Intentional Ignorance – Why the Public Schools Must Die, Part 1

I just read this sentence in a “Study Guide” for taking the public school certification test in middle school Social Studies, “The Constitution DEMANDS UNQUESTIONED respect and SUBSERVIENCE to the federal government by all states and citizens.” (emphasis mine).

WHAT??!! Unquestioned? Subservient?

We have a built-in questioning system by way of a national voting procedure every 730 days! MY Constitution starts with the phrase WE THE PEOPLE! This is the kind of crap being programmed into teachers so it can be shoved down our children’s throats!!

Let’s delude the kool-aid here for a minute.

I, like a small minority in this country, have actually read the Constitution. In fact, I make it a practice to take the 22 – 30 minutes to read it through, several times per year. Not once does this precious document DEMAND anything of the sort. The only “demands” in the Constitution are located in and around that pesky Bill of Rights; and if you really want to address to whom the demands are directed, take a look at the first word: CONGRESS.

CONGRESS shall make no law… nor shall CONGRESS prohibit the free exercise thereof. For those who need a further interpretation, Congress IS the federal government, at least in terms of what the framers intended in regards to the center of power – not the end all, be all, but the center.

Subservient? Wrong again! Under the Articles of Confederation, the federal government was subservient to the states! Admittedly, the states recognized the need to reform the Articles, hence the convention. Can one really fathom a situation where these states just would have voluntarily bowed their knees to the great and powerful Federal Government? There are several little ditties written during the time called the Federalist Papers that show clearly how tough of a sell the new Constitution was to the states. The ONLY reason that it was ratified is because the states were satisfied that they would NOT be subservient to the feds.

The “Federalist” system by definition is one that appoints responsibilities to each level, but operates under the pretext that these levels run independent of each other, and in harmony. The Constitution NEVER says that the federal government is supreme. Article six states, “This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States …. shall be the supreme Law of the Land.” It says the Constitution and the (constitutional) laws of the U.S. are supreme – that is NOT the same as the federal government! The mere fact that so many checks and balances established in the Constitution (of which the multi-tiered federalism plan is a part of) should be an indication that the founders and framers would have never consented to a top-down only style of governance (that’s called a unitary system), let alone 13 independent states just chomping at the bit to abdicate their power to Washington D.C.

For those of you who like to run around quoting Jefferson, you should realize that he didn’t particularly care for the Constitution in its initial form and, had he been in country, probably would have lobbied against it. He and the other “anti-federalists” of the time were only assuaged when the promise that a Bill of Rights would be one of the first items on the agenda of the new Congress.

Yet this is being systematically programmed into a generation of kids (and even scarier, a generation of teachers) day by day. We have become a “take my word for it” 30-second sound byte society that is slowly giving away our freedoms. The genius of our Constitution is that it cannot be over-ridden unless by a conscious and deliberate series of acts that culminates in an amendment. This can only be done by the people. Fortunately, the ignorant masses (made that way on purpose) cannot take away the supremacy of the Constitution. What they can do is to continue to appoint people into authority positions every 730 days who will work to circumvent these rights, OUR rights; and this can really only be done through ignorance – willful ignorance.

One more reason why the public (government run) schools should die.