Freedom First Society

UNESCO “Withdrawal” — Mere Posturing!

“The State Department announced Oct. 12 that the U.S. plans to withdraw from UNESCO, alleging a ‘need for fundamental reform’ and ‘anti-Israel bias.’” — The Washington Post, 10-12-17

In a follow-up Post report later that day, the State Department’s initially tough-sounding anti-UNESCO announcement quickly mellowed:

“In notifying UNESCO of the decision Thursday morning, the State Department said it would like to remain involved as a nonmember observer state. That will allow the United States to engage in debates and activities, though it will lose its right to vote on issues.

“The withdrawal follows long-standing issues the U.S. has had with UNESCO and does not necessarily foreshadow a further retrenchment of U.S. engagement with the United Nations, where the Trump administration has been pushing to bring about structural and financial reforms.”

This is not the first time that the U.S. has bowed out of UNESCO, the United Nations Educational and Scientific Organization, a specialized UN agency based in Paris. In 1984, the Reagan Administration temporarily withdrew the U.S.

Then, as now, the justifications for withdrawing from UNESCO should have applied to its parent organization, the United Nations, as well. But just to assure everyone that the move didn’t seriously threaten globalist plans, Reagan’s Assistant Secretary of State for International Organization Affairs, Gregory Newell, stated:

“When UNESCO returns to its original purposes and principles, the United States would be in a position to return to UNESCO.” [Emphasis added.]

In 2002, President George W. Bush decided that the U.S. should rejoin UNESCO.

UNESCO’s “Original Purposes”

UNESCO’s first general conference was held at the end of 1946, a year after the UN began operations. The conference elected humanist leader Dr. Julian Huxley as UNESCO’s first Director-General. As one example of the revolutionary mindset permeating the UN and its agencies, in 1947 Dr. Huxley wrote in UNESCO: Its Purpose and Its Philosophy:

“Thus even though it is quite true that any radical eugenic [controlled human breeding] policy will be for many years politically and psychologically impossible, it will be important for UNESCO to see that the eugenic problem is examined with the greatest care, and that the public mind is informed of the issues at stake so that much that now is unthinkable may at least become thinkable.” [Emphasis added]

Here is how the Washington Post report summarized UNESCO’s public purposes:

“UNESCO was established to help promote global cooperation around the flow of ideas, culture and information. UNESCO’s mission includes programs to improve access to education, preserve cultural heritage, improve gender equality and promote scientific advances and freedom of expression.” [Emphasis added.]

However, let’s look at UNESCO’s real purposes, beginning with the parent body, the United Nations.

In 1945, a war-weary world acquiesced to the Internationalists’ propaganda campaign that their proposed UN was mankind’s “last best hope for peace.”

In normal times, that claim would have rung on deaf ears. For the UN would be comprised to a great extent of corrupt and tyrannical regimes, unrepresentative of their peoples. How could these regimes be expected to satisfactorily police the world? The participation of the Soviet Union as a permanent member of the UN’s Security Council (followed decades later by Communist China) should have confirmed the subversive nonsense. In fact, within a few decades, knowledgeable observers would refer to the UN as “Terrorists ‘R US.”

In reality, the Internationalists conceived these institutions as a means of gaining unaccountable world authority over previously sovereign nations. But more strategy and pretexts would be needed to provide the UN or its offspring with the authority (e.g., taxation and a UN army) necessary to compel the full submission of independent nations.

Three decades later, Foreign Affairs (the magazine of the Internationalists’ Council on Foreign Relations — CFR) advocated a strategy of gradual international entanglements as a workable means for bringing nations to submit to a world authority. “The Hard Road to World Order,” authored by Columbia University professor and State Department veteran Richard N. Gardner, spelled out a multi-point strategy of deceptive encroachment. In that April 1974 article, Gardner blatantly insisted:

“In short, the ‘house of world order’ will have to be built from the bottom up rather than from the top down. It will look like a great ‘booming, buzzing confusion,’ to use William James’ famous description of reality, but an end run around national sovereignty, eroding it piece by piece, will accomplish much more than the old-fashioned frontal assault.”

The above Post story quotes Irina Bokova, UNESCO’s current and tenth director-general, a Bulgarian politician, in defense of UNESCO: “The American poet, diplomat and Librarian of Congress, Archibald MacLeish, penned the lines that open UNESCO’s 1945 Constitution: ‘Since wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defences of peace must be constructed.’ This vision has never been more relevant.”

Not mentioned by the Post: Archibald MacLeish was a member of the Council on Foreign Relations (from 1946–1949).

Now what role would UNESCO actually play in the UN scheme? From the beginning UNESCO sought to become the world’s school board, promoting world government. Its revolutionary activism soon became apparent. In 1948, UNESCO published a ten-volume series of pamphlets entitled Toward World Understanding. The pamphlets were designed to prepare schoolchildren for world citizenship.

In 1952 The Saturday Review candidly conceded this purpose in a pro-UNESCO editorial:

“If UNESCO is attacked on the grounds that it is helping to prepare the world’s peoples for world government, then it is an error to burst forth with apologetic statements and denials. Let us face it: the job of UNESCO is to help create and promote the elements of world citizenship. When faced with such a ‘charge,’ let us by all means affirm it from the housetops.”

