Cathy Keim – Page 7

Refuse to Comply. Decline to Test. Petition Governor Hogan to Cancel Membership in PARCC.

By Cathy Keim

The Worcester County Tea Party recently sent an email out requesting that people sign the petition entitled: Immediate Repeal of Common Core State Standards and Cancellation of Membership in the PARCC Consortium in the State of Maryland.

As both Michael and I have mentioned previously, Governor Hogan has the ability to remove Maryland from the PARCC Consortium. The time for action on his part is running out, so Antonio Piacente is gathering signatures on a petition to give the governor the political courage to pull out of the contract. Go here to read and sign the petition, and then send it on to all your friends.

It would be a shame to lose the opt out clause in the PARCC contract. However, without massive pushback from parents, nothing will be done. Governor Hogan has appointed two new members to the Maryland State Board of Education, Chester E. Finn, Jr. and Andy Smarick, both of whom have connections with the ‘Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, a think tank with ties to the Gates Foundation that supports education reforms such as the Common Core State Standards, school choice, and accountability testing.”

Since Gov. Hogan appointed new state school board members that are supporters of high stakes testing, it seems unlikely that he will drop out of the PARCC agreement without intense pressure.

If the governor and our legislators do not listen to the parents, then it may be time for the civil disobedience option.

Charles Murray’s book, By the People: Rebuilding Liberty Without Permission, makes the case “that American government today is so far divorced from the nation’s founding principles of limited government and individual liberty that it can’t be returned to those principles through normal political action. No presidential administration, congressional turnover, or set of SCOTUS appointments will restore the Commerce and General Welfare clauses. Thus, he writes, supporters of liberty should try to effect change through carefully chosen but broadly adopted acts of civil disobedience against publicly unpopular regulations.”

The Federalist follows up with an article saying that widespread resistance to Common Core could be just the wedge that Charles Murray was hoping for.

As more and more parents become aware of the follies inherent in the premise behind common core, we may finally reach a critical mass of citizens that are willing to say no to the federal government’s grab for control over the public schools.

It’s time for a governor to say, “To heck with Congress’s inability to send our federal education dollars back with fewer strings attached. The cost of compliance with federal regulations is higher than the funds we get back from the feds. They can keep our stinking money. We don’t need the A-PLUS Amendment. We don’t need federal education funds at all. We can run our schools better, on slightly less money, without federal micromanagement.” Local school boards could do the same thing, especially those who don’t get much or any federal funds.

The costs to comply with all the government mandates are enormous. Just trying to get all the technology in place to implement the testing regimens is going to bankrupt the school system. And as we all know, technology has to be replaced frequently, so it is not a one-time cost per student. Then you realize that not only is the technology expensive, but it is helping to implement the data mining of your student’s every move which is then kept in his permanent record to track him from pre-school to the work force.

One other important point is that there is a difference between a test and an assessment. The two words are used interchangeably, but parents should be aware that what is occurring in the schools now is not the type of tests they were used to taking. A test measures a student’s grasp of facts such as 2 + 2 = 4. It can be graded the same for everybody. However, an assessment is to measure change such as can the student cooperate in a group better this month than last month or has the student’s attitude “improved” on a certain subject matter.

Teachers are not trained to evaluate attitudes, but these assessments will follow your student right into the workplace. Combine them with all of the personal information that the assessments ask about the student’s family, religion, and other areas that are not the school’s business, and the data mining that is done by businesses and the government and soon you have a system where everything about your student’s abilities, beliefs, and weaknesses are carefully documented in a neat little file. Some bureaucrat can use that information to send your child to a good college or to block him from attaining his goals.

Parents need to realize that even though they do not have any spare time, this education crisis needs their attention. Sometimes things are big enough that we must make time for them right now. This presidential election cycle is the time. Bring Common Core front and center. Parents need to insist that the presidential contenders address their concerns.

The thousands of parents across the country that are standing up to the educational leviathan need you to join them. Sign the petition and encourage Governor Hogan to be a leader against the federal takeover of our schools. Without your input, it seems clear that he will just follow the Common Core path that is before him. Parents can make the difference. Speak up now while you can.

Editor’s note: I signed on Friday evening and was number 622. We need to do better, people.

Sharia, gay marriage, and the First Amendment

By Cathy Keim

On May 20, 2015 I received an email from the American Freedom Defense Initiative announcing that they are buying ads on Washington, D.C. buses and train dioramas.

AFDI President Pamela Geller said in a statement:

Because the media and the cultural and political elites continue to self-enforce the Sharia without the consent of the American people by refusing to show any depictions of Muhammad or showing what it was in Texas that had jihadists opening fire, we are running an ad featuring the winning cartoon by former Muslim Bosch Fawstin from our Muhammad Art Exhibit and Cartoon Contest in Garland, Texas.

The attack on the event drew a lot of criticism aimed not at the jihadists, but at Pamela Geller and AFDI for hosting such a “provocative” contest. In this convoluted way of thinking, the jihadists could not be held responsible for their attack because they were provoked into it!

Here is the ad so that you can see for yourself what the fuss is about.

While this controversy is important in its own right, the following quote from Pamela Geller made me think of another first amendment issue that we are facing:

Putting up with being offended is essential in a pluralistic society in which people differ on basic truths. If a group will not bear being offended without resorting to violence, that group will rule unopposed while everyone else lives in fear, while other groups curtail their activities to appease the violent group. This results in the violent group being able to tyrannize the others.

The progressives have been very eager to push gay marriage on the American people. The Supreme Court ruling that many expect to legalize gay marriage in every state should come down this summer. If or when that happens, do not think that this is over. The gay marriage fight is really not about gay marriage at all: it is about destroying marriage and the family unit and replacing it with the government.

