Rodent Regatta

The Media Judges the Media
by Craig J. Cantoni
April 22, 2004

Should former Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling be the judge in his fraud trial? Silly question, unless you belong to the establishment media, in which case you are accustomed to the media judging its own fraudulent practices instead of letting outsiders into its cloister to make an independent judgment.

A case in point:

On April 21, 2004, the PBS NewsHour had a segment on the fabrications of USA Today’s star reporter, Jack Kelley. Sitting in judgment of Kelley and the mainstream media in general were two guests, both cloister members. One was Geneva Overholser, an articulate journalism professor at the University of Missouri School of Journalism. She is not only a cloister member, but she also trains novitiates to become cloister members. The other was USA Today staffer Susan Page, who was proud that the paper had appointed an investigative committee consisting of—yeah, you guessed it—cloister members.

This is akin to the Catholic Church handling its own sex abuse problem.

Professor Overholser said that most broadsheets are ”fine newspapers.” Certainly she has to know that many newspapers are losing readers and credibility, which is hardly a sign of doing a fine job. Yet based on what she said on PBS, she is apparently unwilling to take any responsibility as a teacher of journalists for the loss of readers and credibility.

Both Overholser and Page said that the solution was for newspapers to establish ombudsman positions, which are almost always filled by insiders on the newspaper payroll. In other words, let readers complain to an insider about problems inside the cloister. Sure, that’ll work. It certainly worked for boys abused by priests.

Here’s an example of how it doesn’t work in the newspaper business: Several years ago, a reporter by the name of Julie Amparano was fired by The Arizona Republic for fabricating stories. (Note: Thanks to the open-mindedness and graciousness of the editorial editor, the Republic, which is the largest circulation newspaper next to USA Today in the Gannett empire, runs a freelance opinion column of mine, for which I have never accepted remuneration)

At least a year before Amparano was fired, I had told several of the paper’s editors and the ombudsman at the time that Amparano’s stories had a bad odor. In view of the fact that Amparano was subsequently rewarded with her own column, my feedback was apparently ignored.

I believe my feedback was ignored because, like Jayson Blair of the New York Times, Amparano was a diversity hire. She had been hired from The Wall Street Journal to cover Hispanic issues because she was Hispanic. She was eventually fired for fabricating a story about a racist who had hated Hispanics, only to discover later in life that he was Hispanic.

This is an example of how one wrong leads to another wrong. The first wrong was the newspaper disregarding long-standing discrimination law, which clearly says that it is illegal to base hiring decisions on race or ethnicity. It doesn’t matter that all big-city dailies engage in the practice or that the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission looks the other way when it comes to favored races. What matters is the message that the practice sends to the newsroom, a message that it is okay to break the rules and then to rationalize the rule-breaking with convoluted logic.

But don’t expect Professor Overholser to speak out against the practice and risk being branded a heretic by fellow professors, the vast majority of whom worship at the altar of affirmative action and, as surveys show, vote Democratic.

Which brings me to an issue that is more important to the media’s credibility than an occasional fabrication: the perception that the media has a liberal bias.

The simple-minded blowhards who host conservative talk-radio shows claim that the perception is real. The blowhards are wrong.

Judging by what they write, many reporters are simply misinformed, illiterate in economics, intellectually lazy, and disdainful of free markets, suburbia, the auto, Wal-Mart and the people who shop at Wal-Mart. At the same time, they are enamored with central planning, coercion, collectivism, taxes, nannyism, growth controls, subsidized downtown development, public transit and special rights for special racial groups.

Hmm, maybe the blowhards are right after all.

Seriously, it is virtually impossible to read a big-city daily anywhere in the country without becoming infuriated over the lack of balance, over the left-leaning opinion pieces masquerading as news stories, over the insults to reader intelligence, over the same shopworn New York Times formula followed across the land, and over the industry’s affection for big government. With the demise of a competing daily in most big-city markets, the industry has gone from being an admired government watchdog to being a disdained government lapdog, at least in conservative and libertarian eyes.

