justindcarlsonblog

Education is paramount in our life and the presence of a good education or a poor one will have an impact over a lifetime. When one considers their education and how it has impacted them they may not even know the implications. How can one know what they don’t know? How can one determine if they should have been educated better or if it was sufficient? It may well be that the education that we received was horrible and wholly inadequate. A deeper dive into the search of results of American education reveals a sad reality, without an easy fix.

“As of 1991, only 11% of the 8th grade students in California’s public schools could solve 7th grade math problems.” (1)

As of 2012, high school students were reading at a 5th grade reading level.

“When nearly 1/3 of American 17-year-olds do not know that Abraham Lincoln wrote the Emancipation Proclamation, when nearly half do not know who Josef Stalin was, when about 30% could not locate Britain on a map of Europe, then it is clear that American educational deficiencies extend far beyond mathematics” [and reading].(2)

When parents are making the life altering decisions in education for their children how can they navigate the landscape of American education? This may be one of the most difficult tasks of parenting. After a deeper understanding of the public schools and their agendas it is easy to conclude that to avoid the public school institution at all cost is preferred if educational results are important to you. When this is not possible it is critical to keep a close eye on the education and instruction your little ones are receiving. “Parents who send their children to school with instructions to respect and obey their teachers may be surprised to discover how often these children are sent back home conditioned to disrespect and disobey their parents.” (3) “Too many American schools are turning out students who are not only intellectually incompetent but also morally confused, emotionally alienated, and socially maladjusted.” (4) Anyone willing to take an honest look at the results of education and the profound affect it has can see this. “An international study of 13-year-olds showed that American youngsters fell further and further behind, the more they were required to think.”(5) “As Professor Ravitch concludes: “Having opinions without knowledge is not of much value; not knowing the difference between them is a positive indicator of ignorance.” In short, it is not merely that Johnny cant read, or even that Johnny cant think. Johnny doesn’t know what thinking is, because thinking is so often confused with feeling in many public schools.”(6)

There is simply to much involved to discuss it in length. With governmental red tape and tax money being lobbied and payed out from the federal level down to the local level where the results may be different from one local to another. It is difficult, if not impossible, to know where to begin. There are many excuses given for the deficiency in American public schools, but mostly we hear it has something to do with money. Money for teachers, money for curriculum, for supplies, transportation, busing, and everything under the sun. Though evidence is rarely asked for or given to support that. “Looking at money input and educational output over time makes the education establishment’s claim of inadequate financing look even more ridiculous. “Our schools are already turning out some of the most expensive incompetents anywhere. Making them still more expensive will not change that.” (7)

Lets begin with the teachers. Remember that this is information in general and does not apply individually to each and every teacher. ESPECIALLY TO YOU READING THIS.

“There are well more over 2 million school teachers in the United States- more than all the doctors, lawyers, and engineers combined.” (8) This was true in 1988 and it would appear that teachers are still one of the most desired occupations. With one of the largest national unions and virtually iron-clad job security, why not desire it? After all, upon entering this career one usually has a desire to do something positive and, in general, feel that they are contributing to society. Also, it is one of the easiest fields to get into to with an education that does not require one to be the highest achiever in their class. “Consistently, for decades, those college students who have majored in education have been among the least qualified of all college students, and the professors who taught them have been among the least respected by their colleagues elsewhere in the college or university.” (9) “In short, some of the least qualified students, taught by the least qualified professors in the lowest quality courses supply most American public school teachers.” (10)

And just how iron-clad is a teachers job security? It is virtually impossible either financially or legally to terminate a teacher. The NEA has set up rules and regulations for handling a troubled teacher. One might wonder what a teacher must do to be terminated. The biggest alarm that has to be notified are parent’s complaints, without parent complaints, the teacher is left alone. There are rooms in unoccupied school building in New York City that are for housing teachers that have been deemed inappropriate to teach in front of a classroom. But, before teachers are sent to unoccupied schools they are passed around from one class to another or from one school to another. “These multiple transfers are so common that they even have nicknames, such as “the turkey trot” or “the dance of the lemons.” (11)

If one were wanting to influence another and get them to question their thinking, a classroom would provide a sufficient source. With the help of truancy laws, we are required to have the children in a classroom for a certain amount of hours a day/year. Therefore, classroom brainwashing is common place in America. “A variety of programs used in classrooms across the country not only share the general goals of brainwashing-that is, changing fundamental attitudes, values, and belief by psychological-conditioning methods-but also use classic brainwashing techniques developed in totalitarian countries.”(12) These methods have gone under the radar for so long because of fancy sounding names- “values clarification”, “decision making”, “affective education”, “Quest”, “drug prevention”, “sex education”, “gifted and talented” programs. (13) “A parent who visited a 5th grade classroom in Oregon testified at U.S. Department of Education hearings as to what she saw: I was present when a plastic model of female genitalia with a tampon insert was passed around to the boys so they might understand how tampons fit.” (14) The real world implications can hardly be argued given the usefulness of a young boy needing to understand tampons, or how they fit. “The U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare in 1979 produced a questionnaire for “health education” which included these questions: How often do you normally masturbate (play with yourself sexually)? How often do you normally engage in light petting (playing with a girl’s breast)? How often do you normally engage in heavy petting (playing with a girl’s vagina and the area around it)?” (15)

