Category: Culture

This is National School Choice Week, and I am thrilled to support the efforts of so many brave educators, teachers, lawmakers and parents who are standing up for kids, and the choices of parents and communities to pick what’s right for their families.

School choice is close to my heart, because Diane and I chose to home-school our two children, and were blessed to see our kids not only succeed in academics but excel out in the real world. Living on a ranch 36 miles from town would have meant multiple hours in a school bus every day for our kids, not to mention the countless wasted hours that a public school teacher must spend on discipline, and the lowest-common-denominator approach that so many schools are forced to take, even with well-adjusted, bright students.

So, we decided that our kids would be better served by more freedom, and the choice of home-schooling. By the time our children were in 8th grade, they tested out of High School on their SATs, and they reveled in the freedom to pursue their interests and take on entrepreneurial endeavors in junior high and high school. Children are gifts to us, their parents, and there is nothing that brings me more joy than watching my son build custom furniture using skills I passed on to him, or my daughter enjoying classic literature because my wife and I nurtured that love of English and let her experience the classics at a young age.

Because of my experience with our family, and the way that I see parents fighting for their children’s education every day, I fully support school choice. This doesn’t mean that I think everyone should do what Diane and I did, but that parents should have the freedom to choose the best option for their family and circumstances: whether that is private school, public school, charter school or home-schooling.

I think that parents and communities are the best advocates for children, and they know best how to motivate, teach and inspire their students. Centrally planned and mandated curriculums cannot account for the learning styles, unique capabilities and diverse backgrounds of children across America, and nor should it.

Through the wasteful spending of the Federal education system, the poorly written curriculum of Common Core and the deadly grip of unions in public schools, our kids are being left behind the rest of the world, and an entire generation of students are sentenced to duller futures because we are not giving them the choice to succeed.

For example, the 2012 Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) found that: “While the U.S. doesn’t break the top ten on any academic subject, it ranks fifth in educational expenditures at a whopping $115,000 per student. Only Austria, Luxembourg, Norway, and Switzerland spend more. Countries that outperform the United States spend drastically less.” as cited in this Americans for Prosperity article: http://americansforprosperity.org/legislativealerts/what-pisa-tells-us-about-american-education-reform

As the Federation for Children points out:

• An estimated 1.1 million students failed to graduate with a diploma in 2011. That is 6,000 dropouts a day or one dropout every 29 seconds.
• Nearly half (48 percent) of public schools across the country are labeled as failing, and they serve a disproportionate number of minority students.
• Only 24 percent of eighth and 12th grade students have solid writing skills. Students who qualify for the federal free and reduced-price lunch program scored 27 points below students from families with higher incomes.
• The national achievement gap between lower- and higher-income students is 27 points.
• Students who drop out of school are twice as likely to end up in poverty.

Stats found here: http://federationforchildren.org/why-school-choice

This is a crisis of epic proportions, but opponents of school choice would have us believe that the status quo is “just fine”. Do those numbers seem “just fine” to you? How would you use $115,000 to educate your child, if given the choice?

It must be noted that, although there are certainly a few bad apples, teachers and principals are not the problem – the bureaucracy surrounding public schooling is. We are so worried about the protection of teachers and the satisfaction of the teacher’s union that we are failing our kids on a grand scale. More and more parents and students are begging for school choice and a chance to home-school, attend a private or charter school, or force change in their public schools, but comfortable education professionals and the entrenched status quo are stifling this movement.

We should be risking everything to make our kids’ dreams come true, not holding them back to meet our desires. So I think it’s time to remove the stigma from School Choice and let parents, communities and educators have a say once again.

Every child should have access to quality education, and schools should have to compete for educational dollars, not stifle dissent and punish parents who are simply looking out for their families.

Religious education, learning disabilities or low-income neighborhoods are just a few of the issues that school choice can help solve, so join with me this week, and let’s Amplify Choice – giving every child a hope of a bright future and the kind of healthy, intellectually stimulating education that my kids were blessed to experience.

