Journal pudge's Journal: The Dangerous Arne Duncan 11
The new U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan seems like a good guy who means well, but he's pretty scary. He's this month's NRA cover boy for Obama's anti-gun administration -- following such well-known gun rights foes as Hillary Clinton, Rahm Emanuel, Eric Holder, and Obama himself -- and for good reason: he's been at the forefront of the battle to ban handguns in Illinois, "for the children."
Indeed, he asserted recently that it is an "undeniable fact that guns and kids don't mix." That our society does not "[value] children more than it values violent rituals and traditions that might have been at home in a frontier society two centuries ago but make absolutely no sense today."
That for those people who disagreed, he will "fight them in Springfield
But it gets worse. Now, as Secretary of Education, he has unprecedented authority to spend money. The Secretary's discretionary money -- that he can spend in literally any way he sees fit -- is $5 billion, more than the entire budget of the Department of Education 35 years ago.
And he makes no bones about his intent to use that power to push his own agenda:
ARNE DUNCAN: I think Washington has an extraordinarily important role to play, maybe more so than ever before. But I would argue states have to behave in very, very different ways, and they have a critically important role.
I think there can't be one power center. I think we all have to work together, collaboratively in very different ways to get where we need to go.
JOHN MERROW: But you are going to be writing the checks. That's power.
ARNE DUNCAN: You see it as power; I see it as partnership.
JOHN MERROW: Do we need national standards?
ARNE DUNCAN: I think we need to look at it. I think the idea of 50 states doing things, you know, their own way doesn't quite make sense.
JOHN MERROW: Do you anticipate using some of this stimulus money, this incentive money to help these national standards emerge?
ARNE DUNCAN: Absolutely.
JOHN MERROW: So states will get money if they do this thing that Duncan wants?
ARNE DUNCAN: If you play by these rules, absolutely right.
Some "partnership." He'll push a single national standard for education and if you go along you'll get money. (Raise your hand if you don't think this will include his social agenda, including his anti-gun agenda.)
Of course, even apart from the social agenda, national standards for education make almost no sense. There's little serious interest in Seattle and Everett having the same standards, let alone Seattle and Atlanta.
Duncan wants control. This implies we need him and Obama and the rest of the crowd in Washington D.C. to control us. We don't. And we don't need his money so much that we should sacrifice our liberty and the best interests of our children to get it.
(And yes, this is exactly what I mean when I use the term "socialism.")
Cross-posted on <pudge/*>.
bug fix (Score:1)
interpretation = socialism;
else
interpretation = fascism;
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Heh.
Socialism is different from fascism. In this case, however, yes, this can be seen as both.
Socialism uses both fascist and non-fascist methods to achieve its ends (for example, tax credits for buying "green" appliances is hardly fascist, but is certainly socialist), and its ends are for the "common good," whereas fascist ends can be for any purpose.
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Okay, I guess that what the Sec. of Ed. is doing would be considered socialism if one is to believe that his intentions are "for the greater good". I for one however believe no such thing. At least about the Ruling Liberal Elite. (Prolly Rank-and-File Liberals are anti-gun out of a genuine belief that it's better for society.)
Also, isn't a tax credit pretty much like federal funding to the states, wherein if the latter is fascist, as I think you said could be seen this way, then aren't tax credits for doing
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Random thought: Why not fix the "gun problem" by bringing shooting education back to public schools? We had a rifle range and shooting club when I went to high school. Amazingly we all managed to get through high school without witnessing a single murder.
I recently had a representative from a local gun club talk to my GOP district group ... the Forest Service has been working hard to make sure they cannot continue to use federal land (that they used for 50 years) for their gun club, so now the local kids have no place to practice their competitive shooting. Note that this all happened under Bush; it's not a Republican/Democrat thing, it's a federal thing. At one point Cheney asked the EPA to report back on it, but they refused to say anything bad about an
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Illinois legislators are debating a "concealed carry" law. The only place in Illinois that is anti-gun is Chicago, the rest of us are mostly rednecks.
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The good news is that incorporation of the Second Amendment is almost surely coming soon. That means states will have to follow the Second Amendment, which has never before been held. This will eliminate outright bans on common guns like handguns, but then there's more work to do beyond that.
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Are you kidding? The last Governor we had is going to prison for trying to sell Obama's Senate seat, and the Governor before that is already there for corruption. In Illinois we're so patriotic that even being dead doesn't keep us from voting!
Illinois is the only state whose capital is a cartoon city.
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