COMMENCEMENT 2014

 

Many people ask me " Why are you so angry?"   I usually reply "Why aren't you?"  For starters I am not built to surrender.  I take my rights and responsibilities seriously.  I take my obligation seriously to try and leave my country and the world better than they were when I found it.   I cannot roll over and become a slave to those who once they have stripped me of my rights would then attempt to eradicate my humanity.  So I'm angry!

The country is in the throes of an American version of the cultural revolution.  Too many of our allegedly educated youth are all too ready, willing and eager to silence anyone who disagrees with them on whatever issue du jour  they have taken a pious and ignorant stand.

We were warned  that this day would come when the missionaries of Marx took over Academia and systematically proceeded to turn our children into witless disciples of numerous phony Messiahs.

Intolerance in the university is now the norm as witnessed by the procession of graduation speakers who have become objectionable for moronic reasons held by brainwashed bigots with caps and gowns.

If I were to be a commencement speaker (which is about as likely as playing shortstop for the Yankees after Jeter retires), I would say this to the graduates of 2014:

" The world is in terrible shape.  The country is virtually in free fall because the rule of law has been abandoned.  The Constitution ...the greatest secular document of freedom ever written is in tatters...and many of you, but not all of you are oblivious to all of the above because your education has not included an accurate history of this country, warts and all.  Instead if you got anything it was The History of the United States...warts...that's all.    

Nor were you instructed in how this country is supposed to work  so you could be the watchmen in the night when the nation veers off course.  Had you been so instructed, most of you would be on the barricades today.   

You also do not understand that you live in an "exceptional" nation unlike any other in the history of the world.  Whether it remains that way will now be up to you.  Whether it remains that way means  you will have abandoned an innocence that no longer justifies your arrogant, self righteous pathology of never offending anyone in order to justify in turn your knee jerk reflex to censor anyone who disagrees with you.

Your obsession with grievance based conformity of word and deed must be put away with your toys.  Your thirst for punishing your mythical enemies while aligning yourself with some of the most vile political movements in history has become in the minds of many the  signature achievement of your academic careers...unless of course you count the appalling fact that far too many of you know more about Ben Affleck than you do about Benghazi.

You might be surprised that many in the real world see you first and foremost as Fascists.   If you  don't know what that means than Google it.  They wonder how Liberal Arts became so illiberal.

You worship "diversity" but were not educated in an environment that practiced it and most of you said and did nothing about it and now the bill  for that avoidance will be coming due.

You will now be entering a world more dangerous and complex than any before it.  It is also a world which is more competitive on a global scale than ever before.  Those who know how to seek and acquire knowledge and truth will survive, thrive and prosper and the rest will not.  Those who have wallowed in the popular culture while ignoring the humanities, science and western civilization, now must radically change their ways or be relegated to a life of diminishing returns.

Mine is a call not just to your hearts and minds but to your souls as well.  The wisdom of the past is the only road map to the future. But it will only be as good a road map as you make it... as you chart your course in an unsettled world.

My plea to you is simple.  Do not wake up 10...20...30 years from now as a cog in a machine made by politicians selling you what passes as political manure.  Do not wake up as subjects of the state and not the ultimate rulers of that state. Do not wake up as serfs to a progressive elite.

I close with the following thoughts;

Shun the cult of celebrity and the curse of political correctness...both will devour  you...

Embrace the classics and the lessons of history...they can save you

Embrace the sermon on the mount...it can save your soul

Be faithful to the vision of the founders or risk losing your freedoms forever...

Keep learning until you die...

Learn a trade to get you through the lean times...

Practice courage,bravery and honesty...they are virtues that define you in good times and bad...

Do not let the nation, your nation, wither on the vine until it becomes a cruel parody of the last days of the Holy Roman Empire...

And if you don't know what The Holy Roman Empire was ...don't Google it...instead pick up a  book and learn!"

