Government Owns Our Castle

We can no longer use our property or do to it what we would like. Our homes are being micro managed by our government. No, while we were sleeping the government did not decree the end to private property, at least not yet.

We still own our homes and have to pay the mortgage and taxes. Private contracts such as house and land deeds are honored although the government has begun to enlarge its power to take away our rights as homeowners. Eminent domain was for the public good to build schools, roads and other community improvements. It now includes increasing the tax revenue for the government’s good as well as greedy pick-pocketing developers.

Americans have always felt that their “homes were their castles.” The home was a sanctuary under their control. They may not have had great material wealth but they knew a free man could do whatever he chose on his land.

Times have changed. Putting a shed up on your property means you now have to get permission and actually pay a permitting fee, “tithe,” to the local government. Changing your front door or merely painting a room, or upgrading your air conditioner or just changing a large appliance can require a permit. Our freedom to do what we want with our homes has been radically reduced.

Greedy bureaucrats are salivating realizing technological advances can be used to increase their invasion into our homes. Rural wells are being identified and recorded to have the information necessary to impose an unexpected tax on homeowners. These country residents, not the government, drill and maintain their own wells at their own expense to tap into God’s waters. Officials in some California counties want to control the air conditioning and heat temperatures in homes by the use of advanced electronic monitoring. In some urban areas smoking has even been outlawed in people’s own dwellings. The list of government intrusions into our homes is growing rapidly.

There are two main rationales the government uses for stealing our civil rights. According to local government any home improvement has to be inspected by government officials to insure it meets the current building code. This is supposedly to protect the owner and the potential next owner of the house from shoddy work by contractors. In reality it is just another way of controlling and taxing us. Even with “government inspections” any buyer with any brains would inspect the house himself or hire a professional before making a major commitment to buy a home.

The other is a socialistic rationale that the government must limit our rights for “the common good.” This translates into: “you cannot use this item according to your own needs” like air and water since other people in the world may need them more. The government arbitrarily determines a formula that charges you for carbon emissions or water. It is hard to argue for personal freedom when “city hall” is claiming they do this for our children’s future unless you realize all of this rationale is another bunch of bunk to take our hard earned money to expand government further into our pocketbook and lives.

We Americans are at the breaking point and need to draw a line in the sand. We must start somewhere. It is best to begin as close to home as possible. The loss of our rights in our own homes should be a wake up call. If we cannot stand up for our own liberty on our own property, we do not deserve to be free.

Doers are being penalized for being productive. The disincentives to industrious people will lead to totalitarianism but incentives to these same people will create a free, vibrant country. We should leave the good US citizens free to do things necessary to improve their lot in life, not tax them into poverty.

To begin we need to take back our castle:

• Question instead of sheepishly accepting any time the government is demanding money from us for improving our homes or consuming God’s gifts to man like water and air.
• Associate with other like-minded people to run candidates for office who want to protect our rights to be free. (Citizen’s cumulative decisions are more efficient and effective than government’s short sighted ones.)
• Call, email and speak directly to our representatives to enlarge, not restrict our freedoms.

We need to take back our castles or accept the all -powerful government’s approach to restricting rights and housing. Remaining oblivious to government’s erosion of our rights will leave us with no choice but dull, drab state built and run projects like other communist countries. America will deserve whatever happens: we fight for our freedoms or lose them.

Dr. Maglio is the author of Invasion Within and Essential Parenting. He is a psychotherapist and the owner/director of Wider Horizons School.

The Issue is Neglect Not Abuse

Through “group think,” the progressive elites made spanking an abusive act that most people believe is illegal. Although no law has been passed making spanking illegal in any state of the union it has turned many against parents who sternly discipline their children. Americans are being reported to government officials for doing their duty of teaching their children right from wrong. No parent wants government bureaucrats to march into their homes making their lives a living hell.

The response to this intimidation has been for parents to back off teaching their children appropriate behavior. Instead of giving an effective consequence like a spank on the toddler’s behind, parents have learned it is easier to ignore bad behavior. Parents intuitively know that not doing anything when their child acts out is less offensive than taking a stand in our PC culture. In our modern society when a child acts out parents usually just lazily tune out and do nothing.

Ignoring bad behavior produces a maladaptive child. When parents begin to dislike their own misbehaving children, they find ways to avoid being around them. This leads to leaving them a little later at after school programs or at friends' homes before coming to pick them up, going into another room to get away or just coming home later and later to spend less and less time with their child. By not being there, the parents are neglectful.

Neglect, not physical abuse is the number one culprit in damaging children in our modern culture.

“1 In 50 Infants Neglected or Abused, Study Shows,” is the title of an article by Mike Stobbe, April 4, 2008, Tampa Tribune, page 5. The title is misleading as almost 87% of the 1 in 50 children are neglected while only 13% of the children were abused. The overwhelming problem in America is parental neglect, not abuse.

Yet the brainwashing continues that any and all spanking is abusive while the main issue of neglect is kept quiet. The higher socioeconomic forms of neglect are not even being considered no less addressed.

Neglect is usually less traumatic than physical abuse although it can be even more damaging to a child’s development. Without parents dedicating their time and energy to training their children to societal standards, children will be deficient in emotional and social areas. Problems in these areas make children susceptible to drugs or alcohol because they have a strong need to fit in. The neglect of these children’s normal needs leads to antisocial and self-destructive behavior.

The profile of the majority of parental villains in our culture is not a crazed, violent parent but a detached, inconsistent one. A parent who emphasizes only the “show off” skills to impress people with his bright child while neglecting the emotional and social nurturing is creating a self-centered, ticking time bomb.

By concentrating on the extreme cases of physical abuse, we as a nation have handcuffed parents from doing their duty as the first teachers of their children. Frightened, absent or uninvolved parents cannot raise a healthy child.

For their first 18 years our society should expect parents to consider their children as one of their top priorities. In public citizens should compliment parents when they have well behaved children. Appropriate discipline of a rude child should receive a smile of approval instead of a frown of disapproval. A conscientious parent is a blessing to the children and to our nation.

Parents need to feel free to do all the things necessary to do their job. Kissing and spanking are natural practices of nurturing. We should not stigmatize these acts as potentially physical or sexual abuse or we suffer the consequences of parental non-involvement.

“Do gooders” in government and the media should step aside and leave parenting to parents. The family has proven to be the best social unit in producing healthy children. Parents need to be appreciated for all the sacrifices they make for their children not treated like perennial child abuse suspects.

Truly abusive parents stick out like a sore thumb and should be prosecuted by law enforcement not by overzealous “remake the world” social workers. Modern parents need to stop thinking about how they may appear abusive to “busy body know-it-alls” and act in the best interest of their child.

Dr. Maglio is the author of Invasion Within and Essential Parenting. He is a psychotherapist and the owner/director of Wider Horizons School. Visit: www.drmaglio.com.

Parents Expect Teachers to do the Parent's Job

“Obedience is the foundation of all learning.” Ben Franklin

Many children are told by their parents to eat their food and they don’t. Their bed time is 7:30pm and they mess around until 9 or10 o’clock. “Brush your teeth,” and the child merely pretends or does not do it at all. Finally the child crossed the line, looks straight at his parents and says, “No.” Most of this happens before they leave the toddler stage.

Too often students listen better to their teachers than to their own parents. The parents are not indignant about being ignored by their children. They are not ashamed of their inability to get their children to listen to them. These parents feel the lack of children following their commands is acceptable for them and the future of their children. It is not.

The explanation for their nonchalant attitude in disciplining is parents no longer view this as their responsibility. Eventually the child will reach school age and the teachers will train them. The modern parents lack of anxiety about the future of their child should be frightening to all of us. Functioning adults are necessary for a free society.

Teachers may have good intentions to change the bad habits of students but this is a monumental undertaking. The foundation of these behaviors was laid at home before they entered school. Parents will continue to take and uninvolved, lazy approach to disciplining until they realize they have the power to develop good habits to maximize the chances of the child’s success. Many parents ignore this reality as it is labor intensive.

It is easier to think everything will naturally fall into place as their child grows older. This may be true in a primitive culture although it is absolute nonsense in a highly civilized society. Skills and habits need to be demonstrated, practiced and perfected under the supervision of the parents to shape certain aspects of the child’s character.

Today’s parents believe they should not be held accountable for their child’s actions although they are ready to scrutinize each and every teacher’s impact on their child’s performance. They question every teacher’s methods to see how they are going to improve their child’s grades and behavior. Some parents even want to wash their hands of any and all responsibility for the child’s performance at school.

From the first day a child enters school, the handprint of the parent can be seen on the behavior of the child. Many children are well socialized knowing what to do at school although they may act the opposite at home. The inconsistent enforcement of the rules at home encourages the child to play manipulative games. These games push the limits enough to make the child think he won while the parents throw their hands up in frustration defeat. Many parents find it easier and more comfortable to isolate themselves from their children by doing their own activities without the children.

The children “win” disregarding the power of their parents but “lose” by developing bad habits. Instead of eating their entire meal, they eat only what they want. They often refuse to eat breakfast and play numerous games to avoid going to bed on time. These children don’t even follow commands and act as if they do not care about the punishments meted out. The parents are not only inconsistent but they begin to feel hopeless and powerless. Their last desperate hope is that their children will outgrow bad behavior by going to school.

Children may make a turn about in front of a new authority figure like a teacher but eventually their bad habits will resurface. Going to bed too late and not eating correctly results in a lack of energy, frequent illness and inability to concentrate. Frequent swings of attitude and performance in school can be traced to little structure and inconsistent discipline at home. The victim is the child.

When parents realize increasing structure and expectations at home positively affects the child’s education, they will correct the mistakes of the past. For many loving parents this empowers them to be more demanding and less wimpy in dealing with their children.

When parents become accountable for doing their parental duties they stop relying on teachers to be surrogate parents. This results in their children doing better in school.

The most beneficial activity parents can do to assist their child in school is to teach them to listen. When children follow the instructions of their fathers and mothers they are more likely to follow the directions of their teachers. In school the child who listens and does what he is asked usually does better than the child that does not. The ability to listen assures success in school.

Dr. Maglio is the author of Invasion Within and Essential Parenting. He is a psychotherapist and the owner/director of Wider Horizons School. Visit: www.drmaglio.com.

