Grievances

Involuntary Servitude

Mandatory National Service

10-10-09

Dear Tea Party Members:

First, I want to express my deepest appreciation to everyone who has been
involved in all aspects of organizing, promoting and participating in the
Tea Party events. The willingness of people to devote so much time and
energy in the name of preserving liberty and restoring our lost rights is
amazing, and inspiring. Just when despair sets in and you begin to think
that the United States might be down for the count, the American people do
what they have always done -- fight back for their independence! But this
time, instead of a waging a physical battle with guns, we are engaged in a
battle of ideology. Ideas are our weapon, with truth and principles as our
ammunition.

I am impressed at how well the organizers have done at keeping up the
momentum by staging a continuing series of creative events. The town hall
protests over the summer were a staggering success and the 9/12 march on
Washington, although minimized, misrepresented or ignored by the main
stream media, still had tremendous impact on the politicians, no matter how
much they denied it. Let's go back to Washington, this time two or three
million strong, but with a well defined and financed advertising campaign
that does not rely upon the moribund media. This campaign should be
designed to insure that our message is conveyed accurately to the rest of
the country. And then we will keep returning in ever-growing numbers until
our government finally acknowledges that we too are American citizens!

During the month of October we are all working diligently to keep the
cowards in Congress from sneaking a health care bill through the back
door after discovering that they could not do it honestly, in the bright
light of day. We must also stop the disastrous cap-and-trade legislation
that would certainly destroy our economy. Once again, the President has
demonstrated his utter contempt for the American people by completely
bypassing the normal legislative process and having the EPA, a regulatory
agency under his purview, declare CO2 as a "pollutant", so that his
draconian policies can be implemented without the need for scientific
scrutiny or public review and debate. My hope is that the October Surprise
will be a trick for Congress and a treat for the the rest of us!

The reason I am writing is that I want to bring another important issue
to everyone's attention. During his presidential campaign, Barack Obama
repeatedly spoke about his deep commitment to national service. In our
President's view, we are not sovereign individuals possessing unalienable
rights protected by the Constitution. Instead, as a thoroughgoing
collectivist, he views "society" as the fundamental political unit and
the sole repository of rights, with people as merely the raw material of
that society -- a natural resource to be applied by the collective's whim
and will to those societal issues and problems deemed by the controlling
elite (i.e., by him) to be worth addressing. If you think about this for
a moment, I believe that you will see that this perspective makes sense of
every one of his subsequent actions, from his calmly believing that he can
make all of our personal decision for us, whether in the realm of executive
pay or health care, to his belief that he has the power and authority to
control every aspects of our economy. And as we are the clay in his hands,
he intends to shape us as required to achieving his purpose, by instituting
mandatory service requirements for every citizen, effectively making us
all slaves of the state. Here is what Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel had to
say:

    "Citizenship is not an entitlement program. It comes with
    responsibilities.... Everybody--somewhere between the ages 18 and
    25--will serve three months of basic training and understanding in
    a kind of civil defense. That universal sense of service--somewhere
    between the ages of 18 and 25--will give Americans, once again, a sense
    of what they are to be American and their contribution to a country and
    a common experience."

Get that? Rahm knows that you don't have any idea what it means to be
an American, so he plans to place you and everyone in your family into
a re-education program that will ensure that you learn what a "proper
American" is and how they act!

Barack has been a little busy lately with some of his other plans for us,
so he hasn't gotten around to trying to implement this national service
requirement -- yet. But that doesn't mean that this program lies dormant.
On the contrary! And just like all of his other schemes, this one is
being snuck in under the radar in a truly despicable manner. You might
remember that earlier this year that the "Serve America Act" was passed,
transferring an additional $6,000,000,000 (yes, that's 6 billion) of
taxpayer money to the Corporation for National and Community Service.

