Filed under: public education

The Morality of Civility

"'Tis substantially true that virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government.  Who that is a sincere friend to it, can look with Indifference upon attempts to shake the foundation of the fabric?" (George Washington, Farewell Address, 1796).*

 

The Northwest Ordinance is a rock-solid example of the nonsectarian religious predicate embraced as constitutional law.  When the Articles of Confederation was replaced by the new Constitution, the Northwest Ordinance was passed again and became effective under the new Constitution.  George Washington signed the Northwest Ordinance back into law on August 7, 1789.  Article III specified "Religion, morality, and knowledge, being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education, shall forever be encouraged."**  During this same period of time (July 17 to August 7, 1789), the same men who had implemented the Northwest Ordinance were writing the First Amendment to the Constitution [prohibiting government officials from interfering with religious freedom, printing press and education competition].

 

Even some atheists and skeptics realize the inviolate nature of what Americans call the "laws of God and creation's nature."  Ernest Renan, the agnostic, warned his friends: "Let us enjoy the liberty of the sons of God, but let us take care lest we become accomplices in the diminution of virtue which would menace society if Christianity were to grow weak.  What should we do without it?  If Rationalism wishes to govern the world without regard to the religious needs of the soul, the experience of the French Revolution is there to teach us the consequences of such a blunder."***

 

History summarizes the nature of war against responsible citizen self-rule and liberty.  When Whittaker Chambers left the Communist party, he feared that the world would succumb to the parasitic nature of socialistic promises.  He said that the only hope was to discover "a power of faith which will provide mans' mind, at an intensity, with the same two certainties: a reason to live and reason to die."**** President Reagan angered leftist sympathizers in American media and universities by using the word "evil."  On March 8, 1983, Reagan said the Cold War would "never be decided by bombs and rockets…"  We would prevail because of belief in God.  What is teaching moral revisionism (objected to by over 90 percent of taxpayers, teachers, and administrators) now accomplishing in student minds' in captive public schools?  Reagan concluded, the strength to prevail "is not material but spiritual."*****

 

*http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/washing.asp

**http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?document=48

***http://www.scribd.com/doc/79320764/HISTORY-OF-CHRISTIANITY

****http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2001/04/whittaker-chambers-man-of-co...

*****http://usa.usembassy.de/etexts/speeches/evilempire.htm

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Responsible Citizen Self-rule and Liberty

By placing their faith in the principles advanced by creation's God for education, Americans achieved liberty from brutal rulers and the history of big government.

 

Benjamin Franklin, a delegate from Pennsylvania to the second Continental Congress and signer of the Constitution of the United States, wrote this in his Articles of Belief:  "I believe there is one supreme, most perfect Being…  Also when I stretch my imagination through and beyond our system of planets, beyond the visible fixed stars themselves, into that space that is [in] every way infinite, and conceive it filled with suns like ours, each with a chorus of worlds forever moving around him…  That I may be preserved from atheism . . . Help me, O Father!... For all thy innumerable benefits; for life, and reason… my good God, I thank thee!"*

John Quincy Adams, America's sixth president:  "The law given from Sinai was civil and municipal as well as a moral and religious code; it contained many statutes… of universal application--laws essential to the existence of men in society [of the United States], and most of which have been enacted by every nation which ever professed any code of laws."**

To justify taxpayer-funded education, instruction must detail the civil and moral absolutes found in the Ten Commandments but rightly avoid controversy of religious codes that are the domain of church denominations.  The depth of spiritual conviction of these absolutes is spelled out in the Creator-based Declaration of Independence, religious liberty (First Amendment), and the Bill of [human] Rights law.  Citizen equality as sovereigns under God over government is demonstrated when randomly chosen citizens serve as the supreme court for judgment of guilt or innocence in criminal trials conducted by government officials.  The above values are the design, and the Constitution is the tool to implement that design.

 

The preamble to the Constitution, "We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare [meaning common needs that do not conflict with or hamper the development of the work ethic and personal self-reliance], and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."

 

"Our investigation indicates that the main reason for youthful rebellion and the attitude of carelessness in student morals is their loss of confidence in the wisdom embedded in their heritage.  Failure to dearly implant these truths detaches future generations from past experience, the very basis of education" (Grand Jury Presentment, 1968-69, Problems in Higher Education, the Eleventh Judicial of Iowa).

