"The Homeschoolers Who Proved That School Is a Waste of Time"

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"Of course, there are disadvantages to homeschooling, too. If enough people do it, tattoo artists, body-piercing parlors, drug dealers, and abortionists may go out of business."
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Also, contrary to their constant whining, teachers are NOT underpaid. Moreover, these days, even the somewhat normal ones, the ones who aren't trying to recruit you children into sexual perversion, tend to be idiots.

I wasn't home-schooled, but three years of my schooling (8th-10th grades) was comparable to home-schooling. And, if not for those three years of absence from the government-union run indoctrination centers, I know that I would not have finished high school, much less college. By the way, overnight, I went from being a "C- student" to being a "straight A student" (and this was without "grade inflation").

The final straw (*) occurred when I was in 7th grade, and the principal told my father, "We don't need students like your son in our school", and my father decided, "You know, I think I agree that my children don't need to be in your school.". You see, I had dared to fight back against a kid who bullied me daily. And worse, I had dared to "call out" a teacher who was refusing to protect an unpopular kid from a mob of "vibrant youth", a few of whom intended to beat the shit out of him (**), and the others to watch and laugh at his pain and injury.

So, my father found places for us for the next school-year in a Seventh-Day Adventist school (we are not Adventists). This wasn't cheap. Or, rather, it *was* cheap, but it was also a *huge* portion of the family income (as I recall, the first year cost $1000 for the four of us).

This is how I think that that "religious" schooling was somewhat comparable to home-schooling: Each class was actually two grades, combined (1/2, 3/4, 5/6, 7/8, 9/10). Other than the 9th and 10th grades, a single teacher taught the combined classes: sometimes the two grades received the same lesson, but usually one grade had "study hall" while the other had active instruction, all in the same room. As I mentioned, I went from being a "C- student" in 7th grade, to being a "straight A student" in 8th grade. Moreover, I not only had time -- while at school -- to do all my school-work, but I also had free time to do what interested me. What interested me was history, and without knowing what it was, during that free time I read the entire history book that would be the text in 9th grade history class.

(*) Mind you, this was 55+ years ago. The public schools have been shit for a very ling time.

(**) You've surely seen some of the recent videos of gangs of "vibrant youth" knock someone to the ground and then kick the defenseless person in the head . This behavior is not new.

Selwyn Duke: The Homeschoolers Who Proved That School Is a Waste of Time

When is a Constitution "unconstitutional?"

The ongoing left-right political battle in the US is at root a battle between two conflicting and contradictory moral systems, as mediated by a battle between two conflicting and contradictory constitutions: the written US Constitution of 1787, on the one hand, and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (*) and its penumbras and emanations, on the other hand.

When the Republicans enacted the Civil Rights Act of 1964, they weren't content simply to overturn the Democrats' various "Jim Crow" violations of the Constitution, which unconstitutionally differentiated citizens by race before the bureaucrats of various of the States and which violated citizens' rights of association by compelling them to differentiate one another by race in private association. Oh, no! The Republicans were too clever by half, imagining that there were going to "pwn" the Democrats, and so they were played by the leftists: they drafted a law which violates citizens' rights of association by compelling them to differentiate one another by race in private association (but in the opposite direction to what the Democrats had been doing theretofore) and laid the groundwork for future legislative acts and court rulings which unconstitutionally differentiate citizens by race, and eventually by "identification", before the bureaucrats of the totalizing administrative state.

"Woke culture" is the natural and inevitable out-working of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the subsequent additions to it.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 -- much of which is actually unconstitutional -- is being used by the leftists as the means to destroy the legitimacy of our Constitution and thus to destroy our Republic.

For example -- In 2008, the citizens of California passed Proposition 8, which amended the California Constitution to overrule a state-court imposition of "gay marriage" on the citizens of that State. A federal court later ruled that this legally-enacted provision of California's Constitution was "unconstitutional".

One might ask, "On what grounds was this amendment to the California Constitution decreed to be unconstitutional?" Why, on the grounds of the judge's interpretation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Mind you, this was years before the US supreme court imposed "gay marriage" on the citizens of the entire nation, in contravention of the written US Constitution.

For example -- You may be aware of a Turkish-born rabid leftist by the name of Cenk Uygur, who claims (or claimed) to be running for the Democratic nomination to the US Presidency.

