Liberals and the art of politicizing disaster...

Check the timeline, with regards to how governments (yes, plural, as in local, state, and federal), responded to the threat, and impact of, Hurricane Katrina. Then read what Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi (D), from California had to say,

"The people of the Gulf region were struck by two disasters. First was the hurricane and then the failure of the federal government in time of great need," she said. "The buck stops at the president's desk. The president said he's going to lead the investigation into what went wrong. He needs to look only in the mirror." (emphasis added)

Pelosi's attempt to score political points, at the expense of hurricane ravaged Americans, is yet another fine example of liberal crassness. She's a moron. UPDATE: Check Hugh Hewitt's post on Pelosi. A choice excerpt,

Not only have Senator Reid and Congresswoman Pelosi apparently not caught up with the growing recognition that Governor Blanco's ineptitude is the ground zero for the chaos in New Orleans, they haven't even figured out that if you want to control committees, you have to win elections. ...Now they want to blame Bush for Blanco, fire Brown instead of demanding answers from Nagin, and generally want to try and politicize a disaster that most Americans just want addressed as speedily and humanely as possible. You have to hand it to the Dems, they are nothing if not consistent -- consistently hysterical, and consistently wrong.

Maybe moron wasn't the right word... how about buffoon? UPDATE 2: Also check Instapundit's posts, here and here. Or listen to Rep. Cynthia McKinney (D), from Georgia, speaking in the House,

As the mostly black people were herded into what looked like concentration camps , Barbara Bush suggested that they were really better off now than they were before. Well, maybe she has got something there, because it took losing an entire city for the "compassionate conservatives'' in Washington, D.C., to finally get some compassion in the laws they pass, in the policies they enact, in what they do around here. (emphasis added)

Update 3: For those who think this post is an attempt to gloss over the mismanaged response to Hurricane Katrina please re-read it (and the Katrina Scenario was known post immediately preceding it). You can also go read how Instapundit and others are pointing out that Bush appointed FEMA managers lack, in a now blatantly obvious way, pertinent experience. But as for this post, the title should give you a clue as to its point - Liberals and the art of politicizing disaster.

Katrina scenario was known...

Per Chertoff: Katrina scenario did not exist,

Defending the U.S. government's response to Hurricane Katrina, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff argued Saturday that government planners did not predict such a disaster ever could occur. But in fact, government officials, scientists and journalists have warned of such a scenario for years. Chertoff, fielding questions from reporters, said government officials did not expect both a powerful hurricane and a breach of levees that would flood the city of New Orleans. "That 'perfect storm' of a combination of catastrophes exceeded the foresight of the planners, and maybe anybody's foresight," Chertoff said.

But in Sinking City of Venice, a NOVA program, which aired in November of 2002,

NARRATOR: Storms push water into the city, forcing pedestrians to use impromptu high-rise sidewalks until the water drains back out to sea. But as spectacular and destructive as Venice's high waters can be, some experts fear New Orleans geography may invite larger floods. Joseph Suhayda, Coastal Engineer: The flooding that threatens Venice is of a more chronic nature. New Orleans would be subject to a high level of threat associated with a hurricane storm surge that could in fact devastate or destroy the city. NARRATOR: That's because 70 percent of New Orleans is below sea level. In the event of a very severe hurricane—category 4 or 5—the city's levee system would not be able to keep massive surges out. The possible result of this nightmare scenario: a city drowned under more than 20 feet of water in places. A worrying prospect for New Orleans, which, like Venice, is engaged in a constant struggle with nature. (emphasis added)

Katrina Relief orgs...

You can donate online to hurricane relief funds through the following organizations: Assemblies of God World Vision Home School Legal Defense Association

Socialization...

Naturalism Nonsense...

New exhibit at London Zoo - humans, per Yahoo! News.

"We have set up this exhibit to highlight the spread of man as a plague species and to communicate the importance of man's place in the planet's ecosystem," London Zoo said. The scantily-clad volunteers will be treated as animals and kept amused at the central London zoo with games and music. ...Brendan Carr, 25, from Aylesbury, southern England, wrote a poem in his bid to get on the mountain.

Mankind as a plague species, communicating importance, kept amused with games and music, the use of poetry? It continues to amaze me how believers in naturalism ignore the implications of the reality of the abstract. Sometimes I wonder why I should take the time to develop arguments against naturalism when all one needs to do is let the naturalists do it themselves.

On detecting bad design...

