Utahs Republic

Click this shortened link to go to the Provo Daily Herald for an article on ASD’s motto fiasco as reported last week. Please feel free to make comments.

“District parents angry over radical Web link”
https://bit.ly/bkRg9o
Also of interest is this story…

I came home tonight and had an email from a family in Highland who read the email I sent out last week, showed it to their teenage son, and asked him if Democracy ever came up at school. He replied that he hadn’t really heard about it much. Today in his English class, his teacher was giving out assignments to write essays and one being assigned was entitled “Education in a Democracy.” He came home with a new perspective on education and his parents had a productive discussion with him. Score one more for the parents!

Her note ended with this:

“I guess the point of my e-mail besides–yes its in the classroom–is that parents will have to teach their children and in turn they are the ones that will probably need to stand up and say “wait.”  Or pick the topics to write contradictory essays.  So, thanks for your hard work and keeping us informed.  I would not have known but for you, and in turn I can teach my children.”

To: Alpine School District:
American Fork, Utah
Superintendent Henshaw, and Board Members

Because I am the author of books on the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution, recently I was contacted by some residents of the Alpine School district who are concerned about the District’s Mission statement: “Educating all students to ensure the future of our democracy”. (https://www.alpine.k12.ut.us/phpApps/genericPage.php?pdid=2789)

I wrote an e-mail to your public relations people, whose e-mails are listed below the mission statement pointing out that the Alpine School District is not IN a Democracy, but in a Republic which is clearly guaranteed by Article 4 Section 4 of the Constitution of the United States: Read the rest of this entry »

Red-Meat-Radio-Republic-ASD-Link-1-20-2010

[podcast]https://www.utahsrepublic.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/Red-Meat-Radio-Republic-ASD-Link-1-20-2010.mp3[/podcast].

This morning I was on air with Senator Howard Stephenson and Representative Greg Hughes on their radio program, “Red Meat Radio” discussing how the administration at Alpine School District (ASD) is promoting a change of government from a Republic to a Democracy. Listen to the interview above and then make your voice heard by emailing the board members at ASD as well as letting others know about this issue. Sign the petition to stay updated on what is happening around Utah on restoring basic constitutional education.

Be sure to read the details on how ASD is giving its endorsement to a radical Green party member who believes Christ was a vampire.

Update 10/23/10: for those of you looking for the most relevant information on the elections I recommend you visit www.SaveASD.com for candidates that will act as the public watchdogs we need, instead of acting as apologists for district policies.

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Original post:

I received an email about a week ago from a Susan Schnell concerning a link Alpine School District (ASD) had put on their website Mission Statement page in an effort to bolster their position that America is a Democracy. By directly linking to an outside site, they gave tacit approval and endorsement of everything on that site, but especially the page they linked to.

After Susan’s email started to circulate, ASD pulled the link. Read below and you’ll find out why.You’ll also wonder how on earth they thought the original page they linked to was acceptable just by itself. I filed a GRAMA request with the district on 2/18/10 for more information which will be published here when we have the answers. Please sign the petition on this site (www.UtahsRepublic.org) to be notified as things progress and to ask the state to return us to constitutional education in the tradition of our Founding Fathers.

Here is Susan’s email:

WARNING TO ALL ALPINE SCHOOL DISTRICT PARENTS

I am a parent of 4 children in Alpine School District (ASD) in Utah and I just found out some alarming things that our district is promoting. Please take the time to read this as we need to come together as a community to fix a monumental problem which has crept into our local district. Then please go to https://www.utahsrepublic.org to learn more about this issue and what we can do to solve it. School board elections are coming up soon and we can fix this if we all work together quickly.

Many are aware that our country’s leaders are trying to transform this nation into democratic socialism. You already know that one of their main techniques is to indoctrinate school children around the nation into gradually believing Progressive ideology and move away from our great Constitutional heritage. I moved here in the heart of a conservative city and state from California hoping for a better education and environment for my children. However, I was shocked to find out recently that our own Alpine School District has been aligning itself with people who believe that we are NOT a great God-inspired Republic. They are teaching that our Founding Fathers were wrong in establishing a Republic, that the Constitution was set up by wealthy elitists who only wanted gain for themselves and that we should transform our Republic nation into a social and political Democracy by teaching this false doctrine to our children. They even went as far as linking their Mission Statement page with a California Green Party candidate who believes Jesus is a vampire. READ ON….

Read the rest of this entry »

Last week I attended the State Board of Education’s meeting and presented them with a copy of the petition from this website and asked them to consider what we were asking for to help restore basic constitutional education.

I then asked a follow up question regarding the K-2 standards they approved in December. I acknowledged the hard work that went into those standards but expressed disappointment that of the many comments sent in with some simple and effective suggestions, none seemed to be included in the final document (to see some click here). I then asked for an official response as to why this happened and anticipate receiving an answer (hopefully soon). I will pass it on to you as soon as I get one and then we will move on to the next phase of this project.

Thank you for your support.

This morning I was on Red Meat Radio with Senator Howard Stephenson and Representative Greg Hughes talking about the problems with our recently adopted K-2 social studies standards. The first 2 minutes are a little talk about the first segment of the show and then we get into the meat of the subject. Total running time is 14 minutes (or 12 if you skip the first 2).

