What Happened? (2009)

Alexander Bell, inventor of the telephone, in his first words said, “What hath God wrought”? If he could return today and see telephones in the faces of the public everywhere including to the demise of many innocent people, the automobile, he would say again, “What happened?”

The first telephone in the White House was installed in 1877 during the presidency of Rutherford B. Hayes. I was raised in a rural community where there was just one telephone for miles and it was at my cousin's country store. My parents did not have a party line telephone until 1960.

Technology has changed the world, but human nature remains largely untouched. The greatest challenge to this country and its citizens is not the invention and establishment of new technologies, but the absolute failure of our system of education. The school system is a complete failure largely due to the most effective union in existence, the Teacher’s Union (NEA). We thought, and some still think, that throwing money at the problem will increase the learning ability of students. Washington DC spends more money on each student ($17,000) than any other school system in the nation. As I heard one black educator from Boston say on the public airways recently, “We should just shut down all the schools and start over”.

Ask the largest employer in your town, in my city it is the large regional hospital, or the smallest employer in your town, what is his biggest problem? The answer every time will come back the lack of education of the employees, their inability to perform the task for which they were hired, their attitude towards each other and the people they are supposed to serve.  I said to one of my employees, one who seemed to have more promise than most, “I will teach you everything I know about Real Estate and Securities (the areas which I have more financial success than anywhere else), but you must read, as I did, everything possible in these fields as money does not grow on trees, you still have to work for it”. He said, “I don’t care about all that work, I just want to get a check every month”. This has become the general attitude of our young people and our older citizens because the monthly check is more important in their lives than God, family or country.

In the past 3 days, after careful interviews where this 79 year old totally blind, 100% disabled service connected veteran shared much of his life and was careful to make sure the prospective employee understood his job, price, after 3 hours of work taking dictation, each just got up and just walked out the door without saying anything. I did get an email from the last this morning in which he apologized and said that “the work was more than he anticipated and that he had much respect for me”.  The facts are, he knew ahead of time just as the other one knew ahead of time everything involved in the job, had watched others doing the job but did not have the education background even to being able to admit that they each were having a problem.

I am closely associated with several colleges and universities. I am told they spend most of the student's early time, during matriculation, with “preliminary catch-up work”, remedial, things they should have brought with them from high school. But of the 65% of the students who enter high school, who graduate, their diploma is almost worthless. Most employers spend too much time just correcting mistakes. Even the college graduate, unless in a stressful, demanding curriculum of intense and accurate studies such as the sciences, mathematics, physics, music areas, where there is no room for guess work, we find a lackadaisical attitude.

In England, many individuals refuse to even accept the knighthood award anymore because so many undesirables have been knighted by the queen, that knighthood means nothing anymore.

In China, India, even many third world countries, the most important matter in a family or individuals life is success in education. When my parents and grandparents matured, a high school education was a real accomplishment. There were very few college graduates in the county or even in the state. The best educated citizens were the ministers and lawyers. Many of them were self-educated. I knew two lawyers, even in my younger life, who did not go to a law school, only “read law with other prominent lawyers and judges”. Most professions have increased their time in school but such is not reflected in their knowledge. I loved everyone of my elementary and high school teachers. They were real teachers and their mission in life was to teach and make sure that their students did learn. To the uninitiated, everything is obscure. Only the most dull citizen does not recognize the fact that our schools are failing. It has happened and only the education community and parents are responsible.

Dr. Clarence Poe, one of North Carolina's most distinguished citizens, editor of the Progressive Farmer, attended a one-room country school for just three months a year, and just one year of high school in Greensboro, but he read eagerly. One can self-educate if you know how to read.

Governor Charles Brantley Aycock, education governor (1900-1904), born and reared in the community in which this writer was born and reared, attained his zeal for education when he saw his mother put her mark on a deed...she could not sign her name. He decided then and there, that every North Carolina citizen should learn to read and write. Yet, over 100 years later, the illiteracy rate in North Carolina is as high as it was in Gov. Aycock's lifetime, a shame and disgrace to those in North Carolina, school board members, teachers, members of the education elite, who have the audacity to call themselves educators.