Now, Cenk Uygur is a naturalized US citizen; which is to say, the US Constitution expressly forbids him to occupy the office of the US Presidency. And what do you think is Mr Uygur's strategy to get around this encumbrance? Why, and of course, it is to try to get a federal judge to rule that the US Constitution itself is "unconstitutional" ... on the grounds that by the Civil Rights Act it is "unfair" for the US Constitution and US law to distinguish between a naturalized citizen and a natural born citizen, wedded to the false assertion that the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution erases the distinctions between classes of citizenship.

(*) A deep dive examination of these conflicting constitutions will take us from the false constitution's rancid fruiting in Current Year's "Woke culture", to its flowering in Lyndon Johnson's "Great Society", to its growth in Franklin Roosevelt's "New Deal", to its cultivation in Woodrow Wilson's and Theodore Roosevelt's Progressive Movement, and will ultimately find the seed of the false constitution in Abraham Lincoln's violations of the written Constitution ... in the name of "preserving" that Constitution and the Union therewith established.

Auron MacIntyre: "Civil Rights Law Is a Problem"

Auron MacIntyre: "Why We're No Longer Governed by the Constitution"

The "alt-right" is "alternative" to conservatism because it's just more leftism

K T Cat: Ta-Nehisi's Inverse -- "In a substantive way, the Left screaming about racism is just the Left screaming at itself."

K T Cat links to a tweet by one Sissy Willis, saying --

"Vox Day says the alt-right is conservative. It’s actually an identity movement on par with Black Lives Matter, La Raza, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, & other products of @CulturalMarxism." … "

My comment -

Actually, VD emphatically denies that "alt-right" is conservative -- he *despises* conservatism [and conservatives] -- so, that's one of the few times he's honest.

And, yes indeed, "alt-right" *is* "actually an identity movement on par with Black Lives Matter, La Raza, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, & other products of @CulturalMarxism." Or, to put it another way, it's just another variant of collectivism ... which is left, not right.

The "alt-right" is just as inimical to individual liberty as any other variant of leftism is.


K T Cat: Jordan Peterson Destroys The Myth Of The Alt-Right

To paraphrase Kathy Shaidle, "It you see "alt-right" and "antifa" battling in the street, the correct response is not to pick sides, but to pray for a meteor strike."

ps: Peterson is also not a conservative, much less a Christian.

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Donald Sensing: Mass shootings - a few relevant links

The Same Coin ... and Change!

Men insisting that they are women -- and using the power of the state to compel the rest of us to pretend as much -- is just the other side of the coin of feminism, which teaches women to insist that they are men -- and to use the power of the state to compel the rest of us to pretend as much.

This

and this

is just the other side of this

==================
Edit 2018/12/30:
Rather than directly link to two recent videos of SJWs in action, I direct Gentle Reader to Shadow to Light: Social Justice Temper Tantrums

That Guy, Over There!

When you think about it, the Democrats have *always* been the party of "If you vote to give me control of the government, I'll use governmental force-and-violence to take the wealth of that guy over there and give it to you", on the one hand, and "If you promise to use governmental force-and-violence to take the wealth of that guy over there and give it to me, I'll vote to give you control of the government", on the other.

The mordantly amusing thing about Democrat voters is that they *never* figure out that *they* are some other Democrat voter's "that guy over there".

The Senate ... and The Constitution!

O.M.G. ... the US Constitution *forbids* an Amendment to create "proportional representation" in the Senate.

One may recall that the one of the drums the leftists are pounding is about how "unfair" and "undemocratic" it is that North Dakota has equal weight in the Senate with California and New York; and that they seem to imagine that they can "fix" this "problem" by decree. To which many on the right have responded to the effect that, "No, you can't do it by decree ... but you're welcome to try to amend the Constitution to get the result you desire."

Well, it turns out that the US Constitution forbids such an amendment --

ARTICLE V: The Congress, whenever two thirds of both Houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose Amendments to this Constitution, or, on the Application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States, shall call a Convention for proposing Amendments, which, in either Case, shall be valid to all Intents and Purposes, as part of this Constitution, when ratified by the Legislatures of three fourths of the several States, or by Conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other Mode of Ratification may be proposed by the Congress; Provided that no Amendment which may be made prior to the Year One thousand eight hundred and eight shall in any Manner affect the first and fourth Clauses in the Ninth Section of the first Article; and that no State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate.

