Up North Progressive

Nearly every day Up North Progressive receives comments from readers with both positive and negative feedback. One article that seems to cause the most grief so far is this one, because how dare anyone call out a college for opening schools, right?

The most recent comment to this article comes from a man who works for a private corporation that receives government funding, meaning our tax dollars. The name is Arthur Karros. His friends call him Art, probably because he writes impressively tone deaf comments on blogs about who does a better job spending tax dollars, and emails those comments over servers that can be traced back to his employer. Now that’s art!

It amazes me that money taken from private citizens and private corporations magically becomes PUBLIC funds that only an elite, secular, group of social engineers should be able to spend in any way they see fit.

Yes, these public funds are called TAXES that are used to provide things like schools, roads, and funding for your job.

If you had an open mind you would see that our constitution allows religious people to hold public office and allows religious people to run and teach in schools. What is not allowed is to pass a law that establishes a religion. We have taken this to an extreme and tend to fight anything that smells of religion (mostly Christian, that is).

Ah yes, the “if you don’t allow me to persecute you that’s discrimination” argument some Christians like to make today. It’s their right to hate you because you don’t follow their religious beliefs you know. Seeing the constitution is different than actually understanding what it says about religion, which is very little except to state that there will be no religious tests for holding public office and the government can’t establish an official church. Christians, Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, Wiccans, Satanists, Pastafarians, and Atheists are all guaranteed the right to hold public office. That’s what the constitution actually says.

Religious people can run schools, provided they don’t use public funds to teach religion. That is not what Hillsdale College is up to at all.

A Christian-philosophy based institution like Hillsdale has every right to fund, train and assist in the development of charter schools. Their K-12 guides on their website are reference materials and are actually quite different from the secular curriculum that they suggest for the charters they are affiliated with.

Hillsdale College funds and operates a private, tuition-funded Christian school on their campus. If they want to open more privately funded schools that is their business. Opening schools based on the Hillsdale model and funding them with public funds is unconstitutional.

And in a free society, with intellectual curiosity and critical thought encouraged, there is no reason that a literature or history class would be barred from reading from the bible, the Koran, the Talmud or any other book.

Yes, religious texts should be used as original sources – all religious texts. Pasquale Battaglia’s plan for a classical charter school was not that at all. He wanted a Christian school teaching creationism and Latin and historical “facts” such as Thomas Jefferson sending in the Marines during the Barbary Wars to eradicate Muslims. That doesn’t sound at all like critical thinking or intellectual curiosity.

Proselytizing and preaching Jesus or Mohamed would be unacceptable, but our society has gotten a bit out of hand taking money from all citizens and limiting its use to what only a handful of elites agree is proper.

This is exactly what tea party charter school wants to do. And exactly who are these “elites” telling everyone else what to do? The only elites in the United States are billionaires who can afford to buy elections and candidates.

Wow.

So who exactly is Arthur Karros, or Art as his friends call him? He’s the Senior Facilities Engineer at Lockheed Martin, a company that enjoys lots of government money (our tax dollars) to fund projects like the F-35. In fact, out of the top ten companies in the United States receiving government contracts (our tax dollars), Lockheed Martin is number one. Just to give you an idea how much money (our tax dollars) Lockheed Martin gets to spend, the F-35 project alone will cost United States taxpayers $1.5 trillion dollars. $400 billion so far has rendered a jet airplane with exploding engines, tires that can’t stay inflated, oil leaks, and issues with the pilots helmets. Even the Wall Street Journal calls the F-35 the Pentagon’s most expensive lemon.

But please, Arthur “Art” Karros, enlighten us more about your take on how private citizens’ money becomes PUBLIC funds that “secular” elites get to decide how it is spent.