Freedom First Society

Posts

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 50th 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].

Here’s the Illogic of New Definition of Marriage

“Destroy the family and you destroy a nation” has been an oft-repeated aphorism of unverified origin that rings true from a common sense perspective. The family unit, after all, is the building block of all cultures and societies. And just as the law of unintended consequences manifests itself often glaringly when dealing with issues of a political nature, so likewise the unintended consequences of redefining marriage will likewise prove to be pejorative.

The proliferation of “same-sex marriage” is based, both judicially and from a political correctness standpoint, on two major fallacious premises. The first is that marrying whoever or whatever one wants is somehow a “right,” and the second is that marriage can be whatever we choose it to be.

Marriage to whomever or whatever one chooses to be is not a codified “right.” Even if it could somehow be so extrapolated, nowhere is it based on whom one professes love for. To the contrary, it is, based in natural law, lex naturalis, which is the system of law that is determined by nature and is thus universal. Embedded also in nature’s law is the use of reason to analyze social and personal human nature to deduce binding rules of behavior from it. As fundamentally significant as marriage is to our culture, our society, and our civilization, the institution cannot be simply redefined based on fad or political correctness without negative consequences.

Dr. Patrick Fagan, a sociologist and psychologist, has said, “The family is the fundamental building block of society and predates the state and even the societies it builds…At the heart of the family is the mother and father who bring their children into existence.” This is a self-evident truth, regardless of who said it; and anthropologists, biologists, sociologists, and politicians have reiterated that very sentiment. The family is the building block of society and civilization; and the cornerstone to that foundation, or the genesis of it, is a mother and a father.

Foundations must be strong, and built to withstand the elements, corrosion, and the test of time. Otherwise, the structure built thereon will inevitably crumble. If a foundation is made with unmixed cement or just water, as same-sex marriage tries to do, the foundation is weak; and the structure (our civilization) built thereon will crumble. When we tamper with, and attempt to socially-engineer, the foundational elements and institutions to civilization and our society, the results will be destructive.

Redefining marriage based on who one purportedly loves is a spurious dilution of our societal foundation. At no time in human history has marriage been legally based on who one loves, but has always been about perpetuating the species and forming familial units that construct the foundation to civilization. Sometimes it has included multiple spouses; but always it has been based on propagational properties, whether age or fertility exceptions apply or not. Any semantic change to the definition is only that, semantic, and does not change the biological or anthropological verities etymologically embedded in the term. Such a change to accommodate same-sex “marriage” is therefore nothing more than creating a verbal counterfeit to the real thing. Referring to a snake as a swan doesn’t change it into something that it is not.

Nor is there a “right” to marry whomsoever or whatsoever we please, or profess love for. Such a right is, as most other “rights,” claimed by those in our society who feel somehow shortchanged, slighted, or disadvantaged. The “right” is not codified in any legal document, much less our founding documents, just like the “right” to health care, or the “right” to a good job. Heterosexual marriage, however, is codified in natural law, as attested by biological and anthropological fact. The test is simple: try building a civilization or a society from scratch with anything other than natural law, heterosexual marriage. As an attorney friend of mine said, “there is absolutely no logical interpretation of the Constitution that can stretch sufficiently to include the definition of marriage as a judicially definable term.”

Mat Staver, founder of Liberty Counsel, has warned that the door to what can be legitimized as a legal relationship is now wide open. “This doesn’t just stop at heterosexual marriage or same-sex ‘marriage,’ but it also will extend to bigamy and incestuous marriage and all kinds of situations. If the government doesn’t have any interest in [marriage], then polygamy is permissible, polyamory is permissible.  We would have group marriages. Incestuous marriages are permissible. Marriages with … children as young as 8 or 7 or however low you want to go on the list — all of that becomes a free-for-all.”

Dr. Charles Krauthammer makes the same argument. “Traditional marriage is defined as the union of (1) two people of (2) opposite gender. If, as advocates of gay marriage insist, the gender requirement is nothing but prejudice, exclusion and an arbitrary denial of one’s autonomous choices, then on what grounds do they insist upon the traditional, arbitrary and exclusionary number of two?”

Other factors now become arbitrary and exclusionary as well. A Missouri man feels he was discriminated against when the state disallowed his marriage to his chosen “partner.” He says of her, “She’s gorgeous. She’s sweet. She’s loving. I’m very proud of her.” He can now employ the same charge of “discrimination” that is precluding him from “marrying” his favorite mare, Pixel.

Doug Mainwaring, an avowed homosexual, has made an astute observation regarding marriage. “Two men or two women together is, in truth, nothing like a man and a woman creating a life and a family together…Marriage is not an elastic term. It is immutable. It offers the very best for children and society. We should not adulterate nor mutilate its definition, thereby denying its riches to current and future generations.”