If it were only about being able to be with the partner of their choosing, then why do we have the vindictive attacks on Christian photographers, bakers, and florists that decline to participate in gay marriage ceremonies? Why is this issue being pushed so hard?

The gay mafia has not resorted to chopping off heads, but it has put many Christian business people through a hellish experience resulting in fines and losing their business because they did not want to participate in gay marriage ceremonies.

As a reminder, the First Amendment says:

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.

This is true whether the speech is politically correct or not.

Americans are facing tough choices on First Amendment topics. If we do not resist the onslaught to demonize any open discussion of what Sharia requires of Muslims and how that is not compatible with the Constitution, then we will soon be silenced on any topic when threatened. For example, besides saying that you cannot draw Mohammad, Sharia law says that women are not equal to men. It allows men to have four wives. It also says that if you convert from Islam, you are to be killed. Now how can that be reconciled with our Constitution?

Yes, we can draw pictures of Mohammad in the USA and we have an obligation to do so to show that we will not back down on our First Amendment rights.

Christians have the obligation to state the Biblical position on marriage. Marriage is only between one man and one woman. If the Supreme Court declares marriage to be something else, then the religious freedom that we have known will be gone because rather than choosing another baker, photographer, or florist, the gay mafia will seek to destroy and intimidate anyone that does not fall into line and state that gay marriage is as good or better than heterosexual marriage.

Tolerance in both situations is a one-way street. If you do what the bully says, then he will tolerate you. If you do not toe the line, then he will seek to destroy you.

Albert Mohler, the president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, states:

Religious liberty is under direct threat. Just days ago the Solicitor General of the United States served notice before the Supreme Court that the liberties of religious institutions will be an open and unavoidable question. Already, religious liberty is threatened by a new moral regime that exalts erotic liberty and personal autonomy and openly argues that religious liberties must give way to the new morality, its redefinition of marriage, and its demand for coercive moral, cultural, and legal sovereignty.

The totalitarian impulses behind Sharia enforcers and erotic liberty advocates both result in the same end: the loss of personal freedom. Our country was founded on the belief that all men are created equal and this came from the Biblical worldview that all men are created in the image of God. This profound concept is what led to the birth of our country.

If we walk away from this truth, then we also walk away from America as we know her.

Mohler points out: Human rights and human dignity are temporary abstractions if they are severed from their reality as gifts of the Creator. The eclipse of Christian truth will lead inevitably to a tragic loss of human dignity. If we lose religious liberty, all other liberties will be lost, one by one.

So draw a cartoon and support marriage between one man and one woman or soon you may find that you can do neither. If everybody draws a cartoon and all Christians stand up for marriage, then it will be much harder for the jihadists to kill all of us or for the gay mafia to destroy every business that doesn’t agree with them, but if we are cowed by the threat of violence, then the First Amendment may still be in the Constitution – but it will not be relevant.

Political perseverance

By Cathy Keim

I have just returned from two trips to see family in Georgia, Florida, and California. I saw all six of my grandchildren in a three week period. I put aside all my usual responsibilities and just enjoyed seeing family. However, I could not put aside my thoughts of what will my grandchildren’s lives be like? Change is in the air. Everywhere you look you see chaos and systems stretching to the breaking point. When will the turmoil explode into our lives and how will that affect our children and grandchildren?

The question that I have posed to many people recently is: Do you think that this is what the 1930’s felt like? People knew that trouble was brewing, but what could the individual do about it?

Richard Fernandez takes a stab at setting the current stage of events and offering possible actions to take in his excellent two part post on PJ Media. I hope that you will take the time to read his posts as I found them very helpful.

He agrees with my feeling of a system that is about to break. In the face of the rapidly morphing ISIS, he sees the nation-states floundering and becoming more totalitarian as they try to control events. There are many problems converging on the bloated liberal western governments that make them unable to adapt to the changing times, but the Muslim jihadists could be the final straw.

The liberal politicians will try to manage the crisis by seizing more and more of our liberties in the name of security. He projects this as a done deal, but his proposal about what to do to survive that and to bring back a civilization for our grandchildren caught my interest because many of us that are trying to have an impact on our government sometimes feel defeated by the lack of positive results.

Fernandez states:

The challenge before ordinary people is to join actions which will help Europe and North America work its way through this coming episode of psychosis. In general three survivable exits from madness can be attempted.

Reforming the system through regular political action in a way similar to how the British went from absolutism to a constitutional monarchy. The old system replaces itself with new parts in a more or less peaceful process;

Creating “monasteries” of survival by establishing affinity groups which preserve culture, technology and values from submergence in the wave of chaos;

Flight to the frontier. Creating technology that will allow some people to physically escape or hold off barbarism.

Reforming the system through political action is probably the most obvious response and the one people will most commonly use. It means engaging in thankless, often fruitless interaction with the generally dishonest political class, but while it will never deliver as much change as one hopes, it will never be completely fruitless. It does something. Whether it can do enough to help us avoid the crisis entirely remains to be seen. But it should be tried. (Emphasis mine.)

There is the call to action for all of you who regularly pick up your phone to call your representatives, write thoughtful emails to be read by disinterested staffers, attend hearings and public sessions to state your case, and write letters, articles and blogposts to educate and motivate your fellow citizens. He covers it all in that paragraph.

The constant disappointment when your representative votes the wrong way again, the easily discernable ruses the professional politicians use to cover their lies, and the irritation when a staffer is rude or implies that you are uninformed are all familiar to anybody that dabbles in politics. For those of us that are called to action in this area, enjoy a small chuckle at how succinctly he covers the whole array of political malfeasance, but remember that we must keep trying.

