Reflections From a Murky Pond

Two of the foremost things that allowed the domestic enemies of America to continue to exist within our nation and to rise to power are ignorance on the part of Americans and the fact that these Leftist enemies suborned and corrupted the American educational system.

What better way to destroy a nation than to refuse to each its values and to teach foreign and/or false values instead?

When a generation of people in America was raised without true knowledge of what our Founders created, what they meant and envisaged, and what being an American means, the road to our enemies’ rise was paved and ready.

I know no safe depositary of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power.

– Thomas Jefferson
Letter to William C. Jarvis, 1820 AD

Fortunately for America, the Tea Party has moved beyond the first, needed tactic of widespread protests and now has begun to focus on the longer term strategy of providing educational opportunities to the people.  They seek now to inform the people’s discretion, as it were, by such education in order to revitalize and re-empower the American citizenry, which the Liberals have tried hard – and nearly successfully – to turn into mere subjects devoid of even the knowledge that they, not their elected tools, are the government.

From the Washington Post:

BEALETON, VA. — “Tea party” activists across the nation tried to put the “independence” back in Independence Day this weekend with festivals and other gatherings focused on the Constitution — and how to use it for political gain.

Coupled with an upsurge in organized classes and book clubs, the trend reflects a growing effort among conservatives to teach supporters how to do political battle using an inviolable weapon: the nation’s founding documents. It’s a change in emphasis for a movement that rose to prominence with spirited and sometimes unruly protests across the nation.

But it’s one that organizers hope will yield real political results by arming supporters with the detailed knowledge to back only those candidates who are loyal to their ideals.

“The rallies were a start, but the goal now is to get people to stop and really think about things,” said Kerry Scott, an organizer of the Alexandria Tea Party, one of several hundred conservative activists who attended “An American Event,” a Fourth of July festival for “God and country” staged by a local farmer on rolling farmland in the foothills of Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains this weekend.

This seems to me to be both a brave and wise move on the part of the Tea Parties. Encouraging people to learn about what America was supposed to be is the best long-term strategy I’ve heard of to get our country back on the track it was always meant to be on and from which it has so horribly strayed.

It’s sad that it is necessary though. Such thing should have been continually taught in our schools, but with the educational system’s subornation by our enemies it’s been a long time since this was true. We’ve devolved and degenerated a great deal since James Madison’s time.

A popular Government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy; or, perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance: And a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.

– James Madison
Letter to to W. T. Barry, 1788 AD

When Madison wrote that he was lauding the growth of educational institutions in America because they were teaching citizenship and educating we, the People in matters of governance so that as many as possible could take up their duties as the true government of America.

Sadly, things changed and some sorts decided that an informed people was contrary to their own interests. Perhaps though, their effectiveness in this ploy is finally beginning to fade and falter.

~*~

Keep your eyes open. Travel light but load heavy, and always put another round in the enemy after they’re down.

The Obama regime is, once again, expanding its power at the expense of the personal liberty of each and every American citizen. They are of course doing this for our own good – or so they will continue to claim just as all titularly beneficent tyrants do, often even as the People place a well-earned noose around their necks.

The latest excess of Obama’s nanny state is his regime’s burgeoning war on what Americans are allowed to eat and drink – specifically how much salt we’re allowed to have ready access to.

Naturally Obama’s and his Liberals’ pet media stayed largely silent on this latest intrusion into Americans’ personal lives by the regime, which is why, almost a month after the announcement, I finally found out about it. A few outlets, mostly print, did report on it though.

As reported on April 20, 2010 by the Washington Post:

The Food and Drug Administration is planning an unprecedented effort to gradually reduce the salt consumed each day by Americans, saying that less sodium in everything from soup to nuts would prevent thousands of deaths from hypertension and heart disease. The initiative, to be launched this year, would eventually lead to the first legal limits on the amount of salt allowed in food products.
This Story

The government intends to work with the food industry and health experts to reduce sodium gradually over a period of years to adjust the American palate to a less salty diet, according to FDA sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the initiative had not been formally announced.

Officials have not determined the salt limits. In a complicated undertaking, the FDA would analyze the salt in spaghetti sauces, breads and thousands of other products that make up the $600 billion food and beverage market, sources said. Working with food manufacturers, the government would set limits for salt in these categories, designed to gradually ratchet down sodium consumption. The changes would be calibrated so that consumers barely notice the modification.

The legal limits would be open to public comment, but administration officials do not think they need additional authority from Congress.

“This is a 10-year program,” one source said. “This is not rolling off a log. We’re talking about a comprehensive phase-down of a widely used ingredient. We’re talking about embedded tastes in a whole generation of people.”

The FDA, which regulates most processed foods, would be joined in the effort by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which oversees meat and poultry.

Currently, manufacturers can use as much salt as they like in products because under federal standards, it falls into the category deemed “generally recognized as safe.” Foodmakers are merely required to report the amount on nutrition labels.

But for the past 30 years, health officials have grown increasingly alarmed as salt intake has increased with the explosion in processed foods and restaurant meals. Most adults consume about twice the government’s daily recommended limit, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
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Until now, the government has pushed the food industry to voluntarily reduce salt and tried to educate consumers about the dangers of excessive sodium. But in a study to be released Wednesday, an expert panel convened by the Institute of Medicine concludes that those measures have failed. The panel will recommend that the government take action, according to sources familiar with the findings.

