Summer 2000Volume 7, Number 5

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GORE’S FLAT EARTH THEORY

Gore Wants YOU to Scale Back YOUR Standard of Living
By Cathie Adams, president of Texas Eagle Forum
cathieadams@texaseagle.org

Democrat Al Gore may be the scariest Presidential candidate Americans have ever faced. His book, Earth in the Balance: Ecology and the Human Spirit, written in 1992 and reissued for the 2000 campaign, is prophetic of the United Nation’s Kyoto Protocol written five years later that deals with the issue of global warming. Gore went to Kyoto, Japan to instruct the American delegation to be “flexible” which meant to acquiesce to the global agenda that is to erase national sovereignty and redistribute American wealth around the globe.

Global religionist and author, M. Scott Peck, captures the essence of Gore’s book: “The way we need to change to insure the survival of our grandchildren…brilliantly written, prophetic, even holy….” If a Republican had written such a book, he would be mocked for being prophetic or holy, but using the typical double standard, the anti-tolerant, anti-free speech, anti-free thought, politically correct critics are mute about Gore.

Presidential hopeful Gore wants the environment to become the “central organizing principle” for the United States like it has been for the UN since 1992 when it met in Rio de Janeiro to create the Climate Change Treaty. That means, “embarking on an all-out effort to use EVERY policy, EVERY tactic and strategy, EVERY plan and course of action—to use, in short, EVERY means to halt the destruction of the environment and to preserve and nurture our ecological system.” Anything short of this Gore calls “appeasement, designed to satisfy the public’s desire to believe that sacrifice, struggle, and a wrenching transformation of society will not be necessary.” As President of the United States, Gore wants to head “a new worldwide bureaucracy” that he claims will be necessary “to manage the unimaginable problems caused by massive social and political upheavals, mass migrations, and the continuing damage of the global environment by civilization itself.”

While global warming theorists claim that greenhouse gases are causing the earth to warm, computer models cannot factor in wind currents, ocean currents or solar activity in order to prove the theory. Furthermore, about 97% of all carbon dioxide is water vapor; only a small fraction is produced when fossil fuels are burned. Yet, Gore intimates that carbon dioxide production may increase solar intensity, which is like claiming that too many people stirring their coffee at the same time cause tornadoes.

Gore claims in his book to be a Christian, but he wholeheartedly embraces the theory of evolution. Gore’s focal point of history is not the “His-story” of Jesus Christ according to Christian theology, but it is the history of man evolving with global climate change. He writes: “…our origins in the primate family placed a limit on the ability of the birth canal to accommodate babies with ever-larger heads.”

He commingles the spiritual and political with great abandon, and writes about the earth as if it has a soul and spirit. He questions “one’s relationship to the sky” in his chapter entitled “Buddha’s Breath” claiming “we bathe our lungs in a homogeneous sample of that same air…that was also breathed by Buddha…Jesus, Moses, Mohammed—as well as Hitler, Stalin, and Genghis Khan.”

Steeped in Eastern religious cult references, Gore quotes the Hindu teaching that, “The earth is our mother, and we are all her children,” and gurus who claim that the, “Earth teaches us patience, love; Air teaches us mobility, liberty; Fire teaches us warmth, courage; Sky teaches us equality, broad-mindedness; Water teaches us purity, cleanliness.” Quoting the Baha’i cult, he writes, “Man is organic with the world. His inner life molds the environment and is itself deeply affected by it.”

“The people’s right to freely enjoy public property” is preeminent while Gore downplays personal property rights. It reminds me of the “public property” I toured in China that the communists stole because equity demanded that the landowner’s property become “public property” for the common good.

Gore’s radical views about tropical rain forests and indigenous peoples, however, do not affect his personal investments. His family’s quarter of a million dollars’ worth of Occidental stock and a potential for 1.4 billion barrels of oil worth about $35 billion on international markets in Columbia exposes his insincerity. As Vice President he has favored Occidental Petroleum (founded by Armand Hammer, a communist sympathizer who bragged about having Gore and his late father “in my back pocket”) against the U’wa tribe in Columbia. And he leased property in Tennessee to Union Zinc for mining against his stated principles. In response, Americans should send Al Gore the mining engineers’ bumper stickers that state: Earth First, and then we’ll mine the other planets.

