The Tears of Things

Social Ambush, Cowardice, and Stupidity: Some New Academic Standards

by Jerome du Bois

Two weeks ago some students, parents, teachers and administrators at West Seattle High School performed a social ambush on a Marine Corp Major, a veteran of Iraq. Both Sound Politics and Michelle Malkin have covered it well, and I was about to take the Major's eight questions and concerns and run down their present status. But rereading Principal Susan Dersé's juking and jiving, her clogged ambivalent verbiage, as well as the stale bureaucratese of the Seattle School Board, reminded me too much of the cowardly side-stepping we got in emails from Christine Schild of the Scottsdale Unified School District.

So here I'm going to quote the Major's letter in full, then point the reader to the relevant posts by Sound Politics and Michelle Malkin. When the reader returns, I'm going to briefly touch on three things: (1) social ambush as a widespread tactic of the empty-headed left, (2) some insights gleaned from a radio interview with the student organizer, who, though dumb as a bag of hammers, manages to show his cruelty, and (3) the abysmally low test scores of West Seattle High students as a partial explanation for their nasty, brutish behavior.

Before we continue, though, a couple of notes: These WSH students call themselves Students Take A Stand, yet only one has come forward. Not one other student, much less a parent, teacher, staff member, who took part in the ambush, or supports this group, has proudly stepped forward to defend their work. Why not? What's it going to be --Students Take A Dump? Students Take Off Running? Step up!

Finally, a local note: tonight the Scottsdale Unified School Board meets at Coronado High School. We've listed some questions elsewhere about Islam in Arizona schools (in our four-part series). We urge concerned parents to take this list to that meeting and ask these questions. (You might also want to check the size of the wedge of Intelligent Design.) Thanks.

[Update: Oops. I got my date wrong. The SUSD meeting is 7 PM tonight, Tuesday, March 29, 2005, at Coronado High School in Scottsdale.]

From Sound Politics:

This is a letter written by Major Thomas to the school board.

March 14, 2005
Seattle Public Schools
Attn: School Board & Superintendent
P.O. Box 34165
Seattle, WA 98124-1165

Dear Seattle School Board and Superintendent:

It is with extreme and heartfelt regret, anger and utter dismay that I find myself having to write this letter to your attention given my family’s deep personal ties to West Seattle High School.

This past Friday afternoon, March 11, 2005 I served as one of a panel of guest speakers at the West Seattle High School Theater after having been invited to West Seattle High School by a student, Mr. Ben Doty, via referral from Ms. Nadine Gulit of Operation Support Our Troops. I served as one of a panel of approximately seven guest speakers at the West Seattle High School Theater. The topic on which I was invited to speak was my experience as a combat veteran of the war in Iraq. I was informed that I would have an opportunity to speak to students, along with other veterans as part of an objective forum with both anti-war and pro-troops sentiments. It was my understanding the purpose of this event was to provide students of West Seattle High School with an opportunity to hear from people with varied opinions on the war. I am pleased that my remarks were welcomed by the student audience. The panel of guests, though varied in opinion, was most professional in all aspects of a disagreeable but respectful discourse.

Why, then, am I writing to you? Upon entering the theater at 12:30 PM, approximately 15 minutes prior to the event, I was taken aback by what I witnessed. As I stood there in my Marine Corps Dress Blue uniform, there before me stood numerous kids running around in sloppily dressed and ill-fitted helmets and military fatigues with utter disrespect for the symbols and uniforms of the U.S. military. The walls were covered in camouflaged netting and the stage was covered with approximately twenty white, life-sized cut-out patterns in the shape of dead women and children, all of which were splattered in red-paint to depict human blood. Onstage, children were kneeling and weeping while dressed in ill-fitted Arabic headdress with white-faced masks similarly covered in red paint to depict human blood. At a podium, children were reading a monologue of how U.S. troops were killing civilians and shooting at women and children. Moreover, several grown adults were standing on stage in bright orange jump-suits, with black bags on and off their heads, some bound and tied, and some banging symbols and gongs in a crude depiction of what I believe were their efforts to depict victims of the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse episode.

Within the auditorium, numerous adults appeared to have been supervising this behavior and children were literally running amok. [1] What is going on in your classrooms and auditoriums? [2] Who supervised this program? [3] Who are these grown adults dressed as prisoners and performing such the attics on the stage of our public schools? [4] Since when has it become Seattle School Board policy to take an official anti-troops position and declare returning combat veterans from Iraq such as myself as killers of innocent women and children as if this war were some sick sport. As an Iraq war veteran I am outraged by what I witnessed going on at West Seattle High School!

My fellow veterans and I were immediately made to feel unwelcome by these organizers as if each of us were the devil himself; indiscriminate killers and enemies of our own community. To someone's credit, all of this nonsense was ceased less than one minute prior to the curtain going up. I can only assume someone realized how sickly embarrassing this would be for the school district. However, this last minute cover-up does not excuse what was going on and it appears to have been going on for quite sometime given the obviously lengthy art and script preparation developed for this event. I and the other veterans from Afghanistan, the Balkans and Ms. Gulit from Operation Support Our Troops were all witness to this ugly spectacle along with over 40 or so people that appeared to be willingly participating in this depravity.

I have served my country honorably for nearly 13 years all around this globe. I have fought on the battlefield in Iraq, lost good friends dead and wounded in this conflict and I will not sit back and allow our Seattle school district to shame or sully the name, reputation and good name of our military and our returning veterans. I will not tolerate an ill-administered school bureaucracy that seeks to sanction, condone, advocate or chaperon a vile position that Americas military men and women are somehow blood thirsty, indiscriminate murderers, executioners or war criminals.

[5] I am requesting a meeting with your board as soon as possible to explain and address this issue and [6] a letter should be written to the parents of West Seattle High School students making them aware of Fridays events explaining how and why it occurred. [7] A full accounting of those teachers, counselors, parents, groups and adults that were allowed preferential access on to the campus to advocate for this particular position, use school facilities and develop these abhorrent materials is expected immediately. [8] Lastly a public letter of apology is due the Seattle community with apologetic cordiality extended to the returning Iraq war veterans of this community for the shameful antics going on in our public schools with an assurance that this sort of sick nonsense will not be condoned or tolerated in Seattle public schools now or ever.

Sincerely,
Terry Thomas
Major, USMCR
Combat Veteran– Operation Iraqi Freedom
P.O. Box 31406
Seattle, WA 98103

Superintendent (206)252-0100 Raj Manhas
rsmanhas@seattleschools.org
Communications Director (206)252-0200 Peter Daniels
wpdaniels@seattleschools.org
School Board MemberDistrict 1 (206)252-0052 Sally Soriano
sally.soriano@seattleschools.org
School Board MemberDistrict 2 (206)252-0031 Darlene Flynn
darlene.flynn@seattleschools.org
School Board MemberDistrict 3 (206)729-3202 Brita Butler-Wall
brita.butler-wall@seattleschools.org
School Board MemberDistrict 4 (206)297-4533 Dick Lilly
dick.lilly@seattleschools.org
School Board MemberDistrict 5 (206)720-3303 Mary Bass
mary.bass@seattleschools.org
School Board MemberDistrict 6 (206)933-5338 Irene Stewart irene.stewart@seattleschools.org
School Board MemberDistrict 7 (206)760-4747 Jan Kumasaka jan.kumasaka@seattleschools.org
West Seattle High School Principal (206) 252-8800 Susan Derse scderse@seattleschools.org

[Please, reader, email them all!]

I have handily numbered the Major's questions, concerns and demands. He meets with the School Board up there today, so maybe we'll have more news in the next couple of days, but I doubt he'll get much satisfaction. These people are like greasy bbs or blobs of mercury. Sound Politics has posted about it here, here, and here (wherein the Principal "replies"). And Michelle Malkin here, here, and here.

Back to the ambush: these people knew exactly what, how, where, and why they were doing. No matter how it may be explained later, the act itself is the most important thing. Like pouring blood on Selective Service files, indelibly staining and ruining them, exposing the Major to this filth --to make him take it, to make him share their stink, as I've written elsewhere-- is crucial. So is deception, of course. The major would certainly have not shown up if he had known what he would face. They knew it, and they took advantage of the venue. That's the third crucial criterion for the new ambushers. When a teacher --4th Grade, 10th Grade, professor in a university-- uses a captive audience to promote a political agenda, that's an ambush.

When Ward Churchill and his crew blocked a Columbus Day Parade, they were entirely dependent on the existence of the Parade. Nobody would care if they marched or demonstrated elsewhere; there would be nothing to block. Nobody would be inconvenienced. Nobody would have to stand there and take it. The whole point is disruption of someone else's legally-organized energy. (Ward Churchill's deepest dream is to come galloping up over the rise in the moonlit night, leading his murderous crew, screaming like a banshee and shaking his lethal long lance at the peaceful circle of startled settlers.)

Here in Phoenix last December an America-hating pendejo professor named John Jota Leaños and his crew of sycophantic student zombies pasted up his Pat Tillman posters on private buildings downtown during the First Friday Artwalk. Again, he was entirely dependent on energy organized for other reasons. On his own, he couldn't bring that many people together in a million years. He loves ambush. He requires it. He teaches a class on it. It's "Interventionist art," don't you know. (Well, as I've let him know before, he comes on my private property, he'll have blood in his eyes.)

That's why a lot of these hard leftists loved 9/11 --it was the ultimate ambush.

Smearing, lying, slandering, and subverting civil behavior. These are some of the new academic standards I refer to in the title. As for the product of this system, the student "leader" of the ambush (Ben Doty? I'm not sure) was interviewed on Seattle radio. I don't have a transcript, but a couple of commenters on Sound Politics listened to it and relay some, to me, revealing information about the workings of this young man's "mind."

Chuck Miller posted this on March 16:

If you listened to the interview, as I did, then you would know TEACHERS WERE INVOLVED in the entire process. TEACHERS gave advice and input and that was followed and incorporated into the "skit". That's straight from the lead student organizer who was being interviewed.

This student "leader" was also about as eloquent as one might expect from a student body with the low test scores Matt posted. When asked what sources students drew on for their depictions of American soldiers killing women and children he drew a complete blank. Worse was what he said on his own, without prompting --that they wanted to set a mood for people coming in to think and be receptive, so they knew they had to be provocative. Well, which is it laddie? Do you want the audience contemplative or provoked? Do you know the difference? Plainly he does not.

Worse than being sponsored by the teachers union, this was sponsored, aided, abetted and guided, by teachers themselves.

Shame on these teachers --and shame on their ignorant defenders as well.

All of whom remain to be named later. So the kid's an idiot. But it's worse than that. Commenter Janet S. posted, on the same day:

I listened to an interview of the student who was heading this up. Every time he was caught in an inconsistancy, he changed his story. Then he resorted to saying that Major Thomas didn't object to the presentation while standing there. He seemed to think this meant it was all okay.