Embarassing Ourselves in the Eyes of the World

As a world power we think we can dictate our cultural ideals no matter how alien our culture is to others. Our overly pampered teenagers are frequently given vacations to foreign countries. Instead of acting reserved and being concerned about how others view their behavior they act as if they are putting on a show. Our teenagers are often loud, silly, sexually provocative and become intoxicated while their parents or chaperones look on unconcerned.

The reality is everyone watches an American. Foreigners are fascinated by our actions, dress and lack of manners. When we allow our youngsters to drink because the country they are visiting or cruise ship they are on has no age restrictions, the young teens’ obnoxious drunken actions are a reflection on all Americans.

The ugly American has changed from wealthy, older people to teenage “MTV celebrity wannabees.” We Americans are not demanding courteous and dignified behavior from our children when visiting foreign nations. We act as if “what happens there stays there.” When something tragic happens we do not question our supervision nor the obnoxious behavior of our youth but arrogantly blame the authorities of the foreign nation.

We have punished Aruba for the “Natalie Holloway” debacle. We now know a token four chaperones were given the responsibility of supervising over 100 American high school seniors. Natalie Holloway was allegedly drunk and drugged the night she was last seen with three young Aruba men. There is ample evidence that the partying was voluntary.

There are people in all nations and social classes who will take advantage of a vulnerable person. Predators are waiting in the wings for these young girls. They are merely doing what they do best: prey on others. It is the parent’s responsibility to keep their children’s behavior under control and to let them know that evil is waiting for any person who loses his faculties or is in an altered state.

Natalie’s parents and stepparents, with the help of the media, put the government of the small Caribbean island on trial for several years. America’s power has devastatingly harmed Aruba’s tourism by painting their judicial system as corrupt and incompetent. It may well be although the root of the problem is our cultural naiveté of human behavior. Drunken boys do obnoxious things that often end in brawls. Young “loose” appearing girls are going to be sexually harassed by high testosterone boys and men in any culture.

Too many modern “I want to be your friend” parents have moved so far away from human nature that they believe their personal power can protect their children and control everyone who comes in contact with them. This is delusional.

All of our expended energies after a preventable tragic incident do not bring the person back to life. The ultimate anguish and often guilt is experienced by the parents. Only by acknowledging the real dangers of existence can children live more safely and peacefully with others.

Most foreigners and traditional Americans believe parents and chaperones have the responsibility to demand appropriate and moral behavior from their children. No aware and rational parents can believe they have the power to control the reactions of others to protect their child. Our culture is foolish if we believe we can dictate to others what we want rather than live reasonably within the boundaries of human nature. Ignoring evil does not magically make it disappear.

Bad things happen when youngsters are left to their own devices. We are all at fault if children are not taught this by their parents and culture. No parents should believe they possess world power to change human nature. Attractive teenage “hotties” acting uninhibited places them in a vulnerable and dangerous position. Many males will follow their base instincts and seize the opportunity these girls provide.

Americans are not inherently better or worse than other people from other nations. The majority of Americans who choose morally responsible lifestyles create safe and respectful environments. We must recognize that others live an undisciplined or even criminal life-style. We need to make our children aware that their stupid actions attract dangerous people who can harm them.

Any and all obnoxious or immoral behavior of Americans overseas affects our reputation as a nation more than any presidential actions. We the American people are either good or bad will ambassadors. Our actions out of the country do impact all Americans.

Dr. Maglio is the author of Invasion Within and Essential Parenting. He is a psychotherapist and the owner/director of Wider Horizons School.

Our Parents Were Right

Parents have an inherent responsibility to protect their children from the dangers of the world. Generation after generation has warned children about dangerous situations they have learned about through their own experience. When we were young many of the things we thought were ridiculous, old fashioned and no- sensible have turned out to be realistic and prophetic. They were right and we were naively wrong.

“Saving for a rainy day” has been replaced by “buy now- pay later.” According to a recent poll cited on National Public Radio, today’s adults do not feel financially better off than their parents. Even though they earn more money, they spend more than they earn and buy what they want rather than what they need. Each newer generation has readily rejected the notion of saving to the point where the average American has none.

America is reaping what it sowed 45 years ago when the “Me Generation” threw out all the rules. “It is all about me” became the self-serving mantra of college students. These same young adults who detested their parent’s work ethic lifestyle, ironically demanded money from them to live an instant gratification lifestyle.

Although the parents of these self-centered young adults were from the “world of hard knocks” they chose to believe their “children knew best.” Parents were convinced to discard their nagging ways and accept the easier liberating lifestyle of their non-responsible children. No longer did parents feel obliged to share their experience and knowledge with their children. The duty to ones family, community and country was replaced by optimal self-indulgence. Each younger generation has walked down this path with less mature advice from their self-delusional parents.

APBF era, the “After Parents Became Friends” Era was the impetus for the radical downturn in our culture. We rejected the knowledge and wisdom of our ancestors for the unrealistic dreams of inexperienced “know-it-alls.

When they were parents and not friend’s adults knew to resist the ignorance of youth and not join it. They knew dining together was good for the entire family. It allowed parents time to mould their children. Parents taught American exceptionalism based on God and laws of nature, to their children. These were some of the things they taught us.

• Having children without marriage, lying, stealing, cheating or disrespecting others is wrong.
• Evil exists and needs to be recognized and controlled.
• Watch a person’s deeds not his words. Talk is cheap.
• If things appear too good to be true, watch out.
• Do not take candy from a stranger.
• There is no free lunch, especially from government.
• Do everything to the best of your ability.
• A person’s reputation matters. Show me your friends, shows me your future.
• We are judged by the company we keep.
• A good family and your health are more valuable than gold.
• Knowledge is power.
• Silence is golden.
• “Wait until your father gets home. “I punished you for your own good.”
• “Punishing you is harder on me than on you.”
• Father knows best.
• The best predictor of future behavior is past behavior.

Moving away from these accurate evaluations of human nature and towards progressive falsehoods has led us to today’s world. Our society is much more dangerous, uncaring and purposeless. The less than perfect families of the past have been superseded by fragmented families and dysfunctional government agencies.

After almost 50 years we have the data to compare. Americans are materially richer and spiritually and socially poorer. Violence, divorce, drug and alcohol addiction, unwed mothers and dropouts have sky rocketed. We have moved away from God, laws of nature and meaningful relationships. The evidence is overwhelming.

The blueprint to obtain a more civilized existence is clear. America offered more stability, personal responsibility and peace of mind when we chose to be guided by God, the wisdom of our ancestors and moral values enforced by our parents.

America has prospered on our forefather’s formula of combining limited government with the comprehensive understanding of human nature. It was not a vision of a utopian state that drove them but the desire to design a nation based on the history and knowledge that worked in the past.

To revitalize our spiritually ill society we must be again guided by American exceptionalism rather than continue to demean ourselves in a culture of hedonistic tribalism.

Dr. Maglio is the author of Invasion Within and Essential Parenting. He is a psychotherapist and the owner/director of Wider Horizons School. Visit: www.drmaglio.com.

Schools' Unworkable Zero Tolerance Policy

A 13 year-old Ohio girl was suspended for bringing Midol to school. She was handled as if she was a drug pusher. A country boy who forgot to leave the matches he used to burn garbage at home before he left for school is reprimanded. A 10 year-old girl who brought a serrated knife in her lunchbox to cut her steak and a 9 year-old Louisiana boy who drew a picture of a soldier with a knife are treated as violent criminals. Zero tolerance policies do not have any safeguards for students. There is no room for innocent students to present their side of the story. They are just wrong. Common sense is not allowed in zero tolerance policies.

Although these policies are unworkable, they make good news headlines throughout the nation. These policies are easy to justify for everyone wants violence and drugs to be eliminated in our schools. The flaw in this approach is that it is without justice for the individual.

For years schools were being pressured by the public to develop a way to control potentially dangerous situations on school premises. Superintendents have responded by issuing directives to emphasize resolve to eliminate the problem. A uniform policy was required to establish consistency amongst a large and diverse staff. This policy handcuffed the local teachers and administrators from settling each case on a case-by-case basis. This left many students unintentionally breaking the rules. Too often, without knowing, the decent students trespass on a minefield that indiscriminately punishes them. The unintentional and intentional offenders receive the same equally harsh consequences.

“One size fits all” zero tolerance policies actually encourage the culprit and discourage the victim from standing up for himself.

This illogical policy not only empowers juvenile delinquents but creates a greater not less chance for violence by promoting more outrageously aggressive behavior. Offenders learn the worst punishment they are going to receive if caught in the act of intimidating someone will be the same as their victim. Instead of students receiving accolades for having good character and standing up to obnoxious and often dangerous behavior, they are equally punished. It encourages the transgressor to be more aggressive while the innocent is discouraged from protecting himself.

Creating a peaceful school environment takes intensive work by students, teachers and school administrators not a superintendent’s directive. Knowing the students well through frequent interaction, even counseling will decrease opportunities for juvenile delinquents to operate with impunity. It is certainly easier to establish and maintain discipline in a smaller rather than larger school. Even in larger facilities it is possible when all the administrators are directly involved with their pupils.

All administrators need to view safety as their number one priority. Developing a peaceful school environment takes proactive not reactive measures. Students need to know the expectations of their local school. Administrators and teachers of the school need to develop and believe that their procedures are fair and honorable ones. Policies need to be impartially enforced without being influenced by any outside pressure.

Students doing the right things need to be recognized. All school rules need to be specific and well communicated to the students. Witnessing classmates need to be interviewed without involving the students being investigated. A thorough investigation needs to get the facts of the incident before making any decision. The evidence, not politics, should direct the decision making process.

The light of justice is a disinfectant for injustice. This is a time consuming process though well worth it for the safety and security of the students. When students know the school administration’s decisions are just, students will behave more orderly. The potential delinquent comes to understand that mean and abusive behavior will be punished while the appropriate students know the school will protect them.

Schools are places for children to learn how to behave as respectful, kind and responsible people. This behavior cannot be decreed, it has to be shaped by an involved staff constantly teaching right from wrong when misbehavior occurs. The instigator has to be punished and the so-called “victim” should be encouraged by the teacher to directly tell the problem student how he feels. The teacher with the support of the administration should lead the confrontation. This meeting often should take place in front of the class to drive home the difference between appropriate and inappropriate actions. Troublemakers need to be “put down” and the honorable lifted up.

