Sunday, January 15, 2017

Fwd: SAR19: Pre-Summit | Volunteers | Workshops | Registration


---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Summit Against Racism <summitagainstracism@gmail.com>


Schedule is LIVE + Pre-Summit Town Hall Reminder + Online Registration
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We need volunteers for Friday evening (1/20) and Saturday (1/21). Roles include registration, taking notes during workshops, food, set-up, and clean-up.
Volunteer to sign up here.  Volunteer orientation is 1/19, 6:00-8:00 p.m.

Schedule for the Summit is Posted on Our Website
View SAR19 Schedule
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Pre-Summit Town Hall in Partnership with Union Project Tuesday 1/17
5:30 p.m. - 8:30pm at Union Project,
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Online registration will close on Thursday, January 19th, at
 11:59 pm. However, registration will still be available in person from 
8:00 am to 2:00 pm on the day of the event, Saturday, January 21st. 

Can't attend the full Summit? We are offering a special half-day rate of $20 that does not include lunch.

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Fwd: [New post] The Racists Roots and Racist Indoctrination of School Choice


---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: gadflyonthewallblog <comment-reply@wordpress.com>


stevenmsinger posted: " "Simple justice requires that public funds, to which all taxpayers of all races contribute, not be spent in any fashion which encourages, subsidizes, or results in racial discrimination." -President John F. Kennedy "Injustice anywhere is a threat to jus"
Respond to this post by replying above this line

New post on gadflyonthewallblog

The Racists Roots and Racist Indoctrination of School Choice

by stevenmsinger

screen-shot-2017-01-15-at-8-10-02-am

"Simple justice requires that public funds, to which all taxpayers of all races contribute, not be spent in any fashion which encourages, subsidizes, or results in racial discrimination."
-President John F. Kennedy

"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."
-Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Billionaires and far right policymakers are pushing for school choice.

I say they're pushing for it because voters always turn it down.

Every single referendum held on school choice in the United States has been defeated despite billions of dollars in spending to convince people to vote for it.

But advocates aren't discouraged that the public isn't on their side. They have money, and in America that translates to speech.

The Donald Trump administration is dedicated to making our public schools accept this policy whether people want it or not.

But don't think that's some huge change in policy. The previous administration championed a lighter version of these market-driven plans. The main difference goes like this: Democrats are for charter schools and tax credits for private and parochial schools. Republicans are for anything that calls itself a school getting your tax dollars – charter schools, private schools, religious schools – if some charlatan opens a stand on the side of the road with the word "school"in the title, they get tax dollars.

In all this rush to give away federal and state money, no political party really champions traditional public schools. Ninety percent of children attend them. In opinion polls, a majority of Americans like their local community schools. But like most things Americans want, politics goes the other way. Universal healthcare? Have Romneycare. Universal background checks on all gun sales? Nah. That sort of thing.

However, what often gets lost in the rush of politicians cashing in on this policy is its racist roots.

You read that right. School choice was invented as a mechanism of white flight. Before the federal government forced schools to desegregate, no one was all that interested in having an alternative to traditional public schools. But once whites got wind that the Supreme Court might make their kids go to school with black kids, lots of white parents started clamoring for "choice."

It was intended as a way to get around Brown vs. Board. In 1953, a year before that landmark decision, many white southerners felt it was vitally important to continue a segregated education. They deeply desired to continue having "separate but equal" schools for the races, yet the US Supreme Court seemed ready to strike that down.

Enter Georgia's Gov. Herman Talmadge who created what became known as the "private-school plan." Talmadge proposed an amendment to the Georgia Constitution to empower the general assembly to privatize the state's public education system. "We can maintain separate schools regardless of the US Supreme Court by reverting to a private system, subsidizing the child rather than the political subdivision," Talmadge said.

The plan goes like this. If the Supreme Court mandates desegregation (as it did), the state would close the schools and issue vouchers allowing students to enroll in segregated private schools.

Fortunately, Talmadge's plan was never implemented in Georgia. But it became the model for segregationists everywhere.

In Prince Edward County, Virginia, the plan actually came to fruition – sort of.

Two years before the 1959 federal desegregation deadline, local newspaper publisher J. Barrye Wall explained what county leaders were planning:

"We are working [on] a scheme in which we will abandon public schools, sell the buildings to our corporation, reopen as privately operated schools with tuition grants from [Virginia] and P.E. county as the basic financial program," he wrote. "Those wishing to go to integrated schools can take their tuition grants and operate their own schools. To hell with 'em."