That's exactly what that young man thinks, and worse. That's what's scary. Again, he wants him to take it. He's like a animal or cyborg with extremely limited empathic abilities, but well-developed sadistic ones. The major is scarcely human for him, much less a striking, shining figure of human dignity and quiet pride, all brass and piping and polish, and displaying the best in civilized behavior.

But this punk wants his reaction shot. He wants his man to wince, or growl, or lose it. He wants degradation, he wants to pull the major down into the psychological shithole he lives in. And that applies to every other cowardly student and parent and teacher and staff member, because there hasn't been a single written public signed apology by anyone involved in this disgrace. Because they're proud of it, they'll do it again, and then go run and hide again.

Finally, I'm grateful that Matt Rosenberg over at Sound Politics did some digging into WSH test scores. His findings:

A post-forum writing assignment on the war would have been a good idea, as opposed to politicized theatrics beforehand. As the State Superintendent of Public Instruction reports, only one-third of the West Seattle High School 10th graders tested last school year could pass all three mandatory sections (reading, writing, math) of the Washington Assessment of Student Learning (WASL); which will be required for graduation as of 2008.

Then again, considering the move to broaden the use of "alternatives" to the WASL for students who can't pass, maybe guerilla theatre projects will become part of some "essential academic mastery" project portfolio for the many WSH students who can't hack the onerous "pen and paper" test due to the low "cultural competency" of the test designers.

Forty-one percent of WSH 10th graders failed the 03-04 WASL reading test; 51 percent failed writing; 60 percent failed math; 73 percent failed science.

But they can bang a gong with their daddy to make the soldier feel ashamed.

GREEN BE-IN

Flower Arrangement and Photography by Catherine King.

Poetic Darwinism: A Description Of Haeckel's Infinite Carpet

He not busy being born is busy dying.
--Bob Dylan, "It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)"

We're climbing on the strangest ladder that was ever there to climb.
--Mike Scott and the Waterboys, "Strange Boat"

There is no future in a sacred myth. --Daniel Dennett

by Jerome du Bois, with a note by Catherine King

Richard Feynmann once wrote:

Is no one inspired by our present picture of the universe? This value of science remains unsung by singers; you are reduced to hearing not a song or poem, but an evening lecture about it. This is not yet a scientific age.
(What Do YOU Care What Other People Think? 1988, p.244.)

And the scene hasn't changed much, at least in the visual arts, in the ensuing seventeen years. (And Doc, I care more about how other people think, rather than what, since the former shapes the latter.)

I made the artwork in the title as a poetic palimsest, a meditation device on some elements of The AllGoRhythm, by which I mean evolution by natural selection: the Modern Synthesis of Darwin, Mendel, Theodosius Dobzhansky, Watson & Crick, and the other greats of the ensuing waves, William Hamilton and George Williams and Manfred Eigen and Graham Cairns-Smith and John Maynard Smith, and the list goes on. I'm posting a photograph, some details, and a detailed description of this artwork here (after the jump, which I'll get to eventually) as an oblique and poetic contribution to the current debate between The AllGoRhythm and the God-driven alternatives. Before the jump, though, let me be direct and blunt.

Intelligent Design and plain old Creationism --can you gimme Hallaloooolyah!?-- thrive here in Phoenix, as mysteriously persistent as Valley Fever. On February 17, The Tucson Weekly online published a summary of the scene by Diedre Pike. Here she briefly profiles Arizona State Senator Karen Johnson (R-Mesa):

To Johnson, a Christian fundamentalist, the teaching of evolution in the schools isn't simply unfair; it could be "faith-destroying," she says.

"It's hard for me to understand how evolution can get put into school science programs and get stuffed down the throats of those who don't want to hear it and who don't believe it anyway," Johnson says. "Children should choose what they want to believe. . . . Science is basically the search for truth. The opposite of truth is myth. In my opinion, evolution is a myth. Those who adhere to the evolutionary theory, it's like a religion for them."

When Johnson talks to constituents, she's often struck by how few accept evolution.

"I can only find a few who think (the) theory of evolution has any merit," she says, "like professors at universities."

You can almost hear her sniff as her nose goes up in the air. You know --those kind of people. I think a lot of university professors are worthless jerks, but mainly those in the humanities, not the hard sciences. But let's be honest, Ms. Johnson; let's "search for truth:" when you say,

Children should choose what they want to believe

you don't mean exactly that. You mean that children should choose Christian Creationism over evolution by natural selection. You don't mean that students should choose the creation stories of Hinduism or Zoroastrianism or Buddhism or Islam or The Great Turtle or anything else over evolution. I was a born-again Christian for over ten years; I know how your minds work; one reason among many I'm Christian no longer. (And, by the way, mind your metaphors, mom: one neither hears nor chooses nor believes with one's throat.)

[She is correct, depressingly, about the percentage of the American people who believe evolution is true. I've seen various figures that range from 13% to 25%. After over 150 years . . .]

Earlier, on January 30, the Arizona Republic quoted the head dude of the Arizona Board of Education:

"If a student says, 'Well, I think intelligent design is a better theory,' then the teacher is obligated to treat that in a respectful way," Arizona Superintendent of Education Tom Horne said. "Those kind of discussions can make the study of evolution itself more interesting if students know that there is a controversy going on."

I have no problem with mutual respect; so that when the teacher says, "Intelligent Design is forlorn --that means 'alone, and without a friend'-- and you'll be wasting your time building any work on it," and refers the student to one of the many websites contributing to the controversy, one hopes the student will listen and follow his or her mentor's expert, reasonable, and knowledgeable advice. Part of a teacher's job is to alert students to the chimeras within the controversies. The student thinks he or she has time to burn. The teacher knows better. Besides, what kind of mentor gives directions to a dead end?

Superintendent Horne would. He would waste the student's time to avoid hurting the student's feelings or, more likely, losing the student to a Christian school. (Like American Muslims, American Evangelical Christians are a politically canny, persistent, and powerful lobby. Just ask IMAX.) Horne is probably ignorant of the real controversies inside The AllGoRhythm, intricate, rigorous algorithmic and repeated consensually validated experiments which bring the broad arguments brought by people like Dembski (see Pike) and Michael Behe to a standstill.

When Behe posits "irreducible complexity," it's as though he has not examined with his own eyes or heard with his own ears the logical possibilities laid out before him prior to him publishing his already-refuted arguments.

Long before Behe came running in waving his hanky, falsely crying foul, people like Richard Dawkins were saying (in paraphrase), "Well, duh, we know that's what we need to explain: how did the macromolecules become the macromolecules? How did the stupid primordial soup create something --Life-- that strains at a leash --constantly and unstoppably-- toward the future?"

What were the basic lifeless building blocks of Life?

We still don't have a defintive answer to that question, but check this notion out, from Daniel Dennett's peerless book Darwin's Dangerous Idea, which, though now ten years old, is simply a basic text for the 21st Century. Honestly, before the year is over, reader, promise yourself to read this book.

A good Darwinian, faced yet again with the problem of finding a needle in a haystack of Design Space, would cast about for a still simpler form of replicator that could somehow serve as a temporary scaffolding to hold the protein parts or nucleotide bases in place until the whole protein or macro could get assembled. Wondrous to say, there is a candidate with just the right properties, and more wondrous still, it is just what the Bible ordered: clay! Cairns-Smith shows that in addition to the carbon-based self-replicating crystals of DNA and RNA, there are also much simpler (he calls them "low-tech") silicon-based self-replicating crystals, and these silicates, as they are called, could themselves be the product of an evolutionary process. They form the ultra-fine particles of clay, of the sort that builds up just outside the strong currents and turbulent eddies in streams, and the individuals crystals differ subtly at the level of molecular structure in ways that they pass on when they "seed" the processes of crystallization that achieve their self-replication.

[Aside: In The Book of J, Harold Bloom and David Rosenberg point out that "Adam" derives from adamah, the purest, smallest, most pulverized, persistent, enduring and refined red clay. This is the first verse of the book that forms the foundation of three major world religions, written circa 1000 BCE:

Before a plant of the field was in earth, before a grain of the field sprouted --Yahweh had not spilled rain on the earth, nor was there man to work the land-- yet from the day Yahweh made earth and sky, a mist from within would rise to moisten the surface. Yahweh shaped an earthling from clay of this earth, blew into its nostrils the wind of life. Now look: man becomes a creature of flesh. (P.61)]

Since I've introduced religion, here's a good place to bring in Jim Holt's recent incisive points in the NYT Magazine, February 20, 2005. "Unintelligent Design" (you have to pay) carried the headline "Nature is often sloppy and bizarre. Can critics of Darwinism explain why?"

First, Holt calls attention to the fact that the laryngeal nerve of the giraffe, as in most mammals,

extends down the neck to the chest, loops around a lung ligament and then runs back up the neck to the larynx. In a giraffe, that means a 20-foot length of nerve where 1 foot would have done. If this is evidence of design, it would seem to be of the unintelligent variety.

Then he reminds us that

perhaps 99 percent of the species that have existed have died out. Darwinism has no problem with this, since random variation will inevitably produce both fit and unfit individuals. But what sort of designer would have fashioned creatures so out of sync with their environments that they were doomed to extinction?

He continues with a point about pain:

. . . Our pain mechanism may have been designed to serve as a warning signal to protect our bodies from damage, but in the majority of diseases . . . the signal comes too late to do much good, and the horrible suffering that ensues is completely useless.

And finally, a point about abortion:

And why should the human reproductive system be so shoddily designed? Fewer than one-third of conceptions culminate in live births. The rest end prematurely, either in early gestation or by miscarriage. Nature appears to be an avid abortionist, which ought to trouble Christians who believe in both original sin and the doctrine tha a human being equipped with a soul comes into existence at conception.

His conclusion (though he makes other good points):

It is hard to avoid the inference that a designer responsible for such imperfections must have been lacking some divine trait --benevolence or omnipotence or omniscience, or perhaps all three.

I'm the first to recognize Nature raw in tooth and claw, and I can see the awe in awful, but let's remember that Nature has no mind, no purpose, no intention. Dennett writes, introducing a quote by Nietzsche: "Mother Nature is heartless --even vicious-- but boundlessly stupid. And as so often before, Nietzsche finds the point and gives it his special touch:

'According to nature' you want to live? O you noble Stoics, what deceptive words these are! Imagine a being like nature, wasteful beyond measure, indifferent beyond measure, without purposes and consideration, without mercy and justice, fertile and desolate and uncertain at the same time; imagine indifference itself as a power --how could you live according to this indifference!"

Now, reader, imagine this indifference awakening into conscious consideration, reflection, and total self-awareness. Coupled with Holt's points above, does this not make God synonymous with Cruelty?

Another question: Which is colder and more harsh, a godless world or one presided over by Him?

Another question: Which is a better world, one in which Life created itself, slowly, earning every inch and using only what was around, or one in which Life is a gift rained down from above by a Capricious Mystery?