VP Gore wants to pick up where eugenics promoter and Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger left off. In his book, he compliments family planning in Thailand that includes “balloon-blowing contests with condoms, the distribution of condoms by traffic policemen on New Year’s Eve in what he calls a ‘cops and rubbers’ operation, schemes to give health care insurance payments to taxi drivers who sell a quota of condoms, to mention only a few.” We can expect Gore to embrace the human genome project as he has already embraced “The Great Genetic Treasure Map” of plants that he calls “centers of diversity.”

The bottom line is that Gore believes that America’s economic successes are the reason for poverty in the Third World, and that the way to correct it is to scale back American’s standard of living, mandate abortion-on-demand at taxpayer expense, and embrace government central planning of all land thereby erasing personal property rights because he says: “We are, in effect, bulldozing the Gardens of Eden.” He advocates “A Global Marshall Plan” that “combines large-scale, long-term, carefully targeted financial aid to developing nations, massive efforts to design and then transfer to poor nations the new technologies needed for sustained economic progress, a worldwide program to stabilize world population, and binding commitments by the industrial nations to accelerate their own transition to an environmentally responsible pattern of life.”

There are two ways to insure an Al Gore Presidency so that he can make the environment America’s “central organizing principle” implemented via “A Global Marshall Plan.” First, we can decide that Gov. George W. Bush does not inspire us like former President Ronald Reagan did and thus refuse to work for him and the entire Republican ticket. Secondly, we can vote for a third party candidate. Either way, Gore becomes President.

The U.S. does NOT need more bread-and-circuses Clinton/Gore government. Gore would bring the sand of the Coliseum, but NOT the marble of the Senate to the American republic. The moral pollution that Gore promises might be the final blow to our great republic.

Let us stand shoulder-to-shoulder to elect Gov. George W. Bush and retire the Clinton/Gore circus. With integrity, let us take back our White House and put our nation’s moral character on the road to recovery. Our children and grandchildren deserve nothing less than America as a light on a hill that cannot be hidden.



WOMEN AND POLITICS
Reconsidering the 19TH Amendment

Condensed from an article by Columnist Ann Coulter, Human Events, 2/14/00

According to a recent poll of women voters commissioned by "Lifetime Television" (Television for Women) women are complaining again. Over a third of the respondents say none of the presidential candidates are addressing their concerns. According to the summary, the top concerns of half or more of the respondents are these: "insufficient effort to cure breast cancer," gun control, medical benefits, childcare, the rising cost of college education, the connection between pollution and health risks, violence against women and equal pay.

This could only be the poll results of people who have nothing to do with the creation of wealth. They sit home waiting for their husbands to bring home the money, or toil away at little jobs dreamed up to assuage the egos of bourgeois women living in the suburbs. Consequently, the typical liberal woman's political calculus is based on budgeting, not earning. They have no idea how the money materializes. But they have lots of opinions on how to spend it. They claim to be Republicans, but they are no more Republican than Bill Clinton. In fact, they adore Bill Clinton.

As a class, women have never borne collective responsibility.for electing Republican Presidents. In every presidential election since 1944 but one (1964), men went for the Republican candidate. Even in 1980, when men voted for Ronald Reagan over Carter by 53% to 38%, women voters went about equally with President Jimmy Carter as with Reagan.

What's a Republican presidential candidate to do?

First of all, Republicans should recognize that they can't fit a round peg in a square hole. It is impossible for a candidate to obtain the votes of the liberal women topping the "Lifetime TV" poll without becoming Bill Clinton, in which case, they will lose the votes of the people with a capacity to engage in linear thinking and grasp logical connections.

Consider this item: 70% of the women polled in the "Lifetime Television" survey claimed the country is not making "enough of an effort to find a cure for breast cancer."

Here are some facts: Men get prostate cancer at a rate of 147 cases per 100,000 men. Women get breast cancer at a rate of 113 per 100,000 women. The mortality rate for breast cancer and prostate cancer is about the same. The federal government spends roughly four times as much on breast cancer research as prostate research.

In a further moment of self-interest, 85% of women in the "Lifetime" poll said they think discrimination against women in the workplace is still a problem, but only 57% think there is any problem with race relations. I love liberal women.