ERLANDSSON

INCOME INEQUALITY

Nobody capable of useful work need today lack food and shelter in the advanced countries, and for those incapable of themselves earning enough these necessities are generally provided outside the market. Poverty in the relative sense must of course continue to exist outside of any completely egalitarian society: so long as there exists inequality, somebody must be at the bottom of the scale. But the abolition of absolute poverty is not helped by the endeavor to achieve 'social justice'; in fact, in many of the countries in which absolute poverty is still an acute problem, the concern for 'social justice' has become one of the greatest obstacles in the elimination of poverty. In the West the rise of the great masses to tolerable comfort has been the effect of the general growth of wealth and has been merely slowed down by measures interfering with the market mechanism. It has been this market mechanism which has created the increase of aggregate income, which also has made it possible to provide outside the market for the support of those unable to earn enough. But the attempts to 'correct' the results of the market in the direction of 'social justice' have probably produced more injustice in the form of new privileges, obstacles to mobility and frustration of efforts than they have contributed to the alleviation of the lot of the poor.

From economist Friedrich Hayek's "Law, Legislation and Liberty, Vol. 2: The Mirage of Social Justice" (1976):

 

  

It seems as if everyone today is  talking about income inequality.  Obama is using it as a bogus political crusade to divert our attention from Benghazi, the IRS and ObamaCare; Pope Francis is denouncing it as an ethical and moral challenge.  Bill DeBlasio ran with it as his signature issue to become Mayor of NYC. 

 

Thomas Piketty,a neo-Marxist French political scientist believes that income inequality is cause by capitalism.  He has written a book called  "Capital in the Twenty-First Century" which the left is having schoolgirl swoons over.  In it Piketty, says only taxation can correct this problem, so he  advocates a world wide tax of 80% for anyone making over $500,000 a year.  For those making less, levies of 40% and 60% are proposed.  This is all social justice masquerading as a path to income equality which history has shown will not work when the market mechanisms of capitalism have been thwarted by ideology.

 

 

Yet no one can really dispute that the gap between the "uber" rich and some of the rest of us is growing.  The real question is why?

Since 2008 the economy has been stagnant.  In the first quarter of 2014 it  grew by a measly .1%.  This was blamed on the severe winter which in turn was blamed on "climate change" thereby turning an economic and political disaster into a cause for further manipulation of the economy, one more time. 

This administration, in point of fact has addressed all things economic, via a comprehensive "progressive" ideology that defies both common sense and the modern marketplace.  In doing this it has conducted a not so secret and not so subtle war on capitalism itself and thereby created income inequality. 

The true cure for income inequality is economic growth coupled with prudent and common sense policies and  regulations which prevent or curtail among other things ..."crony capitalism"...excessive regulation ( 4000 new regulation a year on top of the 200,000 "regs" that exist already)...massive Federal debt and deficits...government growth which causes the private sector to remain in stasis or contract...excessive taxation...waste and corruption in government spending...an educational system that rewards you for showing up in K through 12 and then brainwashes you in the university...and failure to end programs that don't work or need re-imagining in order to work in the 21st century.

The "Fed" has kept the lid on interest rates by "Quantitative Easing" but in so doing has forced those with capital to invest until very recently in the market which is still the only game in town if you want to make a buck.  These investments create wealth but do not create jobs.  The Fed has also increased anxiety about the inevitability of the inflation they seek to forestall.  This in turn adds to the overarching uncertainty which hovers over the economy  like a dark cloud.

The President doubles down on this uncertainty with a war on fossil fuels that raise energy prices for the average person to record levels, stifles job creation  and reduces the wealth of the middle class. This is done in a nation which has longer term sources of energy than any other nation on earth. 

 

EPA regulations in the name of climate change in particular, regularly kill jobs  and shrink the GDP.   But the ideologues who  practice a form of "Green terrorism", don't care if people end  out of work and dependent on government instead of being independent, employed and contributing to a vibrant economy.  Today the levels of unemployment, under employment and people leaving the workforce have reached "great depression" levels with certain demographics within the population.  