Again: "The Congress ... [may] propose Amendments to this Constitution, ... Provided ...that no State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate"

So, it wouldn't be enough that California and New York might agree to deprive North Dakota of its equal vote in the Senate; North Dakota would have to explicitly agree to deprive itself of this fundamental equality as a Sovereign State of the Union.

h/t Francis W. Porretto at Liberty's Torch

The presence of that clause in Article V, the Amendment Article, excludes the equal representation of the [S]tates in the Senate from the possibility of amendment. This is beyond dispute. The Senate, in other words, was created to guarantee that each [S]tate would have a voice in the Senate equal to any other [S]tate. The electoral system for choosing a president reinforces this oft-neglected aspect of the Constitution: it was intended to protect the small [S]tates from abuses perpetrated by the large ones.

The phrase “checks and balances” should come to mind at this point. My Gentle Readers have no doubt been muttering that phrase for some time already. Lesser intellects might consider suing their civics teachers.

The Framers knew full well what they were doing. The very last passage of the Constitution emphasizes the importance of the [S]tates as elements in the Constitutional design:

ARTICLE VII: The Ratification of the Conventions of nine States, shall be sufficient for the Establishment of this Constitution between the States so ratifying the Same.

The Constitution was conceived and ratified as a compact among the [S]tates. The [S]tates retained nearly complete internal sovereignty. Their equal representation in the Senate was intended, in part, to preserve that sovereignty, the exclusions in Article I, Section 10 being the sole exceptions. This aspect of the Constitution’s design is sometimes cited as an argument for a [S]tate’s power to nullify federal laws on the grounds of federal overreach.

The federal government has done many unConstitutional and extra-Constitutional things since the Wilson Administration. Some of them have been undeniable encroachments on [S]tate sovereignty. (Where, for example, is Congress given the power to legislate a federal penal code? But that’s a subject for another day.) This latest talk - of amending a part of the Constitution explicitly protected against amendment! - merely indicates how far Americans’ knowledge of the deliberately designed-in features of our Union has slipped.

ps: Repeal the 17th Amendment!

Which is the Real Catholicism?

This post duplicates the content of a response I have posted at The Orthosphere in Alan Roebuck's thread, Roebuck's Standard Orthosphere Disclaimer --

Echoing Leo, which is the real Catholicism -- the US Conference of Catholic Bishops (as a whole) or individual bishops (such as Chaput) or the commenters here (playing at being "reactionaries")?

Here is an official statement by the US Conference of Catholic Bishops concerning (the political joke known as) "comprehensive immigration reform".

Those who refuse to admit that The One True Bureaucracy is at war with our nation, and indeed with all Western nations, will seize upon the portion I will quote first, while totally ignoring the portion I will quote second (which is the reason for the order in which I quote).

Under the heading: Catholic Social Teaching --

"The Catholic Catechism instructs the faithful that good government has two duties, both of which must be carried out and neither of which can be ignored. ...

The second duty is to secure one’s border and enforce the law for the sake of the common good. Sovereign nations have the right to enforce their laws and all persons must respect the legitimate exercise of this right: "Political authorities, for the sake of the common good for which they are responsible may make the exercise of the right to immigrate subject to various juridical conditions, especially with regard to the immigrants' duties toward their country of adoption. Immigrants are obliged to respect with gratitude the material and spiritual heritage of the country that receives them, to obey its laws and to assist in carrying civic burdens." Catholic Catechism, 2241."

That sounds so good, doesn't it? Well, unless one looks too closely at what is actually said.

Consider: "Political authorities, for the sake of the common good for which they are responsible may make the exercise of the right to immigrate subject to various juridical conditions ..." But, of course, if they may, then they may not; that is, according this quotation from the Catholic Catechism, the enforcement of the "second duty[, which] is to secure one’s border and enforce the law for the sake of the common good" is not a matter of the duty of officials to uphold the laws of their "sovereign nation", but rather is a matter of the discretion of officials whether they will uphold the laws of their "sovereign nation".

Consider: "Immigrants are obliged to respect with gratitude the material and spiritual heritage of the country that receives them ..." Really? And who is going to make this law and enforce it? Does the USCCB allow that the "political authorities" may deport immigrants who do not meet their "oblig[ation] to respect with gratitude the material and spiritual heritage of the country that receives them"?

Right!

Even in this part, which those who refuse to admit that The One True Bureaucracy is at war with our nation will seize upon, what is actually said is inimical to the interests of the citizens of the United States (and of all Western societies).