And what is this organization doing with all those additional funds. Well,
a good chunk of it is being funneled into the National Service-Learning
Partnership, which is working very diligently to get every school in this
country to institute "service-learning" programs, which is just a fancy bit
of double-speak for "mandatory community service" programs for all students
from Kindergarten up, with rigid service requirement on all high school
students which must be met in order for them to graduate. In other words,
every child in this country is being forced into indentured servitude,
in direct violation of the 5th and 13th amendments of our Constitution.
According to reports I have read, over half of the public schools across
the country have already instituted these mandatory requirements.

Channeling Rahm Emanuel, Ron Waldman, the Head of the Meridian School in
Seattle, WA, stated it this way:

    "Service is the rent you pay for living on earth, and it starts in
    elementary school. By the time they leave 5th grade, we want our kids
    to feel that this is part of the fabric of who they are. It's not
    whether I should or shouldn't serve the community, but how. That's
    just what we do."

And this is very representative of statements made by teachers and school
administrators across the country. Our public schools are rapidly being
transformed into indoctrination camps, brainwashing the youth to see the
social philosophy promoted by Obama and the progressives as simply the
unquestioned norm. They are being taught that they must suppress their
own dreams and plans, placing the needs of society or the community above
their own. And in this way, their enthusiasm and independence is slowly
crushed.

There is much more to be said on this subject, and I have created a website
which analyzes the philosophical and moral underpinnings of this movement.
I have also created a running blog which track ongoing developments in
the arena of mandatory service. Please take a look and read all the
gory details. I would appreciate it if you could also make all of your
organization's members aware of this site. It is extremely important that
we get the word out to as many people as possible about this action which
is not being reported on in the main stream press. It would be of great
help if you could also announce the site at your October rallies, and I
would also encourage you to write about this issue on your own websites,
blogs or newsletters, and to send letters to the editor or write articles
for your local papers expressing your outrage at what is being done to our
children.

The assault on our freedoms is pervasive, and it may seem difficult to
focus on yet another area of attack, but I believe that this issue is one
of the most important to our future. While health care and cap-and-trade
will have devastating economic consequences, we could shoulder those
burdens as we continued to work for a better future. But if mandatory
national service becomes the law of the land, then we will have, once
and for all, abandoned the fundamental principle of individualism at
the core of our Constitution, which is the underpinning of all of our
rights and freedoms. We will have truly become servants to the state,
with the fundamental relationship between the government and its citizens
permanently inverted. Please work with me to stop that from becoming a
reality.

At my site you will also find an initiative called the John Galt Pledge.
As most readers of this letter will probably already be aware, this pledge
was the concise summation of Ayn Rand's moral philosophy outlined in her
novel Atlas Shrugged. In conjunction with that pledge, I have written a
"Personal Declaration of Independence" as follows:

     "I swear by my life, and my love of it, that I will never live for the
     sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine."

     I take this pledge as a personal Declaration of Independence. As a
     sovereign individual, I assert the exclusive right to my life, my
     liberty and my property, as guaranteed in the U.S. Constitution. As
     government is properly instituted to protect my rights, I oppose, and
     declare as unconstitutional, all actions taken by government that
     violate the very rights it is charged with defending. I support a
     return to the principle of individualism upon which this country was
     founded. And rejecting any initiation of the use of force as being
     wholy inappropriate, I support a society based strictly upon voluntary
     association and free trade among its people.

This is the pledge that I make to myself, as a personal commitment to
proudly stand in the face of opposition and defend my rights and my freedom.
I ask anyone else who understands these words and wished to also publically
proclaim it to the world, to add their voice to a movement for a return to
the principle upon which this country was founded. And they can start by
adding their name to the growing list at this site.

Thank you for your time and attention.

In Liberty,
--
C. Jeffery Small

Website: http://go-galt.org/Galt_Pledge

Blog: http://go-galt.org/Galt_Pledge/JG_Blog.html

Email: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Service Learning

http://go-galt.org/Galt_Pledge/JG_Blog.html

Subject: Service-Learning

While exploring the National Service-Learning Partnership (NSLP) site, I took a look at the page describing the "service-learning" concept. Near the top of the page is the following example:

Picking up trash by a riverbank is service.