Eventually the wheels will fall off the progressives’ vision of utopia. They can continue to try to perfect mankind by increasing their control over our thoughts and actions, but at some point the money will run out, the debt ceiling cannot be increased again, and the barbarian hordes will breech the defenses. At that moment, the progressives will finally see that the myth of the perfect man living in harmony with others is not possible on this earth. There can be no utopia.

It is at the moment that the conservatives will need to step in and guide the shattered remnants of Western Civilization to begin again or the new Dark Ages will descend. So, take a deep breath and prepare to call our politicians to account. We must keep trying to work with the system we have to prevent this dire scenario. The stakes are high, but our Founding Fathers never said it would be easy. They struggled to birth this nation. We must struggle to keep it.

An assessment of the current situation

By Cathy Keim and Michael Swartz

Here is a question for our loyal readers: Now that it is mid-May, do you think that the GOP elites in Washington, D.C. have fulfilled their campaign pledges to stop President Obama’s fundamental change of our country?

Michael and I have voted no on that question and to make our point we have signed the Open Letter to Congress: Interim Assessment from the Citizens’ Mandate. (Our signatures are on page 5.)

I wrote about the original Citizens’ Mandate on monoblogue back in February. After working hard on the 2014 elections, many of us felt great relief when the GOP won by a landslide. That feeling was quickly replaced by a sense of betrayal with the passage of the CRomnibus budget and the retaining of John Boehner as Speaker of the House. The Citizens’ Mandate was a call to the GOP leadership to remember their campaign promises and to fulfill their obligations to their voters.

Instead, as the organizers of the mandate stated:

Contrary to the Republicans’ self-assessment of their first 100 days… more than 100 conservative leaders, in only 72 hours of signature collection, have given the Republican Congress a poor assessment on the members’ performance in their first 132 days in control of the legislative branch.

Among the actions by the GOP Cathy and I disagreed with, they:

Funded executive amnesty;
Continued Obamacare;
Jeopardized national security (by not addressing illegal immigration);
Ceded away treaty power on a nuke deal with Iran;
Continued excessive federal spending;
Undermined faith-based agenda;
Helped Obama (by confirming Loretta Lynch as Attorney General);
Continued federal education;
Punished conservative champions (through changing committee assignments), and;
Neglected congressional oversight.

While Congress is doing some things right, there’s a tremendous amount of untapped potential we are missing out on. It’s a reason that other vocal critics such as Richard and Susan Falknor of Blue Ridge Forum, Carroll County GOP Central Committee member Kathy Fuller, and former Delegate Michael Smigiel (who is running for Congress against the incumbent Andy Harris), and conservative commentator Dan Bongino have signed on. Bongino was quoted in the release, noting:

It’s way past time to reinvigorate our party and set forth a set of guiding principles. For too long we’ve been lost in partisan games while forgetting that, in the end, it’s the ideas that will take us to a better tomorrow.

Some may argue that Barack Obama received his electoral mandate in 2012, but it’s just as valid (if not moreso) to make the point that a course correction had become necessary and the results showed the message was sent emphatically in 2014.

Our call is for Congress to translate that message in legislation and oversight. Certainly there’s the prospect of veto after veto, but rather than get the reputation as a “do-nothing Congress” put the onus on the President to respond and – whatever you do – don’t cede any more power to the Executive Branch. We don’t want to have to sign an updated letter in the fall, so get busy.

The culture wars and Common Core (part 2)

By Cathy Keim

Second of two parts.

Where to go? What to do?

In Part 1, I wrote about how Common Core teaches reading in such a way that content is stripped of its context. Every student can read into the passage whatever they feel, which can lead to major problems when it comes to transmitting our culture to the next generation.

Common Core is all about the redistribution of education, just like our president is all about the redistribution of wealth in the economic realm and Obamacare is the redistribution of medical care. Now all students will get a mediocre educational experience (except for our elites which will have special opportunities just as they are exempt from the laws that they impose upon us.)

I promised to give some options to fight back in Part II. First and foremost, I would strongly encourage you to get your children or grandchildren out of the public school system. Our government is so out of control that I do not support giving them any opportunity to indoctrinate any child that I am responsible for and love.

This does not mean that we can abandon the fight for our educational system. Even if we pull our children out, there are many defenseless children left in the government system that need our help.

Unfortunately, the Common Core Standards are now driving the new SAT tests for college admission. This fact has led to many private schools adopting Common Core even though they are not under government control. The private schools, including Christian schools, are so afraid that their students will not score well on the nationwide tests if they do not teach the Standards that they have given in without a fight.

This same fear of doing poorly on the College Board exams will lead many homeschoolers to adopt Common Core textbooks. The public school system is so large that all other methods of teaching tend to follow in its path.

As stated in Part I, we have lost our republic and we must now work to restore it. That means that you as parents will have to take a more active role in your child’s education. If you continue to send your child to the public schools, then you had better plan to spend time each day undoing the indoctrination and trying to repair the damage.

We need to be much more intentional in our child rearing. You cannot leave them to the schools, television, and gaming worlds and expect them to grow up with any understanding of Western Civilization. If you want them to be able to think, then you had better plan to teach them how to think yourself.

Personally, I homeschooled my five children because if I was going to have to deprogram them everyday, then I might as well teach them correctly in the first place. To homeschool your children well, you have to see it as a long-term commitment. You must plan, prepare, and learn material yourself or find friends that can trade their areas of expertise to compliment yours.

If you absolutely cannot homeschool your children, then a private school is your second best option, but you must be very careful to see what and how they are teaching. The public school system is your final and least desirable option. I know that there are many dedicated, responsible teachers in the system. I am not aiming this at them. However, their hands are tied by the restrictions placed on them by the system. Also, the lack of discipline interferes with their ability to utilize their time to teach and the testing schedules that are wildly increased under Common Core eats up more instruction time. Add to that the politically correct positions that must be taught and you have teachers that are thwarted at every turn.