“Zero intelligence” policies sound good but do not teach specific moral lessons. Only teachers, administrators and students getting down to basic facts of situations can arrive at a just decision for everyone involved. The accumulation of doing the right things over time produces a culture of safety in our schools.

Dr. Maglio is the author of Invasion Within and Essential Parenting. He is a psychotherapist and the owner/director of Wider Horizons School.

Parents Against Sexualized Culture

The pharmaceutical company, Merck, the Center for Disease Control and the mental health industry all have a vested interest in hyping a sexual epidemic amongst teens. Merck is producing Guardisil, a vaccine for the Human Papiilloma Virus, the CDC will lobby for more federal grants and the sexual experts will increase their relevance when our perception is that our teenager’s sexual activity is out-of-control. Each of their agendas is served.

It is difficult to accept the reputable Gullmacher Institute’s statistic of only 46% of high school students having had sexual intercourse. This is down from 54% in 1991.

Too many of us have been propagandized that this statistic is in the range of 80-95%. When the media says often enough that all teens are sexually active we begin to believe it. Perception is reality.

“One in four teenagers has an STD” is spread all over the media. When the truth is 1 out of 4 sexually active teenagers has an STD. This means 1 out of 8 children have an STD when you factor in that less than one half of all teens are sexually active.

Story after story in the mainstream media is a distortion of the truth. A man is pregnant. The “man” turns out not to be a man after all but a woman who has not completed her series of shots and operations to appear like a man. We live in a world that attempts to distort reality in engineering an ultra sexualized world. Too many parents believe the negative picture the experts and the media are painting of our youth.

Our youngsters have an even more powerful and extreme exposure to a sexualized destructive culture. Ignorant “wanna be gangsta” peers communicate it. It happens in actions and gossip, in video games, in school, daily IM and browsing the Internet on phony MY Space pages. Children watch MTV that displays the glorification of an immoral lifestyle. MP3s are plugged directly into their brains feeding them vulgar trash.

This generation’s culture civil war is being fought to some degree in every American home. Parents are losing because they foolishly believe by going along with their child’s sexual precociousness their youngsters will not rebel against their authority. The parent’s appeasement never allows them to establish their power, which is the basis of all authority.

Parents should fight to win keeping their children on the right path or will suffer the anguish of witnessing the unfulfillment of the potential of their child. Parents can teach their children to be decent, moral adults but not by being weekend parents. They need to dedicate themselves from the child’s birth to their 18th birthday. It takes nothing less from the parents than dedicating themselves to their children to maximize shaping good human beings especially in this culture of unrestrained temptation.

The strategy for winning the culture civil war is for parents to train their children to listen to them not to MTV. When children do not learn to listen to their parents they do not learn to listen to what comes out of their own contaminated mouths. Their inability to monitor their own speech prolongs the dishonesty and disrespect for their parent’s position as head of the home. If children do not listen to their parents when they are toddlers they do not listen to them as teenagers.

The highest chance of success in raising a well-adjusted child is to start training the child as early as possible. The battles won with infant/toddlers mean the parents have established structure and rituals that minimize opportunities for conflict. When the child has learned to be obedient it will be more difficult for him to openly lie to his parents and everyone else on MY Space about his fantasy lifestyle.

Ultimately it is the responsibility of the parents to guide their children through a minefield of perversion that can encourage their children to make negative life altering decisions. Parents must stay a step ahead of their children to resist giving them permission to think and do things that will have harmful consequences or suffer the pain of being involved with a dependent parasitic adult child.

Parents need to be tougher in this open sexualized society than their parents were. They must limit video gaming, Internet access and sleepovers with families they do not personally know to protect their children from making poor decisions. Children need to be kept innocent until they are mature enough to make intelligent decisions.

Uniting with their spouse and other like-minded parents can strengthen parents resolve to keep children from following the celebrity path of being sex objects. Only by parents having a stronger will than their children will the children be saved from their arrogance of ignorance in a world where evil abounds.

Aware parents and adults can shield their children from being part of a decadent existence and put America on a more solid moral footing.

Dr. Maglio is the author of Invasion Within and Essential Parenting. He is a psychotherapist and the owner/director of Wider Horizons School.

From Bad to Worse

In order to control the media, no reporters were allowed to enter the California earthquake zone that killed 110,000 people with 70,000 still missing. The government did not want any reporters or foreign relief workers to question or speak with our citizens even though their aid would help the suffering citizens. The problem would be the world outside who would learn too much about what was happening inside the American borders.

Fear of the secret police is in the forefront of everyone’s mind. Certain words and thoughts cannot be spoken without fear of reprisal. America’s freedom of speech has been choked off with insidious political correctness. When people want to talk honestly about the government they non-verbally signal each other to go into a separate room. Each speaks in hushed voices not to be heard by any listening device.

The average family can hardly afford a tiny prefab apartment while the elite live a privileged life of luxury. Assets of individuals are constantly confiscated for the “greater good.” Taxes continue to rise on the employed to pay for the unemployed. Water, oxygen intake and artificial temperature change are taxed according to sophisticated state meters penetrating the sanctity of our homes.

In the universal medical service system patients must pay money under the table to get an appointment before the usual six-month waiting period. Hospital beds are only available for the politically connected.

This may seem far-fetched to many Americans who take our freedom for granted. In our short history as a nation, many have made great personal sacrifice to put us on the right track when we veer too far to the left or right. Now there are few real patriots in power positions.

Historically the average person pays and a small elite group prospers whenever a people follow a leader who promises something for nothing, An idealistic plan based on hope rather than the reality of personal responsibility and sacrifice leads ultimately to a loss of economic freedom ending in a totalitarian existence.

Europeans are experimenting with this through accepting the European Union. Each of these joining nation’s elites have been willing to sacrifice their working middle class to join this scheme. The silence of the citizens of these countries has been bought by the hope of collective power giving each person more for doing less.

Right now in the EU gas is $9 a gallon and diesel fuel is over $10 per gallon, unemployment is in the mid to high teens. The federal income tax is about 48% with a 19-23% sales tax on everything sold. The price of food has doubled in the change of currency to the euro while incomes have increased only slightly. These results should wake up every American.

Things in Europe have gone from bad to worse. Are we are going to choose a similar socialistic model that is not working? Is the global economy going to maintain or improve our standing as the number one nation in the world or is it going to rob us of our freedoms? We have become soft and greedy. We complain, hold our noses and elect lying, corrupt candidates who spout schemes that will never work.

It is true no matter the level of functioning of the nation there are always things that can be improved. In economic downturns there are always legitimate gripes. We only know how good things were when we look back over time. We blame our country for our almost $4 a gallon of gas, a 6% mortgage rate, for beef at $5 a pound and sharp increases in airplane tickets. We are righteously indignant about the state of affairs and want immediate change without the necessary suffering, which is part of the hustle to stay on the top.

American’s greatness has been built on the backs of free, average people. When these people feel their efforts no longer matter we are a decaying society. We must keep our individual freedom not replace it with “the collective good.” There is no “free lunch.”

Change does not insure better conditions. It can go either in a positive or negative direction. Things can rapidly crash going from bad to worse. We can go from “the frying pan into the fire.”

Positive change takes work. Only by united citizens pressuring our leaders to do what is best for America, rather than continuing in their disgusting corrupt ways, can we regain America’s exceptionalism.

Dr. Maglio is the author of Invasion Within and Essential Parenting. He is a psychotherapist and the owner/director of Wider Horizons School.

Che Guevara: The Sadistic Anti Hero

The swashbuckling icon of the 1960s counter revolutionaries lives on 50 years later. In Chile, Czechoslovakia, Argentina, Italy, England, Germany the USA and other countries of the world there are photos on walls, posters and T shirts of a bearded man wearing a beret and staring charismatically above us. The ultimate symbol of the liberator of the downtrodden masses of the world is Che’s omnipresent photo.

This is curious given Ernesto Che Guevara’s past. He was a handsome medical doctor who was a cold-blooded murderer. Che was from an upper class background like most leftist revolutionaries in history. As did others from Lenin to Castro to Chavez he said all the right things that the powerless poor wanted to hear while his actions were aimed at seizing power by any despicable means.

Che’s fondness for barbarity has been concealed from the public arena. His motto was, “If in doubt, kill” and his nickname was “the butcher of Cubana.” He wrote to his mother when in Guatemala demonstrating his juvenile and egotistical motivation for his revolutionary antics: “It was all a lot of fun, what with bombs, speeches and other distractions to break the monotony I was living in.” Jonah Goldberg, Liberal Fascism, Doubleday 2007, pg. 194.

Che himself admitted to ordering several thousand executions in the first few years of the Castro regime. Daniel James, Che Guevara, A Biography, Cooper Square Press, 2001. Torturing and killing others was an enjoyable diversion for Che’s boring existence. “To send men to the firing squad, judicial proof is unnecessary. These procedures are archaic, bourgeois details. This is revolution. Revolution must become a cold machine motivated by pure hate. We must create the pedagogy of the paredon (wall).” Humberto Fontova, NewsMax, “Che Guevara Assassin and Bumbler”, Feb. 23, 2004.

Che’s brutal, dark soul has been hidden by idealistic elites who get suckered into believing what a charismatic person says he stands for rather than what he does. His behavior and associations with low lives are off limits to public scrutiny. The radical left finds it imperative to protect a man like Che who inspires a Communistic vision of the world.

The same emotional rationale for the “greater good” of the powerless masses elevated the image of “Uncle Joe” Stalin, China’s Mao and the loony Venezuelan despot, Chavez. The documented oppression and slaughter of their own people is conveniently overlooked by these imposters of change “for the greater good.”

Today’s unworthy rich and famous, guilt ridden Hollywood types cannot get close enough to the Fidel’s and Chavez’s. It liberates them from the shallowness of their own phony existence. The super hero glorification, almost deification of a man who uses evil to maintain and strengthen his power is the easiest means for celebrities like Sean Penn or Dan Rather to become vicariously part of a revolutionary movement. The actions of Che must be disregarded in order for him to remain a revolutionary symbol that legitimizes modern leftist dictators.

These creative intellectual types have been and are dishonest in their appraisal of communist dictators. Their utopian worldview depends on a “slight of mind,” a disregard of anything that conflicts with their radical leftist narrative.

