FrankRep
08-21-2009, 10:47 AM
You Know the Nation is in Trouble When... (http://www.jbs.org/jbs-news-feed/5253-you-know-your-nation-is-in-trouble-when)
A Tale of Two Crimes
Beverly K. Eakman | John Birch Society (http://www.jbs.org/)
21 August 2009
http://www.jbs.org/images/stories/aug_09/lemonadesmall.001.jpg
When a child get in more trouble for opening a lemonade stand in a public park than does a “student” at a tax-supported university traveling to a foreign country to install a terrorist state detrimental to America’s existence, you know our nation is in trouble.
The specifics of this particular “disconnect” in U.S. law-making and enforcement involve two news reports in one week: First, an August 16 story in the New York Post revealing how police (http://www.nypost.com/seven/08162009/news/regionalnews/sweet_lemonade_kid_lapped_184770.htm) with the city’s Parks Department slapped a $50 fine, without warning, on a 10-year-old and her flummoxed dad, who responsibly accompanied her, for setting up an “unlicensed” lemonade stand, something every child used to do 25 years ago no matter where it was.
The very next day, the Washington Times carried a report by Iason Athanasiadis (http://washingtontimes.com/news/2009/aug/17/khomeini-ally-now-leads-iran-dissidents/) concerning how, in 1978 (the height of Boomer student activism), a brash young man named Moshen Sazegara “quit his studies at the University of Illinois to join Ayatollah Rubollah Khomeini’s return from exile to lead Iran’s Islamic Revolution” and to help establish “Iran’s Revolutionary Guard…an ideological army entrusted with safeguarding the principles of the revolution”.
Apparently, the student’s eventual fall-out with the abusive, terrorist regime proved a reality check, and Sazegara returned to the U.S. to lead a global opposition movement to the regime he once so brashly supported.
This story, picked up by several news outlets, unfailingly implied an endorsement of this “resistance leader,” despite the fact that in his youthful arrogance, Sazegara bears substantial responsibility for the overthrow of a pro-Western government and for plunging Iran into an 8th-century horror. One woman who escaped Iran relays how her young, female colleague, forced into burqa-like garb, accidentally allowed her black head shawl to slip backward. One of the Revolutionary Guards yanked the heavy scarf down to “where it ought to be,” took a short nail and hammered the shawl into the woman’s forehead. That’s the kind of “peace and nonviolence” the naïve, young Sazegara thought he was installing to replace the old shah — admittedly no saint, but at least with visions of a more democratic nation. Some of that was sparked when the shah was forced by old traditions to divorce his beloved wife, Soroya, when she could not bear him an heir. But such was forgotten in the rush to demonize anything pro-Western.
The larger point here is why Sazegara, who caused so much harm, was allowed to return, or indeed why he, and others like him, are allowed to intervene in the affairs of potentially hostile nations. Apparently, he was an undergraduate student at both Sharif University of Technology in Iran and the Illinois Institute of Technology while a leader of the student movement against the shah. This smacks of dual citizenship, but could not be confirmed in an online search.
What is striking is that both then and now Sazegara is a supporter of “civil disobedience” and “protest movements.” Where did he learn that? Not in Iran, for sure. He learned it in America, where universities are steeped in Marxist strategies of inciting dissent through mob psychology. He would have been better off setting up lemonade stands.
Sazegara’s post-graduate work in multiple countries is impressive, yet one has to wonder at our system of “law enforcement” which has since the 1970s glossed over important connections to terrorist organizations, illegal immigration, and other matters of national security and public safety, yet has no trouble delivering a citation to a ten-year-old over a lemonade stand.
From idiot programs like “click it or ticket,” to non-programs like “aggressive driver imaging” (which never focuses on anyone driving erratically), to so-called “airport security” that plays tough with elderly women, the message is: Good citizens are easy; but we don’t mess with really dangerous folks.”
There have been thousands of warnings since the volatile 70s that out-of-control, violent crime; terrorist attacks; and grandiose fraud scams, to mention just a few of the societal changes that now affect everyone, were coming — without intervention from the courts or “the law.” As By Ron Ewart, President of the National Association of Rural Landowners, put it in an article, “How Can We Undo It?”: “We are a country under the rule of law all right, but we have taken law and rule-making to the extreme edge of absurdity, if not insanity.”
Mr. Ewart cites the 80,700 pages in the Federal Register to make his case. “The United States Code is perched on multiple shelves and is 16,845 pages, according to the government printing office. The Tax Code, Title 26 [alone], is 3,387 pages. This doesn't even begin to cover millions of pages of state and local laws, regulations, restrictions and ordinances...[many of which] are patently without constitutional authority.
The duty of government is to protect Americans from all enemies, foreign and domestic, and to support parents in their efforts to protect children from harm. But what if it is our own elected officials, both by their sins of omission (in failing to read the bills it passes, and insist on enforcement of existing criminal statutes) and its sins of commission (passing “gotcha” ordinances that restrict normal, everyday activities of individuals, such as “unlicensed” lemonade stands), who are doing the harm?
Beverly K. Eakman is a former teacher and retired federal employee who served as speechwriter for the heads of three government agencies and as editor-in-chief of NASA’s newspaper at the Johnson Space Center. Based now in Washington, DC, she is a freelance writer, the author of five books, and frequent keynote speaker on the lecture circuit. Her most recent book is "Walking Targets: How Our Psychologized Classrooms Are Producing a Nation of Sitting Ducks" (Midnight Whistler Publishers).
