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Homeschooling Not a Fundamental Right Says Justice Department
In 2010, Uwe and Hannelore Romeike, who lived with their five children in the German state of Baden-Württemberg, were faced with a choice: abandon their Evangelical Christian religious beliefs or lose custody of their children. The Romeikes had withdrawn their children from German public schools in 2006, after becoming concerned that the educational material employed by the school was undermining the tenets of their Christian faith. After accruing the equivalent of $10,000 worth of fines and the forcible removal of their children from the home, they chose to flee their homeland and seek asylum in the United States. They believed our government was more respectful of religious liberties.
They soon discovered that was not the case.
On January 26, 2010, a federal immigration judge granted the Romeikes political asylum, ruling they had a reasonable fear of persecution for their beliefs if they returned to their homeland. The judge also denounced the German policy, saying it was, “utterly repellent to everything we believe as Americans.” However, President Obama’s Justice Department disagreed. They argued that the family should be denied asylum based on their contention that governments may legitimately use its authority to force parents to send their kids to government-sanctioned schools.
article continues here
"Our country is going backwards": Millions earning same as decade ago and three more years of misery to come
The rising cost of living and pitiful pay increases has resulted in a spending squeeze for many families across the country
How to Develop Common Sense
Smart people do not always do things in a smart way; sometimes smart people can do confoundedly, irrational things like gambling away all their money on the stock market, or forgetting to take adequate clothing for a back country hike in the middle of very changeable weather. Whatever your background, training, Intellectual Quotient, or experience, common sense can be learned and applied in everyday situations.[1] And while it may seem provocative suggesting that smart people don't use common sense, this deliberate association is merely to highlight that everyone has lapses in common sense. The more we're trained to think one way (by our workplace, family, culture, etc.), the greater the chance that sometimes we allow sloppy or auto-pilot thinking to take the place of common sense. Common sense isn't a one-stop-destination; it's a way of thinking that needs constant nourishing and application, and this article provides one way of looking at developing your common sense a little further. More
Is There Any Common Sense or Inspiration Left for This Generation?
The Phone Hacking Scandals, the state of the British economy, the rights for terror suspects, Tunisia, Hezbollah being in power in Lebanon, unrest in Egypt and other Arab countries run by dictators which if ousted may then have a government run by other terror organizations and wave upon wave of environmental disasters.
Where Oh Where Has Common Sense Gone? (Communism Anyone?)
“In a Communist system, the government owns most businesses and land and controls all areas of life. China’s new Communist government began by taking over control of the economy. The government seized all private farms and organized them into large, state-run farms.”
- See more at: http://kellythekitchenkop.com/2012/04/where-oh-where-has-common-sense-gone-communism-anyone.
How a nation fall from greatness to decay and slavery pt1
When we see problems that our nation faces, most of the time it is because of decisions our leaders have made in the past. We in the United States have 3 federal branches of Government; they are Congress, Senate, and President, and Judicial. They are called Check and balances so that we the people can govern ourselves without a King.
Comcast Bans Gun Ads as Cable Giant Takes Control at NBC
Comcast, the nation's largest cable provider, no longer accepts advertisements from businesses selling guns.
The policy change was quietly instituted on Feb. 8 after Comcast acquired a controlling interest in NBC Universal, which already had a policy of not accepting ads relating to firearms.
Every horrid thing you need to know about how healthcare is paid for today
"Despite more than sixty years of government efforts – representing the work of both political parties – we are moving further and further away from what we want. Prices are higher, more people are excluded from needed care, more excess treatments are performed, and more people die from preventable errors. Why?"
Lewinsky scandal !
The Lewinsky scandal was a political sex scandal emerging in 1998, from a sexual relationship between United States President Bill Clinton and a 22-year-old White House intern, Monica Lewinsky. The news of this extra-marital affair and the resulting investigation eventually led to the impeachment of President Clinton in 1998 by the U.S. House of Representatives and his subsequent acquittal on all impeachment charges of perjury and obstruction of justice in a 21-day Senate trial.[1]
Stimulus Spending Fails to Improve Economy
If studies on the short-run benefits of stimulus spending and the historical reality of public spending are examined, Keynesian macroeconomic policies that support stimulus spending make little sense, says Andrew Young, an associate professor of economics at West Virginia University.
