Author: David

There are two central problems I see facing the preservation of true civil liberties in America today. No matter how committed to preservation of liberty or resolute in defense of liberty anyone might be, commitment and resolution fail in the face of these issues.

1. Most Americans are historically subliterate, if not illiterate and have no idea what the civil liberties the Founders and Framers wrought for us are. That being the case, these historically sub- or illiterate folk fall prey to every manipulation of the media, academia, politicians and such organizations as the ACLU use to poison the well of liberty.
2. The same historically sub- and illiterate folk can vote. *shudder* And do. (Though fortunately, not in as great a number as they could.)

And the problem is exacerbated by the simple fact that so many people grow up in these United States not only historically ignorant but unable to reason. Witness: just about any evening news program or major newspaper, where strings of fallacies are presented as “news” and sheeple eat it right up, completely unaware—as I do not doubt most of the media folks who perpetrate the crimes against reason are—that what they are hearing/seeing/reading is drivel.

Of course, sheeple are not born; they are made. Made by a process of government interference, parental stupidity and laziness, educrats’ “academia nut” theories used as child abuse in the classroom (e.g., “new math”, “look-say”) and increasingly lazy and indifferent students. Add to that an ever more removed-from-reality educational system, and it’s no wonder so many adult Americans are truly functional illiterates, and masses are culturally, historically and even literarily subliterate._1_, _2_, _3_ (Linked: three pdf files comprising the 1992 National Adult Literacy Survey, and folks, the news hasn’t improved since then.)

Yes, moral fibre is essential to preserving liberty. But absent the knowledge of true liberties, the enemies of liberty will win over even an “upright” and  fervent, but ignorant, populace.

So, what shall we do? Depending on public education is a recipe for disaster. Even good teachers are stifled, blocked, prevented from, well, teaching by stupid, entrenched bureaucracies and generations of mistaught students who are now… parents. And stupid, entrenched bureaucracies (and by at least one objective criterion—GRE scores—educrats/school administrators are the stupidest people working in the education sector) will NOT “go gently into that good night.”  

*sigh*

We must do it. It would be nice (“‘Nice,’ he says… ” heh) if the words of the song were more substantive, but at least one line rings truer all the time as we travel the road that leads to preservation of true liberty for our children… or not…

“Teach your children well.”

You who are on the road
Must have a code that you can live by
And so become yourself
Because the past is just a good bye.

Teach your children well,
Their father’s hell did slowly go by,
And feed them on your dreams
The one they pick’s, the one you’ll know by.

Don’t you ever ask them why, if they told you, you will cry,
So just look at them and sigh and know they love you.

And you, of tender years,
Can’t know the fears that your elders grew by,
And so please help them with your youth,
They seek the truth before they can die.

Teach your parents well,
Their children’s hell will slowly go by,
And feed them on your dreams
The one they pick’s, the one you’ll know by.

Don’t you ever ask them why, if they told you, you will cry,
So just look at them and sigh and know they love you.

Powered by Castpost“Teach your children well… ”

*sigh* (And as I learned when attempting to explain the Fair tax to an older voter recently, “Teach your parents well” also applies.)

They are NOT going to learn what they need to be good citizens of a democratic republic in school. Count on it.

It is up to us. Our children and grandchildren (yes, and in some cases, parents) must learn somewhere if the friends of liberty are  to have the fundamental tools and knowledge—and numbers!—necessary to defeat the foes of liberty.

(Yeh, I expanded on this post in “Comments”. So? 🙂

Linked at: Otimaster, Peakah’s Pub, the rather racy, Where Are My Socks?, Choose life! and Don Surber After Hours… for now. 🙂

[Yes, that is the lyrics and an instrumental cover of the Crosby Stills & Nash piece. Recorded from a midi file collected years ago from… I don’t know where. If you know who created the midi file this mp3 is based on, let me know. Meanwhile, sing along if you have the hankerin’ to. 🙂 ]

I’ve finally, partly because of some recent comments and partly because, well, I guess about time, decided to post a “Commenting/Trackback Policy” CLICK the link if you’re interested. There’s also a “permapost” link in my right sidebar, if anyone cares (or if anyone doesn’t care–so? 🙂

Have fun, folks.

Tripping my blogroll this a.m., I naturally stopped off at my fav “coffee shop”—Morning Coffee and Afternoon Tea—for a lil eye-opener. (heh—I typoed “sys-opener” a sec ago. Actually took me a sec to realize it. Need. More. Coffee.) Christine actually hasn’t posted anything new in the past coupla days, but this time I followed a link she provided to…

Cubicle Coffee, but not to the neat Bodum French Press. No, I went straight for the philosophy cubicle.

