GOING, GOING, GALT!

As many of my friends and family know, I am rereading Ayn Rand’s ATLAS SHRUGGED.

I was maybe 18 when I first read it and although it stayed with me, the reality is I WAS A CHILD and had NO CLUE!
As I read it now, from the vantage point of age and experience, I find myself looking up from the pages and seeing this novel played out before my eyes every day and night on the news.

 In the novel Rand has the movers, inventors, artists, and producers (Atlas) of American society simply strike and disappear. They remove themselves from the world. Today they don't go on strike; they just leave for other states and, eventually, other countries.

In America, right now, Atlas is shrugging.. He is going to places that WANT him, his skills, his jobs, and his money.


Right now companies, jobs, and people are leaving highly taxed and regulation punishing states like California and Illinois and relocating to states like Texas and Florida that have no income tax and fewer state regulations.


But for many, our federal policies drive them even further…they cannot stay here and thrive so…they leave the US all together.

This has been going on for a long time and it is now accelerating. Atlas is fleeing because of intrusive and economy killing government policies.


Atlas leaves in bits…he begins first by outsourcing, then the entire manufacturing process goes, and last is Atlas himself… the inventors and entrepreneurs .

 These people go, as all people do, to where there is OPPORTUNITY. The globe is a different place than it was when Ayn Rand was writing. Many countries are tax friendly and their standards of living have entered the modern world. They offer dual citizenship.


And…I found this shocking…Americans renouncing their citizenship is higher than it has ever been! If our policies do not change we will lose….and it will play out within the next 20 years.

We USED to be the country that drew talented, motivated people to us. They are now departing for places that do not punish individuals that produce. Places that want and reward business owners and risk takers. These countries are vigorously pursuing American companies and investment.




Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, Monte Carlo, Belize, Costa Rica, Singapore, Panama, Bahamas, and Cayman are just a few examples of those offering low taxes and a business friendly environment.


My grandfather started, in Illinois, a successful metal manufacturing plant in the 40’s that has remained in my family for 3 generations…. a plant that is now being crushed by the state’s toxic policies and bankrupted economy. My brother, who now runs the company, has stated that, if he could, he would leave Illinois for another state. Our grandfather understood an economic America where wealth was comprised of big physical assets that could not be moved easily. The government could effortlessly, and still does in Illinois, bind you with heavy taxation and burdensome regulations.

Today, however, more and more wealth and assets are mobile. They can easily be sent elsewhere. Those physical assets are not so physical anymore….they are intellectual and electronic.

And when Atlas finds too many obstacles in the way of production Atlas can leave.

Today’s technology and transportation have given enormous freedom to those business people who wish to access it….their businesses are where THEY are and THEY can be anywhere on Earth.
The high tech revolution has freed businessmen to run their companies from anywhere in the world.


Present day producers do not have to punish themselves by dropping out of the SYSTEM as they did in Rand’s story. They just drop into another, more welcoming system…. while leaving this economy more and more adrift.


Big government and the CLASS OF DEPENDENCY get in the way and like a parasite, drain the host country. If this goes on long enough…. the host dies.

As the producers, inventors, and risk takers leave, the society becomes more and more injured. Everything declines… wealth, jobs, and living standards. The citizenry becomes poorer. Government, to the detriment, spends and prints more money, and ineffectually tries to do what it CANNOT DO.


It CANNOT create jobs or wealth. It CANNOT make everyone equal materially or intellectually. The more it intrudes into the private sectors of society the worse matters become.




It makes no difference what our currant administration says, there is not one thing government can do to turn around this process of continual decline except to reverse its policies.


We must restore those conditions which make it attractive for Atlas to return. We must drastically reduce our spending and the thousands of strangling regulations that prevent production. We now have the highest corporate tax in the world…Why would ANYBODY want to start a business here?


It has taken us 100 years to get to this stagnant point…to reverse it will also take time. We must do it in the same way that it has been done to us…… incrementally. Our talented creators and the capital that the current toxic policies have driven away will not come back when other societies provide more favorable climates for entrepreneurs than we do. They must trust that the change is real.