More resources

• http://amplifychoice.com/
• http://www.edchoice.org/Blog/January-2013/The–Fruits–and-the-Future-of-Centralization-in-P
• http://www.edchoice.org/Research/Reports/A-Win-Win-Solution–The-Empirical-Evidence-on-School-Choice.aspx
• http://watchdogwire.com/michigan/2014/01/28/choice-its-a-beautiful-thing-commentary/
• http://americansforprosperity.org/legislativealerts/what-pisa-tells-us-about-american-education-reform
• http://federationforchildren.org/why-school-choice

“From the moment of conception, the unborn has a human nature. That he cannot yet speak, reason, or perform personal acts means only that he cannot yet function to the degree we can, not that he lacks the essential nature that makes those functions possible in the first place.”  — Scott Klusendorf, in The Case for Life

As you wonder about today’s tragic anniversary of Roe v Wade, consider the implications of Klusendorf’s statement. I believe Scott nails it.  He states an obvious, self-evident, common-sense truth that deflates the pro-choice moral position. Philosophically, there is no significant difference between the man I am today and the baby that I was in my mother’s arms 57 years ago. Clearly, this same logic also holds for me as an embryo only days or weeks earlier than that.

The logic of this pro-life position is stated clearly in what is known as the SLED Defense for Life. SLED represents four logical arguments based upon Size, Level of development, Environment and Degree of dependency.

Here’s a summary –

Size: Does size matter in our moral assessment of human beings? Embryos are smaller than newborns and newborns smaller than adults, but does that matter? Are larger people more valuable than smaller people? Since men are usually larger than women are women less valuable?

Obviously not. Men, teens, babies are not granted their inherent,  self-evident, inalienable rights based on our Creators consideration of their size or potential size.

Be thankful that people are not graded for size, shape or color like Grade A poultry eggs. Our internal moral compass informs us rightly that size doesn’t equal value.

Level of development: Does level of development matter in assessing our stature as humans?

Indeed, embryos and fetuses are less developed than you and I. Yet,  a two-year old is also less developed than a full frown man or woman. Is this where the pro-choice movement wants our nation to stand?

Are we willing to say that athletes have more worth or value than those who are less developed. Do bodybuilders have more worth than those who are handicapped or have not yet reached their full developmental potential?

Maybe it’s not just physical. Maybe this category should include mental capacity, also. For instance, embryos have no sense of self awareness. Would that  make a difference? Does a six-day old baby have self-awareness?   What about those who lack the immediate capacity for performing normal mental functions, as do the comatose, the sleeping, and those with Alzheimer’s Disease.

Environment: Your location has no bearing on your humanness. Whether you are in the local elementary school or the county jail your value as a human being is not weighed differently. The same holds true for you while in bed verses your stature at the office. You may look funnier in one place over the other, but your stature as a human does not change.

If this is true, how can someone claim that there is a significant difference between the nature of the “unborn” and the “born?”  The ultimate nature of this being is still that of a human.

Degree of Dependency: I have been an insulin dependent Type-I diabetic since I was in my late teens. That means I have taken somewhere near 40,000 injections of insulin (40 years x 365 days x 3 injections per day). My life has been the ultimate expression of dependency on modern medicine. Does that make me, or any of the other millions of diabetics less human?

Although humans differ immensely with respect to gifts, talents, accomplishments, preferences they all share in equal value as part of humanity. Humans are valuable because God has deemed them valuable and as their “creator has endowed them with certain inalienable rights that among those are the right to Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

No human being, regardless of size, level of development, race, gender, or place of residence, should be excluded from the moral community of human persons. In other words, the pro-life view of humanity is inclusive, indeed wide open, to all, especially those that are small, vulnerable and defenseless.

Photos courtesy of: http://heatherwagnerphotography.com/blog/

Professionals in our timber industries are the best-equipped stewards of our forests. However, in Oregon, more than 50% of the state is owned by the Federal government, so this means that private industry, state and local governments have ultimately no control over most of Oregon’s resource-rich landscapes. As a county commissioner I regularly see the tragic results from ill-conceived federal policies and the high costs of unintended consequences.

In Klamath County, and throughout the 2nd District, we find ourselves begging for favors from the Federal government instead of being allowed to create jobs, build communities and see prosperity flourish at the local level. The political establishment prefers rewarding national or regional special interest groups rather than local communities because that creates a culture of power, money and control for themselves. Federal control and regulation diminishes the effectiveness of those most likely to steward natural resources well (loggers, miners, ranchers, etc.).

A classic example of this troubling trend is the recent Restoring Healthy Forests for Healthy Communities Act (HR 1526). Instead of giving O&C counties and private enterprise responsibility for forestry lands (that are already designated “to provide for economic stability of local communities and industries”) this bill gives 50% of that land to special interest groups who have neither earned nor shown stewardship of it.

