The notion of what is “politically correct” to do at American universities is historically a new problem. Through most of the history of the American republic, the federal government directly funded neither education nor science. Indeed the Constitutional Convention of 1787 considered and rejected proposals that would have given the federal government powers to fund academies or sciences directly or by incentives. Instead, the Congress was only given the limited power to promote science and the useful arts by protecting actual inventors through grants of what we today call “patents”. Education, except for specific federal purposes such as training of military officers, was a state responsibility, or a purely private one. Federal science funding was most typically done by the use of commercial contracts or special purpose applied agencies, such as the Geographic Survey or the Census. For example, commercial aviation developed in the 1920′s and 1930′s in part by responding to the stimulus of Federal air mail transportation contracts. The government provided a market, and commercial technology did the necessary invention and development for its own purposes in reply.

This means of indirect government stimulation was ended by the famous incubator of social innovation we presently call World War II. By the end of that conflict, the United States federal government was deeply involved with direct command and control of the economy, including especially of science and technology. For scientists who otherwise may have had no easy sponsors, and for academic administrators who otherwise had to deal with state legislatures, this new role of Federal government did not appear to be a bad thing. Thus many scientists and engineers both in and out of government who worked together in the war effort found it natural to continue that cooperation. As early as October, 1945 hearings began in Congress on the idea of creating a “National Science Foundation”. The entity proposed was (and became) not a true foundation with separate endowment, but rather a government agency, distributing Federal funds to academic institutions based on advice of scientific advisory panels.

In 1950 this idea became law, but not without opposition. Previously it was believed that the under the constitution the Federal Congress had no role regarding state or privately funded academic institutions. Thus, the most extensive hearings on the newly proposed “foundation” in 1945 were on the issue of “Authorizing a Study of the Possibilities of Mobilizing the Resources of the United States” by the Senate Committee on Military Affairs. While the federal government had no constitutional role in funding science, presumably it did have a proper role in wartime manpower management. This notion provided suitable basis to hold a hearing. Because the explicit constitutional role of Congress in regard to science was to promote science and the useful arts by means of grants of limited term exclusive rights, much of the testimony in these hearings was discussion related to patents and invention, not to manpower. Thus immediately following the War in October and November of 1945 a parade of academics, government bureaucrats and industrial managers from laboratories which had benefitted from government sponsorship in the war testified in the “Manpower” hearings that continued funding was vital to the national interest.

A few serious scientists, such as the respected atomic physicist I. I. Rabi, objected to some of the details of how to implement a single national science funding source. But even these critics missed the most fundamental criticism. When the states and many separate private colleges, independent industries funded their own institutions and research, and stated funded their own institutions independently of central control, there was a great diversity in views and a broad wealth of possible innovation. Observers of both Nazi and Soviet science in the first half of the century certainly had good reason to believe that central control of funding was a threat to independence of mind. Imposition of a single national science funding source created the threat of imposing a single national ideology of what would be “correct” to think about.

But not only did proponents of the new “foundation” not predict the dangers, some actually advocated the Soviet system as their model. In the first day of hearings the second scheduled speaker was Irving Langmuir, Associate Director of the Laboratory of the General Electric Company. While praising the American economic system, he also noted the “obvious necessity for Government control of some features of our capitalist system”. How to improve things? “I was particularly impressed by the tremendous emphasis placed upon incentives in Russia today.” He mentioned chauffeur driven cars for the top scientists, and secret election of scientists to the academy. “They have a remarkable system of incentives”.

Given the fears of the day — unemployment and the horrors and wonders of science including radar and The Bomb — a bill creating a national science bureaucracy passed in 1947. But the then President Harry Truman was not impressed. He vetoed the Act with the following explanations: “The proposed National Science Foundation would be divorced from control by the people to an extent that implies a complete lack of faith in democratic processes” and “…the bill would violate basic principles which make for responsible government.”

The academics and their allies in Congress immediately renewed the campaign. One critic, Frank B. Jewett, the President of the National Academy of Sciences, thought that “… the [new] bill is substantially the old bill modified merely to meet the President’s principal [technical] objections.” Jewett’s complaints included “…I do not think that a convincing case has been made out for so radical and dangerous a divergence from the established proven method … as the creation of a tax-supported politically controlled Foundation would be.”