The editor-in-chief for Saturday Review was Norman Cousins, an open advocate for world government, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and a member of the United World Federalists.

Multiculturalism Exposed

In 2015, following deadly terrorist attacks in Paris, congressmen floated several proposals to pause and even limit refugee immigration from Syria. More than half of the state governors said they would not accept Syrian refugees.

However, President Obama, supported by fellow liberals, objected that such action “is offensive and contrary to American values.” In doing so, he was defending the politically correct agenda of multiculturalism.

Gauging by the liberal reaction, it was no surprise that when President Trump took office in January 2017 and ordered a temporary halt on immigration from certain Middle East countries, organizations such as the ACLU would oppose any such restrictions in successful court challenges.

However, the claim that an American founding principle demands an open door policy toward mass immigration from diverse cultures is a recently contrived myth. In fact, it’s a subversive rewriting of history.

Reacting to the Obama claim, conservative columnist Michelle Malkin provided an excellent summary of the opinions of America’s Founding Fathers regarding immigration. As she showed, they were opposed to importing cultural diversity and would have abhorred the goal of “multiculturalism.”

Our Founding Fathers wanted immigration to support a distinctly American culture, a culture that could be counted on to support the principles of freedom as derived from the lessons of Western history.

Indeed, as Malkin wrote: “Madison argued plainly that America should welcome the immigrant who could assimilate, but exclude the immigrant who could not readily ‘incorporate himself into our society.’”

And she recounted an even more explicit statement by George Washington: “George Washington, in a letter to John Adams, similarly emphasized that immigrants should be absorbed into American life so that ‘by an intermixture with our people, they, or their descendants, get assimilated to our customs, measures, laws: in a word soon become one people.’”

At the birth of the American experiment in freedom, our Founding Fathers knew from their study of history that cultural diversity in a nation is not a strength but a burden and often a source of major conflict.

We highly recommend reading Malkin’s entire article: “Immigration and Our Founding Fathers’ Values.” But then go a critical step further.

The Critical Lesson

Malkin offers only ideological arguments to oppose the multiculturalism assault in an ostensible battle with “No-limits liberals.” But this “safe ideological approach,” the norm with most popular conservative writers, conceals an immense driving danger, thus failing to sound the clear trumpet called for in 1 Corinthians 14:8.

Indeed, further research shows that Internationalist Insiders and their foundations are the drivers of both “the open borders movement” and “multiculturalism.” Their clear objective with these programs is to gain unaccountable power. And the pathway to their ultimate success requires the destruction of the culture necessary to support republican (rule of law) government and the associated undermining of America’s ability to resist totalitarian world government.

We summarize the “open borders” part of that story in Chapter 7 “Immigration Reform” of our Media-Controlled Delusion booklet. As visitors will see, even the front-line drivers are not limited to liberals.

For example, the above Chapter 7 recounts the support given by the Wall Street Journal. The late Robert L. Bartley served as its editorial page editor for 30 years. While adopting the image of a conservative free-market Republican, in 1979 Bartley was invited to join the Establishment’s Council on Foreign Relations. In a 2001 editorial, entitled “Open NAFTA Borders? Why Not?” Bartley wrote:

Reformist Mexican President Vicente Fox raises eyebrows with his suggestion that over a decade or two NAFTA should evolve into something like the European Union, with open borders for not only goods and investment but also people. He can rest assured that there is one voice north of the Rio Grande that supports his vision. To wit, this newspaper….

Indeed, during the immigration debate of 1984 we suggested an ultimate goal to guide passing policies — a constitutional amendment: “There shall be open borders.

Origins of Multiculturalism

The public advocates of revolutionary change often wear the liberal cloak and offer ideological arguments to support their agenda. However, if we “follow the money” we can recognize the real drivers and their goals.

Historian Oswald Spengler in his classic Decline of the West astutely concluded:

There is no proletarian, not even a Communist, movement, that has not operated in the interest of money, in the directions indicated by money, and for the time permitted by money — and that, without the idealist amongst its leaders having the slightest suspicion of the fact.

In a 1992 article, Father James Thornton observed: “Though wild-eyed it definitely is, multiculturalism has Establishment support through the lavishly financed programs of the National Endowment for the Arts, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and other tax-supported and tax-exempt organizations.”

And multiculturalism also follows the strategy advocated by Italian Communist theorist Antonio Gramsci for achieving “cultural hegemony” over a nation. The first phase in his strategy is to undermine all elements of traditional culture.

Gramsci’s thinking, perpetuated by his disciples, has had significant impact on revolutionary organizations in America today, as well as on their big-money sponsors. Rudi Dutschke, one of Gramsci’s disciples, described the strategy of culture war as conducting “the long march through the institutions.”

In short, our point is that one cannot oppose revolutionary programs effectively by getting caught up in merely debating their public proposals. Ignoring the driving conspiratorial agenda is simply a no-win strategy, a widespread practice that neutralizes conservatives. Instead, we need to help others recognize the pervasive cultural attack, how it’s organized, and its real totalitarian purpose.