Our Waterloo

Aristotle writes about the Ancient city state of Agrigentum, where, as in Sicily and Rome, perjurers and other corrupts government officials were thrown off cliffs, as well as suffering other tortures. If in 21st century America, corrupt political perjurers were thrown from cliffs, there would be piles of bodies at Washington (District of Criminals), most state capitals, and certainly local courthouses.

In 1815, French emperor Napoleon was defeated at the Battle of Waterloo by a coalition of forces led by England's Duke of Wellington. Napoleon, a tyrant of the worst sort was only 5 foot, 7 inches tall, 2 inches taller than Joesph Stalin. Hitler was also a small man, 25 inch waist line. History amazes history with the accounts of the slaughter of people by such small people.

From then until now, every defeat is known as a “Waterloo”, America's Waterloo started in 1920 with the formation of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). Until then, American free enterprise, work ethic, Judeo-Christian religious foundation was making this country the world's ideal, a true democratic republic. Roger Baldwin, who headed the ACLU until 1950, made the following statement at its founding, “I am for socialism, disarmament and ultimately for abolishing the state itself as an instrument of violence and compulsion. I seek the social ownership of property, the abolition of the propertied class and sole control by those who produce wealth. Communism is, of course, the goal.”

Since the founding of ACLU, until this very day, like cutting slices off a roll of bologna, our freedoms have been lost, our libertarian way of life has been taken over one slice at time, without one enemy soldier landing on our shores, one bullet being fired.

Firstly, the Waterloo of loss of liberty and control started with public education. Even sixty years ago, when I was a university student, academia was not entirely communist, the public schools had not been taken over by sociology. The school, college or elementary, was a place of education, not entertainment and indoctrination. Today, 44% of our students never graduate. Nikolai Lenin, founder of modern Communism, told us long ago, “give me your children for four years, and the seed I plant will never be uprooted.” Propped up and sustained by a liberal media, our schools have been dumbed down, students have bought the communist line “hook, line, and sinker”. 50% of all students now prefer the communist system to free enterprise. 50% of the American population pay no income tax, content to just ride in the wagon pulled by the other 50%. Children have a desire to learn, they just soak up knowledge, the tragedy of this country, we have thrown money and educators at the schools, and the public schools are a total failure. The children who are being educated, go to private schools, or are schooled at home. 90% of all academic professors, in colleges of every type, including Christian, are liberal. It only takes one generation of liberal, atheist, pagan parents, teachers and preachers to turn out future generations of enslaved people, slaves to totalitarianism, collectivism, controlled by the state.

Secondly, the Waterloo of the loss of a spiritual relationship between individuals and their God, the church, started with the ACLU and its chief target, people of religion. Until permeated by liberals of the world, the church, standing on the absolutes of God's laws, had nothing to fear from the communist ideology, liberal enticements of the ACLU. Using the well-worn hypocrisy, “separation of church and state”, not mixing the secular with the temporal, not involving the church and politics, not “judging” one another, giving unto “Caesar what is Caesar's”, the ACLU, along with such lawyers as Madeline Mary O'Hare, Dr. Michael Newdow, the unbelievers found in such modernist denominations as Episcopal, Lutheran, Methodist, has made the spiritual climate of the country a cauldron of doubts and deception. Mr. Obama, standing in front of a Muslim symbol, making sure that every Christian symbol is covered, refers to America as a country of Christians, Muslims and unbelievers. He brings out “unbelievers” every time he speaks, perhaps this is because he and everyone he knows are unbelievers or are pretenders, impostors of some sort.

From 1799 until 1892, even the Supreme Court of the United States declared this a Christian nation. It was our Christian ancestors, who fought the world, the flesh, the devil to establish the religious holiness of this nation, with all its flaws, Indian wars, civil wars, slavery, greed of a few, the deception of many by politically correct politicians and media. There has been no culture, no society in history that has contributed as much to the welfare of mankind...a lifestyle which is the envy of the world. What has happened in this country is almost the same as building a beautiful home, full of every technical convenience, then taking a blow torch to it and burning it to the ground.