- The effectiveness of Keynesian increases in government expenditures are determined by fiscal multipliers, which denote how large the increase or decrease in economic activity is for each federal dollar spent.
- Spending multipliers depend on an individual's marginal propensity to spend out of their incomes and their expectations of future tax liabilities.
- When stimulus spending increases the deficit, individuals reasonably expect that the future tax liabilities of the deficit incurred will crowd out the benefits of any spending.
- Because stimulus is the result of the political process and suffers from diminishing returns, it is unlikely to be targeted in the most efficient manner at areas of "slack" in the economy.
- Mixed evidence from various studies suggests the spending multiplier is either greater or less than one, and most researchers, even those who support stimulus spending, acknowledge there are large long-run costs of deficit-financed fiscal stimulus.
- When governments use aggressive fiscal policy they create significant macroeconomic instability.
- Despite the scant evidence supporting fiscal stimulus, many politicians and pundits continue to call for increased government expenditures.
- The American Jobs Act, supported by President Obama in 2011, detailed $447 billion in stimulus spending but was largely blocked by House Republicans.
Source: Andrew Young, "Why in the World Are We All Keynesians Again?" Cato Institute, February 14, 2013.
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The Truth about Obama's Sequestration Report
With March 1's sequestration threat looming, the White House has released a state-by-state report of sequestration's effects. The report is full of doom and gloom predictions like long lines at airports and the loss of special education funding. The predictions involve some large assumptions and generally overstate the impact of sequestration, says Politico.
Obama’s DOJ targets religious freedom, again
The Obama administration has launched another challenge to the rights of individuals to act on their religious beliefs, this time focusing on a family of homeschoolers.
Lobbying Is A Symptom Of Big Government
A common complaint heard from any side in a
political argument is the outrageous amount of influence lobbyists have in
Washington D.C. The concern is merited, as well: in the 2012 presidential
election, Republican Mitt Romney gathered over $990 million to spend on his bid,
while Barack Obama raised over $1 billion. Representatives from
every industry lobby the government for handouts, subsidies, and
regulations. Cont. Reading
Green Side of the Grass (NEW comical song/video about aging!) AGING SONG
Funny video about the intricacies of aging. Great "Over the Hill" song for a milestone birthday for those 50+. Although you may see yourself and/or be reminded of someone you know in this video, it was created as a lighthearted spoof on aging and has a reassuring message at the end! Remember, age is only a number - I recently turned 50 which subconsciously gave me the idea to create this song.
It is my belief that God allows us to experience aches and pains so that we will appreciate our heavenly body when we are called home.
I would love to hear your comments about the video!! - it may take a day or two for me to post them because I have my site set up to allow me to review the comments first to prevent spam.
I hope you enjoy my song/video and that you will be blessed by the true message in the song, heard at the end of the video.
Libby
Young Adults: Fewer Homes, Fewer Cars, Less Debt
The Great Recession caused everyone to tighten their belts, none more so than young adults who now have fewer homes, fewer cars and less debt. The debt profile transition of younger adults reflects a broader societal shift toward delayed marriage and household formation, says the Pew Research Center.
Elite's Plan to destroy America predicted by Robert Welch in 1958
This just goes to show that this mess of a government we have created has been a long time coming and will take a very long time and a lot of work to fix. I wish there was a politician today that wasn't afraid to talk like this guy.
Posted By: Michael Schomisch
Posted By: Michael Schomisch
Conservatives Under Attack
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The GOP Establishment Should Think Twice Before Trying to Undermine the Tea Party
Even though it changed the terms of the political debate, thus giving them a majority in the 2010 elections, many in the Republican establishment deeply resent the Tea Party. They don’t like being monitored by taxpayer-friendly groups that will expose them when they side with special interests (as they have in recent months on Export-Import Bank subsides and housing handouts).
W5 + H = A Baseline for Integrity
UPDATE: Let me add up top an update out of the gate. The issue here is not RedState, but a larger issue among conservatives as we keep growing new and expanding existing outlets for reporting the news. With our jobs board up (if you haven’t noticed), I want to help put solid conservatives in reportorial positions throughout the movement. Now is the time to stop lamenting conservative reporters not having access to the media and instead now is the time to start running a deeper pool of interest and start getting people involved who don’t want to be the investigative “stick it to the other guy” reporters, but the basic who, what, where, when, why, and how reporters.
