Obama Opposes Civil Rights

Posted on October 3, 2012 by Jim

Toonophobia by Cox & Forkum

In cases of an irrational fear of blasphemous line drawings, the prescription is Black and White World Vol. II, Vol. III, and Vol. IV

Contrary to the media narrative of President Obama being an enlightened constitutional scholar, he actually opposes civil rights.

Let’s define our terms, what are civil rights?  Democratic Party supporters getting free stuff from government?  WRONG!!!

Civil rights are procedural rights designed to protect individual rights from violation by government; they are found in the Constitution, laws, regulations, and judicial precedent.

There are two essential principles in civil rights: (1) equal protection of the law, and (2) due process of law.  Through its actions, the Obama Administration has acted to undermine both of these principles.

There are three well known areas of equal protection violations by the Obama Administration that I point to: (1) favoring one religious group (Islam) over others, (2) discrimination against some political speech and for other political speech, and (3) advocating racial discrimination in college admissions.  I will go into each in more detail in a post on Friday titled, “Obama Violates Equal Protection of Law”.  In the meantime, feel free to add your own examples in the comments below.

There are four well know areas of due process violations by the Obama Administration that I point to: (1) GM bankruptcy, (2) Khalid Shaikh Mohammed’s prosecution, (3) executive waivers from compliance with the law, and (4) legal process extortion.  I will go into each in more detail in a post on Saturday titled, “Obama Violates Due Process of Law”.  In the meantime, feel free to add your own examples in the comments below.

Through its repeated violations of equal protection and due process, the Obama Administration has demonstrated a contempt for civil rights.  Instead of the protection of the rule of law, Americans can expect from President Obama an arbitrary, capricious, and contrary to statute administration by decree to benefit the politically favored at the expense of violating the individual rights of all Americans, which had been protected by a governmental commitment to civil rights.

To paraphrase George Orwell, Obama’s governing modus operandi is that although all citizens are equal, some are more equal than others.

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Teaching to the Test

Posted on October 3, 2012 by Jim

I found another interesting quote in Joshua M. Dunn’s Complex Justice: The Case of Missouri v. Jenkins; in 1983, Jeanne Chall (professor of education at Harvard) observed:

Pre-Grade 4 reading can be said to represent the oral tradition, in that text rarely goes beyond the language and knowledge that the reader already has through listening, direct experience, TV, and so forth.  We can view reading beyond Grade 4 as comprising the literary tradition—when reading matter goes beyond what is already known.  Thus, Grade 4 can be seen as the beginning of a long progression in the reading of texts that are ever more complicated, literary, abstract, and technical, and that require more world knowledge and ever more sophisticated language and cognitive abilities to engage in the interpretations and critical reaction required.  The materials that are typically read at Grade 4 and beyond change in content, in linguistic complexities, and in cognitive demands.  [p. 130]

Dunn brings up these point related to test results in the Kansas City public schools, which showed improvement in the early years, but then got progressively worse as the children got older.  This was also true for students who spent their entire education within the high-spending high-enrichment period of the court ordered desegregation plan.

In support of his assertion that teaching to the test resulted in ephemeral gains succeeded by worsening performance with longer experience in that public school system, Dunn cites observations by UC-Riverside education professor Harry Singer related to similar practices elsewhere.

Now decades later, under the mandate of our Congress and directed by conditional waivers decreed by the Obama Administration, our public schools are reportedly suffering a nationwide plague of teaching to the test in a vain effort to increase scores.  I have witness this error committed last year by my nieces’ teachers.

The educrats claim that the tests are to blame and we should stop measuring; however, I judge that it is the teachers who are to blame due to their lack of professional integrity.  By teaching to the test, these public school teachers are cheating…not only on the tests, but they are cheating the students’ futures and defrauding the taxpayers.

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The Free Exercise of Rights without Government Intimidation

Posted on October 2, 2012 by Jim

“The Embassy of the United States in Cairo condemns the continuing efforts by misguided individuals to hurt the religious feelings of Muslims – as we condemn efforts to offend believers of all religions.”

In response, I condemn the U.S. State Department and the Obama Administration for its intimidation against Americans exercising their constitutionally protected freedom of speech.  That the Obama Administration should violate the First Amendment’s Establishment clause by acting as the strong arm of the theists demonstrates that the danger of theocratic dictates over Americans comes from the Democrats as well as the Republicans; as another example, observe that President Obama has argued that his policies, such as Obamacare, are an implementation of Christian doctrine.

Statue of Muhammad included on the U.S. Supreme Court’s building

In history related to government infringement of individuals freely exercising their constitutionally protected rights, we should consider the Supreme Court rulings in Minersville School District v. Gobitis (1940) and West Virginia Board of Education v. Barnette (1943).  As the facts of the cases are substantially the same and the rulings differ, it is worth considering the facts in reality that shifted the Supreme Court to protecting individual rights from infringement by the government.

At issue were Jehovah’s Witnesses who had been expelled from public school because they refused to comply with government orders to participate in morning flag salute rituals.  The students claimed that these contradicted their faithful interpretation of Exodus and the admonition against worshiping graven images.