These groups, often environmentalists from San Francisco or New York, are usually headquartered in Washington, D.C. Ever wonder why these groups voice concern for Oregon’s communities and habitat while residing in the capitol?

These environmental special interests have political power in Washington, which allows their media moguls to raise the massive capital needed to control industries throughout the West. This concentrated power decimates our local communities. In Oregon’s 2nd District, whole towns and counties are withering financially. They don’t have access to their land’s natural resources, like timber, and the result is lost infrastructure and jobs that these communities desperately need.

The political establishment’s policy essentially denies these communities the freedom to pursue private enterprise and support themselves. This is not how our representative government is supposed to work.

Bills like HR 1526 eventually hurt those they’re trying to help, even though they are lauded by the media and the political class as wonderful bipartisan efforts. Congressmen Walden, DeFazio and Schrader’s bill is troublesome because Congress looks good while not substantially helping the region. The rural communities affected by this O&C bill accept these negotiations because they know the Feds dominate the conversation and they feel they don’t have a choice.

As your Congressional Representative, I’ll take a different stand. Although a cup of tepid soup might help a starving soul, our Federal legislators shouldn’t be working the ladle, nor forcing us to accept such bare-bones deals. Instead, they should allow us freedom to prosper, by opening markets and creating opportunities for success in the local economy, not in the halls of Washington.

Therefore, I’m going to stand up for Oregon’s entrepreneurs, foresters, harvesters, ranchers and miners. These are the vibrant businesses and families that have the tenacity to bring our communities back to life. I believe in these individuals more than I believe the professional politicians. I’ve lived and worked beside these ingenious, hardworking problem-solvers for years.  Unlike Washington’s half-hearted politics, offering tepid hand-outs saddled with onerous controls, these Oregonians just need government to get out of the way and let them succeed.

Don’t mistake my optimism for naiveté – I know there are difficulties in any public policy. But unlike some in the permanent political class, I don’t think these problems are unsolvable. I think it’s the responsibility of our representatives to truly uphold the interests of the people and not force citizens to take bad deals which entail more laws, more regulation, less enterprise and less freedom.

It’s disingenuous to bully local governments into accepting sub-par deals that fund special interest environmental groups from out-of-state at the local communities’ expense. It’s tempting to take these political “deals” – as a commissioner, my support for HR 1526 arises out of sheer frustration; I have no other viable alternative, but I think we can do better.

It’s long-past time that we stood up for the men and women who exhibit the professionalism and knowledge needed to insure successful timber sales and harvests while protecting these beautiful forest resources.

For more on our natural resources, check out the links below:

• Endangered Species Act: On 40th anniversary, time to rethink how we protect wildlife
• Lawsuit Seeks Sustainable Timber Harvest on O&C Lands Companies ask Court to remedy federal agency inaction
• Enviornmentalists & Tribes Team Together, Again
• Government Fiddles, Our Nation’s Forests Burn
• Fox News Video: A June GAO report found that the Obama Administration blew $500 million on green jobs training for jobs that don’t exist.
• Video: Energy Makes America Great
• Here Comes Another Sham …

Last week, in a letter to the Herald & News editors, someone commented that:

“[Linthicum] never seems to use the word ‘we’, but generally expresses his personal feelings toward issues and starts every objection with ‘I’.”

Frankly, I find this odd, because, surely, my objections belong to me. While various individuals  might agree, or disagree, with my positions, I am voicing them because they are mine. I see no problem with owning my opinions as my own.

Each of us as an Individual

We are all different and we all carry different ideas.  We are different in height, weight, body-type, talent and skill. We each come from different educational backgrounds; we have different life experiences, families and, hence, different perspectives.

More than likely each of us ate lunch yesterday based upon our own individual preferences. We each weighed several factors differently. One factor might be our own likes and dislikes. Another might be our family heritage, or cost and time constraints. We may even choose differently based upon who is present or who is missing, or what events were scheduled for later in the afternoon.  Each of these represents our potential individual choice that is based upon free and voluntary preferences combined with competing options.

Would it be fair for someone to assert, “We object to pepperoni pizza!” because the one individual speaking preferred oily anchovies, instead? Obviously – No.

Now, if this is true for something as insignificant as lunch, how true is it for the more complex issues associated with county government?

