest nation on Earth is the United States of America'- and I love people who love America.

But what I really liked about Perry was his appeal to Reagan Democrats- although a lot of Republicans who are following the primary are all about picking the best candidate in the primary, in reality the most important consideration they should be thinking about is who stands the best chance of beating Obama. Romney is a good moderate who is business-like and a safe pick, and this gives him a solid edge, but Perry talked about willing over the Reagan Democrats, those people who are still in the Democratic Party even though every year the Democratic Party becomes more militant progressive and socialist. Yeah, the Tea Party might make this GOP not the GOP of your fathers- but the Democratic Party is not the Democratic Party of a generation ago, and having a candidate like Perry in the running who tries to win these Reagan Democrats might be a great asset.

"We will take the boots of over-taxation and over-regulation off the necks of small businessmen and businesswomen" he stated, laying out his theme that it is centralized control and elites in a far away capital who are being a barrier to the progress of America. Restoring freedom and liberty, he feels, will lead us forward better than having government bureaucrats rule over us- the freedom and liberty to make choices and take responsibility from those choices and letting the collective wisdom of the marketplace guide decisions in society will lead to a more prosperous and happy nation. "We don't need the rhetoric of change, but rather a record of change" he declared.

To be honest, his approach is a gutsy approach- it takes courage to let go of power and trust the American people to create jobs and goods and wealth- rather than tell the people what to do with regulations and a controlling tax code, Perry is suggesting that people be free and make decisions freely and that that will result in greater production and wealth. It's a tougher argument to make, but the right one, and I really hope the American people listen more closely to what he is saying.

"There is nothing ailing our nation that freedom can't cure," he said, pointing to crushing debt, increasing regulations, and legislation like Obamacare as the reason why our economy has failed to recover from the 2008 recession. He outright rejected Keynesian economic theory, and it was great to hear a major candidate cite economic theories, because our current President doesn't rely on any sort of economic theories to underpin his policies, unless you consider the mutated and mangled version of Keynesian theory he is ignorantly applying a real policy.

"I will guide this nation with a deep deep rudder," he said- and that to me is perhaps why he moved ahead of Romney as my choice in the straw poll. Sometimes I am concerned that Romney will not steer the ship of state with a deep rudder, but rather a shallow one, and that's okay- with a GOP Congress dominated by the Tea Party, it's okay to go on that current and see where it goes, and after Romney is done America will be a much improved nation. But with Perry, he'll steer our nation in the direction he wants to take it, even if the current flows another direction, and if we do defeat Obama, that might benefit our nation more in the long run.

And as long as Rick Perry keeps rolling off lines like the one he left the lunch crown with, I think he'll be okay- he finished with- "Every day I will try to make Washington DC more inconsequential in your lives".

Get the facts when you're teaching a child how to read.

I have a child with dyslexia and one of my biggest ambitions is to help my children love reading. Mrs. Grace Adkins in our learning lab is an invaluable help in this way and sent me some links to current research on the topic. I may not be an official "reading" teacher but I am my child's reading teacher.

I cried this summer when my fourth grader became so fluent that he's poured through one of the Chroncile of Narnia books and is now on his second book. He reads every night with me - we take turns and he's nailing it. I really wondered if I'd ever see the day. We've done multisensory everything, spent summers, extra help, whatever it takes. Reading opens up the world and is dear to my heart. I love it and I want my children to love it too!

A book recommendation from Mrs. Adkins
Mrs. Adkins just sent me a note recommending this book: Ready to Read: A Multisensory Approach to Language-based Comprehension Instruction  and also sent some other resources across my desk for looking at the research behind teaching reading.

Read up on Reading Research
You don't have to be the expert to read what the experts say and break it down into practice. As I"ve shared before, it is appalling that so few people like to read and how many never pick up another book after high school or college. (See my post Time to Get Angry About Reading.)

I've got a whole list of reading resources I've pulled from the web in a Diigo list, so please take a look, but here is a list of some great PDF's that you'll want to read.

Round Up of Reading Research

Knowledge and Practice Standards for Teachers of Reading International Dyslexia Association

This guide is from Dr. Louisa C. Moats and the International Dyslexia Association. It bridges research into practice to create a "research-based tool for practitioners." These are the standards used by the IDI to guide teachers of reading, spelling, and writing.

the Research Building Blocks for Teaching Children to Read

The updated 2006 copy of the National Reading Panel teacher's guide to give a framework for using the findings of the 200 national Reading Panel in the classroom. This is another guidebook for teachers and curriculum directors.