Just One Example

A 2004 Department of Education publication, “ACHIEVING DIVERSITY: RACE-NEUTRAL ALTERNATIVES IN AMERICAN EDUCATION,” includes these introductory remarks:

The diversity question in America now is not “Whether?” but “How?” The Supreme Court’s decisions in the Michigan affirmative action litigation affirm that our shared commitment to diversity is both compelling and just when pursued within lawful parameters. In light of these decisions, President George W. Bush has challenged the education community to develop innovative ways to achieve diversity in our schools without falling back upon illegal quotas. Most educational leaders, particularly at the postsecondary level, agree with the importance of this goal. [Emphasis added.]

Of course, they do. The reason why America became saddled with an unconstitutional Department of Education was to mold public education to achieve revolutionary goals, using federal money as a carrot and stick.

Among the report’s introductory remarks, we see the George W. Bush administration’s stamp of approval:

President George W. Bush has said that diversity is one of America’s greatest strengths and has encouraged the development of race-neutral alternatives to achieve diversity in educational institutions.

Using the federal hammer to promote commonsense racial opportunity no longer masks fed-gov’s primary diversity objective. Indeed, multiculturalist pressure disparages assimilation into America’s defining culture, while glorifying other cultures, including homosexuality — you name it.

But if Americans are asked to oppose such programs as merely misguided, who will prepare himself for the battle? Indeed, it is necessary to understand the big picture before there will be sufficient alarm to organize the needed resistance.

School Children and National Security

All across America, public officials swear up and down that Common Core education reform has been, and will be, state-led and locally controlled. No one is telling us that in early 2012, before the general public was even aware of Common Core, elite representatives of big-money corporations and high-level members of the political elite in Washington met in a privately funded think tank where they formally declared our children to be “human capital”—and uneducated children to be a threat to national security.

The 32 think-tank participants, organized as a Task Force by the Internationalist Establishment’s Council on Foreign Relations, included Linda Darling Hammond (of SBAC — “Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium” — fame), representatives of large Gates-funded foundations like the United Negro College fund, the Carnegie-sponsored Institute of International Education, Joel I. Klein of the News Corporation, and former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

The tangible product of their deliberations is a measly 121-page document titled “U.S. Education Reform and National Security.” It can be viewed at cfr.org, the official website of the Council on Foreign Relations. CFR TFR 68 Cover 20120313 AN B.indd

In this document, these self-appointed education gods bemoan the state of American education (presumably the result of the incompetent masses) without ever once giving consideration to the historical facts: (1) for nearly 200 years the entirely locally directed American education system was the envy of the world, and (2) as top-down federal meddling in education has increased, educational outcomes have consistently declined. If these dictocrats were sincere in their concerns, this historical evidence would demand that they put forward a very different solution from that called for in their 121-page document.

Their solution: the implementation of Common Core education and standards via a partnership between State Governors, corporations, and federal authorities; the use of federal dollars (our money) to incentivize (bribe) states into compliance with national education standards; and the oversight of local education by a broad coalition of corporate leaders, the federal Department of Education, the federal Departments of State and Defense, AND un-named federal intelligence agencies. This oversight is supposed to better prepare the human capital necessary for military service and national economic success.

Enforcement

How do they propose to enforce their top-down authority? Their scheme calls for intensive national evaluation (auditing) of teachers and schools. Audit focuses include: student mastery of Common Core content, mastery of “national security skills” (standards in science, technology, civics, etc.), and a vague statement about auditing the “characteristics of the school.” Where schools underperform, severe penalties are to be imposed, including the “reallocation of resources” (funding and human capital), the replacement of school leadership, and the top-down re-design or re-structuring of school systems.

While these penalties are to be imposed by State and local leaders, the audits are to be directed and published on the national level, effectively removing actual control over audits from state authorities and from the parents of the children who are affected.

I find the militaristic rhetoric of this private task force particularly alarming. Declaring education to be a national security issue (meriting oversight by intelligence agencies and the Department of Defense) lays the philosophical ground-work for a massive top-down power grab. History has shown that when education ceases to be about children and becomes an issue of national security the pretext for federal power becomes absolute. Those who resist or rebel against that power risk being labeled as enemies of the State.

Why We Should Be Concerned

Some may question why the recommendations of this private task force should concern us when they are just that — recommendations. First, this kind of high-level meddling and scheming in private forums provides no transparency to the general public. We are told only what they wish us to know. Second, those involved have clear conflicts of interest: They are the beneficiaries and Gods of the system they propose to impose on us. The power, control, and wealth, these corporacrats stand to gain — as long as Americans will meekly grovel before their statistics and criticisms for a few of our own tax dollars — are staggering.

Third, there is a consistent historical pattern over the past 100 years whereby American public policy is being shaped by corporacrats acting in collusion with high-level federal officials. The powers they seek to obtain and the process by which they are going about it are in direct violation of the Constitution of the United States, which clearly reserves both the direction of education and the establishment of public policy to the states and to elected representatives of the people respectively — not to political or corporate elitists.