Ultimately the county refused to sell the public school buildings. However, public education in Prince Edward County was nevertheless abandoned for five years, from 1959 to 1964. During that time, taxpayer dollars were funneled to the segregated white academies, which were housed in privately owned facilities such as churches and the local Moose Lodge.

The federal government struck down the program as a misuse of taxpayer funds after only a year, but even so whites benefited and blacks lost. Since there were no local taxes collected to operate public schools during those years, whites could invest in private schools for their children, while blacks in the county were left to fend for themselves. Since they were unable and unwilling to finance their own private, segregated schools, many black children were simply shut out of school for multiple years.

In other states, segregationists enacted "freedom of choice" plans that allowed white students to transfer out of desegregated schools. Any black students that tried to do the same had to clear numerous administrative hurdles. Moreover, entering formerly all-white schools would subject them to harassment from teachers and students. Anything to keep the races apart in the classroom – and usually the entire building.

Eventually, segregationists began to realize that separate black and white schools would no longer be tolerated by the courts, so they had to devise other means to eliminate these "undesirables."

Attorney David Mays, who advised high-ranking Virginia politicians on school strategy, reasoned:

"Negroes could be let in [to white schools] and then chased out by setting high academic standards they could not maintain, by hazing if necessary, by economic pressures in some cases, etc. This should leave few Negroes in the white schools. The federal courts can easily force Negroes into our white schools, but they can't possibly administer them and listen to the merits of thousands of bellyaches."

Mays turned out to be somewhat prescient. Though desegregation efforts largely succeeded at first, in the last 20-30 years whites accomplished through housing and neighborhood segregation what they couldn't legally enforce through outright school segregation. District lines were drawn to minimize the number of blacks at predominantly white schools and vice versa. Moreover, since funding was often tied to local property taxes, whites could legally ensure black schools got less resources than white schools. And with standardized tests constantly showing students at these schools as failing, policymakers could just blame the school instead of what they'd done to set the school up for failure.

Today racist policies undermine much of the structure of our public schools. We should acknowledge this and work to peel it back. We need to ensure all schools are equitably funded, that class sizes are under control, that all students get a broad curriculum and the services they need. But in the absence of a new, robust desegregation policy, our schools will always be in danger of racist programs that can easily select which students to benefit and which to ignore.

Instead of doing this hard work, we're engaged in resurrecting the school choice policies of the deep South and universalizing them across the country. School vouchers are extremely similar to Talmadge's private school plan. The main difference is that vouchers don't close public schools outright, they simply allow them to be defunded and ignored. With universal school vouchers, public schools often become the de facto holding area for whichever group of children the private schools refuse to accept or who can't afford private school tuition even with the vouchers.

Charter schools are built on the Prince Edward County model. They're administered as private institutions yet claim to be somehow public. As a result, they're allowed to bypass many of the rules that protect students at public schools from discrimination and fraud. In effect, they're largely unregulated. In the modern age, that means they can be incredibly substandard for long periods of time and no one knows or intervenes. The kinds of scandals perpetrated at some charter schools are simply not possible at traditional public schools. Some charters close without notice, have facilities used as nightclubs, involve taxpayer funds used for non-school purposes such as apartments for mistresses, the purchase of yachts, etc.

In both cases, charters and voucher schools often cater to mostly one race rather than another. That increases segregation at both these facilities and traditional public schools. But voucher schools can go a step further. They can even put racism on the curriculum.

Supporting the racial order is often what's actually being taught at private and religious schools. They are infamous for revisionist history and denying climate science. What's less well-known is how they often try to normalize racist attitudes.

The American Christian Education (ACE) group provides fundamentalist school curriculum to thousands of religious schools throughout the country. Included in this curriculum is the A Beka Book and Bob Jones University Press textbooks.  A Beka publishers, in particular, reported that about 9,000 schools nationwide purchase their textbooks.