Ironically these same “humanistic people” who express their hatred for torture romanticize a fanatical practitioner of it. Their willingness to overlook or ignore the horrors of an uprising by an untested intellectual professional is advocacy not a search for truth. Demonizing any and all established military action regardless of its legitimacy is proof of their lack of integrity.

Through honoring this sadistic man we are spreading his fame as well as his tactics of terror. Role models do affect people’s behavior. When naïve followers learn their hero was a vicious killer it makes it easier for them to mimic that behavior.

It is up to believers in individual freedom to inform others about the brutality of Che’s life to debunk the cult myth of this evil man.

Celebrating a terrorist is not what most people believe they are doing by wearing his image on their chests. Che worshipers think they are advancing freedom. Instead they are inadvertently furthering the power of oppressing the human spirit. Ernesto Che Guevara was a selfish, sadistic anti-hero who needs to be viewed as the murdering sociopath he was.

Dr. Maglio is the author of Invasion Within and Essential Parenting. He is a psychotherapist and the owner/director of Wider Horizons School.

Schools Promoting Sex Over God "Day of Silence"

The April 15, 2008 front page of the Tampa Tribune read: “Final Four Gives Lesbians Forum to Celebrate Women. Parties, basketball-and a sense of camaraderie- draw crowds to what some call the lesbian “Super Bowl.” Many indignant letters to the editor did not appreciate the Tribune’s promotion of the lesbian agenda.

It is one thing for a political newspaper to advance a homosexual agenda; it is another for our supposedly non-political educational institutions to do the same. Government schools should expose students neither to a religious way of believing or towards an uncommon sexual orientation. In a totalitarian country indoctrination of a particular belief system is accomplished by the state, while in a free nation moral values are taught by the family and church.

Our government has banned prayer in ceremonies in school. Even one minute of silent prayer has been viewed as an infringement on religious freedom. On April 15th Marcus Borden a sports coach for two decades in East Brunswick High School, was found by the Third Circuit Court to have crossed the line of an unconstitutional endorsement of religion. His crime was to kneel in silence before games with his team even though this ritual is common in college and professional sports

On April 25th many of our government schools throughout our nation are sponsoring not one minute but an entire “Day of Silence.” The Gay, Lesbian, Straight Education Network (GLSEN) to promote acceptance and support of homosexual behavior in our government schools initiated this event. Teachers are encouraged by many school districts to participate as well. Online at afa.net the schools are by state that are honoring this event.

When our government attempts to repress any mention of God in our schools while encouraging the acceptance of a Biblically deviant homosexual orientation over the majority heterosexual behavior, it is a blatant reverse discrimination against the moral majority of Americans.

This “Day of Silence” discriminates against heterosexual parents and their children. There is no day of the year where we celebrate the normal opposite gender attraction. It serves no reasonable purpose to coerce youngsters into committing themselves to a lifestyle before they are sufficiently mentally and physically mature to understand the long-term implications of their choices.

Teenage students are solidifying their sexual identity. All students have a right to choose to identify himself or herself as either a homosexual or heterosexual. Normalizing homosexuality is not a function of the state in a free country. The vast majority of heterosexual parents want their children to live a normal life of marrying a person of the opposite sex and having a traditional family.

Peer group clubs like GLSEN often are informally sponsored and led by people who have a strong homosexual agenda. These clubs should not be allowed to indoctrinate our children. Our sexuality is a personal choice not a decision to be made by a government re-education program.

“Normal,” in a free America, is what the majority of the people are and what they do. Schools should remain in the business of educating not changing the norms of society by manipulating the minds of students. Our government needs to cease social engineering and leave personal sexual choice to the individual.

If we are going to radically misinterpret the constitution to exclude any mention of God in our nation, then there is no justification for changing the moral values of our children.

There should be the same separation between school and homosexual indoctrination that there is between church and state.

We can send a clear message to government schools by encouraging our children to ask questions in school on this absurd “Day of Silence.” Questioning is a necessary element of freedom in a society. We pay for our children’s education through our taxes. Our children have a right to learn and should not waste another day. Silencing questions for an entire day is not sound educational policy: it is propaganda.

Dr. Maglio is the author of Invasion Within and Essential Parenting. He is a psychotherapist and the owner/director of Wider Horizons School.

Visit: www.drmaglio.com.

From Zero Population to Global Warming

"People did what worked. Now people are doing what sounds good. " Thomas Sowell

The Florida insurance company's skyrocketing rates on homes was scientifically justified using meteorological models to predict hurricanes in 2006 and 2007. The scientific agreement on an active hurricane season for these years was absolutely wrong. None occurred although there were no rebates for the exorbitant rates. So much for certainty of scientific predictions.

These are the same models that have difficulty predicting tomorrow's weather. Computer programs are only as good as the programmer and the data used.

In the 1960s sitting in a university classroom studying Malthus's theory of overpopulation written in 1798, it sounded inevitable that as the world population increased man's ability to supply ample food would lead to worldwide famine and disease. This Maltusian doctrine was the rationale for the Zero Population movement.

The world's population has exploded from less than a billion in the 1700s to over 6 billion yet the food supply has increased to more than meet the demand of the increased population. Today, instead of famine and disease we have obese people living longer than ever.

This theory based on consensus science to control world population has been a dismal failure. It has not curbed the earth's population but has politically destabilized the most environmentally concerned nations on earth, the western societies.

Zero population has reduced European and North American birth rates causing modern nations to rely on a large influx of immigrants to remain economically viable. At the same time the developing nations' population has exploded. The world's population has grown rapidly even with western nations reducing their birth rate to zero. This has undermined the ability of these nations to survive not from over population but from under population.

The same arrogance of changing the world on what sounds dreadfully plausible is seen in the "bird flu pandemic" scare, the "Y2K" fiasco and the hysteria over nuclear energy plant meltdowns. Bird flu has not mutated, computers functioned as the millennium barrier was crossed and not a single person was killed by nuclear energy even though France has cut its reliance on oil by using nuclear energy.

The latest "scientific sky is falling " consensus fad, global warming, is taking the world by storm. Extrapolating from the fact the earth's temperature is rising, a host of dire predictions for mankind has been trumpeted throughout the world's media. The theory behind this warming says it is caused by manmade CO2 emissions. The world can only be saved by humanity cutting back on the production of carbon dioxide. "To capture the public imagination, we have to offer up some scary scenarios, make simplified dramatic statements and little mention of any doubts one might have. Each of us has to decide the right balance between being effective and being honest." Stephen Schneider (the lead author of the 2007 UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report )

There is no demonstrative evidence to prove the global warming hypotheses that manmade CO2 levels are going to devastate the earth. Disregard other possible explanations for the sake of argument and let us assume this global warming thesis is true.

The UN's IPCC solution is the Kyoto Treaty. This protocol would limit developed nations' CO2 emissions to 1990 levels and exempt developing nations like China and India from any CO2 or other pollutant requirements.

Obviously by adopting the Kyoto protocol world wealth would be redistributed from once prosperous western nations to underdeveloped nations. "Climate change provides the greatest chance to bring about justice and equality in the world." Christine Stewart, Canada's former environmental minister. Government and corporate elites will increase their power and riches from their ability to tax some industries and grant waivers to others. This Kyoto agreement would eliminate free international trade replacing it with a world centralized economic system. Jacques Chirac: "Kyoto is the first component of an authentic global governance."

Before we are swept away by another rationale for saving the planet let us remember the subjective opinions of a group of experts, even scientists does not mean following them will result in a better existence. Science is based on the scientific method and replicating of studies, not a group of experts proclaiming consensus. This pop science's bandwagon led us to addictive prescription drugs, the housing and dot.com boom and bust.

We cannot rush to judgment. Rational thought, not hysterical fear, leads to healthy decision making. Only through careful step-by-step evaluation of the unfolding facts can we reach a rational policy on global warming. It is ridiculous for global warming alarmists to censor open discussion by claiming scientific certitude through consensus. This has been tried over and over again with negative consequences to the world, from the earth is the center of the solar system to zero population growth.

"Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels: it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled." Michael Crichton

Dr. Maglio is the author of Invasion Within and Essential Parenting. He is a psychotherapist and the owner/director of Wider Horizons School.

We No Longer Say No

Our lack of personal toughness is sapping our authority to get things done right. The inability to deny ourselves anything is making us weak. This weakness is filtering down to every aspect of our society. When we don't say "no" to ourselves, how can we expect others in our charge to listen to us? We have forgotten the virtues of saying "no" to ourselves, our children, our students, employees and our ever-expanding government.

We are living in the present with little preparation for the future. Prudence has been tossed out in favor of hedonistic fantasy. The casual marriage, adoption and abandonment of children, drugging and partying is the life style of too many celebrities in sports, politics, business and entertainment. The traditional concept of saving for a rainy day has become obsolete. Our modern indulgent lifestyle is depleting our human and capital resources, which are essential for continuing the advancement of our civilization. We are spending money on the federal, state and household level like "drunken sailors."

Our spouses, children and employees will likely follow what we do, not what we say. When we live a glutinous, sexually permissive, dishonest lifestyle with little regard for the example we are setting for the youth we are creating a bleak future.

Our children do and get what they want because we do and get what we want. Placing limits on our children means placing limits on us. Living above our means is the name of the game. We should have it because we "deserve" it. Our lives are lived on credit. We rationalize that the worst that can happen is bankruptcy. That will only lead us to another gamble to maintain a lifestyle lived by the "skin of ones teeth."

Our parents, schools and churches have conveniently lowered standards to appease rather than elevate the character of people. We are producing, morally, emotionally and socially superficial individuals. We are becoming a soft, selfish and spiritually bankrupt nation.

As long as students are happy almost everyone remains content. The parents, teachers and administration go along with the philosophy of "just getting by." We are not living by principles of doing what is right. Even the churches are not willing to expose and expel clergy pedophiles or teach Biblical beliefs on homosexuality.

Caving in to the demands of others is easier than saying "no". Granting employees who give a minimum of effort incredible perks leads to failed ventures. The same can be said for allowing our government to expand spending our tax dollars without any tangible results in improving relevant services. Eventually this nonchalant attitude ends in economic and moral decline. The breakdown in upholding moral and economic standards leads to a dispirited society. This spiraling decline ends with the servitude of the people.

Not practicing personal discipline through sacrifice makes it likely others will follow our pathetic example. Being self-absorbed leaves little time for living a quality life. Instead of sharing wisdom with the next generation we tolerate behavior we know is self-destructive. We just don't care about the future.