The Take-Home Message

What is the take-home message? While many are busy obsessing over the details and drawbacks of Common Core, most remain blind to the bigger picture of what is happening. By simple definition these elitists are imposing a form of fascism on the American people that runs entirely contrary to the form of limited constitutional government established by America’s founders. These insiders are using propaganda and big money to manipulate the American people into accepting their policies a piece at a time, while pretending that their schemes came straight from the grass-roots all along.

This deceptive power grab, now being carried out without our general knowledge or consent is unacceptable and dangerous. Public officials who sign onto these nefarious schemes are guilty of subverting the liberty of the people. Inasmuch as any among us support and comply with these kinds of top-down power grabs, we are facilitating the destruction of our own liberty.

SBAC Concerns Need a Fair and Open Hearing Now

New Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC) testing (now being called the ISAT in Idaho — someone thinks we won’t notice the change) has elicited an unprecedented negative response from students, parents, and educators all across the country. Local students have nicknamed it the “SweatBAC.” A friend of mine, who has administered standardized testing to elementary students for the past six years, recently resigned out of frustration with the SBAC.

My friend witnessed the transition between tests and saw a dramatic difference in the student response to the SBAC, as opposed to the ISAT. With the fact-based, multiple choice ISAT, students knew what to do and could move through the test. With the SBAC, many young students cannot even identify the subjective questions buried in the texts, let alone make abstract inferences and answer with an essay containing supportive evidence from the text. Yet, they cannot move to the next question in the 3 ½ hour English testing without providing an answer to the question they can’t identify. These students sit feeling stupid, some of them in tears, as they are required to spend hours completing developmentally inappropriate tasks without support.

My friend could no longer bear to participate in a process which is causing so much emotional pain and psychological damage. She sees no benefit to this subjective test as a measure of knowledge, feels it to be a counterproductive waste of precious time and public money, and is bothered by the lack of information about ‘who’ grades the tests ‘how’ and ‘what’ data collected from testing is being used for. She resigned mid-year.

The difficulties my friend witnessed are NOT “just the result of inadequate preparation.” Early childhood experts all across the country have come forward stating that these tests are developmentally inappropriate. I have a son who suffered a severe brain hemorrhage as a premature infant. Consequently, we have worked closely with the National Association for Child Development, an organization that has a decades-long resume of cutting-edge research in brain development and incredible success helping children and adults learn. These professionals are frustrated by the havoc being wreaked in the minds of many of their clients who are being subjected to what they identify as developmentally inappropriate, and even damaging, educational methods in the name of the Common Core.

State Legislatures Have Withdrawn

What’s more, since its hasty implementation, seven state legislatures have already reconsidered their involvement with the SBAC consortium, have been convinced of its problems, and have withdrawn their participation.

Carol Burris, New York State Outstanding Educator in 2010 and New York State High School Principle of the Year in 2013, thoroughly reviewed the Common Core and identified 5 reasons she believes it is disastrous for education. Included among these — Common Core standards contradict what we know about how young children learn, including decades of research on early reading development; and Common Core tests are unreasonably difficult and will result in unfair consequences to children.

Here in Idaho, the Madison School District superintendent has questioned the validity and costs of the SBAC. He found another option for his school district which had a much more solid research basis, more valid results, and will save his district approximately $10,000 over the cost of administering the SBAC. He has announced that his students will not be taking the SBAC test.

Top-down Pressure to Comply

But the top-down pressure to comply with the educational monopoly granted to this Common Core aligned testing consortium is staggering. Parents are being told that they have no legal authority to withdraw their child from taking this test. Districts are required to administer this test to 95% of their students, regardless of their circumstances or special needs, or risk “losing stars” and federal money. The SBAC has become a graduation requirement. Those seeking an alternative route to graduation will find that even the GED test has been re-written by the same consortium that compiled the SBAC.

As these SBAC tests have been implemented the pass rate has plummeted by as much as 80% in some states. Yet, instead of re-examining the tests, the steam-roller pressure to enthrone them continues. Even colleges and universities are under top-down pressure from the federal government to align their college admission standards to federal standards for financial aid, eliminating other traditionally-accepted admissions options and making these tests mandatory for admission to higher education as well. This big-fisted monopoly over education at all levels makes past monopolies look like a game of croquet as opposed to rugby. This unprecedented top-down pressure is a gigantic, flashing, red indicator that these are NOT parent-led, voluntary changes.

That so many have caved to this top-down coercion without protest is disappointing; but the way that our state leaders have responded to the concerns being raised is completely unacceptable. When Idahoans introduced bills requiring debate and discussion regarding the SBAC, state leaders have killed these bills in committee, refusing to allow them to even come to the floor. The plug-your-ears-and-turn-your-back response of these state leaders to our substantial, valid concerns is inexcusable. With only a short time left in the legislative session, It is high time that state representatives and all concerned citizens use their influence to demand that bills like SB 1070 and SCR 106 are given a fair and open hearing.