So the first point is: Liberal suburban soccer moms are impervious to logic. One cannot cut taxes and reduce the size of government while simultaneously trying to satisfy women kvetching about insufficient funding for child care and breast cancer research. The good news is, one stiff November snowstorm, and the "Lifetime TV" women aren't going to bother to vote anyway.

But moreover, Republican candidates ought to note that Reagan got more women to vote for him than George Bush or Bob Dole did. Reagan also got about 40% more of the men's vote than did Carter. Oh, yeah, Reagan won. Twice. He did it by being a hard-right conservative on social issues, which is the way to win over the maximum number of women voters who would ever consider voting for a Republican in the first place.

Women voters tend to be either very conservative or very liberal. And jaded feminists are never going to vote for a Republican anyway. But Republican politicians regularly sacrifice the votes of the women who might vote Republican, simply to persuade bitter suburban harridans to hate them a little less. Polls may indicate that the average woman voter is more liberal than the average male voter, but that is a statistical average. The soft liberal "average" among women establishes only that there is a larger chunk of liberals among women than men. It doesn't mean there is actually a single woman, much less a vast cohort, that resembles some political composite of Hillary Clinton and Phyllis Schlafly.

It may be that women tend to fall on the political extremes because women are not much given to compromise and appeasement. (As C.S. Lewis said, if your dog bit the neighbor's child, would you prefer to apologize to the woman of the house or the man of the house?) Or the political extremes among women may be the evidence of the dwindling tradition of women as keepers of religious faith. Some women have faith in the Supreme Being, some place their faith in gun control.

Whatever the reason, the issues that resonate with the largest chunk of conservative women are the moral issues, not fiscal issues. And, unlike the "Lifetime TV" poll respondents, these women won't forget to vote.



LET BOYS BE BOYS, NOT CRIMINALS-IN-TRAINING
By Columnist Kathleen Parker, 4/14/00

By today's zero-tolerance standards of child's play, my brother and I both should have been sent to the electric chair decades ago. In fact, every child in our neighborhood and at school would qualify today as a juvenile delinquent at least, a potentially homicidal maniac on average.

We played war; we dug trenches and foxholes; we screamed and cried, raided and rioted, bombed each other with rotten grapefruit, torpedoed with oranges, fake-killed and fake-died, fell from trees, crashed bikes and wiped out on gravelly roads. We pillaged and plundered until the sun set and a dozen fathers whistled time for supper.

We didn't die from these activities, nor did we kill anyone else. It is more likely that these dastardly playtime drills-followed by parentally invoked rituals-kept our little riotous souls in check. Instead of hurting people, we pretended to. Instead of suppressing anger and frustration, we acted out confusing emotions in innocent play. Instead of toying with real guns, we cocked our fingers and shot imaginary bullets.

Just like the four kindergarteners at Wilson Elementary School in Sayerville, NJ, who were suspended from school a few months ago for aggressive behavior. For pointing fingers and shouting "bang" at their playmates in a playground game of cops and robbers, four boys ages 5 and 6 were deemed dangerous and sent home for three days.

The lunatics don't have to take over the asylum anymore because apparently we've lost our minds.

To the relief of the few thinking adults hiding in bunkers here and there, the school's action prompted some protest, though not nearly enough. The American Civil Liberties Union-often estranged from common sense-rallied to protect the boys' rights to free speech. A few child development experts expressed outrage.

But a discomforting number of parents applauded the school's response, saying the boys' behavior scared some of the other children. In the telling words of one mother: "You've got to teach your kids to watch what they say, especially in school."

Back in my 50s childhood, no child would have dared admit being scared of other children playing what was then normal. But today is different. Children carry real guns to school; children kill and wound other children in what used to be a safe environment.

However, I would like to say as loudly as possible, today is different in other ways too. I'm not talking about the availability of guns. Most of us World War II babies had guns and knew how to shoot without missing. I'm not talking about violent media, either. We watched many a cowboy or Indian cruelly dispatch an enemy.

What's different is that our parents and teachers worked together without undue interference from bureaucrats, social workers and lawyers. A kid who misbehaved in school was dealt with promptly, first by the teacher and then by the dads who whistled at dinner time.