We must say "Enough" when we know something is wrong. People should fight for the principle of right over wrong regardless of how others might view them. The greatest gift you can give to others is the truth.

Reversing this process has to begin where it started- in the family. Fathers have to stop being wimps and mothers need to be more critical of their child's daily behavior. Parents should start again to be the parents by saying "no" to things that are not in their children's or other family member's long-term best interest. This means adults must accept being disliked or hated in the short run for long-term dividends of raising productive children of good character, having a clear conscience and the self-respect of doing your duty in all aspects of your life.

As we learn to turn away from living only for today and start to become better at self-discipline we can positively impact not only ourselves but also everyone around us. Our legacy will move from only caring for oneself to leaving the earth a better place. Right now is the time to think about our spiritual purpose for the sake of all that we love.

Legacies are gifts we pass on to others only when we have the courage to say "no" to ourselves and others doing the wrong thing.

Dr. Maglio is the author of Invasion Within and Essential Parenting. He is a psychotherapist and the owner/director of Wider Horizons School.

Robbing Any Citizen's Freedom Limits Everyone

Society should protect the innocent from despicable acts. Murder, sexual and physical abuse, destruction of property and reckless behavior need to have severe legal consequences in order to deter them. However, the more laws enacted, the less free the society. The more choices citizens are able to make, the freer the society.

When governments attempt to legislate preferences, manners and decency it is over-stepping its boundaries. It is going down a slippery path of oppression.

Our government has passed laws against smoking in restaurants, beaches and even in one's home. NYC mayor, Michael Bloomberg, decided educating the people about the dangers of trans fats would be ineffective. Instead he decreed that restaurants had to stop serving trans fats. Congress has established laws, which have curtailed our freedom of speech by making it a crime to utter certain words. A common expression today can be a hate crime tomorrow. Now California is attempting to require "programmable communicating thermostats' in homes so the government can control our heat and cooling during what is deemed an "emergency event."

Unnecessary laws are stifling our liberty. Free people collectively make better decisions than do government elites.

Most Americans have dropped their love affair with smoking being cool. Cigarettes have lost favor in our culture. Very few non-smokers have empathy for smokers. Cigarette smoke stinks and can cause allergic reactions. Many smokers have been persuaded to stop smoking for the sake of their health. Free people can be convinced to live without trans fats and can learn to stop saying politically incorrect things. Laws are not needed to tell us how to live our daily lives.

People in a free nation have the right to associate with anyone as long as they do not advocate violence against others. Some individuals who want to control their neighbor can join a deed-restricted community. Each individual voluntarily agrees to limits his choices as well as his neighbor's. These deed-restricting contracts can stipulate the color or one's house, number and kind of plant allowed and exclude children from the homes of community residents. These rights are not being taken from them; instead they are expressing their freedom to live in an environment that decreases their neighbor's and their own options. They agree to restrict their own freedoms.

It is a radically different act when the federal government limits individual's rights and freedoms. When government robs us of our positive choices it is not in the interest but against the interest of the people. This is despotism.

Even though all citizens should be agitated by the government abridging our freedoms, most of us do not protest. Our silence allows government to whittle away our independent choices. Limiting the rights of specific groups of people creates a political environment that makes all of our freedoms vulnerable.

Proposing new laws to correct a perceived problem usually enhances a politicians ability to be elected. These issues are often manufactured by special interests using dubious polls. Our society should not be changed by the whim of politicians passing laws motivated by special interests but by free individuals making choices over time.

In the past smoking was "cool," Oreo cookies and donuts were the rage, saying what you meant was valued. Today these all have lost cultural favor. People have made decisions on their own to change their behavior rather than being directed by "Big Brother."

America is a country with shrinking liberties. We are unwilling to recognize that government's attempt to unnecessarily restrict any of us will eventually affect all of us. Since most of these laws do not restrict us personally we take the lazy citizen approach and ignore them.

Laws and regulations are strangling our once great and free nation. Our children, our land, homes, eating habits, water and air will be the domain of the state. We are losing our rights and privileges. We have no one to blame but ourselves.

Our liberties will be lost by our not being vigilant to stand up for the rights of others. Losing our liberties in a dramatic coup or piecemeal still ends in a tyrannical existence.

Dr. Maglio is the author of Invasion Within and Essential Parenting. He is a psychotherapist and the owner/director of Wider Horizons School.

The Tyranny of Minority Special Interests Over the Majority

We Americans must sacrifice time and effort to do our homework in order to be knowledgeable voters. Being too busy to do our civic duty is not an acceptable excuse. Educated citizens must give direction to our government representatives.

When the majority of Americans were educated on the eminent domain, Dubai port take over and illegal immigrant issues, left and right came together to direct our politicians. Through emails and telephone calls to our representatives we demonstrated we meant business. Politicians turned their backs on the special interests of international corporations, developers and financial institutions and turned towards the voice of the majority of Americans.

In these instances the smug arrogance of special interests was wiped off their faces by the average American. When we come together, our message is loud and clear. Politicians listen, perhaps for no other reason than to save their jobs. We stood up to some of the most powerful elites and were victorious for the benefit of us all. The majority should trump the powerful minorities.

The only reason special interest has dominated our political process is because we have become complacent and let them. Various interests have used the power of money to organize their efforts to push their sel- serving wish list. George Soros, of Moveon.org has spent millions of his own dollars to manipulate people into adopting more progressive, secular viewpoints. The oil, financial, NEA, ethnic, homosexual, racial and other special interests hire public relation firms and lobbyists to get what they want passed into law.

Special interests have been immensely effective in controlling the political machinery that many Americans feel they are powerless to compete against. The vast majority of us are acting as if it is inevitable that America will be deviously controlled by the new aristocracy of international corporations, non-profit groups and celebrity elites. We recognize special interest groups can get laws enacted even when it harms the national interest. We know the playing field is getting less and less level for small business and the average American.

Instead of demanding that our representatives are responsive to us, we just sulk and complain to each other. We know that legislative loyalty and allegiance can be purchased by the highest bidder. We ought to use the natural tendency of people to do what is needed to keep and promote their own power. We must reclaim our ability to form the ultimate special interest group called the "American people." By frequently showing our power through our numbers and monetary donations we will mandate our government to work for instead of against us.

In the computer age knowledge of any issue is at our fingertips. We can research, formulate our positions and mobilize large numbers of citizens to show our resolve and will to our politicians. By lighting up the phone lines at their offices and inundating them with emails we can instruct our representatives to do what is right. This will eliminate the feeling of impotency in the political process. The Internet's rapid research and communication gives us the tools to show our representatives how to do the people's business.

The salvation of our freedom lies not with passivity but with but educated, joint action. By showing a force of numbers we will encourage our representation to be motivated more by their moral and noble inclinations than blatant greed.

We will be reenergized by seeing the results of being victorious through our coordinated efforts. A representative government takes effort on the part of the citizens.

We can rekindle the spirit of our founding fathers extraordinary revolution by doing our part. Only through our hands-on involvement in politics can we combat and defeat the tyranny of the minority over the majority.

Dr. Maglio is the author of Invasion Within and Essential Parenting. He is a psychotherapist and the owner/director of Wider Horizons School.

Pushy Parents, Underachieving Kids

Every time parents attempt to influence, cajole and finally browbeat a teacher to increase the child’s standing in the class, they are sending a horrible message to their child. The student learns parents will bail him out of his laziness, twisting of the truth and sloppiness in dealing with his daily school assignments. These potentially high functioning students concentrate on “getting over” on the teacher rather than just doing things right the first time. They rely on their parent’s powers of coercion rather than their own hard work to obtain high grades.

This disinterested and lazy view of schooling starts in the home. The child becomes absolved from solving his own daily problems. These compulsive parents do their child’s work rather than requiring the child to do it himself. Nagging is their primary strategy while the child learns to be selectively deaf and dumb. The child perfects these passive-aggressive games so that the irate parent gives up and does it herself.

These established habits of the child doing only what he wants to do is transferred from the home to the school environment. As long as learning comes easily it is not an issue. When the student can no longer get by with his reserve of general knowledge, usually in junior or senior high school, the problems surface. Instead of rising to the challenge of the harder work, the student digs in his heels using his passive-aggressive techniques used at home. The parent notices the lower grades and lack of studying that produces anxiety about their child’s future school success. As the child’s grades remain below the parent’s expectations it becomes the teacher’s not the child’s fault.

These are usually high functioning, bright parents who demand the best performance from everyone including their underachieving children. This approach usually works with the public. They direct the teacher to send everything home to them from grades, assignments, to specific reading lists. The parent decides to micro manage the child’s studies and homework until the parent becomes frustrated from the lack of results.

The parent’s inconsistency gives the child a free pass as the parent knows her pit bull tactics only drives the child further into his own world of avoidance. The solution to the parent’s dilemma is to place their child’s poor performance squarely on the shoulders of the teacher. “The teacher did not inform the parent early enough. There were insufficient progress reports for the parent’s liking. They did not know about this or that assignment. The child should receive one-on-one instruction.” The parent never places the responsibility where it belongs, on the child to do his own work.

The child’s dispassionate existence is reversed when the parent requires the child to be responsible for his own home chores and school duties. The parents’ emphasis should be demanding what is in their control, the child doing family responsibilities. At the same time the parents increase their pressure at home, they should release the reins for their child’s academic studies. Any difficulty the child has at school should be viewed by the parent as an opportunity for the child to improve and grow as a student.

The message should be loud and clear. “You contribute to the family and become responsible for your own education or else you will be cut off from the things you love but have not earned.” The computer, television, books, the child’s virtual reality must be replaced with a chore list of helping the family. “Not for a weekend or a month but until you show ownership of your chores and schoolwork.”

When the parents understand that their youngster must be held accountable for his own well being then they allow the child to make his own choices and deal with the consequences of his behavior. The message changes from “I will use my power to cover up your self-made difficulties” to “grow up because this is your life now.” This shift in the parent’s attitude and behavior will move the child from underachieving towards taking more appropriate action for his own future. The child will become empowered to mature into a self-reliant student.

Inflated Wallets, Arrogant Egos

The housing boom has turned into the mortgage bust. Financial experts are stating that people with “upside-down” houses, houses valued less than the mortgage, have no obligation to continue to pay. Their advice is “walk away and in several years you can restore your credit.” It is clear to these experts that money consideration trumps all other values.