Words have meaning; and marriage, as the cornerstone to civilization, is copiously imbued with it. I have yet to hear a logical or cogent explanation as to why a binding homosexual relationship must be a marriage as opposed to a civil union or legal partnership. Rather than weakening and diluting the foundation to our society, we should be strengthening and encouraging it. After all, our future, and stability, as a society is dependent on it.

_____________________________________________________________________________________

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, Idaho, 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].

Global Warming Models Prove Fallacy of AGW

It’s always fascinating to see the public responses to columns challenging the notion that man is “causing” the earth to warm. Predictable are the personal attacks against such purveyors of contrarian dogma, as well as references to the favorite buzzwords and invalidated theses. It’s difficult to understand such fierce loyalty and fealty to a theory invalidated by their own models. Whether they’re looking for meaning in life by “saving the world” by diminishing their CO2 footprint, or they’re susceptible to the mainstream media propagandistic endorsement, it’s hard to say.

Let’s start with the obvious, which for some is not obvious, nor easily accepted. According to NASA, globalFig.A2 temperatures have not increased for 15 years. Here is the chart for actual temperatures as published by NASA clearly illustrating the cessation of warming in 1998.

Fig.A2

The plot appears dramatic, but notice the scale on the left axis. From 1880 to 2013 the range is .8 of one degree Celsius.

 

 

We can then look at the chart developed by former UN IPCC Lead Author & Climatologist Dr. John Christy which plots 73 global warming models. The models’ projections are based on climate sensitivity to manmade carbon dioxide. In other words, the models reflect the premise that man is causing, or at least contributing significantly to, warming of the planet. Yet not one of the models even comes close to reality based on NASA’s empirical data. The mean average for those models is nearly 1 degree Celsius higher than what has been observed for the past 15 years.

Why is this significant? Because it shows that, based on their own theories, and their own calculations of climateFig._A3 sensitivity to manmade CO2, that they’re all wrong. If their theories about the greenhouse potency and feedback of carbon dioxide emissions were correct, their model projections would match reality. And it’s not the earth that’s at fault; it’s the models and their underlying theory! When they’re so wrong for so long, how can anyone with a semblance of cognitive functionality even possibly consider taking them seriously!  Fig._A3

I can’t help but conclude what a phenomenal job it is to be an anthropogenic global warming (AGW) scientist. Come up with these alarmist theories to provide global governments the premise to regulate and tax what we exhale as a pollutant; rake in hundreds of millions from government grants to do so; generate sophisticated models to ring the warning bells of catastrophic manmade global warming; be proven totally wrong empirically, and yet still be heralded by media, academia, environmentalist activists, and low-information citizens, as ultimate authorities on the issue, and claim to be right!

With such an abysmal record of projecting reality, now 15 years and running, it would be like a stock analyst in my industry forecasting a decade-and-a-half of bull markets, and be proclaimed a market guru even if all 15 years were bear markets! It’s logically impossible to be right, as claimed by media, academicians, and AGW sycophants, when the alarmist’s calculations, as evidenced by their projections, are completely wrong!

Last month the German news publican Der Spiegel interviewed Hans von Storch, renowned German Professor at the Meteorological Institute of the University of Hamburg. Storch said “scientists are so puzzled by the 15-year standstill in global warming that if the trend continues their models could be fundamentally wrong.” Could be? Do you think? After fifteen years of being wrong, it seems rather obvious that the underlying premises have already been empirically invalidated. He continued, “We are finding it very difficult to reconcile actual temperature trends with our expectations.”

“There are two conceivable explanations — and neither is very pleasant for us,” said Storch. “The first possibility is that less global warming is occurring than expected because greenhouse gases, especially CO2, have less of an effect than we have assumed. This wouldn’t mean that there is no man-made greenhouse effect, but simply that our effect on climate events is not as great as we have believed. The other possibility is that, in our simulations, we have underestimated how much the climate fluctuates owing to natural causes,” Storch added. Now that’s an astute statement of the obvious. And notice how he was more concerned that they were all wrong, rather than that the earth was facing cataclysmic warming.

And just a quick note on the “97% of scientists” buy into the AGW hypothesis statement so often repeated by the alarmists. This figure of “consensus” originated from the “Doran Survey.” This was a nonscientific survey of 77 climate scientists polled for a master’s thesis. And it’s been debunked as a flawed and statistically invalid “survey.”

So how do most scientists really feel about AGW? According to Forbes, citing peer-reviewed surveys in February, only 36% of geoscientists believe humans are creating a global warming crisis, and a solid majority believe what warming is occurring is from natural sources.

If the AGW argument was correct, their models would be accurate. Since they are not, their basic premises are obviously flawed. And to say there’s a consensus is equally fallacious.

