Conservative Republicans

Conservatives must keep up with the present issues and find ways to apply concervative principals. Cal Thomas, in his editorial today, highlights some of the issues and throws light on how to deal with them as Republican Conservatives. I concur.

Health plans

Hillary Clinton has been advocating changing our individual health insurance policies to a universal health plan. We all know that only 40 million of our citizens do not have health insurance coverage. Right? That means that more than 300 million do have a plan. It also suggests that the 300 million are satisfied with their insurance and are able to pay for it. We also know that indigents (who would include the 40 million not covered) have avenues to take for medical care. They are not turned away from  most hospital emegency rooms when in need, and can turn to welfare for help. Rather than change our whole system, why not give the uninsured extra help by compelling each to walk a half hour a day as part of a preventative measure and send them packets of  oatmeal and bags of walnuts to insure their health. Wouldn’t that be less expensive to the taxpayer?

Politicians

Why are so many politicians either lacking in the ability to express themselves clearly, or void of integrity? It appears that ALL politicians are totally dishonest.  Since this statement is true, our only hope is to stick to our guns and political party of choice.

hate

Getting hate out of the head is tough, but the accomplishment adds years and enrichment to life. Think of hate matters as objects on a floor in a room with one door to the unknown. Place the objects on a flat table and take a long look at them before you open the door and toss them out forever.

An explosive idea

What would our country be like if instead of spending our money on fireworks we used it to improve our highways and byways?

Originality

Mark Twain wrote in “Innocents Abroad”, 1869, ch. 26: To give birth to an idea – to discover a great thought – an intellectual nugget, right under the dust of a field that many a brain plow had gone over before. To find a new planet, to invent a new hinge, to find the way to make the lightnings carry your messages. To be the first – that is the idea. To do something, say something, see something, before anybody else – these are the things that confer a pleasure compared with which all other pleasures are tame and commonplace, other ecstasies cheap and trivial.

Religion and politics

Religion has always played a role in politics and always will. Rev. Jerry Falwell, who died recently, not only got involved but united many different Christian factions to create a huge majority of Republicans and Democrats to elect Ronald Reagan in 1980. It’s unlikely that we’ll see in our lifetime a successor to Falwell because he had one trait lacking in most all politicians: honesty.

The learning process

MARK: Still concerned about public education?

FRANK: It’s too politically controlled. Political leaders don’t seem to understand the learning process.

MARK: The focus shifted from the fundamentals of the learning process, to the complications of human behavior. In our day schoolmasters required memory of fact.

FRANK: It’s still that way but little is done to improve pneumonic power.

MARK: I was long out of school before I learned how to memorize.

FRANK: You described that in your essay “How to Make History Dates Stick”, something every student should read.

MARK: Thank you. Better still, teachers shouod be required to read that essay.

FRANK: After I read it, I started associating facts with pictures and it works. In fact, I think children would think it fun if they were required to do the same when preparing for a history test.

MARK: But the heart of the problem lies in the teachers’ neglect to realize that often a child can’t remember because he first can’t even understand.

FRANK: That brings to mind your comment, in your essay”English as She Is Taught”: “Isn’t it reasonably possible that in our schools many of the questions in all studies are servera miles ahead of where the pupil is?”

MARK: Good boy! Too many teachers think just because they know and understand the facts and situations, their pupils do as well – when told.

FRANK: And the results are often humorously reflected in responses to questions as you reported in your essay. Here are some definitions given by students: (1) ABORIGINIES, a system of mountains. (2) IRRIGATE, to make fun of. (3) PUBLICAN, a man who says his prayers in public.

MARK: Those responses were record in a book well documented and written.

FRANK: As you said, a pupil’s ears and eyes can be most deceiving.

MARK: One of the problems is that too many teachers assume their students are on the same intellectural level as themselves. The question remains: how do you penetrate the minds of all students in a classroom? The answer is: you can’t in  most cases.