One possibility is to pull your child out of school whenever they are giving the standardized tests. Use that time at home to read something of value.

Take your children to museums, exhibits, historical sites, concerts and art galleries. Let them see for themselves the beauty of Western Civilization in paintings, music, and plays. We studied art and then would go see the original piece if possible. Study a Shakespeare play and then go see a live performance. Read about energy production in science and then visit a historical coalmine. If you cannot see a live performance, then find a well-done movie or act the scenes yourself.

We have been sold the line that you must have an education degree to be able to teach. This is a lie. If you love your children, you can teach them. Isn’t that what you have done since they were born? You taught them to talk by talking to them. You can teach them to read and to do math. There are plenty of resources out there. You do not have to be a master of the subject to teach your children.

I grew up with the wonders of New Math and sight word reading, so I learned phonics when I taught my children to read. My first four children studied Spanish because I had studied Spanish. The fifth one wanted to do Latin, so we learned Latin together. I could only do that because he was the only one still at home, but it shows that you can teach a subject that you have not mastered previously if you are determined.

Go to church with your children. You need to teach them a worldview to live by and the church will help equip you and give you a community to encourage your whole family.

The pervasive moral decline can be offset by an intellectually rigorous Christian worldview. Give your children Christian principles and a strong faith to live by.

Then inspire them with great literature. Equip them to confront the culture, not to be destroyed by it. Literature provides them with examples of bold characters standing up for truth against great odds. Isn’t that what we hope our children will do? Give them encouragement by reading to them when they are younger and then guiding them to great books when they are older.

Our hearts yearn for heroes, but our culture provides us with irony and complex situations of gray. In The Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkien presents characters that fight on against hopeless odds because it is better to die for truth and honor than to live as slaves. Frodo and Samwise Gamgee portray friendship even to the point of death. Gandalf show great wisdom and compassion. Aragorn is the epitome of the servant king quietly protecting people for many years before returning to claim his crown. Faramir is as noble a character as you will ever find.

(I will point out that the movies that Peter Jackson made from the books, while good, do dilute the characters’ greatness. It seems that Jackson had to bring them down from the lofty heights that Tolkien placed them, to more human levels. I would contend that Tolkien knew what he was doing when he portrayed his characters in the heroic tradition. They are there to inspire us.)

On that note I will close. I hope that I have inspired you to not settle for education as the government says it must be done. Instead seek to educate your children to be able to think and reason well and to have the character to live in a heroic fashion by doing their duty to God and man.

The culture wars and Common Core (part 1)

By Cathy Keim

First of a two-part series.

I have been writing about traditional marriage, traditional family, and sanctity of life issues for several years. I have been increasingly aware of the inability to communicate with people why these traditional values are important to them personally and to our society as a whole especially in our political realm. It is hard to win political battles if we cannot defend our positions cogently and make a compelling case for them.

There is the ever-present problem of media bias, which skews decidedly towards the progressive values, but our positions are true and have facts to support them. We can cite studies that show that children do best in a home with their married father and mother. We can demonstrate that babies have a heartbeat at about six weeks in a pregnancy and that they can feel pain by 16 to 18 weeks.

Why is it so hard to engage voters with our traditional values? Why do our facts fall on deaf ears? Donald Williams, PhD, makes a compelling case in his recent article “Discerning the Times.” (This is from the print version of the Christian Research Journal.)

We paid insufficient attention to changes taking place in our colleges in how reading and writing were taught.

(snip)

The attempt to discover the author’s message to his original audience was replaced by a new view in which authorial intention is irrelevant at best and meaning is in the eye of the beholder. When people are taught to read this way, the authority of all cultural texts- including our founding documents and Scripture- is undermined, so that even good arguments for traditional values lose their traction. To reverse this defeat, we must recognize the importance of reading and how it is taught.

Tea Party activists, pro-life advocates, and judicial restraint supporters all point to our founding documents and our Judeo-Christian heritage and beg for people to resist the “hope and change” that has been unleashed on our country. Our history is firmly on our side of the argument, but people look at us as though we are speaking gibberish.

I remembered an article about a teacher complaining about a Common Core lesson plan in the Washington Post several years ago. I looked it up and sure enough my memory was correct: the teachers were to teach the Gettysburg Address in a particular manner.

Another problem we found relates to the pedagogical method used in the Gettysburg Address exemplar that the Common Core calls “cold reading.”

This gives students a text they have never seen and asks them to read it with no preliminary introduction. This mimics the conditions of a standardized test on which students are asked to read material they have never seen and answer multiple choice questions about the passage.

Such pedagogy makes school wildly boring. Students are not asked to connect what they read yesterday to what they are reading today, or what they read in English to what they read in science.

The exemplar, in fact, forbids teachers from asking students if they have ever been to a funeral because such questions rely “on individual experience and opinion,” and answering them “will not move students closer to understanding the Gettysburg Address.”

(This is baffling, as if Lincoln delivered the speech in an intellectual vacuum; as if the speech wasn’t delivered at a funeral and meant to be heard in the context of a funeral; as if we must not think about memorials when we read words that memorialize. Rather, it is impossible to have any deep understanding of Lincoln’s speech without thinking about the context of the speech: a memorial service.)

The exemplar instructs teachers to “avoid giving any background context” because the Common Core’s close reading strategy “forces students to rely exclusively on the text instead of privileging background knowledge, and levels the playing field for all.” What sense does this make?

(snip)

Asking questions about, for example, the causes of the Civil War, are also forbidden. Why? These questions go “outside the text,” a cardinal sin in Common Core-land.

