It's Not About Health Care

I'm not calling it Cognitive Dissonance anymore. It's Socialist Propaganda, plain and simple.

Consider these two articles: http://dailycaller.com/2014/12/30/obama-adviser-jonathan-gruber-in-2009-obamacare-will-not-be-affordable/ and http://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/228257-vast-majority-of-obamacare-customers-qualify-for-subsidies

"Gruber also said that the only way to control costs is to effectively deny treatment."

“The real substance of cost control is all about a single thing: telling patients they can’t have something they want. It’s about telling patients, ‘That surgery doesn’t do any good, so if you want it you have to pay the full cost.’”

“There’s no reason the American health care system can’t be, ‘You can have whatever you want, you just have to pay for it.’ "

BUT, according to the second article, "Nearly 90 percent of people who bought health insurance in the second year of ObamaCare qualify for government help to pay their premiums,"

SO, those of us who can "afford" to pay more for mandated health insurance (not for long) will be paying for those who can't, and when those who can't need extra care someone in government will deny treatment to control costs.

HOW IS THIS DIFFERENT FROM PRIVATE INSURANCE?!!

Oh yeah, with the ACA, government gets more control.

Kinder Gardens

Friedrich Froebel opened his first Kindergarten in Blankenburg, Germany in 1837. He described children as tender, growing plants and their female teachers as their gardeners, creating an environment of optimum growth through play.

History of Kindergarten

Imagine the advantages of giving children the opportunities to become the gardeners of their own plants! Cultivating an environment where vegetables and flowers can grow lets students become the teachers of one another, as they learn by doing.

Study of School Gardens

As great as all the reasons outlined in the above article are, I host a Garden Club at my school to witness the excited faces of the students who see vegetables growing from the seeds they planted themselves.

I am committed to facilitating a garden at my school. In 2013, another teacher helped me procure materials for a 6'x6' raised bed garden, framed in straw bales, but it was vandalized and destroyed within a week. This year, I hosted a small Garden Club, using Dig In! curriculum from the USDA. We planted green beans, wax beans, lettuce and a tomato seeds in 4 medium sized pots and set them on the west side of the school, directly underneath a video camera. We were able to eat the lettuce before freezing temperatures ended our experiment. In the Spring of 2015, I plan to add more, larger pots to expand our container garden while applying for grants to build another raised bed garden in view of the security camera.

If your local school doesn't have a garden, what are you going to do about it?

R.I.P. Veritas

R.I.P. Veritas

“What is truth?” This was Pontius Pilate’s retort to the assertion of Christ that “those who are of the truth hear My voice”. It’s easy to kill an innocent man when one is deaf to the truth. Even abortion is justifiable when “the Way, the Truth, and the Life” is a stranger. What happens to a nation when the "self-evident" truths we were founded on are no longer recognized? The realities of Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness (property) become matters of opinion.

The reelection of Barack Obama stunned me. How could voters approve of a U.S. President who had proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that his ideology and actions were moving this nation toward Socialism and away from Constitutional principles at such a dramatically rapid pace? It’s easy when the masses don’t know Constitutional principles and prefer to be ruled by emotion rather than information! Truth has come to mean what one chooses to believe. I learned this first-hand while teaching intermediate school students about our nation’s foundations. There were times when, after teaching a fact about our Constitution and letting them make the connection to instances of the President’s blatant disregard for the Rule of Law, students who identified with Obama would merely decide not to believe those facts. This took me aback. How do we teach our students anything if they can pick and choose which facts and information to “believe”, based on their unfounded ideologies?

More recently, we see evidence that this deception is actively promoted in adult society. Despite evidence to the contrary, riots are staged to protest the truth! Mainstream media and political leaders are in collusion with this deceit by propagating cognitive dissonance: supporting the unlawful protests with the same breath they use to report the justly concluded grand jury decisions. Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton actually confessed that, while she did not read the evidence report, “that is not a concern.” She had decided to support the protests based on her feelings.  Other Congressional members posed with hands raised, announcing, “Hands up. Don’t shoot.” in the House Chamber. This is frightening! Those with bully pulpits and the privilege and responsibility of voting are equating opinion with fact, with complete disregard for their oaths of office.

"It is natural to man to indulge in the illusions of hope. We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth - and listen to the song of that syren, till she transforms us into beasts. Is this the part of wise men, engaged in a great and arduous struggle for liberty? Are we disposed to be of the number of those, who having eyes, see not, and having ears, hear not, the things which so nearly concern their temporal salvation? For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it might cost, I am willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst, and to provide for it."

Patrick Henry 1775 - speech in the Virginia Convention

We’re sacrificing Rule of Law for Rule of Man, and whether one believes it or not, the truth of history proves that this never ends well.

Truth. It's Kind Of Important.

Yesterday evening I watched the movie Flight, starring Denzel Washington.
Whoa. Not a family movie, but an important one. At every turn, I kept hoping the main character would finally tell the truth and set himself free.

On Christmas Eve, a Facebook friend posted information about the pagan origins of celebrating the birth of Christ on December 25. My first reply was, "Because Truth matters", to which another replied, "What is the truth.?.....to me, Christmas is celebrating the coming, and birth of our savior, Jesus Christ....if we are off by a few months, so what...the fact that we believe and worship..should please him....Silent night, Holy night..." 

I couldn't resist: "'Worship in spirit and truth."'John 4:24 'What is truth?' This was Pontius Pilate’s retort to the assertion of Christ that 'those who are of the truth hear My voice'. I choose to celebrate Christ daily in truth. I do not judge you for your mode of worship. I just explain my stand."