ObamaCare also kills growth by driving the cost of health care through the roof while delivering substandard care in a system designed by bureaucrats and not Physicians.  Job growth is thwarted  by artificial requirements placed on the size of private  businesses disguised as reasonable regulatory limitations linked to healthcare  without ever once recognizing that from town to town...state to state...and region to region there is no such thing as one size fits all.

Globalism has moved manufacturing off shore and turned us into a service economy with a technical IT elite who increasingly make what they do and how they do it, unintelligible to the average person.  As it turns out it also makes us dependent on a omnipresent, omnivorous technology which has taken over our lives  to the point of also making us strategically vulnerable from a national security standpoint.

Our politics seem about where they were before the Civil War.  Harry Reid has turned the Senate into a joke where solutions die in childbirth.  It has rocked the Republic to the core and begs the question of can a Republic work without democracy.  Nothing can grow in such a climate.

All of the above and more, create "manmade" income inequality.  All of the above involve deliberate policy decisions that this administration has made which fly in the face of common sense and the lessons of history.

Capitalism today is sick, but not for the reasons the left would have us believe.  Capitalism is sick because of ideologues who say it is  and have proceeded to wreck it in order to prove their point.  Capitalism is sick because this President has infected it with socialism.  The end result is the creation of a society where being reduced to poverty,  joblessness and loss of both economic and political freedom and opportunity  has perversely created a brave new world of income equality where poverty will make us all equal.

ERLANDSSON

THE SMOKING GUNS

 

Benghazi has been and continues to be a scandal trifecta. 

 

There is the scandal of why the Consulate in Benghazi was not reinforced with adequate security despite a rapidly deteriorating security situation and despite repeated requests from military, diplomatic and security officials inside and outside the State Department.  Those questions have been largely answered due to the callous indifference and incompetence of the State Department and Hillary Clinton. 

 

 

The second scandal is why there was no attempt to come to the aid of both diplomatic and CIA personnel once the attack began.

 

 

The third scandal is what various elements of the US government did and said, subsequent to the attack, to explain to the American people what happened, why it happened and who was responsible.

 

 

On April 30, the release to Judicial Watch, via a FOIA related Federal law suit,  of  e-mails from Ben Rhodes, White House Deputy National Security Adviser for Communications, provides proof that the story of a YouTube video as the cause of the Benghazi attack was bogus and was an attempt to give cover to the President seven weeks before the November 2012 election.

 

 

 In an email he sent to U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice the evening before her five Sunday news show appearances,  Rhodes states the "goal" of the cover story is "to underscore that these protests are rooted in an Internet video, and not a broader failure of policy."  Additionally Rhodes wrote that the video narrative was intended "to reinforce the President and Administration's strength and steadiness in dealing with difficult challenges."

 

 

These e-mails implicate both the President, his immediate staff and Hillary Clinton who in the aftermath of the attack was persistent in reiterating that the US had no part in  the production of this video and went so far to promise the father of one of the victims, that the US would punish those responsible for the video.  Shortly after, when violence in the Middle East was raging,Obama and Clinton spent $70,000 in taxpayer money on a commercial that aired on Pakistani television apologizing for the "video".

 

 

On May 1,  Retired Brig. Gen. Robert Lovell, who at the time of the attacks was the intelligence director at AFRICOM, told the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee that "The point is we should have tried," to aid those under attack in Benghazi and,  "As another saying goes -- always move to the sound of the guns." 


He later testified that the military "could have made a response of some sort." and made clear repeatedly that the military was waiting for clearance to intervene, which never came, from the State Department and Hillary Clinton .  He also declared that at 3:15 AM on September 12, 2012,  AFRICOM knew it was an attack and not a demonstration and that the video had nothing to do with it.  Despite this Obama, Clinton, Rice, Carney and others maintained this fiction publicly, for another two weeks.