Now, for the second quote from the USCCB's stance paper --
"The Catholic Catechism instructs the faithful that good government has two duties, both of which must be carried out and neither of which can be ignored. The first duty is to welcome the foreigner out of charity and respect for the human person. Persons have the right to immigrate and thus government must accommodate this right to the greatest extent possible, especially financially blessed nations: "The more prosperous nations are obliged, to the extent they are able, to welcome the foreigner in search of the security and the means of livelihood which he cannot find in his country of origin. Public authorities should see to it that the natural right is respected that places a guest under the protection of those who receive him." Catholic Catechism, 2241."

According to the USCCB, the *first* duty of "good" government "is to welcome the foreigner out of charity and respect for the human person". According to the USCCB, the *first* duty of "good" government is not to safegaurd the security and well-being of the society of human persons over whom it asserts authority to rule, but rather it is to welcome the alien, over whom it does not assert the authority to rule, who chooses to intrude upon the society over which it does assert the authority to rule.

According to the USCCB, "[p]ersons have the right to immigrate", from which it follows that "thus government must accommodate this right to the greatest extent possible" ... and, of course, "the greatest extent possible" is throw open the borders, which happens to be precisely what the USCCB is shilling for.

But, look at that assertion again: "[p]ersons have the right to immigrate". Really? Since when?

The Founders of the US government asserted that "[p]ersons have the right to emmigrate" -- which, let it be noted, was a novel and revolutionary assertion by those who would rule over a people. But to say that "[p]ersons have the right to emmigrate" is a very different thing than to say that "[p]ersons have the right to immigrate".

Our Founders asserted that neither they nor any other set of rulers owned the human persons over whom they ruled. The Roman Denomination asserts that no existing human society (especially the ones which are "prosperous") has the right to limit, much less refuse, aliens intruding into its midst.

It's a matter of simple logic: IF "[p]ersons have the right to immigrate" -- if persons have the right to come into a society -- THEN societies have a corresponding "duty is to welcome the foreigner out of charity and respect for the human person ... to the greatest extent possible".


Further notice, this isn't *just* the damned (and I mean that word most literally) "liberals" of the USCCB -- and who happen to be the spiritual overseers of you American Catholics -- simply making these assertions; they are directly quoting the Catholic Catechism. This call to national suicide is made not just by the USCCB, but by The One True Bureaucracy as a whole.

"Supreme Court" vs "supreme Court"

Selwyn Duke at American Thinker: Did Justice Scalia Already Give Us the Solution to the Problem of Filling His Seat?

The real issue here is not whether Scalia’s successor will abide by the Constitution.

It’s whether we will.

Consider: in a representative republic of 320 million people, we’re all now talking about how one appointment of one unelected lawyer can radically change the face of American law, rights, and freedoms. Anything wrong with this picture?

This isn’t to say that a civilization’s fate being radically altered by one man’s death and another’s ascendancy hasn’t been humanity’s norm. Autocracy has been humanity’s norm. The king would pass on and people might lament, “You mean Aylwin, that kid who drools on his cloak, is next in line? How shall we be ruled?” But does this sound like a concern in a land of, by and for the people? The fact is that a government cannot be stable if one man’s fancies and fortunes can have such a great impact on it and the wider society. Did the Founding Fathers -- who were most concerned about avoiding the aggregation of power by any one entity -- really devise such a flawed system?
...
The legislative branch has the power to make law because the Constitution grants it. The executive branch has the power to enforce law because the Constitution grants it. And the courts exercise judicial supremacy -- where its decisions constrain not just its own branch but the other two as well, making it not a “co-equal” branch but a super-legislature/über-executive -- because ____________?

The answer has nothing to do with the Constitution. Rather, the Supreme Court unilaterally declared the power in the 1803 Marbury v. Madison ruling.

That’s right: Like an upstart seizing the reins in a palace coup, the Supreme Court assigned the Supreme Court its oligarchic power, all without the force of arms. It’s a nice con if you can pull it off.

This isn’t how our system is meant to work. A governmental branch derives its power from the Constitution -- not from itself. ...

Moreover -- and this is something most persons will resist knowing ... even when it is directly pointed to in the Constitution ... for is it contrary to the indoctrination they received when they were ignorant teens -- the US Constitution creates the federal courts, including the supreme Court, as creatures of Congress, rather than as a "co-equal" (and therefore, somehow, Supreme) branch of government.