Conservatives, Not Liberals, Are the Problem
Our best allies in Congress are actually the problem these days. They have stood by while bad bills have passed into law. It’s true that they have fought courageously against bigger government, but it’s not enough to just oppose bad bills. Conservatives need to block them. And they have all the power they need to make that happen, despite being massively outnumbered.
Simmering Down The Sequester Talk
The hysteria in Washington over sequestration is both strange and amusing. The president would like us to believe that cutting just over 2% of our $3.5 trillion budget this year will leave kids without vaccines, meat without inspectors, planes without air traffic control and streets filled with criminals and no police to stop them. Republicans, on the other hand, are wasting time blaming President Obama for spending cuts—yes, the same man who is distinguished as the only president to run a trillion dollar budget deficit, and to do so four years in a row.
A brilliant teacher steps down from the papacy
As the Church prepares for the election of a new pope, we reflect upon the inspiring works and teachings of Pope Benedict XVI. We thank God for his service and his dedication to our faith and to the people of the world. We continue to pray for him as he leaves the papacy, and we pray for the cardinals as they choose a new pope.
Beretta to Leave Maryland if Gun Control Laws Passed
In 1526, Mastro Bartolomeo Beretta was paid to deliver 185 arquebus rifle barrels to the Arsenal of Venice. An arquebus rifle was a long-barreled smooth-bore gun that was the precursor to modern rifles. The Beretta products made at the time were extremely high quality precision arms for the day and the fledgling company quickly earned a reputation among the Republic of Venice.
2/26/13 Republican Leadership Press Conference
The House has passed two responsible replacements to President Obama's sequester. Unfortunately, the President continues to campaign instead of meeting with Senate Democrats to work on a solution to these devastating cuts, due to take effect March 1st.
Character Traits Of Truly Evil People !
Once again, I discovered one of those amazing articles circulating that just makes you stop and go ‘wow’. My commitment to NWV is to ensure our readers have an opportunity to embrace some truly great content. This was one of those rare stories I stumbled across, that reached out and grabbed me. I always want to believe the best in people, but sometimes we have to be willing to see the worst. Then the question is what will you do to keep it from spreading. I hope that each and everyone of you get a chance to read this insightful article.
The first dangerous mistake the average person makes is the assumption that “evil” is a kind of subjective concept. We would love to believe that all destructive and malicious behavior is merely a product of bad environment, bad upbringing or mental psychosis. Deviance in the name of “profit” or “status” is often more acceptable to the public, as long as there is a reason we can easily understand and grasp.
What frightens the average American today is not the abhorrent action of criminality; rather, it is criminality without rationality. What frightens the common citizen is the possibility that some people hurt others not because their mommy and daddy “mistreated” them or because they have a psychological deficiency, but because they fully and consciously enjoy doing what they do.
Our society is desperate to make excuses for the monsters of our era, perhaps because we would rather not entertain the possibility that there is a dark side to humanity that, if allowed, could take control in a deliberate and calculated way.
This is why the greatest crimes of our time often go ignored by the public. The idea, for instance, that international financiers and political elites would purposely create economic disparity, social chaos and global war out of a desire for centralized power and a disturbed sense of superiority is simply too much for many to handle. Surely, these terrible events throughout our modern history are merely the result of random coincidence and human error, right?
Unfortunately, this is not the case. In fact, most catastrophic cultural policies and tragedies can be traced back directly to a subset of people who use their positions of influence for ill purpose and who knowingly engineer calamity not just for personal gain, but also for the gain of their social class.
In the liberty movement, we often refer to members of this group as “globalists” or “elitists.” They permeate the upper echelons of our Nation, and they do indeed have a culture that is entirely separate and disparate from our own. If one studies their literature, initiatives and motives, he would discover another world, driven by outlandish goals and an even more outlandish brand of religious fervor. Here are some of the character traits and beliefs that make these people easy to identify.
Xenofascism
Global elitists tend to see themselves as a separate breed of human being, a superior class with superior faculties, born to rule over the rest of us. In their writings they often espouse the teachings of The Republic by Plato and the concept of the philosopher kings. They believe that some men and women are endowed with a genetic predisposition to leadership and that the average person does not have the intelligence to determine his own destiny. They see the rest of humanity as a blank canvas and themselves as the artists. We are to be molded, and our social dichotomies are to be manipulated.