Power does not relinquish itself. A bloated STATIST government, with injurious regulations and taxation, make escape impossible. That is its goal.

But… entrepreneurs are now free to vote with their feet and wallets. Thankfully they pose a threat to just how many of these bad policies any government can impose and still continue.




Who is John Galt? He is Atlas leading an organized "strike" against those who use the force of government law and moral guilt to confiscate the accomplishments of the productive menbers of society. He “Shuts down the motor of the world”.

U.S. politicians may tear their hair about THE RICH, but the real enemies of America are those who come to power by demonizing the successful while producing nothing useful themselves.


Rand calls them the “Looters”..they are proponents of high taxation, big labor, government ownership, government spending, government planning, regulation, and redistribution.

Rand also identifies the "Moochers" ….those who demand others' earnings on behalf of the needy or those unable to earn for themselves. Yet they berate the producers who make that help possible and seem to resent the talented on whom they depend. They destroy the productive through guilt, and by appealing to "moral right" while enabling the "lawful" looting performed by governments.


As I stated at the start of this entry, I am reading Atlas Shrugged while seeing its story played out in real time before my eyes.


In the novel many companies and businesses are moving to Colorado because it is a state that has “hardly any government” They leave to escape the onerous government regulations found in other states. Of course Colorado is deemed REGRESSIVE because of this.


And in response to their leaving, the federal government issues a decree forbidding companies from relocating.

I look at the news and see that the National Labor Relations Board filed a complaint demanding that Boeing locate its assembly line for the 787 Dreamliner in Puget Sound instead of Charleston, South Carolina—on the grounds that Boeing should not be allowed to escape to a "right to work" state.


As I continue reading Atlas Shrugged an innovative oilman invents a revolutionary process to extract oil from shale, but even though the country is desperate for energy, he is shut down by government regulations.

I look up from the page and the news is talking about a process called hydraulic fracturing— "fracking" for short—This makes it possible to extract large quantities of natural gas from shale formations across the country. It could revolutionize domestic energy production. But, again the media and the government are calling for a moratorium on fracking.

Atlas Shrugged…. where productive companies are bled dry to provide bailouts for failing companies which produce "unreliable goods at unpredictable times."


And here is General Motors and Chrysler who were bailed out with $80 billion dollars of our tax money so that nine of their cars made the Forbes list of the eleven "Worst Cars on the Road." The nine are:

Cadillac  Escalade                                                      
Chevrolet Tahoe Hybrid

Dodge Nitro                                     
Jeep Wrangler
Dodge Dakota
Chrysler Town and Country
Chevrolet Colorado
Chevrolet Aveo
Jeep Liberty




In Atlas Shrugged, the advocates of uncontrolled government keep spending money faster than they can take it by heavily taxing a shrinking number of producers. The title of one of the chapters is "Account Overdrawn."

In our world, S&P has downgraded the long-term outlook for US government debt, a first step to downgrading the nation's credit rating.


Throughout the novel characters are commenting on their inability to get things repaired, the abandonment of buildings, and the general lack of normal commerce.

 

And online I see an entire photo journal dramatically displaying the currant disintegration of Detroit, Michigan….a city that was once a jewel in this country’s crown.

And finally…in Atlas Shrugged, men of talent and initiative are disappearing and withdrawing from the economy because they refuse to accept punishment for their hard work and ambition.

In April of 2011 well known ad man and entrepreneur Jerry Della Femina announced that he had sold his famous restaurant and was withdrawing his money from all of his other businesses and investments because.....

"I'm just not ready to have my wealth redistributed. I'm not ready to pay more tax money than the next guy because I provide jobs and because I work a 60-hour week and I earn more than $250,000 a year."

But what was even more interesting was Mr. Della Femina’s answer when asked why he was doing this….…
 "Read a brilliant book by Ayn Rand called Atlas Shrugged, and you'll know." 

I Am Thinking About: THE STORY IN UNSUNG WORDS



I have spent a lot of time looking more closely at our history, our institutions, and our beliefs. I have found that, upon examination, many are incorrect, or clouded by myth.