Thirdly, the Waterloo of the loss of our national financial structure, industry and the small farm, willingness to transfer offshore the very commerce which made America great (automobile manufacturing, technology manufacturing, food supplies). There is not one cell phone manufactured in America. Through NAFTA and CAFTA, many American jobs are now the job opportunities of foreigners in their own countries. One of the largest producers of computers, Dell, plans to spend $100 billion producing computers in China, their North Carolina operation closed, employees out of work joining the almost 20% unemployment rate in the nation. US taxpayers, funds paid the government by hard-working, god-fearing citizens, used in the Obama bailout for General Motors and Chrysler, plants being built in other countries, other nationalities getting those jobs. The very essence of American entrepreneurship, provider of most private jobs, the small business man, slowly eradicated by big business, at the behest of big government. New jobs are all government jobs, government jobs, best pay of all jobs, depending on the taxes of private employers, it takes all the taxes provided by working Americans, and only 50% pay taxes, to pay medicare, medicaid and social security. All other expenses of government: entitlements, war, grants, etc, borrowed, mostly from China and other enemies. If you dance, you must pay the fiddler, Americans are enslaved to their enemies.

Fourthly, our Waterloo of undisciplined lives, school, streets. Last year, there were 134 suicides in the military, the suicide rate in the military has gone up over 200% since 2004, simply because of our senseless military excursions. Our young people recognizing our senseless political and justice hypocrisy. Pledging allegiance to the flag, even waving the flag, was one time considered a great event in America. Young people, and this is the real tragedy, no longer have allegiance to America because of the hypocrisy of the judiciary, the greed of business, the deception in every area of American life, one time considered non-negotiable.

Are we serious? Can we raise a phoenix from the ash heap of our Waterloo? Do we really believe, are we confident, that the following promise of the creator of the universe applies to us? If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land. (2 Chronicles 7:14)

Back to School

Although ruled by the Democrat party for the past 100 years, which, through segregation and other practices, has kept North Carolina at the bottom in education ratings nationally, Governor Charles Brantley Aycock, known as the 'education governor' in this state, was governor from 1901-1905. He was born and reared in the community in which I was born and reared in Wayne County, North Carolina. He attended a two room school with 2 of my grandfathers. My grandfather told how they were responsible for cutting the wood, kindling and building the fires in the wood stove to heat the school building. Governor Aycock said he became a fanatic about education when he saw his beloved mother make her 'mark' on a deed because she could not write her name. Only those who have seen their parents embarrassed because of lack of education can appreciate education and be so humiliated by today's young people who take education so casually. My own mother was very poorly educated and I could barely make out the letters she wrote to me the 8 years I was a university student. But, it stimulated me to do better because she was working night and day to give her 4 children a university education. The youngest graduated from a university 2 weeks before she died.

Never, in the history of the world, has it been more important to prepare your youngster for the onslaught of Satanic unbelief promoted and taught by modern educators, as in today's world. The journey of faith must begin in the home, where you prepare your child, if you love your child and want your child to experience eternal life, to be ready for the onslaught of Atheism, which has taken over every college including, I am very sorry to say, most “Christian” colleges. Today, it is necessary for you to prepare your young student to expect the onslaught of Atheism, even in the primary grades. A young father in Massachusetts, David Taylor, spent 4 days in jail because he would not submit to the teaching of his kindergarten student the principles of homosexuality. The modern Atheist NEA death culture teachers start promoting perversion to children even in the lowest grades. Children, who are entirely innocent, children who care nothing about sex and should not be exposed to practices which embarrass many adults! I can remember, even in pre-medical studies and even in professional medical school, we were embarrassed to even discuss sexual perversion, abortion, euthanasia and the news flashes which sicken most of us everyday. Why this fascination with sexual perversion? Sexuality is sensitive enough even in the teenage years. Why rob small children of the innocence of childhood?

This month, 76.6 million students (and this number includes public university students) will return to school. A total of $972 billion will be spent on education. Depending on the state, the amount of money spent per student varies between $6,000-17,000 (greatest cost, Washington, DC which has the poorest schools). Every year, more and more parents make the decision to home school their children; they love their children too much to send them to the morass found in most public education facilities. Why teach your child manners, discipline, good habits which will see them entirely through life, give them the love and attention of light, and then send them into the public school world of darkness? I have one employee with 5 school-aged children and she home schools all her children. My one son, never went to a public school, but he did go to a public university, medical school, 2 seminaries and he and his wife both with graduate degrees, never allowed my two grandsons to go to a public school. My two grandsons, because their parents were foreign missionaries, were reared and educated on the foreign mission field. When they returned to this country for college, they were so far ahead of other high school graduates, that there was no comparison; and they have continued to excel because of the well grounded education they received in their home. (One, now a law school senior, one, a university engineering senior). The greatest wealth you can give or leave to your child, and I am convinced that most parents love their children, is to love them enough to put a 'hedge' around them from the undisciplined cauldron of deception called 'public school' education, even though it is necessary for you to pay the same tax as those who use the public school system.