“As an article in the Humanist magazine put it: These teachers must embody the same selfless dedication as the most rabid fundamentalist preachers, for they will be ministers of another sort, utilizing a classroom instead of a pulpit to convey humanist values in whatever subject they teach, regardless of the educational level-preschool day care or large state universities.” (16) From this pulpit some teachers are passionately and exuberantly spreading propaganda in climate theory, population control theory, death education, socialist/Marxism, and much more. The religious organization known as Planned Parenthood has made disciples of most the staff in education and government that have promised to spread the good news of truth and hope that all people can choose to murder their children at will. Before birth or immediately thereafter. Whether these programs help accomplish their said goal is another question entirely, while no one offers evidence or asks for it. Perhaps their goal was to increase abortions exponentially, since that was the result, I would say they have far surpassed their goal.

As with many things today racism is blamed for the many inadequacies of education. If one were to define racism as acting like one race is superior or better than another then perhaps racism can define some of the problems in the following programs. Terms like “multicultural diversity” can disguise racism and even encourage it, leading to bilingual education that forces students to spend time in class of a foreign language, even when those very students are fluent in English. “A landmark on the road to bilingualism was the 1974 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Lau v. Nichols that it was an unconstitutional denial of equal protection to provide only an English-language education to non-English-speaking school children.”(17) What results can you expect from a government program like this? “A large-scale national study of bilingual programs found that two-thirds of the Hispanic children enrolled in such programs were already fluent in English, and more then four-fifths of the directors of such programs admitted that they retained students in their programs after the students had mastered English.” (17) It seems this programs was designed to give jobs to teachers that can speak a foreign language. The results this programs was designed to seek were not even measured as several school districts kept children for years beyond their need, or even entered the program already fluent in English. A bilingual teacher in Massachusetts, explained her frustrations when she explained that the school district would not let children out of her class even when she recommended they should. “The department head argued that they must remain in the bilingual program as long as they were not yet reading at grade level. It did not matter when I countered that many American students who speak only English do not read at grade level.”(18)

Discussing the “flow of racism” as if one can determine where racism originates and will flow to or from. Sensitivity training and role models are also under the disguise of racism claiming that we must focus on a different culture instead of the one the students live in and giving the excuse that students must see a role model that looks like them in order to better learn a concept. Of course, this is nonsense and can lead to a culture where the color of ones skin is more important than what they know or whom they are. Going even further, this type of thinking and teaching can divide people instead of uniting them. A student may see racism outside of school in the real world, but in the real world racism is starved and cannot survive in public under scrutiny. In the cover of the classroom focusing on what separates us and that one culture is better than another breeds racism and allows it to flourish. Of course, division has been their goal the entire time. Without polarization racism dies, it stagnates and cannot continue in public. Now that students are graduating with a healthy distrust of their parents coupled together with a healthy trust of schools and teachers that taught them since pre-school all of this nonsense what can we expect their next phase of life to look like. It would appear that college will just reinforce these lessons and go on to deepen the racism and polarization that has been instilled in them.

Notes: (1) Inside American Education -Thomas Sowell, Page 1. (2) Inside American Education -Thomas Sowell, Page 3. (3) Inside American Education -Thomas Sowell, Preface ix (4) Inside American Education -Thomas Sowell, Preface x (5) Inside American Education -Thomas Sowell, Page 4. (6)Inside American Education -Thomas Sowell, Page 4. (7)Inside American Education -Thomas Sowell, Page 12 (8)Inside American Education -Thomas Sowell, Page 22. (9) Inside American Education -Thomas Sowell, Page 23 (10) Inside American Education -Thomas Sowell, Page 25 (11) Inside American Education -Thomas Sowell, Page 31 (12) Inside American Education -Thomas Sowell, Page 36 (13) Inside American Education -Thomas Sowell, Page 34 (14) Inside American Education -Thomas Sowell, Page 38 (15) Inside American Education -Thomas Sowell, Page 46 (16) Inside American Education -Thomas Sowell, Page 59 (17) Inside American Education -Thomas Sowell, Page 74 (18) Inside American Education -Thomas Sowell, Page 79

For those of you that haven’t heard, SCOTUS has decided not to hear the Texas lawsuit against the four swing states, MI, WI, GA, & PA. Texas along with 17 other states, AL, AR, FL, IN,KS, LA, MS, MT, NE, ND, OK, SC, SD, TN, UT, WV, & MO filed a lawsuit declaring it unconstitutional for those four swing states to change their election rules in the way they did. In addition 106 House Republicans announced their support for the lawsuit including President Donald Trump.

SCOTUS has said that they are denying for “lack of standing under Article 3 of the Constitution. Texas has not demonstrated a judicially cognizable interest in the manner in which another State conducts its elections.” It appears that SCOTUS is attempting to claim they have no jurisdiction in this case. To abdicate their responsibility to do the job that, in fact, this institution was created to do demonstrates a lack of courage, or incompetence.