Today we've emasculated teachers and evicted fathers. Most of the boys who've recently carried guns to school had histories that were ignored largely because we don't allow teachers and administrators to "handle" the bad apples. Instead we leave them rotting in the barrel until someone gets hurt. Or, as in this case, we overact to innocent play.

Our confusion might be eased if we put real discipline back in schools and fathers back in homes. Then might we relax and let the good boys play.



FIREARMS UNDER INCREASING ATTACK
Constitutional rights threatened
By U.S. Representative Ron Paul (R-TX) from his 4/23/00 weekly column

The constitutional rights of all Americans continue to be threatened. Unfortunately, this election year has shades of past years when the president and the anti-gun lobby were able to neutralize many key gun rights advocates and back-down congressional leadership.

I agree with our founding fathers and others who assert that the right to keep and bear arms is a key cornerstone right that acts as an insurance policy for all other liberties. The problem is that this right is being eroded at the edges, and attempts to compromise have left us in a position where the basic principle has been nearly erased.

The arguments of those who oppose gun rights make no sense at all. New gun laws have gone on the book just about every decade over the last century, and at the same time, gun related crime incidents have increased. In fact, in places where gun laws are most strict, gun crime and violence is most rampant.

One only need to ask the question, "Would you feel safer in New York City or Washington, D.C., where guns are prohibited, or in rural Texas where there is a concealed carry law or in Vermont which has no gun regulation?" Facts do indeed tend to show that an armed society is indeed a polite society.

In fact, Dr. John Lott, a Ph.D. law professor at Yale University, has completed impressive studies that show, in his words, "more guns equal less crime." Certainly it is true that gun laws have never had any measurably positive impact on crime. In fact, in countries that have recently undergone gun confiscation, violent crime rates have skyrocketed. It is simply common sense to suggest that a murderer or felon is not going to be deterred by the fact that in the commission of such a crime he or she will also have to violate a gun control law.

Gun control laws do nothing to reduce crime. That is why they are so insidious. Those who push these laws either have to be completely ignorant of this fact, or they must be motivated by some other agenda. It stands to reason that the latter option is the more truthful.

The reason gun control advocates will never run out of new proposals is precisely because they realize full well that gun control cannot limit crime. Thus, they will always be back with what they call "just one more reasonable regulation." We should not be arguing for further enforcement of existing gun laws. Instead we should be putting these laws on trial.

It has been said that the very definition of insanity is to continue using the same means while expecting a different result. The means of controlling crime by controlling guns is a dismal failure. The idea that we should continue this policy is absurd. We should ask the gun control advocates why it is that the gun control act, the automatic weapon ban and the Brady bill have not proven to be the panacea they promised when proposing these bills.

I oppose gun laws on constitutional grounds, but I often wonder why those who say they want to be reasonable do not ask the gun grabbers straight away for some evidence that their approach works. Or, why they do not demand evidence that a new proposal will bear the promised results of cutting crime. Without some measurement of the effects of gun laws how can anybody tell if they are been successful? The administration simply trumps up its statistics after-the-fact.

Actually, I realize why the gun grabbers are never called onto the carpet in such a way. Simply, those who refuse to stand up for constitutional rights like to say they are compromising, but the fact is they are cowering. It is one thing to be a coward with one's own life, but it is entirely immoral to run in fear when it comes to defending the constitutional rights we are sworn to uphold.



MRS. GARNER IS LEAVING
27-year teacher cites loss of local control for quitting
By Donna Garner

What has forced a Texas public school teacher like myself to leave a high school where I have spent the better part of my 27 years of teaching? Why would I leave a school district where I have invested huge amounts of time and energy? Why would I decide to teach in a private school for much less pay? The answer can be summed up in one phrase-the loss of local control.

At my high school next year, every English teacher is to follow a syllabus that is aligned with the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS), a standards document which is replete with performance-based projects (e.g., "create, present, test, and revise a project and analyze a response, using data-gathering techniques such as questionnaires, group discussions, and feedback forms.create media products to include a billboard, cereal box, short editorial, and a three-minute documentary or print ad to engage specific audiences). At our school, we English teachers have to sign an affidavit-like statement which forces teachers to teach exactly what is on the syllabus at exactly the same time-even using the same tests.

