5:30PM Guest: Dan Gainor
04/19/2009 Andrews, Kataline, Stark
5PM Show Open John Andrews, Karen Kataline, and Matt Stark
America is better than Utopia, Mr. President
Utopian visions have stirred men’s souls at least since the time of the ancient Greeks. The philosopher Plato unmasked the folly and the evil of all such schemes in his famous "Republic." He did not merely criticize a current tendency but a perennial human temptation. President Barack Obama is a utopian who believes that there are no limits to what can be done with political power. In contrast to the United States Constitution, the powers of which James Madison described as "few and defined," the ideological goal of the current administration is "transforming" the human condition.
Not content with equality in political rights and economic opportunities, Obama seeks to redistribute the wealth. To this end, he means to increase the income tax on the most productive and eliminate it for the least productive. By simultaneously commandeering votes with groups like ACORN, he will ensure that those who pay no taxes will access the money of those who do.
Obama has shown no respect for the law of nature that persons of the opposite sex alone should be married, that marriage should be upheld as a vital institution, or that unborn children should not be wantonly slaughtered. That is why he equivocates on same-sex marriage, ended restrictions on federal money for abortions overseas and for embryonic stem cell research, and supports legislation to end all restrictions on abortion whatsoever.
In perhaps the biggest conceit of all, our President actually says that he can negotiate with the world’s most aggressive dictatorships and make them see the wisdom of restraining their military ambitions. Iran and North Korea somehow will stop producing nuclear bombs and missiles, the Taliban and Hamas will see the error of their ways, and Hugo Chavez, Danny Ortega and even the Castros will change their opinion of us.
Obama pledged during the campaign to cut back on nuclear weapons unilaterally and has repeated the pledge recently. He says that our moral leadership will show the rogue nations of the world that we mean them no harm and that we can develop common interests.
The only sensible response to socialism at home and ill-conceived peace missions abroad is to point out that "there is nothing new under the sun." There will always be persons--and nations--who envy the success of others, blaming others rather than themselves. What talents they do possess they turn to tearing down others’ achievements. Socialism, as Winston Churchill so sagely remarked, produces nothing and makes people equal in their misery.
Mankind is certainly capable of improvements, as our ancestors showed when they founded the freest nation in the history of the world. But the enemies of the American Constitution, foreign and domestic, stretch the limits of human nature and wind up making things infinitely worse with socialism, communism and fascism.
The task of each generation of Americans is to elect leaders who understand that we are better off buying and selling with each other, in our neighborhoods or across national boundaries, than trusting governments to determine who should benefit from its power to redistribute the wealth through taxing and spending.
Those same leaders need to follow the maxim of Alexander Hamilton that nations do not have permanent friends, only permanent interests. Although the most reliable friends are those with a common heritage of liberty, we should never imagine that American independence can coexist with the fiction of a "community of nations." Many nations are as envious of our freedom, wealth and power as the least successful among us are of the most successful.
It is not in the character of the United States to be belligerent toward the world, but neither should it procrastinate while threats build up to such a degree that we lack the will and the means to counteract them and we are forced to wage defensive war, as we did in 1917 and 1941.
And certainly no America President should ever apologize abroad for policy differences with his predecessors, not to mention frivolously gloss over the great divide that separates the majority of Americans who embrace the Judaeo-Christian tradition and those who adhere to Islamic doctrines. For whatever Christians may have done in the Arab world a thousand years ago, there are no modern-day Christian equivalents of the violent Muslim minority that has declared war on the "Infidel."
Obama cannot legislate inequalities away or make the lion lay down with the lamb. Indeed, it is better for us to trade, as civilized nations do, than to seize wealth by force, as barbarians do. Meanwhile, we must always keep our guard up.