There are rumors spreading online about succession and it makes one wonder what unites us? When you think about it you may come to the same conclusion. There is very little which unites us. Matt Walsh has written about this and he makes a good point. It make me think of our founding, what kept the 13 original colonies united? With victory from the British behind them what persuaded them to unite? Why not stay independent?

There were many arguments in the Continental Congress, it seems they didn’t agree on much. John Adams once said that if they were to argue that 2+2=4 they would all eventually agree but debate it for three days on the best way to come to that conclusion. To unite everyone was a difficult task and each colony had to negotiate and be willing to give and take. There were many issues in those days and to unite under a federal government was a big one. Many were afraid of giving power to a federal entity. Originally the Federal Government had very little power and even then they were afraid of what could happen. I guess they were able to see what could happen when you give someone power, they will abuse it. Obviously they did eventually agree to unite under the Constitution and it held together for a long time until the secession of 1861.

Why was it so important to the founders to unite? Many of them gave up things that were important to them. Slavery was a contentious subject and all but 3 colonies were wanting it to go. Perhaps the hypocrisy of fighting for freedom from Britain and then keeping people enslaved did not go unnoticed. As history shows this country was founded with the evil and horrible institution of slavery. Even still, it remained and with the personal beliefs of many of the founders being against slavery it is hard to believe that they were willing to go along with that.

What are we willing to go along with today? And are we willing to unite? It would appear that we are unable to do so. Many on the left today are all but hiding their contempt for those on the right. The values that we hold dear are rotten to the left and they can not accept them. The value of life, freedom, and many others are not accepted and they are actively trying to destroy them. If we can not at least agree to disagree and meet in the middle and give and take, perhaps secession is our only choice. For the sake of this great experiment called the United States hopefully that is not true.

What is misinformation and why do we here that all the time? Is it a lie? If it is, why don’t they just call it a lie instead of misinformation? How about disinformation, is that the same thing as misinformation?

When I search misinformation and disinformation on Google, here is what I come up with. Misinformation: “False or inaccurate information, especially that which is deliberately intended to deceive.” Disinformation: “False information which is intended to mislead, especially propaganda issued by a government organization to a rival power of the media.” They almost appear to have the same meaning, just for fun here is what you find when you search the definition for telling a lie: ” A lie is an assertion that is believed to be false, typically used with purpose of deceiving someone.”

I believe there is a reason that we haven’t heard these words in the past. For the most part, these words have been created in the era of the Trump presidency, mainly by the media and used by the left. As you can see from the definitions these terms are closely related but can be used apart from each other. If a politician wants to claim that something is not true but doesn’t want to call it a lie they say misinformation. If a news network wants to create a narrative persuading their viewers that something is false, when it really is not, they use the term disinformation. Let me give you an example, a quick Twitter search will turn up the results that explains it all. Russia used a disinformation campaign against candidate Hillary Clinton with her emails, you see what was really true was turned into the Russian government using disinformation to deceive everyone. Trump’s presidential campaign was infiltrated with the Russian government and it was definitely not disinformation except that they were spreading disinformation to make Hillary look bad, got it. Oh, and also all the Hunter Biden laptop stuff that is for sure Russian disinformation too. Now, misinformation is when someone says something that contradicts the perceived narrative. Covid is bad, real bad, and the only way to stop it is for the government to close business and pay people to stay home. They also have to enforce a mask mandate that if you don’t comply, you could wind up in jail, to say other wise is misinformation. Basically if you disagree with the exalted Dr. Fauci or the great Governors Whitmer, Cuomo, Newsom, or many of the others you are spreading misinformation. Is this clear? Clear as can be.

Why didn’t we hear about disinformation or misinformation in the Obama or Bush presidencies? What about all other presidencies? If you look through history one thing is common there were always someone that tried to spread false information to get others to believe what they wanted you to believe. As far back as Washington, in fact the papers at that time wrote many false and disparaging things about him. Same was true for Adams and Jefferson. There is much that can be said about spreading false information but the lesson we can learn is that the first several presidents didn’t fight back, they believed that the truth would prevail. That is not to say that we shouldn’t fight back, we should, but back then they believed that through education and knowledge the truth would be revealed.

Education is the key for the truth to be revealed, but the left has control over that too. If you can be convinced that there are others that are trying to destroy this country, and that they are greedy and want to kill people, that makes it easy to not trust them. To do this you need to begin at an early age and you will need their attention for several hours a day. The perfect landscape for this is public school and the left understood this long ago. In addition to having a captivating audience for several hours a day, the left also started working on culture. After infiltrating the culture through music, movies, and T.V. it was easy, it just had to begin slowly inch by inch. Something that is known as bracket creep once it gets started it never ends, today you can’t even watch a commercial without hearing a message the left wants us to hear, just a few seconds on any T.V. or radio commercial. You really cannot deny this when statistics show that students graduating can’t even read well at an overwhelming rate. Students don’t have a clear understanding of Americas constitution or its history.