According to the exemplar, the text of the speech is about equality and self-government, and not about picking sides. It is true that Lincoln did not want to dishonor the memory of the Southern soldiers who fought and died valiantly. But does any rational person read “The Gettysburg Address” and not know that Lincoln desperately believed that the North must win the war? Does anyone think that he could speak about equality without everyone in his audience knowing he was talking about slavery and the causes of the war? How can anyone try to disconnect this profoundly meaningful speech from its historical context and hope to “deeply” understand it in any way, shape, or form?”

This teacher points out many of the problems with reading without any context. However, you must remember that the proponents of “New Criticism” have been entrenched in our universities for over fifty years. While most of us ignore the academic world, it does not ignore us. The professors of the academy have been educating our children and setting them loose on our society to wreak havoc. We have been undermined from within. Few of us, or our children, can articulate these concepts in the academic jargon that the scholarly journals use. In fact, we do not read the journals because they seem ridiculous to us, but the concepts have filtered into our society so that appealing to the original intent of the founders of our country or declaring that our Judeo-Christian heritage tells us that marriage is between a man and a woman has no weight or credibility.

If our citizens have been taught that it doesn’t matter what meaning the author intended to convey, but only what they interpret it to mean to them, then we cannot convince them by our good arguments from the Constitution or the Bible.

Williams adds:

(W)e must adjust our rhetoric to address the audience that actually exists, not the one that was here two generations ago. We need to stop berating people for departing from a position they never held.

(snip)

It is too late to preserve the American republic (we have to restore it). We have lost the opportunity to appeal to the old consensus and we need to stop acting like it is still there.

If you have had a hard time crystallizing your concerns about Common Core, then I hope that this information will help you identify a key problem in an easy to share example. I find that many people just cannot grasp what is at stake in our schools.

Sadly, we lost the culture war over fifty years ago when we let the academic world be overtaken by progressive professors. Common Core is just one of the final steps in destroying our society.

Part II will address what we can do to remedy our situation.

Easter musings

By Cathy Keim

Editor’s note: Rather than leave the site all but dark for Easter as I did last year, I’m going to back up what I wrote on Good Friday with Cathy’s thoughts on the week that was in the religious realm.

**********

This has been a tumultuous week with hysteria over the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) in Indiana and Arkansas, the tenth anniversary of the death of Terri Schiavo, and always in the background the ongoing holocaust of abortions.

Terri Schiavo, a profoundly brain damaged woman, was starved and dehydrated to death by court order despite her family pleading to be allowed to take care of her. They were not even allowed to moisten her lips as she died a prolonged and painful death that would be deemed inappropriate for the vilest convicted felon.

Her husband decided, and the courts backed him up, that Terri would not want to live in her condition, so she was forced to die by starvation and dehydration. Here were two opposing points of view embodied in the husband and Terri’s family. He could not tolerate allowing her to live and they could not tolerate forcing her to die. After a lengthy court battle, a judge decided that she must die. Nothing that the family could do could stop that order. Police guarded her to make sure that they did not touch a drop of water to her parched lips.

That is where the new tolerance takes you.

When there are two strongly held convictions, traditional understanding is that tolerance will allow each to go his own way. This is not how tolerance works anymore.

The tolerant position in the Terri Schiavo case would lean towards do no harm. She had a loving family that wanted to care for her. The husband had moved on with his life including a new girlfriend and children. Let the poor woman live.

Do not be taken in by the use of tolerance by the social progressives. It is a code word that means they will get the social agenda that they want over the protest of anyone and everything that is traditional, sacred, or reasonable.

Just as Terri Schiavo had to die because the social progressive movement had deemed that a brain damaged person was not a “real” person, so they have decided that religious freedom must die because it stands in the way of their continued restructuring of our society.

The Terri Schiavo episode was a watershed in our culture turning towards a culture of death. The ongoing abortion holocaust is another example as are the Death with Dignity bills that are popping up all over the country.

We are being pushed inexorably towards a total refutation of our Judeo-Christian heritage. The holdouts are the Christians that still believe that God’s truth is more important than the progressive gospel of man’s perfectibility leading to Utopia here on earth. The dream of Utopia, heaven on earth, is a popular, recurring theme that always leads to mass mayhem, death, and fascism. People are individuals that do not like to be told how to think and what to do. The only way to ensure conformity of the masses is to coerce compliance by fear and force.

The governors of Indiana and Arkansas (Mike Pence and Asa Hutchinson, respectively) that just caved on the RFRA bills did not understand what hit them. Why they did not see it coming, I do not know. Certainly there was warning when Gov. Jan Brewer in Arizona faltered last year.

Perhaps now we finally have the attention of our fearful leaders. The progressives that have been pushing to destroy the fabric of our society are serious. They will not be stopped by Republican leaders caving a little here or there. Giving ground only fuels their lust to win. That is why I keep begging our leaders to consider their principles carefully and then to stand on them.

This RFRA fight is not about gay marriage or equality for gays. That is just a temporary way station on the path to the total destruction of traditional (religious) values. It started years ago with no-fault divorce weakening marriage. Contraceptives allowed the separation of child rearing from marriage, thus further weakening marriage, as it became just a form of personal fulfillment rather than the vehicle to rear children in a loving home with two parents to guide them.

The push for release from sexual restrictions brought on cohabitation, single parents, and eventually homosexual marriage.

Homosexual marriage was always a side note though. The vast majority of the gay population does not want to avail themselves of marriage. Their goal is the complete equality of the homosexual lifestyle and that is not premised on a monogamous relationship.

The end game is becoming clearer now. It is not really anything to do with the homosexual movement per se. It is about the total release of any and all sexual restrictions on any person. To reach that goal, all the traditional foundations of a society have to be weakened and eventually removed. This will leave a people that will need the government for everything.