These books include the following gobsmackers:

"[The Ku Klux] Klan in some areas of the country tried to be a means of reform, fighting the decline in morality and using the symbol of the cross. Klan targets were bootleggers, wife-beaters, and immoral movies. In some communities it achieved a certain respectability as it worked with politicians."
—United States History for Christian Schools, 3rd ed., Bob Jones University Press, 2001

"God used the Trail of Tears to bring many Indians to Christ."
—America: Land That I Love, Teacher ed., A Beka Book, 1994

"A few slave holders were undeniably cruel. Examples of slaves beaten to death were not common, neither were they unknown. The majority of slave holders treated their slaves well."
—United States History for Christian Schools, 2nd ed., Bob Jones University Press, 1991

"To help them endure the difficulties of slavery, God gave Christian slaves the ability to combine the African heritage of song with the dignity of Christian praise.  Through the Negro spiritual, the slaves developed the patience to wait on the Lord and discovered that the truest freedom is from the bondage of sin. By first giving them their spiritual freedom, God prepared the slaves for their coming physical freedom. "
-Michael R. Lowman, George Thompson, and Kurt Grussendorf, United States History:  Heritage of Freedom, 2nd ed. (Pensacola, FL: A Beka Book, 1996), p. 219.

"Africa is a continent with many needs. It is still in need of the gospel…Only about ten percent of Africans can read and write. In some areas the mission schools have been shut down by Communists who have taken over the government."
—Old World History and Geography in Christian Perspective, 3rd ed., A Beka Book, 2004

Gay people "have no more claims to special rights than child molesters or rapists."
—Teacher's Resource Guide to Current Events for Christian Schools, 1998-1999, Bob Jones University Press, 1998

Brown v. Board of Education is described as social activism by the Supreme Court: "While the end was a noble one - ending discrimination in schools - the means were troublesome... liberals were not willing to wait for a political solution."
-Teacher's Resource Guide to Current Events for Christian Schools, 1998 - 1999 (Greenville, SC: Bob Jones University Press, 1998), p. 34

These are claims that are uncritically being taught to children at many voucher schools. If this were happening only at private schools, it would be troubling that racists were indoctrinating their children in the same hatred and bigotry of their parents. However, that we're actually using public money - and planning to expand the amount of public money - to increase the racism and prejudice of the next generation is beyond troubling! It's infuriating!

School choice does not enhance civil rights. It is inimical to them. It is part of a blatant policy to make America racist again. We cannot allow the Trump administration and any neoliberal Democrats who quietly support his ends to undo all the progress we've made in the last 60 years.

The bottom line is this – voters don't want school choice. It does nothing to better childrens' educations. It is a product of segregation and racism and even in its modern guise it continues to foster segregation and racism.

If we care about civil rights, social equality and democratic rule, school choice is something that should be relegated to the dust heap of history. It's time to move forward, not look back fondly on the Confederacy, Jim Crow and segregationism.

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Thursday, January 12, 2017

Welcome to attend this evening, mindfulness training

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Richard King

***   ***   ***
An Invitation to Attend a Mindfulness Training Workshop for Parents, Students and Staff
Thursday, January 12th, 6:15pm - 7:30 pm

St. Edmund's Academy Auditorium
5705 Darlington Rd, 
Pittsburgh, PA 15217

St. Edmund's Academy PTA will present a workshop introducing mindfulness training exercises for parents and children.  Mindfulness exercises reduce stress and support academic success.  Mindfulness practices are life skills that promote health, wellness, resilience, emotional stability and habit change.  Because these exercises build self awareness, calm, and impulse control, they can also help cultivate resilient individuals, families, and communities as they improve self management and communication skills.  

Managing stress is a life skill.  We'll review what stress is and some techniques for managing stress.  We'll practice belly breathing, the awareness response, mindful breathing, and body scan exercises as ways to activate a physiological state called "the relaxation response."  One goal of the workshop is to support parents and students in developing a personal routine daily practice.  Health and emotional wellness both benefit with daily mindfulness routines.  Practicing these mental hygiene skills may be as important as daily hygiene, physical exercise, or the use of seat belts.  Hopefully these wellness skills will become family traditions that will last a lifetime. 

Please rsvp to Dr. Richard King at kinggaines@comcast.net with "Workshop" in the subject line.

Tuesday, January 10, 2017

Fwd: BGC needs help with worksite placements for 150 amazing seniors-Friday meeting

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: <RFlanag@aol.com>
Date: Jan 10, 2017 4:08 PM
Subject: BGC needs help with worksite placements for 150 amazing seniors-Friday meeting




Hello Local Business Owners and Partners,

Local young adults need you to help them become the workforce of tomorrow!

The Bloomfield-Garfield Corporation is seeking businesses and partners that are willing to host high school interns who are participating in our College and Career Readiness Program. This is an exciting opportunity to play an active and supportive role in shaping the career of a young adult in our city. 

