American School shootings and values neutral education-
the connection to and conflict with essential liberty
This is one of the most difficult topics on which to write an essay.
The grief and anguish for the slain is very hard to contemplate. It will never
leave those families who were savaged by those attacks. The parents will never
see their children again. On the morning of the shootings, unknowingly, the
parents saw their children for the last time. Can you imagine that empty
feeling? Pray and ask God to comfort them during this time of suffering and
great loss.
Some questions that arise out of these disasters have no answers. We will not
pretend that we have all the answers to this or any other tragedy. Evil exists.
Good exists. Sometimes, evil prevails.
When we analyze these events, some questions we think of are, "What caused
this?, and "What can we do to prevent this from happening again?"
These questions DO have answers. The reason this piece is written is to explore
these answers. The phrase that, "Those who don't learn from history, repeat
it" is quite true. Quotations are included from the founding fathers of
American government in the course of this essay to show that humanity has been
here before. The creators of the American constitution were people who met the
barbarians and realized that they are us, and therefore framed the constitution
and bill of rights around that painful reality in an attempt to check our sad
propensity for self destruction.
In questions of power, then, let no more be said of confidence in man, but bind
him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution. --Thomas Jefferson
In our political world today, generally speaking, two types of governments
exist. With varying degrees of application, governments seek to keep societal
order and control. Totalitarian governments control their citizens thoughts,
words and deeds by externally forcing their people to obey the code of law. In
order to bring this about, many personal freedoms don't exist. The government
controls the media and speech of the people to such an extent so as to keep all
activities working for the good of the state. The state sees religious
activities as a threat to it's primacy and atheism is primarily taught.
Individual liberty is a threat to the unified good of the state. Dissent is a
crime and carries a harsh penalty.
No government is respectable which is not just. Without unspotted purity of
public faith, without sacred public principle, fidelity, and honor, no machinery
of laws, can give dignity to political society. --Daniel Webster
In democracies and constitutional republics, such as in America, the primary
method of societal control resides within the people themselves as they exercise
INTERNAL control. This mechanism of order is predicated upon a moral consensus
shared by the society at large. One's respect for their family name or the great
spiritual truths derived from religious traditions informs their inner self as
to what is just and lawful. The guidelines are written on their heart and minds
to the extent that external laws are not generally violated. The external laws
exist to formally detail the law that operates within the internally controlled
individuals. This respect for rule of law is primarily enforced from the inside
out. It might be added that some unjust external laws exist, however, most laws
are enablers of liberty and not it's inhibitor.
John Adams said, "We have no government armed with power capable of
contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Our
Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly
inadequate for the government of any other. Oct. 11, 1798, Address to the
military
"Society in every state is a blessing, but government, even in its best
stage, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one."
--Thomas Paine, Common Sense; 1776
Being willfully ignorant of that vital element for a free society, deliberately,
over the last thirty years, our government, through the public schools, has
sought to exclude the great religious teachings that have fostered the mechanism
of INTERNAL control. Prayer was eliminated from public schools and evolutionary
teaching took it's place. Students who were once were taught that they were
created in the image of God are now being taught they are nothing more than an
end result of random chance mutations. God is a crutch and man is the rule maker
is now the teaching. Furthermore, the teachings of the home were ridiculed as
being backward and restrictive upon "freedom". The creed of the
schools became "If it feels good-do it". If evolution is true, they
reasoned, why not? This is the ethos of the supposed "values neutral
education" and it threatens to permeate every aspect of our culture.
God who gave us life gave us liberty. And can the liberties of a nation be
thought secure if we have removed their only firm basis: a conviction in the
minds of men that these liberties are the gift of God? That they are not to be
violated but with His wrath? Indeed, I tremble for my country when I reflect
that God is just; that His justice cannot sleep forever.
--Thomas Jefferson
In time, as these students became young adults, their college professors built
upon these teachings. Then when these college graduates entered the work force
they brought this world view with them into their professions. They now occupy
political office. They are the "credentialed" experts who promulgate
the public school ciricula. They are judges and attorneys. Some are school
teachers who now teach these things to subsequent generations; the morally blind
now lead the morally blind.
Thomas Jefferson wrote,
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization,
it expects what never was and never will be."
What are some of the fruits of all this? Convenience killing for one. Abortion
is called freedom of choice. We see that without God anything is possible.
Without the INTERNALLY applied moral restraint humans are able to rationalize
any behavior. External laws don't avail. The high school shootings are a symptom
of the moral void created by failing to educate the "whole person".
External laws are interpreted as encumbrances to "freedom". These laws
are "someone else's morality". If it "is my body, my choice"
in one area of life, why can't it be the same in other areas of life as well? At
least their logic is sound.