Probably, opponents of the revised Act were not opposed to the federal role in science, so much as to accommodating President Truman by changes in the Act which imposed “responsible government” as Truman saw it. The power of presidential appointment at the top of the agency was strengthened, meeting Truman’s constitutional objections. This may be the “political control” which worried Jewett. But the academic committee “peer” system, literally a system of academic soviets or worker’s committees, was left in place, and still holds the effective power of purse within the agency. Thus caution on the side of liberty did not prevail. The National Science Foundation Act of 1950 was passed and signed to law; similarly structured “Institutes” were soon also established in health and biological sciences. And, especially in the less established fields which certainly include the social and “policy sciences,” the critics have proven to be correct. Single national ideologies for entire fields of study, and equally importantly, the institutional means to enforce these ideologies, were created when the National Science Foundation was created.

Consider the institutional devices created or reinforced by the National Science Foundation, its review practices and its personnel policies. Although not required by law, as a matter of practice essentially all Foundation science project awards are to academic institutions. These institutions receive money for expenses of “overhead” on the project, computed as an additional payment equal to a percentage of the direct costs of that project. Awards are made by a decision process managed by a program director. A program director is a temporary government employee, usually a tenured academic on temporary leave from their home institution for the period of their directorship. The program director is advised by a panel of “peers”, who are normally employed by academic institutions. The directors and reviewers are placed with the advice of private membership associations of academics. The opinion of a particular reviewer is then “secret,” but primarily from the person whose proposal is being reviewed. The program director and therefore for practical purposes the management of the non-government private associations, and also, the academic institutions who employ the reviewers, do know who made which recommendations. Appeals of decisions are reviewed by essentially the same people who made the initial decisions.

The potential for abuse in this kind of system is obvious. It is no surprise that nearly all awards are made to academic institutions, and that high rates of “overhead” payments to such institutions are common. Inbred ideologies of “correct thinking” quickly evolved … the system is in fact hardly more than a federally funded secret society. Such closed systems invite thought control through dispersion of Great Mysteries, and indeed, are well suited to control of a church, or the operation of a one-party state. A self-replacing elite manages the maintenance of a private code of secret knowledge through semi-secret committees which control lives and careers of individuals. The recent experience of funding “global warming” and “climate change” “research” is a good example of what has resulted from such controls.

But this is also no accident. Creation of a uniform ideology for the social and policy sciences was a goal of many of those who sought creation of a single national science fund. One clue about this comes simply by examining discourse involving the resulting ideology, called “the philosophy of science,” was put. The phrase “the philosophy of science” is nearly always stated in academic discourse using the definite article “the,” and almost never using the indefinite article “a.” Inappropriate use of the definite article in all contexts conveys a belief that “the” approved philosophy was the only possible One Known Truth. It is hard to believe serious scientists acted on the seemingly ludicrous purpose of finding the One Known Truth of science, merely because the structure of the ideology or of the language in use seemingly requires it. But meetings for that purpose are well documented. For example, in the second volume of his autobiography I Am a Mathematician, Norbert Weiner, the mathematical prodigy and theorist of control systems, mentions meeting with other scientists including for example the anthropologist Margaret Mead in the late 1940′s. The contents of these meetings, which occurred among those two and others, was reviewed in a book with the unusually descriptive title Constructing A Social Science For Postwar America, The Cybernetics Group, 1946 – 1953, by Steve Joshua Heims, MIT Press, Cambridge Massachusetts, 1993.

Except for the political uses to which the results were put, these meetings and the attempt to create a single ideology for all of science simply continued a popular European pre-war philosophical trend, often called “positivism”. This philosophy asserts that all science has a common core of ideas shared among all fields. The object of positivist philosophy was to discover this core. Taken as a philosophy, this topic merits serious review, and is in many ways true. It is by no means however the only possible truth discoverable about science. Nor is it the case that once some common core of ideas might be found among certain scientific fields that no further thought is necessary other than applying the thus discovered One Known Truth. Indeed, that form of enquiry is the opposite of science.

The people who initially took control of the United States’ new national science institutions where positivists. They believed they knew to a moral — not merely scientific — certainty that they held a Unique Truth. And whatever they actually believed, it was certainly a political convenience to be able to control an organization through the use of secret committees — the soviet model literally applied! Thus the first “politically correct” government sponsored ideology was imposed on all of science, but especially on the social, economic and policy sciences.

The practical effect of creation of the national science institutes in the early 1950′s was therefore to place social and policy “sciences” under the control of a political alliance of people with the will and means to suppress ideas. Thus American social science today consists almost entirely of a weird (and politically left-oriented) collage, of whatever happened to be on the minds of early advisors to the science institutes. For some fields or sub-fields, if those early ideas happened to have been productive, then progress may have since been made by building on them. For other fields, if the original ideas happened to have been useless or wrong, then no progress can have been made because any deviations have been systematically eliminated. The ideology also systematically excludes developments that are plainly recognizable as scientific in the sense of being both testable and tested. Thus entire subject matters of demonstrably correct, predictive and tested social science are unpublishable in the United States. Because the American ideology views these areas as inherently impossible, the fact of their existence does not form proof of their possibility.