UK cops arrest man for “offensive” comment about Muslim Moslem migrants invaders

Jihad Watch: UK cops arrest man for “offensive” comment about Muslim migrants

This isn't a new development in the UK, or in other European countries. When one understands how bureaucrats think, when one understands the incentives by which they operate, it's entire predictable: bureaucrats, like Mohammedans, always go for the "soft targets". And when bureaucrats are leftists, they will always turn state violence against the peaceable and law-abiding rather than against the violent and law-breaking.

After all, a rapist is just as likely to look like Bill Clinton as Bill Cosby

V the K, at 'Gay Patriot': Swedish Police No Longer Allowed to Describe Race or National Origin of Suspects -- "... There is a great huge difference between the racist assumption “All members of Race X are criminals” and the equally racist counter-assumption “Acknowledging that some members of Race X commit crimes is equivalent to saying all members of Race X are criminals.” However, this nuance is lost on the Progressive Left.

After all, a rapist is just as likely to look like Bill Clinton as Bill Cosby."

Trick question

Was George Washington a natural born US citizen, or was he a naturalized US citizen?

Answer -- he was *neither*, which is *why* the Constitutional provision setting forth the required citizenship of the president (and vice-president) was written exactly as it was written --

Article II, Section 1: "No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; ..."

One can be a non-naturalized US citizen and *still* not be a natural born US citizen.

Curling Up Under the Blanket

Douglas Wilson: Curling Up Under the Blanket

We live in a generation that is totalitarian in principle, having accepted all the basic totalitarian premises. Denying the Lordship of Jesus Christ drives you to those premises — for if Jesus is not Lord, then there is a vacancy that men will always want to fill. ...

We started by believing, as we ought to have done, that every man had a right to his own cabbages. We have ended by believing that every man has a right to his own truths. That ends with goons coming from the Department of Agriculture to seize the cabbages, and not one minister of the gospel in ten can explain how all such events are connected.

So that people can see them

Douglas Wilson: In Which I Paint With Some Bright Yellows --

First, whenever we get to that elusive and ever-receding “hill to die on,” we will discover, upon our arrival there, that it only looked like a hill to die on from a distance. Up close, when the possible dying is also up close, it kind of looks like every other hill. All of a sudden it looks like a hill to stay alive on, covered over with topsoil that looks suspiciously like common ground.

So it turns out that surrendering hills is not the best way to train for defending the most important ones. Retreat is habit-forming.

This brings us to my second goal this morning, which is to highlight the principle. ...

...
But I am not trying [to] equate anything here — I am simply trying to illustrate how a believer’s conscience ought to work if he is employed by a government that tries to sin grievously through the instrumentality of a godly magistrate. This is just how I paint illustrations, with bright yellows and gaudy greens. I do that so that people can see them.

Douglas Wilson: Benedict and Beza Options

But that, though a nice statement of the problem, does not answer the problem. We need a solution to the impasse created by political polytheism, which is what under-girds our incoherent system of pluralism and diversity. Schizophrenia doesn’t work for cultures any more than it does for individuals.

So all these questions can be answered, I believe, by emphasizing something that all politically-engaged Christians should get tattooed on their frontal lobes — facing in, so that they can see it all the time.

Political process is not neutral. Administrative process is not neutral. Procedures are not neutral. Constitutional law is not neutral. Nothing is neutral. Everything we do corporately in the body politic is an expression of our foundational faith. That faith will either be the true faith — what I have been calling mere Christendom — or it will be an attempt to build a great skyscraper civilization on the foundation of our watered-down secular concrete.

The “rule of law” is not some “pure neutrality,” an ethereal gas that enables a bunch of members of different faiths and religions to bond together in the same society. The rule of law is actually a codified expression of certain aspects of our Christian inheritance. It is part of our legacy and heritage for a reason. It came from somewhere. It grew and developed in some countries and not in others for profound religious reasons. The rule of law has no evident authority apart from the authority of a transcendent God.

There is *always* a "god of the system", and if that god is not The Living God, then it's going to be some idol ... and there is going to be at least one demon inhabiting the idol, just waiting to feast on human souls.

Michael Egnor: Christian county clerk sent to jail for her opposition to gay marriage

Michael Egnor: What's the difference between a clerk not enforcing gay marriage law and a president not enforcing immigration law?

Michael Egnor: What's the difference between a clerk not enforcing gay marriage law and a president not enforcing IRS law?

Michael Egnor: Why are the President's myriad and persistent refusals to enforce law treated as discretionary, but a clerk's refusal to issue a marriage certificate deemed worthy of jail time.