Granting such monopoly power to any consortium is wrong. Granting it to a consortium that straps us with developmentally inappropriate, unsound educational practices is a betrayal of the public trust.

The Common Core Cabal Strikes Again

The Common Core Cabal has struck again, this time to the tune of 61 million Idaho tax-payer dollars, as was reported on the front page of the Morning News, March 25, 2015. This money was reportedly “wasted” on a student data tracking system which, incidentally, Idaho agreed to implement as a part of Governor Otter’s federal “Race to the Top” application. Idaho didn’t win the Race to the Top, but we did get a bill for a 61 million dollar Student Data Tracking System that didn’t really work.

The article conveniently blames this incredible waste, which comes at a time when many Idaho schools are struggling just to meet basic expenses, on the Luna administration, which is long gone. It then quotes Senator Tim Corder reassuring us that our new state superintendent, Sherri Ybarra, can count and spell (as if Tom Luna couldn’t) and so we can all feel secure that this fiasco will not be repeated. It appears, then, that this 61 million dollars is just water under the bridge.

There are a lot of angles to this story. I could write a whole book documenting concerns related to the Student Data Tracking System, which is intended to gather personally identifiable data on every student from pre-school up through college and career. These concerns include: the privacy issues, the lack of parental access and oversight, the significant likelihood that it will be a financially lucrative gold-mine for corrupt government cronies, etc. There are many reasons to oppose the creation of this system in the first place.

Ignoring the Truly Significant

However, the thing that struck me about this story was the part that was minimized and NOT shared. The article very briefly mentions that, in addition to poor administrative decisions, the system we paid for was never designed to serve as a statewide system. It also briefly mentions that it was purchased from a company called Schoolnet, a New York company owned by British-based publishing giant Pearson.

Why is this significant? Pearson has partnered with the Gates Foundation as one of the primary corporate funders and promoters of Common Core reforms. I know — some will falsely claim that the student data tracking system has nothing to do with the Common Core standards. But the fact is that the authors of the standards — those who own the copyright — have published articles on their own web-site outlining a five step plan for education reform. These reforms include the adoption of the Common Core standards AND the implementation of a national student data tracking system as interlocked parts of a five-step reform package. Other steps include teacher training reforms, curriculum alignment, and new school accountability measures (testing, etc.).

Pearson and the Gates Foundation have been behind the Common Core wave from the start. They have learned to play corporate cronyism to the hilt and they are riding the American tax-payer hard, financially benefiting from almost every aspect of the five-step education reforms they are pushing. Pearson, the largest educational publisher and on-line book company in the world (how about some new Common Core aligned curriculum in every classroom?), also launched the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC) consortium which is writing new Common Core testing (more money) and sells software for districts to use (and more $) in administering tests, and provides internet bandwidth (still more $). They also provide conferences and training to help states roll out Common Core (more profit). And they apparently sell Student Data Tracking Systems with price tags in the tens of millions.

News reports of Pearson rolling out inadequate products and receiving slaps on the hand for illegal corporate/non-profit activities are not hard to find. For example, in December of 2013, the Washington Post reported that Pearson had agreed to pay a 7.7 million dollar settlement after the New York Attorney General found them guilty of using their non-profit foundation to generate tens of millions of dollars for their corporate arm. Pearson’s non-profit foundation was used to develop products and curriculum aligned to new standards, all tax-exempt. These products were then being sold — for profit.

What’s more, their tax-exempt foundation was flying public officials to extravagant international locations for conferences where Pearson’s corporate employees would meet with them and assess the needs of the states the public officials represented — so that they could sell them Pearson products. When Pearson was called on the carpet for their illegal activities (bribery and extortion) they claimed ignorance and paid a measly settlement into a fund to train teachers (hardly a loss on their part).

When one understands the scope and nature of the corrupt cronyism which is the impetus and core of current education reforms, it seems ludicrous that this most recent 61 million dollar loss of tax-payer dollars is being chalked up to one ignorant public official who is nowhere around. Meanwhile the current administration is giving Pearson a free pass and continuing it’s love affair with Common Core reforms.

Surely the data tracking software was purchased with the understanding that it would perform as a statewide data collection system. Clearly it was not what it was marketed to be. Now, our public officials, evidently hesitant to challenge the corrupt system they have participated in, are mildly walking away.

It’s time to get educated about education reforms. Until the people, in general, become aware of and unwilling to tolerate the corporate/federal cabal that now has public education by the throat, we will continue to pay through the nose — not just in dollars, but in the quality and content of our education, and, ultimately, in the loss of our own personal liberty and the ability to have local control over the education of our own children.

Also by Julianne Young: SBAC Concerns Need a Fair and Open Hearing Now

Monthly Action Report Excerpts re Common Core

October 2014 Action Report

“Getting to the Core of Common Core”

“The longitudinal student data tracking systems which are currently being put in place in states all across the country will compile personally identifiable data on every student. That means that a student’s test results, academic and disciplinary records, and even personal information about students’ personal and family life are being plugged into a database that will follow them their entire lives.” — Julianne Young in a new DVD

Idaho Chapter Leader Mrs. Julianne Young has researched and developed a blockbuster new presentation on a topic dear to her heart — education. Julianne graduated from Idaho State University with a bachelor’s degree in education. For this latest presentation, she had done masterful work in researching and organizing what those concerned about Common Core should really be looking at.