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, Idaho, 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].

Learning Lessons from California

This past week California Governor Jerry Brown announced that his state is facing a “ballooning” budget deficit of more than $16 billion. In an interview on CBS News, Brown said, “We’re not some tired country of Europe. We’re a buoyant, dynamic society that will both discipline itself on a daily basis but it will on the long-term plant the seeds of future growth.”

What is inscrutably lost on the governor is that the policies that have brought California to the edge of a fiscal cliff are mostly the same ones of those “tired countries of Europe,” which have manifest the same degree of financial discipline that California has practiced.

Many trends, fads, and even governmental policies have originated in the Golden State that has even given rise to a widely accepted aphorism, “As California goes, so goes the nation.” It’s the verity of that truism that makes the state’s financial problems a portent of things to come for the rest of the nation if we fail to learn from their experience.

Joel Kotkin, one of the nation’s premier demographers, has identified the most significant contributing factors to California’s problems. He points out that four million more people have left California in the last two decades than have moved there from other states. This is in sharp contrast with the 1980s when 100,000 more Americans were settling in California each year than were leaving. Most of those leaving are young families.

They’re leaving because they can’t afford to live there. Everything from food, energy and taxes to real estate and housing, are beyond the financial reach of young families. Kotkin points to restrictions and massive regulations on development and housing that have artificially limited housing supply. As he explains, California’s so-called “smart growth” plans literally force middle-class families into less expensive, high-density housing, or out of state.

From his analysis, housing is merely one front of what he refers to as the “progressive war on the middle class.” The high cost of energy has had a dramatic impact on everyone, but especially on the middle class. Policies restricting traditional sources of energy, and state financed advantages granted to green energy producers have resulted in skyrocketing energy costs. The price per kilowatt hour of electricity is nearly twice what it is in Idaho, and more than 50% above the national average, according to Electricchoice.com.

Yet state policy makers are doubling down on green energy and on the restriction to traditional producers, which are expected to make the rates rise even more. For California has enthusiastically embraced cap-and-trade, with AB32, “…which will raise the cost of energy and drive out manufacturing jobs without making even a dent in global carbon emissions. Then there are the renewable portfolio standards, which mandate that a third of the state’s energy come from renewable sources like wind and the sun by 2020,” according to the Wall Street Journal.

Most of these costs are borne by the middle class since those below the poverty level get state assistance and the wealthy can afford it. But the high energy costs drive manufacturing and other blue-collar energy users either out of business or out of the state.

And not only are energy costs much higher, but with two decades worth of policy and tax-advantaged investment in green energy, the promised windfall of jobs has not occurred. Only 2% of the job force in California is in green energy, roughly the same as Texas, which maintains a vastly different green energy policy. Rather, in part due to the higher operating costs in California created by onerous regulation, companies, and their jobs, have been exiting the state. California currently has the third highest unemployment rate in the nation at 10.9%.

The Golden State has significant gas and oil resources, yet policy and regulation preclude utilizing them. An estimated 25 billion barrels of oil are sitting untapped in the vast Monterey and Bakersfield shale deposits. Over the past decade, Texas has created 200,000 oil and gas jobs, while California has hardly added any. The Wall Street Journal pointed out recently, that, “The state’s remaining energy producers have been slowing down as the regulatory environment becomes ever more hostile even as producers elsewhere, including in rustbelt states like Ohio and Pennsylvania, ramp up. The oil and gas jobs the Golden State political class shuns pay around $100,000 a year on average.”

“You see the great tragedy of California is that we have all this oil and gas, we won’t use it,” Mr. Kotkin says. “We have the richest farm land in the world, and we’re trying to strangle it.” The latter point references how water restrictions aimed at protecting the delta smelt fish are endangering Central Valley farmers. Kotkin asserts that is the kind of “anti-human” public policy that is driving agriculture out and is impacting so many of the state’s economic sectors.

Kotkin explains the demographic changes are occurring because of state policy. “Californians are voting much more based on social issues and less on fiscal ones…” Consequently, it’s a much less favorable climate for employers than ever before. “As progressive policies drive out moderate and conservative members of the middle class, California’s politics become even more left-wing. It’s a classic case of natural selection, and increasingly the only ones fit to survive in California are the very rich and those who rely on government spending. In a nutshell, ‘the state is run for the very rich, the very poor, and the public employees,’” Kotkin explained recently to the Wall Street Journal.

Middle-class families are fleeing California in droves. As a result, California is turning into a two-and-a-half-class society. On top are the “entrenched incumbents” who inherited their wealth or came to California early and made their money, and the self-made technology millionaires. Then there’s a shrunken middle class of public employees and, miles below, a permanent welfare class. As it stands today, about 40% of Californians don’t pay any income tax and a quarter are on Medicaid. It’s “a very scary political dynamic,” Kotkin laments.

