Reality Check 101

 When is a contradiction a contradiction?  When principle and the assumed needs of the many clash, which one demands primary allegiance?  For the captain of philosophical liberals and the political left, President Barack Obama, it depends on the reason for the opposing claims.  Too  many Americans have been persuaded that the answer depends on the demands of what Hillary Clinton popularized as “the village”.

 Buried in President Obama’s 2013 State of the Union address is an appeal to agenda over principle in spite of contradiction.  Universal preschool represents another proposed assault on a principle of creation, the authority of the natural family.  It assumes parent-like privileges over that institution and its fruit, children, in order to achieve the goals of the “village”.

 President Obama’s agenda-over-principle contradiction exposed itself in front of his national audience when he lauded Germany’s educational system as an ideal.  It is too bad that he wasn’t transparent enough to mention his justice department’s current efforts to deport the Romeike family by revoking their asylum.

 Une and Hannelore Romeike immigrated from Germany with their children in 2008.  They were awarded political asylum in 2010.  The parents were facing repeated fines, jail time and the possible removal of their children.  The basis for the asylum?  Homeschooling.

 The German government does not tolerate parents who attempt to educate their own children at home solely for reasons of faith or conscience.  Homeschooling does exist, but is legal only if the parents are gypsies, in the U.S. Military, have jobs that involve frequent travel or if they establish a regulated licensed school in the home using government-sanctioned materials.

 In their bid to nullify the Romeike’s natural parental rights, the Department of Justice (DOJ) has offered some alarming if not ominous reasoning.  First, according to the DOJ’s legal brief, there is no violation of rights if a government outlaws an educational choice equally for everyone.  For instance, private and charter schools could be abolished if it applied to all Americans equally.  In other words, a child’s mind is primarily under the custodial care of the state.

 The brief argues secondly that there is no violation of the Romeikes’ evangelical Christian  religious liberties since all homeschoolers do not share the same convictions.  Apparently the official position of Obama’s Attorney General is that as long as individual religious convictions are not banned outright, the exercise of those convictions may be forbidden by censoring diversified groups instead.  This reasoning suggests that any group may be sanctioned unless all its members express identical personal convictions!

 This is only one threat of many to the rights, immunities, privileges and responsibilities of the natural family.  Parents, barring abusive or criminal behavior are, by created design and the natural order, the first and final guardians of family integrity and their children’s well-being.  For good or for ill, the parent is the captain of the child’s future. 

 No government entity, not the German government, not the DOJ, not a universal Head Start, has the authority to transgress those bounds.