Julianne supplies a unique and vital perspective missing from the national “debate.” In particular, she points out that Common Core is just one recent manifestation of a much bigger agenda that has plagued education for decades. And she insists that the real threat driving Common Core cannot be defeated without addressing the bigger picture.

So impressed were we with Julianne’s message that we invited her to come to Colorado Springs and allow us to make a DVD of her presentation. A DVD would enable all members to spread her message as part of a campaign opportunity.

For starters, we urge members to familiarize themselves with the presentation. Note: The DVD is provided as a bonus to anyone who contributes to our Fall financial appeal.

Once members are familiar with Julianne’s message they will likely be eager to share her presentation with others. That will mean ordering additional copies — for sale at group meetings or for lending. Excellent prospects for either might include: 1) “conservative” members of local school boards; 2) local citizens who have expressed concern over Common Core; 3) home-schooling parents; and 4) parents who have children in government schools. Standard FFS DVD quantity pricing applies (see the Tools & Products page on our website).

The nationwide momentum behind Common Core, supported by billions in federal money, has properly alarmed many Americans, even though they see only a small part of the picture. Exposing the Core of Common Core, by hosting presentations and organizing outreach, is an excellent project for local chapters.

Action Summary: View and share the “Getting to the Core of Common Core” DVD (available for purchase and as a bonus for responding to the Fall financial appeal).

November 2014 Action Report

Common Core “Standards”

“The nationwide momentum behind Common Core, supported by billions in federal money, has properly alarmed many Americans, even though they see only a small part of the picture.” — October Action Report

Members who contributed to the Fall financial appeal received Freedom First Society’s new Getting to the Core of Common Core DVD as a special “thank you” bonus. This outstanding presentation by Idaho Chapter Leader Julianne Young provides vital perspective missing from the “conservative debate.”

A National Power Grab

“Conservative” leadership addressing Common Core generally adopts the narrow, reactive focus Julianne Young warns against, as though Common Core were an isolated problem. For example, an April 2013 National Review online report stated:

“The federal government has spent billions to move Common Core forward, and it has put billions more on the line. Unfortunately, parents, teachers, tea-party activists, and governors have every reason to believe Common Core represents major, unprecedented federal intervention into education.” [Emphasis added.]

However, as Julianne points out, Common Core is not unprecedented federal intervention but merely another major step in a planned power grab spanning most of a century.

Not surprisingly, a brief search of the Internet turns up dozens of state organizations that have been formed to fight Common Core. Unfortunately, experience shows that single-issue organizations are generally ineffective, because they decide to ignore the big picture of what they are up against.

In this climate, aggressive member action can make a unique and incisive contribution. Chapters should be making plans to use this new wake-up tool aggressively. We have recommended ordering additional copies — for sale at group meetings or for lending. As we suggested last month:

“Excellent prospects for either might include: 1) “conservative” members of local school boards; 2) local citizens who have expressed concern over Common Core; 3) home-schooling parents; and 4) parents who have children in government schools.”

We urge Chapters and members to adopt a dual strategy with the DVD: 1) Use it to create interest in Freedom First Society among good prospects for membership; and 2) share it with local opinion leaders who are confronting Common Core.

Our standard DVD prices apply: Individual copies are $7 each, 3 to 9 copies $5 each, 10 or more copies $3 each, plus a flat $3 shipping and handling per order, regardless of quantity. Note: A generic flyer for promoting presentations comes with each order.

January 2015 Action Report

The Core of Common Core

“The Common Core standards were developed in 2009 and released in 2010. Within a matter of months, they had been endorsed by 45 states and the District of Columbia….

“Joel Klein and Condoleeza Rice chaired a commission for the Council on Foreign Relations, which concluded that the Common Core standards were needed to protect national security….

“The U.S. Chamber of Commerce endorsed the standards, saying they were necessary to prepare workers for the global marketplace. The [Establishment’s] Business Roundtable stated that its #1 priority is the full adoption and implementation of the Common Core standards.” — Diane Ravitch, “education historian,” in a speech to the Modern Language Association on January 11, published in the Washington Post, 1-18-14

In our November Action Report, we urged Chapters and members to adopt a dual strategy with the “Getting to the Core of Common Core” DVD: 1) Use it to create interest in Freedom First Society among good prospects for membership; and 2) share it with local opinion leaders who are confronting Common Core.

Note: A generic flyer for promoting presentations comes with each DVD order.

February 2015 Action Report

The Core of Common Core

As The President Makers amply demonstrates, anyone who seriously threatens the Insider agenda will not gain the presidency anytime soon. Lawmakers who play the presidential race game are helping to perpetuate the Great American Myth — the deception that Americans can make real change by electing the candidate for president who makes the most sense on the campaign trail.