Studying water samples under a microscope is learning.

When students collect and analyze water samples and the local pollution control agency uses the findings to clean up a river... that is service-learning.

When I was in school, we were given problems in practical learning that involved real-world exercises that helped us to integrate and apply our abstract knowledge to situations that we might encounter throughout life. There could certainly be a practical learning component to the exercise of examining local water to determine its content. And practical problem-solving certainly meets this aspect of the NSLP's goals:

Service-learning helps students master important curriculum content by supporting their making meaningful connections between what they are studying and its many applications.

But that goal could easily be met by thoughtful teachers and standard educational programs just as it was in my day. So why do we need to pump billions of additional taxpayer dollars into a complex organization like NSLP. Well, so that we might achieve their other true objective:

Service-learning also helps young people develop a range of service skills, from acts of kindness and caring, to community stewardship, to civic action.

Our schools are being turned into factories used to create a population equipped with "service skills" (conveniently left undefined), "community stewardship" skills (again, I could not locate a definition or discussion of what this entails), and "civic action" skills. The mind reals at what this last is supposed to mean!

Standards for conveying the facts embodied in subjects suchs as math, English, history, biology, chemistry and physics can be objectively examined and agreed upon. But what about topics such as what is and is not appropriate activity within the realm of "civic action", or what exactly are the standards one applied to concepts of "kindness" and "caring"? And where is there any discussion and analysis relating to the morality and constitutionality of enforced labor? The answers to questions such as these are clearly dependent upon a broad-based philosophy, and different people will come to different conclusion in these areas depending upon the principles that they hold.

After examining case after case where these so called service-learning program are being implemented, it soon becomes clear that the agenda is to indoctrinate the students in an implicit philosophy of altruism, replacing their budding independent and adventurous spirit with a more docile one of self-sacrifice to others. The people implementing these programs administratively, and teaching them is the classrooms, are all Ellsworth Tooheys - but of an even more sinister kind. For, while Toohey plied his craft in the realm of adults who at least had a fighting chance to think for themselves and defend against his methods, these people ambush children, as young a five or six, who have not yet had the opportunity to develop their critical thinking skills through practice and life experiences, nor have most yet learned that there are adults in the world who do not deserve their trust.

If you are concerned about the rapid invasion of service-learning programs into our schools, supplanting traditional education subjects and methods, I encourage everyone to get in touch with your local school board to determine the status of these programs, and to make your opposition known.

There is only one long term solution to this and a myriad of other problems with our schools. We must get the government out of the education business once and for all. Until this is accomplished, schools will continue to be used as indoctrination centers for one bad idea after another. The abysmal state of education today is a direct result of having made it appear to be "free" to one and all. Like any other free product, education has come to hold very little value in the eyes of most students (as witnessed by their lack of initiative and commitment in pursuing their studies) and by most of their parents who are also products of this "free" system. And the resultant apathy leaves the system wide open for the type of massive abuse we are now seeing. When parents are required to pay directly for their childrens' education, they will soon begin to apply some of those critical shopping skills that they currently reserve for the purchase of a new car or major appliance. And when parents begin to evaluate how their valuable education dollars are actually being spent, children will once again begin to learn — and think.

Update - National Service-Learning Partnership

http://go-galt.org/Galt_Pledge/JG_Blog.html

Subject: Be It Resolved ...

Ace Parsi, the Policy Director for the National Service-Learning Partnership, issued an Important Policy Update in which he states:

I write you because we need your help in nurturing key relationships in Congress. These relationships are very important as we promote policies that give more youth in this country meaningful opportunities to engage in service-learning.
[...]
It's a critical time for service-learning and it is so important to let Congress know that service-learning works and we care.

I wonder what those "key relationships in Congress" are that need to be nurtured? Could it have anything to do with taking more money from the pockets of the taxpayers and giving it to these people?

