Stupido-Erudio americanus

by Craig J. Cantoni



A new species has been found in North America. Its scientific name is Stupido-Erudio americanus. The common name is stupid-educated Americans.

They tend to congregate along the Pacific coast, the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic coasts, and in big cities across the land, especially where neighborhoods have been gentrified, where trendy restaurants serve pretty and tiny haute cuisine, where trendy supermarkets sell organic food grown in cow manure, where factories and refineries are unwelcome and have been exported elsewhere, and where light-rail lines have been built at great expense at the urging of Stupido-Erudio americanus, who, strangely, don't use the lines, preferring instead to drive the Prius, Volvos, BMWs, Porsches, Lexus's, and Infinitis to the trendy restaurants, where they use valet parking.

They have undergraduate and graduate degrees from the best universities; they marry within their own species but believe in diversity; they think that global warming is a serious problem and man-caused; they are non-judgmental about other people, unless the other people are hunters, soldiers, working-class workers, church-goers, Sarah Palin, or Joe the Plumber; they idolize Barack Obama; they think that George W. Bush and New York Times columnist David Brooks are free-market conservatives instead of statists like themselves; they make big bucks as lawyers, regulatory experts, specialized paper pushers, and software writers; they've never set foot in a factory, refinery, mine, meat-packing plant, power plant, or Wal-Mart; and they don't know any engineers, production supervisors, production workers, or other bourgeoisie and proletariats who work in such places and produce the stuff that they and other Stupido-Erudio americanus use.

I recently attended a social gathering of the species, where I pretended to be one of them.
That meant putting on a sensitive air, holding my glass of chardonnay the correct way, talking about my trips to Europe and lamenting that the United States isn't like the Continent, nodding my head in agreement about the ignorance of Republicans, showing off my knowledge of the different varieties of arugula, and tsk-tsking about the lack of funding for public education, the arts, healthcare, green energy and public transit.

My cover was almost blown when someone asked where my kid was thinking of going to college. I responded that his top choice is the engineering school at Purdue Univ. in West Lafayette, Ind.

Looking at me as if I had tracked dog litter across the environmentally-correct floor made of bamboo wood, the stupid-educated American said, "Ugh, West Lafayette is such an awful place to live."

My first impulse was to put the pompous ass into a headlock and dunk his foliated face into a bowl of organic pate.

Instead, I smiled and agreed with him, while thinking to myself that the jerk hates West Lafayette for the very reason that my son, wife, and I like it -- that is, it doesn't have a lot of Stupido-Erudio americanus living there, which means that the students and town folk are unpretentious and down-to-earth, probably due to Purdue's roots as an engineering school. "Yeah," I said, "West Lafayette is not like Princeton, New Jersey."

The stupid-educated American took that as a sign that I was the right species after all. Actually, having lived in the Garden State for 10 years that seemed like 20, I had spent a lot of time in Princeton at business conferences and disliked it because it was overrun with as many Stupido-Erudio americanus as Berkeley, Madison, Cambridge, New Haven, and Georgetown.

When other stupid-educated Americans began talking to me about global warming, I decided to inflict pain on their half-formed brains.

"What are your favorite scientific sources and scientists on the subject?" I asked. No words came out of their mouths, but their eyes blinked, smoke was emitted from their ears, and gears could be heard grinding inside their craniums. Continuing, I said, "My favorite environmental scientist is Dr. S. Fred Singer." Pretending to know who he is, they nodded in agreement, not knowing that he is a highly-credentialed debunker of hypotheses on anthropogenic global warming.

I tortured them on many other subjects, but especially on economics, poverty, healthcare, and political philosophy. Their knowledge was so thin in these subjects that I felt as if I was speaking to chocolate-covered rocks. When their veneer of sugary, politically-correct buzzwords, platitudes, and sophistry was removed, nothing but ignorance appeared underneath.

No doubt, when the children of Stupido-Erudio americanus come home from government school and tell mommy and daddy what they learned that day from unionized teachers, their parents beam with pride. When my kid comes home from school and repeats a canard he heard during the day, I use it as a learning opportunity to tell him the facts.

My son might decide to go to college in West Lafayette, but at least he won't grow up to be a Stupido-Erudio americanus or a chocolate-covered rock.

Craig J. Cantoni is an author, public speaker and president of Capstone Consulting Group of Scottsdale, Arizona, a firm that specializes in developing people, teams and organizations. Mr. Cantoni is a regular contributor to the The Wall Street Journal and The American Compensation Association Journal, and has written for The Indianapolis Star, The Arizona Republic, The Arizona Business Gazette, and other publications.