Accordingly, we are disappointed that Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) has made a bid for the presidency. Many conservatives will undoubtedly find comfort in Paul’s opposition to Common Core. In a swing through New Hampshire (Reuters, 1-14-14), Paul argued that it would be better for local schools to develop their own standards, thus fostering innovation: “If you have a national curriculum and rules, you’ll never get to these new ideas.”

The Reuters report further noted:

“Paul’s position against Common Core distinguishes him from former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, the Republican who has come closest to officially declaring his presidential candidacy and who has expressed support for the standards…..

“Paul added that if elected, he would eliminate the U.S. Department of Education, a sentiment that drew applause from the audience.”

Not mentioned are the forces that quietly persuaded so many states to adopt Common Core. Allowing them to remain hidden from public scrutiny will not defeat their agenda.

Fortunately, our Idaho Chapter Leader Julianne Young has provided a great service by exposing those forces with her masterful Getting to the Core of Common Core presentation (available on DVD from Freedom First Society). Julianne shows that Common Core is not an isolated “mistake” of flawed planning, as most politicians would prefer to treat it. Rather, Common Core is just one part of a long-term collectivist battle to control the education of America’s youth, as a foundation for a subservient socialist society.

While it is refreshing to hear a senator advocate the elimination of the unconstitutional U.S. Department of Education, we note that “conservative” presidential candidate Ronald Reagan did so decades earlier. Yet, as president, his administration never even entertained such a step.

The Department of Education is so well entrenched and so important an accomplishment for the Insiders that it will not be reversed simply by a political position statement. The American people will first need to understand the subversive danger the Department truly represents.

Ideological “Weeds” Thrive Across the Land

While recently rereading a classical literary piece from a century ago, I realized anew how each person is a microcosm of the demographic group or society to which he or she belongs. Truly, no man is an island, and we all bring to our society characteristics, traits, and attributes which contribute to the whole. When we analyze some of the notable events from the past year, we can’t help but realize how our individual contributions either ameliorate, or vitiate, the cumulative character of our society.

The book, As a Man Thinketh, by the English moralist James Allen, abounds in insightful truisms and verities. The following is but one of many such gems. “A man’s mind may be likened to a garden, which may be intelligently cultivated or allowed to run wild; but whether cultivated or neglected, it must, and will, bring forth. If no useful seeds are put into it, then an abundance of useless weed seeds will fall therein, and will continue to produce their kind.”

As much idiocy as we observed playing out on the public stage this past year, it’s obvious that there are too many minds not being planted or cultivated with ennobling or productive seeds. And, according to Allen, the evidence is manifest behaviorally. Not unlike the timeless wisdom of Forrest Gump, “Stupid is as stupid does.”

Case in point, the “Hands up, don’t shoot,” social phenomenon that was spawned, and perpetuated, based on fictitious accounts of the tragic shooting of a young man in Ferguson, MO. The fact that such a fallacious mantra would gain such traction among the race-baiters, celebrities, misinformed, and even professional athletes, does not portend well for our culture. But why bother with facts and evidence, when a fabricated story can be so superbly spun for the sake of advancing an ideological narrative, or inciting riots and precipitating violence? This provides evidentiary validation of Allen’s thesis, that “an abundance of useless weed seeds” can bear sway in the absence of “useful,” and I might add, informed and fact-based “seeds.”

On a par with that evidentiary validation, but much more consequential in its long-term implications, is the request by law students at Columbia, Harvard, and other law schools, to postpone their final exams. They felt they had been “traumatized” due to their protests of the Ferguson and New York grand jury decisions to not charge policemen for perceived wrongful deaths. Would anyone even consider hiring an attorney who felt “traumatized” because they protested too strenuously, and felt themselves to be incapable of taking tests as a result? Aphorisms aplenty seem to apply in such an instance, primary of which is simply to “grow up.”

As we celebrated the 50^th anniversary of the Great Society “war on poverty,” the nation’s redistribution of over $22 trillion is one of those governmental policies that evokes great emotion yet, as inefficacious as it has been, clearly is bourn of ideological “weeds.” Our poverty rate is about the same today as it was fifty years ago, which means our wealth redistribution has accomplished nothing, and has not addressed the underlying societal issues which are causal to poverty.

Another example is regrettably provided by our president, who, after claiming that all of his policies were on the midterm electoral ballot, was thoroughly trounced as voters rejected his legislative and ideological pawns who supported his policies. Yet, in the aftermath of such a drubbing, became increasingly pertinacious, clinging to his rejected ideology, and claimed to hear what those who didn’t vote had to say. The mainstream media should have had a heyday with such vapidity, yet, as has been their wont over the past six years, gave the president a pass on his vacuity.

Equally vacuous was the president’s reference to the Biblical story of Mary and Joseph in an amnesty speech delivered last month. He may want to break down and actually read the Bible, if he’s going to “quote” from it. Mary and Joseph were not illegal aliens, and, contrary to his other “quote” from the Bible in the same speech, the Good Book says nothing about “people in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.” It’s bad enough when our fellow countrymen fill their ignorant voids with uninformed “weeds,” but when our president does it, and he gets away with it, it does not bode well for our media or our society.