On October 7th, various Senators introduced the following resolution:

S.CON. RES. 46: CONCURRENT RESOLUTION

Recognizing the benefits of service-learning and expressing support for the goals of the National Learn and Serve Challenge.

Whereas service-learning is a teaching method that enhances academic learning by integrating classroom content with relevant activities aimed at addressing identified needs in a community or school;

Whereas service-learning has been used both in school and community-based settings as a teaching strategy to enhance learning by building on youth experiences, granting youth a voice in learning, and making instructional goals and objectives more relevant to youth;

Whereas service-learning addresses the dropout epidemic in the United States by making education more `hands-on' and relevant, and has been especially effective in addressing the dropout epidemic with respect to disadvantaged youth;

Whereas service-learning is proven to provide the greatest benefits to disadvantaged and at-risk youth by building self-confidence, which often translates into overall academic and personal success;

Whereas service-learning provides not only meaningful experiences, but improves the quantity and quality of interactions between youth and potential mentors in the community;

Whereas service-learning empowers youth as actively engaged learners, citizens, and contributors to the community;

Whereas youth engaged in service-learning provide critical service to the community by addressing a variety of needs in towns, cities, and States, including needs such as tutoring young children, care of the elderly, community nutrition, disaster relief, environmental stewardship, financial education, and public safety;

Whereas far-reaching and diverse research shows that service-learning enhances the academic, career, cognitive, and civic development of students in kindergarten through 12th grade, and students at institutions of higher education;

Whereas service-learning strengthens and increases the number of partnerships among institutions of higher education, local schools, and communities, which strengthens communities and improves academic learning;

Whereas service-learning programs allow a multitude of skilled and enthusiastic college students to serve in the communities surrounding their colleges;

Whereas service-learning programs engage students in actively addressing and solving pressing community issues and strengthen the ability of nonprofit organizations to meet community needs;

Whereas Learn and Serve America, a program established under subtitle B of title I of the National and Community Service Act of 1990 (42 U.S.C. 12521 et seq.), is the only federally funded program dedicated to service-learning and engages more than 1,100,000 youth in service-learning each year;

Whereas Learn and Serve America is a highly cost-effective program, with an average cost of approximately $25 per participant and leverage of $1 for every Federal dollar invested;

Whereas the National Learn and Serve Challenge is an annual event that, in 2009, will take place October 5 through October 11; and

Whereas the National Learn and Serve Challenge spotlights the value of service-learning to young people, schools, college campuses, and communities, encourages others to launch service-learning activities, and increases recognition of Learn and Serve America: Now, therefore, be it

I had a few questions about this resolution, and as the primary sponsor, I wrote to my Senator, Patty Murray, asking the following:

Dear Senator Murray:

I am reading the text of S.CON RES. 46, and I am trying to get a better understanding of the exact nature of service-learning. There are a great many claims made in this resolution regarding social and cognitive benefits to be realized by youth from their participation in this program. Specifically, the resolution states:

I have scoured the NSLP website looking for just this type of research, but have not been able to locate it. As the primary sponsor of the legislation, I would greatly appreciate it if you could send me a copy of the research that you used when crafting these statements. Alternately, you could just point me to a location on the internet where I could review the research.

The resolution also states:

I was confused by this passage. Could you please explain to me just how this leveraging works? What is the $25 cost/participant and what is the time unit associated with this $25 cost (per student/year, per student/event or something else?) Can you then explain why this is cost effective? In relation to what exactly?

Finally, I must plead serious ignorance when it comes to the day-to-day workings of Congress, but I am trying to understand exactly what is the purpose of a resolution such as this? There does not seem to be any legislative component here, and I cannot determine what action or impact this resolution is supposed to produce. Could you please enlighten me.

Thank you for your time and help in improving my understanding in this area.

Sincerely,
--
C. Jeffery Small

I will report here if I receive any clarification from the Senator.

Grievances

Involuntary Servitude

Mandatory National Service

Service Learning

Update - National Service-Learning Partnership

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