A "Distinguished Military Graduate" and ex-Army Captain, Mr. Cantoni holds an MBA from St. Mary's University. His wife Kim is a human resources professional, and his son Christopher attends school in Scottsdale, where the family resides.

Mr. Cantoni can be reached at ccan2@aol.com.

This article originally appeared at Page Nine #62, published by Alan Korwin, Bloomfield Press, Scottsdale, AZ

Afghanistan South

by Patrick J Buchanan

Heeding the advice of Gen. David Petraeus, Barack Obama has committed 17,000 more troops to Afghanistan and will keep 50,000 in Iraq after U.S. combat operations end in August 2010.

But are U.S. vital interests more threatened by what happens in Anbar or Helmand than in the war raging along our southern border?

Prediction: After all U.S. troops in Iraq, Afghanistan and Korea have come home, there will be a U.S. army on the Mexican border. For this is where the fate of our republic will be decided, as the fate of Europe will be decided by the millions streaming north from the Maghreb and Middle East, sub-Sahara and South Asia.

Last year, 6,000 Mexicans died in drug-related killings in a war where the tactics are massacre, murder, kidnapping and beheading.

President Felipe Calderon has ordered another 5,000 troops and 1,000 police to the border. Primary target: Ciudad Juarez, across the Rio Grande from El Paso.

Some 2,500 federal troops are already in Juarez, where in 2008 there were 1,600 drug-related murders. Gun battles occur every day. Nationally, 45,000 army troops and police are committed to this war that Mexico is not winning. For, according to the March 3 Washington Times, the Pentagon now estimates the cartels field more than 100,000 foot soldiers.

The chief of police of Juarez just resigned after a cartel threatened to kill an officer every 48 hours if he did not. To prove its seriousness, the cartel murdered four cops, including the chief's deputy. Last year, 50 police officers in Juarez were murdered.

"The decision I am taking is one of life over death," said Chief Roberto Oduna. The chief would seem to have a point. In January, his predecessor's head was found in an ice cooler outside a police station. The mayor keeps his family in El Paso, as they have been threatened with decapitation.

Friday, the State Department declared, "Corruption throughout Mexico's public institutions remains a key impediment to curtailing the power of the drug cartels." Calderon retorts that, while the murders may be committed in Mexico, the cash and guns come from the United States.

With oil revenue down since the price dropped $100 a barrel, and remittances down from Mexican workers in the United States as the U.S. economy tanks, tourism, too, has begun to die. Beheadings in and around Acapulco have not helped. Warnings have been issued to U.S. college kids to avoid Mexico on spring break, as kidnappings for ransom are rampant. Restaurants and bars in Juarez that catered to folks from El Paso and soldiers from Fort Bliss are shutting down.

In February, in the resort town of Cancun, a retired army general sent to create an elite anti-crime unit was kidnapped, tortured and shot. Mexican troops raided Cancun's police headquarters and arrested the chief and dozens of his officers in connection with the murder.

Add a collapsing global economy to a losing war with drug cartels, and Mexico is at grave risk of becoming a failed state, a narco-state, with a 2,000-mile border with the United States.

How does one win a drug war when millions of Americans who use recreational drugs are financing the cartels bribing, murdering and beheading to win the war and keep self-indulgent Americans supplied with drugs?

There are two sure ways to end this war swiftly: Milton's way and Mao's way. Mao Zedong's communists killed users and suppliers alike, as social parasites. Milton Friedman's way is to decriminalize drugs and call off the war.

When Richard Nixon declared the War on Drugs in 1972, Milton, writing in Newsweek, objected on ethical grounds: "On ethical grounds, do we have the right to use the machinery of government to prevent an individual from becoming an alcoholic or a drug addict? For children, almost everyone would answer at least a qualified yes. But for responsible adults, I, for one, would answer no. Reason with the potential addict, yes. Tell him the consequences, yes. Pray for and with him, yes. But I believe that we have no right to use force, directly or indirectly, to prevent a fellow man from committing suicide, let alone from drinking alcohol or taking drugs."

"Am I my brother's keeper?'" asked Milton, answering, "No.

" Americans are never going to adopt the Maoist solution. For the users of drugs are all too often classmates, colleagues, friends, even family. Indeed, our last three presidents did not deny using drugs.

Once, a Christian America outlawed and punished homosexuality, abortion, alcohol, loan-sharking and gambling, all as criminal vice. Now, homosexuality and abortion are constitutional rights. Gambling and booze are a rich source of government revenue. And loan-sharking is done by credit-card companies, and not just the Corleones.