Michael Egnor: What Judge David L. Bunning got wrong

Refanging The 10th Ammendment (updated)

K T Cat: Refanging The 10th Ammendment

Though, as Mr Cat's commenter, Tim Eisele, points out, it's not that the 10th Amendment is inadequate or ambiguously worded, it's that the bureaucrats and politicians -- anf the People -- don't want to abide by the Constitution, including the 10th.

Here is my contribution to K T Cat's thread --

I think that one of the biggest reasons, and perhaps the biggest reason, that the current (and collapsing) behemoth is an anti-liberty behomoth is that people -- even senators and supreme Court (*) justices -- simply don't understand the Constiution, and mostly never try to rectify the lack. It's sort of like the case of the Bible ... everyone has one, and no one reads it.

The nearly universal misunderstanding of the Constitution starts in civics class, wherein we are taught falsehoods about the Constitution which a simple reading of it ought to dispell.

For instance, one of the first things drummed into us in civics class is that we have a federal government of three "co-equal" branches. Now, this claim is false in two ways: it's false by the Constitution (that is, it is fase de jure), and it is false by how the federal government actually operates (that is, it is fase de facto).

De facto, our rulers are various judges within federal courts. And just below the judges are the "permanent government" within the bureaucracy, which is ostensibly answerable to the chief executive.

De jure, the Constitution established the *Congress* as the supreme branch of government.

Another civics class myth is that the Constitution establishes an "independent" judiciary (which is "co-equal" with the other branches). It does nothing of the sort: the Constitution makes the federal courts, and specifically the supreme Court, creatures of the Congress -- the Constitution gives the Congress the authority to declare that almost every matter of law is outside the jurisdiction of the supreme Court (and thus all federal courts): so, for instance, if Congress were so minded, it could simply enact bills overturning both Roe and Obergefell and include provisions declaring these matters to be outside the jurisdiction of the federal courts.

Another civics class myth is that the Constitution grants the power of "judicial review" to the supreme Court, and thus to the federal courts under it. The Constitution does nothing of the sort; the Court's exercise of "judicial review" is an unConstitutional usurpation going back to 1803 -- John Marshall's power grab appealed to the then-current partisan needs of both the Federalists and the Democrats, and so the politicians cooperated [with the judges] in violating the Constitution ... as they have been doing ever since.


Isn't it odd that so many of the myths we are taught in civics class have the effect of making us blind to blatant violations of the Constitution? Really, it's not all that odd -- the tone of our nationalized education was set in the Progressive Era, and the Progressives were all about a stealth overthrow of the Constitution.


(*) interesting tidbit -- the Constitution never mentions any "Supreme Court", but only a "supreme Court"

Edit 2015/09/01:
The reason the "Bill of Rights" are amendments to the Constitution, rather than written into the original document as presented to the States for Ratification, is because at the Constitutional Convention itself the argument (*) prevailed amongst the Framers that if a "Bill of Rights" were explicitly written into the Constitution then over time Americans would forget that necessarily that "Bill of Rights" could list only a very small number of their rights. In the wider American society, this argument didn't prevail; and, in fact, a number of the States made their ratification of the Constitution conditional upon a "Bill of Rights" being presented to the States as amendments for further ratification.

So, this is *why* the 10th Amendment is included in the "Bill of Rights", and why it is worded as it is worded. The Constitution as originally presented to the States for ratification gives the federal government *only* the powers and authorities explicitly enumerated in the document. That is, the original document implicitly reserves all other powers and authorities to the People or to the States. So, in keeping with the rationale for not including a "Bill of Rights" in the original document, the 10th Amendment was written to make explicit that all non-enumerated powers and authorities are reserved to the People or to the States.

(*) And, as history has shown us, Hamilton, Madison and the others were right: Consider merely the current "Gay Wedding Cake" non-debate --
Here we have "gay" little fascists using the violent power of the state to attempt to compel others to approve and celebrate their choice to live lives of deviant perversion. Now, no government anywhere on earth has the authority to so compel its subjects. Yet, how are Americans trying to protect themselves from this illegal and immoral usurpation of their own rights? Why, by meekly looking for some wording in the Constitution which can be used as a basis to claim that on this particular point their inherent rights as human beings and as citizens take precedence over the (illegal and immoral) desire of other persons to enslave them.

A people who *really* believed themselves to be the inheritors of "the land of the free and the home of the brave" would say, simply: "Go the Hell! You don't have the *right* to tell me to do this."