The e-mails now show the duplicity and possible criminal actions of both  the Obama White House and Hillary Clinton.  It is also inconceivable that the President himself did not know or even approve this cover up, coming so close to Election day.  Moreover where was he while the attack was going on?

 

The Obama 2012 campaign was built on a foundation of lies, first about ObamaCare and now about Benghazi.  Why should the American public give this disingenuous President the benefit of the doubt on the IRS scandal, Fast and Furious, the AP/James Rosen scandal, the economy and the NSA.  The only question left to answer is the motives of this President who persistently hurts and lies to the nation.

 

Hillary Clinton is simply, once and for all, unfit to be elected to any office... much less the Presidency.

 

ERLANDSSON

RACE, RAGE AND JUSTICE 

 

"Racism springs from the lie that certain human beings are less than fully human. It's a self-centred falsehood that corrupts our minds into believing we are right to treat others as we would not want to be treated."
-Alveda King, civil rights activist 

   

Donald Sterling has been a racist for a very long time.  His public comments were always there for us to see if we really wanted to look.  So why is it now that almost unanimous scorn is heaped upon him as if a great and terrible secret had been uncovered.  Despite his odious views he got awards and now forgiveness (that he has not asked for) from the LA branch of the NAACP.   What is that all about?  This man seems unrepentant, locked as he is in a legal battle with the latest young woman he cavorted with while still married to his wife of 50 years who is  the co-owner of the Clippers. 
 

Racism is the great American sickness.  Clearly it exists all over the world, but in America it takes on insidious dimensions that threaten the soul of the nation.  It is has always has been an existential danger to who we profess to be and what we profess to stand for.  People who see the world and their fellow men through a racial prism are quite simply, mentally and spiritually ill.


The question before us however in the Donald Sterling affair is not how to demonstrate our collective outrage about his not so secret racist views...that question has been settled.  Instead the question before us now is what is  appropriate, moral and legal with regard to his punishment.  The NBA may well say he has brought shame and dishonor upon the sport and the league, and they would be right.  They may further say that 80% of the players are young black men and it would be intolerable to make them play while this man still owns a valuable franchise.  They would be right about this also.  They may conclude that because of the above, that which Sterling owns must be ripped asunder from him because it is the righteous thing to do.  The problem is... is it the legal thing to do?


Punishing someone solely for his odious views or thoughts is  neither right or legal.  If society attempts to make it so... then what thoughts or views  down the road will become markers for criminal punishment or worse? 


Recently we have witnessed a spate of incidences involving so called speech and/or thought crimes which have ended with people losing their jobs, careers or being threatened  with such a loss.  Brendan Eich at Mozilla is one such case.  Paula Deen and Phil Robertson are others. 


In the majority of incidences that become big news, conservatives or those believed to be conservatives, are the bigots.  Ironically Sterling seems to be an exception to this since he has reportedly been a heavy contributor to the Democratic Party.  The point is that far more often, disgusting speech from the left is ignored or excused while that from the right is never forgotten and never forgiven. 


This ideological selectivity is part of the totalitarian impulse which permeates progressivism and the PC culture it has nourished.  Attempting to bypass the law because the case at hand is so vile has become  a leitmotif for the left.


Nevertheless if there is to be further punishment for Sterling than let it be decided in a court of law with his due process rights protected and let the court of public opinion be restrained to robust  market and social protest that denounces and reacts to his views with vigor but within a legal framework. 

We  should all remember that the Nazis were allowed to march in Skokie and as good people turned their backs on them, they ended up  in the dustbin of history.  Donald Sterling is a nasty, sick man and not worth the loss of one American right under the law but he has given us an occasion to come together in shared protest as decent people, united and not divided.  
 