GOSHEN, Ind. Monday, June 6, 2011
— A small Indiana college that began playing "The Star-Spangled Banner" for the first time at sporting events last year, upsetting some who believe the song with its images of war and the military undermines the school's pacifist message, plans to review next month whether to continue the practice... Goshen College’s board of directors has suspended the practice in response to complaints. … The board of the Mennonite liberal-arts college has asked its president to come up with a song “that fits with sports tradition, that honors country and that resonates with Goshen College’s core values and respects the views of diverse constituencies,” according to a press release.

The original flag in the Smithsonian

I must confess, like Goshen College,  our National Anthem has always bothered me.   I often thought America The Beautiful would have been a much better choice as the song of our nation.   After all, the ANTHEM does speak of bombs, rockets, and war….    But, let's turn around and look back.... at the history of  The Star Spangled Banner…and the words that are never sung....
 

The United States of America, quite rightly (in my opinion), went to war with Great Britain in 1812 because we DISAGREED with them over our freedom of the ocean.


We resented Britain’s interference with American international trade, their impressment of American sailors, and their obstacles to America’s desire to expand.   This led Congress to declare war on Great Britain on June 18, 1812.


We managed to keep them at bay for at least two years. We did this even though, as a country, we were not very strong.

 During this period, the Brits were involved in an altercation with Napoleon.  At the same time that we declared war on England,  Napoleon set off on an invasion of Russia.   Everyone expected him to be successful which would result in his complete control of Europe.  Great Britain would then be on her own. This was NOT the best of times to be at war AGAIN with America.

In the beginning the British were outdone by our seamen. Commander Oliver Hazard Perry, sent this message upon winning a battle on Lake Erie in 1813, "We have met the enemy, and they are ours."


But, the British navy was mightier and they were blockading New England.  They eventually overpowered our ships.  And, New England, increasingly strangled by the blockade, was threatening to secede.

Then, Napoleon was forced, in 1814, to abdicate because he was thrashed by the Russian winter. With this concern out of the way Great Britain could now give America its complete attention.

The British planned a three-pronged attack.


From the North they would come down Lake Champlain toward New York, and capture parts of New England. From the South they would travel up the Mississippi, seize New Orleans and shut down the West. The Central prong would go for the Mid-Atlantic states and attack Baltimore because it was the largest port south of New York.

Since America, at that time, was gathered along the Atlantic coast, the taking of Baltimore would have cut the nation in two.


The success or failure of this Central prong would determine the fate of America.






On August 24, 1814, they arrived on the Atlantic coast capturing Washington, D.C..... With that done, the British proceeded up the Chesapeake Bay, toward Baltimore.

 At the time, Fort McHenry (OUR fort) controlled Boston Harbor with big guns and 1000 men.  In order to take Baltimore the British would have to capture the fort. They arrived on September 12 prepared to do just that.




Fort McHenry

 Meanwhile, the elderly Dr. William Beanes was being held prisoner on one of the British ships having been arrested in Maryland (I do not know why).   His lawyer and friend, Francis Scott Key, had come to the ship with the hope of negotiating his release.

Francis Scott Key

 Although the British captain of the ship was willing to do so, he told the two Americans that they could not leave right away.
The bombardment of Fort McHenry was about to begin. It was now the evening of Tuesday, September 13, 1814.

From their place on the ship, with the twilight fading, Key and Beanes could see the American flag flying over Fort McHenry.

They watched all through the night. They could hear the bursting of the British bombs. They could see the red glare of their rockets. The men knew the fort was holding because they could see the flag flying in the light of the battle.






The British bombardment fell silent toward morning. At this time Key and Beanes could not see what happened…it was still too dark. Had Fort McHenry surrendered or had it held fast? Which flag now flew above the fort?

The men struggled to see as the eastern sky was slowly lit by the dawn. Key and the doctor asking each other again and again "Can you see it? Can you see the flag?"

When the battle was done Key wrote a four-stanza poem sharing the events and emotions of this night.