That such ignorance, bourn of ideological “weeds,” can flourish in our “enlightened” culture is indeed discomfiting. It’s enough to make one wonder if “The Walking Dead” TV series is more reflective of our collective consciousness, rather than simply apocalyptic TV fiction.

Associated Press award winning columnist Richard Larsen is President of Larsen Financial, a brokerage and financial planning firm in Pocatello, Idaho and is a graduate of Idaho State University with degrees in Political Science and History and coursework completed toward a Master’s in Public Administration. He can be reached at [email protected].

Subordination of Parental Rights

Parents in Nashville, Tennessee were concerned about their minor son’s health condition, including the possibility that the doctor was over-medicating him. The doctor recommended administration of drug tests to see if there were other factors contributing to his discomfort. The doctor made it clear, however, that he would not be able to release the drug test results to the parents, but only to the child. After all, as the doctor erroneously explained, the child had a right to privacy based on federal law that trumped the parental rights to care for, nurture, and protect their child.

Parents of a kindergarten age child in Massachusetts were shocked to find some of the books and materials being sent home with their 5-year-old were sex education materials and books that normalize and promote homosexual activity. After visiting with the teacher and getting nowhere on an “opt out” agreement for their child, the parents met with the principal, who in turn sent the parents to a “diversity” workshop to increase their acceptance of the indoctrination of their child.

After their disturbing experience at the workshop, the parents met again with the principal, begging for prior notification of sexual content instruction and for an opt out for their child. The principal responded to their request by having a police officer handcuff and forcibly remove the concerned parents for trespassing. Parental rights to protect, teach, nurture, and inculcate fundamental values were trampled by the education establishment intently motivated by an ideological agenda.

A child in Washington state complained to a school counselor about his parents making him go to church too much. Without notifying the parents, the counselor contacted a state social worker who took the 13-year-old boy directly from school and placed him in a foster home until a judicial hearing could be set for the parents to argue their case before a judge.

These are not isolated cases. Through legislative and judicial overreach, an increasing amount of power is given to the state over our children. As with the examples provided, all parents who fail to comply with a certain ideology are assumed to be bad parents, and the state’s intentions pristine. These efforts are methodically replacing parental discretion in all areas of child rearing and development with governmental and bureaucratic dominion over our minor children.

Karl Marx, in chapter 2 of The Communist Manifesto, said that in order to establish a perfect social state you have to destroy the family. You have to substitute the government for parental authority in the rearing of children. Whether intentional or not, the current trend of erosion of parental rights and refusal to enforce the Defense of Marriage Act are perfectly facilitating the socialist agenda.

In 1989 the United Nations adopted the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC), a human rights treaty that delineates the civil, political, economic, social, health and cultural rights of children. Nearly all UN member nations have adopted the protocol, and are subject to review, sanction, and enforcement by the UN. The U.S. is one of two that have not.

While ostensibly appealing in its protection of children, the document codifies the supremacy of government over parental rights in the rearing of children. This grants government bureaucrats the ability to prosecute parents or remove children from homes where parents are suspected of being out of compliance with the UN’s objectives. In short, rather than being a proactive protection for the rights of children, it is an instrument to strip the rights of parents in child rearing.

A website dedicated to this issue, ParentalRights.org says of the UNCRC, “Despite the claims of its supporters, the Convention on the Rights of the Child is more than an international ‘wish list’ – it is an instrument of societal action. The evidence is clear in the nations that have ratified it, like France, Canada, Brazil and the United Kingdom. Member-states are expected to incorporate its provisions into their own laws, and failure to do so is met with intense international censure and pressure to conform. The United Nations, and its Committee on the Rights of the Child, tolerate nothing less.”

Even without adopting the UNCRC, the threat is real for American parents. Federal judges, who take an oath to defend and uphold the Constitution and our laws, increasingly rule on cases relying on customary international law. International precedence and code often align more closely with those judges ideology, and drawing from international rather than U.S. law grants them the justification necessary for “legislating from the bench.” This is facilitating a judicial creep of the tenets of the UNCRC and laws from other nations that have adopted it en toto.

All parents need to be aware of this insidious process that is slowly yet methodically subverting the rights of parents, and granting increasing authority to government to control and govern the rearing of our children. All parents should be prepared and knowledgeable about this stealthy trend, and ParentalRights.org is a superb starting point.

AP award winning columnist Richard Larsen is a regular contributor to the Idaho State Journal. He is also President of Larsen Financial, a brokerage and financial planning firm in Pocatello, and is a graduate of Idaho State University with a BA in Political Science and History and former member of the Idaho State Journal Editorial Board. He can be reached at [email protected].

Federal Control No Rose Garden

“Rotten to the Core” (Boston Herald, 2/28/10)

FFS: This devastating critique of the Common Core project for national education standards comes surprisingly from the Boston Herald Editorial Staff. Nevertheless, it misses the key point: The federal government has no proper role, constitutional or otherwise, in providing funding to education and prescribing standards. In fact, a quick way to improve standards would be to get the federal government out of the education business.

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