The only groups standing in the way are the religious believers. Thus they must be denigrated, reviled, and berated until they either fall into line or are so cut off from society that they cannot have a voice. Their views will be deemed so bigoted and hateful, that nobody will even consider anything they say. Who bothers to listen to a bigot?

We are very close to achieving that reality. Any person or group that steps out of the politically correct storyline is decried as beyond the pale.

Religious freedom or freedom of conscience means being able to say what your convictions are and to live by them. It doesn’t mean that you will be popular, but you can come into the public square and speak your mind.

Today just try saying that you do not believe in climate change – there are calls to cut funding to states whose governors refuse to agree that climate change is real.

Today just try saying that marriage is between a man and a woman. You may lose your job as CEO of a major company like Brendan Eich did at Mozilla.

If a governor or a CEO cannot state their conscience, then how is the normal citizen to stand in the public square and be allowed to speak?

Remember, the issue on display this week may not matter to you, but if you don’t allow your neighbor to speak his mind today, will you be allowed to speak yours tomorrow on the issue you care about?

The new tolerance means that you must say what the cultural elites and media order you to say. As long as you dance to their music all will be well, just don’t step out of line.

‘Death with Dignity’: compassion or dispatch?

By Cathy Keim

“Deserves it! I daresay he does. Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement. For even the very wise cannot see all ends.” ― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

The House Judiciary and Health and Government Operations committees held a joint hearing last Friday on HB1021, the Richard E. Israel and Roger “Pip” Moyer Death with Dignity Act. Yesterday the Senate Judicial Proceedings committee held a hearing on the cross-filed SB676.

The arguments that were offered at the House committee hearing on March 6, 2015, were exactly what were expected. The two sides are clearly divided here. The culture of death has no room for the culture of life. The desire to rule one’s own fate does not leave room for compassion or suffering, which are both elements of the human condition.

The siren call of death takes the guise of “fairness.” It is only “fair” that a person that is terminally ill should be able to end his suffering. Without a doubt, we all tremble at the thought of pain, dependency, loss of mental capacity and/or bodily functions. We all desire to be healthy and happy, but to equate the loss of our health with the right to die is a dire step.

Let’s run through some of the arguments that opponents of the bill put forth.

Maryland has outlawed the death penalty for anyone, no matter his or her crime. However, the same drugs that Maryland will not allow to be used to execute murderers are the drugs that will be prescribed for a person to die with dignity.

Physicians are not trained to kill their patients. It will inevitably change the doctor/patient relationship if the doctor is expected to offer death as an option.

People that are given a diagnosis of a terminal illness with six months to live will most likely respond by being depressed. They could kill themselves in a state of depression because there is no provision for a mental health professional to evaluate them in the current bill.

Physicians cannot tell with accuracy who has six months to live. Plenty of people live for years after they are told they have six months to live, but we will never know if they kill themselves out of despair. Amazingly, about 20% of the people that receive hospice care actually leave the hospice instead of dying.

Palliative care is available for patients in pain. We are not condemning our loved ones to endless, unrelenting pain.

Many of the most poignant cases that are presented as deserving a death with dignity are those afflicted with Alzheimer’s, ALS, or Parkinson’s. However, by the time they would want to die, they would not be able to self administer the drugs, so this bill would not “help” them anyway.

Handicapped people already feel pressured because they are using medical resources at a steeper rate than healthy people. This bill would increase the pressure on the handicapped to not use more than their fair share of medical care.

Do you see how the subtle pressure works? Especially once the government is in control of health care, there will be the pressure to manage care from an organizational, cost-effective perspective, not a personal case-by-case perspective.

An effective way to save on costs is to encourage the elderly, the handicapped, and the sickest patients to stop their suffering (and ours) by removing themselves. It does not even have to be said aloud, but the pressure will build on our weakest, most vulnerable citizens.

It is time now to stop and count the cost of this type of public policy. Our country was established with a Judeo-Christian foundation of which the keystone is that each individual is created in the image of God. This is the concept that gave birth to Western Civilization, which resulted in our Declaration of Independence proclaiming, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Already we are seeing breaches in the wall protecting our weaker brothers. Abortion claims the lives of many babies because they are deemed defective (the vast majority of Downs Syndrome babies are aborted). Sex-selection abortions claim many female babies even here in the United States. Abortions are performed for trivial problems that could be surgically corrected like a cleft palate or even more troubling for the convenience of the mother. The absolutely logical next step after abortion on demand is the removal of the handicapped and elderly.

We are seeing the complete inversion of our thinking. Compassion used to mean caring for those that needed help. Now compassion is making sure that you can have a lethal dose of drugs to end your life. We have moved from compassion to dispatch, but in an Orwellian turn of the phrase, we still call it compassion. Then to keep up the farce, this bill would require the doctor to lie on the death certificate and list as the cause of death whatever terminal illness the patient had rather than suicide by overdose.

This Death with Dignity bill is a lie from start to finish. The true dignity would come from all of us rejecting this manipulation of our emotions and comforting our family and friends when they need comfort, not helping to finish them off.

Once again, I am aware of the pain, emotional and physical, that is present as we watch a loved one or ourselves move towards death, but this is part of the human condition. We do not make ourselves more human by rushing life out the door. We cannot create life, so let us not be over eager to take it away.

On ‘Death with Dignity’

By Cathy Keim

“The solution to suffering never is to eliminate the sufferer.” – Dr. William Toffler

I was writing a piece on the Death with Dignity Act but Michael beat me to it by posting on it last Wednesday, so I will address some of the issues that Michael touched on briefly.