Meanwhile, taxes are decimating the private sector economy. According to the Tax Foundation, California has the 48th-worst business tax climate. “The wealthy pay a top rate of 10.3%, the third-highest in the country, while middle-class workers—those who earn more than $48,000—pay a top rate of 9.3%, which is higher than what millionaires pay in 47 states. And state leaders want to raise tax rates even more,” according to the Wall Street Journal.

The reason taxes have been increasing to now unsustainable levels, is that Sacramento has been unable to curtail spending. State spending has more than doubled in the past ten years. Costs for state pensions have increased by over 150% in the same time period, as demands from state employee unions have required a greater percentage of the budget. Unable to muster the discipline to reduce spending to match economic realities, the only tool the state seems to know how to use is tax increases.

The lessons from California are many, and this analysis only scratches the surface. The question is, will we as a nation learn them before or after we’re in the same malaise?


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, Idaho, 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].

Latest Assault on our Civil Liberties, The NDAA

Fundamental individual liberty and rights are central to our Constitution, and protection of the same from governmental infringement. Yet we see on a nearly daily basis, attempts by sometimes well-intentioned politicians, locally and nationally, to trample those fundamental rights in the name of a “greater good.”

The latest case in point, the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) passed Congress with broad bi-partisan support, (proving once again that there is little difference between the two major political parties), and will reportedly be signed into law this week by President Obama.

The Act states, “Congress affirms that the authority of the President to use all necessary and appropriate force pursuant to the Authorization for Use of Military Force includes the authority for the Armed Forces of the United States to detain covered persons pending disposition under the law of war.” And just who are those “covered persons” that can be so detained? Section 1031 seems innocuous enough by identifying anyone who had a part in the 9/11/01 attacks or “A person who was a part of or substantially supported al-Qaeda, the Taliban, or associated forces that are engaged in hostilities,” against the U.S. But then this Trojan Horse language follows, “including any person who has committed a belligerent act.”

A broad interpretation of “belligerent” includes “hostile and aggressive,” and is not limited to the more specific acts of war, which the drafters of the legislation may have intended. This language swings the door of interpretation wide open to include any threatening, antagonistic, contentious, or confrontational conduct perceived to be a threat to the nation. It is not beyond the realm of possibility to see this president or any future president use this provision as justification for military detention without due process of Tea Party protestors or Occupy Wall Street activists.

The Fourth Amendment to the Constitution has served to enforce due process and habeas corpus by preventing unlawful arrest and detention, yet this one Act (NDAA) grants virtually unlimited power to the president to detain potential “terrorists” indefinitely, with all the ignominy of a military Guantanimo-like detention. And one of the most striking components of the legislation is that the “battlefield” of the “War on Terrorism” is expanded to include the homeland of the United States of America.

The Act, itself a violation of law since it was drawn up, debated, and passed in closed committee sessions without a single hearing, is clearly a violation of posse comitatus, established in 1878 which proscribes the use of the military on domestic soil to enforce the laws of the land.

While I rarely find myself in agreement with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), on this issue we’re of one accord. In their write-up of the NDAA they averred the Act “will direct American military resources not at an enemy shooting at our military in a war zone, but at American citizens and other civilians.” They continue, “The power is so broad that even U.S. citizens could be swept up by the military and the military could be used far from any battlefield, even within the United States itself.”

Section 1031 of the Act concludes with an attempt at assuaging civil libertarian concerns by stating, “Nothing in this section is intended to limit or expand the authority of the President or the scope of the Authorization for Use of Military Force.” It may not be “intended,” but the act does precisely that.

Section 1032 further attempts to mitigate the far-reaching affects of the legislation by stating that the, “The requirement to detain a person in military custody under this section does not extend to citizens of the United States.” While not “required,” it clearly leaves the door wide open for the possibility of military detention of citizens.

For students of history, this legislation eerily has a parallel in the Enabling Act of 1933 in Germany, where rights enumerated in the Weimar constitution were repressed or precluded by expanded central government control. The subsequent staged attack on the Reichstag or parliament building, led to the Reichstag Fire Decree, finalizing the transition of Adolph Hitler from Chancellor of the Republic, to Führer. Is that all it would take to make that final transition here?

At what point do we as citizens reject and stand up against such trampling of civil liberties? There was so much disapprobation over the Patriot Act, and this goes so much further. It’s impossible to not see another parallel from 20th century Germany in the words of Martin Niemoller, “First they came for the communists, and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a communist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a Jew. Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak out for me.”


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, Idaho, 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].

 

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].

Receive Alerts

Get the latest news and updates from Freedom First Society.

This will close in 0 seconds