It was titled The Defense of Fort McHenry. The poem was published in newspapers, and was immediately popular.

It was observed that the words fit an old English tune called To Anacreon in Heaven – a mostly unsingable tune because it had a large and very contorted vocal range. But, the words fit the melody so….


Key's poem soon became known as The Star Spangled Banner, and in 1931, Congress declared it the official anthem of the United States.


Now that you have the backgroud of the story,  read the words of THE STAR SPANGLED BANNER....ALL the words that are never sung and few know exist.    It is Dr. Beanes who is speaking first….. This is the question he asks of Key:

Oh! say, can you see, by the dawn's early light,                                   


What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming?


Whose broad stripes and bright stars, through the perilous fight,


O'er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming?


And the rocket's red glare, the bombs bursting in air,


Gave proof thro' the night that our flag was still there.


Oh! say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave,


O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?


Key answers:


On the shore, dimly seen thro' the mist of the deep,

Where the foe's haughty host in dread silence reposes   


What is that which the breeze, o'er the towering steep,

As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses?             


Now it catches the gleam of the morning's first beam,


In full glory reflected, now shines on the stream.


'Tis the star-spangled banner. Oh! long may it wave,


O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!




Key continues (with a slap at the British):

And where is that band who so vauntingly swore,  


That the havoc of war and the battle's confusion


A home and a country should leave us no more?


Their blood has washed out their foul footstep's pollution.

No refuge could save the hireling and slave,

From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave,   


And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave,


O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave.




This last verse expresses Key's hope for America:

Oh! Thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand,    


Between their loved homes and the war's desolation,


Blest with vict'ry and peace, may the Heav'n - rescued land,

Praise the Pow'r that hath made and preserved us a nation. 


Then conquer we must, for our cause it is just,


And this be our motto - "In God is our trust."


And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave,


O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave.




So today, FLAG DAY, turn around….look at our National Anthem…. See it now with new eyes.....listen to it with new ears……and sing it, ALL OF IT,  with a new voice.

It is not an anthem of war…it is a tribute, with gratitude, to the survival of our country and to the preservation of our liberty.  Our flag is still here...long may it wave!





The HELLcyon Days of School

Etta K. Barstow was hired in 1870 by the Canton (Massachusetts) School Committee. She was to teach in the Sherman School, a one-room schoolhouse located on Pleasant Street, in District 5 . District 5 was called “Ragged Row.”


On the morning of October 5th, she had a confrontation with four of her male students…. Daniel Keliher age 9, John Coffee 11, Jerimiah Keliher 11, and James Cogswell age 13. These boys had presented behavior problems often in class.

When the four boys would not come inside after morning recess, Miss Barstow shut and locked the door. She went on to teach the rest of her students while the boys yelled and shouted curses outside.


Then… close to noon, a rock sailed into windows. It did not hit anything.


But, as Miss Barstow walked home for lunch break at Mrs. Baker’s rooming house, the four boys followed her shouting profanities while throwing stones the size of ink bottles at her.


She was hit on the back of her neck and head just below the ear. She was also struck on her back. This caused her to stagger and the boys yelled that she was drunk.


When Miss Barstow got to Mrs. Baker’s she tried to rest but continued to say she did not feel well. Her legs were weak and she could hardly move. Her landlady suggested she go to Boston to stay with her aunt and seek a doctor.

 A friend took her to the train and remained with her as she required assistance in seating and in staying conscious.


Upon arriving in Boston Etta went in and out of consciousness. Not being told of the attack, the doctor, by the name of Buckingham, took her symptoms to be those of a diabetic condition. By the next day Etta was dead.


The death by stoning of this young teacher was greeted with outrage by the residents of Canton.


James Cogswell, the 13-year-old, ran away never returning to Canton. However, Daniel and Jerimiah Keliher, and John Coffee were eventually only charged with disturbing a school. The assault on their teacher was not brought to the fore.



The Sherman School in the background. 1887 photo 


These three boys were sent to reform school in Westboro.
This sentence was later appealed. The boys were found guilty of disturbing a school building. They were given probation and ordered to pay a fine for the damages they had done to the school.