So the answer is the truth in information through education, as we have seen, it begins early, so make sure you make an effort to know America’s history and teach it to everyone you can. Take the time needed to educate yourself by reading, if you don’t like reading, try listening to audio books or podcasts. It is also a really great idea to create a healthy distrust for information. Almost anything you hear needs to be doubted and then you can verify it. Even this information go out and research it and learn the truth for yourself. Then you will be equipped to teach others.

What do we do now? Where can we turn while we wait for the outcome of one of the most corrupt elections in our history? We need more voices to turn to, more that can speak with conviction about what we already know. This election stinks something is going on and we should, at least, listen to Trump and his attorneys. For all the conservatives out there that are saying Trump should concede they are wrong. We should wait out the constitutional process of vote certification and the electoral college. If you will allow me to, here are a few voices to turn to right now. http://bonginoreport.com, https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-michael-knowles-show/id1266577963, https://www.newsweek.com/should-trump-concede-not-yet-opinion-1549344

In the meantime, what are you thinking? Are you like me? Do you believe that there is something wrong here? There is evidence or clues pointing to some wrong doing, no doubt. Charlie Kirk says that there was a 100% increase in voter turnout in the 90+ year old bracket. Thousands of dead people voted and they all voted for Biden. In Georgia, we are being told that signatures do not match ballots. In Nevada many people that do not live in the sate voted there. In Pennsylvania we learned that a judge is putting a hold on certifying the vote because he wants to here more evidence of alleged voter fraud. That seems to all who will listen, reason to doubt the outcome of the election.

That brings me to the media. They are a corrupt dumpster fire that is willing to help ignore evidence and cover up a terrible candidate for president. Biden is almost unable to speak without a teleprompter. In blissful ignorance they overlook these issues and pontificate from on high, because they are better than you, that he is, as they predicted, our president. They have also mentioned that we should dump Trump and anyone associated with him. Not only that, we should round up his supporters, half of the country, and reeducate us. If this doesn’t scare you, what will? There is other media out there but what do we do with the mainstream, elite media? Can we just ignore it?

How about social media? Perhaps, even worse than the mainstream media. With every post about Trump there is a warning label to remind us that they, who are better than you, have called the election for Biden. See, because you are not smart enough to understand how it works, they have to remind you that “others” dispute claims of voter fraud. God forbid, that you look at another opinion or try to learn something new. That’s really what it comes down to is that they want to control what you are looking at and what you read. If you were to wonder upon an excellent article, like this one, that speaks of anything other than Biden won and shutup and take that, losers, it would be a monumental tragedy because they would lose control of you. There are other social media companies, like Parler, I suggest you visit, you can find me there.

Misinformation is the name of the game we have been hearing that word a lot lately. Information comes at us quickly in many different directions. If all of it is labeled and we are to stupid to understand it without the help of the media companies that are better than you are telling us what we should believe, what are we to do? We can be patient and see what happens and most of all we can pray.

On this Thanksgiving in 2020 what can we do? First, give thanks. The Bible tells us to pray without ceasing and in your prayer and supplication, give thanks. Ok, great what are we to be thankful for? Perhaps, in God’s wisdom he knew that once we find things to be thankful for we will be willing to fight for them.

Be thankful that we live in America. Be thankful for the family members you still have and can visit with. Many of us have family members we can’t visit, we can’t see. That can be a good start, but also there are many other things.

Be thankful for our history and that we can study it. America’s story is far from over and it’s history is fascinating. Is this the first time America has faced a crisis? What have we done in the past?

I, for one, find it comforting to read our history and find solutions to current problems in it. When it seems hopeless and you are facing despair it can be helpful to have a proper perspective. That’s what history can be, a perspective.

During the Revolutionary War when Thanksgiving came and went soldiers were in despair. They were hunkered down fighting the enemy, disease, and the cold. As the leaders of those times were trying to pump hope and something worth fighting for into the very people they were leading, I’m sure they struggled. Even though Thanksgiving wasn’t a national holiday at the time, many may have been wondering if there would be a nation to create a holiday in their future. Simply put, they were in despair and probably didn’t have much to give thanks for. What did they do? They fought like there was something to fight for.

During the civil war as president Lincoln surveyed the landscape of the nation he may have found it hard to find something to give thanks for. As he declared Thanksgiving a national holiday and started an American tradition to give thanks, he knew then, as we do today that we can always give thanks. The evils of the Civil War and many deaths that lay at its feet would have been devastating, no doubt it filled many with despair. What could they do? They fought, like there was something to fight for.

In the times of the Great Depression, World Wars and the great pandemic of 1918 it would have been hard to give thanks. What did Americans do? They fought, like there was something to fight for. It would be hard to argue that they weren’t thankful for their country as the lined up to fight for her.

What can we do now? We can fight, like there is something to fight for. In short, you fight for what you appreciate, for what you are thankful for. We can fight to preserve our nation to stop the encroachment of tyranny. Liberty is at stake and we can sit back and do what we are told or we can give thanks. As history has shown when you find something to be thankful for you will fight for it.

