I hope that you are already acquainted with John Taylor Gatto and his influence in the on-going conversation about American education.
As his Wikipedia entry states, he is "a retired American school teacher with nearly 30 years experience in the classroom, and author of several books on education. He is an activist critical of compulsory schooling, of the perceived divide between the teen years and adulthood, and of what he characterizes as the hegemonic nature of discourse on education and the education professions."
Some of his friends recently organized a lengthy interview with him, and have released it on the internet. A close friend of mine discovered it and called me. I must watch it, he said -- even though it is five hours long.
I did, and my friend was right -- it was well worth it. In a very warm, engaging, and informal way, Mr. Gatto talks with his interviewer on a wide variety of subjects ranging from education and philosophy to people and current events. I learned plenty I hadn't known before.
Even if you can't spare the time to listen to the entire interview, I urge you to check in to some of the links here -- you'll be glad to add him to your circle of Internet friends. He is a treasure.
__________
Wikipedia entry on John Taylor Gatto
His website
Find him on YouTube
"The Ultimate History Lesson" (the interview)
Index of articles he has had published at Lew Rockwell's website
* * *
If you have some thoughts about Mr. Gatto, or his subject matter, I urge you to comment.
Friday, February 24, 2012
Monday, February 20, 2012
The Troubled Bridge Over The Water
. . . that is, the Sherman Minton Bridge over the Ohio River, joining New Albany, Indiana with Louisville, Kentucky . . .
. . . after over five months of complete closure, due to structural problems on its decks . . .
. . . causing massive traffic problems, rearranged commuter schedules, and some business closures . . .
. . . is now open again!
The most significant effect, of course, is that I can now get to Waffle House in 7 minutes, rather than the 27 minutes that the detour required.
Good people, good vibes, good steak-and-eggs.
. . . after over five months of complete closure, due to structural problems on its decks . . .
. . . causing massive traffic problems, rearranged commuter schedules, and some business closures . . .
. . . is now open again!
The most significant effect, of course, is that I can now get to Waffle House in 7 minutes, rather than the 27 minutes that the detour required.
Good people, good vibes, good steak-and-eggs.
Wednesday, February 8, 2012
A Post To All Futurians
Dear Friends of Future Quake,
Ben Carmack and I returned from Nashville, Tennessee, today after a great session with Doctor Future, participating in the 300th (and final*) Future Quake show. Present at the recording session were many of the Future Quake cast, including Mrs. Future, Tom Bionic, Emmett, Pyro, Chris White, Merv, Futurian Bob, and Adam Sayne. Other Futurians were present in emails, and also in live remote interviews, from South Africa and the Pacific Northwest. The recording process was over five hours -- that's right, five -- and it was great.
The show file will be a great starting point for people who want to explore the seven years of archive files. Many significant show topics were referenced by name, and some by show number. We covered a lot of good ground, and had fun while we did so.
There are a number of sites and projects related to Future Quake that are (1) already in existence, or (2) starting up as we speak, or (3) in planning stage and ready to start up in the very near Future.
For his part, as you probably know, Doc Future will be devoting more of his time to the completion of a couple of books that he has under construction, and that he considers to be of some importance. But he will probably be available for interviews, etc, with Futurians who have projects or web presence.
I will post any and all comments, updates, and links to related shows, you-tube projects, documentaries, and web sites as I know of them. For this purpose, I have created a permanent page titled, Future Quake Friends. Please keep me, and this site, informed and up to date.
Thanks. -- Robert
* We may recall Garrison Keillor's famous "final performance" of A Prairie Home Companion that aired in 1987, and hope that Dr. Future will, in this matter, follow this worthy precedent and return soon, and vigorously, to the Net.
* * *
The permanent page, Future Quake Friends, will appear in the band of links at the top of this site. If at any time you do not see it there, look for a link to it in the sidebar. It does exist at this site as a permanent page.
Ben Carmack and I returned from Nashville, Tennessee, today after a great session with Doctor Future, participating in the 300th (and final*) Future Quake show. Present at the recording session were many of the Future Quake cast, including Mrs. Future, Tom Bionic, Emmett, Pyro, Chris White, Merv, Futurian Bob, and Adam Sayne. Other Futurians were present in emails, and also in live remote interviews, from South Africa and the Pacific Northwest. The recording process was over five hours -- that's right, five -- and it was great.
The show file will be a great starting point for people who want to explore the seven years of archive files. Many significant show topics were referenced by name, and some by show number. We covered a lot of good ground, and had fun while we did so.
There are a number of sites and projects related to Future Quake that are (1) already in existence, or (2) starting up as we speak, or (3) in planning stage and ready to start up in the very near Future.