Underlying Idea

However, the more relevant issue isn’t the use of the word “I”, or “we” but it is the underlying collectivist idea. The implication, in the original complaint, is that the collective’s voice is more powerful than the individual’s voice. This claim is false and is a typical leftist tactic for getting individuals to bow to the forces of political correctness.

This is why the 1^st Amendment to the US Constitution guarantees that, “Congress shall make no law… abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble…”¹ These rights belong to the individual, not the state, and are collectively referred to as securing the “Liberties of Conscience.”

The false notion, that your personal voice is irrelevant, should be an anathema to everyone who values their personal liberty and freedom.

However, be forewarned, this pressure, for the recognition of the collective good above the voluntary and personal character of an individual’s right to choose, is part of the collectivist’s dream.

The other irony with regard to this gentleman’s letter is that he sounds somewhat conservative. Yet, he has fallen into the statist camp because of the promised, yet undelivered, benefits of growing government programs.

It breaks out like this. Statists can be either liberal or conservative; either Republican or Democrat.

By definition, a statist adheres to statism which is the, “principle or policy of concentrating extensive economic, political, and related controls in the state at the cost of individual liberty.”²

Therefore, both conservatives and liberals can be statists. The only requirement is that they support an ever-larger government paid for by ever-increasing taxes.

An Illustration

Here’s an example using “public safety” or “law and order” as an illustration.

The liberal statist will seek to alleviate the circumstances that caused the “troubled-youth” to run afoul of the law. The solution might be a War on Poverty, a No-Child-Left-Behind education policy, work-force training, or even Midnight Basketball.  Note, all of these programs require administration, implementation, management, statistical analysis and ever-increasing tax dollars.

Meanwhile, the conservative statist argues for tougher jail sentences for the “low-life thugs.” This will include more police officers, more prisons, more facilities and programs, along with more parole and probation officers.  Note, all of these solutions also require administration, implementation, management, statistical analysis and ever-increasing tax dollars.

The problem isn’t that some kids won’t be helped by some of these solutions, regardless of which ideology propagates them. The problem is that the central planner cannot possibly know which kid likes anchovies or pepperoni, or which kid is truly criminal. These one-size fits all programs are costly and inefficient. More often than not they are a drain on the free economy and they often produce more long-term private harm than public good.

The long-term harm stems from the loss of individual, family and neighborly responsibility. The State assumes more control through these seemingly good efforts but, in essence, also becomes the new nanny. Parents slowly allow the newest program to help them solve problems with their children. It becomes much more than a parenting helpline because every additional State program strengthens the tacit assumption that it is the duty of the State to deal with all these evils to secure untold public benefits.

As the power of the administrative organization is enlarged, there is a corresponding decrease in the power of the taxpayer. Over time it becomes harder to constrain the growth of these bureaucratic programs. Additionally, the multiplication of careers opened by this developing bureaucracy, tempts others to favor its growth.

These ideas also get couched as being “good for the economy” due to the new career employment opportunities that spring up. Unfortunately for the taxpayer, these new jobs develop in public employee unions that have costly and unfunded PERS benefits tacked on. Every job created in this new State sector drains the equivalent number of jobs from the private sector. There is no net gain, but the loss of individual and family prosperity will have a greater impact across the social fabric of the community than the narrowly focused bureaucracy that gets enlarged.

Worse still, bureaucrats use taxpayer funding to promote their program. Candidates for public office also promote these empty promises because they sound so good. I refer to these as “empty promises” because we have spent trillions in our various wars on poverty, drugs, education reform, swat teams and prisons with no discernible statistical success.

And finally, the media, ever responsive to popular new programs, strengthens these ideas by lending them air-time. Unfortunately, the opposing view finds less media acknowledgement because it appears that the counter-opinion doesn’t have a master plan.

They do, however.

The Solution

The solution is the plan laid out in the Declaration of Independence:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. That, to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”³

The individual is the primary focus of these inalienable rights. The individual is of first importance because all other cultural units arise from the individual, whether they are groups, organizations, counties, or states. These rights don’t originate from the State, rather, they are the entitlements which come from, “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God.”⁴

Individuals carry the weight, focus and cultural might of the community, not the nanny State. The individual has the right, responsibility and obligation to effectively manage these areas of his life. This can only be achieved by allowing for personal prosperity, liberty and individual rights. These rights are the foundation for independent action based upon the free-will of the individual and are the bedrock concepts underlying the basic tenants of our Nation.