In Gobitis, the Court ruled the state had a valid interest in promoting patriotism that was more important than the student’s right to freely exercise their religious beliefs.  What was the reaction to the Court’s ignoring constitutionally protected rights?  Let me quote from Lee Epstein and Thomas G. Walker:

There were extraordinary repercussions from the Court’s decision in Gobitis.  After the ruling many states either retained or passed laws requiring flag salutes and pledges for all public school children and threatening to expel anyone who did not comply.  What was startling was the violence against Jehovah’s Witnesses.  “Within two weeks of the Court’s decision,” two federal officials later wrote, “hundreds of attacks upon the Witnesses were reported to the Department of Justice.”  Viewing their refusal to salute the flag as unpatriotic—especially as the country fought in World War II—mobs throughout the United States stoned, kidnapped, beat, and even castrated Jehovah’s Witnesses. [Constitutional Law for a Changing America: Rights, Liberties, and Justice, 4thed., p. 111]

I note that these were Christians committing violence against other Christians, because they disagreed about a biblical interpretation.  While such doctrinal violence is common today in the Islamic civil war of Muslims killing Muslims, the separation of church and state in America prevents religious disputes from being armed by government force.

In the face of its obvious error in Gobitis, in Barnette, the Supreme Court overruled itself, but did so on free speech grounds.  The shift of emphasis demonstrates that we Americans enjoy the protection of many overlapping constitutionally protected rights that limit action by our government.

While conclusions by the Jehovah’s Witnesses were detached from reality and irrational, they have a constitutionally protected right to be wrong.  In the case of the Obama Administration versus Americans’ freedom of speech, the issue is not whether that speech is well reasoned, but that the government should keep its threats out of the marketplace of ideas as individuals freely discuss these ideas.

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Cargo Cult Education Reform in Public Schools

Posted on October 2, 2012 by Jim

One theme that I find in reading about innovation in education is the inability of public schools to scale promising solutions that demonstrate results in small scale tests.  Reading Joshua M Dunn’s Complex Justice: The Case of Missouri v. Jenkins, I found another instance:

…effective schools appear unsurprisingly to have effective practices—the effective schools movement mistakenly believed that mimicking the attributes of effective schools would transform failing schools into successful ones.  In other words, knowing the rather obvious point that strong instructional leadership helps make a school effective does not mean that one will know how to make good teachers out of the same people who had manifestly failed as teachers before.  But Levine and other expert witnesses testified that the chronically failing teachers and principals of the KCMSD could be transformed into effective ones if their recommendations were adopted.  The plan’s projected cost, $68,917,000, was almost three-quarters of the KCMSD’s yearly budget. [p. 86]

Now in retrospect, we know that this reform of the Kansas City public schools was an utter failure despite the educrats best practice reform fantasies being fully funded by a sympathetic federal judge.

I see a pattern here that is applicable beyond public education.  When government expands its domain to include services that should be within the province of free association, civil society, and the private sector, it results in an expensive failure.  Government officials, without understanding how such activity actually functions, go through the motions of the process as if their thoughtless muscular exertions would produce that same result that was dependent upon an active mind.  In the face of failure in such government programs, there is a repeated call for “reform”, but rarely for privatization.

This cargo cult mentality appears repeatedly in the Obama Administration:  GM (Government Motors) produces cars that are not bought, green energy “investments” yield bankruptcies and the destruction of capital, and Obamacare claims to be insurance but is not actually anything like insurance.

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Criticizing Political Religion is an Act of Virtue

Posted on October 1, 2012 by Jim

President Obama has personally attacked the First Amendment by leading an Administration that has abused its power in its attempting to intimidate Americans engaged in constitutionally protected free speech.  While the theocrats and theocrat wannabes agitate for burning the American Constitution and imposing laws against criticizing religion, I dissent.

Overboard by Cox & Forkum

Selfishly get more Cox & Forkum for yourself:  Black and White World Vol. II, Vol. III, and Vol. IV

I will go further and assert that publicly criticizing political religion is a virtue; meanwhile, the failure to do so is most often cowardice, ignorance, stupidity, or outright dishonesty.

In a proper political context, the subject of religion would not even come up for discussion.  Instead, such discussions would be privately addressed within civil society.  However, there is a particularly vile group of power lusters who seek to insert religion into the political realm as their easy ticket to power at the head of a parade of fools.  Unfortunately, too many devoutly religious individuals fail to heed the admonitions of St. Augustine and Martin Luther regarding the mixing of faith and earthly power; consequently, they empower the insertion of their faith into political discourse, which puts their faith up as a target for derision and mockery.

Don’t blame me brother, because you asked for it.  Don’t beg for mercy, because that anti-virtue is the opposite of justice.

Personally, I would prefer that religious discussion be conducted outside of politics as part of a peaceful debate of ideas; however, when those who profess faith attempt to grab the sword of state so as to impose their error on others through force, then it is a requirement of life to challenge the error of faith until the faithful retreat from the public square to their private practice.

If you do not like it when someone criticizes your religion in a political context, then you should oppose attempts by your fellows to bring your faith into the public square.

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