SOURCE:
http://www.jbs.org/jbs-news-feed/5253-you-know-your-nation-is-in-trouble-when
A Tale of Two Crimes
Beverly K. Eakman | John Birch Society (http://www.jbs.org/)
21 August 2009
http://www.jbs.org/images/stories/aug_09/lemonadesmall.001.jpg
When a child get in more trouble for opening a lemonade stand in a public park than does a “student” at a tax-supported university traveling to a foreign country to install a terrorist state detrimental to America’s existence, you know our nation is in trouble.
The specifics of this particular “disconnect” in U.S. law-making and enforcement involve two news reports in one week: First, an August 16 story in the New York Post revealing how police (http://www.nypost.com/seven/08162009/news/regionalnews/sweet_lemonade_kid_lapped_184770.htm) with the city’s Parks Department slapped a $50 fine, without warning, on a 10-year-old and her flummoxed dad, who responsibly accompanied her, for setting up an “unlicensed” lemonade stand, something every child used to do 25 years ago no matter where it was.
The very next day, the Washington Times carried a report by Iason Athanasiadis (http://washingtontimes.com/news/2009/aug/17/khomeini-ally-now-leads-iran-dissidents/) concerning how, in 1978 (the height of Boomer student activism), a brash young man named Moshen Sazegara “quit his studies at the University of Illinois to join Ayatollah Rubollah Khomeini’s return from exile to lead Iran’s Islamic Revolution” and to help establish “Iran’s Revolutionary Guard…an ideological army entrusted with safeguarding the principles of the revolution”.
Apparently, the student’s eventual fall-out with the abusive, terrorist regime proved a reality check, and Sazegara returned to the U.S. to lead a global opposition movement to the regime he once so brashly supported.
This story, picked up by several news outlets, unfailingly implied an endorsement of this “resistance leader,” despite the fact that in his youthful arrogance, Sazegara bears substantial responsibility for the overthrow of a pro-Western government and for plunging Iran into an 8th-century horror. One woman who escaped Iran relays how her young, female colleague, forced into burqa-like garb, accidentally allowed her black head shawl to slip backward. One of the Revolutionary Guards yanked the heavy scarf down to “where it ought to be,” took a short nail and hammered the shawl into the woman’s forehead. That’s the kind of “peace and nonviolence” the naïve, young Sazegara thought he was installing to replace the old shah — admittedly no saint, but at least with visions of a more democratic nation. Some of that was sparked when the shah was forced by old traditions to divorce his beloved wife, Soroya, when she could not bear him an heir. But such was forgotten in the rush to demonize anything pro-Western.
The larger point here is why Sazegara, who caused so much harm, was allowed to return, or indeed why he, and others like him, are allowed to intervene in the affairs of potentially hostile nations. Apparently, he was an undergraduate student at both Sharif University of Technology in Iran and the Illinois Institute of Technology while a leader of the student movement against the shah. This smacks of dual citizenship, but could not be confirmed in an online search.
What is striking is that both then and now Sazegara is a supporter of “civil disobedience” and “protest movements.” Where did he learn that? Not in Iran, for sure. He learned it in America, where universities are steeped in Marxist strategies of inciting dissent through mob psychology. He would have been better off setting up lemonade stands.
Sazegara’s post-graduate work in multiple countries is impressive, yet one has to wonder at our system of “law enforcement” which has since the 1970s glossed over important connections to terrorist organizations, illegal immigration, and other matters of national security and public safety, yet has no trouble delivering a citation to a ten-year-old over a lemonade stand.
From idiot programs like “click it or ticket,” to non-programs like “aggressive driver imaging” (which never focuses on anyone driving erratically), to so-called “airport security” that plays tough with elderly women, the message is: Good citizens are easy; but we don’t mess with really dangerous folks.”
There have been thousands of warnings since the volatile 70s that out-of-control, violent crime; terrorist attacks; and grandiose fraud scams, to mention just a few of the societal changes that now affect everyone, were coming — without intervention from the courts or “the law.” As By Ron Ewart, President of the National Association of Rural Landowners, put it in an article, “How Can We Undo It?”: “We are a country under the rule of law all right, but we have taken law and rule-making to the extreme edge of absurdity, if not insanity.”
Mr. Ewart cites the 80,700 pages in the Federal Register to make his case. “The United States Code is perched on multiple shelves and is 16,845 pages, according to the government printing office. The Tax Code, Title 26 [alone], is 3,387 pages. This doesn't even begin to cover millions of pages of state and local laws, regulations, restrictions and ordinances...[many of which] are patently without constitutional authority.
The duty of government is to protect Americans from all enemies, foreign and domestic, and to support parents in their efforts to protect children from harm. But what if it is our own elected officials, both by their sins of omission (in failing to read the bills it passes, and insist on enforcement of existing criminal statutes) and its sins of commission (passing “gotcha” ordinances that restrict normal, everyday activities of individuals, such as “unlicensed” lemonade stands), who are doing the harm?
Beverly K. Eakman is a former teacher and retired federal employee who served as speechwriter for the heads of three government agencies and as editor-in-chief of NASA’s newspaper at the Johnson Space Center. Based now in Washington, DC, she is a freelance writer, the author of five books, and frequent keynote speaker on the lecture circuit. Her most recent book is "Walking Targets: How Our Psychologized Classrooms Are Producing a Nation of Sitting Ducks" (Midnight Whistler Publishers).
SOURCE:
http://www.jbs.org/jbs-news-feed/5253-you-know-your-nation-is-in-trouble-when