Rick Lee shows what can be done with Thanksgiving Dinner leftovers. What an eye!

And, of course a stop at Kat’s for a lil weekend music is in order. How ’bout this one from John Prine and Iris Dement? Great Saturday morning fare! Not to your taste, try the Bill Morrissey she has posted.

Kris links to a near death experience at WallyWorld… heh. Oh, and a real nice after action report on her week, too. Don Surber links to a WallyWorld mayhem video. Funny, Don. “The Next Wal-Mart Millionaire” indeed. heh. And another “indeed” just for the heck of it. And,

I oppose the death penalty but it would be awful tempting to pass a law that would allow the people of the United States to elect each year a celebrity to be pelted to death with US magazines.

Droll, Don. But… just for good measure, (three is and even number, right? 🙂 let’s round out the “After hours” posts with, “Christmas 1, PC 0”. heh

Nothing new since Wednesday at Jerry Pournelle’s, but in a mail post that starts with a tomatoe bazooka and ranges through intellectual property rights, computer security, ID and the once (and future??) USSR, there’s plenty for everyone there. I thought about the “Scotch tape foils Sony copy protection” notice in his Current View section for my “Around and About” the other day, but didn’t carry it through… of course, I would never defeat copy protections schemes. No, not I! heh

Carol Platt Liebau rips into a grade school teacher for propagandizing his students. Justifiable ripitude. heh And her succint summation of the Boston “Holiday Tree” flap is bang on, too.

Dan Riehl has commentary on Sir Elton and “Lady David”. Feelin’ a tad snarky, Dan? 🙂 He also includes a link to another video of Wal-Mart Mayhem.

Bret Rogers over at Beat Canvas has already painted his Christmas card for this year. Next step, reproduction/printing… Good job, Brett!

I’m looking forward to The Conservative Cat’s exposés: “What makes John Murtha a better expert on Iraq than Michael Yon” and “The Truth about the Truth Laid Bear thing”, but until then, I can click through the wealth of links he offers on really important topics…

Grab a cuppa joe, sit back and dig into a recent history lesson with Cao’s October 1998: Military Analyst Goes Where Spies Fail to Go, but Her Efforts Are Rejected. Significant stuff, folks.

And check her post on the Padilla indictment (and how the ACLU is attempting to interfere) over at Stop the ACLU.

That’s about it for now. RW stuff needs doing.

Linked at Don Surber After Hours, The Crazy Rants of Samantha Burns, and Stop the ACLU’s Weekend Open Trackbacks..

A few pings from some interesting reads the last coupla days. Check out:

Due to blogger error (mine, I think, not Blogger’s :-), somehow a trackpack ping to Committees of Correspondence was “etherized”. DO READ: it’s a big deal. In “When I was Ten Years Old” he links to a story you really ought to hear.

Pajamas Media / Stuck On Stupid Blog The True Meaning Of Thanksgiving, “Christmas Season starts this week beginning with Thanksgiving. While I was looking for something to post this Thursday I ran across this article and decided now is a good time to share it. From The Branson Courier: Thanksgiving is all about to whom the thanks is given…”

[On target]

T F Stern’s Rantings brings Having an Attitude of Gratitude to the Thanksgiving table. “I’ve heard some demean this truly American holiday by calling it ‘turkey day’, which may well be the reason I decided to write my thoughts about having an attitude of gratitude.”

[I’ll not refer to Thanksgiving Day as “turkey day” either, thanks. 🙂 ]

Small Town Veteran’s collection of Holiday Quick Hits is a concise list of good reads, and I say that not just because he linked my “An ACLU Thanksgiving”— “Some things I’d excerpt and link to individually if not for the holiday: An ACLU Thanksgiving Wilsongate: Motive, Means, and Opportunity More Mistakes by the Washington Post on the Foreign Fighters Debate General calls Iraq pullout ‘destabilizing’ M.. ”.

[Some good reads. Not a turkey in the bunch]

Another history lessn, this one from Peakah’s Provocations— Thanksgiving 2005 “Our Founding Father, George Washington, Proclaimed Thanksgiving Day an Official American Holiday… click on picture to read his words…”

[The text of Washington’s 1789 proclamation. Worth reading in its entirety. More than once a year. Out loud. With a bullhorn. In front of an ACLU office.]