Teacher's Desk: Hurray for Rhee
Heckuva week with grades due, service learning for a day, new students, training, ACT planning, substitute plans, coffee with a school board member, and oh yeah, teaching. I had planned on attending the event with Michelle Rhee, Washington school superintendent, discussing her shakeup of DC public schools, but the weather and the end of Passover caught up with me and I missed it. However www.ednewscolorado.org has great reporting, including a video, of the Rhee event as held at the Denver News Agency last Thursday. Ms. Rhee, a Teach for America alum with no previous superintendent experience, made four major points about her DC reforms that should be looked at here and replicated. First, develop a teacher evaluation process that is non-political and can be used for training, as well as, assessing. She is making the evaluation non-political by having content and grade specialists do the observations several times a year. Next, terminate ineffective principals and teachers. Then offer teachers two different tracks. One eliminates tenure, but increases pay to over $131,000 per year. The other keeps tenure, but offers less salary. Close down ineffective district and charter schools, and finally, place private schools in the mix.
Washington, D. C. schools are 50% district schools, 30% charter schools, and 20% of the student population attend private schools on a district scholarship, or voucher. (Obama and the Democratic Congress are terminating the latter option, unfortunately.) When a poor D.C. student and a poor New York City student begin kindergarten, they are equal in skills, but by fourth grade, the D.C. student is is four years below grade level while the New York City student is two. Ms. Rhee knew she needed to take radical action and did so, to the dismay of many, and appreciation from D. C. families attending public schools.
Jill Conrad, the at-large member on the Denver Public Schools Board, and I sat down for coffee one morning this past week and spoke to many of these issues prior to Ms. Rhee’s visit to Colorado. She told me there was a committee looking into how we observe and evaluate teachers. They were looking at changes to make the observation and evaluation fair and not political. She agreed with me that we should discover what makes great public schools good and what makes great charter schools good and replicate it! We also agreed it begins with great leaders. Michelle Rhee certainly appears to be one of those!
Kathleen Kullback is a licensed special educator with an M. A. in educational leadership and a former candidate for the State Board of Education.
Obie the Obsequious
The other day President Obama seemed to bow upon first meeting King Fahd of Saudi Arabia. Americans should not bow to any person, for to do so would be to show your obeisance to them. "One does not bow or curtsy to a foreign monarch, because the gesture symbolizes recognition of her power over her subjects." (Miss Manners' Guide, 1990, p.697) We are born free and not subservient to monarchs or aristocrats. It is especially shocking for the President of the United States, who represents all Americans, to show such fealty to a foreign potentate. Juxtapose Barak Obama’s bow to King Fahd with Michelle Obama’s condescending pat on the back to Queen Elizabeth. To even touch the British monarch is a serious breach of protocol, but to do so in such a patronizing manner seems to show a great lack of respect. Note also the pat on the back given to President Obama yesterday by Venezuela’s Marxist dictator Hugo Chavez. Should an American head of state tolerate such condescension from a dictator?
Should our president also show outward signs of subservience to King Fahd? The majority of the world’s Muslims hold him in great regard, not necessarily because he is the king of Saudi Arabia, but because he is the guardian of the holiest places of Islam: Mecca and Medina. Islamic law demands that Dhimmis (Jews and Christians subdued by Muslims) show submission to their Muslim conquerors by bowing. The Quran (9:29) tells Muslims to “Fight against such of those who have been given the Scripture [Jews and Christians who] follow not the Religion of Truth, until they pay the tax in acknowledgment of superiority and they are in a state of subjection.” Dhimmis are required to bow or lay prostrate before their Muslim master. To refuse to do so would mean certain death.
One wonders if that bow to the Saudi king and the pat on the back to the British queen tell us what to expect of U.S. foreign policy over the next few years. Will we damage the special relationship we have had with democratic Britain by offending their monarch, while at the same time showing subservience to the theocratic guardian of the Islamic holy places?
One might also wonder if our new president is a Dhimmi, who shows subservience to a Muslim master, or whether he is a Muslim, who shows respect for the guardian of their holy places. We should hope that it is a third possibility, that he merely doesn’t know what he is doing.