The process employed in an oil refinery is, essentially, a very simple one. Crude oil is placed into large vessels which heat the crude and cook the various products out of it (be it jet fuel, diesel, etc.). Of course, the quality of the crude, plays a major role in determining just how it is cooked.

Connecting the many vessels and tanks in an oil refinery is a labyrinth of piping. This piping is not, as you might imagine, of the type you would find at your local Home Depot. It is specialized piping made of specialized materials, depending on the particular application in the refinery. While many of the components of a refinery are similar, their configuration is typically unique. As such, the piping required is designed specifically for the refinery. These pipe pieces are referred to as spools because they have flanges at both ends and, consequently, resemble a common spool.

A cross-section of a typical pipe spool.

Certainly, the complexities found in a refinery will result in pipe spools of various lengths and sizes. It is also not unusual to find pipe spools with bends in them, such as shown below.

Now, due to the nature of unique design, as found in virtually all refinery construction, one would expect that a methodology that employed a common template to be a better design, as compared with a methodology that designed many, if not all, of the spools individually. For example, if one were confronted with several design problems in which the solution turned out to be a common pipe spool of the size and configuration shown above, wouldn't it make sense to keep that configuration? After all, it would save money in terms of design and fabrication time.

Conversely, if one found out that, instead of employing a common template, a unique configuration was used for certain spools, would that be cause to infer bad design?

No. It would not. And the reason why is that one may not have complete access to the design parameters at hand.

Recently there was an explosion at a BP plant in Texas City, Texas. In BP: Wrong type of pipe caused plant explosion, we read,

The installation of the wrong type of pipe spool is believed to have caused last week’s explosion and fire at the same BP plant where 15 people were killed in March, company officials said Monday.

An 8-inch section of heavy steel pipe, located between a compressor and heat exchanger on the Resid Hydrotreater Unit, failed on Thursday. No one was injured during the resulting blast and blaze. The section failed because workers installed the wrong type of steel pipe spool on the outlet of the heat exchanger, BP spokesman Ronnie Chappell said. The elbow-shaped pipe spool, believed to have been mistakenly installed when the unit underwent routine maintenance in February, is not designed to withstand higher temperatures.

Carbon steel pipe is used for lower temperature operations, while stainless steel pipe is used for higher temperature operations. Installing a carbon steel pipe spool in place of a stainless steel pipe spool will result in pipe failure.

Installation procedures should have prevented the installation of the wrong pipe spool. But human error is a tricky thing. So tricky, in fact, that one would expect a better design to be one that takes into account the possibility that a pipe spool of the wrong material type might be inadvertently installed due to its identical configuration with the correct spool.

The lesson here is not that it's difficult to detect design. No, that's the easy part. What's difficult is to conclusively determine that the design detected is truly a bad design.

Keep that in mind whenever you hear evolutionists make claims that certain biological systems or organisms exhibit inherently bad design.

Imago Articulus has moved...

I've moved my Photo-blog, Imago Articulus, over to Typepad. Posts are now categorized, for easier navigation.

Intelligent Confusion...

It's amazing that normally intelligent people, when presented with the prospect of the teaching of Intelligent Design, lose the use of their cognitive faculties. Consider the incident related to by Instapundit in which George Bush was asked about the teaching of Intelligent Design.

Bush wants to teach Intelligent Design in schools. That's just pathetic.

It's not going over well in some places on the right, either. Rick Moran at Right-Wing Nuthouse writes:

Alright then, I’ve got a few more “ideas” that students should probably be exposed to as long as we’re talking about filling their heads with a bunch of nonsense like ID:.

1. The earth is actually a bowl sitting on the back of elephants. Hey! If its good enough for the Hindus, why not us?

2. The God Manitou took pity on a mother bear who had lost her cubs while swimming across Lake Michigan and turned the cubs into islands (the Manitou islands) and the mother into a sand dune (Sleeping Bear Sand Dune).

...Now if I were a White House spinmeister I'd say this was just about teaching children the shape of the debate. But I feel sure that Bush wouldn't be satisfied by a curriculum that exposed the many fallacies of Intelligent Design (the biggest being that its proponents start with a particular Designer in mind and then try to marshal the evidence). And certainly the constituency that he's trying to satisfy wouldn't be. Nor would various other hypotheses (e.g., that our universe is actually a computer model itself, being run by unknown others for unknown purposes) satisfy, I suspect, even though there's more evidence for them -- we see computer models every day -- than for creation by a deity.