We have 150+ 12th graders in our program from all over the city. These students have a very diverse range of career interests. Our hope is to recruit a similarly diverse range of employers so that each student can participate in an internship that helps them develop their career interests.

BGC has funding from the 3 Rivers WIB to pay these students while they participate in an internship with your company.

Please join us for a College and Career Readiness Program Internship Meeting to learn more about what it takes to host a 12th grader intern and to get to know our staff and program participants.

When: Friday, January 13th, 2017
Time: 8:30 AM
Where: The Children's Home of Pittsburgh, 5324 Penn Avenue

Please RSVP to Rick Flanagan, Bloomfield-Garfield Corporation if you plan to attend by calling 412-353-9594 or by completing and returning the attached
FAX BACK FORM to 412-441-6918.


Attached is a letter that has more details about this program and how to get involved.

Thursday, January 05, 2017

Fwd: Fast and furious



---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: John Hemington


I realize that these missives have been coming fast and furiously, but the attached article by Jonathan Rosenblum in Tikkun is an important contribution to our understanding of what needs to be done in the era of Trump and Republican dominance.  It also exposes the futility of depending upon the tired nostrums of the neoliberal New Democrats for band-aid solutions.  It is certainly not the whole answer; and it is clear that labor unions in the form we have come to know them will never return to the positions of power within the economy which they once occupied.  This is not because of a particular fault with the idea of organizing, but the changing nature of manufacturing in the era of technological mechanization and robotics.  Indeed, what Rosenblum suggests is a powerful merger of the organizing impetus with a view toward expanding to a more global arrangement of continuing to defend what they now have while at the same time expanding alliances with other groups seeking to change the direction of neoliberal destruction of common needs.  If there is any real hope in the coming years, it will take this type unionizing effort and cooperation among divergent groups seeking not just inwardly focused goals, but goals shared among the larger sphere of communities in need.


John



Wednesday, January 04, 2017

Fwd: Looking at 2017 . . . and beyond


---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: John Hemington


Attached is a 2017 New Year's prospective by James Howard Kunstler.  For those of you who are not familiar with Kunstler he is an American author, social critic, public speaker, and blogger.  He is best known for his books The Geography of Nowhere, a history of American suburbia and urban development, The Long Emergency, and most recently, Too Much Magic.  Kunstler is an interesting character on the American scene and can probably best be characterized as a progressive-libertarian to the extent that any characterization is possible.  Whatever else one may say Kunstler is always provocative, opinionated and, more often than not, pretty much on point with his assessments.

I send this article along with a couple of caveats:  (1) it is rather long – 16 pages but well worth the time and effort; (2) it almost certainly contains viewpoints that will offend some of you; and (3) he does not, in my opinion, have a good understanding of sovereign money, credit and debt as I note where it occurs in the piece.  This, however, is the norm in American society as most of us still believe that the country operates on a gold standard (at least in principle) and as far as the Congress and the President are concerned so do they – at least insofar as they are willing to let on to the public.  But whenever more funds are needed for the military or for corporate/financial subsidy there is never a problem.  What it means, however, is that some of the dire predictions about the U.S. not being able to pay its debts or that the interest on the debt will become a crushing burden is simply a delusional fiction used to justify devastating austerity policies intended to crush federal social safety nets and justify their privatization. 

What should be clear to most, but it is always ignored, is that the enormous increase in the national debt over the past 40 years should have, according to the debt alarmists, caused the U.S. to have fallen into a Zimbabwean-type hyper-inflation and nothing could be further from the truth.  This should be particularly obvious given the massive multi-trillion dollar spending required to sustain our endless wars in the Middle East and elsewhere and the $29 trillion allocated to bailout the banks and insurance companies following the 2008 financial crisis.  Having said this much of what Kunstler suggests might happen in the new year is highly probable and should be taken seriously. 

Also attached in support of Kunstler's concerns is today post from Wall Street on Parade dealing with the risk of the U.S. money center banks to European banks through derivative holdings which should be taken very seriously given the extreme weakness of numerous European banks particularly in Italy, Germany and France.

With that, welcome to the Orwellian world of 2017!


