A CALIFORNIA PRINCIPAL'S OPENING MESSAGE TO STUDENTS

Dennis Prager, a principal at a high school in Redding, California, on the first day of classes in 2010:

To the students and faculty of our high school:

I am your new principal, and honored to be so. There is no greater calling than to teach young people.

I would like to apprise you of some important changes coming to our school. I am making these changes because I am convinced that most of the ideas that  have dominated public education in America have worked against you, against  your teachers, and against our country.

First, this school will no longer honor race or ethnicity. I could not care less if your racial makeup is black, brown, red, yellow, or white. I could not care less if your origins are African, Latin American, Asian, or European,  or if your ancestors arrived here on the Mayflower or on slave ships.

The only identity I care about, the only one this school will recognize, is your individual identity -- your character, your scholarship, your humanity.  And the only national identity this school will care about is American. This
is an American public school, and American public schools were created to make  better Americans.

If you wish to affirm an ethnic, racial, or religious identity through school, you will have to go elsewhere. We will end all ethnicity-, race- and non-American-nationality-based celebrations. They undermine the motto of 
America , one of its three central values -- E Pluribus Unum -- "from many, one."  And this school will be guided byAmerica 's values.

That includes all after-school clubs. I will not authorize clubs that divide students based on any identities. This includes race, language, religion, sexual orientation, or whatever else may become in vogue in a society
divided by political correctness.

Your clubs will be based on interests and passions -- not blood, ethnic, racial or other physically defined ties. Those clubs just cultivate narcissism -- an unhealthy preoccupation with the self -- while the purpose of 
education is to get you to think beyond yourself. So we will have clubs that  transport you to the wonders and glories of art, music, astronomy, languages  you do not already speak, carpentry, and more. If the only extracurricular  activities you can imagine being interested in are those based on ethnic or  racial or sexual identity, that means that little outside of yourself really  interests you.

Second, I am  not interested in whether English is your native language. My only interest in terms of language is that you leave this school speaking and writing English as fluently as possible. The English language has united 
America 's citizens for more than 200 years, and it will unite us at this  school. It is one of the indispensable reasons this country of immigrants has  always come to be one country. And if you leave this school without excellent  English-language skills, I will have been remiss in my duty to ensure that you  are prepared to compete successfully in the American job market. We will learn  other languages here -- it is deplorable that most Americans only speak English. But if you want classes taught in your native language rather than in English, this is not your school.

Third, because I regard learning as a sacred endeavor, everything in this school will reflect learning's elevated status. This means, among other things, that you and your teachers will dress accordingly. Many people in
our society dress more formally for a meal at a nice restaurant than they do for church or school. These people have their priorities backwards. Therefore, there will be a formal dress code at this school.

Fourth, no obscene language will be tolerated anywhere on this school's property -- whether in class, in the hallways or at athletic events. If you can't speak without using the "F-word," you can't speak. By obscene language I mean the words banned by the Federal Communications Commission plus epithets  such as the "N-word," even when used by one black student to address another, or "bitch," even when addressed by a girl to a girlfriend. It is my intent that  by the time you leave this school, you will be among the few of your age to distinguish instinctively between the elevated and the degraded, the holy and the obscene.

Fifth, we will end all self-esteem programs. In this school self-esteem will  be attained in only one way -- the way people attained it until the state of  California decided otherwise a generation ago -- by earning it. One
immediate consequence is that there will be one valedictorian, not eight.

Sixth, and last, I am reorienting the school toward academics and away from  politics and propaganda. No more time will be devoted to scaring you about  smoking and caffeine, or terrifying you about sexual harassment or global  warming. No more semesters will be devoted to condom-wearing and teaching you 
to regard sexual relations as only or primarily a health issue. There will be  no more attempts to convince you that you are a victim because you are not  white, or not male, or not heterosexual, or not Christian. We will have failed  if any one of you graduates from this school and does not consider him or  herself inordinately lucky -- to be alive and to be an American.

Now, please stand and join me in the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag of our country. As many of you do not know the words, your teachers will hand them  out to you.

What Thomas Jefferson learned from the Muslim book of Jihad

Democrat Keith Ellison is now officially the first Muslim United States congressman. True to his pledge, he placed his hand on the Quran, the Muslim book of jihad and pledged his allegiance to the United States during his ceremonial swearing-in.

Capitol Hill staff said Ellison's swearing-in photo opportunity drew more media than they had ever seen in the history of the U.S. House. Ellison represents the 5th Congressional District of Minnesota.

The Quran Ellison used was no ordinary book. It once belonged to Thomas Jefferson, third president of the United States and one of America’s founding fathers.