For his part, as you probably know, Doc Future will be devoting more of his time to the completion of a couple of books that he has under construction, and that he considers to be of some importance. But he will probably be available for interviews, etc, with Futurians who have projects or web presence.
I will post any and all comments, updates, and links to related shows, you-tube projects, documentaries, and web sites as I know of them. For this purpose, I have created a permanent page titled, Future Quake Friends. Please keep me, and this site, informed and up to date.
Thanks. -- Robert
* We may recall Garrison Keillor's famous "final performance" of A Prairie Home Companion that aired in 1987, and hope that Dr. Future will, in this matter, follow this worthy precedent and return soon, and vigorously, to the Net.
* * *
The permanent page, Future Quake Friends, will appear in the band of links at the top of this site. If at any time you do not see it there, look for a link to it in the sidebar. It does exist at this site as a permanent page.
Saturday, February 4, 2012
Sunday, January 29, 2012
Hypocrisy in Four-Part Disharmony
I'm seeing a four-part hypocrisy being played out by Americans and Israelis, which is going to end up in a moral smashup that Christians and Jews are responsible for, but for which they will blame God, or Satan, or the Muslims, or the Left, or whoever else they can find.
The Obama Administration is quite rightly concerned about the fact that a bunch of US Marines recently pissed on the bodies of Afghans that they killed, and photographs of this act were distributed everywhere. This was an intentional insult, violating longstanding traditions of honor and respect among both warriors and people of good will around the world, and at the very best, the US Government knows there will be "blowback," even though everyone professes to be "shocked" that congressman Ron Paul would dare to suggest that America has created many of its own foreign policy problems.
Since the days of Franklin Roosevelt, the Democratic Party -- or at least its liberal wing -- has represented itself as being concerned about international relations from a perspective of liberal values, common humanity, and so forth. And so far as I have heard in the recent flap about the pissing ceremony, top administration officials have said the right things about "outrage," "American values," and calling for the usual "thorough investigations." They have let it appear as if they really care.
But this rings totally hollow to the entire rest of the world, which is fully aware -- much more aware than Americans who view all of reality through a very polarized media filter -- that the US has been expanding its "drone attack" strategy in Afghanistan and wherever else, indiscriminately blowing men, women, and babies into the next world. This thoroughly undermines the legitimacy and credibility of Hamid Karzai, our own puppet in Afghanistan, who is seen to be unable to protect his own people from American excesses. (He can only "protest to NATO.") To add insult to injury, our government then piously "holds Karzai and the Afghan people responsible for their own security." But in sober fact, pissing on dead bodies is the least of our nation's outrages upon the common people of Afghanistan. They are being carelessly murdered and maimed by the dozens, by the hundreds.
I suspect that the (somewhat naive, and somewhat phony) hope-and-change humanitarian image of the Obama administration has been permanently ruined. But we must acknowledge that much of the inconsistency of the Obama Administration can be traced to the extreme pressure of politically-minded Christians and politically-minded Jews who are reinforcing each other's self-delusions, at the expense not only of the credibility of the Administration, but also of the moral welfare of our country.
The Republican Party is an elephant that has been fed a cocktail of Koolaid and Prozac.
The Christian Right wing of the Party has been drinking Rapture Koolaid for at least twenty-five years. Its idea of foreign affairs comes partly from the British-Israelism of the Puritans, and partly from the dispensational imagination of Hal Lindsey types (Late Great Planet Earth), revised and updated by Tim LaHaye and the Left-Behind scenario, sugared up by faith-healers and "Dominionists" who have the answers to all our ills and are ready to "take charge, bless God." The most consistent advocates of pre-emptive war and torture as an acceptable policy have been -- and are -- impudent "evangelicals."
Their ideal America is apparently similar to their idea of Heaven: vaguely beautiful, and very much like an everlasting Protestant church service. Their idea of a Restored America seems to be a sort of cross between Disneyland and The Truman Show. A clean, well-ordered, and prosperous Potemkin village. There is No Drinking, No Smoking, and No Unapproved Sex. But War is OK, as long as you are Pro-Life. If it wears a uniform, salute it. If it wears camo, fawn all over it. And nothing can go wrong for them because Jesus is going to save them from any consequences of anything. Thus, they are mistake-proof.