An example: Last year, The Arizona Republic had a long front-page story about the state’s budget crisis and proposed cuts in the state budget. The story quoted 12 people who were either on the government payroll or who received government entitlements. Naturally, all of the quoted people were opposed to the cuts.

The story did not quote one taxpayer who thought that the cuts were a good idea. Not one out of a state of five million people. Not one! The result was that a half-million readers only got one side of the issue: the pro-tax side. Typical.

I and others immediately sent e-mails to the reporter and to the chain-of-command at the newspaper. No response. No apology. No admission of violating journalism standards. And worse, no change in how stories are covered.

The trend of crossing the firewall between news and opinion has accelerated so much that news reporters now author op-ed pieces on the editorial pages, where their opinions reveal that they are indeed liberal. For example, a news reporter recently wrote the lead opinion piece in a Sunday edition of The Arizona Republic. The piece, which was about the growth of metro Phoenix, revealed the author’s bias against suburbia and the auto, and her bias for public transit and for limits on growth.

The same biases can be found in almost every big-city daily, as if every journalist across the land has been indoctrinated in the same liberal dogma. Perhaps Professor Overholser can explain how this happens.

Never mind. I’ll explain it to her. You see, Professor Overholser, journalism students are taught the simple basics of journalism and the standard politically-corect pabulum found on college campuses, but they are not taught economics, science or the philosophical and historical foundations of capitalism and our constitutional republic. As a result, they know how to sanitize stories about race, how to write a simple declarative sentence, how to check sources, and how to ask who, what, why, when and how. But they don’t know enough to recognize economic and scientific hokum when they see it.

Since schools of journalism aren’t going to change, it is up to newspapers to change. The change that would have the most impact is for newspapers to publish a detailed daily critique of their previous day’s coverage on page two, written by a non-employee from outside the cloister. Circulation would increase as newspapers recaptured the market share lost to talk-radio and other non-mainstream media.

Unfortunately, as demostrated by Enron and the Catholic Church, insular organizations don’t allow insiders to come inside and judge them until it’s too late.

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Mr. Cantoni is an author, columnist and consultant. He can be reached at ccan2@aol.com

A Day of Anger and Questions
by Craig J. Cantoni
April 15, 2004

April 15 is not only tax day. It’s also a day of anger and questions.

After paying a tax accountant $1,125 to prepare two tax returns for my wife and me, two returns for our 13-year-old son, and five returns for my 82-year-old mother and deceased father, I am overflowing with anger and questions.

I’ll discuss the tax returns after I ask a question that I ask every April 15th: Is it moral for me to use force to stop an armed robber from stealing my family’s money?

If the answer to the above question is yes, then a follow-up question is in order: Is it moral for me to use force to stop someone who retains an armed robber to steal my family’s money?

If the answer to that question is yes, then there is one more follow-up question: Is it moral for me to use force to stop fellow citizens from voting to have the government and its armed agents steal my family’s money for their own benefit?

Sorry for the provocative questions, but…

...it’s an Italian thing. I was raised to believe that family comes before anything else and that a man has a moral obligation to protect his family. I understand that other people from other backgrounds were raised to believe that the state comes before family. Some even believe that it’s good for a woman to ”marry” the state instead of the father of her children and for the state to support her with money taken from her neighbors. It takes a village, you know.

Note to Attorney General John Ashcroft: Although I believe that I have a moral obligation to protect my wife, son and mother, and although I’d like to break the kneecaps of thieves who steal from them with the government’s help, I don’t plan on grabbing my tire iron—not because I think it would be wrong, but because I’d go to jail.

Speaking of jail, I have a question for you, Mr. Ashcroft: Since the primary purpose of government is to protect the lives and property of citizens, and since the primary purpose of your office is to prosecute those who take the lives and property of citizens, then why don’t your agents prosecute people who have government agents steal money from their fellow citizens?