Remember: there is no such being as "the government"; it is not "the government" that is deciding to use the threat of violence-unto-death to compel so-called citizens to participate in "gay" "weddings" whether they wish to or not. Rather, it is specific actual human beings making this decision.

So, just as the Framers feared, we Americans have degenerated to the point where we automatically behave as though those who wish to use us for their own ends have the right to do so and that *we* bear the burden of proof to justify that we have this or that right as an exception to that general rule. The whole point of the Constitution implicitly, and the 10th Amendment explicitly, is that the reverse is true -- *we* have the rights without needing to justify that we have them, and *they* bear the burden of proof to justify any and all attempts to impose upon us.

Who stands where on the victimization totem pole?

GayPatriot: "So, we had to purge all Confederate Battle Flags because Dylann Stormdoor was a southern white supremacist; can we please ban that horrible rainbow flag now? Or does gay privilege trump white privilege?"


Douglas Wilson: Pretty Sure It Is Not You

How will 'gay' mirage affect *your* marriage?

One of the favorite non-arguments of the proponents of "gay" mirage -- that is, when they're pretending that they are willing to try to get what the want through democratic means, and accept the consequences when the demos says, "No, thanks" -- is to pose the rhetorical question: "How will 'gay' [mirage] affect or harm *your* marriage?" And, of course, the approved, albeit false, answer is, "It won't!"

Here, Mr and Mrs America, is one of the ways that "gay" mirage is going to harm *your* marriage -- since it is impossible that a woman is a 'father' or that a man is a 'mother', and since it is also impossible that the leftists will acknowledge that marriage exists only between one man and one woman, the "solution" to this dilemma will be to remove the words 'Father' and 'Mother' from birth certificates, replacing them with 'Parent A' and 'Parent B'.

So, thanks to the judicial imposition of "gay" mirage upon the nation, once this particular logical implication works its way through the courts, you will no longer legally be your children's mother or father; at best, you will be 'Parent A' or 'Parent B'.


Eventually, even the word 'parent' will have to be scrubbed from birth certificates, for it still whispers, a bit too loudly, the truth.

Pervertitarians never rest

Alexander Boot (from 2015): German government says incest is best

LifeSite News (from 2007): German Government Publication Promotes Incestuous Pedophilia as Healthy Sex Ed

Christian Telegraph (from 2008): Christians stopped sexual depravity of German kids

I think "stopped" is probably too strong a word; "delayed" probably more accurately captures the nuance, for pervertitarians never rest in their quest to pervert all good things.


Now, Gentle Reader has been around the block a time or two. One knows, from repeated experience, that the very people who are continuously promoting this sort of thing -- the very human termites who are intentionally gnawing relentlessly at the roots of our civilization, which is the very thing that makes our comfortable lives possible -- will point to the fact the the German government was successfully shamed into withdrawing this particular publication and then say, "Ah-ha! You conservatives are just fear-mongering!" And the fence-sitters, the people who don't want to see what's right under their noses, will say, "Yeah! What's the big deal? It all woked out."

But, the point is, as Mr Boot put it in an email response to me, "what's staggering here isn't the dates, and not the fact that the booklets were eventually withdrawn, but that the government of a Western, formerly Christian, nation could have produced them in the first place."

The other enormities he mentions in the article are more recent -- because the pervertitarians never rest in their quest to pervert all good things.

And, in the meantime, with respect to Germany, it is still illegal, as per laws left over from the Nazi era, to try to remove one's own children from the open sewer that is "public education".

Does Gentle Reader recall the case, from just last year, of the Romeike family? This is a German family that fled to the US, seeking political asylum, to escape imprisonment by the German government for refusing to send their children to the sort of state-approved cess-pits that would "teach" them that parents ought to diddle their kids, so that they won't "be ashamed of their bodies." And the Obamanation was working with the German government to force the family back to Germany, to have their children stolen from them and to be imprisoned for daring to object.

The last I read of the case, the family had been granted "indefinite deferred action" status -- or, to translate that into English: "this case is presently too 'hot' to deport them back to Germany, so let's decide to not decide anything just yet; see if people forget about them, then we'll decide to decide."


Quoting Mr Boot's article:

For religion isn’t all about what people do on a Friday night or Sunday morning. It’s also about the way man defines himself.

If a father sees himself as the creature God made in His image and likeness, then he’ll raise his daughter to be proud of her humanity, not her vagina.