Ellison borrowed it from the Rare Book Section of the Library of Congress. It was one of the 6,500 Jefferson books archived in the library.

Ellison, who was born in Detroit and converted to Islam while in college, said he chose to use Jefferson's Quran because it showed that "a visionary like Jefferson” believed that wisdom could be gleaned from many sources.

 

There is no doubt Ellison was right about Jefferson believing wisdom could be "gleaned" from the Muslim Quran. At the time Jefferson owned the book, he needed to know everything possible about Muslims because he was about to advocate war against the Islamic "Barbary" states of Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Tripoli.

 

Ellison's use of Jefferson's Quran as a prop illuminates a subject once well-known in the history of the United States, but, which today, is mostly forgotten - the Muslim pirate slavers who over many centuries enslaved millions of Africans and tens of thousands of Christian Europeans and Americans in the Islamic "Barbary" states.

 

Over the course of 10 centuries, Muslim pirates cruised the African and Mediterranean coastline, pillaging villages and seizing slaves.

 

The taking of slaves in pre-dawn raids on unsuspecting coastal villages had a high casualty rate. It was typical of Muslim raiders to kill off as many of the "non-Muslim" older men and women as possible so the preferred "booty" of only young women and children could be collected.

 

Young non-Muslim women were targeted because of their value as concubines in Islamic markets. Islamic law provides for the sexual interests of Muslim men by allowing them to take as many as four wives at one time and to have as many concubines as their fortunes allow.

 

Boys, as young as 9 or 10 years old, were often mutilated to create eunuchs who would bring higher prices in the slave markets of the Middle East. Muslim slave traders created "eunuch stations" along major African slave routes so the necessary surgery could be performed. It was estimated that only a small number of the boys subjected to the mutilation survived after the surgery.

 

When American colonists rebelled against British rule in 1776, American merchant ships lost Royal Navy protection. With no American Navy for protection, American ships were attacked and their Christian crews enslaved by Muslim pirates operating under the control of the "Dey of Algiers "--an Islamist warlord ruling Algeria.

 

Because American commerce in the Mediterranean was being destroyed by the pirates, the Continental Congress agreed in 1784 to negotiate treaties with the four Barbary States.

 

Congress appointed a special commission consisting of John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin, to oversee the negotiations.

 

Lacking the ability to protect its merchant ships in the Mediterranean, the new America government tried to appease the Muslim slavers by agreeing to pay tribute and ransoms in order to retrieve seized American ships and buy the freedom of enslaved sailors.

 

Adams argued in favor of paying tribute as the cheapest way to get American commerce in the Mediterranean moving again.

 

Jefferson was opposed. He believed there would be no end to the demands for tribute and wanted matters settled "through the medium of war." He proposed a league of trading nations to force an end to Muslim piracy.

 

In 1786, Jefferson, then the American ambassador to France, and Adams, then the American ambassador to Britain, met in London with Sidi Haji Abdul Rahman Adja, the "Dey of Algiers" ambassador to Britain.

 

The Americans wanted to negotiate a peace treaty based on Congress' vote to appease.

 

During the meeting Jefferson and Adams asked the Dey's ambassador why Muslims held so much hostility towards America, a nation with which they had no previous contacts.

 

In a later meeting with the American Congress, the two future presidents reported that Ambassador Sidi Haji Abdul Rahman Adja had answered that Islam "was founded on the Laws of their Prophet, that it was written in their Quran, that all nations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as Prisoners, and that every Musselman (Muslim) who should be slain in Battle was sure to go to Paradise."

 

For the following 15 years, the American government paid the Muslims millions of dollars for the safe passage of American ships or the return of American hostages. The payments in ransom and tribute amounted to 20 percent of United States government annual revenues in 1800.

Not long after Jefferson's inauguration as president in 1801, he dispatched a group of frigates to defend American interests in the Mediterranean, and informed Congress.

 

Declaring that America was going to spend "millions for defense but not one cent for tribute," Jefferson pressed the issue by deploying American Marines and many of America’s best warships to the Muslim Barbary Coast.

 

The USS Constitution, USS Constellation, USS Philadelphia, USS Chesapeake, USS Argus, USS Syren and USS Intrepid all saw action.

In 1805, American Marines marched across the desert from Egypt into Tripolitania, forcing the surrender of Tripoli and the freeing of all American slaves.

 

During the Jefferson administration, the Muslim Barbary States, crumbling as a result of intense American naval bombardment and on shore raids by Marines, finally officially agreed to abandon slavery and piracy.