Let me say it another way. I believe it would be a better world if everybody realized what it has cost the world for us to be here --what it really means to be homo sapiens sapiens. Every bone, every nerve, every wrinkle in the brain was hard-earned, so hard-earned the scale of suffering and success --over both time and space-- is so Vast as to be literally mind-boggling.

We are fearfully and wonderfully made, but I think religious believers, especially Christians, have let the fear overwhelm the wonder: the fear of the importance of the insignificant, and the fear of the leering monkey. But the fear goes deeper, and I think Dennett has a handle on it, so I'm going to end these notes before the jump with an extended quotation from him (wherein he quotes Eigen) at the mindless busyness that grounds so much of Life:

[Dennett] . . . Through the microscope of molecular biology, we gt to witness the birth of agency, in the first macromolecules that have enough complexity to "do things." This is not florid agency --echt intentional action, with the representation of reasons, deliberation, reflection, and conscious decision-- but it is the only possible ground from which the seeds of intentional action could grow. There is something alien and vaguely repellent about the quasi-agency we discover at this level --all that purposive hustle and bustle, and yet there's nobody home. The molecular machines perform their amazing stunts, obviously exquisitely designed, and just as obviously none the wiser about what they are doing. Consider this account of the activity of an RNA phage, a replicating virus:

First of all, the virus needs a material in which to pack and protect its own genetic information. Secondly, it needs a means of introducing its information into the host cell. Thirdly, it requires a mechanism for the specific replication of its information in the presence of a vast excess of host cell RNA. Finally, it must arrange for the proliferation of its information, a process that usually leads to the destruction of the host cell . . . . The virus even gets the cell to carry out its replication; its only contribution is one protein factor, specially adapted for the viral RNA. This enzyme does not become active until a 'password' on the viral RNA is shown. When it sees this, it reproduces the viral RNA with great efficiency, while ignoring the very much greater number of RNA molecules of the host cell. Consequently the cell is soon flooded with viral RNA. This is packed into the virus' coat protein, which is also sythesized in large quantities, and finally the cell bursts and releases a multitude of progeny virus particles. All this is a programme that runs automatically and is rehearsed down to the smallest detail [Eigen].

[Dennett] Love it or hate it, phenomena like this exhibit the heart of the power of the Darwinian idea. An impersonal, unreflective, robotic, mindless little scrap of molecular machinery is the ultimate basis of all the agency, and hence meaning, and hence consciousness, in the universe. [End Dennett; my emphases]

Or, as I put it in my artwork: "Our Mother Is Absolute Ignorance." (Don't even ask about Dad.) And that scares some people.

We are the palimpsest of the history of this planet. It is writ small in us all. (Think of the frontispiece to Leviathan.) We owe it to both our ancestors and our descendants to shape the future with the truth. And The AllGoRhythm is the truth.

Haeckel's Infinite Carpet, 2002, 30 x 30 inches, acrylic, ink, pencil, tracing paper, and hot pink gel pen on two layers of Arches Paper, with cutouts.

Details here and here.

A Description of Haeckel's Infinite Carpet

In 2002, Catherine King wrote about this piece for our online gallery Art For Our Times, now closed:

Mysterious life forms peer from precise windows cut through Haeckel’s Infinite Carpet. The strange creatures swim in a yellow sea beneath the Carpet’s red plane. Hundreds of pink arrow snakes slither over its surface, restlessly pointing out connections.

Eight open doors lay near the sides and corners of the square-patterned Carpet. They open onto an intense blue space where pink constellations align with perfect wisdom.

A yellow hand reaches out from a deep pink portal through the center of the Carpet. A closed pentagram made of five finely drawn stars overlays the deep whorls of the palm print. This is the Sign of the Human -- with our five-fingered hands we make and mark the world.

Haeckel’s Infinite Carpet floats, human-made, over a teeming ocean of evolution. It seems to order the chaos below by alternately revealing, then hiding it. The Carpet is the platform on which we stand in order to construct our view of the universe. We can never see all that lies below the surface and the life we glimpse one moment has already drifted away the next. We can grasp no fixed truth in this bloody, blooming biology. Unanchored, we hang on with our five-fingered Navigator and trace maps through trials with tears. --CK

Thank you, beloved wife and muse. And here I would like to add my own notes.

I began with a simple picture of infinity provided by Rudy Rucker in his book Mind Tools. This layout of squares is the second stage of a regular fractal called a Sierpinski carpet. "It can be defined on its own as the limit of the process of removing the central one-ninth of squares."

So, first, I cut out the central (pink) square, which "created" eight others, the four adjacent and the four diagonals. So I cut out their central (blue) squares, which "created" sixty-four more (yellow) squares. That was enough to keep the process going mentally with the viewer, who can imagine finer and finer squares, until the edges around the larger squares begin to resemble a regular foam. You can hold infinity in the palm of your eye. Also, the process is an algorithm, which is the drumbeat of the free-floating rationales that inhabit the universe whether we do so or not. Finally, I like the idea that the original nine-square resembles one of those rationales --the cellular automata of John Horton Conway's Game of Life, a 2D dynamic whose complexity arises from one rule, as does the Sierpinski carpet itself. The power of simple recursion often leads to combinatorial explosions which foster novelty, a key element in natural selection. It also hints at the capacious and tensile strength of the modern mind. The ancient Greeks hated, feared, and denigrated infinity, calling it apeiron, which connotes a dirty rag crushed up and stuffed in a corner. But handling infinity has opened our minds, given us confidence to grip new rungs on the strange ladder.

The dot patterns behind the blue squares depict the lo-shu magic square. Let Rudy Rucker explain (p.52):

One of the earliest examples of people using dot patterns to represent numbers appears in the Chinese image known as the lo-shu. Here there are patterns representing the numbers 1 through 9, and these patterns are arranged into a "magic square." Supposedly, Emperor Yu saw the lo-shu pattern on the back of a tortoise on the banks of the Yellow River in 2200 BC. The pattern is called a magic square because the sum of the numbers along any horizontal, vertical, or diagonal is always the same: 15.

I chose the lo-shu first because it appeared on the back of a tortoise, of course! Beautiful patterns fall out of nature by accident, but their order and formal arrangement fascinate us --and point in helpful directions, as with the Fibonacci Series. Busy busy busy, we arrange and rearrange, combine and twist and add and subtract, sifting for sense, scratching at novelty, for the glint, the hint of the future.

Look at all those curvy pink snake arrows, pointing in both directions. These restless roaming curves are like ampersands, endless asking "How about this and this?" "Okay, what about this and this?" "Okay, maybe--" and so on.

Long ago Johannes Kepler stood out in the snow, night after night, holding a glowing coal in tongs in one hand, scribbling notes on star positions in a notebook (derived from Tycho Brahe's) with the other. Later he would scan these spreadsheets and ephemeri for hours on end, looking for pattern. It was crazy, but it worked.

The yellow squares show off-center pencilled depictions of microscopic creatures, on gauzy paper, all sixty-four drawn from Ernst Haeckel's book Art Forms in Nature. The little yellow squares become like windows on the bottom of a boat, revealing glimpses of the teeming --and imperfect-- life below. (Yes, I'm well aware of Haeckel's political odium. We note it, condemn it, learn from it, and move on.)

The eight blue squares contain some of the more important claims and positions of natural selection. I won't take them in order.

Cranes, Not Skyhooks. The genius Daniel Dennett, who I long ago nicknamed The Great Engineer, is the most practical philosopher I've ever read. You could bring him the sweetest little conceptual machine, sleek and shiny and sinuous as a Frank Gehry building, but if it didn't produce future --if it just solved some philosophical puzzle, some shoelace knot, or covered one's philosophical ass-- he'd thank you, put it on the mantle, and pick up his tools again.

Dennett uses skyhook --from OED, "an imaginary means of suspension in the sky"-- to refer to any statement or thing which can't be anchored to the Earth, whether it be about gods, or mysterians, or the so-called "naturalistic fallacy" (a chimera), or "irreducible complexity."

A crane is any statement or algorithm or object which begs no questions. It stands on firm ground, and every part of it, including its blueprints, can be accounted for. It works. It lifts. It can even lift other cranes. Cascading cranes produce the future.

Our River Flows Uphill is a tribute to William Calvin's river / biology chronicle, "The River That Flows Uphill: A Journey From The Big Bang To The Big Brain." It's a tribute to our energy, our hard work against entropy. The sun pours the energy down endlessly, burning up the Second Law and spawning the multitudinous glories of creation.

Our Mother Is Absolute Ignorance I've discussed briefly above. Steven Pinker puts it even more succinctly: "No peeking." No theory of the history of Life on this Earth can depend on anticipation or purpose or plan. It happened to happen, but it could have happened otherwise, or not at all, and that should thrill everyone. Dennett: "Evolution can be an algorithm, and evolution could have produced us, without its being true that evolution is an algorithm for producing us." (p.56) There is no Anthropic Daddy, not even in principle.

Hand Shapes Brain is a tribute to the Toolmaker, the Tinkerer -- homo habilis-- and also to Frank R. Wilson's contemporary classic (another must-read) The Hand: How Its Use Shaped The Brain, Language, and Human Culture. The language explains much of the content, but not its richness. We Know In Our Bones and Read Your Head both fit here, too. Just one example: the neurological-physiological algorithm or program which directs my arm reaching out through the branches for just the right apple to twist, pluck, and bring to my mouth --that program may be quite similar to language sentence structure, which the brain adapted for its use.

Our Tree Is Real. Most religions and traditions feature trees or tree-like structures, including sacred oaks, maypoles, the Trees in Eden, the crucifixion cross, and especially the American Liberty Tree. Each tries to grasp a part of us. But only the Tree of Life --"the graph that plots the time-line trajectories of all the things that have ever lived on this planet"-- grasps it all. Nobody puts it better than Dennett, at the end of his book (p.520), and I can think of no better way to end these notes:

Is this Tree of Life a God one could worship? Pray to? Fear? Probably not. But it did make the ivy twine and the sky so blue, so perhaps the song I love ["Tell Me Why"] tells a truth after all. The Tree of Life is neither perfect nor infinite in space or time, but it is actual, and if it is not Anselm's "Being greater than which nothing can be conceived," it is surely a being that is greater than anything any of us will ever conceive of in detail worthy of its detail. Is something sacred? Yes, I say with Nietzsche. I could not pray to it, but I can stand in affirmation of its magnificence. This world is sacred.

Amen.

CODA: Irrationaly, I neglected to mention the yellow hand in the middle of the piece. It is my left hand, though it could be read the other way. Of course it is meant to evoke Lascaux, but also something else --the irrational need for sacrifice. I lost the first joint on the third finger of my left hand in a childhood accident. But, as Walter Burkert notes in his excellent account Creation of the Sacred, finger sacrifice, an ancient practice of supplication and substitution, persists to this day, doesn't it? In fact, during this week, as many will remember, it was extended to the entire body of one man, wasn't it?

