A Letter to an Ol' School-Mate

Front Porchers---you may enjoy this email sent to an ol' school mate of 45 years ago. I enjoyed writing it...

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Norris---Thanks for getting me off my butt to write this! If by "Americanism" you mean your high school alma mater taught you how you were property of the State, then I agree.

As you recall, it was my high school too. But if your definition of "Americanism" involves liberty, private property and self-reliance, well, unless you solely attended Del Driver's history class, I'll wager you were never asked to read the Constitution, Declaration of Independence, The Wealth of Nations, The Road to Serfdom, Economics in One Lesson, The Federalist Papers as a school assignment.

For sure, we weren't asked to understand them.

You never heard God and Man at Yale mentioned, Atlas Shrugged, Henry Hazlitt, Ludwig von Mises, Lysander Spooner. But you did hear about Karl Marx, if guardedly. Castro was a a hero. We were told "Communism" was ideal in a perfect world, but human greed had prohibited it from fully flourishing. If you said the pledge of allegiance in high school, they didn't teach the meaning of the words. You never heard the term "free markets", and were never taught the meaning of individual rights---all of which made America what it was. We were all either learning lies about America's past, or nothing at all.

It's no reflection on you, other than perhaps a kodachromed memory. Progressivism was burrowing its way into America's fabric back then. and before. It's merely more in your face now.

I was in the class behind you---maybe things all changed in one year. But you'd be surprised at the group of counselors, coaches, teachers and students in our class and yours that literally put our money where our mouth was to try to get the message to our poor parents, "The Greatest Generation," about what was happening to our school system. At least one is a another friend of yours on FB whom you dated, another was your coach and mentor. And I can tell you had no idea what transpired and culminated on June 7, 1967. (Yes, that's an invitation to inquire under separate cover).

Speaking of American history, you probably do recall "Join or die." If we don't stop bickering amongst ourselves, whether we call ourselves libertarians, conservatives, free market advocates, 'Americans,'we will be consumed by a united, focused alliance of tyranny: socialists, race-baiters, communists, progressives, jihadists, fascists, parasites of all descriptions, all of whom despise us and our freedom more than they value their own lives. With the world literally on the brink, the time for hair-splitting, handwringing about the nuances between ourselves has past, don't you agree? Now if we can find out what Bren's been sniffing and take it away from her, she can go back to doing the work of any 10 of us mortal activists... :)

The College 'Education' Scam

This issue infuriates me. It's a double-barrelled whammy of colossal proportions. (1) ALL citizens are compelled to support, by various subsidies, taxes, etc. unconconscionably priced 'education' in the US (2) the 'education' is really indoctrintation, turning the impressionable clients ('students') into willing accomplices in the destruction of American civilation. We ignore this at our peril.

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America's College Bubble Next to Burst

The National Inflation Association (NIA) is pleased to officially announce that it will soon be releasing its hour long documentary 'College Conspiracy', which will expose the U.S. college education system as the largest scam in U.S. history. NIA has been producing 'College Conspiracy' for the past six months and plans to release the movie on May 15th. NIA members will be given the first opportunity to watch this must see documentary, which we hope will change the college education industry for the better.

NIA expects 'College Conspiracy' to take college education by storm and expose the facts and truth about tuition inflation to prospective college students. Almost everybody applying to college has heard the oft-repeated statistic that Americans with college degrees earn $1 million more in lifetime income than high school graduates without a degree. This is one of those statistics that gets repeated so many times that just about everybody accepts it as fact, but nobody actually does the research to confirm whether or not it is true. 'College Conspiracy' will prove once and for all if indeed this so-called statistic is true or just a myth.

If 70.1% of high school graduates enroll in a college or university, how does a college degree give you an advantage over the rest of the population? Back in the early 1960s, Americans didn't need to go to college. We were a creditor nation with a strong manufacturing base. With an unemployment rate of only 5%, jobs were available to almost everybody. Less than 50% of American high school graduates enrolled into college. For those who did attend college and graduate with a degree, it was actually something special that made you stand out from the rest of the field, because not everybody had one.

American college tuition inflation has been out of control for the past decade. During the financial crisis of late-2008/early-2009, almost all goods and services in America at least temporarily declined in price. The only service in America that continued to rise in price throughout the financial crisis, besides health care, was college education. Despite real unemployment in America reaching 22%, students were brainwashed into believing that if they were lucky enough to be blessed with the privilege to get half a million dollars into debt to obtain a college degree, they will be on a path to riches and have a guaranteed successful career; whereas those who don't attend college are destined to be failures in life.