After all, it’s not as if the culprits are hard to find. You could start with the directors of AARP, who use the mail to openly advocate that wealthy seniors steal from subsequent generations, including from my son. If it was justified to arrest and handcuff Enron executives, then it is certainly justified to arrest and handcuff AARP directors, whose theft is thousands of times greater. And while you’re at it, you could arrest all of the members of Congress who perpetuate the fraud and dishonest bookkeeping of Medicare and Social Security.

Closer to home, you could arrest the school board of my local school district. The district will take about $190,000 in school taxes from my wife and me over our adult lives, although we exercise our religious freedom and send our kid to parochial school. The district gives some of that money to our neighbor, a wealthy doctor who has three kids in public school and could well-afford to pay the full $252,000 that it will cost the district to educate his kids for 12 years.

Because the doctor and 90 percent of Americans have been indoctrinated in government schools by government teachers to believe that government schools are for the public good, he and most Americans don’t question how the public good is served by him and others being given other people’s money. It may be good for him, but it isn’t good for my wife and me. The good doctor carts his kids around in a $40,000 SUV, while we cart our kid around in a 13-year-old minivan.

Maybe a couple of arrests would make the doctor and others question what they’ve never questioned before about the public good. Maybe they would stop giving me blank stares or programmed platitudes when I ask them how the public good is served by the state forcing my wife and me to pay double for education, once for the public education of the doctor’s kids and once more for the parochial education of our kid. Maybe they’ll actually think beyond the group-think that they learned in government schools about the government. Maybe they would understand the difference between paying taxes for government services that directly benefit all people equally, such as national defense, and paying taxes for government services that directly benefit some people at the expense of others.

While we’re on the subjects of education and taxes and theft, let me explain why my 13-year-old son had to file state and federal tax returns. The reason is that my wife and I established a college fund for him when he was born. He has to pay taxes on the investment income, even though the income is reinvested in the fund.

Ironically, part of my son’s taxes goes to college students in the form of subsidized student loans. Some of the students come from families that are impoverished through no fault of their own, but others are from families that had the financial wherewithal to save for college but chose to be spendthrifts with their money. The government is lousy at distinguishing between the two types of families, because it is easier for politicians to take a portion of my kid’s college savings and give it to other kids than it is to tell voters to act responsibly.

These are the same politicians who wonder why the cost of a college education is rising so much faster than inflation. They can’t connect the dots. The first dot is student loans and other government subsidies, which have created a disincentive for colleges to control costs and be more productive. The second dot is the demand for college education, which has been fueled to a great degree by the devaluation of a high school education, due to government schools lowering academic standards and catering to the lowest common denominator.

Now to my mother’s five tax returns. She had to file so many returns because she and my deceased father had established trusts to protect their hard-earned lifelong savings from probate court and from grave robbers who steal family nest eggs through estate taxes. Returns had to be filed on each trust, as well as on the assets held jointly by my mom and dad, both of whom were working-class people who saved all of their lives for their retirement.

Like all other savers, my mom and dad paid income taxes on their meager wages, and then, as a result of a shortsighted and immoral tax policy, had to pay taxes for a second time on the investment income from their retirement savings. Now the government wonders why Americans don’t save for old age, and it can’t figure out how the looming shortfall in Social Security and Medicare will be closed without consigning my kid’s generation to a lifetime of indentured servitude.

My mom’s retirement savings included a substantial number of shares of Anheuser-Busch stock, which she inherited 40 years ago from the immigrant aunt who raised her after her mother died at an early age. She sold the stock this year, because it is not wise for an 82-year-old woman to be heavily invested in the stock market. She will pay taxes on the amount that the stock has appreciated in value since she inherited it, an amount that includes inflation, much of it caused by lousy government fiscal and monetary policies. Since 1964, the stock has risen in value from inflation alone by 593 percent. A moral government does not force an 82-year-old woman to pay taxes on inflation.

But we don’t have a moral government. And that’s why April 15 is a day of anger and questions.