A "Thinker" Of The Rebarb: Jason Gatliff

by Jerome du Bois

The sitemeter shows a lot of searches for Jason Gatliff, so I might as well set down some further notions prompted by that curiosity, as well as a comment I deleted but which still buzzes in my brain.

The comment --on the Gatliff piece, Rebarbarization In The Academy, Part Two: The Innocent Are Guilty-- came from an obscene email address, so I thought at first it was dirty spam. I trashed it after I read it, so I no longer have it verbatim. The first sentence, though, was

Have you at least read his essay?

The essay's title: "In Defense Of Terrorism: When Is It Permissible To Target Children?" The speech he gave in Boise on the same subject bore the title: "In Defense Of Terrorism: When Is It Okay To Kill Kids?" I don't know why Gatliff changed it.

Now, I'm a Darwinian. I reason, I'm smart, I trust my mind, and I'm busy. There is no conceivable defense of terrorism consistent with the sovereign individual's rights. End of argument.

But there's more with these people. They want to piss on your shoes, and they want you to stand there and take it until they're done. They have the emotional needs --and lack of boundaries-- of two-year-olds throwing tantrums. The culture, especially the contemporary arts and humanities, is overflowing with these needy hyenas who, knowing their stuff is crap and knowing it insults your intelligence to spend any time or attention on it, still demand that time and attention. That is their triumph, that is their purpose. The content is secondary; the main goal is to make you share their stink.

A couple of years ago Catherine and I went to a slide lecture featuring the artist Jon Haddock. We knew his work, hated it, but wanted to see and hear. But when he put up his cartoon of poor doomed cartoon animal figures in the burning windows of the WTC, we had to get up and leave. No commotion; we just booked in disgust.

In the ensuing email discussion between John Spiak and us, he suggested that we should have at least stayed for the whole thing, and then ask our questions and make our points.

But our point was the leavetaking. We walked out. We don't TAKE IT.

This little twit Gatliff knows damn well he's wrong, he's playing with friendly fire, but to get attention these days you have to be outrageous, so why not write a defense of terrorism? The academic culture practically begged for it, and --since Ward Churchill can't use two words when eleventy-two would do-- the moldy idea took hold in the loaf between Gatliff's ears.

But I don't need to read it. For my last piece I read and briefly analyzed an earlier essay of his. It was from hunger, and I couldn't see his "thinking" developing any further from the forlorn ideas --Kantianism and utilitarianism, and virtue ethics without the virtue-- presented in that earlier tract. (For the definitive demolition of those outdated ideas, please see Daniel C. Dennett, Darwin's Dangerous Idea, Chapter Sixteen, "On the Origin of Morality," and Chapter Seventeen, "Redesigning Morality.")

The scariest aspect of the presentation of this whole arc is that Gatliff knew that in this culture, the essay was a sure bet. He knew damn well he couldn't lose.

But we do, as the rebarb gnaws, gnaws, gnaws away at every civilized thing.

Is Scottsdale Unified School District Pro-Islamist? Time to Look at Administration, School Board, Faculty, Staff and the Strangely Silent Parents.

by Catherine King

The Tears of Things readers who have been following the Across the Centuries / History Alive! textbook scam postings (here, here and here) will find in this post my reasons for suspecting that the above-mentioned adults are effectively laying down and rolling over so that Muslims and Islamists can have their way with the students of the Scottsdale Unifed School District.

That's right, I'm wondering if perhaps a fair percentage of those typically micro-managing parents up in the far north-eastern part of SUSD agree with the School Board and Administration that all we dhimmis need to try very hard to understand why the Muslims needed to bring us down That Day, and furthermore, that we (U.S.) had it coming. Because for over four years in the district, only two adults (Mr. and Mrs. Fish, pseudonyms) that we know of, have ever objected to the Pro-Islamist (Anti-American) curricula.

That's the most disturbing aspect of History Alive! Pro-Islamist Textbook Scam (besides the fact that Muslims are busy mangling America into an islamic state). How could it be that only two parents in the Scottsdale Unified School District ever objected to the twisted curricula?

I struggled with that for a while.

We're talking SUSD middle schools. Middle school parents are extremely involved. I know that: as busy as I was with commuting and all, when I had a middle-schooler, I went to almost every parent-teacher meeting (at least 2 per school year), Open House (1 per s.y.), May Curriculum Fair (1 per s.y.) and PTA meetings (at least 6 per s.y.). A parent would have to miss all those opportunities, and more, to let any objectionable curriculum slip into teaching.

Wait a minute --something wasn't right here. It's for sure the parents know what's going on in Social Studies. I know these parents, and they don't let anything slide. As a micro-managing, control-freak SUSD parent, there is no way that my kid's Social Studies classroom is not going to be run to my exact specifications. So I've been role-playing a SUSD parent in my mind for over a week now. . .

Not that long ago, I lived and taught in a neighboring school district to SUSD. Most cars in the high school student's lot were better than any car I've ever owned. Most kids, even in middle school, were carrying more money than I had. Intact families with both multi-degreed parents working high-payoff jobs so that their well-groomed darlings can live among other extremely sucessful Americans in big, brand new homes and go to big, brand new schools that look like Grady Gammage.

I can easily imagine being the parent of a Scottsdale Unified School District middle-schooler. If my SUSD student and I live in the far north-eastern parts of the school district, there is a good chance that we are fabulously wealthy.
As a SUSD parent, though I may be very busy, and very important (we are high-achieving, well-educated movers and shakers up here in our corner of the district), you better believe I know full-well what they're teaching my kid in Social Studies. No one at school gets to slide on how they approach and enrich my precious MacKenzie!

My role-playing exercise helped me to the obvious conclusion that it is okay with the parents of at least a "handful" of select SUSD schools to have their kids taught Social Studies from a Pro-Islamist (Anti-American) viewpoint.

The President of the Governing Board said (implied, really; she is a lawyer, remember) that History Alive! was going to be used in a "handful" of schools. So I started wondering if that handful of schools weren't out in the incredibly affluent northeastern reaches of the district. Where the rich, important, pushy parents (the ones the Administration fawn all over) are, by nature, going to insist that their extra-extra gifted kids get only the best and newest.

That would, of course, include any and all pilot programs. After all, bells and whistles are why a lot of these pushy parents moved the precious brats into this rarified corner of Scottsdale Unified School District. So it would not surprise me at all who gets the special test programs. Or just who their parents are.

So then I just had to think about the kind of American success-story parent who would want their kid taught that we need to try harder to understand Muslims and only Muslims, and why, and also that the U.S. had it coming on 9/11, and why. Who would American success-story parents want their spoiled brats taught this? They are from a group almost as insidious as the Muslims who are infiltrating all of our institutions --the Self-Loathing Americans.

It's a bigger club than you might think. I've run into a lot of them over the past few years who are also young parents. Mark Rubin-Toles, Jon Haddock and John Spiak are all examples of well-educated, successful self-loathing Americans who are also young fathers.

I'd have to say that of the three, Mark Rubin-Toles is the best example of being "typically depraved." He is the sucessful golden boy guy, Brophy Prep, then Yale, artist, who now teaches your middle-schoolers in another exclusive Mountain Foothills school district (which I also know well), who is married to a doctor, a lovely woman I'm sure, and they are the parents of a little boy.

But, despite his education, his privilege, his position of responsibility, Mark Rubin-Toles is also a guy who laughs about 9/11 and the people who had to choose to jump! See how refined is the private school Yale scholar with the doctor for a wife! The Rubin-Toles' would be a perfect example of the kind of outrageously sucessful self-loathing American parents who would, indeed, want their little Maxon taught that all we dhimmis need to try very hard to understand why the Muslims needed to bring us down That Day, and furthermore, that we (U.S.) had it coming.

There is definitely a correlation here between academia and Anti-Americanism as we have all witnessed with Ward Churchill, Haunani Trask, Jason Gatliff, and others. I used to think that Mark Rubin-Toles just thought the 9/11 jumping was funny just because it was a stupid ironic stance that Yale taught him. But I have since come to realize that Yale is teaching that we had it coming and THAT'S why it's so funny. Yale is teaching that we had it coming, and as we all know now, most universities are teaching the same thing.

The parents of the kids ups in northeastern Scottsdale Unified School District are a well-schooled bunch. We must consider that many sucessful, powerful and wealthy American success stories are also Anti-American parents. Muslims strategically use our infrastructure and natures against us. Well-educated self-loathing American parents are providing the schools to be infiltrated and the little dhimmis to indoctrinate.

It is possible that seemingly ideal parents, who have taken full advantage of our nation's richness, potential and generousity, would want to have their kids taught to hate America. It's possible and it IS happening. And I'm getting the feeling that it's happening in Scottsdale Unified School District.

Am I forgetting to address the staff of Scottsdale Unified School District? No, and I hope Administration isn't either. Because remember what happened in Beslan? Those were Muslim extremists who worked all summer long during construction and rennovation, right beside or with school workers (maybe they themselves were school workers) to plant explosives in the school, to be ready for the massacre on the first day of school.

Remember, parents of Scottsdale Unified School District, Muslim extremists are now looking for soft targets in the U.S., and we all know the number one soft target, don't we?

And a word of warning to any teacher, parent, administrators who thinks it's a good idea to have Muslim speakers come to the schools, the better that we should understand why they had to take us down --How will you know whether that Muslim speaker is packing C4 and rat-poisoned nails? One more thing all of us highly educated people know is that Muslims can lie to non-Muslims anytime it suits their jihad. It's called taqiyya.

Parents: It's pure heaven being out of the classroom. You really wouldn't believe, and you would be ashamed, if you could see how they act at school. But as lovely as it is to have nothing to do with your spoiled brats anymore, I had to come out of seclusion for this one.

Can't you see how important their little minds are? As f*cked-up as they are, they are our future. You're not going to hand them over to the Islamists just like that, are you?

Rebarbarization In The Academy, Part Two: The Innocent Are Guilty

[Part One is here.]

Life is as meaningless as death. --Sociopath's axiom, from Depue.

Academics. Who would have thought that murder can sometimes smell like sheepskin?
--JdB, Ward "The Cleaver" Churchill Wants To Watch You Bleed

by Jerome du Bois

Sometimes the academic abyss gets deeper right when you're looking into it. I feel like James Stewart in Vertigo. The ivory tower inverts itself, plunging deeper into moral evil, revealing a nest of vipers. Look at the latest serpent Alma Mater has nursed at her bosom:

The Boise State University Philosophy Department presents a lecture by Jason Gatliff titled “In Defense of Terrorism: When is it Okay to Kill Children?” from 3:40-5:30 p.m. Thursday, March 10. Held in the Special Events Center at the west end of the Student Union Building, the lecture is free and open to the public.

Gatliff is a Ph.D. candidate at Bowling Green State University in Ohio and is a Boise State philosophy graduate. His talk will focus on the conditions under which an innocent civilian can be reclassified as a dangerous combatant. “Activities such as paying taxes are sufficient to make one a combatant,” he argues, thus nullifying immunity. However, he goes on to argue, identifying a person as a combatant does not necessarily mean it is permissible to target that person for terrorism. (Hat tips to Luke Lindley at Sterile Thunder, and lgf.)