In reality, they are no smarter than the rest of us. Rather, they inherit positions of wealth and influence, and they automatically assume this makes them superior. Their ability to mold society is derived entirely from their extensive capital and their complete lack of morality. If they were not in the top .1 percent of the world’s rich, they would be treated like common criminals for their behavior. But sadly, in our day and age, money often buys undue respect. Imagine a group of John Wayne Gacys or Charles Mansons, except with 80 percent of the world’s wealth at their disposal and the means to purchase good publicity and legal immunity. That is essentially what we are dealing with.
Zero Conscience
Elitists believe that conscience is a hindrance to success, instead of a worthwhile virtue. They knowingly and deliberately abandon their moral compass because they see it as an unnatural restriction, an obstacle that makes getting what they want more difficult. Conscience, however, never quite disappears in anyone. In order to reconcile their wretched mindset with that distant nagging sensation of guilt, they claim that their actions are “for the greater good of the greater number.” They desperately want to believe that they are serving the future of mankind and that we should appreciate their guiding hand, even though the things they do seem far more hateful than helpful. They would call this “tough love.”
They further attempt to avoid the fact of their own dysfunction by trying to elicit criminality in others. If they can convince the masses that morality is relative and that right and wrong are subject to interpretation, if they can convince us to ignore our own inner voices which are inborn, then their monstrosity could be considered normal — even preferable. In a world of moral relativists, the man with a conscience becomes the criminal, the outcast; and the elites become the heroes they always wanted to believe themselves to be.
Promote Collectivism
Top globalists are not necessarily collectivists themselves. In fact, they often swing far to the other end of the spectrum into an aberrant form of individualism. As discussed above, they even see conscience as a restriction on their personal freedom and rebel against it as if rebelling against enslavement. What they do not grasp is that the inherent nature of conscience is a gift, one which has, so far, kept humanity away from the brink of total self-destruction, at least to this point. It is not a prison. Rather, it is protection from ourselves.
The elitist’s insane ideal of pure individualism without self-discipline is a private matter they rarely discuss. In public, they constantly promote the collectivist lifestyle and admonish individualism in common people. If people can be convinced that they are devoid of inherent qualities and characteristics and that their environment is the totality of their existence, then they will hand over all power to anyone who promises them the best possible surroundings. That is to say, when we have no faith in our own individualism and self-responsibility, we will automatically seek protection, usually from a nanny government or dictatorship.
People often confuse “collectivism” with “community.” This is caused by a lack of understanding as well as a lack of experience. Community is a voluntary gathering of individuals for the purpose of mutual aid. Collectivism is the gathering of people by threat of force or loss, for the purpose of consolidating power into the hands of a few. It is the act of destroying individualism in the name of protecting the group. In America today, we have disappearing sense of community, while the “advantages” of collectivism are being sung to the rooftops by global elites.
The Noble Lie
Elitists are very adamant about the idea of the noble lie, the use of a lie to attain a positive goal. In their view, average citizens lack the capacity to understand the bigger political and social picture; so we must be lied to in order to make us do what is best for ourselves. Of course, their version of what is best for our culture always seems to include first and foremost what is best for them.
The noble lie is a logical fallacy of epic proportions, and I often wonder if global elitists secretly doubt its legitimacy. If you need to lie to people in order to get them to accept your ideas, then there must be something terribly wrong with your ideas. Ideas with vitality and honesty do not need to be “sold” to the public through chicanery; the truth takes on a life of its own. Only destructive philosophies need a foundation of lies in order to take root.
Population Reduction
One of the centerpieces of the globalist religion is the concept of population reduction. They not only see themselves as a separate species with superior genetic makeup and a propensity for ruler ship, they also see the rest of us as cockroaches and “useless eaters,” a herd that needs to be culled. The funny thing about population reductionists is that they always want other people to die in order to save the planet. They never offer their own life as a sacrifice for the greater good. This is because they assume they are too important (ostensibly because they think they are intelligent), while many of us are expendable.
Of course, overpopulation today is an oversold myth that has been disproven in many scientific circles. Population expansion is also not necessarily a bad thing. Greater population means more minds working on more problems. It drives technological advancement and forces us through the survival imperative to invent more efficient methods of production. There are advantages to growth.