I have followed Senator Bernie Sanders on Twitter for a long while now, mostly for humor, but also for information purposes too. It is interesting to follow him and watch as people agree with what he is saying, no matter how ridiculous it is. For the most part I just roll my eyes as he rolls across my feed on Twitter. He really has championed this whole idea of socialism for a long while, at times, looking and preaching full on socialism, and at other times just on the edge. More peculiar to me is that more often than not no one questions why, or even calls him out on it. Sure there are a few brave souls in the Twitter universe that stand up to him, but they are quickly shouted down by the socialism loving anti freedom people. The dichotomy of how he lives and how he preaches is one thing to marvel at for sure.

As someone like me I have always believed to get ahead you have to work hard and prove yourself, out working those around you, seemed to be the best way to show what you can do. I can never remember someone asking me why I was doing it or what made me want to do it. To answer those questions is not difficult but hard to articulate, I just wanted too. In every job I have ever worked one of the first thoughts I had was that I could out work those around me to get promoted and move on. Not because I thought I was better than anyone, I guess, they didn’t want it as bad as I did. Again I cant remember anyone ever asking why. The reason I bring this up is because I keep seeing the great Senator ask why or what is so and so in some big corporation doing, or how they are using their salary. Has anyone asked him how he uses his? Or why he makes as much as he does? Or why does he do what he does? Has anyone asked you?

If you follow Senator Bernie Sanders on Twitter you will know what I mean. But the question I have is who has the right to ask you how you spend your money? Or why you make as much as you do? I guess that may be the wrong question, after all, we all have the freedom to ask any question we want. Is it appropriate, or decent to ask those questions? I mean can you imagine going into a store and asking for the manager, after you find them, ask how are you spending your salary? Presumably the manager makes more than the clerk, or the cashier so why do they make more and what are they doing with what they make? Doesn’t that seem weird, strange, rude, or even wrong?

Is free enterprise free? Are we allowed to work at a business, or start a business and make as much as we can? How much should we make, who decides what salary one should be paid? And then are we to justify what we are making, and to go one step further, as the Senator keeps asking, explain what we are doing with it? Look at it this way,  if you visit your neighbors and ask them why they have the house, cars, and things they have would that be appropriate?

Lets tackle a couple of these questions ever so slightly. How is a salary decided upon? Is it decided arbitrarily by one person? By a group of people? Or perhaps, in a board room by a bunch of fancy suit and ties? The real answer here is that it is decided upon by you and I. When you agree to work somewhere you are agreeing to the salary, you might want to make more, but you are agreeing to it. When you get promoted you agree to the terms of that promotion, salary included. If you don’t like the salary you can keep looking until you find a job that has a salary more suited for you. How about a business? Lets say you start a business do you just say to yourself, I am going to pay myself “X” number of dollars? Most likely no. It is decided by your customers, that’s right, you and I are the customers. If I start a business selling widgets and no one wants to buy my widgets then I have no money coming in and therefore cannot pay myself anything. On the other hand if everyone wants to buy my widgets and I have lots of money coming in I can pay myself more. Please understand this principal of economics, the consumer, you and I, decide what can be paid to do a specific job, it is NOT arbitrarily decided upon by anyone.

Does that mean we are free, in free enterprise? Yes!! That is the great part of free enterprise is that the market speaks, the consumer speaks, you and I are speaking and what we are saying is that if a company or person does a great job they can make more money, because their product or service is in demand by you and I. So if a company or person does not do a good job all they have to do is figure out how to have a better product and service that is in demand. How freeing is that?

Back to the main question. Why would one have to justify what they are making, and then justify what they are spending it on? I am not sure. I think the logical answer is they don’t. In fact, they shouldn’t have to at all! What you and I do with our money is our business, just like any other person. Perhaps you are asking yourself now, what about those that make an outrageous amount of money? Before you can ask that question, first we have to determine what is an outrageous amount of money? And we have to determine who gets to define that. Here lies the problem. There will always be someone that makes less money than you do. In fact to a person that makes 25 cents a hour 10 dollars a hour could seem outrageous, don’t you think. Or how about this comparison the average american makes 50 thousand a year, a United States Senator makes 174 thousand a year, that’s outrageous. I wonder why they make so much? And what is Senator Bernie Sanders doing with that much money? The good news here is that in a free enterprise system we don’t need to ask those questions we can just assume that the market is demanding it. Otherwise it would change, all though, I would argue that the United States government is not a free enterprise system, but that is another story.

It has occurred to me that many of the people I read about, that speak of abortion, may not understand its origin. I think many understand it has something to do with Roe vs Wade, but what really did Roe vs Wade have to do with abortion? And what did it have to do with the 14th amendment?

Full disclaimer- I am extremely pro-life under almost any circumstance, however this article is not pro abortion neither is it against abortion, just a brief history.

Hopefully you have asked yourself, what is Roe vs Wade? I mean we all know it was a court decision that had something to do with abortion right? Many of you probably have at least looked it up and read a little bit about it. So who is Roe and who is Wade and why the big fuss over those names?