History lesson #3 from California Conservative: The History & Meaning of Thanksgiving “Why and to whom are we giving thanks? There’s more to Thanksgiving than family, feasting and football. All too often the significance of our cherished holidays is forgotten, and replaced by a rewriting of new intentions. As we celebrate this special American holiday, may we also remember the history and be reminded of the true meaning behind it.”

[Another perspective—with depth and a link to a History Channel video]

Freedom Folks  could repost this for a guard the Borders blogburst: The Toll of Illegal Immigration  â€œMJ shares a horrifying account of the hidden costs and dangers of illegal immigration…”

More as I see ‘em.

Nah, it’s not because the FEC or some other government weenie bureaucraps might dump on ya. It’s not even because NZ Bear might decide every link to Instapundit is worth 10 links to anyone else (heh–just kidding Bear). No, It’s because this guy is covering every single topic he touches better than anyone else.

Yep. Anyone.

In fact, linking to him in such a way as to open the link in a new window is probably an exercise in futility. You’ll click the link, read posts like this one and never come back.

Oh. Wah.

Not that I’d feel the pain, cos if you did click on over there and get lost in the wealth of good blog and never come back here for my mediocre stuff, I’d feel that I’d served you well and be pleased.

Seriously: that’s one fine blog. I’d love for you to come back, but if I lose your readership to someone like this, I’ll feel that the service I’ve done you was well worth it.

Just noticed. Concurrent with Blogwriter starting to delete portions of posts when uploading or saving locally, posts originally posted via Blogwriter (as of today’s latest bug session) apparetnly canNOT ne edited to apply to the variable-width center column any more…

So, Opera, naturally, sees things correctly, and no other browser I’ve tried does.

I’ll explore this carnage wrought by my used of a beta blogging product as I have time. Meanwhile, it looks like hash is all I have to offer nonOpera users. Either that, or go back to raw html editing in Editpad.

*sigh*

[UPDATE: See The Real Ugly American’s take on Open Trackbacks. Good post. Meat on those bones, bubba. AND due to blogger error (mine, I think, not Blogger’s :-), somehow a trackpack ping to Committees of Correspondence was “etherized”. DO READ: it’s a big deal. In “When I was Ten Years Old” he links to a story you really ought to hear.]

My Wonder Woman’s a children’s librarian, so for our anniversary, we caught “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.” I had to wait until the end of the flick for something besides the typical “Harry Heroics” and boffo special effects. That was when Dumbledore spoke to Harry of a time approaching when everyone they knew would be called upon to choose between doing what’s right… or what’s easy.

And then, following the tracks of one linkfest to another to another late last night,—just kinda casually cruisin’ n perusin’—until I lost track of the links in the chain, and I ended up at Alexandra von Maltzan’s All Things Beautiful. There, I found a post to end my evening with: “Loyalty To The Truth on Thanksgiving.” She refers to Hugh Hewitt’s article on how to have a political argument with family (just read it) and then builds a powerful “tribute” to genuine bloggers she knows. From her leadoff:

“The loyalty and integrity we should have as bloggers is to the Truth and liberation of that Truth, and not to the Truth we assign to the political denominations we belong to. And above all to the good old fashioned family values of integrity and loyalty to that Truth which we celebrate at Thanksgiving. Respect for each other as bloggers no matter what we believe in is paramount, and no amount of self gratifying echo chamber rhetoric should come in the way of a good upbringing, and manners, above all being grateful today that we have a voice.”

And you know, the truth she’s talking about applies whether it’s bloggers who are devoted to so-called “important” issues or to personal journaling—or even to food and recipes (“Do YOU credit the sources of your recipes every time, David? Well, do you?”) It’s a post I believe well worth reading in its entirety. In fact, I archived the text just in case her permalink should ever prove less than permanent, so I can return to that one statement from time to time.

The quote the other day from Jo’s Cafe? It’s worth repeating in this context:

“What is most important is who you are and does your blog reflect you… ”

There are the hard choices… and the easy ones. When we’re blogging, the hard choices sometimes demand introspection… just to know they really are there. “Where is my bias? What do I believe and why?” If we ever allow our biases or our egos to persuade us to shade the truth, to twist it or even to outright lie, then we become the little people who populate the boob tube opinion programs calling themselves “news”.

Just a thought. Read the two posts linked above for better presentations.

In a strangely related post dealing metaphorically with blog ethics, The Crazy Rants of Samatha Burns reports, Source Code Stolen From NZ Bear.

heh

Indeed.