Will we raise the white flag in the drug war, as well? Which is the greater evil? Legalized narcotics for America's young or a failed state of 110,000 million on our southern border?

Some choice. Some country we've become.

STATES SEND WARNING TO FEDS

States say feds will not usurp powers guaranteed to them by 9th, 10th Amendments

By Pat Shannan

More than 20 states have passed recent resolutions in defiance of the central government’s intrusion into their liberties and governing powers, with all including a demand to obey the Constitution’s Ninth and Tenth Amendments. New Hampshire has issued what may be the harshest “Don’t Tread on Me” caveat of all. Citing its own state constitution, the New Hampshire Legislature has issued its recent resolution “affirming states’ rights based on Jeffersonian principles” and reminding any Washington interventionists of the Ninth and Tenth Amendments in the U.S. Constitution as well as Part 1, Article 7 of their own state document that declares “. . . that the people of this state have the sole and exclusive right of governing themselves as a free, sovereign, and independent state; and do, and forever hereafter shall, exercise and enjoy every power, jurisdiction, and right, pertaining thereto . . .”

It continued: “Resolved by the House of Representatives, the Senate concurring: that the Constitution of the United States, having delegated to Congress a power to punish treason, counterfeiting the securities and current coin of the United States, piracies, and felonies committed on the high seas, and offenses against the law of nations, slavery, and no other crimes whatsoever; and it being true as a general principle, and one of the amendments to the Constitution having also declared, that ‘the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people,’ therefore all acts of Congress which assume to create, define, or punish crimes, other than those so enumerated in the Constitution are altogether void, and of no force; and that the power to create, define, and punish such other crimes is reserved, and, of right, appertains solely and exclusively to the respective States, each within its own territory; and . . .

“That any act by the Congress of the United States, executive order of the president of the United States of America or judicial order by the judicatories of the United States of America which assumes a power not delegated to the government of United States of America by the Constitution for the United States of America and which serves to diminish the liberty of the any of the several states or their citizens shall constitute a nullification of the Constitution for the United States. Acts which would cause such a nullification include, but are not limited to:

“I. Establishing martial law or a state of emergency within one of the states without the consent of the legislature of that state.

“II. Requiring involuntary servitude, or governmental service other than a draft during a declared war, or pursuant to, or as an alternative to, incarceration after due process of law.

“III. Requiring involuntary servitude or governmental service of persons under the age of 18 other than pursuant to, or as an alternative to, incarceration after due process of law.“

IV. Surrendering any power delegated or not delegated to any corporation or foreign government.

“V. Any act regarding religion; further limitations on freedom of political speech; or further limitations on freedom of the press.“

VI. Further infringements on the right to keep and bear arms including prohibitions of type or quantity of arms or ammunition; and “That should any such act of Congress become law or executive order or judicial order be put into force, all powers previously delegated to the United States of America by the Constitution for the United States shall revert to the several states individually. Any future government of the United States of America shall require ratification of three quarters of the states seeking to form a government.”

Ever since Vermont threatened secession and others of the 20-plus have issued lesser threatening notices of intentions, all have made it clear that they are not happy with the current situation, and the action of all indicates that the New World Order may have a bigger problem on its hands than it initially considered.

The 21 states so far that have either introduced resolutions declaring state sovereignty under the Ninth and Tenth Amendments or are about to do so include: Arizona, Hawaii, Montana, Michigan, Missouri, Oklahoma, Texas, Washington, Pennsylvania, Maine, Nevada, Kansas, Indiana, Idaho, Georgia, Colorado, California, Arkansas, Alabama, Alaska, and, of course, New Hampshire.

In another defiance of unconstitutional federal controls, governors are telling Washington bureaucrats that, under the 10th Amendment, they cannot dictate spending or other actions to the states. (“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.”)

“We are telling the federal government that we are a sovereign state,” said Arizona state representative Judy Burges, who is leading an effort in her state to pass a resolution called “Sovereignty: the 10th Amendment.”Oklahoma state Sen. Randy Brogdon (R) introduced a resolution he said would enable his state to “reclaim the 10th Amendment right to reject any and all acts of Congress that go beyond its enumerated powers in violationof the 10th Amendment.”

Republican governors Mark Sanford of South Carolina, Bobby Jindal of Louisiana and Rick Perry of Texas expressed reservations about accepting stimulus funds because they are concerned that the federal government will dictate how it is spent.

The federal government extracts money from their taxpayers, sends a bit of it back and then dictates how it is spent, they argue.

Pat Shannan is a corresponding editor of American Free Press.

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