I have written and produced my own grammar packets (www.readbygrade3.com). Thanks to the Internet, people all over the world are now able to access my free packets; even missionaries are using the packets to teach their children English grammar. My grammar packets require at least six months of intense study; the verb packet alone takes ten weeks of instruction. The other English I teachers at my high school have decided that next year prepositions, verbs, nouns, pronouns, and subject/verb agreement must be taught in 4 ½ weeks. If I were to stay at my high school, I would be forced to discard my grammar packets and teach in lock-step with the other teachers.

I am not being critical of my fellow English teachers. In order to make room for all the 99 TEKS elements, many of which require students to spend huge chunks of time producing performance-based projects, Texas teachers are being forced to quit teaching the basics of grammar, spelling, and composition. To make room for all the burdensome TEKS requirements, teachers are being forced to flit through the numerous elements without being able to spend sufficient time to bring their students to the mastery level.

Mastering basic skills takes time; it simply cannot be rushed. If I thought my ninth-grade students knew basic grammar and could write well, I would love nothing better than to teach more literature. However, each year the students' writing and speaking skills grow weaker. I also teach Spanish I, and my classes are full of students who do not know a verb from a noun. I have to spend hours teaching English grammar before my students can begin to learn Spanish.

Public schools are captivated with the idea of using technology, the Internet, and web sites. The idea of having a common English I syllabus posted on the school web site sound like a good idea, but in reality the document is going to bring terrible pressure to teachers. If a teacher needed to spend more time on verbs instead of teaching what was on the syllabus, all it would take would be for one parent to complain to the administrator, "Why is Mrs. Garner teaching verbs when the syllabus says she is supposed to be teaching mythology?" Thus, a curriculum document and technology are going to drive the curriculum instead of the individual academic needs of the students.

Back in July 1997, a group of teachers with able assistance of qualified reading experts, wrote the Texas Alternate Document (TAD)-(www.htcomp.net/tad) for English/Language Arts/Reading. When we wrote the TAD, we deliberately avoided mandating methodology; and we wrote into our document those elements which we felt could be taught in a year's time with enough time left over for teachers to teach their own favorite units. We also did not prescribe the order of introduction of elements. The only place where we put any required sequence was in the area of direct, systematic instruction of reading; and we based our document on the empirical, peer-reviewed reading research. On that one spot in the TAD, we required that phonemic awareness should be taught first; but through the rest of the TAD, we left the order of presentation to the discretion of the teachers. Over the course of a year, they could decide on the sequence of course content based upon the individual needs of their students.

With the intrusion of the TEKS and the TAAS, Texas teachers are unable to consider the academic needs of their students. Many Texas schools have survived the education fads because experienced teachers ("dinosaurs") resisted the push toward outcomes-based education, block scheduling, year-round schools, integrated curriculum, etc. Unfortunately, many of the dinosaurs have decided to quit resisting. They have decided to teach the top 10-15% of the student body who are in the Advanced Placement (AP) program. The dinosaurs would rather spend their time targeting their students toward the explicit AP standards rather than trying to shoot at a moving target, the TEKS. A large number of dinosaurs are willing to wash their hands of the 85-90% of the student body who will be left with a school-to-work (STW), inferior education rather than a well-rounded, classical, liberal arts education.

Many of the dinosaurs want to teach the AP students because those students typically do not have serious discipline problems, and AP students are usually motivated to learn. Someone ought to ask the dinosaurs this question, "Just how supportive of the STW plan would you be if you were required to teach the lower-level students?" Just how supportive of STW would you be if your own child were to be educated as a 'worker bee?'"

What a school should really do is to require the dinosaur teachers, who are supposed to be the best teachers in the school, to teach the hardest-to-teach students; but that is not what usually happens. Many veteran teachers are backing STW because it gets the hard-to-teach students completely out of their way. Meanwhile, the lower-level students will have their curriculum "dumbed down" which will temporarily make them much happier and easier to discipline. Wait until these students have to face the real world without their having the foundational knowledge necessary to face life 's problems. At that point, I doubt that the "worker bees" will be very thrilled with their public school education.