Moral considerations of fulfilling one’s contract, keeping one’s word have been tossed out the window. They have been replaced with “it is all about money.” This is our new amoral guide to existence. The more we measure ourselves in material wealth, the less we follow what is right. Our humility plummets while our arrogance skyrockets.

Our corrupting materialism has trickled down to the youngest members of society. Children are blasé about even the most sophisticated gifts losing interest shortly after unwrapping them. The more people of any age receive something for nothing, the less gratitude and appreciation they can be expected to feel.

Even people who break our laws entering our country illegally demand the benefits of our social welfare system to which they are not entitled or deserve. Our unaware citizens pay in full. K-12 education, healthcare, subsidized housing, food stamps and college tuition for illegal aliens. Again it is something for nothing. Too many of us unconsciously believe our national treasury is limitless.

Disaster victims and our poorest citizens demand the government do for them instead of the citizens doing for themselves. Too many of us no longer feel it is our duty to help ourselves and our loved ones. Instead we expect the government do it for us. Our entitlement mentality has spread to every crevice of our nation.

Even financial mega corporations and affluent people who make risky investments in the stock or home market want others to bail them out. Financial decisions are being made under the assumption that they are going to make money, not lose it for companies as well as individuals. Presumptuously they believe since they made money in the past, the government has the responsibility to guarantee it in the future. The social welfare or “the government should save me from my poor but freely made choices” has caught on with all segments of society, even the wealthy.

Recent college graduates feel they should start at the top of the ladder. Their degrees should place them at the zenith of the pay scale, give them a great office with no supervisors above them since they already know everything. Their lack of professional experience is a non-issue. They have been told by their instructors that they have the latest knowledge and methods of doing any job. The professors’ hype and the parents’ material power have created an attitude of conceit that is detrimental to every aspect of their lives.

When the thickness of our wallet makes us feel good about ourselves, then the thinness of it makes us feel like losers. Many of us have gotten into the habit of buying something to make us feel good. People will no longer be able to use money power as their financial situation deteriorates. They will suffer the loss of a falsely inflated identity. The inability to continue to get a shopping adrenaline rush and no longer being able to hire people to do our menial chores will breed resentment.

People are already so desperate they are willing to raid their retirement funds. Using a debit card to withdraw their 401K is only delaying the pain of not being able to buy whatever they want whenever they want it. Eventually the person will deplete his nest egg and demand a social security government bail out.

What goes up must come down to earth. Losing the security of being rich on paper has a deflating effect that can reduce some to chronic depression. The worship of the amount of money accumulated leads to temporary arrogance and elation as well as inevitable disappointment. As the adage about money clearly states, “you can’t take it with you.”

The best antidote to corrupting materialism is to stop believing life is all about money. It is more about spiritual values: goodness, kindness and doing God’s work in every way Being rich in virtue can never be taken away no matter how poor one may become in material goods.

Thick or thin wallets can be a measuring gage of our monetary wealth but not of a life well lived. The measure of a rich man is not how much he has but how little he needs and uses to live a good life.

Dr. Maglio is the author of Invasion Within and Essential Parenting. He is a psychotherapist and the owner/director of Wider Horizons School.

Vote Your Preference not the Polls

There are very few people that follow politics who believe in the infallibility of the polls although too many of us are influenced by them. Often people alter their vote because the polls indicate it would be wasted on a candidate who has the certainty of victory or no chance to win. In either case our decision on what bubble to fill in can be altered by erroneous polls caused by incompetence, faulty scientific procedures or an attempt to influence the election.

Polls are often blurred and inaccurate snapshots of people’s feelings at a given moment toward a particular candidate. Many people refuse to answer pollster’s questions. Dissatisfied independents who were going to vote democrat or republican switch their party for the evening to skew the results. Some voters do not make up their minds until the last minute. Others may not honestly answer an exit poll question on a particular issue as it might make them appear in a bad light. This encourages self-censorship distorting the data used by the analysts to project a winner. Although it is against the law, these projected winners are often given before the polls close in the entire state. These predictions influence potential voters to stay home or to change their vote.

Our forefathers were right to institute a secret ballot. For individuals to honestly and freely express their opinions, they should be immune from subtle influences and possible reprisal. The pollsters choice of words, phrasing and inflection of his question can manipulate the responder’s answer. Polls do not offer any safeguards from the pollster’s potential influence or retaliation while the secret ballot does. A voting booth’s privacy eliminates any chicanery.

Regardless of the reason, polls have to be taken with a grain of salt to prevent each of us from wasting our sacred vote. We should vote for who we believe in not attempt to change the election outcome based on a false premise of a dubious poll.

Almost everyone including professional analysts went to bed thinking Obama was up by double digits in the New Hampshire primary and McCain was the inevitable winner in the Michigan primary. Hillary and Romney actually won these respective primaries. Obama’s overnight drop of 16 points in the New Hampshire primary was said to be because of the “Bradley Effect.” This effect is thought to be that whites do not want to appear to be racist to non-white candidates and lie about their vote to the pollster. Regardless of their rationalization they were wrong.

When the pollsters are far off the mark in their predictions, they give questionable explanations. Rick Lazio’s unexpected loss by a wider margin than predicted against Hillary Clinton in the New York senate race of 2002 was perceived as his being too physically aggressive in approaching her during a debate. This theory was called the “Lazio (Macho) Effect.” The disappointing showing of Romney in the 2008 primaries was attributed by some to the “Mormon Effect,” a bias against the Mormons. There is the “Late Voter Effect” where the late voters tend to go to a more conservative candidate and the “Bandwagon Effect” when momentum seems to change the poll’s results. Every time the polls are way off the mark there is another psycho-babble excuse.

In our rapidly moving and changing world many of us learn much of our information from newspaper headlines and three-minute television “sound bites.” Most people have minimal time and opportunity to discuss and analyze the validity of the conclusions of polls that are flashed before their eyes. We for the most part absorb them as fact. There isn’t a “return policy” in our election system. We are stuck with a leader who can do tremendous damage to society for four years. Buyers remorse does not matter.

It is our responsibility as citizens in a mass media society to question information that intuitively seems suspicious. When we follow the herd instead of doing our own homework to make an educated choice we are not doing our civic duty. Allowing ourselves to be led by a pseudo scientific poll could result in a sophisticated coup.

Our faith in polls far exceeds their ability to predict voter behavior. Although we see polls being wrong, time and again, too many of us make our voting decisions on the last poll. This is not logical or sensible.

Electing a leader who will have immense power over our lives is a consequential act. Misinformation can sway an election causing us to elect a candidate opposed to our constitutional protections. Being politically manipulated can only happen when people are too lazy or unwilling to research, think and exercise their right of free speech.

An uneducated electorate ultimately ends in a loss of freedom for the society. A carefully crafted fantasy candidate cannot be elected when people are willing to work and fight to gather the facts. Vote for the person who will represent your beliefs.

Dr. Maglio is the author of Invasion Within and Essential Parenting. He is a psychotherapist and the owner/director of Wider Horizons School.

The Correct Label: PPD- Pathetic Parent Disorder

Every year our mental health industry creatively packages a new catchy 2-4-letter abbreviation to capture the imagination of the American public. Like the yearly most popular name for a new baby, the letters for disorders change every year. This year’s winning letters are AD, which is a tie between Autistic Disorder and Asperger Disorder.

Past winners were ADD, Attention Deficit Disorder, ODD Oppositional Defiant Disorder, CD Conduct Disorder, TD Tourettes Disorder and SAD Selective Anxiety Disorder. All these labels have one thing in common. They focus on the child’s inappropriate behavior not the reasons for being improperly socialized.

In the past when we saw a child act out we first looked at the parent’s behavior. The way they reacted to situations was most important. Were the parents willing to stand their ground regardless of not being liked by the child? Friends and family scrutinized the way the parents disciplined their child, the relationship between the parents and the amount of time devoted to the family. No words were needed to be spoken but the glances spoke volumes.

Everyone accepted the role of parents as the heads of the household; children were expected to listen to parents not the other way around. Parents were supposed to help the children deal with life. This meant the parent was expected to do everything possible to make sure the child behaved. The parents knew the ultimate evaluation of their parenting was how the child turned out.

A revolutionary concept of “returning to the past” has great promise. Examine the parents. If they are not fulfilling their parental duties then label them PPD, instead of labeling the child. “Pathetic Parent Disorder” is a more accurate pinpointing of the cause of acting out children.

Today too many parents are unwilling to limit their daily indulgences for the sake of time devoted to the family. Instead they believe they only need to set up an appointment with a mental health professional to solve all the family’s issues. The parents want to believe the solution to all their problems lies with the problem child. The professional obliges by first labeling the child then sending him on his way with a magic pill. The child’s disorder is supposedly cured.

This process has been a winner for the medical and pharmaceutical industries and a loser for the child and his parents. The medical route temporarily lessens the child’s actions, only to have them flare up with greater intensity after the drug’s effectiveness wears off. Although the parents are not the winners, they are relieved to transfer their responsibility and authority to someone else. The other children in the family and especially the child whose normal development has been ruined by the label and the drugs is the loser.

The consequence of a parent not dedicating sufficient time to their child is a poorly trained child. Labeling and drugging a child into submission does not do anything to improve the quality of the parent’s life. It requires the parents to spend more time in offices and battling the child over taking the drugs then they would have had to spend getting the child properly socialized in the first place.

Modern parents can end their dependency on the pharmaceutical and psychiatric industries by realizing they have the power to mold their child’s behavior and character.

Only through guilt for their shameless behavior towards their children can we nudge the parents back into their rightful position as heads of the family. The solution to these American families is to change who is being labeled. To focus solely on the child has not worked as it avoids addressing the accountability of the parents.

The new PPD, Pathetic Parent Disorder label is the answer. Unlike the child label gimmicks of the past this label will empower the parents to do their job. The parent’s inconsistent, ineffective, selfish or lazy behavior will be obvious to themselves and others.

Revitalized parents will see the effectiveness of their acting as parents. When they realize their child CAN listen, CAN obey and CAN gain mental strength to overcome any limitations they will become more successful in school.

Parents united, making the necessary decisions and consistently following through on them will result in children who will accept parent’s authority and eventually will appreciate them for being loving parents.