Teaching Reading: Report and Recommendations, National Inquiry into the Teaching of Literacy

This December 2005 report talks about best practices in teaching literacy. For those of you who like to review best practices from around the world, this came in from the International Dyslexia Association in their Summer 2011 Perspectives on Language and Literacy "Global Perspectives" column.

Independent Review of the Teaching of Early Reading : The Department for Education

Here is another study for literacy people. This report from the UK talks about effective teacher training and good teaching methods but interestingly talks about early reading instruction and the debates surrounding whole language and constructivism.

Remember your noble calling, teacher. Take time to read and learn -- you expect your students to do it too!

Image by James Marvin Phelps via Flickr

"Inspiration Point"

Every day at lunch I take time to read just 2 small things. It is important that whatever you believe that you take time to "reprogram" your mind. I find that by noon I'm usually on the verge of hyperventilation and if I can take just 5 minutes to refocus on my values.

I read The Message Bible and also read Yes, You Can!: 1,200 Inspiring Ideas for Work, Home, and Happiness! (an old book that focuses on one attribute a day.)

Today I was reading in Acts and it talks about a preacher named Paul who:

"Gave constant encouragement, lifting their spirits and charging them with fresh hope" (Acts 20)

I felt jealous. Who does this? I want some more of that?

Well, why don't I BE more of this?

Why don't you?

I want to give constant encouragement, lifting your spirits and charge you with fresh hope!

What if we all did this? Of course, there is a spiritual element of what Paul is doing that I won't go into here, however, the point is well taken that if you're not encouraging what are you doing?

I think all of us as teachers should have as part of our mission, our charge, to encourage others.

To be empowered we need to be plugged in! We need to charge our batteries. A certain bit of this comes when we are off on vacation. But, friends, it isn't summer any more. WE don't have any vacation time until Christmas and we know how nutty that time period is.

Be the Lifter Challenge
So, I give you a challenge. Take one blog post, one tweet, one Facebook status update and share something encouraging. A video. A story. A kindness.

Let's be the powerplug for other teachers who just can't seem to lift their head today. At this point many of us have been back in school a while although others are already starting. The common denominator is that we are tired.

Let's be the encouragement we want to see from others. I type this as I am on hold with my Student Information System vendor for the fourth time this week. It would be easy to get down.

Remember your noble calling, teacher.  Let's call on our nobility as we share and encourage others.

Several teachers have been asking: what is the hashtag for inspirational teacher stories? Does anyone know? #inspireteach

In my post NYT's Douthat is Wrong: Realigning Elections Exist and One is Coming I countered an argument that was advanced by the New York Times Ross Douthat where he claimed that Harvard Professor V.O. Key's theory on realigning elections was wrong. Douthat thought that 2008 was supposed to the be realigning election, and now that we can all see that it was not, he has become disillusioned with the theory that Key advanced in his iconic essay “A Theory of Critical Elections” and now thinks that elections that change America's direction are no longer possible. But he is wrong.

In my post Why 2008 Was Not a Historic or Realigning Election (written in 2009) I addressed Key's theory of realigning elections and looked back on the election of 2008 and looked forward to 2012. Here is some of what I wrote:

The theory of realigning elections (sometimes called key elections, critical elections, or historic elections)is that sometimes there is a dramatic change in the political system that you can observe in one election or a couple elections in a row. Usually it coincides with the coming to power of a new coalition of voters or the movement of a large or important bloc of voters to a new coalition, these realigning elections occur when voters decidedly break in a new direction on a particularly important issues, when a new party leader emerges who takes the party in a new direction, when the regional and demographic bases of power of the two parties switches, or when there is a new rules of the political system (ie, expansion of suffrage). Because political parties in America tend to be rather stable coalitions, a sudden realignment by a voting group tends to have a longer-lasting and dramatic effect. These realigning elections seem to occur once a generation (every 30-40 years). V. O. Key, Jr. is the professor who pioneered the study of these elections....

...Based on the 30-40 years estimate, the next 'realigning election' is due 2012-2020. Many though, because Barack Obama is black, want to say to say that the 2008 election (Democrat Barack Obama beats Republican John McCain) was a historic election, an unprecedented election, or a realigning election. Does it fit the model though?...

...If Obama had run as a liberal- running on a liberal platform and advocating liberal issues and highlighting his sharp policy differences from the past- then 2008 would have been a realigning election.

But let's go back to (2008). Watch the campaign commercials that Obama ran. Obama did not run as a liberal. He did not run on a platform that advocated stimulus packages, massive spending, large amounts of debt, pulling out of Iraq and Afghanistan, nationalized healthcare, raising taxes, cap-and-tax, or government-take-overs of companies. Obama ran as a moderate. He ran as a new and different candidate, one who would not be liberal or conservative, but would reach across the aisle and be a post-partisan President. He talked about tax cuts and strong defense and ending corruption.