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Mr. Cantoni is an author, columnist and founder of Honest Americans Against Legal Theft (HAALT). He can be reached at ccan2@aol.com

Nobody can teach us more about bureaucracy and how to uproot it than Craig Cantoni. Craig is the author of Corporate Dandelions: How the Weed of Bureaucracy Is Choking American Companies And What You Can Do About It. It’s time for him to write another book and call it Government Kudzu: How Bureaucracy is Choking America.

Craig’s latest essay uncovers root causes of 9/11 far better than any commission. It’s a must read!

Hearings On 9/11 You’ll Never See
by Craig J. Cantoni

The 9/11 hearings are a circus in which congressional clowns act surprised that the government is bureaucratic and that its many fiefdoms don’t cooperate and communicate with each other. The cirucus should be closed and replaced by serious hearings that examine the decades of foreign policy blunders that led up to 9/11 and the culpability of both political parties in increasing the likelihood of the United States being a terrorist target.

For example…

a hearing could be held on why the United States kept troops in Saudi Arabia for so long and openly sided with the corrupt and undemocratic Faud monarchy. The hearing could examine if that was a blunder that gave Saudi extremists, including Osama bin Laden and 15 of the 19 terrorists of 9/11, a raison d’etre for targeting the U.S. instead of another nation.

Another hearing could be held about our financing of the Taliban during the Afghan-Soviet conflict.

Still another could be held on our support of Saddam Hussein before and during the Iraq-Iran war.

There also could be hearings that enlighten Americans about the history of their nation. For example, a hearing could be devoted to the foreign policy of super-patriot George Washington, who feared getting involved in foreign wars and intrigues, and who wanted the United States to restrict its foreign relations primarily to trade. The hearing could pose the question of whether America’s national interest and security would have been better served if it had followed the first president’s advice in the Middle East for the last 50 years.

In addition, the history lesson could explain how the Seventeenth Amendment shifted the Senate from focusing on long-term issues of national importance to a legislative body that debates such weighty matters as how much water American toilets should hold. Because of the Amendment, Senators are elected by citizens instead of state legislators and are thus subject to the populist passions of the day.

Another hearing could address the role of European imperialism in the early 20th century, especially that of Britain and France, in fueling Islamic animosity towards the West and in creating artificial nations like Iraq out of warring tribes and religious sects. The hearing could detail Britain’s large loss of national treasure and troops in trying to pacify the ersatz nation of Iraq after World War I. It also could ask why we left Europe off the hook for solving the problems it created in the Middle East and, in the process, shifted Islamic enmity from Europe to us. Was that in our national interest? Did that make us more secure?

But the most enlightening hearing of all would be on Israel. It would pose the question of whether it has been in our national interest to support the beleaguered nation, which is seen in the Arab world as a hired gun for the United States and, rightly or wrongly, is a catalyst for Islamic extremism.

Pro-Israel witnesses could testify that Israel is the only democracy in the region, that it shares our Western values and heritage, and that it provides a military and intelligence-gathering presence in the Middle East that we would have to provide ourselves if Israel did not exist. Other witnesses could present the opposite view—that Israel does not share our values, because it is largely socialist and was founded for religious reasons instead of democratic ones by Zionists, many of whom were Bolsheviks.

Analysts from the Congressional Budget Office could testify that Israel receives $84 billion in annual welfare from American taxpayers, or $14,630 per Israeli.

Historians could give the sordid facts about Britain’s Balfour Declaration of 1917, which laid the groundwork for a Zionist state in Palestine, a state that 90 percent of Britain’s Jews did not support at the time. The historians also could show that when the Declaration was written, Arabs, Jews and Christians were living peacefully together in Palestine, as they had for centuries.

CIA analysts could be asked to estimate how many Arabs have become anti-American terrorists because of our support of Israel, and how the increased numbers have increased the odds that a terrorist will eventually detonate a nuclear ”dirty” bomb in Manhattan, creating economic chaos and mass hysteria.