Dr. Maglio is the author of Invasion Within and Essential Parenting. He is a psychotherapist and the owner/director of Wider Horizons School. Visit: www.drmaglio.com.

Fitting In: Not Doing What's Right

Six girls and two boys from Lakeland High School pummeled a sixteen year-old girl unmercifully. The cheerleader victim’s offense was “trash talking” online. They planned to put the video of this “cool event” on UTube and MySpace. The initial reaction to their arrest by some of these high self-esteem teens, who are as young as fourteen, was to worry about missing cheerleading practice. This “fun and games” violence is being repeated throughout the USA.

This is not urban ghetto gang violence of the past. These modern teenage imitators did not come from abusive families or live on the streets. Their main problems are that they have limited conscience development and have too few meaningful goals to keep them on the straight and narrow path. These suburban “gang wannabees” often come from homes where they are in charge.

The ability for children to choose and play with friends without parental involvement is minimal in our suburban existence. Their cool way to act with peers is not taught by the peers but by the media. They have learned how to “talk trash” but have negligible street smarts living in their upscale electronic homes. Everything in their lives is about them with little empathy for others.

They want to be celebrities who fit into a gangster, hip-hop world. They do not have access to a “ghetto” so they create a pseudo one in school and at parties. Their phony conversations are not about their daily lives but are about the imaginary existence they project.

The leaders of these suburban virtual gangs are the slickest, most verbally manipulative individuals of a group of lonely, purposeless souls. They do not have to actually prove themselves by their fighting prowess or use of a weapon. Their obnoxiousness is all they need. Through violent verbal imagery they can sway and intimidate members into following them. These threats happen in IM- instant messages, constant phoning and in school.

The gang members are not physically or verbally hardened. Their parents rarely used physical punishment or yelled at them. The slightest threat by someone else puts fear into their hearts. These teenagers are insensitive to the feelings of others but are extremely sensitive to “put-downs” by their peers. Their major objective as a teenager is to be accepted as the exciting person they fabricate on MySpace.

The major need of these pseudo gang members is not to get away from an abusive family but “to belong” to a group of peers. The “big-mouth” leader provides the discipline that they are seeking and rarely receive at home. They are unprepared to fight against the wickedness of others. The best they can do is to passively stand by as an accomplice to verbal and physical abuse of others.

The members choose not to confront the bully tactics of the pseudo gang leader for the same reason that their parents do not stand up to the objectionable behavior of friends. These adults lack strong values of right and wrong. We adults ignore many obvious wrongs but expect our children to act differently in their teenage world.

Today most of us have been given too much on a “silver platter” to realize the sacrifices necessary to accomplish our goals. Just like a winning team becoming complacent, America is becoming fat and lazy as the leader of the world. Many of us are living off the assets of our ancestors.

These ancestors had to work hard to survive. They were taught right from wrong, knew history and had a firm faith in God. They understood the long-term benefits of living a moral life although it was just as hard for them as it is for us today. They fought for their survival and freedom.

Rejecting the notion of being friendly weak parents and returning to maintaining moral values will end our tolerance of behavior that leads to destruction and evil. Parents need to punish their children for misbehaving to teach right from wrong and toughen them up to face the temptations of life. This will give them the moral strength to stand up to people and groups hurting others.

Strong moral people have the courage and the fight to maintain a decent and peaceful society. The vulgar brutality of children on children can only be moderated when parents teach their children right from wrong.

Dr. Maglio is the author of Invasion Within and Essential Parenting. He is a psychotherapist and the owner/director of Wider Horizons School.

Visit: www.drmaglio.com.

A Drugged Nation is not Healthy

Most Americans are too busy in their daily lives to face the obvious: we are a society dependent on drugs. We fought only half the war on drugs. "Just Say No" should have targeted not only street drugs but all detrimental drugs including prescription ones.

There is little ethical or moral difference between a drug pusher in the school yard seducing kids into buying the latest feel good drug and the pharmacological/medical industry dispensing antipsychotic medication to children as young as toddlers. Both the street drug or the prescription drug will lead the child down the same path of chemical dependency that ends in being a taker from rather than a giver to society.

According to the national Teen Drug Survey released December 11, 2007 by the White House, teenagers are turning from street drugs to prescription drugs such as OxyCondin and Vicodin. The study conducted by the University of Michigan Institute on Social Research, found a modest decrease in marijuana and other street drugs and an increase in prescription drugs. John Walters, director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, said, "71% of young people have reported their source of supply is their parent's or friend's medicine cabinet." Theo Milonopoulos, "Survey Finds Teens Smoking Less Pot, But Popping More Pills," Tampa Tribune, December 12, 2007, pg. 13.

It is a deplorable commentary on our nation that the Center of Medicare and Medicaid says 21% of nursing home patients, who do not have a psychosis diagnosis are prescribed antipsychotic, off label, medication. Lucette Lagnado, "Nursing Homes Quiet Elderly with Antipsychotic Drugs," Tampa Tribune, December 7, 2007. To give humans of any age medication to induce docility is inhumane. When children are given off label psychotic medication it is more tragic as their lives are ahead rather than behind them.

Although children naturally fluctuate in their mood from laughing to crying, they are being prescribed off-label antipsychotic medication as toddlers. Before the 1990s it was generally accepted in the mental health profession to be illogical and unethical to label a child with a bi-polar disorder. Certainly drugging a child with an antipsychotic medication was considered going against the Hippocratic principle of doing no harm. Assisting nursing homes to control the elderly and parents to control their children is not any better than caging the elderly and children for control.

Our society has become more than drug tolerant, we have become a drugged society. Drug advertisements dominate women's magazines and television commercials. You have to wait an hour just to have a prescription filled. Recreational drugs of Hollywood celebrities to "roids" of sports idols, to sexual stimulants for anyone, psychotic drugs for the elderly and for children to control behavior indicate drugs have permeated every segment of our society. Using chemicals for daily life is epidemic.

Drugs may temporarily relieve a particular problem. The side effects to a person taking the drugs may be denied but are evident to those around us. The number of people unable to exist without mind-altering medication is destroying our power to be a vital, independent people. A large number of people dependent on drugs eventually become dependent on the government "safety net." This leads to a sick and declining society. We must reject the celebrity's lifestyle, advertising and the pharmaceutical/medical experts or sacrifice our own and our children's bodies, minds and spirits to the long-term adverse impact of drugs.

The joys of life are best experienced in a conscious state. Life's ups and downs can be painful at times although they always provide us an opportunity to learn how to better handle the next challenge of life. Problems never cease, healthy people just get better at solving them.

Americans have established a reputation as an ingenious people who can overcome life's obstacles. We cannot surrender our character as a people who perseveres until we get the job done. If we as a society continue down the drugged path when the going gets tough, we will forget the advantages, assets and wisdom left to us by our ancestors.

Restoring our national vigor requires the discipline to say "no" to any unnecessary drugs.

A Proper Spank is Better Than Time Out to Create Respect

Our modern culture tells us that spanking is wicked even to the point of being criminal while “time out” is humane without any negative or residual side effects. This is far from the truth.

The reality is “time out” may temporarily divert a child’s attention from continuing a misdeed but does not establish a firm boundary. The child may or may not serve his entire time-out and immediately after can go back on his merry way doing what he was doing before.. He continues to test the same behavior again and again until he wears out the caretaker’s resolve or he learns to be better at negotiating a “softer sentence” or an “acquittal.”

The lack of establishing parameters especially as the child gets older leads to a habit of “pushing the envelope.” Eventually the inclination towards risky behavior collides with authority figures inside and outside the home. Time-out is ineffectual though no one wants to admit it for it is so much easier than the traditional discipline.

Traditional discipline takes work. Parents have to be involved 24/7. As soon as the child does something destructive to self or others the parent has to administer the correct consequence. The consequence should not be too harsh to harm the child nor should be too weak to allow the child to think his misconduct is tolerable and the parent to appear powerless.

The consequence has to have an element of psychological or physical pain so the child pays attention and remembers not to do it again. It may be the psychological pain of taking out the paddle in a dramatic way or the physical pain of slapping the child on the behind. In either case you have the child’s attention plus a clear, precise boundary is drawn in the child’s consciousness. The fear of the parent’s reaction pops into the child’s head even in the contemplation stage before the child acts and prevents him from doing it.

A spank on the behind of an infant-toddler is a clear and concise “no”. It is final. “Do not do it again.” Children at this stage of their lives understand “no” better when coupled with a little dose of pain like a slap but are unable to comprehend parental lectures no matter how well intended. The reasons for the prohibitions come after the slap, not before.

It is true that a spank does not lead to discussion or negotiation. It simply means this will not be tolerated again. It inhibits a particular behavior. Horrors! It eliminates certain behavior like walking into traffic, hurting someone or talking back, which is a true long term benefit for the safety of the child..

The slap is usually spontaneous not a premeditated one. The guardian knows the child’s behavior is dangerous and needs to stop it. No questions asked. It is the way it is going to be. No discussion is necessary.

Too many modern people are under the misconception that a spank should happen after you have exhausted all other options. In reality this translates into a child being much older than an infant-toddler age before he experiences a first slap. By this time the spank has to be more severe for usually greater transgressions.

This makes for a much more difficult uphill battle. This delay in using spanking leads to a child’s increased resistance resulting in a greater potential for abuse. The older child has reached the level of independence to be able to resent the parent’s dominance while the infant-toddler just follows the parental dictates learning to respect their guidance.

This type of training is natural in the animal kingdom. Mammals use loving slaps to direct their young to behave properly. There is no animosity towards their parents, only acceptance of their authority.

As we continue to wander down the modern fantasy path of permissive materialism we are getting away from centuries of childrearing knowledge. This path abruptly ends with out-of-control brats.

Returning to the historical main artery of raising children takes only a greater appreciation of our intuitive nature. You know what behaviors of your infant-toddler will have negative implications for his future. You respond at the perfect time, at the instant it is happening or is going to happen.

“No” with an attention getting spank is the most effective way to internalize a safe guidance system in your child. It is an extraordinary act of love to give your child the gift of your mature experience. Discipline is love, love is discipline.

In return your child will give you the respect of a loving parent instead of a headache from endlessly debating the degrees of his misdeeds.

Competency Eliminates the Need for Affirmative Action

Some in America are attempting to pass laws to extinguish human nature. Historically only totalitarian nations have tried to override human nature with unintended disastrous results.