Thus, the political idea that academic institutions are proper devices for creating and enforcing narrow ideologies became widely accepted, and the means for enforcement widely established. The necessary foundations for what today is called “political correctness” were laid in the name of science. Diversity of political thought in academic institutions was largely eliminated. This is witnessed in part by the fact that members of a single political party, the Democratic Party, today occupy most positions at most academic institutions. It is an interesting historical speculation whether this result is an accident. Given the vehemence of President Truman’s political objections to the form of a National Science Foundation in 1947, already cited, why would he then sign essentially the same Act in 1950? One explanation is that by 1950 Truman knew two political facts: the activism supporting the Foundation had not gone away, and that Truman’s term was constitutionally limited with no guarantee that a Democrat would follow him to office; in fact, a Republican, Eisenhower, did so in 1952. Since Truman already clearly understood the anti-democratic (small “d”) nature of the institution proposed, perhaps he reasoned it was better to have the Foundation controlled by the Democratic Party, then to risk allowing a Republican successor the same opportunity should the Act be passed again after he left office.

Whether or not the intent, today more than eighty percent of all academic positions are held by Democrats, while only about ten percent each are held by Republicans or independents; in some institutions, no Republicans have been added to the faculty for several decades. This would seem to fulfill the criticism of the NSF cited above. Though the rigidly controlled ideology the scientific critics feared was a scientific one, derived from the actions of the peer review system, that that system also happened to imply political control by a single political party and has become a serious harm to democracy.

The present study is not the only one to conclude that something systematic is removing American intellectual diversity, and to note the consequences on ideological rigidity. There is also this devastating assessment of American policy science with national security implications by a Adda Bozeman, an analyst of American international military and political intelligence:

This challenge … has not been met by the academic and political elites of the United States. This failure in the perception of reality has been aggravated by a widespread acquiescence in essentially irrational trends — the inclinations, namely, to dissociate values from facts, to treat values as if they were general norms, and to assume that privately or locally preferred values are also globally valid norms. … Further, they suggest that the United States has begun to resemble Don Quixote … it is fighting windmills and losing its bearings in the real world.

One should carefully note that this was written in 1992. Events since then have proven those words prophetic.

The problem we address is the process of collective thinking, which is anti democratic to its core and was so recognized by President Truman in 1947. The best remedy is removal of enforced centralized American policies for academic research, and other national controls of education in all forms. As a matter of constitutional policy fixing the academic problem means instituting policies which are based on the proper powers of the Federal government for the purposes for which intended, and removing Federal exercise of powers it does not possess. The Federal power of the patent is specific, and is intended to protect actual authors and inventors by grants to the creators of exclusive use for limited times. The system established by existing Federal granting authorities is the opposite, certainly in practical effect: it allocates rights from actual authors or inventors and grants them preemptively and exclusively to politically favored institutions. This is an exercise of a power to allocate economic rights, which the federal government does not possess.

The existence of an ideologically controlled one-party type apparatus within the Federal science and educational establishment is the classically predicted effect when a government dispenses funds, controls individual careers, and thereby controls ideas. The limits on the power of the American Federal government to repress ideas can only be restored by a return to the constitutional framework of limited federal powers. This framework has no federal role in control of academic institutions nor education.

Yours in Liberty,

Atlas

Are you ready to restore state sovereignty?

It is a question all those supporting states’ rights initiatives need to ask themselves.  Once answered affirmatively the struggle for educating others truly begins.  It is easy to claim we support our sovereignty, to lend our voice to state resolutions, perhaps even support legislation with some teeth, yet how will we withstand the opponents who simply point to the dollars we are willingly cutting off?

Glen Warchol ran what is perhaps the shortest piece seen in the Salt Lake Tribune in recent history.  In 10^th Amendment cold turkey he quickly leaves us with the truth about what we are asking for and how we must accomplish it.  He describes a very brief conversation between U.S. Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) and Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.  Rep. Chaffetz asked what it would take for the federal government to recognize the 10^th Amendment rights of the states, a fair question asked to someone who could truly articulate the answer.  “Stop taking their money,” is the answer Warchol reports and it is an answer known to be the true, root challenge.  We must stop taking the money and mimicking the income tax system as a start to reclaiming sovereignty.