ERLANDSSON

 CULTS... POLITICS...AND THE DEMISE OF HUMOR

 

The "Progressive"  movement like all proto-totalitarian movements has morphed into a thug like cult of fanatics who are humorless, insensitive and intolerant of anyone who gets in their way. 

 

They take on  pseudo sacramental symbolic  rituals speech and actions of the religions they so despise because their lives are empty and divorced from  the reality of the human condition. 

 

They want a society where the collective will as defined by a select elite few squashes individual wants, needs and rights like a bug.

 

To get to the utopia of automatons they desire, they have to dismantle  western civilization, brick by brick.  In the process of doing this  they have become the purveyors of truly asinine and idiotic ideas due to their lack of connectivity to historic norms that have stood the test of time... hence the circus we are threatened with being imprisoned in at the present.

 

America is in the midst of the of the rise of neo-Jacobin  politics trying to create a French Revolution "deux" to replace ex post facto, the revolution which gave us our freedom and liberties.  Ironically it is also simultaneously going down the "Red Book road" via a domestic version of China's "Cultural Revolution" where those who don't demonstrate sufficient ideological purity and zeal, first become pariahs while on their way to becoming enemies of the state.

 

We all know how both revolutions ended.  Citizen Genet is somewhere in hell smirking that the Americans have finally taken his advice, and are getting their revolution right.   But we can all  suppose that he is still fervently hoping for more blood and beheadings before we finally come at the place where all "Progressive" transformations eventually arrive.

 

Currently we now are faced with an ever growing and ever changing list of what is appropriate ( and safe) to both believe in and express  publicly.  Deviation from the Progressive party line now can mark a person for personal destruction.  Lose your job...lose your reputation...and somewhere down the line, history teaches...lose your life!

 

The progressives who occupy a space on the political spectrum sandwiched between Fascists...Maoists...Marxists... Stalinists... and Nazis are, like their comrades, all about grievance and outrage whether they are snotty coeds paying $65,000 a year at Dartmouth who demand unisex toilets as the way to combat all the "isms" they believe in their self indulgent minds oppress them. Or they are the Rainbow Swastika brigades   who demanded the "dismissal" of Brendan Eich at Mozilla because he gave money in 2008 to oppose same sex marriage. and therefor  is now somewhere between a monster and a non-person.

 

Then there is the honorary Doctorate that Brandeis was supposed to give to Ayaan Hirsi Ali who has spent her life exposing the evils of female genital mutilation, honor killings, child brides and all the other misogyny that Sharia has inflicted on Muslim women...including herself.  But the Hamas / Muslim Brotherhood  creation CAIR (Council on Islamic -American Relations) complained and now the degree has been withdrawn because in the words of its gutless President "her past words are inconsistent with Brandeis's core values".  Of course what past statements are not elucidated and one can now only imagine what the core values of Brandeis are today.

 

For over a decade we have been sounding the alarm bell about the rise of political correctness in our society, politics and culture.  The rise of PC in either or all of these areas is essentially the main tool for the Alinsky left to attain power by turning the world upside down by attempting to rewire human nature and rewrite human history.

 

PC keeps repackaging  itself as the tip of the spear of the forces of the historical vanguard...what ever the hell that means.  As you pick through the adolescent angst that is the substitute for reasoned and rational thinking ...the message seems to be... forget all you know and all you have been taught ...its all wrong and has made you the oppressor...the racist...the sexist...the homophobe...the  Islamaphobe...the 1%...and now you must be punished unless you are willing to be re-educated.

 

Today we are rapidly becoming prisoners of ideas and dogmas so bizarre  or so stupid  that sane people who are not paying close  attention usually end up  refusing to believe that these ideas are taken seriously by others.  The new truths being spread on college campuses and in the popular culture include the propositions that heterosexuality is deviant...Christianity is insanity ...marriage is slavery (unless you are gay ...then it is freedom)...the Israelis are Nazis..the Palestinians are the "Jews"....all clergy are sexual predators...Blacks cannot be racists...but criticism of Obama for any reason...is...   Discrimination is proved by statistics because  lack of  equal outcome in every aspect of life  demonstrates unfairness and unfairness is synonymous with inequality and inequality is caused by discrimination.