In addition, Dr. Alvin Rabushka, a director of an Israeli economic research institute, could testify about his efforts to endow ”Israelis with the same freedom enjoyed by Americans.” He claims that ”for the better part of the last century, every prime minister and government of Israel have concentrated on strengthening the State at the expense of individuals and families.” He further claims that Israel has evolved into a socialistic system ”that denies fundamental freedom to its residents.”

Unfortunately, such views will not be heard and such hearings will not be held on Capitol Hill. The United States will continue to ignore the foreign policy lessons of history as Congress continues acting like clowns in a three-ring circus in the city that is named after George Washington, who had more wisdom than all of the bozos put together.

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Mr. Cantoni is an author and columnist. He can be reached at ccan2@aol.com

Liberal and Conservative Somersaults
Over Gay Marriage
by Craig J. Cantoni

The intellectual contradictions of liberals and conservatives are often hilarious, but they’ve outdone themselves with their philosophical somersaults over gay marriage.

Liberals are squawking about gays being denied rights, but as lovers of big government, they have endorsed government programs that infringe on the rights of gays. Conservatives, on the other hand, love small government but want more government when it comes to gays. Neither liberals nor conservatives seem to understand that gay rights wouldn’t be an issue and wouldn’t be plastered all over the media if the government had not made it an issue by putting its nose where it doesn’t belong.

Social Security is an example.

Gays say that Social Security discriminates against life-long gay partners by denying them the same survivor benefits that are granted to husbands and wives. But gays didn’t say that prior to 1936. They also didn’t have to run to the courts or the legislature before 1936 to get permission to bequeath their retirement savings to a gay partner.

What happened in 1936? Social Security was enacted. Since then, the government has not only forcibly taken money from gays (and heterosexuals) to fund their retirement and the retirement of strangers, but has also dictated who can receive the money upon death. Prior to 1936, gays could keep all of their retirement savings and, with a properly executed will, could bequeath the savings to another gay without anyone’s permission, without making a scene in the national media, without getting married in San Francisco, and without incurring the wrath of conservatives.

Social Security, like most government programs, takes freedom from people under the guise of giving them something. Specifically, it takes away the right of people to do what they want with a portion of their income. It then transfers the right to politicians, who respond to special-interest groups, the passions of the public and social mores. What used to be a private matter becomes a public matter and grist for politicians, judges, journalists and busybodies.

The same holds true for scores of other government programs and tax policies that favor some groups over other groups. For example, the federal tax code alone is 40,000 pages, and Medicare regulations are another 130,000 pages. These two government monstrosities in turn create millions of pages of court decisions, correspondence, forms and filings—and tens of thousands of bureaucrats to administer it all and to catch any citizen who violates a rule that the bureaucrats themselves don’t understand.

All of this unproductive activity is about one thing: restricting liberty. Contrary to Democratic Party claptrap, it is not about compassion, fairness or justice. It is about telling people what they can do, whom they can do it with, what they can keep and what they have to forfeit to other people.

Republicans are no better. Instead of doing away with the rules, they create rules of their own that serve their interests. Then, having conspired with Democrats to create rules and restrict liberty, they are aghast that gays are making a public scene and, according to them, undermining society and traditional marriage. But, again, it is the rules that have turned a private matter into a public matter. Now Republicans want more rules.

This is what happens when the government oversteps its constitutional bounds of protecting life, liberty and property. As laws, regulations and rules increase, free choice decreases. And as free choice decreases, people who feel aggrieved seek recourse in the courts, in San Francisco city hall and in the national media. Meanwhile, liberals and conservatives do intellectual somersaults instead of admitting that they have created the problem.

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Mr. Cantoni is an author, columnist and founder of Honest Americans Against Legal Theft (HAALT). He can be reached at ccan2@aol.com.

