For a small glimpse of what a candid, honest, and un-compromising Republican actually looks (and sounds) like, PLEASE watch this:

Preach it, brother!

I love how the first lady who complained said that, in her mind, she wasn't making enough money...and when reminded by Gov. Christie that, like the rest of society, she "didn't have to" pick the line of work she was in, suddenly remembered that she (and all teachers) only do their jobs because they want to and they love it.

Oh, and by the way, that woman's name is Rita Wilson, and she works in the Rutherford School District...and makes $86,000 per year.

The point here is not that teachers aren't as valuable to society as say a professional baseball player, but simply that the state (and federal government) is not an endless supply of funds as the governor pointed out.  You can't run a budget based on emotional outbursts form angry women in a townhall meeting.  School choice, something I would have thought open-minded liberals would love, is the best alternative for well-qualified, hard-working teachers, as I'm sure Ms. Wilson is.  I WANT good teachers to be rewarded, but when the unions (who are also the single biggest contributors to the political campaigns of Democrats) rule a state like they do in New Jersey, California or Illinois, we're forced as a society to pay the horrendous ones more and more as well.  This is unsustainable.

Everyone loses when there is no competition and people are guaranteed jobs for life.

From FoxNews.com:

What do liberal lawmakers in California share with their conservative counterparts in Texas? Very little. But this week both are watching the 15 member Texas State Board of Education, which will choose the next generation of history textbooks for most American children.

The left-right culture war will play out over the choice of words, photos, who to honor and what events in American and world history should receive a few lines of text. It may sound innocent, when it is anything but.

Years of research, months of editing, hundreds of hours of debate will be boiled down into a single document – a statement of curricula – that will define the parameters followed by virtually every social studies textbook and test for students from kindergarten to through 8th grade for the next decade.

The story continues:

On one side are conservatives, who contend academia has been hijacked by liberals. A point supported by studies that show 90 percent of humanities teachers identify themselves as Democrats.

And nowhere is their bias more visible than the one-sided treatment of American history in U.S. textbooks, where words like ‘man’ and ‘mankind’ have been stricken, ‘Founding Fathers’ has been replaced by ‘Framers’ and ‘Founders’ and racial quota’s are applied to the number of photos used in any one book.

Everyone in this country agrees that education is important.  There's no debate there.  The disagreement is over what type of education children will (and should) receive.   I don't believe that only conservatives should teach conservatives, and only liberals teach liberals.  But, elections have consequences, and these State Education Board members are entitled to make decisions in these matters, same as President Obama gets to nominate who he wants for the Supreme Court.

As the report mentioned, more than 90% of "Humanities" (i.e. History, Social Studies, etc.) teachers in the public school system are self-described Democrats.  In 2008, more than 80% of public school teachers and university professors voted for Barack Obama.  The numbers are almost identical going back decades.

To say that there is a slant toward the Left among our nation's educators and their administrators is like saying that the Cubs haven't won a World Series "in a few years now."

Liberals contend the board is out of touch and the block of social conservatives have manipulated the process to reflect teachings out of the mainstream.

“They have politicized the textbook process.  And I think that our schoolchildren deserve better than politicizing it,” Terri Burke, Texas ACLU Executive Director . “We really believe this curriculum should be turned over to experts who know something about history, about education, about the learning levels of schoolchildren. We ought to have people who really know it being the ones who write it and vet it and tell us that this is what kiddos oughta learn.”

Nice.  Liberals comprise no more than 20% of the nation's population.  Yet they comprise more than 80% of the academic world's population.  The Left has a distinctively different perspective on the history, economy, and political structure of the United States of America.  Conservatives, a block of at least 40% of the nation's population, want their kids to be given a more balanced view of this country and the world around them.

But when parents on the Right get involved in the decision making process they are told to shut up and sit down at School Board meetings.  When they ask for school vouchers or more school choice their voices are drowned out by the voices of teacher unions who have the ear of far too many politicians.  When they finally take their kids out, and either home-school them or place them in private (usually religious) schools, they are labeled nut-jobs and described in demeaning terms by the media.

So what are conservatives to do?

In California, a key state Senate Committee passed a bill Tuesday designed to prohibit any textbook approved in Texas to be used in the Golden State.

“While some Texas politicians may want to set their educational standards back 50 years, California should not be subject to their backward curriculum changes,” said Leland Yee, D-San Francisco.  “The alterations and fallacies made by these extremist conservatives are offensive to our communities and inaccurate of our nation’s diverse history.  Our kids should be provided an education based on facts and that embraces our multicultural nation.”

But we on the Right are the close-minded "haters" trying to impose our worldview and morals on the nation...

The exchange is chilling.  Listen close to the girl's words.

