Eleanor Duckwall's Spotlight

The Wrenching Transformation of America

President Barak Obama's September 23, 2009 speech to the United Nations General Assembly received a rousing applause from the member representatives. However, his comments about UN treaties and UN cooperation are troubling. Here is the text of the speech that was praised even by Fidel Castro.

One has to consider how UN protocols affect the sovereignty of a nation with a unique political system, why they have not been ratified by Congress in the past, and how these protocols are regulations could affect our lifestyles.

Most Americans would be shocked to know that the UN is already operating within the United States, having entered "through the back door." Below is a speech that should curl your hair. But first a video to explain "Sustainable Development," the new mantra that is driving policy. While we have been focused on events in Washington, D.C., most of us have overlooked what is happening right in our own home town and city governments:

Europe's War on Free Speech: Spreading to U.S. Soon?

Katie Couric interviews Glenn Beck

Watch CBS Videos Online

How is this post-racial? - Tuscon schools create race-based system of discipline.

It's come to this: Doug MacEachern, The Arizona Republic, September 19, 2009:

It's been a busy summer for our friends running the Tuscon United School District.

As always, the annual Institute for Transformative Education summer seminar, hosted by TUSD's amply funded Mexican/American raza-studies program, was fun. So much racial bitterness to obsess over.

Time Wise, the ultra-angry Tulane University poli-sci grad who has made a living finding racism under every doormat, was the featured speaker. Everyone was wowed.

In a year in which hundreds of district teachers received pink slips, meanwhile, TUSD spent thousands on recruiting teachers from out of state.M.p>

And it hired a coordinator at $80,000 per annum to lead the effort.

The recruiting was prompted by what is fast becoming the consuming passion of the TUSD governing board and its allies - to establish a corps of teachers that precisely mirrors the racial make-up of its heavily minority student population.

You can argue the efficacy of such issues legitimately, certainly.

The Globo threatens national sovereignty

The G20 and United Nations General Assembly are meeting. One topic seriously under review is that of replacing the dollar as the world's reserve currency. A new monetary unit, the Globo, is a possibility.

Mary Jo Anderson, Foreign Affairs, Reflections Magazine, September 2009, Vol. 1, No. 8:

Look for your neighborhood ATM to spit out Globos, not dollars, if the United Nations has its way.

Many Americans will be stunned to learn that the United Nations has called for a single, global currency. Similar mumbles have been made by Russia, China and India. Russian president Dimtry Medvedev tossed a prototype "united future world currency" to leaders at this summer's G-8 meeting in Italy. The supranational coin bore the motto "Unity in diversity." Though economists agree such a prospect is at least a decade away, Americans have an opportunity to think deeply about the relationship of national sovereignty and national currency.

The premise is that the U.S. dollar is weak and unstable--too unstable to continue as the world's reserve currency. The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) meeting in Geneva proposed a new system of globally managed exchange rates. UNCTAD's annual Trade and Development Report represents the first time that a multinational entity has suggested that nations abandon the declining dollar. Under a single, global currency system, nations would be forced to balance their exchange rates or "central banks would have to intervene and if not they would have to be told to do so by a multilateral institution such as the International Monetary Fund," said Detlef Kotte, an economist with UNCTAD. The U.N. report is introduced with Keynesian propositions and is distinctly anti-free market.

Global Schooling: The Hijacking of American Education

Now that the socialist agenda has completed a long march through institutions, activists have adopted the revolutionary strategies of Antonio Gramsci, and with cohorts and cadres firmly established in the halls of Washington, D.C., the mainstream media, and other "traditional" institutions, the target moves on from the teachers to the real prize: the students.

In a previous post I mentioned the pearls of wisdom dropped by "Mr. Floyd," an assistant middle-school principal who used the principle of spaced repetition on staff to ensure the use by the staff. Knowing that he would lay on another aphorism, we all groaned at his approach. But every single one proved to be true.

"Someday you will be teaching from a script prepared by someone else," he often said. "The script's purpose will be to enforce standardization throughout the curricula of the United States so that every child will be delivered the same skills and information."

Always look at the big picture

Beck and I share a common characteristic: looking for connections among groups, individuals, events and ideas to explain the why and the how of contemporary, seemingly unexplainable events.

Does this make us "conspiracy nut jobs"?

Why does Beck seem to repeat himself?

The reason is based on a principle I learned by heart ... through repetition: spaced repetition creates new synapses in the brains of learners.

This concept was transmitted from "God's lips to my ears," or so it seemed. The person charged with "professional development" and steering in an "educationally sound direction" with whom I worked would often drop these gems, pearls of wisdom at meetings, evaluations, and during casual conversation.

At the times he seemed tiresome, but guess what? I remember these gems rather than the theory spouted during inservice gatherings and university course work.

Mr. Floyd, the affectionate way we used his first name as an inside way of identifying those who suffered together, was applying the same principles he wanted us to use. In this case: spaced repetition to create long-term learning.

Glenn Beck may seem a nut case to many, but he is effective in the same way as was Mr. Floyd.

And we are in agreement: always look for the big picture, in this case: go from the specific to the general. (The alternative is to go from the general to the specific.)

Beck is an effective teacher; the concepts he presents usually proved educational best practices will be remembered.

Is another American president about to repeat a mistake ... and prolong the suffering for millions?