A friend was attending a local town hall meeting Tuesday night.  Regarding their support for 10^th Amendment state duties they were in the vast minority.  At the meeting were 2 Utah State Representatives and 2 Utah State Senators.  Besides the irritating fact the majority of those in attendance wanted more government intervention there was an eye-opening comment from one of the state senators when asked about Utah’s 10^th Amendment rights.  She simply brushed the matter aside with the age old trump card.  She spoke quite plainly that 23% of the state budget came from the federal government and people were not willing to give those dollars away.

There it is, two sources corroborating the very fact 10^th Amendment efforts suffer in the media, political circles, and neighborhoods across the country from the dependency these federal dollars have created.  Right now there are a lot of citizens jumping on the wagon of states’ rights, it is fun after all and there are some really cool people involved in this movement!  Some of the politicians involved are genuine supporters of our heritage, statesmen in a day when that breed is endangered, yet many are simply coming on board for resolutions or weak legislation as a way to win more votes.

Opponents, even those who appear to be supporters, are not willing to stop the federal flow of dollars but then again, neither are most citizens.  I know, some of you already understand the federal dollars being used as a carrot would not exist if it were not ripped from the state citizens’ pocket, which is not the point of the opposition.  The point they want to press is those who truly want our state sovereignty restored really want to take money from the sick, poor, down-trodden, and hungry.  Supporters want to end federal funding of schools, roads, and more.

How foolish, in these tough times, can such nonsense be?  Supporting the 10^th Amendment is nothing more than a stunt for publicity or a failure to understand the dollars and lawsuits being put at risk.  Don’t confuse facts with fiction here!  Don’t mistake the Constitutional plans for a Federalist Republic with today’s necessary, representative national democracy.  So the spin of opposition goes and grows in the ears of your neighbors, sovereignty is not sounding so promising for them.

Are you ready to stand in opposition to federal funding of vital entitlements your neighbors need?  Are you blind enough to think the state and local governments will really care for life, liberty, and property better than federal intelligence?  Can you seriously defend the notion you and your neighbors, city, county, and state officials can actually govern better by governing with less federal interference?  How foolish, in these tough times, can such nonsense be?

As Gary Alder points out there are many in the 10^th Amendment movement who are like young teenagers demanding their parents treat them as adults.  If their parents dare say Okay will the teenager be ready?  Will you be ready to tell your legislators to stand up to their duty, quit accepting federal funding, and quit being the tax collector for all federal waste?  How will you stand in front of your neighbor who relies on a federal program administered by the state and tell them this is best?  After talking with you about our heritage will they be ready to give those dollars away?

None of this will be easy and the ‘federal dollar denial’ card will be played relentlessly in a game of poker that will take many chips from your stack.  Ultimately our Posterity’s liberty is at risk. You must be ready first, and then you must educate yourself on the benefits of our Constitutional order of separation of powers; checks and balances involving states’ duties in controlling federal usurpation.  You must firmly commit to the idea of the lowest level of government being the government that is best.  We will first lose federal inflow before we ever can stop federal outflow and many will cry foul, fool, fiend!  Look in the mirror and ask yourself, honestly, are you ready to restore state sovereignty?

Gary Wood [send him email] is the State Chapter Coordinator for the Utah Tenth Amendment Center

Copyright © 2010 by TenthAmendmentCenter.com. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit is given

by Derek Sheriff

When the federal government decides it’s too risky to usurp the powers reserved to the states respectively, or to the people with outright force or fraud, it often employs a softer approach involving bribery. It should surprise no one that the Department of Education (DOE), under President Obama, is at it again.

The Obama administration’s “Race To The Top” (RTTT) stimulus grant program should really be called the “Race to Nationalize Education”. Like the Bush administration’s “No Child Left Behind” program, it is nothing but another measure designed to enable the central government to take over control of our local schools and establish a government of occupation in the territory that exists between our children’s ears.

According to a DOE press release, the “centerpiece of the Obama administration’s education reform efforts”, in its “$4.35 billion RTTT program, “..will include adopting internationally benchmarked education standards.”

The question immediately arises, “What are internationally benchmarked standards?”. The word “international” often sends shivers down the spine of many conservatives who understandably worry about the loss of American sovereignty.

It turns out that the former Governor of my state, Janet Napolitano, now turned Homeland Security overlord, was one of the Co-Chairs of the International Benchmarking Advisory Group. However, I must admit that after reading, “Benchmarking for Success: Ensuring U.S. Students Receive a World-Class Education.”, which was a 2005 joint report published by the International Benchmarking Advisory Group, my level of concern was actually reduced from what it was initially.