The other wing of the Republican Party is dominated by the Neo-conservatives, whose economic and political roots go back deep into the Finance-Business-Corporate-War philosophy that gave the Republican Party its inception in the 1850s and has never ever left it. Currently, the Neo-Cons are operated by a more or less cohesive group of Zionist Jews (some of whom are religious in a political sense, while others are re-packaged Trotskyites), who apparently think that whatever the government of Israel does, says, or thinks should become American policy, and that to disagree with them indicates a criminal degree of anti-Semitism. Their idea of New Israel appears to be some sort of a cross between Atlantic-City-on-the-Mediterranean, and a kitsch-y "HolyLand" for religious suckers and pilgrims. They are enthusiastically joined and blessed by a multitude of "evangelical Christians" (who are also religious in a political sense).
Both groups are on Prozac. Supposedly for the sake of a visionary New American Century, wedded to the Greater Glory of Israel, they are really pursuing a less-noble agenda -- mutual financial and political advantage over their underclasses, which are the poor in both countries -- largely, but not exclusively, Arabs, Hispanics, and blacks. In order to achieve this, they have created conditions of perpetual war for both countries, and they are currently working rapidly to create matching police states. They do not care about the consequences of "blowback" on the people of the United States or the people of Israel. They imagine that they are doing God's will, or that they are going to force His hand.
It is true that the Israeli citizens-on-the-street have mixed feelings about all this, so one can hardly charge them with full-blown hypocrisy.
(They do have a small but credible peace movement. They do have activists who have strenuously done bridge-building with their Arab citizens as well as the Palestinians in the Occupied Territories, both Christian and Muslim.)
But the vast majority, alas, are too uninformed, or too apathetic, or too distracted, or too scared, to effectively question the policies of the Israeli government, media, and security apparatus. For all their reputation of independence and intellectual vigor, they are too subservient to their own elite masters to influence much of anything.
Pretending to want peace and humanity, while nourishing their addictions to fear and war.
* * *
In reference to point 4, here is an article which gives an idea of what the Israeli citizens-on-the-street have to deal with, and who runs their political campaigns as well as America's.
1.
The Obama Administration is quite rightly concerned about the fact that a bunch of US Marines recently pissed on the bodies of Afghans that they killed, and photographs of this act were distributed everywhere. This was an intentional insult, violating longstanding traditions of honor and respect among both warriors and people of good will around the world, and at the very best, the US Government knows there will be "blowback," even though everyone professes to be "shocked" that congressman Ron Paul would dare to suggest that America has created many of its own foreign policy problems.
Since the days of Franklin Roosevelt, the Democratic Party -- or at least its liberal wing -- has represented itself as being concerned about international relations from a perspective of liberal values, common humanity, and so forth. And so far as I have heard in the recent flap about the pissing ceremony, top administration officials have said the right things about "outrage," "American values," and calling for the usual "thorough investigations." They have let it appear as if they really care.
But this rings totally hollow to the entire rest of the world, which is fully aware -- much more aware than Americans who view all of reality through a very polarized media filter -- that the US has been expanding its "drone attack" strategy in Afghanistan and wherever else, indiscriminately blowing men, women, and babies into the next world. This thoroughly undermines the legitimacy and credibility of Hamid Karzai, our own puppet in Afghanistan, who is seen to be unable to protect his own people from American excesses. (He can only "protest to NATO.") To add insult to injury, our government then piously "holds Karzai and the Afghan people responsible for their own security." But in sober fact, pissing on dead bodies is the least of our nation's outrages upon the common people of Afghanistan. They are being carelessly murdered and maimed by the dozens, by the hundreds.
I suspect that the (somewhat naive, and somewhat phony) hope-and-change humanitarian image of the Obama administration has been permanently ruined. But we must acknowledge that much of the inconsistency of the Obama Administration can be traced to the extreme pressure of politically-minded Christians and politically-minded Jews who are reinforcing each other's self-delusions, at the expense not only of the credibility of the Administration, but also of the moral welfare of our country.
2.
The Christian Right wing of the Party has been drinking Rapture Koolaid for at least twenty-five years. Its idea of foreign affairs comes partly from the British-Israelism of the Puritans, and partly from the dispensational imagination of Hal Lindsey types (Late Great Planet Earth), revised and updated by Tim LaHaye and the Left-Behind scenario, sugared up by faith-healers and "Dominionists" who have the answers to all our ills and are ready to "take charge, bless God." The most consistent advocates of pre-emptive war and torture as an acceptable policy have been -- and are -- impudent "evangelicals."
Their ideal America is apparently similar to their idea of Heaven: vaguely beautiful, and very much like an everlasting Protestant church service. Their idea of a Restored America seems to be a sort of cross between Disneyland and The Truman Show. A clean, well-ordered, and prosperous Potemkin village. There is No Drinking, No Smoking, and No Unapproved Sex. But War is OK, as long as you are Pro-Life. If it wears a uniform, salute it. If it wears camo, fawn all over it. And nothing can go wrong for them because Jesus is going to save them from any consequences of anything. Thus, they are mistake-proof.