[What's that music? The way things are go-wing, they're gonna reclassify me.]

Ward Churchill's lawyer will probably be waving this paper around soon. Mr. "I'm Gonna Get You For This" Churchill couldn't have ordered a better defense of his infamous sadism, since he couldn't have written the thing on his most coherent day. Even so, Jason Gatliff is his direct spiritual child, along with blackhearts like Haunani Trask. Like Churchill, Gatliff wants to kill words and their meanings first, to clear the way to shed real innocent blood. They've seen the future, brother: it is murder.

Nobody is innocent, Gatliff says. By this "reasoning," of course, he should turn himself in to the proper authorities as soon as possible, because he is a dangerous man. And he really is, because dozens of so-called academic professionals have already signed off on him --at Texas A&M, at Boise State, and at BGSU. Twenty years ago I attended many graduate seminars in philosophy, at Arizona State and the University of Maryland. At either place this guy would have been laughed out of the room after a couple of sentences. Now the system is poisoned at its heart, sucking blood, worshipping death.

Since Luke Lindley did the heavy lifting on Gatliff's thesis, I'll be quoting him generously. The reader should go read his whole posting, "In Defense of Terrorism?" Then I want to briefly discuss a true case of applied ethics: Pat Tillman and his brother Kevin.

[Choosing Tillman isn't for easy, gratuitous comparison: Gatliff has a preoccupation with (eroding) the morality of the professional soldier. If you can stay awake through it, he wrote about it in 2000, in "Gertian Morality and Moral Considerations in Military Decision Making."]

Luke Lindley writes:

To be a "combatant," Gatliff claimed, means to be "dangerous"; to be "innocent," in contrast, signifies a state of "noninvolvement in the war effort, not [a state of] moral non-culpability." Modern warfare, according to Gatliff, "is an enterprise which does not leave its civilians behind." The reek of Churchillian moral equivalance here is suffocating; one can almost hear, as a subliminal soundtrack to his speech, the nonexistent cries of those who were not killed at Jenin, a cruel counterpoint to the wails of those thousand "little Eichmans" who, by this absurd logic, somehow deserved to die. Gatliff further "refined" his definition of "dangerous" by stating that: "a person's behavior is dangerous if that person contributes to a causal chain that may cause harm, injury, or loss." And since, per Gatliff, it does not matter whether or not said contribution is voluntary, involuntary, or nonvoluntary, any of the following classes individuals could rightfully be considered "dangerous" in the "martial sense"; taxpayers; farmers; and children. Taxpayers, of course, contribute fiscally and socially to martial activities; farmers produce food not merely to meet the bare nutritional requirements of military personnel but also to promote and maintain such individuals' peak fighting capabilities; and children represent not only a tangible investment in future martial and economic activities but also may contribute to such activities through a variety of present means, such as, Gatliff argued, purchasing war bonds, conserving energy and raw materials, working in factories, etc . . .

Thus Gatliff extended the chain of casaulity to a ridiculous and meaningless infinity, crafting a definition of "dangerousness" so expansive that, in its explosive outward rush, it obliterates the necessary semantic distinctions that underlie our language, our society, even our morality. Words have, and must have, meanings; to define dangerousness down, as it were, is to render irrelevant any distinction between soldier and civilian, killer and victim, murderer and savior. For where does one draw the line? Surely children may contribute to the war effort, both in a contemporary and future capacity - it is a matter of simple finance, after all, to calculate the present monetary value of an investment expected to return, on average, X amount of funds to society each year for a given number of years. And if financial contribution can render one "dangerous," what are we to make of those foreign citizens who invest in American companies, who purchase American products, who contribute, through a variety of direct and indirect means, to the overall operation of the American economy and, as a consequence, to the dread "military-industrial complex," the paralyzing fear of which so obviously constitutes the subtext of Gatliff's fevered philosophizing. Gatliff, it seems, has crafted a perfectly recursive causality, in which all are to blame, in which all are at fault, and, most importantly, in which none can be judged.

The sociopath's creed, the nihilist's dream, eternal repetitive Hell, the dark meat of their Thanklessgiving meal. And Lindley makes clear at the beginning of his piece that Bowling Green State University's philosophy department is not only admired, but "revered." It's one of the best-esteemed in the entire world, with an admirable placement percentage.

You see what I mean by inversion? That's one deeep abyss. This heartless coward should be teaching at Hezbollah University, but he's probably going to get a pretty good gig right here in the cradle of liberty and freedom. I'm guessing at his age, but I'll bet he's not older than 27, and he's got thirty years of cushyville to look forward to.

Which brings me to Pat Tillman, the very definition of the phrase "110%," also known as "the full-tilt boogie," dead at 27 --may he rest in peace and victory-- and his brother Kevin --may he stay safe and live long-- and Gatliff's vapid attempt to undermine virtue ethics and military creeds, beating some dead horses --act-utilitarianism! Jeebus!-- along the way. He wrote the following as if it was a revelation, whoa-daddy:

One of things that I think makes Gert’s system so useful for the military is that it includes in its list of general moral rules: Obey the law, and Do your duty. After all, it is the ultimate goal of every service’s Core Value program, I believe, to get their members to follow these two rules: obey the law, and do their duty. More importantly, though, the duty of the professional soldier to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States is finally recognized for what it is—a moral obligation.

Finally? This lightweight thinks he's finally --along with his buddy Gert-- identified why a soldier does what a soldier does. Or a sailor, or marine, or Army Ranger. He doesn't see how basic it is to the citizenry itself, to ordinary American consciousness, much less the military. Clueless in the academic fantasyland, he traispes by the hard-won victories for freedom in the real world, and sees only the boneyards of history.

Not long after September 11, 2001, Pat Tillman and his brother Kevin made the decision to defend their country. They did and they have honorably. Here's a beautiful short profile of him by Tim Layden, first published in Sports Illustrated on June 3, 2002:

Last week Cardinals safety Pat Tillman, 25, told the team that he was leaving football to enlist in the Army, with plans to attend Ranger School after boot camp. It's a remarkable story: Star athlete walks away from the game in his prime, leaving millions in cash on the table, to put his life at risk in service of his country during wartime. It is one, however, that you won't hear from Tillman. Given the chance to self-promote and wrap himself in the American flag --on Memorial Day weekend, no less-- Tillman instead quietly declined to speak publicly about his career change.

No surprise. His decisions to leave pro football and to decline interviews are pure Tillman. The guy is a fearless nonconformist who has long refused to measure his life against ordinary standards. I met Tillman late in 1997, when he was a senior at Arizona State. He would soon be graduating after just 3 1/2 years with a 3.82 GPA, and he had been named Pac-10 defensive player of the year as an undersized (5'10", 202 pounds) linebacker. "It doesn't do me any good to be proud," Tillman said that year, "because I'll start being happy with myself and then I'll stand still and then I'm old news."

At the end of one interview with Tillman, I asked him if he had ever been arrested for anything, a question that unfortunately has to be asked with athletes today. Tillman didn't hesitate to admit that he had been charged with felony assault after beating up a kid while defending a friend during his senior year in high school. He spent 30 days in a juvenile detention facility, and his conviction was reduced to a misdemeanor upon his release. Here's the point: Since Tillman was underage at the time, his arrest record was sealed, and he didn't have to tell me anything. But he did, because he's honest. And smart. He learned from his mistake and never repeated it.

There were doubts about whether Tillman was big enough or fast enough to play college football, but he played superbly. There were much deeper doubts about whether he could play in the NFL, but he has been a four-year starter and in 2000 set a franchise record with 200 tackles. You cannot keep him off the football. Last spring he turned down a $9 million, five-year offer sheet from the Rams and accepted a one-year deal with the Cards for a little more than $500,000 out of loyalty.

Tillman says he'll resume his NFL career in three years, and Tillman does what he says. In 1994 when then Arizona State coach Bruce Snyder was recruiting Tillman, Snyder suggested redshirting him in his freshman year. "I'm not redshirting," Tillman told Snyder. "You can do what you want with me, but in four years, I'm gone. I've got things to do with my life."

Now we know what things Tillman was talking about. Big things. Wouldn't you want him in your foxhole?

I imagine Pat and Kevin and their loved ones, huddled as most of us were around the TV that horrible day, and the days following, going back and forth with reasoning out their responses, which includes screaming and crying, too, but weighing the many options these two talented men had arrayed before them. Everyone with them helped, drawing on experience and reflection and reading and religion and the very concourse of discourse immanent but perpetually evolving in the culture, the ongoing conversation of right conduct after the Fall, after the knowledge that there is no valid Argument from Authority. We have to work out our own salvation --and we can, because we can reason. We are Americans. We're problem-solvers. We can do this.

So there they were, ordinary educated Americans with good souls. Everybody pointing out upsides, downsides, mortal stakes. Pat and Kevin listening to everything, including their own broken hearts.

But I very much doubt anyone there consulted Gert's unhelpful list--

(1) Do not kill,
(2) Do not cause pain,
(3) Do not disable,
(4) Do not deprive of freedom,
(5) Do not deprive pleasure,
(6) Do not deceive,
(7) Keep your promises,
(8) Do not cheat,
(9) Obey the law,
(10) Do your duty.

[Tell it to M. Atta, Gertie boy.]

--or Gatliff's article, with its simple foci, ranging from whether to

"pencil whip” training records in order to promote a deserving Airman, to deciding whether or not military sites in heavily populated areas should be targeted for bombing.

This is what applied ethics is bringing to the table these days, la-dee-dah, so-called "moral puzzles" that Pat Tillman and most ordinary citizens eat for breakfast all the time. We know how to handle these cases; these are the easy ones; and we knew what we needed to do, what hardships we needed to face, what changes we needed to make, when those murderous Muslims burned the core of our hearts and made our fellow citizens jump to their deaths.

Pat Tillman and Kevin Tillman didn't need to consult any tome, any article, any expert, to know what was right. Everything they needed to know was all around them, the beauty of it read right off the surface of the culture: the land of freedom and opportunity; the incredible cooperative infrastructure which sustained them; the peaceful resolution of internal conflict; the engine of imagination and commerce and life-extending technology. In fact, the sheer incredible exuberance of the country is mirrored by Pat Tillman, who, by all accounts, often had to be told to wind it down a little, to not always hit them at full speed. (To which he probably answered with a puzzled "Why?" That's what I mean by "the full-tilt boogie.") All Kevin, Pat, and their families had to do was point anywhere in the United States, almost, and say, "This is what I'm fighting for:this future: the arrow only points forward."

But Jason Gatliff, and Ward Churchill, will earn cushy incomes building giant termite mounds out of the manure of their minds. Welcome to the University of Death. You'll find the dungbeetles of Hell here. First you must find rat's alley, where the dead men lost their bones; then descend the stairs there, crackling over the rats' teeth, to room 101, and walk right in. They're waiting for you and your credulous sons, one with the dagger, one with the sponge.