At once we have comparisons to various creation myths - has the concept of a "strawman" ever been explained to these people? Or we have claims that a particular Designer is chosen first and then the evidence patterned around said Designer. Such claims only expose the ignorance of the writer to the actual claims of ID proponents. And is it really beyond the horizon line of these people to see that a computer model was generated by a designer? Has it ever occurred to these individuals that the issue should be what is the correct explanation and not what is science? You know - whether or not something is true should trump whether or not it fits within a particular category. You see, the issue really isn't whether or not we should also teach various culture's creation myths or whether or not ID is really science. No, the issue is an a priori assumption that only determinism and chance can explain the reality of our world (including the reality of the abstract). Hence the super-natural, by their imposed definition, is not now, and can never be allowed to be, a possible explanation. Indeed.

Back again...

Well the last 3+ weeks have been hectic, to say the least. Included in one of those weeks was a trip to northern New Mexico, which was very beautiful. I hope to post pics at Imago Articulus soon.

The Artist, and the Ego...

Joe Carter, over at Evangelical Outpost, has a regular series titled The Gallery, in which he features

a different work by a Christian artist. The work will "hang" on my blog so that viewers may have an opportunity to reflect, comment, and discuss the work.

For July 9th he featured the work of photographer Krystyna Sanderson along with the following image: Now, I think that the image, in and of itself, is quite interesting. However, the title of the image is given as Who Do You Say I Am? For those unaware, this is a direct quote from Matthew 16:15 in which Jesus first asks his disciples, Who do people say that the Son of Man is? After telling Jesus that people are referring to him as either John the Baptist, Elijah, Jeremiah, or one of the other prophets, Jesus then asks them directly - But who do you say that I am? The response they give is a pivotal indication of the claim that Jesus has to his identity as the Messiah - the Christ - the Son of the Living God. And Jesus makes it clear to his disciples their knowledge of his identity did not come about through their own intuition, but was revealed to them by God. But, back to our image above. I was, quite frankly, a bit offended at the title of the image. The use of Jesus' words regarding his identity, in the context of a photographic portrait of another human being, seems to me to be inappropriate. Rather than leave a comment at Joe's blog, criticizing the work, I chose to leave a flippant remark, taking the question at a secular level only. I wrote, to answer the question, Who Do You Say I Am?

Santa Claus, in July, after being informed that his elves are two months behind schedule.

Afterwards, another person left a comment in which he indicated he was a bit taken aback by the title used. He said,

Why are the words of Christ which evoked Peter's confession "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the Living God" used as the title of this photo of a querulous old man? It seems incongruous. Better to say nothing than think mistakenly that you've said something.

Venturing over to the artist's website, another commenter attempted an explanation at why the title was used. He said,

Look at the quote I took from Krystyna's gallery of photos on her website: I see each face I photograph as revealing the image of God in which we are all made. It's the old Christian idea that you never know where you'll find Jesus. Whenever you reach out to the least of your brothers in this world (or the greatest), you are reaching out to Jesus himself.

While I'll be the first to agree that God bestowed on the human race His Image - the Imago Dei - one should be very careful in ascribing finding Jesus in the physical features we interpret as a human face. Jesus is the second person of the Trinity. He is not the least of my brothers that I help. The Image of God transcends a mere facial portrait. The essence of the soul, the spirit, and the body, intertwined with one another, created anew as God breathed the life into Adam - this essence - gives us value precisely because it is imparted by God. Grabbing a quote from Jesus regarding his identity to use as a portrait title is simply very bad theology. Yet there may something more going on here than just bad theology. Indeed, the whole idea of the artist having the duty, the obligation, or the need, to enlighten us non-artists seems to be extremely big-headed. I enjoy photography and I enjoy visiting other photo-blogs, but one of the things that truly irritates me is how obtuse work often gets passed off as high-minded art. Investigate some of the photo-blogs for yourself and you'll easily find an eclectic mix of depressing and self-indulgent art. And it certainly isn't limited to photography. Remember Christo's umbrellas? Or how about music? For a few years, back in the '80s, I listened to Bruce Cockburn mainly because every art-minded Christian I knew was recommending him. With but a few exceptions, I found his lyrics to be painfully incoherent (that is, when you could get around his liberal preaching). One thing that did seem clear, though, was his high view of the artist (or, his perception of the artist). Consider his song, Maybe the Poet, from the mid '80s,