 

The second amendment is no longer valid (if it ever was in their minds) and there is no room for religion in the public square.  Any one who expresses his or her religious beliefs in public is now more likely then not in certain areas of the country,  to be met by scorn or a law suit particularly if the discussion or action takes place in a public school or on public property.   And no one seems to argue back that mindlessly limiting where a person can express or practice his or her religion is a clear violation of their first amendment rights.  Moreover few if any put forth the increasingly obvious fact that the state has de facto adopted a state religion of non-religion or anti-religion. 

 

All of the above dogma is proclaimed with deadly earnestness  because progressives and their fellow travelers on their side of the spectrum in fact have no sense of humor and don't abide a sense of humor in others.  Imagine working a comedy club with people looking and acting like Saddam, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Khomeini, Osama, Kim Jung Un, Pol Pot, Lois Lerner and Harry Reid in the audience.  That is what many conservatives experience speaking on college campuses today about anything that runs counter to progressive PC orthodoxy. 

 

A prior guest, Professor F.H. Buckley of George Mason School of Law wrote a witty and perceptive book entitled "The Morality of Laughter"in which he pointedly said

 

"The loss of a sense of humor has impoverished academic discourse where nonsensical theories that could not survive the test of ridicule are now taken seriously.  Before adopting a fashionable idea, we ought first to  inquire whether it twigs our sense of humor'"

 

In other words if it is so stupid that Stewart, Miller Fallon, Kimmel, Letterman, Colbert or SNL see the joke ...we should flush it and send its authors for treatment. 

 

Erlandsson

 

THE CASE OF PRISONER JUSTINA PELLETIER

 

To those who have not heard the story of Justina Pelletier, prepare to be outraged.  To  those who are familiar with it ...prepare to be outraged again.

 

Her ongoing nightmare was first chronicled by Boston Globe reporters Neil Swidey and Patricia Wen in December of 2013.  Justina is now a 15 year old young woman from West Hartford, Connecticut who was diagnosed at Tufts University Hospital with Mitochrondrial Disease by the Chief of Metabolism Services , Dr. Mark Korson, who had been treating her for three years.  Mitochrondrial Disease is a group of rare genetic conditions that effect energy, the stomach, the muscles, the brain and the heart.  Justina was the second daughter in a family of four daughters to be so diagnosed.

 

In February of 2013 while suffering from the flu, she  was rushed by ambulance accompanied by her mother Linda, to Boston Childrens Hospital (BCH ) in Massachusetts at the recommendation of Dr. Korson to see her Gastroenterologist, Dr. Alex Flores who had transferred to BCH from Tufts.

 

When Justina and her mother arrived at BCH she was not seen by Flores.  Instead her case was taken over by the Psychiatry Department at BCH who within three days came to the diagnostic conclusion that instead she was suffering from Somatoform  disorder which in laymen's terms translates for some into something like "your condition and related manifestations are all in your head".

 

When Linda and her husband Lou, who was on the telephone were notified of this, they were also notified that the Doctors from BCH were unilaterally withdrawing several medications prescribed by Tufts.  Both parents were vehement in their objection to this and demanded that Dr. Flores examine their daughter.

 

The BCH team then further notified the parents that they were prohibited from seeking any second opinions including from Dr. Korson.  Dr. Flores later admitted that he was also prohibited by BCH from even talking to his patient, Justina.