There Goes The School District, Trailing A List Of Questions

by Jerome du Bois

Straight talk scares some people, with revealing results. Yesterday, when Catherine King fisked SUSD Governing Board President Christine Schild --using her inimitable stlye to crack Mrs. Schild's ceramic facade, to get her to answer our questions-- she responded by climbing up on an even higher horse, where she looks even more ridiculous.

I'll be fisking her email after the jump, but first I want to bring us back to the subject at hand, what the last two postings have been about: the consistent presentation of a distorted Islam --a benevolent one-- to middle- and high-school students. Neither Christine Schild nor, more importantly, Superintendent John Baracy himself, responded to that issue. The six-figure man is hiding behind the "unpaid volunteer."

As of now, with History Alive! removed from the classroom, the only "materials" available must be Across the Centuries, another distorted volume. Unless the school district has a few thousand new social-studies books that just happen to be available. If so, what is the title of that social studies volume? Somebody tell me. Comments are open.

As a bonus, we append a list of specific questions for John Baracy, Christine Schild, the other members of the SUSD Governing Board, and any and all American citizens. There's a Board meeting March 29th at Coronado High. I hope some brave parents attend that meeting with this list at the ready. We invite them to do so.

First, for easy comparison and because it's so straight and snarky, let's reprint Catherine King's last email to Christine Schild:

Mrs. Schild:

"I understand your frustration."

Comment from Catherine King: "Drop the fuzzy fake empathy."

"However, there are a number of issues on my plate & I have to pay attention to all of them."

Comment from Catherine King: "Boo hoo. That's why you get paid the big bucks. Besides, getting back to one of Jerome's original questions, Who is paying you for this? And exactly what is 'this'?"

"The Superintendent gave me his word and I believe him."

Comment from Catherine King: "How does it follow that we should believe him, unless we were born last night? Also, suspiciously, why would you think other people are so stupid as to be so effortlessly dismissed? About questions concerning the Islamic indoctrination of our youth?"

"However, I will follow up with the Superintendent. I expect him to call me today on an unrelated matter."

Comment from Catherine King: "We are talking about a whole generation of minds in an unprecedentedly crucial time, not about your cozy, 'informal,' 'unrelated matter,' 'I believe him' relationship with Dr. Baracy. Your stance is suspect, and we'll be examining your background, and your affliations."

Signed,

Catherine King, with Jerome du Bois

[Here's Mrs. Schild's "last" email]

From: "Christine Schild"
To: "'Jerome du Bois'"
Subject: RE: more questions than ever
Date: Thu, 10 Mar 2005 13:19:55 -0700

Dear Mr. du Bois and Ms. King,

This is the last time I will respond to your email regarding this subject.

For your information, I am an unpaid volunteer who devotes over 30 hours per week to advancing educational opportunities for 26,000 public school students. In addition, I am responsible for overseeing a $150 million budget and a $217 million capital improvement project. Like any public school district in the United States, we have a myriad of issues facing us this year including significant budget shortfalls, how to best service the needs of our students, and meeting ever increasing standards for academic accountability. While I embrace these tasks wholeheartedly because of my commitment to our community, they take up a lot of my time. Frankly, I am much more concerned with the needs of my students and constituents than I am with the fact that this book, which people who don’t even live within my district believe is inappropriate, is present in a handful of classrooms across the district.

I trust the superintendent to do what he promised. I have indicated to you that I would follow up to ensure the job was done. If you still take issue with my stance, I invite you to express your opinion in person at our next Board meeting which will be held on March 29, 2005 at Coronado High School in Scottsdale, Arizona.

However, please anticipate that by that time, I will obtain a public confirmation from the Superintendent that the books were voluntarily removed from our classrooms thereby defusing any threatened action you may take against me.

Please be advised that if you publicly attack myself, other Board members, or the school district in any way, I will take all appropriate measures to protect my district.

Best wishes,

Christine Schild
Scottsdale USD Governing Board President
Scottsdale Neighborhood Enhancement Commission member

[fisk begins]

This is the last time I will respond to your email regarding this subject.

You have yet to respond to the subject --Islam in textbooks-- but this is the fourth time you have avoided it.

For your information, I am an unpaid volunteer who devotes over 30 hours per week to advancing educational opportunities for 26,000 public school students.

I am an unpaid volunteer, too, who devotes around twelve hours a day exploring important social and political and legal issues, then writing about them sometimes. I don't know how many people my efforts reach, but today, March 11, 2005, if you Yahoo "History Alive! The Medieval World and Beyond", our work is the second citation. The Tears of Things is still microblogospheric, but as I've warned before, beware the power of the blogs of the Long Tail.

In addition, I am responsible for overseeing a $150 million budget and a $217 million capital improvement project.

And it isn't enough, is it? The students --I mean the parents-- flee anyway, into charter schools and religious academies.

Like any public school district in the United States, we have a myriad of issues [sic] facing us this year including significant budget shortfalls, how to best service the needs of our students, and meeting ever increasing standards for academic accountability.

Perhaps you have budget shortfalls (fewer butts in seats) because you're not "servicing" the needs of the students if your standards of academic accountability are low. You certainly haven't been accountable to some simple questions about academic standards. And you certainly have the right to keep your mouth shut. And we see that. This is a post-9/11 world at war, no matter how it may look from cushyville.

While I embrace these tasks wholeheartedly because of my commitment to our community, they take up a lot of my time. Frankly, I am much more concerned with the needs of my students and constituents than I am with the fact that this book, which people who don’t even live within my district believe is inappropriate, is present in a handful of classrooms across the district.

Wait a minute! It's still present in a handful of classrooms across the district? You do say "the fact," after all. Hmmm. . .

And how do you know we don't live in the district? A moot point, as you lawyers say, at any rate, since the original concern, and my first signal, came from FISH's email to Daniel Pipes, and FISH, parent of a seventh-grader, lives in SUSD. But you won't answer his questions either; or, if you have, it's been on the side.

Also, when you say "believe is inappropriate," referring to us, does that imply that you believe that orphaned tome is appropriate? (Oops. I asked a question.)

Frankly, you are much more concerned to tell us of your self-serving self-sacrificing image, using your time to shore up your defensiveness, remain dismissive, and then, in a subsequent passage, imply that we threatened you. But first:

I trust the superintendent to do what he promised. I have indicated to you that I would follow up to ensure the job was done. If you still take issue with my stance, I invite you to express your opinion in person at our next Board meeting which will be held on March 29, 2005 at Coronado High School in Scottsdale, Arizona.

I don't trust John Baracy, the Superintendent, one bit. He doesn't answer any of our emails, and I'm really concerned about his frivolous preoccupation with job titles, which is just new paint over old cracks. He does not impress me as a serious man. And you fronting points for him disappoints me as well.

Of course we decline your invitation. We already have get strapped just to go to the K for a quart of milk. We're not about to present ourselves as two clear targets before a significant proportion of the Scottsdale Muslim "community," bristling with picture phones. You really haven't done your homework on us.

However, please anticipate that by that time, I will obtain a public confirmation from the Superintendent that the books were voluntarily removed from our classrooms thereby defusing any threatened action you may take against me.

Please be advised that if you publicly attack myself, other Board members, or the school district in any way, I will take all appropriate measures to protect my district.

A bit tetchy, aren't you? "Threatened action"? We blog, Mrs. Schild. What are you going to do, stop us before we Google again?

The guy in the movie said, "You're part of the problem, or you're part of the solution, or you're just part of the landscape." Nobody gets to be the last part anymore. The landscape changed when the Twin Towers fell, and when two other planes plowed into hell --all filled with innocent souls, brought down by Muslims. Muslims. Muslims. They are the threat, not we two.

I will take all appropriate measures to protect my district.

We wish you would protect your district. Ditto Dr. John Baracy. We wish you would stand up a little straighter to protect your country, too.

Questions, Questions, Questions

1. Has any member of the SUSD Governing Board had any side or semi-secret meetings with Muslim groups about anything?

2. Have they met, for example, with Dr. Zudhi Jasser, representatives of The Islamic Speakers Bureau of Arizona, The American Islamic Forum For Democracy, or representatives of CAIR?

3. Have Muslim parents pushed for headscarves in SUSD? Has the issue ever been brought up, and through what channels? Whose position is being advanced?

4. How did History Alive! (HA!) come up for consideration of district-wide adoption? Who put it under whose nose?

5. And how did it get canned? This was, supposedly, a pilot program that all of the education honchos in California were keeping a keen eye on. Now, suddenly, it sputters out. Why?

6. And, in the interval, to raise the very first question on this three-article thread, Is it true that HA! was not allowed off-campus, that the student could not take the volume home? If true, then what the hell?

7. Does Mrs. Schild's consistent haughty dismissiveness represent the position of all members of the Governing Board when faced with serious, perhaps unpopular questions, even from a SUSD parent?

8. Finally, as a follow-up to #7, if a Muslim parent, or brace of them, comes to you --any of you-- with their concerns and questions, do you treat them as disdainfully as you have tried to do with us, or do you just bend over for them and say yes yes yes? Has it already happened? did they have their way with you?

History Alive! Is Dead! But . . . QUESTIONS REMAIN [UPDATED]

by Jerome du Bois

Was all my huffin and puffin for nuffin? I don't think so.

Yesterday I posted a long collage about Islam in schools in the West, including Arizona, with a specific question for John Baracy and the Scottsdale Unified School District's Governing Board. I emailed them, of course, and what follows after the jump is my colloquy with Mrs. Christine Schild, the President of the Governing Board. I have sent the last email simultaneously with this posting.

I suggest the reader study the phrasing in the few words Mrs. Schild employs, to see how much is left unsaid, how much is avoided. This is a crucial subject --Islamic indoctrination-- and she sails right by it.

[Irresistible aside: By the way, the Board meeting Mrs. Schild refers to in her last email, where she got the informal word from her boss, was about expanding classroom space for "extremely gifted" students. This is what they're concerned about over there. Rings like ka-ching, folds like green. ("It's extremely gifted, not just gifted, you stupid, stupid . . .")]

This story isn't over.

My first email

-----Original Message-----
From: Jerome du Bois [mailto:kinganddubois@cox.net]
Sent: Wednesday, March 09, 2005 8:30 AM
To: superintendent@susd.org
Cc: govboard@susd.org
Subject: history alive!

Sir:

This is for the record; I do not expect a reply, and would be
surprised to receive one.

I've asked you a question on my blog, The Tears of Things, in an
article I just published with the title "Turning Arizona Schools Into
Muslim Madrassas --It's Already Begun." You can find it at:

http://www.thetearsofthings.net/archives/000317.html

The question is:

Why won't you allow a seventh-grade social studies textbook, History
Alive!, to go home with the student?

I've emailed the Governing Board with the same question. Thanks for
your attention.