Besides having a lot of nice pictures of children holding globes and smiling at the spherical representation of the earth, there was a lot of bad news about how far American kid’s lag behind those of other developed countries in math, science, reading and problem solving. But the report didn’t state that we needed to teach more about global warming, population control, world government, or the United Nations. In fact it seemed like a very reasonable appeal for states in the U.S. to adopt basic educational standards that would match those of other developed countries.

It’s not the “international benchmark” standards that we ought to object to. It’s the central planning of of our children’s education and the loss of parental and local control over those standards that ought to bother us. One could argue very persuasively that international benchmark standards should become our state’s educational standards for K-12. Perhaps this would be a good idea.

What all people should all recognize, however, is the failure of large scale central planning when it comes to meeting our economic needs or our educational needs. In fact, if there was one thing that caught my attention when looking at the countries in the report that consistently outranked the U.S. in academic performance, it was the fact that nearly all of them were small, both geographically and in terms of population. Canada was the most notable exception in terms of geography, but as of 2009, it had under 34 million people compared to over 308 million that live in the U.S. today.

So what does this point to in terms of human scale as it relates to academic excellence? With the sole exception of Canada, the world’s best performing students have their schools run by people who live closer to and are probably more accountable to their parents. The difficult and controversial decisions, such as what kind of education our children should receive, how many hours per day and how many days per year our children should attend school are best made close to home.

Lots of people in in their own areas have met their Superintendent of Public Instruction. Few have met Obama’s Education Czar.

The result of accepting RTTT funds is described by Prof. Allen Quist, Professor of Political Science at Bethany Lutheran College. He writes, “This [RTTT program] will create a de facto federal curriculum. The Department of Education will financially reward those states that teach what DOE wants [to be] taught.”

Do you, as a citizen of your state, want the children of your state to be taught what the government that rules us in Washington, D.C. wants them to learn? Or would you rather have them learn what you as a parent, grandparent, employer or just plain concerned citizen of your own state want them to learn? Who should decide?

Although it shouldn’t come as any great surprise, Arizona Governor Brewer chose to go after after the carrot on a stick placed in front of her by our central planners in Washington. In fact, she and Dr. Duvall, Mesa School District Superintendent and Special Advisor to the Governor, wasted no time in creating a plan to apply for and comply with the terms of the RTTT grant.

According to the Arizona Education Network, “In order to apply for a Race to the Top grant, local education agencies (LEA’s)– public school districts and charter schools–have to fill out a participation agreement outlining specific actions to be taken under the four reform areas, as well as a memorandum of understanding. Arizona plans on meeting the January 15, 2010 federal deadline for funding. The winning states will be announced in April and if Arizona is chosen, school districts and charter schools would have to submit a written plan within 90 days. Implementation would take place in August/September 2010. If Arizona is not chosen in the first round, the state can reapply in June, 2010.”

While I sympathize with their desire to acquire additional funding forschools and teachers, the funding they seek comes with strings attached. The application, or participation agreement referred to above, lists a whole host of federal requirements that our state must comply with in order to receive funding. On page 25 of the application, it requires that evidence must be provided of the state’s, “..participation in a consortium of States that – Is working toward jointly developing and adopting a common set of K-12 standards (as defined in this notice) that are supported by evidence that they are internationally benchmarked…”.

Besides having to adopt internationally benchmarked standards, the DOE has added other conditions which will further its own agenda as well. For example, the state must also commit to increasing the amount of time students spend in school. The state must, “Establish schedules and implement strategies that provide increased learning time (as defined in this notice); and..Provide ongoing mechanisms for family and community engagement.”

In order to qualify for the RTTT funds, states must score points on the application by promising to implement a variety of other reform measures, some of which may include: “[creating] community-oriented schools, such as– (A) Partnering with parents and parent organizations, faith- and community-based organizations, [ACORN?] health clinics, other State or local agencies, and others to create safe school environments that meet students’ social, emotional, and health needs [what kind of health needs?]; (B) Extending or restructuring the school day [more time under the control of the federal government and less time with family] so as to add time for such strategies as advisory periods that build relationships between students, faculty, and other school staff; (C) Implementing approaches to improve school climate and discipline, such as implementing a system of positive behavioral supports or taking steps to eliminate bullying and student harassment; or (D) Expanding the school program to offer full-day kindergarten or pre-kindergarten. [Nationalized day care]. So in other words, if any state accepts these RTTT funds, their schools will have to agree to change not only our children’s school curricula but their school schedules to meet federal guidelines.

Now before you say that many of these conditions seem harmless, take a moment and remember the kind of people that make up our president’s administration and some of their radical backgrounds and agendas. Is it possible or even likely that these kind of individuals were involved in creating this program and will be part of its implementation and oversight?