John


Links (to a number of articles from the past year)

Monday, January 02, 2017

Fwd: Tyranny Fighters Report


---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Julian P Heicklen <jph13@psu.edu>
Date: Mon, Jan 2, 2017 at 10:34 AM


Hi Tyranny Fighters:

ORLANDO COURTHOUSE ARREST, 12-5-16

The arrest: On December 5, 2016, at 11:45 am Julian Heicklen, Mark Schmidter, and 2 ladies entered the Orange County courthouse courtyard in Orlando, FL.  The 2 ladies sat on a bench far from the public sidewalk leading from the parking lot to the main entrance of the courthouse.  Mark and Julian went to the public sidewalk, where they could not see the ladies.  Julian held a sign reading JURY INFO and held out one page Nullification by Jury flyers.  Some people walking from the parking lot approached Julian and took a flyer.  Mark stood about 6 feet from Julian and just observed the event.

At about 12:00 noon when Heicklen had given out about 15 flyers, Heicklen was approached by 3 columns of 8 sheriff officers each (24 total sheriff officers) and told that he was trespassing on private court property and had to leave.  Heicklen refused to leave.  He was placed under arrest.  The police officers started a discussion with Heicklen.

While this was going on, a plain clothes person approached, started mumbling from some document, which Heicklen thought was someone telling him to believe in Jesus.  Actually he was a court official reading the trespass law to both Mark and Julian.  Julian was annoyed by this and asked him to stop reading.  He did not.  Heicklen ordered him to go away.  He continued reading.  Julian said that if he did not go away, he would hit him in the face.  He continued reading.  Julian jumped up and approached him wielding a fist.  The officers stopped Julian, placed him and Mark in handcuffs and declared them under arrest.  Mark objected because he was only an observer and not a participant.  The officers did not care.

Julian charged with 3 misdemeanors and 1 felony
  1. Trespassing on public property after warning
  2. Threatening public servant
  3. Assault
  4. Threat, throw, or Discharge Destructive Device

Items 1 and 2 are correct
Items 3 and 4 are outright lies.
Julian went limp, another officer showed up with a wheel chair for Julian and wheeled Julian to a building adjacent to the courthouse to interrogate him.  He was searched but the only items had were a kleenex pack and the U. S. Constitution, plus his flyers and signs, pen and writing clipboard.  No ID, no money.  There were 2 interrogators and 2 sheriff officers present for the interrogation.  Everything, except the U. S. Constitution was taken by the police.  While Julian was still in the wheelchair, with both hands in handcuffs,  some time was spent discussing Heicklen's previous appearances at other courthouses, which Heicklen was delighted to discuss at great length.  

Finally questions were asked about the present event. Julian immediately went dead silent, bowed his head, and refused to even look at anyone.  He was wheeled away, taken to the courthouse to face a judge in court.  The judge asked his name.  Heicklen answered "Call me Honey."  The judge then asked the court stenographer for Heicklen's name and other information.  The judge asked other questions but Heicklen just hung his head and said nothing more.  The judge said somethings to the court stenographer, which Heicklen could not make out.  She typed a paper and gave it to Heicklen.  It included charges which were as given above.  Parole was not permitted for any of the charges.  The  arraignment date was set for January 12, 2017.

  1. Nine days in prison: After the arraignment, my hands were placed in handcuffs, leg irons were placed on my legs, and I was put into a van with 5 other males and 5 other females.  A metal sheet separated the males and females, so we could not see each other.  After about a 20 minute ride, we reached the county prison.  There we had the hand and leg cuffs removed, were stripped of our clothes, and put into prison clothes: a tee shirt, undershorts, pants and slippers.  After we were registered, then we were led to our male and female "hotels."  The male hotel is a large lounge filled with guards and prisoner helpers, 2 TV sets, a telephone, and a few tables with chairs.  Surrounding the lounge were the cells.

I was assigned to cell #1, a private room for 1 person.  It was 10' x 10', and 15', high.  At the ceiling was a very large light which was kept on 24/7.  Also there was a sink with a toilet connected to it, a small shelf to keep small bathroom articles, a towel, and a cot.  There were no sheets on the mattress.  On the second day a body bag and blanket were added.  Also I was given a pen and pad to keep notes.  The lights and TVs were kept on 24/7.

Meals were given in your cell at 5:00 am, 11:00 am, and 5:00 pm.  Breakfast consisted of half of a small FL orange, some liquid identified as milk, corn flakes, 2 slices of bread, and sometimes a salami.  Lunch and dinner were brought to the cell and consisted of a half baby orange, the funny milk, lettuce, and 2 slices of bread.  Sometimes a slice of salami was also included.  In addition the lunch and dinner food had meat, potatoes, and beans, all of which were uneatable.