Sincerely,

Jerome du Bois

Her first reply

From: "Christine Schild"
To: "'Jerome du Bois'"
Subject: RE: history alive!
Date: Wed, 9 Mar 2005 11:05:29 -0700

Dear Mr. du Bois,

Thank you for sharing your concerns with the Governing Board.

Yesterday, our Superintendent indicated that TCI's materials, including
History Alive! The Medieval World and Beyond have been removed from
consideration.

He also indicated that these materials would be removed from our
schools.

Best wishes,

Christine Schild
Scottsdale USD Governing Board President
Scottsdale Neighborhood Enhancement Commission member

My second email

-----Original Message-----
From: Jerome du Bois [mailto:kinganddubois@cox.net]
Sent: Wednesday, March 09, 2005 12:23 PM
To: cmschild@cox.net
Cc: superintendent@susd.org
Subject: history alive

Dear Ms. Schild,

Thank you for your prompt response.

I would like some clarification, though. You used the word
"indicated." That's vague. What does that mean? Did Dr. Baracy make
a formal, written decision? If so, what did it say? Is it publicly
available? And when will the materials be removed?

Sincerely,

Jerome du Bois

Her second reply

From: "Christine Schild"
To: "'Jerome du Bois'"
Subject: RE: history alive
Date: Wed, 9 Mar 2005 17:58:42 -0700

Dear Mr. du Bois,

The district was piloting the book as part of an adoption process.

The books in question will not be considered for adoption.

It is my understanding that Dr. Baracy has communicated to the
curriculum review committee that the materials should be removed.

Since the materials were never actually adopted by the District, there
was no need to take any formal, written action.

He communicated this information to me informally at last night's Board
meeting and I haven't had a chance to follow up on time lines.

Best wishes,

Christine Schild
Scottsdale USD Governing Board President
Scottsdale Neighborhood Enhancement Commission member

My third and latest email

Mrs. Schild:

No offense, but you obviously haven't done your homework on us. In fact, I doubt you read the article I referred to in my first email. After all that digging, you think I'm going to go away after you wave generalities like "communicated . . . informally" at me? That just sounds like the high jingo to me; nothing to see here, move along, the expensive people have the situation well in hand. Uh-huh.

My first email --with its core question still unanswered today-- was addressed to Dr. Baracy primarily, then the Governing Board. I did not have your personal email at that time. Well, Dr. Baracy has yet to show up --even after I taunted him, and asked him to surprise me!-- but out you came within two hours. And just you, nobody else. (And you haven't answered the question either.)

Is it because you're the President of the Board, or because you're a lawyer, or both? If you represent the District officially, or not, I should know that, I think.

In the meantime, all this goes on the blog, right now, simultaneously with this email --you should have been specific before-- along with the following questions:

1. During the "piloting process," was the seventh-grade social-studies book History Alive! allowed to go home with the student?

2. What is the exact title of the seventh-grade social-studies book that will replace the now-orphaned HA! ?

3. Are you concerned about Muslims distorting the information your students are exposed to?

4. Where's Dr. Baracy, polishing his verbal magazine?

Sincerely,

Jerome du Bois

[Update: Okay, around ten this morning we received a reply from Mrs. Schild, and Catherine answered]

From: "Christine Schild"
To: "'Jerome du Bois'"
Subject: RE: more questions than ever
Date: Thu, 10 Mar 2005 10:07:10 -0700

Dear Mr. du Bois,

I understand your frustration. However, there are a number of issues on my plate & I have to pay attention to all of them.

The Superintendent gave me his word and I believe him.

However, I will follow up with the Superintendent. I expect him to call me today on an unrelated matter.

Best wishes,

Christine Schild

Catherine's answer

Mrs. Schild:

"I understand your frustration."

Comment from Catherine King: "Drop the fuzzy fake empathy."

"However, there are a number of issues on my plate & I have to pay attention to all of them."

Comment from Catherine King: "Boo hoo. That's why you get paid the big bucks. Besides, getting back to one of Jerome's original questions, Who is paying you for this? And exactly what is 'this'?"

"The Superintendent gave me his word and I believe him."

Comment from Catherine King: "How does it follow that we should believe him, unless we were born last night? Also, suspiciously, why would you think other people are so stupid as to be so effortlessly dismissed? About questions concerning the Islamic indoctrination of our youth?"

"However, I will follow up with the Superintendent. I expect him to call me today on an unrelated matter."

Comment from Catherine King: "We are talking about a whole generation of minds in an unprecedentedly crucial time, not about your cozy, 'informal,' 'unrelated matter,' 'I believe him' relationship with Dr. Baracy. Your stance is suspect, and we'll be examining your background, and your affliations."

Signed,

Catherine King, with Jerome du Bois

Turning Arizona Public Schools Into Muslim Madrassas --IT'S ALREADY BEGUN

[Another long post, but more bloggy, with great chunks of other peoples' words. This may be blessing or curse, depending on the reader's taste for my prose. At any rate, read it and weep. Then get angry. Then do something. And remember the goal: No dhimmis here. Ever.]

by Jerome du Bois

Before we begin this very long post, a quick question for Arizona parents of middle-school students: if someone placed a pretty mat on the floor, told you to face in a certain direction, kneel, bow down, and repeat strange words five times a day for a month, would you do it? Your children will, before the end of the year. You can count on it, their grades will depend on it, and right now there's nothing you can do about it.

. . . it is hard to understand why, in an American textbook in which the birth and expansion of Islam gets 55 pages, the Middle Ages in Europe get merely seven, and the Byzantine Empire six. By way of contrast, the story of the Umayyad Muslims is told in seven pages, and even more peculiarly for students in a Western culture, a chapter about "Village Society in West Africa" takes up eight pages. --Rod Dreher, NRO, February 12, 2002, commenting on Across The Centuries, a seventh-grade social-studies textbook.

Michael H. Hart's top 100 list of the most influential people in the history of the world was presented to teach that Muhammad was #1, Sir Isaac Newton was #2 and Jesus was #3. --from an email to Daniel Pipes by FISH, February 27, 2005, about History Alive! The Medieval World and Beyond, a newer seventh-grade social-studies textbook.

Schools and campuses are no exceptions as places where Islam can be victorious. . . . We should use every opportunity to sensitize non-Muslim peers and school staff to Islam and to establish an environment in which everywhere a non-Muslim turns, he notices Islam portrayed in a positive way, is influenced by it and eventually accepts Islam.--from DawaNet, "How To Make America An Islamic Nation." (See Pipes here.)

Coming soon to an elementary school near you: mandatory indoctrination in Islamic customs and practices. According to The Kansas City Star, third-, fourth- and fifth-graders in Herndon, Virginia, are to be given lessons in the three Rs: Reading, ‘Riting, and Ramadan. During this instruction, public school children will play act being Muslims, and, perhaps unwittingly, convert to Islam. -- Alexis Amory, FrontPage, October 20, 2004.

On February 23, 2005, the Arizona Republic ran a story about Scottsdale Unified School District Superintendent John M. Baracy, a Ph.D who makes over $200,000 per year. [Email is: superintendent@susd.org.] The subject: he changed six job titles. It was cute. From Anne Ryman's article:

She used to be known as the receptionist.

Now she's the Director of First Impressions.

Barbara Levine is one of several employees in the Scottsdale Unified School District whose job titles have changed in a sharp departure from the traditional titles that parents grew up using.

National workplace experts say they are unaware of another school district in the United States that has changed its titles so dramatically, and they disagree over whether the new titles, which are designed to reflect the district's commitment to learning, are good. Parents, they say, could become confused over whom to contact if they have a complaint.

Was the school bus late? Blame the "transporter of learners," formerly the bus driver.

Got a problem with your school principal? Take it up with the 10-word "executive director for elementary schools and excelling teaching and learning," formerly known as the assistant superintendent of elementary schools.

Sound confusing or like hyperbole?

Scottsdale Superintendent John Baracy, who created the new titles for about a half-dozen employees, doesn't think so.

"This is to make a statement about what we value in the district. We value learning," said Baracy, who pledges to back up the new titles with better customer service.

Better customer service? I'm impressed --at first-- but I have a question for Dr. "Excelling" Baracy on a lot less whimsical subject than job titles. In fact, I address my question to everyone on the Governing Board. [Email is: govboard@susd.org.] This means you--

Mrs. Christine Schild, President, appointed 2002, three sons in Scottsdale schools;
Mrs. Jennifer Petersen, appointed 2004, three children in Scottsdale schools;
Ms. Karen Beckvar, appointed 2002;
Mrs. Molly Holzer, appointed 2004, two children in Scottsdale schools; and
Dr. Eric Meyer, appointed 2004, two children in Scottsdale schools--

--and the first one to answer gets a Muslim-approved forehead-activated prayer-rug buzzer. Here's my question:

With all this valuing of learning going on, why won't you allow a seventh-grade social studies textbook to go home with the student? You know, one of your "customers"?

Could it be because it champions, foregrounds, and whitewashes Islam?

At least one Scottsdale father wants to know. Read his recent comment (links added by me) on Daniel Pipes's website, responding to Pipes's November 24, 2004 article, Teaching Islam in American Schools:

Submitted by FISH (fish123abc@cox.net), February 27, 2005 at 10:45

Excellent article, Dr. Pipes, and thank you for taking the time to write it!

My child is in the 7th grade in Scottsdale, Arizona. The school's officially adopted social studies textbook is titled Across the Centuries and is published by Houghton Mifflin. However, Across the Centuries has been shelved and the school is piloting a brand new book from Teacher's Curriculum Institute, aka TCI, titled History Alive! The Medieval World and Beyond (this book is not permitted to go home). In my opinion, this book is highly biased towards Islam, historically incorrect and also includes fake history along with Islamic religious proselytizing and indoctrination techniques.

The school has spent approximately 5 weeks of the third quarter grading period teaching Islam to 12 and 13 year olds. The children had to write a full biography on the life of Muhammad, using the information from the textbook --an extremely indoctrinating exercise. This biography will be a large portion of their grade for the 8 week period. Michael H. Hart's top 100 list of the most influential people in the history of the world was presented to teach that Muhammad was #1, Sir Isaac Newton was #2 and Jesus was #3. The school hosted two professional Muslim speakers, from the Islamic Speakers Bureau of Arizona, to speak to all 7th grade social studies classes. This took one whole day. The Muslim speakers brought prayer rugs and taught the children to pray the Muslim way. I also believe that there were recitations from the Koran and possibly an Islamic "fashion show".

To the best of my knowledge, in this Islamic program, there are none of the negative aspects of Islam touched upon. It is my opinion that in the book, History Alive! The Medieval World and Beyond, Christians are trounced and portrayed as murderers of the Muslim and Jewish people. The Jewish people are only mentioned, and very briefly, in order to be victimized, persecuted and murdered by the Christians. All the while, Islam builds great and grand new empires, has many great and wonderful achievements in architecture, education, science, geography, mathematics, medicine, literature, art and music, and ultimately rules benevolently over the Jewish and Christian people.