3.
The other wing of the Republican Party is dominated by the Neo-conservatives, whose economic and political roots go back deep into the Finance-Business-Corporate-War philosophy that gave the Republican Party its inception in the 1850s and has never ever left it. Currently, the Neo-Cons are operated by a more or less cohesive group of Zionist Jews (some of whom are religious in a political sense, while others are re-packaged Trotskyites), who apparently think that whatever the government of Israel does, says, or thinks should become American policy, and that to disagree with them indicates a criminal degree of anti-Semitism. Their idea of New Israel appears to be some sort of a cross between Atlantic-City-on-the-Mediterranean, and a kitsch-y "HolyLand" for religious suckers and pilgrims. They are enthusiastically joined and blessed by a multitude of "evangelical Christians" (who are also religious in a political sense).
Both groups are on Prozac. Supposedly for the sake of a visionary New American Century, wedded to the Greater Glory of Israel, they are really pursuing a less-noble agenda -- mutual financial and political advantage over their underclasses, which are the poor in both countries -- largely, but not exclusively, Arabs, Hispanics, and blacks. In order to achieve this, they have created conditions of perpetual war for both countries, and they are currently working rapidly to create matching police states. They do not care about the consequences of "blowback" on the people of the United States or the people of Israel. They imagine that they are doing God's will, or that they are going to force His hand.
4.
It is true that the Israeli citizens-on-the-street have mixed feelings about all this, so one can hardly charge them with full-blown hypocrisy.
(They do have a small but credible peace movement. They do have activists who have strenuously done bridge-building with their Arab citizens as well as the Palestinians in the Occupied Territories, both Christian and Muslim.)
But the vast majority, alas, are too uninformed, or too apathetic, or too distracted, or too scared, to effectively question the policies of the Israeli government, media, and security apparatus. For all their reputation of independence and intellectual vigor, they are too subservient to their own elite masters to influence much of anything.
*
What, then, is the hypocrisy in four parts?Pretending to want peace and humanity, while nourishing their addictions to fear and war.
* * *
In reference to point 4, here is an article which gives an idea of what the Israeli citizens-on-the-street have to deal with, and who runs their political campaigns as well as America's.
Thursday, January 26, 2012
The Constitution Is Not A Virgin
The Constitution is not a virgin.
On the contrary, she has been abused, despised, and ignored from her earliest youth.
A read of history suggests that the Constitution was conceived to be a streetwalker, at least in the mind of one of the Founding Fathers, Alexander Hamilton. (The street he had in mind was Wall Street, which was already the financial center of the US in 1787).
Though she was betrothed to sound money (only gold and silver coin), she was used to justify Federalist currency speculators as early as 1789, at the commencement of the very First Congress.
After growing to full maturity with the Bill of Rights in 1791, she was soon forced onto the back of a white horse to bless and justify the Treasury Department's little war on citizens in the Whiskey Rebellion of 1794. She was very badly mishandled by the Federalist establishment when the Alien and Sedition Acts travesties were perpetrated in the later 1790s, and she was tortiously treated by Chief Justice John Marshall, et al., on more than one occasion in the early 1800s in his rivalry with Thomas Jefferson.
The Party Men who had charge of her bungled the election of 1800, and began the assault upon her "checks and balances" with the passage of the Twelfth Amendment, which enshrined the "Party Ticket" in the electoral college ever after.
Thankfully, her clauses permitting the abolition of slave trade were honored in 1808; but her compromised arrangements about slaves and taxation were used to justify arguments denying any civil rights to those not taxed, as not being persons. Her silence about race was taken to loudly justify slavery and every other abuse.
Her rules regarding treaties were used to circumvent her, and justify outrages against the natural law, and natural citizens, with the deportations of Indian citizens to distant territories.
Bankers and speculators bypassed her provisions against appropriations of money for longer than two years by loading her down with bonds and other debt instruments to feed their greed and fulfill their manifest destinies.
After about three-score and eleven years of being alternately worshipped as a false goddess and ignored as an inconvenient whore by the Parties, she was gang-raped, killed, and ripped in half by the Lincoln Republicans and their Banker-Corporate masters on one side, and the Cotton Men and their silly Scarlett O'Hara's on the other.
For the next hundred years or so, her murderers practiced various forms of necrophilia upon her, outrage upon outrage, dissolving the sovereignty of her states, calling corporations persons, driving over her corpse with Big Business, Big Government, Big Labor, Big War, Big Deal, Square Deal, New Deal, Fair Deal, Yellow Press, Red Scare, Great Society -- and now our own Perpetual International Security State with its Forever War.