Maybe the poet is gay But he'll be heard anyway Maybe the poet is drugged But he won't stay under the rug Maybe the voice of the spirit In which case you'd better hear it Maybe he's a woman Who can touch you where you're human Male female slave or free Peaceful or disorderly Maybe you and he will not agree But you need him to show you new ways to see

Visiting his website today, he doesn't seem to have changed much. How about Bono? Whoa, no way! Let's not even go there. Dylan? Nuh-uh. Well... there's T-Bone Burnett - another critically acclaimed, but virtually unknown, singer-songwriter who supposedly pushed the envelope to who knows where. Or how about his wife Sam Phillips who once said, in a local TV interview, that the inspiration for recent song of hers came after she had gotten lost in a local mall and couldn't find her way out. Oh yeah, no ego issues there. So... what's the whole point of this rant of mine? Why am I venting? To tell you the truth, I don't know. You see... I'm an artist, and you're only obligation is to listen to me.

The Eclipse of God...

For those concerned about the all too frequent over-emphasis on experiential worship that we find in the evangelical community, there are some excellent lectures, by R. C. Sproul, J. Ligon Duncan, and Mark Dever, over at Ligonier Ministries. They are based on a seventeen-part series from a pastor's conference titled Overcoming the Eclipse of God. Also addressed is the aspect of evangelism and whether or not there is a dichotomy between our responsibility to evangelize and our responsibility to make disciples. In other words, should our focus on Sunday morning worship be that of evangelizing and catering to the needs of the non-Christians in our midst, or should our call to worship be centered on the worship of God and the building up of the saints? Consider these comments from R. C. Sproul in his message, The Eclipse of God (part 1 & part 2):

One can’t be brought into the presence of the living God and be bored; one can’t be brought into the presence of the living God and walk away convinced that it was irrelevant. …And what I plead, with my comrades in the ministry, is to resist the seduction of entertainment. All of us are judged in our job for how much the church is growing (in numbers). We know there’s a formula out there by which we can build the church and get people there.

But what we have to ask is: What is it that pleases God?

When you have the solemn assembly of the saints, are we designing worship for the lost? Evangelism is at the heart of the Great Commission, but it’s not at the heart of corporate worship on the Sabbath Day. The purpose of worship on the Sabbath Day, is the edification of the saints, and that they may bring their sacrifice of praise into the House of God.

It’s for them to worship.

Or take the lecture Target Audience (part 1 & part 2), from J. Ligon Duncan:

If we're the assembly of the living God. If we're the household, the family of God... the place where discipleship is going to occur... then what is our goal in preaching? What is our target audience?

In our day and time... the idea is so often proposed that worship and preaching need to be aimed at unbelievers. That what you do in the church's services, if we are going to be effective in drawing people in, is not to use the language of Zion, which is unknown to those who are not members of Zion; and not to use the weighty substance and content of Christian truth and theology because that would offend those who are not party to that code language; and not to preach to the choir, as it were, but to reach out to those who don't know the Gospel. And thus the whole of the service and the whole of the preaching is to be crafted for those who are not members of God's people.

And of course, that's utterly upside down from the standpoint of the New Testament.

...Preaching evangelistically and expositionally are not options that are mutually exclusive to one another. That's what we ought to be doing every Lord's Day!

...Let's reject this dichotomy between evangelistic and edificational preaching. Those two things are always to go together... And so as we think of our target audience, surely we want unbelievers to come to faith in Christ, but we do not want to starve the sheep as we do that, nor do we want to bring unbelievers into the kingdom under misapprehensions about what life in the kingdom is really like.

And, finally, take a listen to Expository Preaching (part 1 & part 2), by Mark Dever:

Expositional preaching is exposing God's Word to God's people, and exposing God's people to God's Word. ...Expositional preaching is making the point of a particular passage of scripture the point of your message. ...At its best, in doing so, showing people how this is so, that is, how the point you've taken from it is in fact the point of that passage, so that you're training them in reading and understanding the Bible; and applying its truths to their lives individually, and corporately as a congregation.

And brethren, we should want people to grasp God's Word. ...We should want people to know the Word of God, not so that they can pass theology exams, but so that they can follow Christ!

...We get to teach people the wonderful truths of God's Word. And we should want them to know the truths of those different books of scripture. ...Do they know what Ruth is really about? Do they understand the point of Ezekiel? When there are troubles in the church and people are falling into factions, do they know to turn to the book of James? Do they know what the books of the Bible are about?