This exchange didn't occur on an Iranian campus, or even in Europe: it happened here.  There are people who believe this rubbish, that Jews should congregate in Israel so it will be easier to "drive them into the sea", right here in America.  Sadly, universities lend themselves to such radicalism because somewhere along the way our institutions of higher learning sold themselves (and us) on the notion that ANY idea or theory posited and explored is a noble one.  Objective truth (i.e. a terrorist group like Hamas, or Hezbollah, is evil) becomes too rigid a standard for the enlightened elites.  These elites are the policy-makers and supreme court justices and educators of future generations of Americans.

What ends up happening is that the people who promote such muddled "thinking" eventually have no answer for extremists (of any faith) that come along and promote views and beliefs that are irreconcilable with the liberty-loving system we've enjoyed for more than 200 years.

As Chesterton once wrote, "There are thoughts that end thought.  And those are the only thoughts which ought to be ended."

My heart breaks for this young woman.  She is the initial victim, having been raised to want to murder an entire ethnicity of people.  We then become the victims when we do not do everything in our power to combat such hateful, evil ideology.

All opinions are welcome in a free society; not all are right.

Here's Part One of that specific film (and discussion):

Last fall, Washington, D.C., schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee laid off 229 teachers. Here's what was unusual about that: She chose who would stay and who would go based on the competence of the teachers.

That's a radical departure for public education. Most schools across the country make personnel decisions largely or entirely based on seniority. Last in, first out. Illinois law requires that teacher layoffs be based on seniority unless a school district and its local union negotiate different rules. Result: seniority is the deciding factor everywhere, according to the Illinois State Board of Education. So law and custom protect older teachers — whether they're good teachers or bad teachers.

What a shock to learn that the Peoples' Republic of Illinois has such a backwards, ineffective system for hiring and firing teachers!

Many cash-strapped Illinois school districts face the prospect of layoffs in the coming months. Unless outdated rules are scrapped, the schools will have to fire some of their best teachers because they happen to be younger teachers.

They also will have to fire more teachers. Younger teachers have lower salaries, so when schools operate strictly on seniority, they have to let more teachers go to achieve a certain dollar savings.

Yes, there is value in experience. But the National Council on Teacher Quality reports that "teachers in their third year of teaching are generally about as effective as long-tenured teachers."

Seniority can be considered, but along with such factors as competence, drive, classroom performance and willingness to learn new skills. Younger teachers, for instance, may be more computer-savvy and thus more capable of teaching the tech skills children need to succeed.

I don't think it's a stretch to say that almost everyone has a teacher who impacted their life in a positive way.  We want to honor teachers, and we want the best possible teachers in our school systems.  But tax dollars aren't charity to be doled out based on a general feeling of good will towards people who enter the teaching profession.  People must earn those dollars, same as any other job.

And it is the constitutional duty of those running these bloated bureacracies at the state and federal level to do everything in their power to see that the best possible people are hired in the most efficient way.

All governments have to find ways to lure and keep the best and brightest in their work force. Where is that more important than in the classroom?

School vouchers, anyone?  Real change requires real change.   Enough talk.  If we're serious about education, then let's put our votes where our mouths are and let our elected officials know that changes like the ones the Tribune is talking about matter to us.

We hear the pleas from politicians and political pundits to "Remember the children!" when almost any social, cultural, or economic issue is publicly discussed, but might it be that we're focused on the wrong things when it comes to really helping the kids?  Could it be that what children need more than Participation Award trophies, free government handouts, and Nancy Pelosi stumping for them is a good night's sleep, healthy competition in and out of school, and parents who teach them that it isn't the hand you're dealt, but the way you play the hand?

George Will thinks so, and in his nationally syndicated column today he uses the backdrop of a newly-released book, "NurtureShock: New Thinking About Children" by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman, to discuss just that. Will cites the activities of a grade school in Massachusetts that has their students jump rope with no jump-rope:

Those Massachusetts children are jumping rope without ropes because of a self-esteem obsession. The assumption is that thinking highly of oneself is a prerequisite for high achievement. That is why some children's soccer teams stopped counting goals (think of the damaged psyches of children who rarely scored) and shower trophies on everyone. No child at that Massachusetts school suffers damaged self-esteem by tripping on the jump rope.

He continues:

But the theory that praise, self-esteem and accomplishment increase in tandem is false. Children incessantly praised for their intelligence (often by parents who are really praising themselves) often underrate the importance of effort. Children who open their lunchboxes and find mothers' handwritten notes telling them how amazingly bright they are tend to falter when they encounter academic difficulties. Also, Bronson and Merryman say that overpraised children are prone to cheating because they have not developed strategies for coping with failure.

It's been said many times, in many ways, but there really is no such thing as a "free lunch."  You can love your kids (or nephews, granddaughters, etc.) without propping them up for a life of failure and moral confusion.  Life is tough, and what a child wants to hear from the adults in their life isn't "You did good for being average", but "Your mother and I love you, and will always be here for you...even if and when you fail."

Will also highlights from the Bronson-Merryman book something that hits close to home for me: the need for rest (and adequate levels of it).