In the end, though, global elites do not care about the Earth. They do not believe in population reduction because they want to reduce pollution or the so-called “carbon footprint,” save the poor animals, or even protect finite resources. They want population reduction because first, they are eugenicists who see some people as genetically inferior to others, and second, because a culled population is easier to dominate. Again, fewer minds working means fewer problems solved and fewer individuals to rock the boat when the state abuses its power.
The Source Of Our Pain
Globalists are not the only source of our social pain. We bear some responsibility. When we are not vigilant, when we deny our own ignorance and refuse to learn, when we lie to ourselves and when we cater to personal superficial desires rather than taking the future into account, we open the door for the devil. Evil, like conscience, resides in us all.
That said, global elites are not just randomly terrible people. They have constructed an entire culture of deviance. They are organized evil, and this is a problem we must deal with soon. Good men are defined not only by their adherence to the inner voice of truth, but also by their willingness to act when the truth is threatened. We must educate others and, when the time comes, put ourselves in harm’s way to remove the globalist ilk before they destroy everything in a raging elitist fervor.
By Lauren Lane
Let Them Eat Cake? Government Destroys 1,600 Pounds of Deer Meat for Homeless Just Because
Hunters and homeless people in Louisiana are righteously outraged after state health officials forced a homeless shelter to throw out nearly a ton of perfectly good venison.
Traveling To Anywhere But There
Dear
Friend,
Over the past two
weeks, President Obama has traveled more than 5,000 miles across the country on
a campaign – a campaign to raise taxes. In his campaign-style speeches, he
denounces his sequester – devastating, across the board cuts – that was his
idea. The House passed two replacement plans with smarter spending cuts and
reforms. Unfortunately, the President refuses to meet with idle Senate
Democrats on a replacement plan, choosing to campaign instead for tax hikes.
Watch our new video to find out how many miles the President has traveled to
push tax increases instead of responsible cuts to replace his
sequester:
Give us your
feedback. What do you think of the president’s plan to raise taxes again?
I hope you will share
this video by commenting, liking, or sharing the video on Facebook. Learn more at GOP.gov/sequester,
and subscribe to our YouTube channel for
more videos!
Cathy McMorris
Rodgers
Chair, House
Republican Conference
Why are Firemen Always the First To Be Laid Off?
Another in an unscheduled series of short commentaries on current events
Out of Control Government Spending & Waste; $200,000 for Capitol Hill Bottled Water?
The Congressional Budget Office just reported that in the past two years since
President Barack Obama took office, federal spending is up 21.4
percent.
The national deficit was $1.29 trillion in 2010 (second to the $1.4 trillion in Obama's first year in office, 2009), which means that for every $1 the federal government spent this past year, it borrowed 37 cents of it!
The national deficit was $1.29 trillion in 2010 (second to the $1.4 trillion in Obama's first year in office, 2009), which means that for every $1 the federal government spent this past year, it borrowed 37 cents of it!
Sequester-Sized Government Waste Can Go First
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel complained today about $8.5 million in cuts for classroom teachers in Wisconsin if the sequester goes through. The Fort Worth Star Telegram was more worthy, saying that the $67.8 million Texas will lose in education funding is doable for the state.
“That's a lot of money,” says Star-Telegram.com, “but the state is scheduled to receive $4.9 billion in federal funds this year, part of a total school spending plan that tops $40 billion when local funds are included. What the White House is talking about is taking away less than a 10th of a percent of public education spending in Texas. It's doable.”
Both positions in Milwaukee and Houston are understandable. But both are also off the mark.
Because the question that’s most salient here isn’t the monies that are at stake now, but the monies that have been wasted before- and will be wasted again if we don’t demand cuts now. Monies that won't go to teachers and firefighters and cops and soldiers. Money that will reward those who've created the monster.
With government spending expected to cost $6.3 trillion in the US for 2013, let’s look at the things that we’ve squandered money on thus far; waste that has gone a long way to getting us where we are.
After all, sequester demands that we only cut $44 billion in federal spending. That’s a sum that more or less we’ve wasted on a ton of high profile boondoggles that seem to spark little outrage by the administration that can’t stand the idea of cutting even waste.
As Investor’s Business Daily says:
But will a $44 billion cut in spending out of a $3.8 trillion budget, a mere 1%, really be a "meat cleaver approach" that will "eviscerate" government programs?
Obama frightens people by pretending that the $1 trillion cut takes place right away rather than being spread out over 10 years.