I have spent the better part of my life trying to reform the public schools, and I am grieved at what I see happening to them. I have done my best, but my best doesn't seem to be good enough. The current attitude in public schools seems to be: "If you can't play on the team, you need to get off the team." I have decided to get off the team, but that does not stop my heart from grieving over the damage that is being done to Texas students. The reality is that the majority of the students in this country go to the public schools, and it is the public schools that real education reform must take place if we are to see our country remain a world leader.



BUSH AND THE JUDICIARY
Pro-life, pro-family Texans were disturbed to learn that George W. Bush has appointed a liberal Democrat supporter of the Houston Gay and Lesbian Political Caucus and also of Planned Parenthood, Martha Hill Jamison, to the 164th Court in Houston. Judge Jamison is the daughter of former Supreme Court chief justice and unsuccessful gubernatorial candidate John Hill, a powerful Texas Democrat. She was appointed to a bench vacated by a Democrat. Many are questioning why Gov. Bush would appoint a former Democrat (she recently "converted" to the Republican Party) and an apparent liberal at that, when there are many conservative Republicans who could easily have filled that slot.
Source: Republican National Coalition for Life, 4/20/00

THANK YOU JESSE HELMS!
Sen. Jesse Helms (R-NC) pledged to block any so called arms-control agreements that President Clinton negotiates with Russia in these waning months of his Administration. The pledge comes as reports continue to swell throughout Washington that Clinton is negotiating with Russia and is prepared to sign an agreement that would prevent a future U.S. president from developing a real missile defense system to protect Americans from missile attack. Clinton wants this agreement to build a so-called "legacy" for his presidency, but he appears willing to do it at the expense of U.S. security. This is not a new strategy for Clinton. Helms is in a powerful position as Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and his bold statement is a warning not only to Clinton, but to Russia too. There is a moral imperative for the U.S. to protect the American people and deploy a missile defense system as soon as possible. Because of Clinton, we have already wasted eight precious years.
Source: Campaign for Working Families fax, 4/27/00

SENATE HOLDS HEARING ON FETAL STEM CELL RESEARCH
"Is an embryo human or property?" was the ringing question asked by Senator Sam Brownback (R-KS) at a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing on April 26. No one replied. The hearing was conducted by Senator Arlen Spector (R-PA), in preparation for a move to drop the ban on federal funding research using tissue from human embryos (S2105). Sen. Brownback made a strong case against conducting research on those who cannot give consent. However, the pro-life forces were outgunned in the battle for the media by the other side's witnesses. Actor Christopher Reeve made a plea for the research which he believes will restore his ability to walk; and a beautiful young woman suffering from Lou Gehrig's Diseases made a dramatic appeal. Anyone who opposes the use of the 100,000 embryos already frozen in storage across America, was made to seem a cruel ogre who want to deny healing to Hollywood icons.
Source: EF News & Notes, 4/28/00

MEXICO THREATENS TO SUE ARIZONA RANCHERS
Mexico has hired U.S. lawyers to sue Arizona ranchers who take migrants into custody-often at gunpoint-and turn them over to the U.S. Border Patrol. Mexico Foreign Secretary Rosario Green says she is prepared to take "whatever action necessary" to halt alleged human-right violations against Mexicans on private land near Douglas, AZ. She has also invited a UN monitor to investigate the issue. The Arizona cattle ranchers have started armed patrols to stem the flow of thousands of illegal immigrants across their land each day. Ranchers say the immigrants damage fences, steal food and vehicles and frighten their families. John Dawson, director of the U.S. State Department's Office of Mexican Affairs, says the ranchers appear to be within their rights, but "what's legal and smart, as well as appropriate, are two different things."
Source: USA TODAY, 5/3/00



QUOTE OF THE MONTH
"Whenever there is a tragedy involving gun use, Bill Clinton, Al Gore, the gun-control lobby and the news media seize it as another opportunity to exploit the emotions of uninformed American people for political gain. Unfortunately, most Americans don't have the foggiest notion of why the Framers of the Constitution, through the Second Amendment, guaranteed our right to keep and bear arms."
Columnist Walter Williams

FOUNDING FATHER QUOTE
"Hence bad examples of youth are more rare in America, which must be a comfortable consideration to parents. To this may be truly added, that serious religion, under its various denominations, is not only tolerated, but respected and practiced."
Benjamin Franklin in a pamphlet entitled Information to Those Who Would Remove to America, written for Europeans who were considering coming to America.


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