 

First-amendment-rated-e-for-everyone-225x300

*http://www.revolutionary-war-and-beyond.com/ben-franklin-quotes-1.html

**http://quotes.practicalmanliness.com/john-quincy-adams/138/

 

 

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The Sovereignty of the American Citizen

Those among us who choose to exchange declining relationships and health for the temporary excitements of moral revisionism is one thing.  Exercising that diversity in private is their right.  Those demanding the right, however, to take over behavioral curriculum in taxpayer-funded public schools is another.  The war they have imposed, by pressuring liberals in government, must be confronted and won.  America is a Republic!  The "living Constitution" idea of changeable decrees imposed by liberal judges (1947 Everson v. Board of Education decision) always becomes despotism because power in the hands of man, over time, becomes corrupt.

 

"Our fathers have earned and bought it for us, at the expense of their ease, their estates, their pleasure, and their blood.  And liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people, who have a right, from the frame of their nature, to knowledge, as their great Creator, who does nothing in vain, has given them understandings, and a desire to know; but besides this, they have a right, an indisputable, unalienable, indefeasible, divine right to that most dreaded and envied kind of knowledge, I mean, of the characters and conduct of their rulers.  Rulers are no more than attorneys, agents, and trustees for the people; and if the cause, the interest and trust, is insidiously betrayed, or wantonly trifled away, the people have a right to revoke the authority. And the preservation of the means of knowledge among the lowest ranks, is of more importance to the public than all the property of all the rich men in the country" (John Adams, Vice-President under George Washington, and second president of the United States, A Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law, 1766 from The Works of John Adams, …by his grandson, Charles F. Adams, Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 10 volumes).

 

The sovereignty of man under the impartial and higher authority of creation's God over government is traceable from the Bible to the Magna Carta, 1215, signed at the point of a sword by a frightened king.  It is likewise traceable to the English Bill of Rights, 1689, signed by a would-be brutal king.  We then have the God-honoring American Declaration of Independence, 1776, the War of Independence, and then the Constitution highlighted by the First Amendment and the Bill of [human] Rights which details what servants in government must never be allowed to violate.

 

The Common Law jury system, resting final authority in the people, came alive in America on March 4, 1789, the date Congress set for the start of the new ConstitutionThis is the most important feature of the American Constitution.  George Washington became our first president under the Constitution on April 30, 1789.

 

Revelations of the American Judeo-Christian heritage are singularly qualified to foster personal responsibility, citizen self-government and prosperity.  People do not steal the fruits of other men's labor.  The community helps those few who are not able to work or are indigent for other reasons.  Reputations for honesty do not rest in the words of evil gossips.  Taxpayer-funded educators support the character of the traditional family.

 

God does not control men; He protects those who will listen.  By applying God-honoring interpretations of Scripture and being sensitive to His Spirit, man becomes self-controlled (Hebrews 13:18-20).  "Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding.  In all thy ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct thy paths" (Proverbs 3:5-6). 

 

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The First Amendment is the Most Important Amendment

The most important of all the amendments to our Constitution is the First Amendment:  "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances."

 

In the 1947 Everson v. Board of Education decision, the Supreme Court majority discarded the principle for control of government by law (government limited by laws instituted by citizen sovereigns).  They displaced it with control of government by man (top down authoritarianism).  Quoting Alexander Hamilton:  "Government is frequently and aptly classed under two descriptions, a government of FORCE [changeable decrees by authoritarian man], and a government of LAWS [governments that derive 'their just powers' from the consent of the governed], the first is the definition of despotism--the last Liberty" (Tully Papers, 1794).  These two approaches to governing society have been at war against one another throughout human history.

 

The Everson v. Board of Education decision clearly compromised "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…" The judges altered the Constitution at the core of its meaning.  Power-hungry judges and politicians, along with fellow travelers in education, the media and monopoly union bosses, are now working overtime.  They are leveraging the judge-created right that empowers liberals to impose government establishment monopoly in public education, preventing the competition of ideas by moral religions.  The power to impose false renditions of truth upon  captive government classrooms and poison youthful minds is being used to confuse, marginalize and rule new generations.

 

"For many years psychologists and educators have recognized the processes by which thought and behavioral patterns acquired in youth become the basis for adult motivation.  In modern times thoughtful observers have become progressively aware that moral, social, and political concepts implanted during the time of mental immaturity not only participate in the conduct of later life, but, once acquired, such concepts become dominant and often unalterable in the adult" (Story County Grand Jury, in and for the 11th Judicial District of Iowa, 1969).