Although the specifics of the government’s plans have not been made public, the food industry has been bracing for a federal initiative.

The facts of this report have also been independently confirmed on April 21, 2010 by the Los Angeles Times.

Such an action by Obama’s “Food Police” is in no way surprising. After lying, cheating, bribing, and bludgeoning their way into inflicting Obamacare unto a largely unwilling citizenry it became in the federal government’s interest to regulate and strictly control any and all actions that the formerly free citizens of our country might take which would affect their overall health index. The federal government’s doing so became, instantly upon Obamacare’s passage into law, an economic requirement.

Oh yes! You and I need not even bother being our brothers’ keeper; Big Brother will be the keeper of us all and ensure that we remain healthy and appropriately fed – if we let them do so.

To paraphrase from Charlton Heston’s character, George Taylor in Planet of the Apes, “Take your stinking paws off my food, you damn dirty apes!”

The question before the American people is whether or not we have the conviction and the will to do whatever is necessary to put a stop to them.

Keep your eyes open. Travel light but load heavy, and always put another round in the enemy after they’re down.

America was founded through war and suffering upon the concept of personal liberty. Sadly, since then our culture has been infected with a creeping desire to surrender that liberty to the state in order to be protected from the actions of others and of ourselves.

We have slid far down the slope into tyranny, and few seem intelligent enough to even notice it.

All fear the jackbooted thugs of the dictator, but so many in America gladly accept the more kindly face that despotism normally wears.

When a Texas third-grader get’s a week’s detention, during which she would be separated from other students during lunch and recess, for possessing a Jolly Rancher hard candy, it’s a stark warning sign that the Nanny State is firmly entrenched in the country.

Reported by KHOU:

ORCHARD, Texas – A third-grader at Brazos Elementary was given a week’s detention for possessing a Jolly Rancher.

School officials in Brazos County are defending the seemingly harsh sentence. The school’s principal and superintendent said they were simply complying with a state law that limits junk food in schools.

But the girl’s parents say it’s a huge overreaction.

“I think it’s stupid to give a kid a week’s worth of detention for a piece of candy,” said Amber Brazda, the girl’s mother. “The whole thing was just ridiculous to me.”

Leighann Adair, 10, was eating lunch Monday when a teacher confiscated the candy. Her parents said she was in tears when she arrived home later that afternoon and handed them the detention notice.

According to the disciplinary referral, she would be separated from other students during lunch and recess through Friday.

Jack Ellis, the superintendent for Brazos Independent School District, declined an on-camera interview. But he said the school was abiding by a state guideline that banned “minimal nutrition” foods.

“Whether or not I agree with the guidelines, we have to follow the rules,” he said.

The state, however, gives each school discretion over how to enforce the policy. Ellis said school officials had decided a stricter punishment was necessary after lesser penalties failed to serve as a deterrent.

Ellis said failing to adhere to the state’s guidelines could put federal funding in jeopardy.

According to the Texas Department of Agriculture’s website, “The Texas Public School Nutrition Policy (TPSNP) explicitly states that it does not restrict what foods or beverages parents may provide for their own children’s consumption.”

Brazos Elementary Principal Jeanne Young, said the problem, in this instance, was that the candy was provided by another student – not the girl’s parents.

The girl’s mother said the incident has taught her daughter a lesson, but not the one her teachers intended.

“I told her, ‘Leighann, unfortunately you’re learning very young that life’s not fair,’” Brazda said.

– Gabe Gutierrez
KHOU News 11, Houston, TX

So the Food Police at Brazos Elementary gave the ten year-old Leighann Adair a week’s detention for “possession of minimal nutrition food.” One has to wonder if the student who gave her the Jolly Rancher got worse due to harsher sentencing for “possession with intent to distribute” and if young Ms. Adair could have gotten a lighter sentence by identifying her “dealer” to the authorities.

Brazos Elementary school officials have defended their actions against Leighann Adair as being required by- and consistent with Texas state laws; they were just following orders from the Nanny State after all. In this they are actually correct.

Texas Public School Nutrition Policy (TPSNP) Update

SY 2009-2010 TPSNP Amendments will be effective August 1, 2009. Highlights of the Amendments include:

• Nutrition Standards: Schools must eliminate deep-fat frying as a method of on-site preparation for foods served as part of reimbursable school meals, a la carte, snack lines and competitive foods. Transition period for extensive equipment or facility changes ends.
• Foods of Minimal Nutritional Value (FMNV): High Schools my not serve or provide access for students to FMNV and all other forms of candy at any time anywhere on school premises until the end of the last scheduled class.

Complete details and information pertaining to the SY 2009-10 Amendments are available here: Texas Public School Nutrition Policy – SY 2009 – 10 Amendment – Effective August 1, 2009

As I have said before, the Liberals seek to enact a “nanny state” whose despotism will wear a kindly face, but whose iron fist will strike as hard as any other tyrant’s. Even worse, as they have so often in the past, they have come first for America’s children since they are well acquainted with Lenin’s words, “Give me four years to teach the children and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted.”

The question before Americans is do we have the conviction and the will to do what is necessary to stop them.