 

Jefferson's victory over the Muslims lives on today in the Marine Hymn, with the line, "From the halls of Montezuma, to the shores of Tripoli, We fight our country's battles in the air, on land and sea." It wasn't until 1815 that the problem was fully settled by the total defeat of all the Muslim slave trading pirates.

 

Jefferson had been right. The "medium of war" was the only way to put an end to the Muslim problem.

 

Mr. Ellison was right about Jefferson. He was a "visionary" wise enough to read and learn about the enemy from their own Muslim book of jihad.

By Ted Sampley

Concerned Americans Turn to the Constitution

It seems altogether fitting in this month of December that as the Nation officially celebrates the birth of the Savior of mankind, we reflect on the document that guarantees to us the opportunity to do so.
It was only about 50 years after the writing of the Constitution that a young twenty-six year-old Abraham Lincoln, then a member of the Illinois General Assembly, raised a warning voice about a trend he observed by those who would sidetrack America's great experiment of freedom.

Gratitude to the Founders for the Gift of Liberty

In a speech to the Young Men's Lyceum of Springfield, Illinois, entitled, The Perpetuation of Our Political Institutions , Lincoln declared:

“We find ourselves in the peaceful possession, of the fairest portion of the earth, as regards extent of territory, fertility of soil, and salubrity of climate. We find ourselves under the government of a system of political institutions, conducing more essentially to the ends of civil and religious liberty, than any of which the history of former times tells us. We, when mounting the stage of existence, found ourselves the legal inheritors of these fundamental blessings. We toiled not in the acquirement or establishment of them—they are a legacy bequeathed us, by a once hardy, brave, and patriotic, but now lamented and departed race of ancestors. Theirs was the task (and nobly they performed it) to possess themselves, and through themselves, us, of this goodly land; and to uprear upon its hills and its valleys, a political edifice of liberty and equal rights; 'tis ours only, to transmit these, the former, unprofaned by the foot of an invader; the latter, undec ayed by the lapse of time, and untorn by usurpation—to the latest generation that fate shall permit the world to know. This task of gratitude to our fathers, justice to ourselves, duty to posterity, and love for our species in general, all imperatively require us faithfully to perform.”

From where should we expect the approach of danger?

In our comfortable circumstances, he asked if we should ever again be in danger of losing our freedom:

“At what point shall we expect the approach of danger? By what means shall we fortify against it? Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant, to step the Ocean, and crush us at a blow? Never! All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest; with a Buonaparte for a commander, could not by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a Trial of a thousand years.
“At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.”

Lincoln then observes, “…there is, even now, something of ill-omen amongst us. I mean the increasing disregard for law which pervades the country….”

Freedom may slip away while citizens aren't watchful

“I know the American People are much attached to their Government; -- I know they would suffer much for its sake; -- I know they would endure evils long and patiently, before they would ever think of exchanging it for another. Yet, notwithstanding all this, if the laws be continually despised and disregarded, if their rights to be secure in their persons and property, are held by no better tenure than the caprice of a mob, the alienation of their affections from the Government is the natural consequence; and to that, sooner or later, it must come.”

Let the Constitution become the Political Religion of the Nation

Young Abraham Lincoln then gives the answer which reflects his life's work until his tragic death:

“The question recurs ‘how shall we fortify against it? The answer is simple. Let every American, every lover of liberty, every well-wisher to his posterity, swear by the blood of the Revolution, never to violate in the least particular, the laws of the country; and never to tolerate their violation by others. As the patriots of seventy-six did to the support of the Declaration of Independence, so to the support of the Constitution and Laws, let every American pledge his life, his property, and his sacred honor; --let every man remember that to violate the law, is to trample on the blood of his father, and to tear the character of his own, and his children's liberty. Let reverence for the laws, be breathed by every American mother, to the lisping babe, that prattles on her lap --let it be taught in schools, in seminaries, and in colleges; --let it be written in Primers, spelling books, and in Almanacs; --let it be preached from the pulpit, proclaimed in legislat ive halls, and enforced in courts of justice. And, in short, let it become the political religion of the nation; and let the old and the young, the rich and the poor, the grave and the gay, of all sexes and tongues, and colors and conditions, sacrifice unceasingly upon its altars.”

Americans Returning to Their Constitutional Roots

If President Lincoln were here today, no doubt his message would be the same, but with perhaps even more urgency. The good news is that more Americans than ever are becoming interested in learning about our Constitutional roots. Their hope is that perhaps in this inspired document lies answers to America's problems.

Abraham Lincoln is best known as the president who saved the union. He did it by teaching and upholding the Constitution. Our task seems to be much similar to his—that of preserving the union. Let us use the same tool he used—the United States Constitution.
Merry Christmas,

Earl Taylor, Jr.