Consider this my Friday “Open all weekend” Open Post with The Open Trackback Alliance

Link to this URL:

http://thirdworldcounty.blogspot.com/2005/11/riffing-off-dumbledore.html

Trackback to this URI:

http://www.haloscan.com/tb/mnmus/113293642547681487/

See Ferdy’s Open Trackbacks Pingposters List here.

I’ll try to do a frontpage post rounding up interesting pings posted here, later.

PingLinked at: NIF, Is It Just Me?, The Blue State Conservatives(apparently not: MT seems to be having trouble accepting trackback pings–but go to BSC and read up, anyway, ‘K?), Conservative Cat, Don Surber After Hours, Right Wing Nation, Stray Dog, Blogin Outloud, TMH’s Bacon Bits

Thanksgiving Day meal finished, food put away. lazing until my Wonder Woman and I leave to take in a flick.

Just opened another “stash” blog for low-stress, not-too-techie stuff about software/hardware. Any further comments about browsers or other software stuff will be stored there and the only real mention of the contents will be a short comment/link here.

Anyone wants to treat this as an open post, feel free. SPAM trackbacks or comments will of course be deleted and their domains banned. Some things just aren’t worth wasting time on. Spammers, for one class, will never “get” the idea that what they are doing is unethical, any more than other sociopaths can understand their own inhumanity.

Have fun folks. Outa here until tomorrow, most likely. When tomorrow rolls around, I’ll bring interesting trackbacks/links onto the front page in an “around and about” post. (And then, Real World stuff, again. 🙂

[NOTE: I am posting this “Thanksgiving” post in advance of Thanksgiving Day in hopes that it might help even just one person redirect their thinking as we approach a day set apart especially for giving thanks. Update: Bumped to Thanksgiving Day.]

The biblical story of Job is a story of faith in the face of extreme adversity.

You probably know the story well. Satan makes his appearance in the court of The Most High and suggests that he can turn even the most faithful of men, Job, away from faith in God. God gives Job over to Satan to afflict reserving only Job’s life for Himself.

In the trials that ensue, Job loses his wealth, [almost all of] his family and his health. His friends counsel him to forsake his faith, and in one of the most famous lines of the Old Testament, his wife tells him to “Curse God and die.”

Pretty darned bad, eh?

But, you may say, Job’s just a myth, right?

How about an historical example, well-known and verified?

It was the worst of times; it was the worst of times. (Not so Dickensian, but oh, so true.) War ravaged the land for 30 years. During that time, Martin had served as one of the pastors of a once-prosperous town that had suffered greatly in the war. Sacked three times. Saved from sacking once only by courageous negotiations with a conquering general/king by one simple pastor… but still ruined again economically at the end of the negotiations.

This simple pastor had also seen his family, friends, colleagues and thousands of townspeople and refugees killed by plague and hunger, and during the war years, when he was the sole remaining pastor of the town, he was called upon not only to conduct the funerals of his own wife and children, but also to conduct as many as 40-50 funerals a day for families of friends and neighbors-the townspeople he served so long and knew so well-and of those from the crowded masses of refugees from the war-torn countryside. All-in-all, he performed nearly 5,000 funerals during these years.

The war was the Thirty Years War (1618-1648). The town was Eilenburg, in Saxony. The man was Martin Rinkart. In response to all those years of affliction, he penned these words:

Now thank we all our God, with heart and hands and voices,
Who wondrous things has done, in Whom this world rejoices;
Who from our mothers’ arms has blessed us on our way
With countless gifts of love, and still is ours today.

O may this bounteous God through all our life be near us,
With ever joyful hearts and blessèd peace to cheer us;
And keep us in His grace, and guide us when perplexed;
And free us from all ills, in this world and the next!

All praise and thanks to God the Father now be given;
The Son and Him Who reigns with Them in highest Heaven;
The one eternal God, Whom earth and Heaven adore;
For thus it was, is now, and shall be evermore.

Be thankful for your blessings? Yes. But even when you cannot see any “blessings” be thankful still.

Crossposted at Whistling in the Light and Cathouse Chat.

Linked at The Uncooperative Blogger, Don Surber, Peakah’s Productions, Stop the ACLU, Soldier’s Angel, Common Sense Runs Wild, MVRWC, Outside the Beltway, MacStansbury, Right Wing Nation, TMH’s Bacon Bits, NIF, Basil’s Sunday Brunch, and Mensa Barbie.

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