He has taken almost every possible position on spending and taxes. During the 2008 presidential campaign, Obama continually promised to "cut net spending" and make government smaller. The stimulus was promised not to "raise projected deficits beyond a short horizon of a year or at most two."
Yet, during the fifth year of Obama's presidency, we are told that we can't cut spending, that we need even more government "investments."
The Department of Energy, for example, has sponsored loans of $34.5 billion to tenuous “green” companies, many of which have political connections to the Obama White House.
Let’s call in those loans.
The government’s venture into venture capitalism doesn’t seem like such a good idea to me when classroom teachers are going to get the axe.
Or maybe we could get General Motors to make due on the $15 billion that taxpayers are in the hole on the public stock offering of GM? Or perhaps we could ask the auto companies to get back the $27 billion that the government wasted on shoring-up the United Auto Workers union in the bailout plan?
Do we really need to save a union with declining membership and relevance, rather than pay teachers?
We can talk healthcare too.
Before we let the government take over the whole healthcare system, they could first clean up the estimated $48 billion in fraud and abuse that the government’s own General Accounting Office says haunts the part of healthcare that the government controls now-- Medicaid and Medicare.
“In 2010 the Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report claiming to have identified $48 billion in what it termed as ‘improper payments,’” reports Forbes. “That’s nearly 10 percent of the $500 billion in outlays for that year. However, others, including U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, suggest that there is an estimated $60 to $90 billion in fraud in Medicare and a similar amount for Medicaid.”
Holy tamoly: That’s at least $120 billion savings right there.
So if we can find an alternative to the green loans, tell GM to give us back the $42 billion that we wasted on the auto bailout- they have $26 billion in cash today…they can owes us the rest- that $60 billion in savings. Then if we clean up fraud and abuse in the healthcare system that the government runs we could save all told about $180 billion this year, with ongoing savings of $120 billion.
All of this before I cooked dinner, even.
Shouldn’t we do that first before raising any taxes or firing any teachers?
I mean cut spending- and waste- not cook dinner.
John Ransom
Ignoring American History !
In times of trouble, I always look to those wiser and stronger then I for guidance. I look to those who, when faced with hardship, found a way to overcome.
Jane Mayer’s McCarthyist Attack on Ted Cruz
The New Yorker’s Jane Mayer, in a pair of blog posts, served up the latest attempted Democratic Party talking point on freshman Texas Senator Ted Cruz: that Senator Cruz is the second coming of Joe McCarthy. (ThinkProgress coordinates with a predictable illustration for those too simple-minded to get Mayer’s point). As it happens, I have some firsthand knowledge of the subject of Mayer’s vague, thinly-sourced hit job. She’ll have to do better next time, because Ted Cruz is right about Harvard Law School in the mid-1990s. If she’d talked to more people, she might have figured that out.
Here’s the part of Cruz’s remarks at a 2010 event that Mayer presents as shocking evidence of Cruz’s mendacity:
Aside from a generic denial by a current Harvard spokesman, Mayer’s only source for the original article is Charles Fried, my old constitutional law professor who was – at the time – the faculty advisor for the HLS Republicans, but has in more recent years become a vocal spokesman for all things Obama. On the one hand, Fried argues that Cruz has understated the GOP presence in the extensive Harvard faculty:
When Fried was appointed to the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court in 1995, we legitimately feared that we would not be able to find a faculty advisor, which of course any student group needs; as it turned out, Professor Glendon stepped in with Fried’s departure. It may be the case that there were two other Republicans on the faculty, but to this day I have no idea who they were; I assume Ted Cruz didn’t either.
Of course, the more controversial part of Senator Cruz’s equation is his charge that there were Marxists on the faculty. Mayer weakly allows:
Now, it’s something of a hyperbolic flourish to describe armchair radicals of this sort as people “who believed in the Communists overthrowing the United States government,” and as Fried notes, the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 had necessarily pushed a lot of previously proud Marxists to go underground and readjust their rhetoric. But as even Matt Yglesias conceded, “[t]he conclusion that …a follower of Marx’s ideas is, like Marx, a Communist seems perfectly plausible.” The fact that the fall of Communism made the Crits somewhat abashed about their intellectual heritage and its logical conclusions is no reason to discount the thorough Marxist influence in their work, or shrink from asking why arguably the nation’s leading law school should employ several times more of them than Republicans.