The state of Michigan has passed a law making it a crime to discriminate against height and weight in employment. Next will be laws to protect cross-eyed, freckled, sunken chest or large nosed people.

The reality is we are all unique in feelings, looks, thinking and preferences. We all have been discriminated against and we all have discriminated against others whether we admit it or not. Our likes and dislikes are different. This diversity makes life and people interesting.

“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder”, continues to shock and mystify us. What could that person see in the other one is a question we continually ask ourselves throughout our lives. It just illustrates that we all see things differently. Our unique human nature and experiences shape our preferences in choosing who we want and do not want to associate with in our personal lives and in the workplace.

For workers in a free market economy there is one characteristic that supercedes all other preferences. It is competency to do the job. When a person can get the job done efficiently with a positive attitude he will more likely get the position over even a family member who is lazy and obnoxious.

There is presently no need for affirmative action laws from a central government to get hired when a person has good skills, good work ethic and a positive disposition. A person with these characteristics is sought after by employers to advance the business. They can be short, tall, fat or slim, dark or translucent, small or large individuals. In a free enterprise economy getting the job done effectively is the major consideration for anyone doing the hiring.

We are in a global economy. The US cannot afford the lunacy of social engineering in the work place. The need to conform to the demographic formula devised by government bureaucrats to appease special interests is a poison pill to business.

When government interferes with our freedom of whom to choose to hire they are not only limiting our liberty, but they are tampering with our free enterprise economy. This is a system that relies on motivating people to do more than the minimum.

The American economy cannot compete vigorously when the free market forces are repressed by big government. The multitude of nationwide employer’s hiring decisions has proven to create a more vibrant economy then putting the power into the hands of a centralized government. We have recently seen the economic miracle of unleashing the power of a free market economy throughout Asia. The best person to perform a job will triumph over some pseudo scientific rationale for supposedly leveling the playing field.

Government interference in the work place in the form of affirmative action only creates resentment. The workers who were selected as part of a quota system will never be sure they earned the position. The worker not selected or advanced to a higher position would likely resent the worker chosen under this arbitrary government quota system.

Choosing the best qualified person is not perfect. The process is subjective. There are always going to be people complaining about being discriminated against. This will continue to happen regardless of any new naïve legislation imposed by governmental elites.

We should transfer the monies given to affirmative action bureaucrats to education programs to increase worker skills, attitude and work ethic. Prepared employees on every level will increase their likelihood of obtaining and keeping a job. This is a win-win situation for the employee and the employer. It certainly leaves the decision making in the hands of the person with the most knowledge of how best to fill the position.

By allowing the employer the freedom to run his own business, the worker, regardless of gender, race or physical characteristics has the best chance of obtaining a job on his own merits. This leads to a greater chance of job satisfaction, commitment and growth in the organization. The government has no need or right to muscle in on the employers’ prerogative to hire someone they may not want.

Let us keep free enterprise free.

The Internet is Vital to Avoid Becoming a Nation of Sheep

America has gone from a nation of hard working independent individuals to an educationally credentialed bureaucratic people. These modern Americans are so harried trying to impress each other in order to gain acceptance and advancement that they have no time to think about long term personal issues and less to think about local and national ones. Following the latest fads in dress, entertainment and celebrity political causes is easier than developing one’s own opinion based on facts.

We are a nation of people who are vulnerable to conform to the power elite’s agenda. Unfortunately America is fast evolving into a nation of pseudo-intellectual sheep.

Most of our immigrant ancestors had involvement with and knowledge of the land with strong family ties. We are changing. We have become “book smart” moving away from doing most things for ourselves. We now hire nannies, landscapers, mechanics, pool cleaners, handymen and others to take care of us. We are losing our ability to be the “jack-of-all-trades”.

Our careers have moved from generalist to specialist. We work longer and harder in our narrow positions to stay afloat in the material rapids. Most of us live in the fast track with little time to learn from the earth, our elders or history.

Moving up the ladder used to mean learning a trade or a profession through on-the-job training. Many professionals in the pre 1960 open college admissions era rarely had to obtain a college degree to prove competency. Their job function and performance entitled them to their professional position. These professionals were goal not credential driven. Office politics were overshadowed by one’s accomplishments. Getting it done was an indicator of competency rather than who you knew and to whom you “kissed up.” Young people were supposed to immediately compete in the adult world.

Today many young adults are perennial teenagers. These aspiring young people have to spend years on the university level before they can even begin to practice their chosen career. They have to attend many hours in opinion classes, which turn into years. Instead of the instructors talking about how things work and are used in their specialty they opine about how the world should be. In other words they are B.S. courses.

Students are required to go along with the ranting or risk failing the course. The drip-by-drip drivel is the price of indoctrination. It does not encourage critical thinking. It dulls the brain, preparing individuals for passive acceptance of propaganda.

The pervasive media through headline news, polls and dubious studies continues the process of “group think”. The secular brainwashing is constant. God, family, marriage, the work ethic, personal responsibility are bad. Rehabilitation, no punishment- only positive reinforcement, zero population, the UN, Castro and Chavez, hedonism, criminal rights, abortion on demand, homosexual rights and illegal immigration rights are unquestionably good. Anyone who doubts that mental health rehab and drugs cannot erase evil acts or that man is the main cause of global warming is committing blasphemy in our modern secular world.

Americans are becoming less people who make judgments from observation of reality, and more people who make judgments based on the emotional response to a sound bite. Analyzing factual evidence and logic take too much work. It is easier to rely on choosing viewpoints that make us feel good rather than having to determine if they will work in the real world.

Most of us have become passive gatherers of information from 3-6 minute headline segments of news with a specific secular message. We hear the same agenda distortions night after night with little to no analysis of opposing thought. This lack of counter perspective conforms to the definition of indoctrination.

Many of us may consider ourselves intellectuals because we have obtained a credential of higher education. If we do not examine all the evidence available on an issue and reach our decision on a repetitive emotional appeal we are no more than pseudo-intellectuals or even better, a flock of sheep.

It takes time and effort to discriminate between propaganda and the truth. We need to be open to hear and research all the major events of our time. We need to set aside time to keep abreast of a rapidly fluid world.

The internet in the hands of a truth seeking people, not the government, is the most powerful 21st century innovation to counter mass propaganda. As long as individuals can use the internet to have a free exchange of ideas, secular elites will not be able to dull our intellectual powers. Many Americans will be able to avoid becoming pseudo-intellectual sheep.

Keep the internet free from the clutches of the government.

The Homosexual Agenda in Schools is Unamerican: Neither Proselytizing About Religion nor Sexual Orientation Belong in School

Many of the same people who want to prohibit any mention of God in our schools are now attempting to ram the homosexual agenda down our throats. They see no inconsistency in repressing over 90% of our society who are believers in God while promoting a small, though highly controversial lifestyle of 1 to 2% of our population.

U.S. District Judge, Mark Wolf threw out a lawsuit filed in Lexington, MA by David Parker, father of a five-year-old kindergarten student. Mr. Parker wanted to shield his son from homosexual lessons. Judge Wolf said in his ruling against this father, “Schools are entitled to teach anything that is reasonably related to the goals of preparing students to become engaged and productive citizens.” “Gay Topics OK in School, Judge Rules”. Associated Press, Tampa Tribune, Feb. 24, 2007, p. 16.

In other words according to the judge the state, not the parents, has the right to decide on the moral values to teach to children. Our federal judicial system is overruling the will of the people in many school districts. Judges are decreeing what is appropriate in local schools.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has exploited the Equal Access Act to legitimize homosexual clubs in public schools as another non-curriculum club. These homosexual clubs are supposed to be educational and not encourage homosexual activity. More often than not this is not the case.

In the same way, using the same ACLU reasoning, Bible study clubs should be allowed in public school. However, very few Americans believe that a Bible instructor would not cross the line into becoming an advocate of a particular religion. This is the reason why even in the Bible belt, speaking about God is not allowed in public schools.

Children up until the young adult years are developing their sexual identity. They are often innocent and vulnerable to groups led by authorities that promote the alleged virtues of homosexuality. For homosexual clubs to have state sanctioned access to our children without presenting an opposing view, is not a forum for education, it is brainwashing.

Public education’s mission is neither to promote a particular religion or a particular sexual orientation. Public schools have been established to give all Americans an opportunity to become literate functioning citizens.

American government schools are distinguished from totalitarian government schools because we have refused to dictate a specific way of believing to our students. Religion and moral values in America have traditionally been up to the parents to decide not the government.

When our public schools develop curricula to change our moral values towards homosexuality we have moved into the realm of re-education camps of communist countries. This should send a chill up the spine and spineless alike.

General Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, on March 13th, stated that adultery and homosexuality were immoral. This caused a firestorm although Christians, Muslims and Orthodox Jews consider adultery and homosexuality immoral. The old and new testaments and Koran alike condemn sexual acts between people of the same sex.

Old Testament: “You shall not lie with a male as with a woman, such a thing is an abomination.” Leviticus 18:22.

New Testament: “Therefore God handed them over to degrading passions. Their females exchanged natural relations for unnatural, and their males likewise gave up natural relations with females burned with lust for one another. Males did shameful things with males and thus received in their own persons the due penalty for their perversity.” Romans 1:26,27

Koran: “For ye practice your lusts on man in preference to women: ye are indeed a people transgressing beyond bounds.” (7:81)

Homosexuality to many secular people has no moral relevance as long as it is between two consenting adults. They view homosexuality as genetically determined although no definitive scientific evidence substantiates this claim, it is a belief.

In America we are free to believe in whatever manner we decide as long as it does not interfere with the rights of others. A discrete sexual act, homosexual or heterosexual behind closed doors is not the business of our government. It is a personal choice of our conscience.

Whenever the state is able to indoctrinate children into a certain belief system parents and all of us have been robbed of our basic freedom of teaching our children what we have learned through our own lives.

America has a long history of tolerance of different religious and personal beliefs. Our government schools cannot be hijacked by special interest groups to promote their agenda without undermining the essence of our freedoms, the bedrock of our republic.

All special interest agendas should be heard in the free market place of ideas, in books and open discussion amongst individuals. Certainly it is not a government right to spread the secular agenda.

Neither proselytizing a religion nor a homosexual orientation is acceptable in school. We must maintain separation of church and separation of sexual orientation from our children’s education.

Homosexual education does not belong in our schools.