Today, a Facebook friend posted a comment about how the Left achieves their political goals with blatant lies. This was my reply:  WHY have  we seen such a disregard for the Truth in this administration? According to psychology, lying is often rooted in the cognitive dissonance of narcissism and low self-esteem. One does not feel worthy, so must tell lies to keep the needy ego inflated. We've witnessed nearly pathological levels of lying from this current administration, yet every lie is propagated to forward the same agenda: increased power in the hands of the few. What we are witnessing is Socialist Propaganda, plain and simple. What was true in 1959, is true today: "It is this kind of socialist propa­ganda that is so dangerous. It aims at attracting the general pub­lic by what is in fact an exact re­versal of the truth."http://fee.org/freeman/detail/socialist-propaganda

Truth is OBJECTIVE, not SUBJECTIVE.

"[T]ruth is always that matching up of an idea to reality." 
http://www.dwillard.org/articles/artview.asp?artID=66

When we stop matching up an idea to reality, we are living in a fantasy world. Which is the perfect place to dwell if you are in an asylum. Only Truth will set us free.

The Great Divide

Scrolling through the social media posts about the current, heartbreaking race war prompted me to ask the question: “Who is optimizing this crisis, and why? Who benefits from dividing our nation this way?”

I found this: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/12/19/1353048/-Racism-and-Radicalism-Dividing-America

“During Lincoln’s time, racism and slavery were clear dividing issues. Today, with a black man in office, racism, or racial bias, has returned to our political world, or simply become more visible. As Obama said last week, racism is ‘deeply rooted in our society, (and) deeply rooted in our history.’” The author, known as Diligent Bureaucrat (that’s telling), neglects to reveal that it was the Democrats who fomented rampant racism during Lincoln’s time, continuing their hateful ideology through the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s. Now, after decades of exponential normalization of race relations in spite of the regressive Affirmative Action and Welfare programs that perpetuate a victim mentality, Racism is again being used by Democrats as a tool to leverage a rapidly increasing national divide.

The left-leaning story promotes the division by labeling Constitutional principles as radical! “Radicalization of the right wing has played an important role in increasing this divide. The Tea Party and Libertarian movements... have infected the national conversation and mood like a bacterial virus eating away at the delicate solidarity we once had. By embracing an ideology that believes in unrestrained capitalism and self regulation, much of the right wing has all but given up the ideals of social welfare and business regulation that formed the middle class during the twentieth century.” This statement is obvious misdirection. The "delicate solidarity" no doubt refers to the success of mainstream media carrying the water for Democrats for decades before the advent of alternate, web-based Conservative media sources. Having effectively moved the Overton Window so far to the left, with the Socialist policies of Presidents Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, Johnson and Obama, concepts like Capitalism and Personal Responsibility have become “radical”, while rampant welfare and regulation that transfers political power from We the People to a government Oligarchy is looked upon fondly as the norm of the 20th century.

We are firmly embedded in the 21st century now. The radicalism that has ruled this nation since the turn of the last century has sunk our nation into the depths of political, racial and economic division we suffer today. I wish I could agree with the author that “The Republicans have become the no-compromise party”, refusing to march willingly down the path to Socialism, as do the Democrats. It’s actually the Conservatives who are working diligently to return our nation to Constitutional principles.

The author’s conclusion: “Unless both racism and radicalism are quickly eradicated, it seems our democracy will slowly decay into a sort of plutocratic deformity” is correct. Sadly, the Leftists have garnered too much success using these tools to divide and conquer the populace in order to secure and increase the political capital to push their radical democracy instead of safe-guarding the Constitutional Republic our founders intended.

A Book Review

I wish I had kept a journal of all the thousands of books I've read in my lifetime. I encourage my Book Club students to keep a list.

The book that made the biggest impression on my is Shantaram, by Gregory David Roberts - a vivid and personal account of the richness of life and death in Mumbai. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shantaram_%28novel%29
I can only describe it as exquisite. My daughter agrees. The words are delicious, even when read silently.

Perhaps it is because of Shantaram, that I am drawn to books about India.
The Sandalwood Tree, by Elle Newmark. "A sweeping novel that brings to life two love stories, ninety years apart, set against the rich backdrop of war-torn India." - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7545202-the-sandalwood-tree

My father and step-mother get me a book or music CD every year for Christmas. This year, I requested A Suitable Boy, by Vikram Seth. http://www.tor.com/blogs/2010/04/total-immersion-in-1950s-india-vikram-seths-lem-ga-suitable-boy

Like reviewer Jo Walton, I hope I will miss it, and enjoy the lingering taste of it once I've finished reading it.

Why I Don't Do Christmas

Ten years ago, while I was still "Unschooling" with my daughter, she did a study on the History of Religions. Soon, she came to me with articles on the pagan roots of Christianity and Christmas that I could not deny. She asked me why we celebrated a holiday that not only glorified those pagan roots, but denied the very truths of the actual birth of Christ. I had no valid argument. We began to view Christmas as a gauche distraction from our relationship with the Creator.
At the time, we were praying for a friend who had embedded his Christian ministry into Ukraine during the Orange Revolution. He and his team ministered to the Ukrainians as they protested the abuses of their government in the dead of winter. My daughter suggested that we sell all of our Christmas decorations at a yard sale and give the proceeds to our missionary friend. Our donation helped to supply warm, sturdy boots to those who patrolled the tent city of Independence Square of Kiev.
Have I missed "celebrating" Christmas? No. I do not miss celebrating the man-made untruths of the season, and I certainly do not miss the frenzy and exhaustion of December. Instead, I celebrate freedom and peace as I honor the Truth of Christ.
The History of Christmas is eye-opening. I don't know why anyone would want to trade the Truth for deception. I do not judge the salvation of those who choose to celebrate Christmas, but I do grieve for what they have chosen to give up.