 

Lou Pelletier arrived at BCH the next morning determined to bring his daughter and wife home.  He noticed almost immediately that security guards were blocking every exit.  The BCH Doctors then told the parents that they had referred Justina's case to the Massachusetts Department of Children and Families with the recommendation that DCF take emergency custody of Justina on the basis that Linda and Lou Pelletier had been committing "Medical Child Abuse" which is a medical/legal "catchall phrase" as described by the two reporters.  It is controversial because it is very elastic and can stretch the meaning and substance of parents acting against the best interests of their child in a medical setting.

 

By Valentine's day 2013, Lou Pelletier had had enough and told the nurses he was taking his daughter home.  The hospital called security who again blocked all the exits and Lou called the the Boston cops.  When the police arrived they were informed by the medical staff that a 51A complaint had been filed against the parents and the case would be heard by a Judge the next morning.  The parents were then blocked from seeing Justina and the nightmare began in earnest.

 

The next day Suffolk County Juvenile Court Judge Joseph Johnston took custody of Justina away from her parents and transferred it to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts on an emergency basis.  Justina was then sent to a unit called Bader 5 and placed in a locked room in the Psychiatric wing of BCH.  Bader 5 is reserved for seriously disturbed adolescents  even though there was no history whatsoever, that she had ever suffered or was suffering from any emotional or psychiatric malady.  This locked facility for at risk patients would be her home for the next nine months until her father broke an unconstitutional gag order from Judge Johnston and went public with his daughter's ordeal. As a result a contempt motion has now been filed against him.

 

Since Justina's incarceration, the family has retained legal counsel but their ability visit their daughter on a daily basis has been restricted for dubious reasons, to once a week under supervision.  Dr. Mark Korson has tried in vain to convene a meeting of all interested parties, including the parents in order to arrive at a consensus for the future treatment of Justina. 

 

The staff of both BCH and DCF have continued to treat the parents as both troubled and trouble makers without seemingly understanding the emotional toll being taken on them and her siblings.  The Judge appears to believe everything he is told by the hospital and the state while also being angry over the violation of his gag order which Allen Dershowitz has said is unconstitutional.

 

It has further been disclosed that the Pelletier case is just the latest in a series of at least five others at BCH where parents lost custody of their children to the BCH Psychiatry Department, one of whom  reportedly died while in their care.  This practice, which is not contained to BCH, has given rise to a sardonic appellation.  It has become known as "parent-ectomy".

 

Kathleen T. Higgins an RN who formerly worked at BCH and who is a mandated reporter for child abuse situations has accused BCH in a statement to DCF of "causing Justina to be unjustly and illegally imprisoned".

 

Justina's physical condition has deteriorated markedly since she became a ward of the state and was taken off her medication.  She cannot walk and is confined to a wheel chair while suffering from a variety of physical and emotional symptoms including edema of her lower extremities.  It should be remembered that just six weeks prior to her going to BCH, she was ice skating.

 

In late March of 2014, Judge Johnston granted permanent custody of Justina, a citizen of Connecticut who is now in a residential psychiatric facility in Framingham Mass., to the State of Massachusetts.  This done even while DCF was attempting to  transfer her to a facility in her home state.  Lou Pelletier is now seeking a writ of Habeas Corpus to have his daughter restored back to her family.  

 

This is about as frightening a case of violating both individual and parental rights and protections that I have ever seen in this country and the facts presented here today are just a synopsis of all that has unfolded.  The level of Judicial, Medical and Governmental malpractice is close to, if not actually, criminal.

 

The ongoing case of Justina Pelletier demonstrates in stark and dramatic fashion, how far down the rabbit hole the nation  has fallen.  The Judge and the staff at both BCH and DFC involved in this horror should  not just be removed and fired but arrested and tried for false imprisonment, for child abuse, and for violating the civil rights of Justina Pelletier who is an American Citizen who has an unalienable right to her life, her liberty and the pursuits of her happiness. She has the right that her dreams...the dreams that all young girls  have... should not turn to sackcloth and ashes  because she has become a pawn of the arrogant and powerful.  To help her and her family go to FREE JUSTINANOW.COM  ON FACEBOOK.