The lobby was open to the prisoners from 2:00-4:00 pm.  After breakfast and dinner, 3 guards and the nurse arrived with my daily pills, took my pulse rate, blood pressure, and temperature.  Mark Schmidter had given the nurses all of my daily pills.  I did not receive my "at home" breakfast addition of a shot of prune juice each day.  As result, I made only 1 bowl movement during my 9-day stay.  it clogged the toile, but after a few days someone came and unplugged the toilet.

On 3 consecutive days I made requests for access to the law library.  On the 3rd try, I also included additional requests.  All of the requests were ignored.  We were allowed 1 free telephone call.  However I did not use it, because I have early Alzheimer's disease and could not remember any phone numbers.

During the 2-hour open lounge daily time, I was allowed to enter the lounge and visit with other prisoners, watch TV, and make telephone calls.  However the temperature of the whole prison was kept at about 60  degrees fahrenheit.  I was not allowed to take my blanket or any other item out of the cell.  Consequently, I rarely left my cell, and then for only a short time.  I had caught a cold within 24 hours of my arrival at the prison.

In the lounge, I met 2 other prisoners who where helpful.  Both of them joined Tyranny Fighters.  One of them gave me 3 of the prison library books to read and one of his own to keep.  One of the books: "The Covenant House" was about the Catholic home for wayward children in Manhattan, NY.  I read the stories of several children.  After each story I cried heavily: not only tears but my body shook heavily for about 15 minutes after each reading.  I also read 2 of the other books.  I kept the 4th book "40 days to Freedom" which the inmate gave to me as a present.  I have yet to read it.

On the 9th day in prison I was notified of my release.  A public defender had arranged for me to be paroled on $8000.00 bond.  My own clothes were returned to me.  Five other men and five women were handcuffed and driven to the courthouse where we were dismissed until arraignment to come.  Mine was set for January 12, 2017.  I called Mark Schmidter who picked me up, took me to the bail bondsman who arranged my bail at $8000, of which I had to pay $800 at that time.  Mark took me home for the next several days where we met with several lawyers to prepare for my arraignment set for January 12, 2017.

Mark and 1 of the 2 others who had accompanied me were also arrested and were waiting for arraignment on January 5, 2017.  Mark was imprisoned for 1 day before release.  The other arrested lady was released 9 hours after being charged.  Several days later the state attorney dropped the charges against Mark and the  woman.  My charges and trial dates were not changed.

On December 26, I left Fort Lauderdale and flew to Newark airport  where I stayed until I left for Israel on December 27 and arrived in Tel Aviv on December 28.  The Orlando courthouse still has my carry bag with my "Nullification by Jury", "Duty of a Witness" and "Legalize Marijuana" flyers, FIJA pamphlets, a clipboard, and "Jury Info" and "Legalize Marijuana" signs.

I am now living in Jerusalem, Israel with no intent to ever return to the United States.  I wish to be buried in Israel, among my people.  I hope that my family will not desecrate my body by burying it in the United States.


Yours in freedom and justice—Julian



100 Years: Woodrow Wilson and Counter Thinking -- A Libertarian Rebuttal

Thanks to Tom Woods for these insights:

We've heard a lot about all the great people who died in 2016. To my mind, though, by far the most important is someone mainstream America has never heard of.

The man I have in mind was probably the most knowledgeable living historian in the libertarian tradition, and a man who influenced me greatly.

I am referring, of course, to Ralph Raico.

Professor Raico had a vast knowledge of the history of liberty, from the ancient world through the maligned Middle Ages, and on through the Industrial Revolution to the present. He refuted myth after statist myth in his iconoclastic work, and left the establishment view in shambles.

The year 2017 marks 100 years since Woodrow Wilson's horrific decision to intervene in World War I. Professor Raico was an expert on the contested question of war guilt in that war, and he was withering on Wilson's foreign policy.

As we recall Wilson's decision this year, we ought to revisit Professor Raico's treatment.

If you are unfamiliar with Professor Raico's work, I'm linking you to a free copy of his excellent book Great Wars and Great Leaders: A Libertarian Rebuttal. It's been made available to the entire world at no cost, thanks to the heroic Mises Institute:

https://mises.org/library/great-wars-and-great-leaders-libertarian-rebuttal