Good government generally begins in the family, and if the moral character of a
people once degenerate, their political
character must soon follow. --Elias Boudinot, president of the Continental
Congress
So what happens to our society? Well you can bet the political harlots will
seize upon the visual shock therapy provided by the shootings to make themselves
"relevant" and enact new laws that will diminish the freedom of the
law abiding. Dozens of laws were in place that made what was done in these
shootings illegal, yet they happened anyway. Why are people so mis-guided as to
think that more laws will change this? It will only change when the internal
laws are allowed to function within us as they must. As pointed out earlier,
societal control must happen, it is just a question of how.
Those people who will not be governed by God will be ruled by tyrants. -William
Penn
Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the
fatigue of supporting it. --Thomas Paine
The present government will play both sides against each other with these type
of tragedies with the end result being more citizens loosing their God given
freedoms as the state passes more and more laws. Freedom and "rights"
originate with nature's God and not with man. Man by his government systems can
either impede or promote "rights". The only way that (exclusively)
external laws work effectively is when personal freedom is lost. The enforcement
of this system requires a police state. We are heading in that direction unless
the lawful move against this process in a systemic manner. The present
government is fearful of our capacity for self protection. They will seek to use
these tragedies as a pretence to emasculate and disarm this country. Do we dare
trust them?
No free man shall ever be de-barred the use of arms. The strongest reason for
the people to retain their right to keep and bear arms is as a last resort to
protect themselves against tyranny in government. --Thomas Jefferson
"The basis of our Bill of Rights comes from the teachings we get from
Exodus and St. Matthew, from Isaiah and St. Paul. I don't think we emphasize
that enough these days. If we don't have a proper fundamental moral background,
we will finally end up with a government which does not believe in rights for
anybody except the State!"
Harry S. Truman, Thirty-Third President
The solution to these shooting and other on going tragedies is to return to and
apply the necessary moral teachings that brought this nation about and gave it
animation. The ACLU will cry foul, however, but James Madison wrote,
We have staked the future of all of our political institutions upon the capacity
of mankind for self-government, upon the capacity of each and all of us to
govern ourselves, to control ourselves, to sustain ourselves according to the
Ten Commandments of God. --James Madison, chief architect of the Constitution
These fundamentals of our nation's heritage are NOT being taught in the public
schools and this is not by accident. The goal of unregenerate man is to control.
Freedom is a fragile thing and it cannot be domesticated. Values neutral or
values clarification in education is dangerous. The fetish to avoid classifying
behavioral choices as right or wrong is one of the greatest disservices a
government can bring about to it's citizens. The really scary part is the
government KNOWS that our liberty is going to gradually be diminished and this
is part of the formula to bring it about. We the people, I am afraid, have
forgotten the price of freedom. However, we are finding out the cost of having
done so.
I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the
people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and
sudden usurpations. --James Madison
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety
deserve neither liberty nor safety.
--Benjamin Franklin
Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and
vicious, they have more need of masters.
--Benjamin Franklin
We have clear choices before us this day. We can continue down the path of least
moral resistance with all it's glossary of obfuscation and grotesque deceit. We
can be emotionally coerced into bowing to the kings contrivance in order to see
ourselves as "open minded" and "tolerant" as we embrace
varying forms of deviancy and normalize this now proven retrograde proscription.
We can live in denial about this for only so long, however. These events will
become more common and will undoubtedly become worse. In many respects, what
these school shootings represent is the beginning of the end of freedom as we
have known it.
We can also begin the process of reversing the deterioration we see before us
everyday. The advantages are profound. The solution is simple. We the people,
the ones who know better, despite being characterized as unsophisticated and
elementary, must move to vote away those with these world views. We must remove
from our school boards these destructive teachings and their adherents. These
shootings and other moral enormities are the result of their approach. This is
what they have brought us. The wisdom of the people who began this
constitutional republic and codified the natural rights of man within the
constitution and bill of rights have to be taught to every child. Our heritage
and our humanity will be stolen if we fail to decisively act. This time, without
pretence, we must "do it for the children".
Let us not fall in line with the rest of history, whose fate was described by
Alexander Hamilton when he wrote..."But if experience, in this instance,
verifies the lesson long taught by the enemies of liberty, that the bulk of
mankind are not fit to govern themselves; that they must have a master, and were
only made for the rein and the spur; we shall see the final triumph of despotism
over liberty; the advocates of the latter must acknowledge it to be an ignis
fatuus, and abandon the persuit. With the greatest advantages for promoting it
that a people ever had, we shall have betrayed the cause of human nature.---A
letter from Hamilton to the citizens of New York containing remarks on Mentor's
reply, 1784