She was buried out of sight by a swarm of lawyers and a small corps of money-men. Her body is hidden under the great slab of the Federal Register, which is itself buried under a vast mountain of bank notes. Probably the old Ark of the Covenant will be exhumed before she is.
I fell in love with her as a school-boy, about the same time I fell in love with geometry, or even sooner. Even then, it was just a picture of her that I fell in love with, as I now know. Even I am far too young to remember her; left only with old stories, many of them false.
Dismembered corpse she is, long buried and gone; but I confess I still love the old girl, even with her warts. Her false lovers, rapists, and murderers? Not so much. God forgive me.
I still believe in the Resurrection of the Dead. As long as a few people love her best ideals, and take the protection of them seriously, there is hope.
* * *
I recently posted the other half of this musing, "The Resurrection Of The Constitution." Comments always welcome.
For another look at the Constitution, here is a link to a brief essay by Clyde Wilson, "The Founding Fathers Guide To The Constitution."
On the contrary, she has been abused, despised, and ignored from her earliest youth.
A read of history suggests that the Constitution was conceived to be a streetwalker, at least in the mind of one of the Founding Fathers, Alexander Hamilton. (The street he had in mind was Wall Street, which was already the financial center of the US in 1787).
Though she was betrothed to sound money (only gold and silver coin), she was used to justify Federalist currency speculators as early as 1789, at the commencement of the very First Congress.
After growing to full maturity with the Bill of Rights in 1791, she was soon forced onto the back of a white horse to bless and justify the Treasury Department's little war on citizens in the Whiskey Rebellion of 1794. She was very badly mishandled by the Federalist establishment when the Alien and Sedition Acts travesties were perpetrated in the later 1790s, and she was tortiously treated by Chief Justice John Marshall, et al., on more than one occasion in the early 1800s in his rivalry with Thomas Jefferson.
The Party Men who had charge of her bungled the election of 1800, and began the assault upon her "checks and balances" with the passage of the Twelfth Amendment, which enshrined the "Party Ticket" in the electoral college ever after.
Thankfully, her clauses permitting the abolition of slave trade were honored in 1808; but her compromised arrangements about slaves and taxation were used to justify arguments denying any civil rights to those not taxed, as not being persons. Her silence about race was taken to loudly justify slavery and every other abuse.
Her rules regarding treaties were used to circumvent her, and justify outrages against the natural law, and natural citizens, with the deportations of Indian citizens to distant territories.
Bankers and speculators bypassed her provisions against appropriations of money for longer than two years by loading her down with bonds and other debt instruments to feed their greed and fulfill their manifest destinies.
After about three-score and eleven years of being alternately worshipped as a false goddess and ignored as an inconvenient whore by the Parties, she was gang-raped, killed, and ripped in half by the Lincoln Republicans and their Banker-Corporate masters on one side, and the Cotton Men and their silly Scarlett O'Hara's on the other.
For the next hundred years or so, her murderers practiced various forms of necrophilia upon her, outrage upon outrage, dissolving the sovereignty of her states, calling corporations persons, driving over her corpse with Big Business, Big Government, Big Labor, Big War, Big Deal, Square Deal, New Deal, Fair Deal, Yellow Press, Red Scare, Great Society -- and now our own Perpetual International Security State with its Forever War.
She was buried out of sight by a swarm of lawyers and a small corps of money-men. Her body is hidden under the great slab of the Federal Register, which is itself buried under a vast mountain of bank notes. Probably the old Ark of the Covenant will be exhumed before she is.
I fell in love with her as a school-boy, about the same time I fell in love with geometry, or even sooner. Even then, it was just a picture of her that I fell in love with, as I now know. Even I am far too young to remember her; left only with old stories, many of them false.
Dismembered corpse she is, long buried and gone; but I confess I still love the old girl, even with her warts. Her false lovers, rapists, and murderers? Not so much. God forgive me.
I still believe in the Resurrection of the Dead. As long as a few people love her best ideals, and take the protection of them seriously, there is hope.
* * *
I recently posted the other half of this musing, "The Resurrection Of The Constitution." Comments always welcome.
For another look at the Constitution, here is a link to a brief essay by Clyde Wilson, "The Founding Fathers Guide To The Constitution."
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
Annuit Caeptis
Annuit CaeptisLord, elect the manwho will protect our faithwith very scientific weapons.
-- Justin Adams
Justin comments: The title is taken from one of the Latin phrases on the posteriors of our Greenbacks; a close translation would be, Our undertakings are approved.
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