My parent's 4 children attended a public school; my father was on the school board. Since public education started, 150 years ago, public education, even in my lifetime, has changed entirely for the worse. As I heard one esteemed Massachusetts educator say recently, “All public schools should just be shut down and we should start over.” There is no one to blame for the present impossible situation with the public schools than the teacher's union. (NEA) The greatest paradox, I can think of, is that this Union, which always contributes their money and promotes the Democrat party, is promoting a culture of death WHEN their very survival depends on children, for which they are paid to educate! At this year's NEA convention, in San Diego, some pro-life teachers asked the convention just to be 'neutral' on their abortion stance. But again, as always, they took the pro-abortion culture of death stance. I loved all my public school teachers, to this day, I remember each and could tell you their names and all about them. My 6th grade teacher, Ms. Gurley, taught me her first year out of college. She taught my three siblings as well in the 6th grade. She married and lived in the community. When my parents died, and their children came home, she was at our family home to greet us. This is what I call a REAL teacher.

One of my cousins, the same age as my father, was one of the first in our large family to attend college. She taught in the public schools for 50 years and then served as a trustee on a college board; giving her expertise to the teachers being trained there. She was, in every word, a REAL TEACHER, excellent pianist, and, I understand at her funeral, the church was full of teachers with whom she had taught. Among the many awards and scholarships that I give at that college each year, is one award to a student of excellence in her memory.

I have little sympathy for today's students and their complaints; the carpeted classrooms, the air conditioning systems. I still remember, even at UNC-CH, sweat running off my elbows and puddling on the floor. Even the college classrooms, back then, did not have air conditioning and very little heat. The public schools were sparse at best. But, when we got a diploma or degree, it was worth something. The university sends new professors down to meet me because they still are impressed with the fact that a totally blind citizen can contribute to the world; money, writing, speaking, etc.

At the Baptist college, where I have contributed most, I am told that today's students are ill-prepared for college. The politically correct politicians and media always hold up Bob Jones University as a symbol of backwardness. I heard Dr. Jones say, some parents did not want their children to come there because they did not allow smoking. He said, “Now, you are not allowed to smoke anywhere, in the nightclubs”. He said, “we did not allow our students to drink either, but they all received a superior education.” The shame of Southern Baptists and other Evangelical denominations, students and graduates are as promiscuous, agnostic and heathen as those who graduate from state universities. For years, I owned a co-op apartment on the East Side of Manhattan and I attended the 5th Avenue Presbyterian church. The great pastor there, Rev. Dr. R. Maurice Boyd, told me that in the early years at Princeton University, the church gave each graduating minister a new suit of clothes. Today, Dr. Peter Singer, of the Princeton Religion department, advocates the abortion of children, even up to several days old, if they are not exactly what the parents want. But, even at Chapel Hill, where I graduated, we were presented a Bible at graduation. Can you imagine such today? Anywhere?

Perhaps the most precious example of parental/student love was in that country school, where I graduated, on a very hot graduation day with the few graduates on the stage. Calvin's mother seldom got out of the house, she still wore long black dresses, down to her ankles and she had on a black hat. But, Calvin had never been well and he was graduating from high school. Everyone saw her get out of her seat, down where the parents were sitting, and slowly, quietly walk up the steps to the stage to check on Calvin and to wipe his forehead, because she sensed he was not feeling well. She then quietly, after she checked him, went back to her seat. No one said anything, no one made any type reaction. It was not surprising, at that time, 60 years ago, for a mother to demonstrate faith and love, not just talk about it.

I am convinced that Catholicism is the only denomination that prepares their students for the onslaught of Atheism in college; the testing of their faith, the primary ethic of life. In 1963, an innocuous 21 word prayer caused the Supreme Court to outlaw prayer in schools. So, today, instead of prayer, we have police in schools. It is illegal for a teacher or students to read or discuss the Bible in the classroom, many times, the only exposure many students have to the 'love that is a many-splendored thing.' Have a good school year!