Obama ran as a moderate- on a moderate platform- and McCain was a moderate, and the gains in Congress for Democrats were mostly from moderate Blue Dogs, and the polls show the election map as being essentially the same as 1996-2004, so 2008 was not a historic, realigning, critical, key, or unprecedented election...

...2012 will probably be the historic election that we are all looking for. Obama will be running as a liberal and will be seeking a mandate and approval for his policies- which this time around will be clearly liberal and far left. Voting blocs will have to move to vote for him, the map will have to change, and our nation will indeed embrace change with an Obama victory in 2012, setting the stage for likely Democrat control of government for 30-40 years and a shift in our nation farther to the left. If Obama loses, he will lose to a conservative candidate (the GOP is not going with another moderate- Romney, Pawleny, Palin, Huckabee, etc are all conservatives) running on a conservative platform, and it will mark a return to power for conservative Republicans and a move back to the right for our nation.

My theory that 2012 will be a real realigning election continues to receive support. Forbes Ralph Benko wrote an article last week called The Constitutional Populist Realignment Of 2012 that speaks to my theory:

...There are two theories. Progressives believe that the answer lies in government job creation (stimulus, bailouts, “shovel-ready” public works). Supply-siders believe that the answer lies exclusively in human action, entrepreneurs and businesspeople, and that the government needs to get its boot off our necks...

...Constitutional populists, like the Tea Party Patriots, demand a return to free market principles to create jobs. Top notch populists such as Victor Davis Hanson, writing in National Review, anticipate bidding an unsentimental farewell to “A Tottering Technocracy.”...

...Being a republic(an) isn’t for the fainthearted. The sainted Jefferson once wrote “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.” One can imagine the outrage which this violation of Civility by Jefferson would have provoked at the Huffington Post (if they deemed him conservative). Compared to Jefferson or Paine Rick Perry thus far has proved himself to be a model of rhetorical restraint.

Will 2012 go down as the year of Constitutional Populist Realignment in which the American political rank and file decisively reins in the elites? A populist realignment, sweeping both the White House and the Senate into conservative populist hands would be epochal and is by no means out of the question.

The populists’ paladin should expect ridicule at the hands of the smug, failed, modern day royalists. The prize is big and the scorn worth bearing. That’s the way to the White House: jobs through free markets. As our Founders knew, as we now rediscover, as Perry, Bachmann, and Paul, among others are agitating for: jobs need real, rather than funny, money. Onward to gold.

The prize is big indeed and the scorn is worth bearing, but the way there is clear- in the primary you must be active in both the Republican and Democratic parties in advancing solid conservative constitutional libertarians who believe in our Founding Principles, and in the general election you must vote for whomever of whatever party better fits that label better and get your friends and family and coworkers to do the same. Let's dream big, my friends, and dream about taking back our nation, one election at a time, over a generation or two, and then perhaps America will once again be the great nation of freedom and liberty and prosperity that it once was.

UPDATE I: Thank you all so much for visiting my blog! Please be sure to look around at some of my other posts- click on the archives and look around from past months or simply do a search of your favorite topic and see what comes up! Bookmark me or email this page to your friends- it does no good if the message stops with you, you have to spread the word of A Conservative Teacher.

Also, I'd love to start posting to my blog wherever I am, and to do that I need a smartphone- sadly, my salary was cut by over 20% over the next 4 years with our latest contract, so I really can't afford one now... unless you donate some money to me by clicking on the 'donate' button on the top right of my blog. I would really appreciate it! Thanks for visiting!

Educate Yourself! Buy and read...

People produce goods and services, create wealth, and through their talent and hart work are making America a better place. At the heart of our economic system you have someone with an idea on how to make the world a better place by providing a good or service better than others, and then you have people who help this person to make their dream a reality. Some of these dreams are big (Bill Gates dreamed of making a better home computer) and some of these dreams are small (I dream of being an entertaining and interesting freelance writer and radio personality with a perspective that others don't have), but what makes our nation hum is that we all have the freedom to explore these gifts and ideas and the freedom to work hard to make our dreams a reality.

Except when we can't because our dreams and hard work and ideas are blocked by government regulations. Regulations serve a purpose in our nation- they protect public spaces, they protect areas that are owned by the collective nation, they protect lives, and they protect the freedom of people to participate in our nation- and so it is to be expected that in our nation of laws and standards that there will be laws and standards.

Truth in labeling laws, laws against dumping chemical sewage into lakes and rivers, etc- are reasonable and responsible regulations. Twenty or thirty years ago, I would guess that most people would say that most of the reasonable and responsible regulations had already been passed, and that people were pretty well protected in our nation under its laws.