This cartoon was published in the Chicago Tribune in 1934. Look carefully at the plan of action in the lower left corner.

Ironically academics and economists have acknowledged that FDR's policies actually prolonged the crisis.

Gee, that's not what we were taught in high school...

With thanks to Larry C.

Video: Cass Sunstein on FDR's Second Bill of Rights

Sunstein talks about his book on FDR and "brings back from obscurity an important speech: FDR's State of the Union Address of 1944, in which he articulates the idea that human beings have inherent and social rights.

Read the transcript here.

Second Bill of Rights

Every American is entitled to:

• The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries, or shops or farms or mines of the nation;
• The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation;
• The right of farmers to raise and sell their products at a return which will give them and their families a decent living;
• The right of every business man, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad;
• The right of every family to a decent home;
• The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;
• The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, and sickness, and accident and unemployment;
• The right to a good education.

Read a critique here at Forbes.

... The correct political stance is to give President Obama wide latitude in choosing his subordinates, and then to dispute them on the key substantive issues.

Here is how I would go about that task with Roosevelt's Second Bill of Rights, which is so politically dangerous in large part because of its elegant simplicity and intuitive appeal. Let me first quote the central passage of the Second Bill of Rights, which lays out the rights "established for all--regardless of station, race or creed." Roosevelt says:

[...]

What's not to like? Quite simply, it is Roosevelt's treacherous transformation of human aspirations into enforceable legal rights. There are two enormous gaps in that chain of reasoning. First, it does not specify the persons who must bear the correlative duties to this expanded set of rights. Nor can we duck this problem by imposing the obligations on the state or government, which consists, of course, of all those original right bearers in a different capacity.

So in the end we can't maintain the universality of Roosevelt's claim: We have to distinguish between those of us who count as "the people" and everyone else, those who don't really count at all. If we all have the rights to decent jobs, then workers have the right to form unions, regardless of the consequences to employers, shareholders and the public at large. If farmers have the right to a decent living, the rest of us have to suffer Roosevelt's deadly double of agricultural subsidies and state-sponsored crop cartels.

A second difficulty is as acute as the first. Who fills in the content of the right by telling us what counts as a decent price or a remunerative wage? In a world of major uncertainty, these questions have no fixed answer. But in a political setting, we devised schemes then to assure living wages to autoworkers, only to see Roosevelt's rickety structure comes crashing down on our heads. But do we learn humility from failure? Of course not, if we think that now is the time to implement a regime of positive rights to health care--oops, to health care insurance--funded by punitive and self-destructive taxes on the rich.

In short, there is no way to translate Roosevelt's--or Sunstein's vision--into sustainable social practices. But that's just what the First Bill of Rights can do with its bloodless protection of private property and freedom of contract, speech and religion. Now we can specify the correlative duties with precision: keep off the property of others, and don't meddle in their agreements. Follow these rules and you can stimulate investment and reward hard labor. By keeping our aspirations modest, we can keep our achievements high--which is why we don't want to undermine the first Bill of Rights by adopting the second.

Richard A. Epstein is the James Parker Hall distinguished service professor of law, the University of Chicago; the Peter and Kirsten Bedford senior fellow, the Hoover Institution; and a visiting professor at New York University Law School.

Note: Epstein and a host of others dismiss Glenn Beck who has taken it upon himself to bring to light information, in this case, about Cass Sunstein whom he believes his dangerous. Epstein characterizes Beck's treatment as a "brutal hosing," and others who appear to the populous, i.e. ordinary Americans, as "childish arguments" portrayed through "ignorant incivility."

Though correct, what Epstein doesn't understand, every successful classroom teacher does:

• First, you must raise the level of concern.
• Second, the material must be presented in a manner that resonates with the students.
• Third, the teacher must discover where on the learning continuum the knowledge base will be found, a proceed from that point.
• Fourth, the instructor must be willing be entertaining to hold the attention of students with the attention span of flea.
• Fifth, the teacher must be passionate and willing to a certain extent, set aside personal dignity in order to accomplish the above.

I can say with truthfulness and sincerity: "Been there, done that."

Glenn Beck may seem like a clown, a mad man, but in reality he's is teaching facts, concepts, and principles by applying the above enumerated principles to an audience that could not sit through a lecture at the University of Chicago, nor sift through a dry-as-dust academic treatise.

Beck has taken the characteristics of popular culture to raise the level of concern to present important issues in a manner that everyone can understand.

This is why he is "dangerous."

Is It North American integration ... again? - Lipstick won't change THIS pig!

If you thought the plan to integrate all of North America into one entity had been abandoned, was dead you are mistaken. Look what's happening while our attention is focused elsewhere: healthcare, cap-and-trade, marching on Washington, D.C. against big government ...

Wonder how soon we'll be getting an Integration Czar?

Merchants have no country.

-----Thomas Jefferson

Throughout time the pursuit of trade has benefited nations, families, and individuals, but sometimes the pursuit of trade will trump the concept of national sovereignty.

Here is James R. Corsi at WND:

President Bush with the leaders of Mexico and Canada in New Orleans 2008

President Obama is continuing President George W. Bush's efforts to advance North American integration with a public-relations makeover calculated to place the program under the radar of public opinion and to deflect concerns about border security and national sovereignty.