 

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The First Amendment

The most important of all the amendments is the First Amendment.  This is demonstrably true.  It was not until secular militants were leveraged by the 1947 Supreme Court's Everson v. Board of Education decision that the role of moral absolutes ceased to be standard in government schools.

 

On September 25, 1789, Congress requested unanimously that President Washington proclaim a national day of thanksgiving and prayer.  This is the same Congress that on the same day approved the final draft of the First Amendment to protect the people's rights to religious freedom from suppression by government administrators, judges and legislators.  President Washington proclaimed on October 3, 1798:  "Whereas it is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits, and humbly to implore His protection and favor…  Now, therefore, I do recommend… that we may then all unite in rendering unto Him our sincere and humble thanks for His kind care and protection of the people of this country previous to their becoming a nation; for the signal and manifold mercies and the favorable interpositions of His providence in the course and conclusion of the late war; for the great degree of tranquility, union and plenty which we have since enjoyed; for the peaceable and rational manner in which we have been enabled to establish constitutions of government for our safety and happiness, and particularly the national one now lately instituted; for the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed…  And also that we may then unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations, and beseech Him to pardon our national and other transgressions… And to promote the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue."*

 

The First Amendment was added to the Constitution to emphasize the proper use of the Constitution as a tool to protect and uphold religious freedom.  This freedom enables the religious denominations to compete in public, including education.  This, in turn, sharpens the importance of moral absolutes in the minds of citizens who are the sovereigns under God over government.  For most of our history, the Judeo-Christian basis for citizen self-rule has been vigorously taught.  Non-denominational prayers and the Pledge of Allegiance were practiced in classrooms.  For several decades now the moral religions, most directly Christianity, have been under systematic attack by liberal judges.  Americans can agree with the following quote as long as any conflict between amendments to the Constitution are reconciled by having the First Amendment, in its original meaning up until 1947, upheld as supreme.

 

"A constitution, like any other document, is to be read as a whole.  The court, in the language of the lawyers, 'will take the instrument by its four corners' and read each part in the light of the rest.  Since written constitutions come into effect through popular assent, the meaning intended by the people would be sought by the courts.  The common understanding of the words at the time the language was employed is therefore of cogent significance.  This consideration, however, will not prevent the application of the terms employed to conditions arising later and not contemplated at the time the language was adopted…  There is an ancient rule of statutory construction, coming down through Blackstone, that in seeking the true meaning of legislative language the court will take cognizance of the 'old law, the mischief and the remedy.'  The rule is useful in constitutional construction" (Rosco Pound, Dean of the Law School of Harvard University, Volume III, National Law Library, P. F. Collier & Son Publishers, New York, New York, 1939, 23-24).

 

*http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/GW/gw004.html


 

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Part Ten: Grand Jury Presentment of "Problems in Higher Education"

Portions of the Presentment of the Grand Jury for the Eleventh Judicial District of Iowa follow, with words added for clarification in brackets.  Supplemental ideas are italicized.

 

End of Presentment II

 

"The 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure by the American Association of University Professors has no legal effect, but the AAUP publicly censures colleges and universities that they believe have violated [their version of] academic freedom.  However, nearly all [not all] of the colleges and universities have adopted this statement or a variation of the statement which is contained in the faculty policy manual of each college or university, and it is incorporated by reference in the employment contract between the university and each individual faculty member."*

 

The penetrating damage imposed because of tenure laws sheltering radical professors and teachers in the soft sciences must be [reversed].  The authority of taxpayer/parents to control what is taught in government institutions must be restored.  By routing education revenues directly to the parents or guardians, sanity will be restored to education.  The many thousands of honest and morally upright teachers will again have the unimpeded support of the citizen consensus.  Not only will what is taught be cleaned up, but also competition between education suppliers will reduce the cost [and increase the quality] of public education.

 

The voice in the chorus of concerned citizens is imperative.  What confronts the American family and voter electorate is a test of wills.  School administrators must be able to fire leftist teachers [without spending] years and… tens of thousands of taxpayers' dollars defending education from the [resulting] lawsuits imposed by ACLU lawyers and the imperial arm of radical judges.  To effect change, active citizen involvement in the political process must exceed the determination of those who are using political circumvention to destroy the family and liberty.

 

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*Dr. Ronald B. Standler, "Academic Freedom in the USA," http://www.rbs2.com/afree.htm

 

 

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Part Eight: Grand Jury Presentment of "Problems in Higher Education"

Portions of the Presentment of the Grand Jury for the Eleventh Judicial District of Iowa follow, with words added for clarification in brackets.  Supplemental ideas are italicized.

 

Most Important Educational Change Needed

 

1.  Regents' policy changes which will sufficiently define and implement the elimination of moral pollution by faculty and paid speakers will by all suitable means encourage "moral… improvement" (Constitution of the State of Iowa, Article IX, 2nd School… Sec. 3).

 

2.  There is a need for increased emphasis on the American ideal at all levels of education.  We believe this ideal needs to be a continuing emphasis from kindergarten through maturity.  Our revolutionary concepts are a most exciting and important subject.

 

It seems rather clear that the nerve center for society, the power for social revolution, is inherent in the adult electorate rather than in the schools, and that the radical missionaries should be sent to the electorate, not to the captive audience of youthful minds.

 

The idea… that the people of this land should not be trusted with the complexities of education is absurd.  The greatness of America places the educational and political emphasis under the control of the people.  This approach is much safer than providing a haven [tenure guarantees] for… teachers.

 

Our soldiers have been dying for this ideal.  Education, as never before, should clearly teach it.  Even in imperfection, it has achieved greatness for Americans unparalleled in history.  Every individual is important, and the mature public make the decisions over government--something that atheistic, humanist-based governments do not and cannot provide.

 

Right of Taxpayers to Control Education Challenged

 

Who has academic freedom, the parent/taxpayer or the teacher?  Is the parent, who once had academic freedom, now to be deprived because a teacher was hired?  Most agree that anyone can teach what he pleases on his own, but must not [take advantage of his own] academic freedom by robbing taxpayers of their freedom to direct public education in the public's interest, based upon the learning process and established knowledge.

 

Problems Compound If Not Corrected

 

No single level of education should be considered in a vacuum…  But it is going on!  The students of colleges are, after all, the graduates of American elementary and secondary schools.  We, the adults and teachers of today, are the graduates of high schools, colleges, and universities in the recent past.  Not only are various levels of American education interrelated, but the problems also feed back upon one another to produce a complex of relationships that affect us all and must be handled wisely.  In professions such as medicine or architecture, failures soon become apparent and are corrected.  A faulty experiment impacting the socio/political mindset may not be detected for two or three generations, when it is too late to reverse and avoid disaster.

 

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Part Seven: Grand Jury Presentment of "Problems in Higher Education"

Portions of the Presentment of the Grand Jury for the Eleventh Judicial District of Iowa follow, with words added for clarification in brackets.  Supplemental ideas are italicized.

 

Where to Go for the Solution

 

The frustrating inability of the public to correct the distortion of academic freedom is due, in the Grand Jury's view, to the failure of the people to see the continuation of the atrocious abuses by radicals as the breakdown in the responsibility-authority-control principle that it really is.  Any organization, educational or otherwise, is an attempt at cooperation.  Cooperation is not possible unless responsibility and authority go hand-in-hand.

 

The parents and taxpayers delegated a portion of their responsibility and authority, through an administrative chain-of-command, for the selection of educators who want to teach and [who] agree with public policy.

 

The system of organization varies in the several states, but in Iowa the Board of Regents [chosen by the Governor] is responsible to the public for education at the state universities.  It is…. the Board of Regents who must lay down corrective policy on behalf of the people.  If the problem is not corrected… the public must impose changes as necessary.

 

The taxpayers, having the final responsibility for the universities, quite properly should have the authority to change the Board of Regents' membership or take other measures if they find themselves in disagreement with Board policy.  If the established procedures for governing at this level leave the Regents insensitive to public interest, then it is time to update governing procedures.

 

The citizen public, having given the Board of Regents [in this case] the responsibility to implement public policy, must also leave them the authority to go to the university president, who has the executive responsibility of the university.  The university president, vested with the responsibility by the Board of Regents, has the authority to [replace] his aides if he believes they are not carrying out his ideas [in the public interest].

 

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Part Six: Grand Jury Presentment on "Problems in Higher Education"

Portions of the Presentment of the Grand Jury for the Eleventh Judicial District of Iowa follow, with words added for clarification in brackets.  Supplemental ideas are italicized.

 

Summary

 

The concrete evidence of failures is well illustrated by the article entitled "New Left's Boasts: We Are Organizing Sedition."  According to the article, the New York Times asked an Iowa State University student where he picked up his radical ideas.  The student referred to a teacher by name and concluded, "He was a history teacher here [Iowa State University] two years ago.  I took a course in Ideas of Western Civilization from him.  That got me started."  There is no doubt that some teachers are guilty of using their status to effectively subvert or undermine the morals and allegiance of some students.

 

Friedrich A. Hayek said, regarding sectarian missionaries, "The whole intellectual climate [is a] complete perversion of language…  Collectivism means the end of truth…  The most effective way of making people accept the validity of the values they are to serve is to persuade them that they are really the same as those which they, or at least the best among them, have always held, but which were not properly understood or recognized before."*

 

The atheistic humanist approach to education is illustrated by events at ISU.  Using scurrilous charges, tenured academic mafia undermined academic freedom and forced the discontinuation of a very popular university course dealing with creation science.  The course violated the secular dogma upon which the God-rejecting theory of evolution, anti-Americanism, and anti-morality are constructed.  The course, taught by a highly ranked professor administrator at Iowa State University, was discontinued, and the professors who bullied that decision into effect did not receive so much as a reprimand.

 

According to an article in the Ames Tribune, May 12, 2007, "Guillermo Gonzalez… [was] denied tenure this semester by Iowa State University."  In this event that became known to the public, Iowa State University denied tenure to gifted astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez, who made the mistake of writing a book that included academic support for intelligent design.  At the same time, the university promoted to full professor with tenure rights in the soft sciences an outspoken leftist, Hector Avalos. As a religious studies professor, he served as the adviser to the ISU Atheist Society.

 

Our investigation indicates that the main reason for the youthful rebellion and attitude of carelessness in student morals is their loss of confidence in the wisdom embedded in their heritage.  Failure to clearly implant these truths detaches future generations from past experience, the very basis of education.

 

In the field of morality, all basic truths have been apprehended.  All the changing conditions we hear so much about do not affect the validity or applicability of the central directives of human conduct.  These truths are demonstrated both by their benefits and by the consequences of disregarding them--those who do fall easily into lawlessness, and harmful addictions, et cetera.  There is no greater contribution a teaching institution can make to human progress and purpose than to endow students at all levels with this knowledge.

 

Those who place their present faith and future hope in law enforcement to conduct humanity to brighter times ignore a fundamental psychological truth.  Legal and material attempts to correct human conduct resulting form improper training must all end in failure.  It is impossible to superimpose an effective code of ethics through compulsion.  Police force provides nothing more corrective than temporary control of faulty behavior that is traceable to education's failure to implant established knowledge of morality and the precepts of individual responsibility.

 

Gonzalez

Dr. Guillermo Gonzalez

 

 

*Friedrich A. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom, Britain, Rutledge, 1944, 174).

 

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Biography of Dr. Guillermo Gonzalez at http://www.discovery.org/a/4058

 

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Part Five: Grand Jury Presentment of "Problems in Higher Education"

Portions of the Presentment of the Grand Jury for the Eleventh Judicial District of Iowa follow, with words added for clarification in brackets.  Supplemental ideas are italicized.

 

Observations in the Problem Area

 

III.  Radicals use tactics that blatantly ignore the basic teaching standard of honesty.  It is not unusual to hear them proclaim the virtues of equality and love, and extol violence, hatred and the use of harmful drugs in the same speech.  In their effort to present a one-sided picture, they suppress opposing views.  One jury interviewee [a professor] stated his concern--if students hear a lie often enough, some will believe it!

 

IV.  Radicals' tactics are aggressive, domineering and, when needed, ruthless in character.  In such cases, students and other teachers with average courtesy are no match.  The most aggressive [teachers] prevail over those who feel obligated to spend their time teaching and learning rather than contending with and being buffeted by verbal terrorism.  One of the radicals' tactics is rule by policy committee domination.  They pressure administrators to relinquish their duty in a specific area and turn it over to a committee.

 

These practices by employees all fall below what the taxpaying public, in our opinion, expect and have a right to expect of the teachers they hire.

 

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