Cruz made quite clear who he was talking about and why, and any fair-minded observer can draw their own conclusions – unlike, say, when the Senate Majority Leader last summer claimed an unnamed, anonymous source who told him Mitt Romney hadn’t paid his taxes. Cruz didn’t stretch to connect people via tenuous associations, like those who tried to paint Sarah Palin as a secessionist for a marginal political party her husband briefly joined or Rick Perry as a racist for something written on a rock by a person who sold land to his father. He called a bunch of Marxist professors Marxists, and while he may have thrown in a rather excessive dramatic flourish, his speech drew the obvious conclusion to where Marxism necessarily leads. If Mayer had done her homework, she would have recognized what pitiful support this provides for the talking points she was laboring to shore up.
But for a freshman Senator to draw the kind of fear that generates this type of assault from the New Yorker, he must be doing something right.
Dan McLaughlin (Diary)
Here’s the part of Cruz’s remarks at a 2010 event that Mayer presents as shocking evidence of Cruz’s mendacity:
He then went on to assert that Obama, who attended Harvard Law School four years ahead of him, “would have made a perfect president of Harvard Law School.” The reason, said Cruz, was that, “There were fewer declared Republicans in the faculty when we were there than Communists! There was one Republican. But there were twelve who would say they were Marxists who believed in the Communists overthrowing the United States government.”Leaving aside Mayer’s failure to check a fairly basic fact in the president’s biography (Obama graduated in the spring of 1991; Cruz entered HLS in the fall of 1992), Cruz is absolutely right on the basic point here: there were multiples more Marxists on the Harvard Law faculty at the time than open Republicans. I know because I was there. I was a year behind Ted at Harvard, and was president of the HLS Republicans in 1994-95, when Ted was a third-year law student. I can’t say I knew Ted well at the time (he was more involved in the Federalist Society and Law Review), but we crossed paths a few times, and even then everyone knew he was a superstar who was going places in life. He was undoubtedly reflecting on the same things I saw in those days.
Aside from a generic denial by a current Harvard spokesman, Mayer’s only source for the original article is Charles Fried, my old constitutional law professor who was – at the time – the faculty advisor for the HLS Republicans, but has in more recent years become a vocal spokesman for all things Obama. On the one hand, Fried argues that Cruz has understated the GOP presence in the extensive Harvard faculty:
I can right offhand count four “out” Republicans (including myself) and I don’t know how many closeted Republicans when Ted, who was my student and the editor on the Harvard Law Review who helped me with my Supreme Court foreword, was a student here.Ironically, given the tenor of Mayer’s article, she never asks Fried to name any of these people, but just takes him at his word that he has a list of Republicans on the faculty. Now, closeted Republicans may have been known to Fried in the faculty lounge, but they were of little help to those of us in the student body, seeing as how both the liberals and the left-wing radicals were all very open and vocal. At the time, I was aware of only one other Republican or conservative of any stripe on the faculty besides Fried: Mary Ann Glendon, who was busy during much of 1994 and 1995 with activities on behalf of the Vatican (which she represented at a 1995 conference in Beijing). The fact that we had so little representation on the faculty was a running joke among conservative students; I still have the t-shirts we printed after the 1994 elections:
When Fried was appointed to the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court in 1995, we legitimately feared that we would not be able to find a faculty advisor, which of course any student group needs; as it turned out, Professor Glendon stepped in with Fried’s departure. It may be the case that there were two other Republicans on the faculty, but to this day I have no idea who they were; I assume Ted Cruz didn’t either.
