Buggy Whips & Other Tools Of Progress

    I recently had a discussion with my daughter about the difference between principles and methods. Too often society gets so closely connected to a method that they end up fighting the principle that the method is meant to promote.

If you can't defeat the competition in the
market, get a law enacted against them!

    In another era, there were only horses and buggies on our city streets. Autos were a threat to safety because they often spooked the horses. Autos could sometimes reach speeds of 35 mph, back then. Horses could match their speed but for only shot spurts and only with the use of a whip.

    As autos began to flourish, the buggy whip manufacturers saw their sales dwindle. Many forces tried to thwart the move toward autos. The stubborn hold-outs could easily make the argument that without sufficient buggy whip sales, the manufacturers would go out of business. This would cause greater slow downs because "buggy whips are the mechanism of progress"! Without whips, traffic would pile up and it would take an extra hour to ride into Tulsa from Broken Arrow. And we all want progress, don't we? SAVE THE BUGGY WHIP! STOP THE AUTOMOBILE TRADE! they wanted us to see the whip as the method of increased mobility, and the automobile as the threat to progress.

Pennsylvania has several charter schools for blind students

    Well, today we have several Oklahoma School districts offering to start charter schools for educating the blind. Currently blind student musts relocate to Muskogee in order to attend our only school for the blind. Well, The Okla School For The Blind is successfully stopping all other charter schools from offering blind students an education. The O.S.B. wants a statewide exclusive franchise. Too bad, Lawton. Too bad, Norman. Too bad Edmond! The well-entrenched in Eastern Oklahoma don't what you to offer community programs for your area.

Some Homeschool groups don't want
other homeschoolers to have choices.

    This is almost as ridiculous as the Homeschool Sports Organizations who are fighting to stop the Tim Tebow Law. The Tebow Law is an effort to certify a homeschooler to play sports on his community's public school team. The homeschool sports organizations like NOAH, CHEF, STORM, and others will likely loose some athletes if kids can play on the Bartlesville High School team instead of driving to Tulsa for the nearest homeschool team's daily practices.

 But its a sad day when I, as a homeschool coach, have to demand that the homeschoolers in Idabelle and Enid have to be denied athletic opportunities, just so my metropolitan Homeschool organization can have a bigger roster.

How do you define 'Retarded'?

Warren Hill

    Hours from now, this man's fate may be a moot argument (read the latest, here), but the issue will not be soon settled.  He killed, and killed again. His 2nd victim was punished with a spike-filled board, beaten with repeated blows to the head. It was a heinous and premeditated act.
    But he was, by some observations, a borderline mentally retarded man. Therein lies the controversy. Those familiar with him believe he knows right from wrong. But the U.S. Supreme Court says anyone who is mentally retarded does not sufficiently separate right & wrong.
Is the penal system 'blowing it' and cruelly being abusive to the murderer?
    Then there's the issue of throwing a mentally retarded soul into a 'jungle rules' world of state prison? If he doesn't have the mental capacity to understand his crime, why is it okay to imprison him, yet not okay to execute him?
Is our prison a:

• way to exact punishment on people?
• way to rehabilitate criminals into nice folks?
• way to cleanse the broad society from dangerous criminals?

    So, if he's innocent of the first crime (shooting murder) due to mental 'cluelessness', is there a more humane way to protect society without putting a very vulnerable soul into a criminal jungle?  The judicial system, including the highest court in the land, has some real problems with mental health issues. Prison is being used at a huge toll in lives and treasury. Yet too many are escaping the just due for their criminal actions.
    Mental healthcare is rapidly developing very solid treatments for many mood disorders. People who have past psychotic experiences and  had no rational understanding of their dangerous acts; now have a promising future SO LONG AS THEY REMAIN IN TREATMENT. Can we mandate a life-long medical requirement, as a requisite for avoiding locking them up in either a penal  or mental institution?

• Conservatives too often react with a callous indifference, so long as undesirable people are 'put away'. 
• Liberals are too often lacking empathy with folks in the grave, and having too much sappy empathy with the abusers whom they apply wishful hopes of reform.

How Federal Regulations Kill In Mass

Special Ops sniper, Chris Kyle

This weekend a great former soldier was killed by another former soldier.

Chris Kyle was volunteering to work with some of our most difficult Post Traumatic Syndrome Disorder sufferers, at a ranch just south of Dallas, TX. The gunman evidently snapped and killed Kyle and another individual, then fled the scene in Kyle's car. 

Eddie Routh was taken into custody after a police chase ended in a crash. 

• How bad was Eddie's condition? 
• How dangerous was Adam Lanza, from Newtown, CT.? 
• How unstable was James Holmes, of Aurora, CO?

The Federal HEPA law had an overlooked flaw, in it's design. Medical professionals have been threatened with career-ending prosecution and massive fines for any unauthorized disclosure of a mental health public safety concern. Too many spouses and children are left out in the dark regarding a parent's difficulty in returning to civilian life after military service in wartime combat zones.

The problem is much larger than PTSD and military veterans. Psychiatric professionals are heavily discouraged from talking to any family members when an acute crisis exists. I've heard first-hand accounts of suicides that resulted when overloaded hospitals discharged mental health patients without notifying any family or friends. Loved one's have gone to hospitals to visit, only to find that the patient was checked out and left. Scared, alone, and suffering delusions, the patient ended it all.

• Children have been put into the care of dangerous parents.
• Coworkers have been killed in workplace massacres.
• Parents have been executed by orders of an imagined voice, in the mind of a schizophrenic youth.

Millions of marriages have had their vows rewritten by federal edict. The HEPA restrictions nullify a whole host of assumed spousal rights, and only a prenuptial agreement could have served as a counter-measure. 

Healthcare statistics estimate that 90% of marriages fail when a spouse has bipolar mania or other delusional mood disorders. Federal policy assumes that the family unit is untrustworthy and dangerous to a mental health case. This policy has to change. There has to be a way to restore spousal rights without filing for divorce and renegotiating a lifelong commitment in the wake of a painful, vulnerable, and confusing readjustment to life with mental health disability.

Obama Divides Preachers From Congregations

  This weekend, the organized, corporate religion industry is facing a test from God.
Will the multi-billion dollar religion industry actually put their 'sheep' first.

  As shepherds of God's flock, ministers are commanded to lay down their lives for the sheep (God's people).
   Obama's regime just offered the corporate religious institutions a narrow temporary exemption from mandated participation in federal birth control purchases.

   But will those preachers now go silent? Or will they stand in solidarity with their flock who take their faith with them into the business world? Obama is still threatening $1 million per day in fines for not providing potentially abortive drugs to fellow business associates.

   Freedom Of Religion is a personal guarantee that our federal govt. will not be allowed to coerce conduct that persecutes any individual's faith convictions.