I agree with Michael that this bill has a good chance at passing. My reason for thinking this is due to the emotional appeal that is being made by the proponents. None of us like to think about death in general and our own death in particular. Even less appealing is to consider oneself in extremely poor health with no chance of recovery; indeed, only a continued progression downward.

Many people jump from that grim thought to friends or loved ones that they have seen suffer and are ready to declare that they will not submit to such a fate. This is really a very American “I am captain of my ship” type of thinking. We are a free people. Why should we have to suffer a lingering illness and the indignities that accompany such a loss of mobility or mental capacity?

The more libertarian among us declare that the government has no right to keep us from our choice. Perhaps they should stop for a minute and realize that the more present fear is that the government will all too willingly let you have your wish and maybe help you along before you quite decide that is where you want to go.

Now that our healthcare has been taken over by the government and our Republican leaders show no progress in their faint attempts to stop it, people should realize that things are quickly moving to the government being able to refuse care. After all, it costs a lot of money to treat sick or handicapped people and we could save a lot if we helped some of them choose to leave a little sooner.

Insurance companies are already questioning charges on patients that have difficult prognoses and are refusing to cover futile care. I think you can see that this could get pretty scary pretty fast. Or let’s consider that now Maryland hospitals are given a set amount of money at the beginning of each year and they are not to go over budget. The safest way to not go over budget is to reduce the number of patients you see, particularly the really sick ones.

Now some of these measures may be good, but when you change your basic outlook from “we are here to help sick people” to “we are here to not bust our budget” then you can quickly see how this might not be to the patient’s benefit. This is why we must consider the principles involved before we go to the emotional appeal. Sadly, the emotional appeal is more attractive, which is why it is used over and over again to gain voter support for a myriad of causes.

But on to the less attractive principled approach. This comes down to do we want a culture of life or a culture of death? When you start addressing the big issues, then you have to come clean on your worldview. There are really only two worldviews: we are either created by God (you may choose which one, but America was founded on a Judeo-Christian construct) or we sprang from somewhere with no purpose and no place to go.

If you believe that the world and all that is in it, including men, were created with a purpose, then you will lean towards a culture of life. Since you cannot create life, then you should respect it and care for all men, even those that are not perfect no matter how they came to be that way, whether through accident, age, birth, or war.

You will show compassion to those that need help, starting with your own family and then spreading outward to your community and beyond.

This culture of life says that each life is of value whether they can contribute economically or not.

If, on the other hand, you do not believe that you owe allegiance to any Creator, then you will be quite right to think that you can decide whatever you wish. However, you must realize that Nietzsche dealt with all this and you are heading down a path to a very dark place.

In a very short time, you will go from being captain of your own ship to “might makes right.”

One small aside is that weakness and compassion may have lessons for us all that we will never learn unless we are exposed to situations where we must care for or be cared for by someone. This is not a particularly happy thought, especially to our can-do American spirit, but it is true. Suffering is not something that we seek, but it does bring strength that nothing else can.

Dr. William Toffler, a professor at Oregon Health and Science University, is also the National Director of Physicians for Compassionate Care Education Foundation. Since Oregon passed an assisted suicide law in 1997, Dr. Toffler has had plenty of time to observe the law in action. In a USA Today op-ed he wrote with Dr. Frank S. Rosenbloom, Toffler noted:

At the most fundamental level, the fatal flaw of assisted suicide is that it subverts the trust in the patient-physician relationship. Once a physician agrees to assist a patient with suicide, their relationship is altered.

(snip)

Clearly, the disconnection from the patient under the guise of compassion is contradictory to the long tradition of medical practice: ‘First, do no harm.’

In short, this legislation has not granted, but has actually stripped vulnerable individuals of their worth and dignity. In fact, it has diminished the dignity of us all.

Dr. Toffler’s last quote points us to another danger of the emotional appeal. Vulnerable individuals are not immune to the subtle push of the culture of death which whispers to them: you have no value, you are a burden to your family, you are costing everybody a lot of money and time, you should just take these pills as it would be better for everybody. Mothers carrying babies with handicaps are already told that it is for the best to abort the imperfect baby.

I told you that the principled approach would not be the easy way. Perhaps I have not convinced many to change their mind with such a short essay, but to those who understand I appeal to you to call your Delegate and State Senator and tell them that you do not support HB1021 or SB676.

Make the case for the First Amendment

by Cathy Keim

Last Sunday I was flying home from the west coast and happened to sit by a professor from a major university whose specialty was First Amendment Studies. I usually immerse myself in an exciting book to make the time pass, but this trip the book was not so compelling and he ran out of LA Times crossword puzzles that he had apparently collected for the trip. When we got around to owning up to what we did, he demurred from being quoted on a blog, but was happy to discuss issues off the record.

Since he teaches courses on the First Amendment, I had to inquire about the Charlie Hebdo massacre in France. He assured me that we are very different in America and would not back down over cartoons, adding that he had shown them to his classes. I pointed out that many American media outlets refused to show the cartoons, saying that they were offensive. I also brought up the previous Danish cartoon riots in 2006. Despite his assurance that things were different in America, I had to mention that Yale University Press published a book in 2012 about the Danish cartoons, but would not include the cartoons in the book! That doesn’t come off as a profile in courage.

So, how are we to handle speech or art that is offensive to others? As a Christian, I would prefer that we all love our neighbor as ourselves and refrain from antagonizing them. That sounds like self-censorship – and it is – but it is done out of respect, not fear.

Political correctness is the opposite of self-restraint due to respect for others. Political correctness is bending to a powerful coercion that will punish you if you resist. We have seen this take place when people lost their jobs for not having the politically correct view on marriage.