FRANK:  That brings is to the problem of dealing with some 30 different individuals in one classroom at one time.

MARK: What do all these kids have in common that would enable the teacher to get through to them to meet each objective?

FRANK: They all have a certain level of skills, like some read faster with greater comprehension. Some have the skills of writing and speaking better than others. All have habits and need habits that would make them better students. And most of all, all students have an attitude.

MARK: So what we are saying is that the learning process to be most effective must deal with knowledge, habits, skills and attitudes.

FRANK: Without out the right attitude, excellent habits for learning and skills to work, a student is likely to learn little.

MARK: That’s it. Things haven’t changed much since my youth. 

FRANK: It’s not all doom and gloom. Not today.

MARK: It wasn’t in my day either. We all learned in spite of schools. We learned outside of school.

FRANK: And today it is even easier because we have the internet. Ask any question of a search engine and you will find the answer immediately.

MARK: I wonder what I would have done with my life if I had a computer at a  young age?

FRANK: Would that have depended upon “circumstance”?

MARK: Yes. Things have always and will always happen do to circumstance.  Now you can go back to sleep, Frank

Circumstance, our turning point in life

by Frank Eckblom

FRANK: Is Circumstance really that important in our education, our schooling, our lives?

MARK: If Caesar had not crossed the bridge at Rubicon, it is doubtful that we would be here, but perhaps somewhere else, in some other culture.

FRANK: In your essay – The Turning Point in My Life – you reported that Caesar said to his generals: “We may still retreat; but if we pass this little bridge, nothing is left for us but to fight it out in arms.”

MARK: This was a stupendously important moment. And all the incidents, big and little, of Caesar’s previous life had been leading up to it, stage by stage, link by link….It was one of the links in your life-chain, and it was one of the links in mine.

FRANK: You went on to write while Caesar was contemplating the decision, someone sitting near was playing upon a pipe. “When not onlly the shepherds, but number of soldiers also, flocked to listen to him, and some trumpeters among them, he snatched a trumpet from one of them, ran to the river with it, and, sounding the advance with a piercing blast, crossed to the other side.

MARK: So he crossed – and changed the future of the whole human race, for all time.

FRANK: Let me continue: “We don’t know his name…he acts like an accident; but he was no accident, he was there by compulsion of his life-chain, to blow the electrifyiing blast that was to make up Caesar’s mind for him, and thence go piping down the aisles of history forever.”

MARK: With little effort we can all recall certain Circumstance in our life that turned things in a direction. My first was when I as a kid got the measles.

FRANK: From what I read in your autobiography, you yourself made that Circumstance.

MARK: I had nothing to do with the coming of the measle epidemic. That was the circumstance.

FRANK: But you put yourself in the position to get the disease.

MARK: True. It was an opportunity to get out of a “prison” that was driving me mad – confined to my own house, in my own room, to protect me from the germ that was decimating my neighbors.

FRANK: Then Circumstance is not something an individual can create.

MARK: By no means. The stranger who tooted his horn in earshot of Caesar  was a Circumstance that led to his decision to cross over the river on the bridge and win  the greatest battle in all of history.

FRANK: And in your Notebook in 1902 you wrote: “Circumstances make man, not man circumstances.”

MARK: Think about it Frank. Can you recall a Circumstance in your childhood that was one of the most important of all time?

FRANK: I was 8 or 9 when I was visiting a museum in our neighborhood. The curator, a very old man in my eyes, invited me into his office and asked me to write my name. After I did that, he lifted the paper to my eyes and told me to observe the making of my “k’s”. He told me to notice that I had not closed or connected the bottom of the letter as it should be. “Learn to close that letter, my son, and you will become famous.”

MARK: Were you able to close it eventually?

FRANK: At times. But it takes a special effort and has all 80 years of my life.

MARK: Keep trying, Frank. Another Circumstance could change everything for you.

FRANK: Good night, Mark. We’ll continue this study in due time.

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