Trading Freedom for Security is often dangerous.

Freedom to do as we please has to yield to security and the freedom of others. How much freedom should we trade for security?
How much do we still have?
Another question is, do we still have choices?

Our earnings, property and other assets are increasingly viewed by libruls as belonging to the Government. The bases asserted for their notions include a perceived need for an ever higher, more comfortable and more spacious “floor” for those who prefer (but do not need) to be cared for by a benign Government (i.e., tax payers). There, they can snooze, booze, use illegal drugs, procreate, play or do whatever else may please them. It’s the socially responsible way to go. Right? Wrong.

I am no less offended by an ancillary notion, advanced at the Democrat National Convention, that we “all belong to the government.”

However, that seems to be an increasingly common perception. As noted here,

An MSNBC contributor revisits the statist notion that while you gave birth to your children and feed and clothe them, they are only on loan to you by their true parent — a benevolent and all-knowing government.

Melissa Harris-Perry, an African-American professor at Tulane, has endorsed the concept of human ownership by the state, something we thought history would teach her is a bad thing, saying in a promo for MSNBC that “we have to break through our kind of private idea that kids belong to their parents or kids belong to their families and recognize that kids belong to whole communities.

. . . .

One well-known collectivist echoed such sentiments when he said, “Let me control the textbooks and I will control the state. The state will take youth and give to youth its own education and its own upbringing. Your child belongs to us already… what are you?”

So said Adolf Hitler, who founded a sate-run youth group that bore his name.

Today’s statists oppose anything which puts children out of the absolute control of the state, and education is just the start.

They oppose home schooling, even though the children receive the individual attention educators tout, which is provided in a safe environment by people who genuinely love them.

Statists like Ms. Harris-Perry oppose school vouchers and school choice because that puts the decision of what children will be taught — and where — in the hands of parents. Kids are to be herded into re-education camps known as public schools where they cannot pray, pledge allegiance to God and country, but where they can get condoms and free contraceptives because the state knows better.

The state will feed your children breakfast and lunch because the state knows what they should eat. Forget about packing something in that Justin Bieber lunchbox and sending your tot off to school.

As observed by Bryan Preston at PJ Tatler,

Starting last week, MSNBC talker Melissa Harris-Perry caused a stir for this “Lean Forward” all your kids are belong to us ad on MSNBC. It’s as radical and anti-parenting an ad as has ever run on a major cable news network, or even MSNBC.

Today, she broke her silence on the ad and in her own words, doubles down. After claiming to have come to the belief that parents have no inherent rights because her mom volunteered, George W. Bush believed no child should be left behind, and because pro-lifers believe in the right to life, Harris-Perry tosses down the race card. Of course. No political argument is complete until we have that. “Shut up, stupid racist!” she explained.

. . . .

[S[he was talking about the Marxist intent to destroy the family, along with the church, as the last but most powerful impediments to implementing full state control over our lives. Her ad was not the benign call to community that she is now making it out to be. It’s a radical attack on the foundation of our society and way of life. (Emphasis added.)

Here is a video of some of Ms. Harris-Perry’s remarks:

Are Ms. Harris-Perry and her ilk who promote “transformational change” for our nation also offering another new wave of political correctness? There have been many predecessors and they have been fairly successful at changing the narratives.

Political correctness is like a tsunami in that no one understands the extent of its danger until after the massive wave sweeps across the land and then recedes.

Early on, in the first term of the Obama administration, we felt the rumblings of the earthquake that always precedes the storm, when President Obama set the tone for how he expected sensitive issues to be handled. It wasn’t long before the Global War on Terror was renamed “Overseas Contingency Operation.” The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) quickly followed suit when it redefined terrorist attacks as “man caused disasters.” A case of trickle-down idiocy, I suppose, considering that changing a name only makes for a temporary fix. (Emphasis added.)

But does it make for just a “temporary fix?” I doubt it and the author concludes with this thought:

The monstrous PC wave will continue to rise until it can no longer contain itself, and then will explode across America, drowning our freedom and leaving fascism in its wake.

A “temporary fix” may be displaced, perhaps by another possibly inconsistent but nonetheless convenient meme bringing with it another “temporary fix.”

A lengthy article at American Thinker titled The War on the Family enters a New Stage begins,

Welcome to a brave new “national conversation” that proposes not simply to redefine the family, but to eliminate it.

MSNBC host Melissa Harris-Perry recently shocked millions with her brazen TV promo spot urging us to get rid of the idea that kids belong to their parents or to “private” families.  She presses us to replace it with a “collective” notion of children: “Kids belong to whole communities.”

Catch them while they are young enough to accept globalist theology

The targeted children are younger even than these, and that was bad enough:

Now, President Obama wants Government to lay claim to the youngest of children at what he characterizes as the “earliest possible age:”

In the message he issued along with his budget proposal on Wednesday morning, President Barack Obama said he wants to see 4-year-old children in the United States enrolled in public schools.

Obama said America needs to start enrolling 4-year-olds to make sure the children are “better prepared for the demands of the global economy” and to help parents save on “child-care costs.

Prepare “for the demands of the global economy?” Is that another euphemism for giving up such sovereignty as we still have? We seem to have been moving “forward” in that direction for years. We now have international Baccalaureate programs.