...we are the front-line of teaching God's people God's Word. ...that is our calling when we enter the pulpit. It is to instruct God's people in God's Word, to feed them by God's Word. We should want people to grasp God's Word, and we should want people to be grasped by God's Word.

The Recurring Raptor...

Back in September of 2004 I related the incident in which a bird of prey accidentally invaded our screened in "playroom." Yesterday, while working about the house, I heard the unmistakable call of a bird of prey in our yard. Moving to the nearest window I spied the following...

7/7, The Prime Minister & the Brits...

From Tony Blair's news conference, per CNN,

It is through terrorism that the people that have committed this terrible act express their values, and it is right at this moment that we demonstrate ours. I think we all know what they are trying to do -- they are trying to use the slaughter of innocent people to cower us, to frighten us out of doing the things that we want to do, of trying to stop us going about our business as normal, as we are entitled to do, and they should not, and they must not, succeed.

When they try to intimidate us, we will not be intimidated. When they seek to change our country or our way of life by these methods, we will not be changed. When they try to divide our people or weaken our resolve, we will not be divided and our resolve will hold firm.

We will show, by our spirit and dignity, and by our quiet but true strength that there is in the British people, that our values will long outlast theirs. The purpose of terrorism is just that, it is to terrorize people, and we will not be terrorized.

Stand firm, Tony.

From FoxNews,

Taxi driver Steve Green said that despite the carnage, "people are getting on with it. It's marvelous that they're showing their backbone."

"The thing is, with us Londoners, we're used to the IRA. We don't know anything else. You don't like it, but you learn to deal with it."

I get the impression that the Brits are not about to cave in.

Patriots at work in London...

From CNN,

Blair blames Islamic terrorists An intense police hunt is under way in Britain for terrorists behind a string of bombings on London's transport system that killed at least 37 people and wounded 700 early today. Investigators have not yet said whether they believe the bombers left explosives on three trains and a bus or mounted suicide attacks.

Considering Brian Williams' comparison of American Patriots to Islamic Terrorists, and judging by some of the comments my post on the matter has received, would it be fair to submit the following CNN rewrite?

Blair blames Islamic Freedom Fighters An intense police hunt is under way in Britain for the patriots behind a string of bombings on London's transport system that killed at least 37 infidels and wounded 700 early today. Investigators have not yet said whether they believe the fighters of freedom left explosives on three trains and a bus or mounted suicide attacks.

After all, surely someone must think of the incident in those terms and shouldn't we be, at the very least, more tolerant of other moral views? There are many problems with the moral relativist's point of view. Keep in mind that I have never disputed the fact that someone, somewhere, may see (or may yet see) these malevolent terrorists as freedom fighters. What I've been saying is such a person is flat-out wrong. The issue is not, and has never been, how the opposing side views the matter. Such a position leaves one in the self-defeating realm of moral relativism in which no particular viewpoint can be considered true. This is patently absurd. It's not a matter of "the one who wins get to write the history" as if we can never really trust whatever history we've been handed. While I'll be the first to acknowledge the inherent tendency of man to bring his bias to the table, I would much more readily trust the historical accounts written by men of honor than by men of dishonor. One need only look to our recent past for examples: the reality of the horror of the Civil War (and its causes); the journals of Lewis & Clark; racial segregation in the military during WWII; the wanton disregard for the environment during California's Gold Rush; etc., etc., etc. Intentionally dismembering innocent men, women, and children, through coordinated bomb attacks, is morally wrong. And it doesn't matter that someone may consider it otherwise.

Independence Day...

Have a great Independence Day!

Durbinization byproduct...

Via Instapundit we have a link to a column by a former North Vietnamese POW describing his five years and five months in a prisoner of war camp. Read it.

Moral Relativists gone wild...

When we view morality as ultimately relative, it is not surprising to find the following moronic nonsense spoken with complete seriousness:

Many Americans woke up to a curious story this morning: several of the former Iran Hostages have decided there is a strong resemblance between Iran's new president and one of their captors more than 25 years ago. The White House and most official branches of government are ducking any substantive comment on this story, and photo analysis is going on at this and other news organizations. It is a story that will be at or near the top of our broadcast and certainly made for a robust debate in our afternoon editorial meeting, when several of us raised the point (I'll leave it to others to decide germaneness) that several U.S. presidents were at minimum revolutionaries, and probably were considered terrorists of their time by the Crown in England. (emphasis added)

The piece is from NBC anchor Brian Williams' blog. Later, on NBC nightly news, he continued with,

What would it all matter if proven true? Someone brought up today the first several U.S. presidents were certainly revolutionaries and might have been called 'terrorists' by the British crown, after all.