Only 5 percent of high school seniors get eight hours of sleep a night. Children get a hour less than they did 30 years ago, which subtracts IQ points and adds body weight. Until age 21, the circuitry of a child's brain is being completed. Bronson and Merryman report research on grade schoolers showing that "the performance gap caused by an hour's difference in sleep was bigger than the gap between a normal fourth-grader and a normal sixth-grader."

In high school there is a steep decline in sleep hours, and a striking correlation of sleep and grades. Tired children have trouble retaining learning "because neurons lose their plasticity, becoming incapable of forming the new synaptic connections necessary to encode a memory. ... The more you learned during the day, the more you need to sleep that night."

Your body is more than just the physical, but it isn't only the emotional either.  Sleep, a healthy diet (see: not my diet), and regular exercise can be the things that turn a kid's mental and emotional well-being around.

So will raising them to believe, as our Declaration of Independence proclaims, that they are uniquely-formed, Creator-endowed human beings with inherent value and worth.  Between that and your offer to always love and be there for them, your kids will absolutely have the best chance of achieving something more important than grades, sports, or getting into the "right" college: They'll become good people.

Today, in honor of President's Day, Heritage posted two separate blogs: one on Lincoln and one on Washington.

An excerpt for Abe:

Lincoln wanted freedom for the slaves, but he was no progressive. He was a prudent statesman, as Allen C. Guelzo points out in a First Principles essay, and in this prudence lies the essence of his conservatism. He recognized the inherent flaws and limitations of human nature. He did not want to somehow “supersede” or “go beyond” the Constitution, as progressives do. He instead wanted to see his beloved country live up to its founding principles, while upholding the Constitution.

We are not alone in the fight to preserve the self-evident truths that are the foundations of this nation. Nor is our fight new, or unique. We are but the newest carriers of the torch of American liberty in the midst of the darkness of despotism. It is a sometimes daunting but always honorable duty, one in which we have Honest Abe as a most shining example. So let us act as he did, with the goal “that neither picture, or apple shall ever be blurred, or bruised or broken.”

And another for George:

This season’s snow falls and Snowpocalypse presents a great opportunity to remember our president who also suffered through the cold to save the Republic.

Happy William Henry Harrison Day! No wait. That is not right. Failing to wear a coat in cold weather is not the same as defeating the British during a blizzard.

The third Monday in February has come to be known—wrongly—as President’s Day. But, this is not a day to celebrate every president in our Nation’s history: like one who served only a month in office. This is the day that we celebrate the man who led America to victory in the War for Independence, who was instrumental in the creation of our Constitution, and whose character forever shaped the executive branch. We celebrate George Washington. That’s why it’s Washington’s Birthday; not President’s day.

Hear, hear!  We're not celebrating Barack Obama, or even Ronald Reagan: this is a day for George and Abe (and truthfully, both should each get their own day...especially in light of the fact that Martin Luther King Jr. does).

Does it bug anyone else that we can hardly point to any great movies about the life, faith, courage and sacrifice of Presidents Lincoln and Washington?  If Andy Warhol deserves a dozen flicks, these men should be able to look down from heaven and see bio-epics about their lives every summer.

An excerpt:

They say markets are alternately ruled by greed and fear. Well, our panic-stricken financial markets have been ruled by fear for so long that a little greed might serve as an elixir. But everybody knows you can overdose on an elixir.

When economists first heard Gordon Gekko's now-famous dictum, "Greed is good," they thought it a crude expression of Adam Smith's "Invisible Hand"—which is one of history's great ideas. But in Smith's vision, greed is socially beneficial only when properly harnessed and channeled. The necessary conditions include, among other things: appropriate incentives (for risk taking, etc.), effective competition, safeguards against exploitation of what economists call "asymmetric information" (as when a deceitful seller unloads junk on an unsuspecting buyer), regulators to enforce the rules and keep participants honest, and—when relevant—protection of taxpayers against pilferage or malfeasance by others. When these conditions fail to hold, greed is not good.

Oh, and just for good measure, here's what Milton Friedman thinks about the entire matter of greed:

Black people have accepted hare-brained ideas that have made large percentages of black youngsters virtually useless in an increasingly technological economy. This destruction will continue until the day comes when black people are willing to turn their backs on liberals and the education establishment's agenda and confront issues that are both embarrassing and uncomfortable. To a lesser extent, this also applies to whites because the educational performance of many white kids is nothing to write home about; it's just not the disaster that black education is.

Many black students are alien and hostile to the education process. They have parents with little interest in their education. These students not only sabotage the education process, but make schools unsafe as well. These students should not be permitted to destroy the education chances of others. They should be removed or those students who want to learn should be provided with a mechanism to go to another school.

It's understandably difficult for white people to talk about "black" issues, but as Dr. Williams mentioned in his piece, issues of declining education standards and results are color blind.

Here are Williams, Thomas Sowell, and John Stossel making the case for school vouchers: