Indiana Senator Evan Bayh (D)
 
 
 
 
Anti-communitarianism, the National Education Association, and what fictional detectives tell us about ourselves.
 
A regular feature of The American Culture, highlighting items that reveal trends in American society and culture, compiled by TAC correspondent Mike Gray.

 

Third Way

Until last September, I must confess, I had never heard the word "communitarianism"—so imagine my surprise when I discovered that there is already an "Anti-Communitarian League." Is it really necessary? Read about it and decide for yourself:

Communitarianism is the foundation for the emerging supranational government. This is not a conspiracy theory. Anyone who says it is shouldn’t be trusted as a source.

The modern version of this ancient religious and legal theory was introduced in upper academia in the late 1980s. It had brief international attention as the Clinton-Blair Third Way. (Barak Obama is the leading Third Way candidate;

Senator Evan Bayh leads the Third Way group in the U.S. Senate. John McCain, like President Bush, supports all communitarian programs and policies.)

Global community governance and sustainablity are based in the theory of communitarianism. Communitarians believe that communities should hold the same rights as are held by individuals in the USA. It’s billed as a spiritual, earth friendly solution to every conflict between polar opposites. It officially solves the traditional right v left divide. Capitalism, communism and socialism can now merge into the next level of planned human social evolution.

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The All-Knowing NEA

Last July, the National Education Association met in Washington to, as family values activist Phyllis Schlafly notes with steep disapproval, agree on a few wonderfully high-minded-sounding things:

resolutions [that would] cover the waterfront of all sorts of political issues that have nothing to do with improving education for schoolchildren, such as supporting statehood for the District of Columbia, a "single-payer health care plan" (i.e., government-run), gun control, ratification of the International Criminal Court Treaty, and taking steps "to change activities that contribute to global climate change." . . .

NEA resolutions include all the major feminist goals such as "the right to reproductive freedom" (i.e., abortion on demand); "comparable worth" (i.e., government control of wages according to feminist ideology rather than the free market); full funding for the feminist boondoggle called the Women’s Educational Equity Act; and "the use of non-sexist language" (i.e., censoring out all masculine words such as husband and father).

Clearly, change is in the air. Find additional gory details here.

By a comfortable margin of eight out of ten, the NEA also endorsed one of the Presidential candidates. Just try to guess which one. . . .

The NEA’s support for this candidate provoked at least one pro-life group to respond:

"The tragic irony of the NEA’s endorsement of Barack Obama is not lost on millions of pro-lifers across the country," Karen Cross, the National Right to Life political director, told LifeNews.com.

‘The NEA has chosen to back a presidential candidate who wants to continue a policy of abortion on demand, which has resulted in nearly 50 million missing students in classrooms from coast to coast since 1973," she said.

Senator Obama has said that, if elected president, the first thing he would do is sign the so-called "Freedom of Choice Act"—a bill that would make partial-birth abortion legal again, require taxpayer funding of abortion and nullify virtually all federal and state limitations on abortion, such as parental notification laws.

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How Do You Like Your Detectives?

Somebody really ought to write a book about how a society is reflected in the way its defenders (warriors, politicians, theologians, and even private detectives) are depicted in its fictional output.  The French mystery aficionado Xavier Lechard has taken a tentative step in that direction with an interesting article about fictional sleuths and how historically they haven’t been what you would call paragons of virtue:

We are often told that detective fiction is about restoring order, but it hasn’t always been so. Belle-Epoque sleuths’ motivations were remarkably mundane: money, getting oneself or a loved one out of trouble, or the plain thrill of the game; also, they weren’t above letting the criminal go free if they sympathized with his motives. But at least they remained on the right side. Well, most of them. Think of Romney Pringle or, more sinisterly, Horace Dorrington. But the most chillingly effective portrayal of the dark side of the Great Detective figure is to be found in Baroness Orczy’s stories featuring Bill Owen, better—known as The Old Man in the Corner.

The entire article is well worth reading.