The current college education bubble is one of the largest bubbles in U.S. history. The college bubble has been fueled by the U.S. government's willingness to give out cheap and easy student loans to anybody who applied for them, regardless of if they will ever have the ability to pay the loans back. Student loan debt in America is now larger than credit card debt, but unlike credit card debt, student loan debt can't be discharged in bankruptcy.

During the 1970s, college students were able to afford their own college tuition without getting into any debt, simply by working a part-time job year round or by working a full-time job during the summer. Not only that, but most college students were also able to afford their own car and a small apartment. However, since 1970, Americans have experienced a 50% decline in their standard of living due to the Federal Reserve's dangerous and destructive monetary policies. You never heard of parents setting up college savings accounts for their children 40 years ago, but thanks to the Federal Reserve, this has become the norm.

The biggest competitive threat to Wal-Mart today in terms of market cap ($192 billion) is not Target ($35 billion) like you might think, but is actually Amazon.com ($89 billion). Wal-Mart is able to offer the lowest prices out of all brick and mortar retailers, because of the size and scope of the company, which allows them to be profitable even at extremely low gross margins. However, while Wal-Mart's stock price is only up 16% from where it was exactly 5 years ago, Amazon.com's stock price is up 470% during this same time period.

Amazon.com's stock price has risen by a 29 times higher percentage than Wal-Mart due to the fact that they sell their products over the Internet with substantially less overhead costs. NIA believes that the future of college education is over the Internet and that Americans in the future will be able to receive a better quality education from the best professors from all around the world at only a fraction of the cost of a traditional brick and mortar college education.

For the vast majority of college courses, there is absolutely nothing that students can learn in a huge multi-million dollar lecture hall with hundreds of other students that they can't learn at home listening to that same professor on a computer. The only reason online colleges haven't taken off yet in America and still have less than a 1% market share of U.S. higher education is because America has a college-industrial complex that cares only about profits and not educating students. The people who control the system simply don't want the system to change, because they are making way too much money by turning American students into indentured servants.

Back in the 1980s when Americans graduated high school, they would get hundreds of thousands of dollars into debt to buy a house. Today, millions of Americans have mortgage-sized debts, but still live with their parents. All they have is a piece of paper called a college degree, that is rapidly declining in value even faster than tuitions are skyrocketing in price.

'College Conspiracy' was made possible by the personal stories that were submitted to us by thousands of NIA members. NIA's staff spent the past six months traveling across the country, interviewing our country's top expert guests in nine different states. Please tell all of you family members and friends to become members of NIA for free immediately at http://inflation.us so that they along with you can be among the first to see 'College Conspiracy'.

"The Dog Returns to His Vomit..."

Welcome to Spring on The Front Porch! Many of us find ourselves asking "Why?" when we observe, dumb-struck, the incredible suicidal tendencies of the human race. A hundred or so years ago, Rudyard Kipling viewed the very same insanity we think is new today. Here was his answer. I'm not sayin' we're so pre-ordained to implode, but it is more than a little thought provoking; besides being a an eloquent, haunting piece of poetry...



Rudyard Kipling: THE GODS OF THE COPYBOOK HEADINGS

As I pass through my incarnations in every age and race,

I Make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market-Place.
Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall,

And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.

We were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in turn

That Water would certainly wet us, as Fire would certainly burn:

But we found them lacking in Uplift, Vision and Breadth of Mind,

So we left them to teach the Gorillas while we followed the March of Mankind.

We moved as the Spirit listed. They never altered their pace,

Being neither cloud nor wind-borne like the Gods of the Market-Place.

But they always caught up with our progress, and presently word would come

That a tribe had been wiped off its icefield, or the lights had gone out in Rome.

With the Hopes that our World is built on they were utterly out of touch

They denied that the Moon was Stilton; they denied she was even Dutch

They denied that Wishes were Horses; they denied that a Pig had Wings.

So we worshipped the Gods of the Market Who promised these beautiful things.

When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace.

They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.

But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,

And the Gods of the Copybook Heading said: “Stick to the Devil you know.”

On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life

(Which started by loving our neighbour and ended by loving his wife)

Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith,

And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “The Wages of Sin is Death.”

In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,

By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;

But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,

And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “If you don’t work you die.”

Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew,

And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true

That All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four –

And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more.

* * * * *

As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man –

There are only four things certain since Social Progress began –

That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,

And the burnt Fool’s bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire –

And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins

When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins

As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn

The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!

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Re-printed in part in THE OVERTON WINDOW by Glenn Beck.