Islamic indoctrination in American education is a highly successful insidious industry that is extremely well organized, well connected, legally savvy, brazenly influential, and without successful opposition. When individuals complain to the schools, we often find ourselves engaged in a seriously daunting uphill battle. There should be an opposing and equally aggressive and well connected organization of people who are willing to stop the Islamization of our school children and of our public schools. This is a big job. Sharing information, increasing awareness and being connected are half the battle.

There is a large amount of information available about the Islamization of public school textbooks. Of course, Daniel Pipes' website is a good place to start. Check The Textbook League and William Bennetta, The American Textbook Council and Gilbert Sewall for starters. Search the internet using terms like Islamic indoctrination in public schools, textbooks promote Islam, Islamic dawa in public schools, Across the Centuries criticism, Serge Trifkovic Across the Centuries, Textbooks for Jihad by Lee Kaplan, Look who's teaching Johnny about Islam by Paul Sperry, etc. . . You will find many articles and one will lead to the next and so on . . .

I feel strongly that religious studies should not be taught in public elementary, middle or high schools. Religious studies can be offered in public colleges to adults who are able to make their own choices about what they want to be "fed." I wish that the people in charge of our children's public education felt the same way!

I've never heard of a school textbook that the student was forbidden to take home, and neither has my wife, a former teacher. While we're waiting for Dr. Baracy and the SUSD Governing Board's answer to this anomaly, we will explore further this Islamic insinuiation campaign, which did not burst onto the Scottsdale scene two weeks ago like a saddle sore. It goes back years. For example, the "shelved" book Across The Centuries is just as egregious and misleading at the book that replaced it, is used in many school districts nationwide, was read by John Walker Lindh, for example --and was first published in 1991.

I'll be taking us back about ten years, in reverse order, to see what American Muslims have in store for you and me. (I can give you the short version in two words, though: The Borg.) But before we jump, I'd like to point to who has paid attention to this educational scandal, and who has ignored it. Nationally, Charles Johnson and his commenters covered a lot in one posting. Instapundit had a one-sentence link after a story about Al Qaeda in Tucson. Solomania has a mention. Rantburg had a fat quote and some good comments. As for local political blogs, I confess I barely glance at them. But I checked in with Blog for Arizona, a Dean hangover site. No mention. Then I used the blogroll there to check out over three dozen Arizona sites. Nada. (Oh, azcentral.com had a cute little follow-up on the job title thing.) Finally, what about Dr. M. Zuhdi Jasser a Phoenix physician, organizer of the only "Moderate Muslim March" yet, and Chairman of the American Islamic Forum For Democracy? Who even has access to azcentral.com's blog, pluggedin? Anything from him . . . ? No. Silence from the Doctor.

We're on our own here. Get on the bus, dear learner, while I transport us back --in-- time.

Less than a year ago, on April 25, 2004, there was a rally in downtown Phoenix organized by Dr. M. Zuhdi Jasser. Several sources describe it in several ways, but the pitch was "Muslims for moderation, and against terrorism." I mention it here to provide some local context, because it was so recent, and because the turnout, from a Muslim community of 50,000-plus, was so pitifully small.

Since our children are grown and gone, we don't monitor local educational policies and programs. But we sure have the antennae out for Islam. In fact, to make our position about Islam clear, here I'll republish the main part of Seven Statements For Muslims, which I first posted on November 2, 2004 --Re-Election Day (joy), and the day Theo van Gogh was ritualistically murdered (sorrow) by a Muslim, in a Muslim way, for Muslim reasons (anger):

1. The Jews are not a question mark. (Thought experiment: Imagine a history of the world without any contributions by Muslims. Now imagine the same without Jews.)

2. Women are equal to men. They are not property or chattel or anything less than any man, and indeed superior to any man who thinks women should be anything less than any man.

3. The Qu'ran was not orally or mentally channelled inerrantly to Mohammed by the Angel Gabriel. It is a palimpsest, edited, abridged, and extended over many years. This is just historical fact, attested to by the Hijazi Ultraviolets.

4. Allah isn't alone. He shares the world with all the gods in Mecca's cave, and Yahweh, Shiva, Chango, The Everywhere Spirit, Ein Sof, and many more.

5. I don't trust your words. You have a practice called Taqiyya: "Muslims hold that the Islamic version of dissimulation is applied only externally with the tongue and not internally (on the heart, spirit, and soul). In other words, a Muslim is allowed to say untruths to a non-Muslim if in their heart they still respect the truths that they externally deny." (Definition from fact-index.com.) And you want us to trust Muslims? No. Because of taqiyya, I cannot believe a single thing any Muslim says.

6. There is nothing spiritual or mystical about the Arabic language. It may not even be of Arabian origin; evidence suggests it originated in the Levant. So chanting anything in Arabic, or writing it down, is no different than chanting or writing in English or German or Urdu or Spanish or Esperanto.

7. There will be no more one-way tolerance. One man, one vote, once don't go 'round here. Submission is not in our law, our tradition, our Constitution, or our blood, habibi.

Opposition, stubborness: now, that's another matter.

With that settled . . . As soon as I saw FISH's emailed comment over at Daniel Pipes --Scottsdale? That's in my Valley!-- I started Googling and digging.

History Alive! is part of an entire K-12 curriculum. The new middle-school text with its Islamic emphasis may be a pilot program here, but some California parents know well an earlier high-school version, with its bias against Israel. On October 3, 2003, the online magazine j., the Jewish News Weekly of Northern California, published an article by Alexandra J. Wall:

A Middle East curriculum used in some local high schools is strongly biased against Israel, the S.F.-based Jewish Community Relations Council is charging.

The offending curriculum, the “History Alive!” series distributed by the Rancho Cordova-based Teachers’ Curriculum Institute, was discovered by a Santa Rosa parent who not only brought it to the attention of the JCRC but filed a complaint against Maria Carrillo High School.

The parent, an attorney, did not want to be named in j. but he is angry.

First, he found a textbook he found factually incorrect. But what he saw in some supplemental materials was even worse.

The supplementary materials provided by TCI have so many inaccuracies that the section on the Arab-Israeli conflict shouldn’t be used, according to the JCRC’s report.

One especially offensive activity, the JCRC said, divides the students into two groups. There are the “Pads,” whose ancestors have lived in the Land of Pad for thousands of years, and the “Jeds,” who are told: “Your ancestors used to live in the Land of Z, which you believe was given them by God. Your ancestors were forced to leave the Land of Z 2,000 years ago, and your people have been scattered throughout the world ever since.”

The exercise has the teacher, acting as “the Great Power,” favoring the Jeds over the Pads in trying to reach a small, overcrowded plot of land bordered by desks in the classroom. The Pads and Jeds debate whom it belongs to, and the teacher is to act unimpressed by whatever the Pads have to say, while agreeing with the Jeds.

Jackie Berman, the JCRC’s education specialist co-authored the JCRC study with Yitzhak Santis, the JCRC’s Middle East director.

That exercise is perhaps the most egregious example, the JCRC maintains, but there are many such problems in the curriculum, causing Berman to conclude: “That’s why it can’t really be fixed, by saying, ‘Change this around or that.’ It’s just permeated with this kind of bias.”

Neither Berman nor a TCI spokeswoman knew how widely the TCI curriculum is used in this area, but Berman said she had been in touch with the JCRC in Chicago, where schools were also using it. According to the company’s Web site, www.historyalive.com, TCI programs are used by more than 1,000 school districts across the nation, and there are testimonials from California officials from Fremont Union High and Cupertino Unified school districts.

On Monday, Berman and Jonathan Bernstein, director of the Central Pacific region of the Anti-Defamation League, met with the assistant superintendent of the Santa Rosa City School District, Steve Butler. The ADL has dealt with the TCI curriculum on a national level.

Butler said the district tried to solve the complaint filed by the parent informally, as is district procedure. When they were unable to, they convened a committee of four educators not connected to the school to review the offending materials.

The committee found that with supplementary information, including some provided by the parent, as well as the JCRC’s report, multiple points of view were represented, Butler said.

The conclusion the panel came to was that the materials “are not perfect, but they weren’t at a point where they needed to be censored or banned,” he said. “This is making a mountain out of a molehill for us.”

That response does not please those at the JCRC. A copy of the report is set to be sent off to TCI shortly. And Santis said this will be an ongoing story.

“We’re not satisfied,” said Santis. “If the Santa Rosa school district acknowledges it’s flawed, why are they using it? We urge that the school district drop this curriculum completely.”

The district’s response certainly was not enough for the offended parent either. He said he is not only filing a complaint against the teacher, but plans to continue the appeal to the state department of education and is willing to file a lawsuit, if necessary.

This effort paid off. On February 14, 2004, Ms. Wall followed up with another story:

A textbook company has agreed to rewrite its unit on the Middle East after the S.F.-based Jewish Community Relations Council issued a report claiming it was biased against Israel.

The JCRC report concluded that the supplemental materials that go along with the Teachers Curriculum Institute’s “History Alive!” textbooks were too filled with inaccuracies and so biased that they should not be used.

Jim Lobdell, senior director of TCI in Rancho Cordova, estimated that it could take a year to update the Middle East curriculum, but in the best-case scenario, it will be done sooner. In the meantime, a notice appears on TCI’s Web site that warns teachers to use discretion with the existing unit.

All current TCI customers will receive the new materials at no charge.

Last fall, the parent of a student at Santa Rosa’s Maria Carrillo High School complained to school officials not only about the textbook his son was using — which he said was biased against Israel — but about the supplemental materials. When the school district refused to stop using the materials, he took the matter to the JCRC, which, upon reading the chapter in question, became alarmed.

This prompted Jackie Berman, the JCRC’s education specialist, and Yitzhak Santis, JCRC Middle East director, to write a report analyzing point by point how the curriculum was flawed. A back and forth ensued with TCI, which sent the report to scholars of its choosing to offer their opinions.

A JCRC board member sent the report to attorney Alan Dershowitz. The board member called Dershowitz’s assistant to see if he would be willing to look at the materials as well as the report, and he did.

“I agree completely that the historical distortions and factual mistakes that appear throughout the curriculum make it unacceptable for classroom use and I hope that the proper authorities will seriously consider your criticisms,” Dershowitz wrote.

Lobdell said that the JCRC’s report prompted TCI leadership to seek the opinions of additional scholars and teachers on the unit in question.

“The feedback we got from them and the context of the events since 9/11 and the heightened sensitivities around the issues in the Middle East prompted us to update the lessons that we have,” said Lobdell.

Which is cause for cautious celebration at the JCRC. “Of course we’ll be watching,” said Berman, “but we’re hoping it turns out right now.”

Since TCI’s decision, the Santa Rosa school district has stopped using its materials.

What concerns me here is that it apparently doesn't matter if Scottsdale is using the "new materials" or the old materials: either is unacceptable as a portrayal of truth. More importantly, the earlier text, Across The Centuries, was f