In 2008, I think most of the people in our nation felt that our nation was pretty well regulated; in fact, many perhaps felt that it was heavily regulated, but very few were demanding a massive explosion in the number of regulations and regulators in our nation.

And yet, one of the fastest growing employment sectors in our nation since March of 2010 is in federal regulatory agencies. President Barack Obama (Democratic President since 2009) and his Democratic allies in the House (Democrat control from 2007-2011) and Senate (Democrat control from 2007) have decided that although the number of private sector jobs has grown only 1.4% that our federal government needed to hire vastly more employees whose sole employment purpose is to control these private citizens, to make rules regarding their behaviors, to enforce those rules, and to punish these citizens when they break the rules that these regulatory agencies invent.

It is tyranny, plain and simple, when regulatory agencies who are not elected and who are unaccountable break down the separation of powers in our nation and exceed their authority to further their political agenda's, and while our nation is willing to tolerate this at a low level, under President Obama and the Democrats this sort of tyranny has exploded in size and number and cost.

Employment at regulator agencies has climbed 13% since Obama took office, and in the past year alone the number of people who are hired to control our economy and its people has grown by 5.2%!

Is this what you all voted for? Is this the change and hope that was supposed to come with Obama winning office- more regulators, more people devoted to controlling business, more people inventing rules and punishing people who violated them? Is this the kind of leadership that you want to keep in office for another 4 years?

I maintain that anyone- anyone Republican or Democrat- would be a better President than Barack Obama, and the Democrats who have supported his agenda and backed him deserve to lose their jobs too for this misplaced trust in a President who is choking off job creation through excessive regulations and misusing taxpayer money by hiring more and more regulators while the United States of America goes bankrupt.

Hat-tip to Ace of Spades.

Source

I've wrestled with the the idea of a paperless classroom for quite a while now. Obviously, that is a big change from what we now use, and I don't think it's right for everyone.

For the little ones, I'm concerned about all those tactile experiences they're supposed to be having with real paper, real pencils, real crayons, etc. I don't know if I'll ever think it's healthy for our elementary schools to go paperless. However, I can certainly get on board with junior highs, high schools, and colleges going paperless.

I think about all the things I ask of my students during one school year and try to come up with digital alternatives. The majority of digital alternatives I come up with cost money in licensing fees and whatnot. For instance, if I wanted every student to have his/her personal Glogster site, my school would need to foot the bill for that.  And if my school had to purchase licenses for every student at every site I wanted to use...well, that might get a little pricey. But if students aren't buying supplies anymore, maybe schools could have students pitch in for their own licensing fees, instead. Just a thought.

One of my main concerns about a paperless school is making sure that students have access to everything they need. I'm not sure about other school districts, but the past two that I've been in have had internet blocks set up all over the place. I understand that we want to keep our students safe -- believe me, I'm on board with that! -- but at what point are going to give students the freedom to make good and bad choices with technology? Just as I talk about on my philosophy page, I believe that if we teach students from a very young age about what is digitally appropriate vs. inappropriate, most kids will begin to make the right decisions online. (There will always be a few little rascals who want to test the waters, but don't we have those few in every situation?)

These past two paragraphs lead me to believe that schools' biggest hurdles in making themselves a paperless environment are money and legal issues.

In any case, there's no doubt that every student would need to have an e-mail address that's for school use only. I was reading one of Cool Cat Teacher's blogs, and she mentioned that it's much-less hassle to request that students have school e-mail addresses because then the students' professional and social lives don't get mixed up. (There are lots of other blessings that come with giving students a school-only e-mail address, but I'll address those in a later post.) I've had an e-mail address with just about every free host available, and I feel that Google mail is one that students should have at school. I say this because I know several schools that use this client already for their faculty, so it wouldn't be that much of a stretch to use it for the students, as well. AND I am really enjoying exploring all the possibilities of Google's add-ons. If students and teachers all have access to the Google documents created by the students... imagine the collaboration!

And after that's established, we start adding in all these different websites I've talked about on this blog so far. We put our syllabus on a Glog and ask our students to tell us about themselves using Prezi presentations. We get students to create YouTube videos and podcasts to display on the classroom website. We ask students to write via blogs. To display work on parent/teacher conference night or open house night, we scan in documents (or take pictures of them), and use Animoto to create a create and enjoyable slideshow of images. We share documents between teachers and students using Dropbox's public folders and/or LiveBinder. The more I think about a paperless classroom, the more convinced I am that we can do this! Sure, it may take a little extra effort at first. But the ability to share them quickly and easily among members of the school, members of the community, and world-wide friends is priceless!