However, even if this is not a concern, the question we should ask ourselves is: “Do we really want the government in far off Washington, D.C. deciding the subjects and content of our children’s daily school lesson plans and how much time they spend at school?”.

If we the people of wish to retain any measure of self-determination for ourselves and for our children, we must work to reverse the process which has slowly been centralizing all decision making power in the hands of the federal government and their unelected bureaucrats. The corrupting influence of federal money has been used to bribe our state office holders into looking the other way while the federal government ignores the 10th Amendment and usurps the powers which rightfully belong to the states or to we the people. It is time for it to stop!

We must demand that our elected state officials from the governor on down reject federal money such as RTTT funds, which are always given with strings (or chains), attached. The good news is that it’s not too late to stop our state office holders from accepting this bribe.

Please contact your governor’s office and tell them to reject the offer of “Race To The Top” money. Texas Governor Rick Perry has already said “no” for his state and so should the rest! Tell them that our school curricula and school schedule needs to be determined at the local, or at the very most, at our state level!

Tell the members of your school board or your school superintendent the same thing. The states did not become dependent on federal money overnight and it will be a long program of rehabilitation if we are to help our elected officials break the cycle.

The first step is getting our elected state officials to understand that they are trapped in an abusive relationship with the federal government. They have become dependent upon the fix that federal money provides for our state’s budgetary problems. They must admit that have a problem, stand up for themselves and for us and just say NO!

Here at the Tenth Amendment Center we’ve had a number of requests to put together a recommended-books section on the website, and while that proposition isn’t really as easy as it would seem, it’s something we’re working on. In the meantime, and especially after seeing Lew Rockwell’s “Some Books I Like” post, I thought it was a good idea to do something similar here.

What follows are 18 books that I’ve found to be insightful, influential, educational, and/or moving over the years. Some are introductory and easy to read, others take a far more scholarly approach.

If you’re looking for last-minute Christmas gifts or simply something new to tackle – I believe each and every book here would be a good addition to your reading. And best yet – anytime you go to Amazon.com through one of these links and make a purchase (for one of these books or anything on their site), a portion of the sale goes directly to support TenthAmendmentCenter.com. Thank you to everyone for your purchases on Amazon!

As I read the many editorial columns and articles in support of Obama’s speech, I can see that many writers are very upset and emotional over criticism of Obama’s action. They also are clueless concerning the reasons why his address is unwelcome. They are name-calling. They are not bothering to mention, much less rebut, the reasoned objections of people like me.

I can at least articulate my reasons for objecting.

Such a speech blurs or crosses several boundaries that I believe there are good reasons to have in place.

The President’s constitutional powers are explicit. They include the “executive Power.” They include being “Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States” and a few more listed in the Constitution, including preserving and protecting the Constitution. They do not include addressing schoolchildren.

If the President were to live up to his oath to preserve and protect the Constitution, he would request that Congress repeal all its laws regarding education. Section 8 of Article I lists the powers of Congress. Education is not on that list. So when the President addresses schoolchildren, he breaks his oath in several ways. He does not have that power, and he affirms and solidifies a power assumed by Congress that Congress does not have. The President is failing in his sworn duty. Those who think that the President’s speech is helpfully teaching civics are mistaken. His speech is conveying and confirming anti-civics and anti-Constitutional lessons.

The President is a political leader. He is not in office to be an educator. His duties are clearly laid out, and they do not include educating children. By the same token, the President is not the parent of all these children. He is not their teacher. He is not their religious leader. The reason for these boundaries is so that political figures do not use their power and influence to dominate our social lives.

It is a special danger to liberty and society when national powers are developed. These are powers in which the national leadership directly controls or influences individual citizens, while bypassing or circumventing other local sources of governance and influence such as parents, families, churches, schools, and local governments.

An Obama address to schoolchildren is an instance of the further development of national power and influence. It breaks new ground in the influence of State over society. Public education already is under the influence of objectionable forces, but this establishes a new precedent that can be extended. If one political leader addresses youth, other leaders are more likely to address youth. The content of their speeches can be enlarged. Their influence can be enlarged. Government will be given more play and support than it already has. Such a speech is inescapably political. Such a precedent can eventually lead to further dangerous developments, such as a Presidential Youth or an Obama Youth.

The President is a politician. Any address he might make, no matter how nonpartisan it may seem, is bound to be political. It cannot be neutral. The very fact that he is President and making such a speech will be taken in by school children. He will be conveying his authority to these children, with the blessings of their parents and school teachers. They will be taught by the speech itself, regardless of its content, to look to the national government in matters relating to their lives. After all, is he not addressing them about very personal and civic matters? His speech is necessarily a political act.