 

ERLANDSSON

 

THE GIRL WITH THE BOOKBAG WALKING THE RICE TERRACES OF BANAUE

 

In the northern mountains of Luzon in the Philippines lies the remote Province of Ifuago, home to the historic Rice Terraces of Banaue.  The terraces, 5000 feet above sea level were built by hand two thousand years ago, carved into the mountains and still worked by people living along their rims  and in the valleys that separate one set of terraces from another.

 

 

• The people in the valley in particular live largely without electricity eking out a living as harsh and primitive as you will find in the developing world.  This is a hard life for all who depend on the rice, but one that illustrates the indomitable strength and will of the human spirit.

One day at dawn from the balcony of my hotel in the village of Banaue, which looked over a portion of the terraces which go on for many kilometers, I watched a speck of a person  on the far side of the valley that separated the terraces, begin an hour long trek down one set of terrace steps, then across the valley floor and the stream that split one side of the valley from the other and then up the corresponding terrace steps to the top of the other rim.  The speck was a schoolgirl with her book bag and she made this pilgrimage by foot over hard terrain every school day  be it monsoon season or dry season because not going to school is not an option to her and her family.

 

Elsewhere in southeast Asia, Viet Nam specifically, school children in rural areas that flood during the rainy season, are put in large plastic bags and carried or dragged through fast currents of muddy brown water to the far bank.  One by one they are taken across to go to school and one by one are brought back the same way at the end of the school day. 

 

These are the faces of the third and second world poor who want a future and know that education is the road, however rough, muddy and sometimes impassable, that leads to a better life.

 

When you come face to face with this, you cannot help comparing these children to American  children.  The former live in a world where poor here would mean rich there.  And while comparisons may be odious, it is almost an imperative to make that comparison because somewhere along the way to becoming the richest and most powerful nation on the globe, we seem to have lost the spark to overcome adversity and now just accept it as a "new" normal.  In the not so distant past, we as a nation  used  the sheer force of our collective and individual will to become great.  We understood the lesson of history that teaches that while the climb to the top is long and hard, the fall to to the bottom or to the merely average can happen in the blink of an eye.

 

I had the occasion on another trip to the Philippines to interact with the teacher of an unruly grandchild who had been expelled for a variety of infractions. The teacher was without sympathy for my granddaughter who in truth had been lost to us for many years and then found.  The period when she was gone... living in the slums of Manila or with elderly relatives had taken their toll on her,  but in a society which had rules with teeth, she was not nor would ever be, the object of pity.

 

"Life is hard here" her teacher told us " and each child has to learn early that if you break the rules you are no longer welcome  and if you do not work hard ...you doom yourself".  My grand child was not reinstated but we found another school that accepted her.  Two weeks after we left to come home to begin efforts to adopt her, she vanished again.  I pray for her every day.

 

Here in America she would be probably passed from one grade to the next automatically, if in a public school.  If she was lucky she might get counseling which God knows she needed as well as a battery of psychological tests, but more likely she would probably not get as good a basic education as she would have gotten in the Philippines.

 

The lesson of her difficulties have not been lost on my other grand children nor I suspect on her former class mates.  She became a very real example of what happens when you don't try...when you don't follow rules with practical and valid reasons behind them.

 

These anecdotes vividly demonstrate for me something basic that spells out a sickness at the core of what has become our educational industry.

 

In order for education to succeed from generation to generation, it must start with the culture, the family, the child and the teachers. All must be in sync with one another ...all must believe in a shared set of values.  It used to be that way here but instead we have "progressed" to a culture of mediocrity and justification for failure.  As we enter into the most competitive economic, political and commercial period in world history...the weak, ill prepared and dependent will fall to the wayside and the strong, determined and disciplined will survive and prosper.

  

So for now...my money for that future... is on the girl with the book bag walking the Rice Terraces of Banaue

 

ERLANDSSON

 

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