Red-Meat-Radio-Republic Segment-1-9-2010

Here’s the action plan. With public exposure on what has transpired, our plan will be to do as Senator Stephenson asked and have everyone write your State School Board member a letter asking why public suggestions weren’t used in the final document. Use the letter below this post as a perfect example of great suggestions that were ignored. Include in your letter, your name, address, and phone number and send it to all board members (but send it to your own separately with a comment in the subject line identifying you as a constituent) and CC your state representative and senator and myself so I have an archive of the letters. Representative Hughes said if we are ignored they will hold hearings so we need to get everyone to write a brief letter and document responses.  We the people can hold our education office accountable through this method.

To get the email address of your State Board Member go here: https://www.usoe.k12.ut.us/board/

For email addresses for your Representative and Senator go here: https://www.utah.gov/government/legislative.html

If you don’t know what to write, here’s a sample letter you can customize or copy:

Subject: K-2 Social Studies standards {I am a constituent—for your own member}

Dear {state school board member},

You recently voted to approve K-2 social studies standards for the state of Utah. Prior to your approval there were a few public hearings where comments were made regarding the draft. I know there were a few people that made comments at these meetings and I am aware that over 50 email letters were sent in with specific suggestions to improve the standards but almost none of these responses were taken into consideration or included in the final draft.

For example, in discussing our founding documents, the only requirement in the approved standards for K-2 is to learn “Declaration of Independence” and “Constitution” as vocabulary terms, and to be able to “identify” the document. This is completely inadequate. One letter that was submitted showed specific ways to incorporate our founding documents into the standards in a very easy to integrate way. Some of those suggestions were to slightly modify draft standards to use founding document references as follows:

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Kindergarten:

Self, Family, and Classroom, Standard 1 (Culture):  Objective 1   e. Explain that the Declaration of Independence teaches us all people should be treated with respect because they are equal.

Self, Family, and Classroom, Standard 2 (Citizenship):  Objective 1 f. Explain that the U.S. Constitution teaches us to respect the rights of others.

I received a copy of this letter that was sent to the individual tasked with writing the K-2 social studies standards. I know this person received at least 50 letters with suggestions to do various things such as lighten up on the diversity emphasis, incorporate more of the constitution (which the letter below is excellent for and would have been very easy to incorporate), implementation of notions of natural law, great people in American history, and of course teaching what a Republic is.

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[name of state standards writer],

Here’s a copy of the K-2 Utah Social Studies Standards. They are in public comment phase at this time. Please read them and make comments on how they could be improved either here or on the Facebook group for this project at (https://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=174425832671)

DraftWebversionofnewK-2

In a recent email exchange with a school district employee, I included the following information. I have been asked a few times what the big deal is on why we need to emphasize “Republic” over “Democracy”. Here’s my brief version:

I do believe there is great importance on understanding what a Republic is. The word Democracy doesn’t appear in any of our founding documents and the Founders were adamantly opposed to Democracies.  I am certain you would agree that a country can call itself anything it wants but the fact remains that China, Iran, the USSR (former), are certainly not Republics that respect the rule of law. They are totalitarian governments where the people have no freedom. They call themselves Republics as a false pretense to the Republic of the United States, perhaps in opposition to us as a way to tell their citizens “see, we are just like the United States…”

The more we keep drilling into our children’s minds that we are a Democracy, the more freedoms we will lose because they will lose sight of the proper role of government in a Republic. The Founders were so against Democracies because they lead to mob rule. If a vote settles every issue, than rights can be given and taken by the majority. The two wolves vote to eat the sheep analogy… Law has no place for the minority.

You may have read some of these documents before but I’ve got a few pages on the site that really help explain this better than I can. I would encourage all of you interested in understanding this topic better to read these pages.

Why a Republic? (Great little video and other information)
C.S. Lewis’ “Screwtape Proposes a Toast” (A Satire on the American education system)
Excerpt from The 5,000 Year Leap (chapter 12 on Republics)
Democracy Vs. Republic Quotes (Founding Father & other quotes)
Toward an Understanding of the 10th Amendment (my own essay)

Karl Marx said, “Democracy is the road to Socialism.” When “socialism” evoked negative feelings a hundred years ago, the communists abroad and within our country adopted the term “democracy” as their new buzzword. It was more palatable and easily assimilated into the culture. For decades we’ve come to use this term as if it was part of our governmental system when in reality, our true enemies have hijacked this term and taken us straight down the road to socialism and Marxism.

One great quote from C.S. Lewis’ piece (if you’ve never read about Screwtape, go to the link above for a brief explanation):

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“Democracy is the word with which you must lead them by the nose…. [T]hey should never be allowed to give this word a clear and definable meaning. They won’t. It will never occur to them that democracy is properly the name of a political system, even a system of voting, and that this has only the most remote and tenuous connection with what you are trying to sell them. Nor of course must they ever be allowed to raise Aristotle’s question: whether “democratic behaviour” means the behaviour that democracies like or the behaviour that will preserve a democracy. For if they did, it could hardly fail to occur to them that these need not be the same.”

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As an English politician remarked not long ago, “A democracy does not want great men.”

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Oak

I just posted a new page on the 10th Amendment. I’d originally written this page for the Patrick Henry Caucus but they’ve never gotten around to posting it and I hate to have it go to waste. :) It’s now page 5 of the education section. Click here to read it:

Toward an Understanding of the 10th Amendment