The President is the leader of a particular political party, so that the very fact that he is a Democrat who is President and making such a speech influences his listeners. Children grow up to be voting adults.

In any speech, what the President says lies beyond the control of those who allow that speech to enter the classroom. The teachers have control over the subsequent discussion, if they choose to have it. But the President will already have made his impact. Children do not fully possess the capacities to judge political matters.

Will the opposition party demand equal time? Do we want politicians routinely competing with one another for the attention of and influence over children?

The President commands the airwaves. This is a dangerous and influential power when used with adults. Allowing this power to be extended to communication with every child in the country is even more dangerous.

School districts can opt out of the speech. In some districts, children may be allowed to opt out of the speech. These options are good ones. But they do not alter the reasons outlined above for objecting to a president making speeches in schools.

I’d like to add that I have seldom read stronger words in newspapers directed against those who object to Obama’s speechmaking to children. They are being called crackpots. They are being accused of demonizing the President. They are being accused of McCarthyism. They are being accused of being racist, completely insane, and members of the right-wing lunatic fringe.

These attacks are not called for. There are very good reasons to object to Obama’s speech. I’ll sum up the ones that bother me. There are no doubt others, but I have made no attempt to research them and find out what others are thinking on this matter.

1. The speech is beyond the President’s constitutional powers.
2. The President is supporting a national role in education, which also is unconstitutional.
3. The President is not supporting his oath of office, so he is conveying an anti-constitutional message to children.
4. The President is crossing a boundary between the political and social spheres. That boundary is in place in order to control government power and maintain a healthy free society.
5. The President is augmenting national power and influence.
6. The President is starting a new precedent that has dangerous implications.
7. The President’s speech cannot possibly be non-political. The very act itself is politically in furtherance of government and an enhanced government role.
8. The President also leads his party, and that fact may influence children.
9. The President may have an undue influence over children due to his position and power.
10. Will fairness considerations lead to equal time for opposition leaders?
11. Presidential access to communications is dangerous enough without extending it to youth.

Michael S. Rozeff [send him mail] is a retired Professor of Finance living in East Amherst, New York.

Copyright © 2009 by LewRockwell.com. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit is given.

You can ask anybody what the first amendment prevents infringement upon. They might know about one thing, freedom of speech, but incorrectly, tell you we are granted freedom of speech. Even then, most miss the other four inalienable rights the Constitution limits the federal government from violating.

Most are equally unaware of the right of the people to keep and bear arms, and even of their status as militia under U.S. code. Most also don’t know that the third amendment prevents forced slumber parties with soldiers, and further assume that one’s right to be secure in his papers, person and effects can be waived by law – without a rebellion or invasion. They also believe that the seizure of life, liberty or property is okay without a warrant, just compensation or due process is legal.

What about the ninth amendment, the one that restricts powers granted to the federal government from being construed to deny rights retained by the states of the people?

That, too, was forgotten.

What should concern us the most is the tenth amendment. It denies the federal government from assuming any additional powers not granted to it by the Constitution. There are many historical reasons.

I didn’t catch the right of the government to pay farmers not to grow food in Article 1, Section 8. But FDR thought that raising the price of food when most of us were eating ketchup sandwiches was a great plan.

Our founders certainly didn’t write things like Social Security or Medicare into the Constitution. That’s not because they hated the disadvantaged.

It was because they foresaw that such programs would be abused, their trust funds raided and their recipients deprived. Some estimates have concluded Social Security recipients to be deprived of as much as 43% of their benefits. According to GAO comptroller David Walker, there is no “lock box”.

Our founders also didn’t authorize a central bank of issue that would loan us our own money in Article 1, Section 8. That’s because such organizations habitually ruin a currency. In fact, the dollar we have them in 1913 is worth less than four cents.

After the Bank of England virtually destroyed their economy, which was the real impetus of the revolt, we learned a little more. After our failed experiment with the Continental Dollar, we figured it out.

What is truly disturbing is that the Federal Reserve is not a government entity, as ruled in Lewis v United States 680 F.2d 1239 (9th Cir. 1982).

Calling it “federal” did not make it federal. Federal Express is not federal, and Federal Pizza is not federal because it has pepperoni.

Congress then had the audacity to tell us that Article 1, Section 8 gave them authority delegate their power to a private entity, and they don’t need to oversee monetary policy. Given its absolute failure to safeguard the value of the dollar, we have again learned why the tenth amendment prohibited this.