Norma McCorvey, known as Jane Roe, was the plaintiff in the case Roe vs Wade. She was a woman described as desperate for an abortion. She had two children previously that she gave up to adoption, this time I guess, she didn’t have the money or the time to look at the choice of adoption. She was deep in poverty and addiction, and as mentioned earlier, desperate. She knew it was illegal, as it was in most states at the time in 1970’s, to get an abortion. She didn’t have the money to leave the country and travel to an area where abortion was legal at the time, nor did she want to keep the unwanted child. The only option she saw fit was to fight to make abortion legal. Perhaps she incorrectly assumed that a case of that magnitude would be decided upon before it was too late i.e. within nine months. Two things are interesting to note in this case, in my opinion. One: She had the baby, and gave it up to adoption, before the case was even heard before the supreme court, Two: Later in life she became a staunch supporter of the pro-life movement.

Henry Wade was the Dallas County district attorney who defended the Texas state law that abortion was illegal. You may know his name as the attorney that prosecuted Jack Ruby, the man that killed Lee Harvey Oswald. It should be noted that he had courage to take this case on, though I’m sure he didn’t for see it going as far as it did, he was defending life.

So how did it become what it did? There is a lot there, it took some time for this case and those that made the decisions to make abortion legal. Ultimately they used the 14th amendment to make the decision. To me this seems hilarious. If you are not familiar with the 14th amendment take a second and look it up. The phrase they chose from the 14th amendment was “nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of the law”. Obviously, the irony here is apparent they made abortion (murder) legal based on the phrase “no state shall deprive any person of life”. Let me repeat that, they made abortion/ murder legal by saying no state shall deprive any person of life. I know the old phrase hind sight is 20/20 but even in the present any sight, no matter how poor, shouldn’t be able to use that phrase to make murder legal.

To be fair abortion had some major restrictions when first made legal in 1973. For example it was only to be preformed by a physician in the first trimester. Abortion as you and I know it today can be preformed in any clinic named “Planned Parenthood” as late as they see fit, physician or not. Again this is not a case against abortion, necessarily it is, in my opinion, ironic the argument made to make abortion legal.

For some arguments for abortion look at the book “Freakonomics” by Stephen J. Dubner and Steven Levitt. They explain that one of the major impacts to declining crime in the U.S. is abortion. Considering a rough estimate of 25 million abortions took place between 1973 and 1993. That figure alone could reduce enough people walking around to commit crimes.

For an argument against abortion; if we can say that abortion being illegal violates the 14th amendment and the phrase “no state shall deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law” why wouldn’t we start with killing those that prevent us of  getting ahead in life, liberty, and property instead of the most innocent and helpless. One could argue that it would be easier to get ahead, and less stressful if all people over the age of 50 were aborted, certainly the older one becomes the more they get in the way of life, liberty, and property, look at the cost of care for people over 50. I mean this is about rights, yes? It would reduce the number of people and would always leave a place for younger generations to move up in the world. It would be easier to help the babies after being born. The government could even come up with some sort of social net that paid out a small amount of money to all babies born, for care, of course. It could be called “Fetal Security”. I personally wouldn’t advocate for killing anyone of any age, whether one day old or 50 years old, no matter how inconvenient they may be.

As I titled this article “Abortion vs the 14th amendment” it is crazy that abortion became legal through the definition of one phrase from the 14th amendment. It seems, to me, that one could argue against abortion using that same phrase.

 

 

 

 

 