It seems that the someone was him (referencing his own blog entry). That's it. One man's ceiling is another man's floor. Hence, we must be honest with ourselves and admit that one country's terrorist is another country's patriot. Lest we impose our own morality on another culture we also should refrain from using the term "terrorist" altogether and, considering our ceiling / floor logic, admit that the term "freedom fighter" is more appropriate. After all, what is important is not whether the person's actions are truly wrong (for there is nothing really wrong), but whether the person is sincere in their belief. A Brian Williams' History lesson: Terrorists, circa 2000 Terrorists, circa 1776 HT: Michelle Malkin

Rusty Nails 6/29/05...

Intellectuelle is launched The 7 woman group blog, Intellectuelle, has been launched, and is hosted over at Evangelical Outpost. This week is mainly reserved for each of the women to introduce themselves. Thanks go to Bonnie for her mention of my influence on her venture into the blogosphere. ### Bush's Speech - Why did we go to Iraq? Hugh Hewitt reminds us, despite the claims of the Left, that they have understood all along why we went to war in Iraq. Classic quote from Nicholas Lemann:

In his State of the Union address, President Bush offered at least four justifications, none of them overlapping: the cruelty of Saddam against his own people; his flouting of treaties and United Nations Security Council resolutions; the military threat that he poses to his neighbors; and his ties to terrorists in general and to Al Qaeda in particular.

### Pinkie Rage From Sports Illustrated, Ragin' Rogers: Rangers pitcher goes off on TV cameramen.

Texas Rangers pitcher Kenny Rogers shoved two cameramen Wednesday, sending one to the hospital in a videotaped tirade that included throwing a camera to the ground and threatening to break more.

It seems that Rogers was hurting from a broken pinkie, which had caused him to miss his last start, and he just couldn't stand having those cameras around. Does the phrase "complete butthead" apply here? Actually, maybe it's not complete butthead because he broke his right pinkie and, if you'll notice in the pic, he's doin' his shovin' with his left hand.

Rusty Nails, 6/24/05...

To Public School or Not to Public School? Jollyblogger has a couple of posts titled, Christians and Public Schooling and, Christians and Public Schooling, II, in which he addresses the PCA's recent resolution (which was voted down) which would have encouraged congregants to remove their children from the public school system. David also lists several related links, including that of Russell Moore (Mere Comments) and Al Mohler. ### A Dangerous Business A history professor is murdered in broad daylight with robbery not the apparent motive. ### Dumbing Down the Bible or Readable Accuracy? ### Nightmare The alarm clock went off and it's time to wake up... The American Dream is over. ### MSM bias? No way. ### A Gitmo primer. ### Election Fraud Are Carter's Election Fraud police investigating this? ### Dave Roberts, the infrequent blogger at Welcome to the Planet, has started a photo blog. Check it out over at 1000 Words.

And yet another Home School energizer...

Again from Instapundit we're linked to Give This 'Attic' A Story To Tell, by Anne Applebaum, and We Are Our History - Don't Forget It, by David Gelernter. Applebaum laments on how the Smithsonian Musuem of American History has become a pop culture stop vs. an education stop for American History. She writes,

When the museum was built in 1964, this sort of thing probably wasn't necessary. But judging from a group of teenagers whom I recently heard lapse into silence when asked if they could identify Lewis and Clark, I suspect it's now very necessary indeed. Opinion polls bear out my suspicions. According to one poll, more U.S. teenagers can name the Three Stooges than the three branches of government. Even fewer can state the first three words of the Constitution. A San Francisco reporter once did an informal survey of teenagers watching Fourth of July fireworks in a park and found that only half could name the country from which the United States had won its independence. ("Japan or something, China," said one seventh-grader. "Somewhere out there on the other side of the world.") We're not talking about ignorance of semi-obscure facts here: We're talking about ignorance of basic information.

Gelernter writes,

To forget your own history is (literally) to forget your identity. By teaching ideology instead of facts, our schools are erasing the nation's collective memory. As a result, some "expert" can go on TV and announce (20 minutes into the fighting) that Afghanistan, Iraq or wherever "is the new Vietnam" — and young people can't tell he is talking drivel.

Indeed. While Home Schooling is not the only avenue in which parents can rightfully inform their children about American History, it certainly provides a wonderful opportunity to steer young minds away from apathetic ignorance and towards responsible knowledge.