He’d try to instil in her certain eternal truths that can be best absorbed in a state of innocence, the longer-lasting the better. He’d try to teach the little girl that life has a profound meaning, and her genitals aren’t the place where it can be found.

If, however, a man believes that, when he dies, he turns to fertiliser and that’s it, then life to him can have no meaning - or rather the process of life becomes its own meaning.

Deriving as much pleasure out of every moment from the earliest possible age becomes the ultimate desideratum. In fact, the very definition of pleasure has to be pushed downwards, ideally all the way down to the crotch.

So why wait until the girl grows up and, God forbid, marries, reactionary as such a possibility may sound? Why waste the valuable years between 1 and 3, when she can receive hands-on tuition in what her clitoris is for? No reason at all.

Such is the ledger sheet of our much-vaunted progress, ladies and gentlemen. On the credit side, children operating computers with nothing short of wiz-kid dexterity. On the debit side, fathers encouraged to masturbate their one-year-old daughters.

You can't have "just a little bit" of sin -- as individuals, and as societies, either we must reject sin and perversion, root and branch, or we must become sin and perversion, which is to say, death. The choice before us is the same choice it has always been: life or death. Choose one, because you can't have both.

Render Unto Caesar

Douglas Wilson: Children of the Rainbow -- "As Voddie Baucham put it memorably, if you render your children to Caesar, don’t be surprised when they come back Romans."

People frequently quote the verse (*), "Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's" without thinking about the context.

Now, for sure, the overall context is that some Pharisees (and partisans of the Herodian dynasty) were trying to set a trap for Christ: they say only two answers to the question they posed him, both of which they could spin to his condemnation. His answer was to expose the question's false premise on which rested the dilemma by which they thought to trap him..

However, *that* is not the context to which I wish to draw Gentle Reader’s attention, but rather to a sub-context of that overall context.

What did Christ ask them? He asked, “Whose image does this coin bear?” What he didn’t ask explicitly - for in the context of people who live and breathe the text (even if not quite the spirit) of Scripture - it is always implied: “Whose image do you bear?”

So, here is how they understood has answer to them: “Here is a coin; it is marked as being the property of Caesar. And here is you, who are marked as being the property of God. So, if Caesar demands what is his, give it back to him. But do not give him what is God’s.”


(*) and frequently, just the first half; I think we can expect this frequency to increase in the near future


Edit 2015/07/05:
The Other McCain: What Education Teaches

No Truce With the Left

Daniel Greenfield: No Truce With the Left

There comes a time when every conservative thinker tries to find some common ground with the left in some area. Today it's criminal rights and the headlines have Rand Paul denouncing the racist justice system while Grover Norquist and the Koch Brothers join with the left to back their reforms. As usually happens, the conservatives or libertarians turn out to be the useful idiots of the left.

Liberals have a long history of being the left's useful idiots. It's only fair that libertarians get a turn.

...

To understand the left, you need to remember that it does not care about 99 percent of the things it claims to care about. Name a leftist cause and then find a Communist country that actually practiced it. Labor unions? Outlawed. Environmentalism? Chernobyl. The left fights all sorts of social and political battles not because it believes in them, but to radicalize, disrupt and take power.

The left does not care about social justice. It cares about power.

That is why no truce is possible with the left. Not on social issues. Not on any issues.

The left is a drunk in a bar trying to pick a fight with you. Trying to convince him that you didn't disrespect him, put something in his beer to make him dizzy or make his feet so heavy won't work. There's no 'agree to disagree' possible here. He's picking a fight with you because he wants a fight.

The left does not care about Bruce Jenner. It does not care about gay rights, equal pay, police brutality or even slavery. Its activists 'care' about those things a great deal right now, but they could easily be persuaded tomorrow to be outraged by telephone poles, shredded wheat or people in green sweaters.

They care mainly about emotional venting and exercising power over others. It's the same phenomenon witnessed during the Salem Witch Trials, the French Revolution or any other mob scene. Except the individual elements of the mob are on social media and have a hashtag.

The outraged social justice warrior was laughing at tranny jokes a few years ago. Now he's ready to kill over minor verbal missteps. A few years from now he'll be laughing at them again.

On the bright side

On the bright side, with our rulers presently embracing (*) and pushing "gayness", it seems there is finally a way for a man (I use the word advisedly in the context of the linked story) to prevail in "family court"


(*) Give it some time -- after the leftists start putting us Christians in death-camps, they'll start putting the "gays" in there with us.