When discussing anything there are so many places to find information so many sources that one could lose themselves searching. I think the best way to find the answer is to find out who said so!
First of all when asking a question about politics who said so is an important question, don’t you think? If we can find out who then maybe we can start to ask the right questions. The right question may be why do you say that? What do you base that off of? Will that work? How do you know? Can you show me? So what I would like to do is point you in the direction of the founding of the United States. All these questions were asked by so many during that time and how they answered is incredible. The founders were veracious readers, most of them were self taught and didn’t get very far in school. In those days school wasn’t high on the priority list, when compared to living and dying. Often boys in those days, at a very young age, were pulled out of school to go to work in the family business just to keep everyone afloat. They were forced to read to learn, and they couldn’t hop on Google to find the answer. In their reading they learned so much, they learned what they could do, and what they didn’t want to do. It is important to note here that they were all open to new ideas and old ones so what they had to do is find out what would work and how? What a complex situation they were in, if you think about it, how do we start a country was what they were considering. They knew they wanted to start something great, something that would last forever. But how could they know? How could they make the right decisions? You may be thinking did they make the right decisions look at us now. For those of us, if you’re like me, we consider what do I want to wear today? What should I have for luch today? How do I make my wife happy? Just for starters in the morning and these questions could have terrible side affects if answered incorrectly. These men were pondering how to start something so magnificent, so incredible, so. . . . well you get what I am trying to say. It blows my mind, I wonder if they slept good at night, knowing that if I had the wrong lunch I could be up half the night with gas, not to mention if I didn’t succeed in making my wife happy for the day. Think about this, up until that point in history mankind hadn’t made it that far into the future. What I mean is for thousands of years people walked around or rode on animals to get where they were going. They didn’t really have money, not like you and I have today, to purchase things. They didn’t have a way to communicate, they didn’t have medicine, they didn’t even have much hope of not getting sick and dying. What the founders created was a way for mankind in the United States to make a gigantic leap forward you could say a leap that would span all of time before it, to get where we are today. Consider this, if we moved the founding of the United Sates a thousand years back we could have, what we have now, but seven hundred years ago. How incredible! But I got ahead of myself. We were talking about what the founders had to consider and the weight of their choices. Consider freedom…that seems important.
Freedom: should we be, or shouldn’t we be free? The founders, along with many others in those days, didn’t consider themselves free people because England ruled the Americans at that time. England didn’t have much to do with the Americans, it put a few taxes in place, a few tariffs, and sent some troops in to make their presence known and that was about it. Arguably there were a few more things, but for the sake of this writing we shall keep it short. To you and me in this day in age we might welcome something like that. But the founders refused, they wanted genuine freedom. The freedom to choose, to make mistakes, to get it right. Without someone else, mainly the crown, scolding them or taking credit for what they got right. So because of this, some of the people of that time decided to fight for freedom. What is freedom anyway? Perhaps we could talk about that now. Think about “what is freedom”? Did you come up with an answer? Stop reading and ask someone “what is freedom” it’s a complex question isn’t it? Do you have freedom? Are you free to do what you wish right now? Some may say they are, some may say they aren’t. But still the question remains, perhaps I should be more specific, after all the question was very broad. Are you free to do as you wish right now? If you are like most of us the answer is no, “I am not free to do as I wish because I have responsibilities” one might say. Those responsibilities may be chosen or, in some cases, may have been thrust upon us by some decision that when we made. When we made that decision, we were not considering the “responsibilities” that would follow. But that is not what I mean, I mean are you free to make your own choices? Right now we are hearing a lot about the freedom of things, the freedom of speech comes to mind. Are we free to say what we want? The founders discussed all of this and how they wanted a country where one could say what they wanted because of the freedoms we possessed. There were, of course, still countries where you are certainly not free to say what you want; one could get killed for saying certain things. So where does the “freedom of speech” come from. Well as I mentioned before if we point to the founding of the United States we learn that this freedom is a gift from God, or as the founders put it, “an unalienable right endowed by our creator.” That sounds like serious stuff but what did they mean. In the founders writings you can find many times where they discussed rights that were endowed by our creator. They believed that certain “rights” or natural laws, as they put it, didn’t really have to be defined because they all agreed that these rights were just that, a right. “Meaning that no one could take them away without doing so forcefully and if one did attempt to, they were going against the creator, God. In the founder’s minds, going against God was something no one wanted to do. This is why the constitution starts by saying, “certain unalienable rights”. How did they come to this conclusion? You guessed it, from reading. In this case, the Bible was their book of choice, but also because they knew that to be free you just couldn’t take that away. Why, you may ask, hopefully you ask, because they knew what it was like to not have that freedom. As in many cases one will create something because they knew they didn’t like the way it was. Consider parenting. But what was free to be said? Could one say anything? Only if it didn’t infringe on other inalienable rights. Some of those rights are life, liberty, property, and so forth. Hopefully this sheds some light on freedom of speech. At least to what it was originally intended to be. We have come so far from those days and so many things have changed, is this right still available or should it be? The answer is, of course, up too you the reader but consider this we have so many examples of when it didn’t and one great example of when it did. Would you prefer to live in a country that created what we have now, or in one where you could be killed for saying certain things.

 

What can be worse than what we have talked about? If the government can create as much money as it wants, meanwhile producing inflation how far can it go? Will, or can money inflate forever? There has been talk lately of deflation is that possible with money being printed, and or created out of nothing?
Isn’t it odd that we are 20 trillion dollars in debt, but the government can create as much money as it wants? There must be something bad that would happen if they just printed 20 trillion dollars or they would have done it by now. Ben Bernanke, the Federal Reserve Chairman, spoke of deflation several years ago and creating QE 1, 2, and 3. He created a trillion each time, he also said that he would “drop money from helicopters if he had to” to prevent deflation what is he talking about?
Deflation is the opposite of inflation, the value of the dollar rises which mean prices go down. Is this a bad thing? Why would the Fed not want the value to rise? It’s a game played by the Fed they must convince people that they know what they are doing and with slide of hand they have been very successful for many years.
There has to be consequences to printing money and it can’t go on forever, in fact it couldn’t go on as long as it did if it wasn’t for the World Bank. That’s right the World Bank if you think that is made up or it doesn’t exist just look it up.
In comes the World Bank. In the world market there was something called the gold standard this was used to compare currencies. In 1944 there was a meeting in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire to discuss how to completely break away from the gold standard. There are several different currencies in the world and they rise and fall by inflation and deflation and the way it was measured was through the gold standard. The dollar was losing value quickly and because of similar practices of the Fed around the world at other central banks other currencies were devaluing in the same manner. What the Fed realized was it can’t make money out of nothing with no consequences forever especially compared to the gold standard. The outcome of this meeting in Bretton Woods was to create the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.
The International Monetary Fund can be explained this way. The gold standard had to go away before the dollar sunk in value compared to the gold standard and ran away with hyper-inflation. Any government that created money the way the U.S. had couldn’t contain the problem of hyper-inflation. Hyper-inflation coupled with the kind of debt our government has would always lead to a Banana Republic and eventual collapse of its economy. The Weimar republic in Germany had this problem and its economy collapsed they tried to prevent it but nothing could be done. There are stories told of the sudden collapse where one day it was ok and the next you couldn’t buy a loaf of bread for a million Reichsmarks. So, the Fed had to figure out a way around this, and they did. If the gold standard went away something had to take its place, in comes the Fed. What if the American currency was the standard across the world? What an idea! And if that’s the case couldn’t they also force other countries to buy that currency and use it? And the world bought it, the Federal Reserve Note became the reserve currency of the world. This meant that any international trade had to be done in U.S. dollars. That’s right it was genius. Why? Because even though our dollar would have devalued on the world market now it increased in value. Certainly, other countries would buy stuff form one another and when they did they had to have U.S. currency, creating value in the dollar.
Imagine you created your own currency, counterfeit money, and you wanted to launder it and add value to it or at least mix it in with other money to make it appear to have value. What if you could force it’s use. That would help, if someone had to use it, the value would be enormous. That is just what happened, and it has put a band aid on the problem of inflation and the threat of collapse to the U.S. dollar. But as I said it’s only a band aid and it can’t go on forever. Eventually the bubble will burst, and the chickens will come home to roost, but perhaps first, the Fed will find another band aid.

