Who is the Radical: The meaning of success.

I often share moments with my family on this site, and talk about personal experience not to hear myself talk, but to share my successes with those who do not know, or understand what success looks like. As I look around at my fellows, and shop with them at the grocery store, or eat with them at the restaurants, or look at them on our roadways one thing is very evident, that many people have no clue as to where they are going, or what they are doing. They simply do what they are told and show up expecting something to happen, and when nothing ever does, they are eternally disappointed.

When these panicky parents of Lakota and other places leave me these nasty messages with all the pretention of wisdom, as if their lives have been fully lived, and they are in somehow a position to lecture me as to my social obligations, I have to laugh. They are like children telling their parents the ways of the universe, when all they’ve ever experienced is the television in their living rooms. I have to remind myself, even though many of them are close to my age, that they are an uncertain species, who lack confidence in their own child raising abilities. So I often out of the kindness of my heart leave behind little videos and messages for them to use as guides for their own lives, so that they might learn something. I do not however need to learn anything from any of them.

For instance, I recently worked with my son-in-law to help throw a surprise party for my daughter’s 22nd birthday, which I talked about on these pages. Well, it was even more pleasurable to read what she had to say about it a few days later. When I read thoughts like what she produces, it confirms in me that what I say is accurate. I have had great success raising my children. Not just my own, but several others as well. I have read and studied for over four decades now. My education did not end when I graduated from high school. In fact, there was never a teacher who taught me more than I learned on my own. And there was never a teacher who taught my children more than I taught them, and I’d say that they have learned more on their own than I have been able to teach them. So where does that leave public education? Well, for my family, it was a chance to play an instrument. A chance to interact socially. But most of the crap my kids learned in school I had to clarify and undo much of the damage along the way with long talks that went deep into many nights.

My success is confirmed in my daughter’s success, in her ability to think, adapt, translate, love, appreciate, and interact with the world around her. Read her words for yourself.

http://brooketownsend.blogspot.com/2011/11/22-pirates-big-birthday-wishes.html

Many of the families I know cannot stand to be around each other. But this is not the case in our family. The video below shows a snow day from last year where we were all stuck at home because the snow was too intense from the night before. So we found a way to have adventures in and around our house.

So when these tax advocates attempt to paint me as some kind of extremist, as a radical, I have to wonder, by what measure? What is the track record of my accusers? Do they have success at living? I don’t mean to say they are successful because they make a lot of money. But are they truly successful? Have they raised children that actually want to spend time with them when they are grown out of all the options in the world available to them?

My use of aggressive language is simply an understanding of what I’m dealing with in regard to the actual radicals of our age. They call me radical for calling them what they are, failures at life who wish to pretend they are successful by spending money to supplement their lack of parental skill. I’m happy to help them learn where they are wrong, and how they can fix their lives before it’s too late. But I do not need anything from any of them, and it is me they call names when they come to my door and ask me to raise taxes on myself for their own distorted perceptions. I am not a radical for telling them no, and calling them names for interrupting my living with such preposterousness.

Radicalism is the President of the School Board calling a prominent local politician to instruct him that “it is not very wise to not support the school levy,” of which that politician took as a threat. Radicalism is levy supporters advocating boycotts of local businesses who are perceived to support the anti-tax effort. Its teachers who make over 60K a year protesting that they aren’t making enough money for contractually working 9 months a year and 7.5 hours a day. Radicalism is school administration officials who tell parents and other volunteers that they cannot have a bake sale to raise money to save their band program if the levy fails, because if such a thing were to occur, the school district couldn’t use program cuts as extortion against the community to pass the levy. Radicalism is telling the parents who worked hard to put their kids in a Lakota School that if they don’t pay higher taxes that their kids future is in jeopardy, as if the teachers will stop working if their demands are not met. Radicalism is in principals sending negative emails about the community not passing tax levies to their entire staff after levy failures, inciting more anger toward those in the community who didn’t approve a tax increase. Radicalism is ignoring the signs of troubled teens even though there are many paid administrators to act as councilors, and completely failing the job when it counts. Radicalism is in downplaying the acts of a teacher openly participating in child pornography then pretending that it’s an isolated incident and nobody knew about it ahead of time. Radicalism is in a teacher crossing the line to seduce a student’s parent, using the child to begin the deed. When the family confronts the principal, the teacher’s direct supervisor, the only concern is to move the violator from one school to another and cover up the story. Radicalism is teachers preaching to their students how they can help their school pass the levy by going out late on Friday and Saturday nights to steal all the signs of the tax opponents resulting in thousands of dollars in vandalism. And when the incidents are reported by the victims, the issue is brushed under the rug by the authorities who secretly root for the school levies to pass so their police levies also pass when the time comes. Radicalism is when balancing a budget only requires asking the union employees of the district to take a 5% cut in salary when they are already extremely well compensated. The reason is the unions do not want their members to question the union dues their member’s pay, which is close to that amount anyway. Radicalism is expecting the public to forever increase their taxes to compensate for a failed political model of progressive leaning idealists.

I would consider any one of those issues to warrant fury among the public, yet every single one of them has happened at Lakota during the last year, and the public has been too guilty of being “civil.” In their civility, they have been used, and taken advantage of.

The deck is stacked against the tax payer in virtually every conceivable fashion. With our tax money we have built these institutions who believe they have a right to rule us like an empire. They consider any questioning of their behavior to be radical, so there is no way to escape it. So with that in mind, why should I not call them what they are, socialists? They may not be socialists in the way of the Soviet Union, but they are socialists by way of Greece. Is calling public education socialism radical? But isn’t it? What kind of children are they producing?

Well I already know the answer. I’ve been there and done it, and I know what works and what doesn’t. And a teacher in a public school can only supplement what the parent does in the home. And if the parent is too busy to do the job, the child will suffer. You cannot throw money at a teacher and expect them to make your child into gold. That in itself is radical!

I offer these tid-bits of wisdom for your use dear reader. I tend to enjoy my older friends more than my younger ones, even those my own age, because the older friends have achieved a comfortable understanding about how life works. That’s why many of them are now Tea Party members and active in conservative politics, because they learned how not to be burdens on society. But the younger ones, the ones trained to be socialists in their public educations, the ones who expect things to drop into their laps and scratch their heads in wonder why their kids can’t wait to grow up and leave their households never to write unless coaxed into it, because they are terrible parents who are drowning in insecurity, and they are pretentious enough to expect the rest of the world to rescue them from their fallacy.

No, I’m not the radical. I’m the angry guy who decided not to bring a knife to a gun fight but to bring the gun! I’m the guy who recognizes what the real game is all about and I don’t want to play, and I certainly don’t want to dump a lot of money in an education system that is broken to its foundations and advocated by parents who are also broken beyond repair and hopeless.

But I do hope for them anyway. I hope they read what I put down here and learn something; I hope their lives will be enriched just a little. I hope those things because their children actually deserve a chance at life to become something, and their chances of that happening are greatly reduced if their parents aren’t very good at their jobs. The real radicals of education are those who seek to hide their lack of parental skill behind the masks of school spirit and a financial empire that seeks to govern every aspect of our social well-being. No thanks. I’ll stick to my methods which work………………..and are a lot cheaper!

For the answer to everything click the link below!

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2011/09/18/the-answer-is-c-who-runs-society-the-engine-or-the-boxcar/

Rich Hoffman
https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2010/12/04/ten-rules-to-live-by/
http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
www.overmanwarrior.com