"INDEPENDENCE DAY" 2005: HOW INDEPENDENT ARE WE?

 

 

 

By Beverly Eakman
July 3, 2005
NewsWithViews.com

There was the Stone Age, the Bronze Age, the Iron Age, the Industrial Age, the Space Age, the Information Age, and now the Surveillance Age -- an era in which phone calls and keystrokes may be monitored; the comings and goings of individuals can be tracked; and a person�s private thoughts, like his purchases, are open to inspection.

Three recent legislative decisions, seen from the perspective of 239 years of American history, show just how far we have come from the Founding Fathers� ideals about self-determination and independence as crafted into our nation�s Constitution.

Consider first the passage of H.R. 3010 on Friday, June 24 -- the universal mental health screening and drug treatment bill, without even the meager safeguard offered in Senator Ron Paul�s amendment, which might have bought Americans a little extra time to reconsider this horrendous affront to their rights. The Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education passed the appropriations measure with $26 million for "state incentive transformation grants" to fund implementation of the New Freedom Commission's psycho-pharmacological recommendations, thereby giving officials in schools and other agencies virtual carte blanche to marginalize and medicate anyone with unapproved opinions, worldviews and attitudes.

The word �incentive� means exactly what you think it means (for once): to spur, motivate and encourage. Federal tax revenues will be used to motivate every state to assess its citizens for perceived mental aberrations, beginning with children in the classroom and extending to teachers, pregnant women, the elderly, prospective employees, and so on. Inasmuch as mental illnesses, as listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, rely on subjective observations as opposed to substantial and replicable medical evidence, this bill is bound to morph into a political litmus test of nightmarish proportions that will make the �political correctness� of yesteryear look like a try-out for a high school cheerleading squad.

Another attack on traditional American independence came down from the Supreme Court on June 23 in a decision allowing state and local governments to take private lands for public use, by force if necessary, with the issues of �fair compensation� and �due process� left to one�s tender imagination. In Kelo v. City of New London, Supreme Court Justices Stevens, Kennedy, Breyer, Ginsberg and Souter toppled American notions about private property and individual ownership in the larger interest of enhancing tax revenues. Justice Sandra Day O�Connor, in a dissenting opinion, correctly noted that �[a]ny property may now be taken for the benefit of another private party, but the fallout from this decision will not be random. The beneficiaries are likely to be those citizens with disproportionate influence and power in the political process, including large corporations and development firms.�

Guess who will be among the casualties as this decision plays itself out? Those deemed a nuisance because they are �politically incorrect,� thereby helping to ensure a leftist conformity. Regardless of the party in power, Republican or Democrat, politically correctness still leans leftward, leaving any politician uttering a non-socialist comment to apologize and run for cover. The left, which dominates the schools and universities, the media, and the courts, has wooed business interests, foundations and professional associations, thereby conferring the �disproportionate influence� to closet Marxists.

Just as the left favored placing political prisoners in psychiatric lockups in the old Soviet Union, it has long been aware of the need to weaken private property rights in targeted countries. William Z. Foster, National Chairman of the Communist Party, USA, wrote in 1932 that �[t]he establishment of an American Soviet government will involve the confiscation of large landed estates in town and country, and also, the whole body of forests, mineral deposits, lakes, rivers and so on.� The Soviet Union per se may be gone, but Marxism is still alive and well, even though it has failed to create prosperity for citizens everywhere it has been implemented.

Then there was the ambiguous June 27th Ten Commandments decision (or maybe I should say Ten Commandments �waffle�) -- another Church-State debate which every year inches closer to a virtual ban on Judeo-Christian concepts about morality and ethics, which, of course, constitutes the support structure of the American Constitution. In my 1998 book, Cloning of the American Mind, in a section subtitled �A Game Called Religion,� I describe a typical curriculum that treats religion as a silly diversion.

Children are told to make an altar, and to name an oracle, and then to bring all sorts of questions to this make-believe oracle until, at the end of the �lesson,� the children are dissolving in peals of laughter. The message is clear: All religion is just a myth, and your parents� myths are no better or worse than anybody else�s, so best not to get too caught up in them.

The new religion is psychology. The tenets of psychology are fickle, of course, and go far beyond a list of �shalts� and �shalt nots.� Elementary and secondary curriculums are not set up to teach logic, or philosophy or even chronological history, so the dogma of psychology comes to youngsters in a vacuum. It plays out as diversity training, sexual how-to�s masquerading as �education,� and dependence on mind-altering drugs instead of developing character and maturity.

As we celebrate this Fourth of July, I am reminded of prophetic words uttered by Benjamin Franklin when, ill and being carried from the Constitutional Convention by his colleagues, he is asked by someone in a crowd what kind of government the Framers have formed. Replied Franklin: �A Republic � if you can keep it.� [Order Republic NOT a Democracy T-shirts]

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If we can keep it.

When the celebrations break out this year over the Nation�s Capital, I can well imagine a very politically incorrect Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Ben Franklin, and John Adams standing with all the rest of their venerable collaborators, shedding quiet tears among the fireworks.

� 2005 Beverly Eakman - All Rights Reserved

Order Beverly's book, Cloning of the American Mind is out of print, supply is limited