Posted on 11/27/2001 11:35:58 PM PST by Uncle Bill
Witness To A Lynch Mob
The Progressive
By Matthew Rothschild
October 19, 2001
On Monday, October 15, the school board of Madison, Wisconsin, held an open forum to discuss its controversial vote the week before.
In that vote, it had instructed the public schools to forgo having students recite the pledge of allegiance and to offer only an instrumental rendition of the Star Spangled Banner in the classrooms.
This decision became a bloody shirt for talk radio hosts and rightwing church groups to wave around. As I walked in the school, I saw a VFW troupe in full regalia and people with signs saying "God Bless America." There were other people holding signs affirming the separation of church and state, but they were outnumbered. And so was I.
I couldn't get into the crowded auditorium, so I moved out into the cafeteria with the overflow.
Through the sound system, we heard the meeting begin.
All at once, people in full throat were saying the pledge of allegiance. Someone inside the auditorium got it going, and almost everyone in the cafeteria rose to recite it, some with hands over their hearts.
When the pledge ended, I could hear chants of "USA, USA," and I felt like I was at the Scopes Trial.
More than 200 people had signed up to talk for three minutes each, and the school board decided to let students go first.
A homeschooler from Illinois denounced the decision as unpatriotic.
A girl from Mt. Horeb, a town twenty miles away, said she was tired of having her teachers tell her what to do, like telling her she should have sex before marriage.
A few students did support the board, and they were greeted by general tut-tutting in the cafeteria.
Three high school boys with short hair walked by wearing stencilled shirts with the words "Pro-Patriotism" and "Anti-Liberal" in big type on the front, and the pledge in small type. On the back was a picture of Osama bin Laden in a circle with a line drawn through him and the words: "Kill Osama bin Laden."
When it was the adults' turn at the mike, most of the speakers opposed the board, some with a great deal of vitriol. One called the board members "liberal totalitarians."
Several said the board members should resign or be recalled.
Another said, "You should not be recalled. You should be tried for treason!"
Still another described the city as "The People's Republic of Madison," and called the board members a bunch of "arrogant, elitist, heavy-handed, radical leftovers of the Vietnam era, who in your great zeal to protect the minority have stifled the expression of the majority."
That one brought the cafeteria crowd to its feet.
One man countered the criticism that the anthem was militaristic by saying he's sung the anthem thousands of times "but I never felt the urge to conquer my neighbor's lawn or grab their chairs."
Another said that the problem wasn't just the lack of patriotism; it was the lack of discipline. We need to get that discipline back, he said, recalling with approval how one of his teachers "grabbed me by the neck and put me up to the locker."
One Vietnam War veteran said he was proud to wear the uniform, and concluded: "God and America are inseparable."
Many speakers did support the board's decision, and raised the crucial points about separating church and state, about the tyranny of the majority, and about the dangers of blind patriotism.
But the die had been cast.
The board was under enormous pressure all week to back down.
It had received death threats: One person wrote that the hijackers should have flown their planes not into the World Trade Center but into the Madison School Board administration building.
It was being blackmailed economically: Business groups were cancelling their conventions in Madison.
Universities in other states were banning the school board from recruiting teachers on their campuses.
The governor of Wisconsin called the board members to urge them to change their minds.
And as the meeting was going on, a group was organizing to recall the school board members in the room right next to the cafeteria.
In the wee hours of the morning, the board finally capitulated, voting 6-to-1 to have Madison public school students recite the pledge or sing the national anthem on a daily basis.
The power of the mob had prevailed.
A few days later, I bumped into a neighbor of mine whom I had seen at the meeting shaking his head in horror. I asked him what he made of it all.
"I thought I was in Nazi Germany," he said.
Matthew Rothschild
{END OF TRANSCRIPT]
PROGRESSIVES ARE COMMUNISTS
We Are Communists
"In the USSR ("the motherland of socialism"), it led to an explicit recognition of the capitalist nature of its socio-economic structure and its "savage" adjustment to the needs of "modernisation" (at the hands of the nomenklatura of its "communist" party and State, and not by means of "external counter-revolutionary agents"!). In Italy, it led to the equally explicit abandoning of even merely verbal links with communism by the old Italian Communist Party (PCI), and the full acknowledgement of the "eternal" laws of the market, "national interests" and the bloc of the "progressive" classes (from wage-earners to the great "productive" bourgeoisie) the posthumous recognition of a process that had already been completed.
In both one and the other case, the result has been a full adhesion to the needs of capital (including imperialist drives outwards). The proletariat is simply called upon to form ranks in response to the promise that such an environment will allow the "progressives" to safeguard the "compatible" marginal aspects of the social state."