The Seven Policy Blunders That Changed the National Character
by Craig J. Cantoni

As global competition has shown, other nations can compete in natural resources, capital, technology and education. They can even replicate our form of government and economic system, as seen in the fact that the United States ranks only tenth on the Index of Economic Freedom, which is published by the Heritage Foundation and the Wall Street Journal.

That leaves one true national competitive advantage that is very difficult to replicate and that, once lost, is virtually impossible to regain. It is our heritage of self-reliance, individualism, thriftiness, meritocracy and entrepreneurialism.

It is my contention that due to seven policy blunders, our national character has been transformed to dependency, collectivism, profligate spending, entitlement and bureaucracy. As a result, we have become risk averse and now prefer stability over change, government-reliance over self-reliance, wealth redistribution over wealth creation, the regulatory state over free markets, and bureaucrats over entrepreneurs. In other words, we have become the opposite of what we were a century ago, when we achieved the greatest advancement in standard of living that the world had ever seen.

There are hundreds of examples of the transformation, but in the interest of brevity I’ll give just two…

The first can be seen in the rhetoric of presidential candidates, including President Bush. Their theme is not what we should do for ourselves but what the government should do for us. It is a message of entitlement and dependency, a message that both parties now embrace.

Another example is the growth of jobs and professions that consume wealth instead of creating it. Government employment at the federal, state and local levels now stands at a record 21 million workers, or nine million more than in manufacturing. And millions of highly paid, high-growth jobs in the private sector are those that interpret and administer government regulations, such as tax accountants and lawyers.

Let’s turn now to the seven policy blunders, which are listed below in reverse order, with the biggest blunder listed last.

No. 7: Wage and Price Controls During World War II

This will require more explanation than the other blunders.

During World War II in 1942, the government instituted wage and price controls. To get around the controls, employers began offering medical insurance as an employee benefit. The government then institutionalized the benefit by allowing employees to receive medical insurance in lieu of pay on a tax-free bases. Later, the National Labor Relations Board institutionalized it further by ruling that medical insurance would be treated the same as pay for collective bargaining purposes.

This was a policy blunder because it mortally wounded a consumer market in medical insurance, made employees dependent on their jobs for the insurance, reduced the amount of pay that employees would have otherwise received, and eliminated the incentive of patients to control their health care spending. But worst of all, the blunder created a mindset in the American public that health care should be provided by a third party, unlike such other necessities of life as food, shelter, clothing and transportation. It opened the door for the government to be the third party.

As medical insurance and health care costs have skyrocketed in the absence of a consumer market, growing numbers of the public and the press have come to the wrong conclusion—that the problems with medical insurance and health care are due to the free market, when in actuality, the problems are due to the absence of a consumer market. As a result, they believe that the ultimate third party, the government, should control one-seventh of the nation’s economy through nationalized health care, not realizing that it was a government blunder 60 years ago that helped to create today’s problems.

Blunder No. 6: Medicare

The coupe de grace was dealt to a consumer market in health care by the passage of Medicare in 1965. About 90 percent of Americans who have medical insurance now get their insurance from a third party, either from an employer or the government. This is the reverse of the situation with other necessities of life, which are purchased directly by 90 percent of people with their own money.

Instead of focusing on the relatively small percentage of the elderly who are too poor to purchase their own health insurance, Medicare, like its sibling Social Security, gave an entitlement to all retirees, thus putting all retirees on the government plantation and creating a mindset among non-retirees that they do not have to save for old age.

Medicare proves that the public good is not served when a government benefit is given to people who don’t need it. Medicare has resulted in public immorality, not public good. The growing deficit between current Medicare revenue and current Medicare expenditures will have to be covered by future generations. That is a fancy way of saying that the wealthiest group of Americans, seniors, are robbing the cradle by sending their health care bills to children. Shame on us.

Blunder No. 5: Social Security

The linchpin of the New Deal, Social Security has the same problems as Medicare. It proves the axiom that an entitlement, once started, will expand far beyond its original purpose and will be politically impossible to roll back. It also shows how the national mindset has changed about government and business. For example, there was national outrage over the fraud at Enron, but there is not national outrage over the fraud of Social Security, which is exponentially greater than the Enron fraud. Enron executives will get what they deserve: jail. But no one will go to jail over the Ponzi scheme of Social Security.