Of course, the more controversial part of Senator Cruz’s equation is his charge that there were Marxists on the faculty. Mayer weakly allows:
It may be that Cruz was referring to a group of left-leaning law professors who supported what they called Critical Legal Studies, a method of critiquing the political impact of the American legal system. Professor Duncan Kennedy, for instance, a leader of the faction, who declined to comment on Cruz’s accusation, counts himself as influenced by the writings of Karl Marx. But he regards himself as a social democrat, not a Communist, and has never advocated the overthrow of the U.S. government by Communists. Rather, he advocated widening admissions at the law school to under-served populations, hiring more minorities and women on the faculty, and paying all law professors equally.Cruz’s spokeswoman confirmed, in response, that this is precisely the faculty clique he referred to, and Mayer does not dispute their numbers on the faculty. But her description is a rather serious whitewash of what Kennedy and the other “Crits,” as they were colloquially known on campus, professed and taught: a menu of class conflict, false-consciousness theory and subversion of property rights that would have fit comfortably on the syllabus at Patrice Lumumba University. Here’s how one of Harvard’s own courses describes the movement:
A self-conscious group of legal scholars founded the Conference on Critical Legal Studies (CLS) in 1977. Most of them had been law students in the 1960s and early 1970s, and had been involved with the civil rights movement, Vietnam protests, and the political and cultural challenges to authority that characterized that period. These events seemed to contradict the assumption that American law was fundamentally just and the product of historical progress; instead, law seemed a game heavily loaded to favor the wealthy and powerful. But these events also suggested that grassroots activists and lawyers could produce social change.(See more here on how Barack Obama’s own views of property rights can be traced back to the Crits – Obama had vocally supported one of the faction’s leaders, Derrick Bell, at a protest in 1991)
Fundamentally convinced that law and politics could not be separated, the founders of CLS found a yawning absence at the level of theory. How could law be so tilted to favor the powerful, given the prevailing explanations of law as either democratically chosen or the result of impartial judicial reasoning from neutral principles? Yet how could law be a tool for social change, in the face of Marxist explanations of law as mere epiphenomenal outgrowths of the interests of the powerful?
Hosting annual conferences and workshops between 1977 and 1992, CLS scholars and those they have influenced try to explain both why legal principles and doctrines do not yield determinate answers to specific disputes and how legal decisions reflect cultural and political values that shift over time. They focused from the start on the ways that law contributed to illegitimate social hierarchies, producing domination of women by men, nonwhites by whites, and the poor by the wealthy. They claim that apparently neutral language and institutions, operated through law, mask relationships of power and control. The emphasis on individualism within the law similarly hides patterns of power relationships while making it more difficult to summon up a sense of community and human interconnection. Joining in their assault on these dimensions of law, CLS scholars have differed considerably in their particular methods and views.
Many who identify with the critical legal studies movement resist or reject efforts to systematize their own work….
Some critical scholars adapt ideas drawn from Marxist and socialist theories to demonstrate how economic power relationships influence legal practices and consciousness. For others, the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory and its attention to the construction of cultural and psycho-social meanings are central to explaining how law uses mechanisms of denial and legitimation. Still others find resonance with postmodernist sensibilities and deconstruction, notably illustrated in literary and architectural works. Some scholars emphasize the importance of narratives and stories in devising critical alternatives to prevailing legal practices. Many critical legal scholars draw upon intellectual currents in literature, pop culture, social theory, history, and other fields to challenge the idea of the individual as a stable, coherent self, capable of universal reason and guided by general laws of nature. In contrast, argue critical scholars, individuals are constituted by complex and completing sources of ideology, social practice, and power relationships.
Now, it’s something of a hyperbolic flourish to describe armchair radicals of this sort as people “who believed in the Communists overthrowing the United States government,” and as Fried notes, the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 had necessarily pushed a lot of previously proud Marxists to go underground and readjust their rhetoric. But as even Matt Yglesias conceded, “[t]he conclusion that …a follower of Marx’s ideas is, like Marx, a Communist seems perfectly plausible.” The fact that the fall of Communism made the Crits somewhat abashed about their intellectual heritage and its logical conclusions is no reason to discount the thorough Marxist influence in their work, or shrink from asking why arguably the nation’s leading law school should employ several times more of them than Republicans.
Cruz made quite clear who he was talking about and why, and any fair-minded observer can draw their own conclusions – unlike, say, when the Senate Majority Leader last summer claimed an unnamed, anonymous source who told him Mitt Romney hadn’t paid his taxes. Cruz didn’t stretch to connect people via tenuous associations, like those who tried to paint Sarah Palin as a secessionist for a marginal political party her husband briefly joined or Rick Perry as a racist for something written on a rock by a person who sold land to his father. He called a bunch of Marxist professors Marxists, and while he may have thrown in a rather excessive dramatic flourish, his speech drew the obvious conclusion to where Marxism necessarily leads. If Mayer had done her homework, she would have recognized what pitiful support this provides for the talking points she was laboring to shore up.
But for a freshman Senator to draw the kind of fear that generates this type of assault from the New Yorker, he must be doing something right.
Dan McLaughlin (Diary)
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