I personally wonder how bad the economy has to get before people figure it out. Since the Federal Reserve is now fighting inflation with inflation, my suspicion is that people will get the bailouts they’re asking for – and they will get it hard.

Nothing in Article 1, Section 8 includes education. There is also, again, nothing in there about healthcare. We were number one in healthcare and education, but federal involvement took care of that.

Go ask a college graduate what the tenth amendment says. Then, ask that same graduate if he or she would object to the healthcare industry writing its own laws. The irony is that people seek to break up monopolies through government, when in fact, monopolies are only possible through government.

What should frighten us the most is that Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution authorizes Congress to declare war. We’ve had a never ending series of wars since World War Two – but no declaration of war.

If the president is declaring war, and the tenth amendment bars any part of the government from assuming powers it does not have, when will it end? If you want to delegate that power, amend the Constitution, Congress. Don’t tell us you can write a law outside the parameters of your authority without extending them.

Will the Supreme Court eventually declare war? In a sad way, I’d prefer it. There’d be a chance for a dissenting opinion.

Contempt for the tenth amendment is truly limitless, and, not surprisingly, we’re broke. Instead of sending us checks as a bail out from monetary and fiscal mismanagement, which will come from raiding Social Security, Medicare or more inflation, Congress should go figure it out. I can’t think of a higher insult to the poorest, who suffer first and foremost from this, than to steal their wages while debasing their purchasing power and offshoring jobs.

As the reader may infer, this discussion could go on all day. I’ll just leave you with a brief list of things I’d like Congress to show me in Article 1, Section 8, or for that matter, any other part of the Constitution. Show me –

• Drug war
• Tax credit for producing coal dipped in latex
• Paying Americans to run sweatshops overseas
• Registering churches with the IRS
• Study on sex life of mosquitoes
• Gun control
• Executive negotiation of treaties without Senate input
• The WTO telling us how to run our trade policy
• Using our armed forces on behalf of the UN

Dan Reale is a Libertarian Party candidate for Congress in Connecticut.  Visit his website at http://realedealforcongress.angelfire.com

From the article:

Despite having no experience in education, Neil Bush is the founder of a Texas-based company called Ignite! Learning, which, since 1999 has peddled strange little devices called “Curriculums on Wheels” (COWs) to schools state and nationwide. Rather than anything bovine, COWs actually resemble bright plastic droids or office chairs gone terribly wrong. Described as “computer/projectors,” it’s not really clear what they do or how they work, and a cursory look at the company’s website does not help. (Apparently it involves swivel action.) Regardless, there are COWs for different subjects: the Math COW, the Science COW (“the ultimate classroom sidekick!”) and the Social Studies COW.

But here’s the kicker – Neil gets (surprise, surprise) federal funding for his COWs! It’s just another miracle provided to you and I by the No Child Left Behind Act.

Well, of course, there are some people who aren’t happy with this, and another acronym is speaking out against the possible impropriety:

Recently, a three-month investigation by the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) revealed that schools are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars, including No Child Left Behind funds, on Neil Bush’s COWs. “It is astonishing that taxpayer dollars are being spent on unproven educational products to the financial benefit of the president’s brother,” CREW’s executive director, Melanie Sloan, said in a press release.

There’s definitely a problem here.  But, where I see both Liliana and Melanie missing the mark is that they seem to focus primarily on the symptoms rather than the cause. Melanie’s statement is representative of this; “…It is astonishing that taxpayer dollars are being spent on unproven educational products…”

While it is a potential waste to spend money on unproven educational products, this isn’t the biggest problem. The real issue is that the federal government should not be taking your money and spending it on local concerns – at all.

First of all, there’s nothing in the Constitution which authorizes the federal government to engage in such spending. Readers of this site are probably quite familiar with the fact that the Constitution was written under the principle of “positive grant.” What this means is that the federal government can exercise only those powers which are specifically given to it in the Constitution. Everything else is left to “the States, respectively, or to the people.”

Constitutional arguments aside, there’s also a principle that needs to be followed – the idea that centralized bureaucracies are always loaded with corruption. Remember, it’s not the abuse of power that we should be most concerned with, but rather, the power to abuse. The ability to spend vast sums of money will inevitably lead to more and more corruption in government.

As long as this kind of spending exists, there will always – always – be corruption through kickbacks, contracts with friends and family, and the like. Unless we accept this reality, we’ll always end up with the short end of the stick when trying to improve education in this country.

Whether it’s Bush and his brother getting favored status and federal funding, or a future president and their family getting rich from your income, doesn’t really matter. As long as the power exists, it’s liable to be abused. And that’s the sad truth.