The Federal Reserve was created to be the lender of last resort, but what does that mean? When a bank becomes insolvent and runs out of money, they no longer have to close their doors. The bank has to get more money. So, why would a bank run out of money? Where does it get the money? Doesn’t it come from the deposits made by the people? Don’t banks have a huge vault with a lot of money in it? Well, in a way, but as we spoke about earlier, the reason the bank runs out of money is because they lent all of the money out. Being “loaned up” is a term most bankers strive for. Loaning out at a ratio of 90% percent wasn’t enough, they truly wanted to be able to lend at whatever rate they wanted, and now it is common to loan out at a ratio of 300%. When you hear the term to big to fail, this is why the Federal Reserve was created.
So how does all this work? And where does the money come from? This is truly fascinating and if you are not looking closely you will miss it. Remember it is their intention to make this complicated and leave you dazed and confused. It is simple but hard to believe.
In reality, money is created out of debt. This makes sense because you need money to pay for something you are in debt for. The same is true with the government or a bank. When a big bank runs out of money, or in other words, they created bad loans and didn’t receive the payment on them in principal or interest. You may hear that they are too big to fail and need a bailout. The government hears of this and gets involved to vote that the Federal Reserve should bail them out. So, they need to give more money to the bank before it collapses. When  the government gets involved this guarantees a loan because it is assumed that the government is good for it. Don’t be confused they use the term loan but there is not money to loan, the money is created out of nothing and then loaned out charging interest to the United States government.
Here is how this works, the government prints a piece of paper and calls it a treasury bond. The Federal Reserve takes this bond and calls it a security asset. This is an asset on the books for the Fed because it is guaranteed to be paid back by the government, through whatever means necessary (taxes). The Fed writes a check and creates a liability on the books, but this is offset by the asset from the treasury bond. The Fed endorses the check and gives it to the government, then it is deposited into the governments account at one of the branches of the Fed, now it is called a government deposit. This money is used to pay government expenses, and they can now pay their bills with government checks, think government paycheck or social security checks. This is how the first wave of new money makes it into the economy.
Once you and I have this money we deposit it into our accounts at commercial banks but remember that once a bank receives money it now has more that it can lend, this is called “reserves”. It’s all bookkeeping because when you deposit money into your account it is a liability because the bank must give it back whenever you request it. At the same time this money, the “reserves,” can be an asset to lend. So, the assets offset the liabilities. You may be asking yourself if this is possible because you can’t do two separate things with the same money. The answer is that they are not, they are simply creating money out of nothing, this creates inflation. The process goes on a bit further until the bank “runs out of money” and needs more this is called perpetual debt. How long can this go on?
One thing we mentioned earlier is gold. Originally the money was intended to be backed by gold to some extent. It can be hard to print, or make up more money when its backed by something that exists and has inherent value. One can only think that part of the creation of the Fed was to break away from restrictive gold. Once it broke away it could expand a lot faster, and it did.
It took 20 years, and a great depression to make the move of breaking away from gold. In 1933 FDR, by executive order, made gold illegal to own. People accepted this in exchange for all of FDR’s crazy, economically disastrous, ridiculous plans, his “new deal”. It should be no surprise to anyone that the only president to have ever served four terms was also the same president to single handily drive a nail in the coffin of the economy of the U.S.
The Fed has presided over the crashes of 1921 and 1929, and the great depression of 1929 to 1939. Recessions in 1953, 1957, 1969, 1975, 1981. A stock market “Black Monday” in 1987, and 1000% inflation which has destroyed all but 10% of our paper note’s  purchasing power.
What could be worse than this……