Justin Blough describes the IB program at the school he attended—no more learning about U.S. President, good values, no American history, patriotic songs, and plays. Teachers have to wear the light blue colors of the United Nations. Students are indoctrinated into becoming “citizens of the world” instead of citizens of the country they were born in, preoccupied with “moral, ethical, social, economic, and environmental implications of global production and consumption.”

The Rescue Mission Planet Earth is promoted by the IB program as the student’s version of UN Agenda 21. The first director of UNESCO, Julian Huxley, stated that UNESCO “is to help the emergence of a single world culture, with its own philosophy and background of ideas, and with its own broad purposes.” Agenda 21 goals were advanced around the world with the help of ICLEI (International Council on Local Environmental Initiatives) while IB World Schools are advanced with the help of the IBO (International Baccalaureate Organization) in Switzerland.

The induction new of youth must, according to President Obama, start with four years old. I assume (but do not know) that his initiative would not affect home schooled children, directly. However, few parents provide homeschooling. Some are incapable, are otherwise unable or would find doing so inconvenient. The parents of children in public schools have little impact on what they are taught, a problem which such federal efforts as “Common Core” expand. As I said in re-blogging an article titled The Tragedy of The Commons, Children’s Edition,

Unfortunately, the glorious state that too many seem to view as omniscient and omnipotent seems to be taking over. The elementary, secondary and even university systems of education are becoming federalized and bringing along a “librul” statist ideology. Many of us don’t like that but too few are resisting the process. Why? Because not enough care, too many have “better” things to do or too many see the process as irreversible? Until we reverse the course, things will continue to worsen.

No man is an island; but no man should be a Governmental creation.

Living alone on an otherwise deserted island in the middle of a big ocean, distant from other places with humans, one would have almost absolute freedom (as distinguished from ability) to do whatever one desired. Shooting at passing ships might well bring unfortunate consequences, but nothing that did not extend beyond the island would likely meet with human complaint. A monkey or rat living there might complain, but could be eliminated with relative impunity. There might not be much to do, but aside from that whatever was desired could be done.

Most of us live in communities, big or small. If you want to come to my house on my land to sell Fuller Brushes or “Obama is Our Lord and Master” bumper stickers to me, I can tell you to go away. Should you persist, I can call the cops and (if and when they eventually come) they will perhaps escort you away. Any freedom you might otherwise think you have to enter and remain on my land can be cancelled, probably with effort. Of course, if my property is a public area such as a shopping center, it is not that simple.

Most of us do “need a village” or something bigger and want to live in one. Hence, most of us do that and are generally prepared to forfeit some of our freedoms.  My wife and I live on about thirteen relatively isolated acres in the very rural highlands of Western Panama. We have no “next door” neighbors and no other houses are visible from our house; our house is not visible from any other.  If I want to go outside at midnight on our property, stumbling drunk, to curse at the moon I can with impunity and without attracting attention; If Jeanie (my wife), wants to dance starkers in the light of the full moon, she can. We haven’t had any desire to do so, but the point is that we could if we wanted to. That is perhaps a metaphor for the differences between those who live in “villages” and those who don’t. As the “villages” get bigger, more pervasive and more controlling, cf, Ms. Clinton’s “it takes a village” and Ms. Harris-Perry’s views, it becomes more difficult to leave them; they seem to tag along wherever one goes.

Any society needs generally accepted moral values. But they should not be prescribed by Government

If we are to live in society, that society needs some moral values. Whether based on religion, the writings of the long dead or something else, they are necessary.  Here is a link to an excellent article written by Margaret Thatcher in 1995. Modern multiculturalism — which now seems to be the theology favored by our government — has very few moral values except for those made up on the fly with little if any basis in human behavior and even less in our American roots. That presents substantial problems if our society is to function even acceptably. Something usually fills a vacuum and dictatorships are born and thrive, at least for a while.

Whatever moral values there are have to be generally accepted. If they are not, there will be endless disputes over what are “good” and “bad;” should the disputes be widespread, turmoil will result. A society in turmoil, unless rescued from inside or outside, will not long survive. Is that the direction in which we, guided by the current push for uniform education for all, are headed?

The article by Margaret Thatcher linked above concludes:

We who are living in the West today are fortunate. Freedom has been bequeathed to us. We have not had to carve it out of nothing; we have not had to pay for it with our lives. Others before us have done so. But it would be a grave mistake to think that freedom requires nothing of us. Each of us has to earn freedom anew in order to possess it. We do so not just for our own sake, but for the sake of our children, so that they may build a better future that will sustain over the wider world the responsibilities and blessings of freedom.

The notions that we all, now even four year old children, belong to and are the wards of a benign government, run directly counter to Lady Thatcher’s precepts. They also run directly counter to the foundations of our nation.

Easily influenced, young children who are wards of and indoctrinated by the state are likely, as they become older, to advance the statist ideology they were taught. Currently, that ideology is being taught increasingly and with increasing uniformly throughout the land under Federal supervision. As our children emerge from the places where that ideology is taught, there may be high degrees of stability and security; with that, freedom will be forfeited.

Will the children, as they become adults, notice? Will enough care? Will enough try to resist? Or will most disgrace our nation’s founders, us, and themselves by not bothering?

Here is a very important part of our history, to be taught accurately as it happened, and remembered.