Once decisions are being made to restrain our speech or art due to fear of reprisal, then the only way to combat this is to increase free speech. The professor was adamant that when ideas are pushed underground due to fear, then they only bubble up later.

If all the media stood shoulder to shoulder and ran stories showing a picture of Mohammed, then the point would stand that in the West, pictures can be published. The media did not have to all publish the same picture. It could be a tasteful portrait instead of the cartoon if you did not find satirical cartoons your style.

At the same time that we were flying across the US having our discussion, thousands of Muslims were protesting in London over the Charlie Hebdo cartoons.

A leaflet issued by the Muslim Action forum (MAF), who organised the rally, said recent republishing of cartoons, caricatures and depictions of Muhammad by satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and other publishers is a “stark reminder” that freedom of speech is “regularly utilized to insult personalities that others consider sacred.”

We need to have an open discussion of this idea. This is not a time for self-censorship, but rather it is time for each of us to publically speak up. Political correctness has brought us to the point of not being able to accurately address the situation. The only cure is to let free speech increase.

The professor encouraged people to consider the political cartoons that have been present in America from it very beginnings. They were not timid, nor respectful of their targets. We have a long history of making points with satire and humor.

The First Amendment is under attack on many fronts. The LGBT movement, the Muslims, feminists, and the IRS are among a few of the groups trying to stifle free speech. When the IRS refused to grant 501 (c)(4) status to conservative groups, they effectively throttled their ability to speak out in the public forum by intimidating these groups and reducing their fund raising efforts which were to be used to advance their political ideas.

How many conservative activists have been called racists, bigots, haters, and homophobes for pointing out that our federal government is a bloated monster that exceeds its constitutional restraints repeatedly?

Rather than replying in anger, or getting defensive, instead go on the offense by presenting Judeo-Christian based Western Civilization in an appealing way. Know your narrative. Remember that if you cannot change the liberal dominating the conversation, then you may well present some new ideas to the other people in the social setting. Fight bad ideas with good ideas. We have the advantage of telling the truth. Make the case for liberty.

Sharing the load, and taking a step back

After nine-plus years of doing monoblogue, the time has come to expand my horizons.

In the interest of both broadening the readership base and getting an occasional day off, I have decided to take on (with apologies to my Maryland GOP friend Heather Olsen) a “partner in crime.” In other words, monoblogue won’t necessarily be “mono” anymore.

Longtime readers, however, should know I’ve tried to break in this direction before with the “GO Friday” feature where I solicited guest opinions. But it really never caught fire in the way I wanted it to. It’s not to say I won’t keep doing that when the opportunity is presented, but I think this approach will work better for my needs.

However, the impetus behind bringing my new associate on board was somewhat accidental. I’ve actually featured some of this lady’s writing on occasions when I’ve quoted the Wicomico Society of Patriots, as she’s been instrumental in that cause for several years. But she came to me at the last Wicomico County Republican Club meeting with questions and thoughts about blogging. yet worried that she wouldn’t have to time to do a blog justice because of her busy schedule.

As I was compiling the notes for my post about that meeting, the thought struck me about bringing her onboard here. Even though she was a bit skeptical at first because of the “mono” part, I explained to her that numerous bloggers and writers with their names on the site have at least one other writer writing under their banner – for example, Michelle Malkin and Herman Cain have secondary contributors. This way, I said, you don’t have to worry about keeping up your own site and you can write when the mood strikes you.

I don’t know exactly what I said to bring her on board, but whatever it was proved to be successful. So tomorrow you will read the first post from my new contributor, Cathy Keim. First of all, Cathy pledges not to write about music or sports – which is a plus in my eyes – but I think you will really like what she has to say. She had an intriguing experience recently and you get to learn a little about it.

It’s also worth pointing out that Cathy has been trying to expand her contributions to the community, but despite the efforts of the Central Committee she was rebuffed for both a County Council seat as well as a spot on the Wicomico County Board of Education. I’m not guaranteeing blogging will further her political career – insofar as I know I’m the only local blogger who has won an election, even if it was just squeaking by in the final spot in 2010 – but this can be a place where Cathy can help to advance her conservative causes.

As for me, I will still be here and attempt to keep a daily schedule. But it will be nice to have the break and I look forward to bringing you Cathy’s perspective beginning at noon tomorrow.

Why it should be Keim for the District 4 seat

Tomorrow the Wicomico County Council has a decision to make, and it’s of paramount importance they get it right.

As many of you know, it was a week ago that we interviewed a half-dozen candidates, all seeking to be on our four-person list that we submitted for the County Council seat. While all six had their good qualities, to me one candidate stood out above the rest and apparently the rest of our body agreed with me because she was rewarded with the highest number of votes.

While I can’t speak to the reasons the other Central Committee members picked her, it was apparent to me that Cathy Keim has a number of assets useful for a County Council member: active in both the political realm and the community at large, she can hit the ground running on the issues because she’s a frequent attendee at County Council meetings. In her application and interview, Cathy touched on a number of subjects which will be hot-button issues in the days to come and demonstrated she’ll be a well-informed advocate for the citizens of District 4. I can tell you she’s already reaching out to interested citizens on a number of issues, looking for input from various corners.

And while it’s apparent that no one can completely fill the shoes of the late Bob Caldwell, I happen to think Cathy will blaze her own trail and help lead Wicomico County in the right direction during these perilous times. This opportunity presents itself to her at a point in her life where she will have both the time and energy to be an outstanding member of County Council, and she will have three years to make the job her own. I have no doubt that she will.

So I encourage the other six members of County Council to select the best person for the job tomorrow and appoint Cathy Keim to ably represent the citizens of District 4. While we gave the Council the requisite number of choices, one stood out. I call on my readers to let County Council know Cathy Keim is the best candidate.