Blunder No. 4: The Great Society

There are those who believe that Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society program reduced poverty. There are others who believe that poverty would have been reduced quicker if the program had not stunted positive socioeconomic trends. But it is irrelevant who is right.

What is relevant is that the Great Society did not ask for anything in return for government handouts. It neither asked for work nor changes in behavior. Thus, it resulted in not only skyrocketing out-of-wedlock births and the atomization of two-parent families, but also, more importantly, a change in the character of a large segment of the American population.

Blunder No. 3: The Sixteenth Amendment

The passage of the Sixteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1913 authorized the income tax, thus setting the stage for profligate government spending, class warfare and government plunder.

Primarily because of the progressivity of the income tax, the majority of Americans now get more back in entitlements and government services than they pay in taxes. We have passed the tax tipping point, which is the point at which the majority of Americans can rob the minority and delude themselves into thinking that is fair and just to take other people’s money.

Such theft has become so accepted that there is no longer a moral debate about the income tax. The tax is a given. It is such a given that the public and the press do not question the efficacy and morality of the government taxing income once when it is earned and then again when it is saved for retirment and earns investment income. Our national thinking has been so warped by the Sixteenth Amendment that the public and the press speak in glowing terms about 401(k) plans and other provisions of the income tax code that allow Americans to save a portion of their income on a tax-deferred basis. Even the conservative business press does not question why the government has the right to tax our savings at all.

Our thinking has been turned on its head. Thanks to the Sixteenth Amendment, Americans have been led to believe that their money belongs to the collective to be redistributed as the majority sees fit. Income tax cuts are seen as taking something that belongs to the government instead of returning something that belongs to individuals.

Americans do not realize that although they have a Bill of Rights, they do not have a constitutional right to keep their money. There is nothing in the Constitution that prohibits the government from taking all of their money.

Blunder No. 2: Eroding the Constitution

Many Americans believe that the nation is a majority-rule democracy and not a constitutional republic. It is not their fault that they believe this. It is the fault of politicians who have ignored the original meaning of the enumerated powers and the General Welfare and Commerce clauses of the Constitution. They have subverted the Supreme Law of the Land and have broken their oath to uphold the Constitution. They have done so because the press and the judiciary have been willing accomplices.

For example, there is no constitutional authority for the federalization of education, but there was not a peep of protest from the establishment press or the judiciary about the unconstitutionality of President Bush’s No Child Left Behind program. Similarly, there is not a peep of protest when the federal government funds intrastate light-rail systems that have absolutely nothing to do with interstate commerce.

Let’s turn to the biggest blunder and see why there is not a peep of protest.

Blunder No. 1: The Centralization of Public Education

Much of the impetus for pubic education in the mid-nineteenth century was to stop the growh of Catholic schools and to indoctrinate Catholics in the St. James Bible. But after that initial period of tyranny, public schools got out of the religious indoctrination business and focused on the three R’s. And because pubic education was decentralized for its first 100 years, public schools reflected the mores of the local community and were under the community’s control.

Today, public schools are back in the indoctrination business. They are increasingly under the control of the federal and state government, as well as under the influence of teacher unions and other special interests. Public schools also are the purchasers of textbooks from a few national textbook publishers that publish the same politically correct, sanitized, government-approved gruel. The result is a government monopoly on K-12 classroom thought, which is delivered in the classroom by unionized, government teachers.

Because of the public education monolith, the vast majority of Americans believe that the seven policy blunders are not blunders at all. They believe the opposite: that the blunders are what made this nation great.

And that, my friends, is why the nation will not remain great.

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Mr. Cantoni is an author, columnist and founder of Honest Americans Against Legal Theft (HAALT). He can be reached at ccan2@aol.com.