Introduction

A year ago at this time, I was an unemployed RN fighting breast cancer. I was recovering from surgery, smack in the middle of chemo. Definitely one of the low points of my life. Today, I'm a year older and trying to become somewhat wiser.

In the fall of 2010, my children's school district decided to implement International Baccalaureate as an educational opportunity for juniors and seniors. Having been somewhat of an overachiever in high school myself, I was excited about the prospect of bringing such a prestigious program to our school. And we were in luck, because my son's class would be the first class to be able to participate.

However, our school board seemed like they were being a little sneaky in implementing the program, since it was presented, with no opportunity for public input, and then voted on in the same meeting. With other new programs in the past, usually the proposal was presented and then voted upon at the next meeting, with time for people to comment if they signed up to be on the agenda to speak either for or against the proposal. So when our school board pushed it through, if you will, there was some understandable public backlash.

A high school teacher got very involved with trying to get the word out that maybe this program was not the best choice for our school. He started a local campaign to question IB. Of course, he and the public were informed that it was a done deal; they had already started the application process and allocated the funds to support it. It kept coming up though, and the school board invited a prominent physician from the big city who had previously served on the big city school board where one of the schools had had IB for about twenty years. The physician's son, now an attorney in the prosecutor's office, had graduated from the program. They both spoke at length about how wonderful the program was and how it was so beneficial to his education. He even said IB was harder than law school.

Wow. That's hard. I assume, since I've never been to law school. Maybe I would have been better prepared for college had I taken such rigorous coursework in high school. Maybe my son would get into a better school or even do better in college if he got an IB diploma. I was sold.

But some nagging doubts kept popping up. It always bothers me when an organization pushes something through, and this certainly concerned me since they were discussing decreased state funding and impending budget cuts in our schools. With all these cuts, it seemed a little fishy that they wanted to add another program, one that realistically would only benefit a few students. So I started doing some research and I found that the IB program seemed to be deeply ingrained in United Nations values. In fact, UNESCO did indeed initially fund the program until 1976 (along with the 20th Century Fund and the Ford Foundation). Now schools with IB pay a subscription fee to use the program.

I personally believe the UN wants to make the standard of living in every country the same, not by raising Third World nations up, but by bringing developed nations down. If you read Agenda 21 on the UN's own website, they spell it out quite plainly that "the developmental and environmental objectives of Agenda 21 will require a substantial flow of new and additional financial resources to developing countries, in order to cover the incremental costs for the actions they have to undertake to deal with global environmental problems and to accelerate sustainable development," (Agenda 21, Preamble, paragraph 1.4). In other words, income redistribution. I hate poverty as much as the next guy, but I don't think I should have to become poor so that someone else can be less poor.

In any case, it looks like this wonderful educational "programme" may only serve to brainwash my children in globalism and undermine their belief in American exceptionalism. It seems that liberal ideas work their way into the middle of the country by saturating the East and West Coasts first and honestly, IB is just one more way to achieve the goal of creating global citizens.

America didn't get to be the best country in the world, the nation where people everywhere aspire to go, the leader in technology and innovation and the world's only superpower by allowing other nations to decide what we need to do. We started out as a colony, fought the tyranny of King George, revolted and developed our own unique government and when it wasn't working, reconvened to form "a more perfect Union." Our forefathers worked and fought and bled and died to give us the freedom most of us take for granted. They came up with a simple, concise document, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, and a manual to use it, the Federalist papers. Other nations study these documents and other revolutionaries have looked to our example when throwing off tyranny themselves.

Call it what you will, but Providence or God or the Man Upstairs allowed the pieces to come together and through the hard work and perseverance of patriots the United States of America came about. But for most of the past sixty years, we have allowed globalists to slowly erode our sovereignty, passing resolutions and ratifying treaties that serve to benefit other nations while putting the US at a distinct disadvantage.

Over the past year, as I've learned more about IB and watched how our nation has spiraled out of control, with soaring unemployment, rising fuel and utility prices, and dwindling economic opportunities, I've felt compelled to get involved. To do something. To turn off stupid reality TV and start paying more attention to politics and public policy. A few months ago I happened to see a hand painted sign giving information and directions to a meeting about property rights. I was intrigued. Then I ate breakfast at my favorite little cafe here in town and saw a postcard laying on the counter when I went to pay that was talking about this same meeting. Then I drove down the road and saw another sign. And I decided maybe all these were coming together to give ME a sign, that I should go check it out.

At first I wasn't sure what to think...they were talking about a lot of things that have nothing to do with me. I live in town, I'm not a farmer, I'm not much of a conspiracy theorist. But I listened, I took notes, I wrote down the names of websites, books and radio shows. I went home and Googled some of the topics discussed and I read over the pages and pages of information they had at the meeting.

Initially some of it seemed a little nutty...but when you meet real, live, normal people who are personally being harassed by the USDA and fined thousands of dollars (which has since turned into millions) for not having a license to sell rabbits WHEN THEY HAD BEEN TOLD BY THE USDA THEY DIDN'T NEED ONE, you start to realize that something is seriously wrong with this system. Then I started digging in to Agenda 21. I've begun looking into the voting records of my representatives, both at the state and national level. I'm paying attention to what the county commission is and is not doing.

And I'm getting involved. Right now our group is pretty loosely organized. We've got people who are passionate about many different issues and we have lots of ideas of where things are headed and what we need to do to rectify the situation. We each have our own perspective and skill set to bring to the table and I believe we are starting to gel into a group that will bring about powerful changes not only to our county, but to our state and our nation as well.

I've been paying attention to politics since Mondale ran against Reagan in 1984 (my daddy was a southern Democrat, but he's since reformed). I don't think I've ever seen an election where the candidates were in such a spotlight this early in the game. The debates and the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street seem to be waking up the sleeping giant, the American people. This is good, this is progress. It's about time!

OK back to IB. I've now decided I will leave it up to my son whether he wants to participate in the program, and at this point I believe he's leaning toward not. I will support his decision either way and he still has plenty of time to change his mind. But all this IB talk has made me realize I need to pay attention to what they are learning in school. I want my kids to learn about history and economics the same way I did, within the framework that our system, a republic and capitalism, are the best in the world. I don't like the idea of teaching our kids that the US is an evil bully. I want them believing we are the best country in the world, not because someone told them but because they've studied our history in light of other countries' histories and our economic system in light of other systems. I want them to learn about the multiple failures of socialism and communism and the successes and downfalls of the Greeks and the Romans. I want them to see where we have been and where we are headed. And I want them to be optimistic about the future. I want them to know they can make a difference.

And so that's why I'm here, why I started this new blog that better reflects what's going on with my life right now. I will still discuss the cancer stuff as it comes up on my other blog, but I'm not sure it's the right place to discuss political strategy and bureaucratic nightmares.