Getting To Know Commies
"Miss Driscoll had other occasion to find fault with her class on political grounds. At the time of the Dewey-Truman election, Radosh's parents -- and most of his classmates' parents -- were supporting the third-party candidacy of Henry Wallace, former vice president running on a pro-Soviet platform for the Progressive Party."
Communists Should Not Teach In American Colleges
"Every Child in America entering school at the age of five is mentally ill, because he comes to school with certain allegiances toward our founding fathers, toward our elected officials, toward his parents, toward a belief in a supernatural Being, toward the sovereignty of this nation as a separate entity. It's up to you teachers to make all of these sick children well by creating the international children of the future."
Taken from an address given at a childhood education seminar in 1973 by professor Chester M. Pierce of educational psychiatry at Harvard University speaking for the Association for Childhood Education International.
"The battle for humankind's future must be waged and won in the public school classroom by teachers who correctly perceive their role as the proselytizers of a new faith. ....The classroom must and will become an arena of conflict between the old and the new--the rotting corpse of Christianity and the new faith of Humanism."
"A Religion for a New Age," The Humanist - January/February 1983, p. 26.
NEA Resource Text Guide In Regards To The "Extreme Right"
The Origins of "Political Correctness"
"We call it "Political Correctness." The name originated as something of a joke, literally in a comic strip, and we tend still to think of it as only half-serious. In fact, its deadly serious. It is the great disease of our century, the disease that has left tens of millions of people dead in Europe, in Russia, in China, indeed around the world. It is the disease of ideology. PC is not funny. PC is deadly serious.
If we look at it analytically, if we look at it historically, we quickly find out exactly what it is. Political Correctness is cultural Marxism. It is Marxism translated from economic into cultural terms. It is an effort that goes back not to the 1960s and the hippies and the peace movement, but back to World War I. If we compare the basic tenets of Political Correctness with classical Marxism the parallels are very obvious."
Elitist Contempt For American Values
Rothschild - You had one fellow utopian planner
I pledge allegiance to the flag
of the United States of America
And to the republic for which it stands,
One nation, under God, indivisible
With liberty and justice for all.
Remember during the recount when they called the GOP protesters a MOB, as opposed to the AFL-CIO "protesters?" What fakes.
Yes. But words have meaning. Progressive politically means nothing more than communist. It's just another phrase in a long list of phrases/terms that camouflage the true identity of the ideology. Environmentalist is another one. Their elite leadership are nothing more than fellow travelers. Politically, I have always stated the same for the word liberals. I don't believe I have ever used the word liberal in my comments here at FR, as I believe they support all the planks that are also nothing more than communist/socialist/fascist ideology. If I ever did use the word liberal, it was a mistake on my part. I do this quite often on the radio, and it really sets them off. They cannot stand to look in the mirror, that is if they give one enough time to explain in detail what I'm talking about. Do I believe in progress? You bet. But Progressive politically, to me, means nothing more than the regression to the leftist Marxist pit of slavery, death and hell. They're like the phony religions that have to keep changing their name and books of religious teachings because their current crop of prophesies are no longer valid in the current times that we live. Americans, for the most part have adopted the Communist Manifesto and more, so I don't see them charging down the street to run the Communists out of the government school system and Institutions of lower learning. We are progressing however. To totalitarianism. Perhaps they'll hug us before they kill us.
I can't think of anything more enjoyable than watching a leftist whine in such an annoying fashion. Well, maybe a couple things. 8-)
Or does that line just reflect the hope of comity that would endear one State to its neighbors?
The original Oaths of Office upon which the Pledge is modeled were the promises, before God and before the People by whom they were elected, of officials to discharge their offices with due diligence. In that light, shouldn't it be the "flag" that pledges to to People?
Or maybe the People should pledge allegiance to their fellow citizens. Does the flag represent the People or the governmental construct they created?
I'm not being maliciously provocative, I sincerely want to know some other's thoughts on this matter.
I know, I know, sounds crazy. Give poor Uncle Bill some medication.
Well, back to Communists, a.k.a "Progressives.
Chin up, man!
There's a way to go, and things change. Our country is not what it was; but the idea lives on.
I've read the material you post here before. Good to know, but it can get you down. How lucky we are to be alive in any circumstances! Rest easy. And may optomism light upon you.
I stand defiant before them who would slaughter me. I will look my executioner in the eye as I curl my hands around his neck. If I am to die, I do so in the manner of my choosing: Not with a pathetic bleating, but with a roar like a lion. Do you stand with me, brother?
Absolutely. To the very end.
This reminds me of the protest that broke out in Florida during the last presidential election. One of the counties attempted to take the ballots behind closed doors and count them there....which resulted in the republicans in the building having a sit-in and chanting slogans. Some goofy liberal at the time saw this and said "there is a whiff of facism in the air". As if no lefties ever had a sit-in.
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