It is now believed Etta Barstow died from a common result of head trauma. When the stone hit her head it caused an unseen internal injury and bleed, which increased pressure on her brain and killed her the next day.


Miss Etta Barstow’s death was ignored for 140 years. She was a teacher killed by her students.


The myth of the idyllic LITTLE RED SCHOOLHOUSE was just that...a myth.


 A great number of the children were hostile, unmanageable, and prone to violence.



Add to this mix students ranging in age from five to sixteen (some maybe even in their twenties) all crammed into one room. It was an open invitation to a great deal of trouble.

It was easy for the teacher’s role to become more that of a warden than an imparter of knowledge. The necessity of the physical over the intellectual increased.




School boards, especially those on the frontier, often preferred physically strong men as teachers. It was not uncommon to encounter, among the boys, fights involving biting, eye gouging, and all and out slug fests.


It was not unusual for a teacher to be driven out of the classroom in a matter of days. Some did not even last that long.


In the 1830’s a Tennessee school teacher was stabbed and dropped into a well (he lived) and the schoolhouse burned down.


“In the Flat Creek district”, said Indiana historian and novelist Edward Eggleston, “the boys have driven off the last two schoolmasters and licked the one afore them.”

 Attacks on teachers by older male students were a familiar part of nineteenth-century school practice. Teachers in these often rural schools literally fought to prove their right to their positions and often resorted to extreme uses of corporal punishment to maintain them.

These violent attacks were a direct challenge to the schoolmaster's authority. While the application of physical domination was one way in which male teachers established their clear and unchallenged authority, women teachers also experienced physical and psychological intimidation that required courage and determination to withstand.


Mary Ellen Chase described her first day at a school in New England..”I stormed up and down….This pathetic pretense of courage aided by the mad flourishing of my razor strap, brought forth…the expression of respectful fear on the faces of the young giants”


In many instances, parents did not interfere in the pupils' attempts to run the teacher out of town and did not punish them when they did.

It became a form of entertainment in some villages to observe the encounters between new teachers and their male students.


So...what is it like now...in  TODAY’S classrooms….?


Recent data shows that 39 out of every 1,000 teachers experience some sort of crime, and the true rate may be much higher since most incidents go unreported. (Department of Health and Human Services. Center for Disease Control and Prevention. Violence Against Teachers and School Staff)


Teachers are the recipients of verbal abuse, racial and sexist slurs, repeated intimidation, threats of physical violence, vandalism of personal belongings and persistent classroom disruption.

Statistics show a trend of violence toward teachers that is increasing globally.


More than one-quarter of U.S. teachers are threatened on the job by their students, according to research by APA’s Task Force on Violence Against Teachers presented during APA’s Annual Convention.

A survey of 4,735 U.S. teachers conducted in 2010 found that 27 percent said they had been verbally threatened by a student in the past year. In addition, 37 percent had been the target of obscene or sexual remarks from students, and 31 percent said a student had made an obscene gesture to them or groped them. Another 19 percent said they had been intimidated by a student; 13 percent by a student’s parent.

“These numbers did not differ by school setting, by gender of the teacher or by years of teaching,” said Task Force Chair Dorothy L. Espelage, PhD, of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Some more statistics:


• 5 percent of teachers had visited a physician as the result of an attack.


• 15 percent had been physically attacked but did not see a physician.

• 25 percent had their property damaged by a student.


• 22 percent said a student had thrown something at them that year.


• 13 percent reported that parents had thrown things at them.


Each year, 253,100 (7%) teachers are threatened with injury and they can be divided into the following categories by:                                                       


Locale


• 109,800 (43%) in cities

• 78,100 (31%) in suburbs


• 27,500 (11%) in towns


• 37,700 (15%) in rural areas


Level                                                                                      • 139,400 (55%) in secondary schools


• 113,700 (45%) in elementary schools


Gender


• 78,500 (31%) male teachers


• 174,500 (69%) female teachers

I have been a teacher for 23 years…..the one thing I CAN say is that I have yet to be stoned.