Weasel Words
In the words of Homer Simpson:
“Weaseling out of things is important to learn. It’s what separates us from the animals … except the weasel.”
First, I am fighting Eminent Domain. When the state says, as in NC, “The bill, a response to the U.S. Supreme Court’s Kelo case, prohibits the condemnation of private property unless it will be used for an exclusive public use such as government purposes, public utilities or to eliminate blighted areas. Did you note the weasel words: unless, public use and blighted?
Second, I am fighting abortion in the third trimester. They want us to believe that no babies fetuses are delivered with all but the head showing and killed in the third trimester. Then they want us to believe that no doctor would order such a procedure except for “preserving the life or health of a mother”. Note the weasel words.
Third, I am fighting against UN sponsored ratification of the Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST). The treaty imposes limitations “on measures we might take to ensure our national security and homeland defense. If, for instance, foreign vessels operating on the high seas do not fit into one of three categories (i.e., they are engaged in piracy, flying no flag or transmitting radio broadcasts), LOST would prohibit U.S. Navy or Coast Guard vessels from intercepting, searching or seizing them,”…
Weasel words that take away our sovereignty. Read what Phyllis Schlafly thinks about the treaty.
Fourth, I am fighting against UN sponsored Convention on the Rights of the Child (CORC). CORC is a direct slap at families that prefer homeschooling to the statist schools. The governments wants all children to be indoctrinated in statist thinking and cannot control what is being taught in the home. So now we have CORC that apparently been approved byall countries except Somalia and the US.
The Brussels Journal wrote
Until two years ago, we never encountered any problems with the authorities concerning our family’s home education. In fact, compared to neighbouring countries, Belgium was very tolerant of homeschoolers. In 2003, however, the Flemish regional parliament decreed that all homeschoolers are obliged to sign a document in which they promise to rear their children along the lines of the UN Convention. The latter undermines the authority of parents and transfers it to the state.
The document the homeschoolers are made to sign also states that government inspectors decide whether families comply with the UN’s ideology. Furthermore, it contains a clause in which the homeschooling parents agree to send their child to an official government recognized school if the inspectors report negatively about them twice.
Let’s look at the CORC document. First, we have high sounding words:
Bearing in mind that the peoples of the United Nations have, in the Charter, reaffirmed their faith in fundamental human rights and in the dignity and worth of the human person, and have determined to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom,
Then, “a child means every human being below the age of eighteen years” consider
Article 19
1. States Parties shall take all appropriate legislative, administrative, social and educational measures to protect the child from all forms of physical or mental violence, injury or abuse, neglect or negligent treatment, maltreatment or exploitation, including sexual abuse, while in the care of parent(s), legal guardian(s) or any other person who has the care of the child.2. Such protective measures should, as appropriate, include effective procedures for the establishment of social programmes to provide necessary support for the child and for those who have the care of the child, as well as for other forms of prevention and for identification, reporting, referral, investigation, treatment and follow-up of instances of child maltreatment described heretofore, and, as appropriate, for judicial involvement.
Note all the weasel words.
In April, 2008, John Stossel reported
A California appellate court, ruling that parents have no constitutional right to homeschool their children, pinned its decision on this ominous quotation from a 47-year-old case, “A primary purpose of the educational system is to train schoolchildren in good citizenship, patriotism and loyalty to the state and the nation as a means of protecting the public welfare.”
What worries many about CORC is that government officials can decide if your child is suffering neglect or is abused because you are not instructing them in the proper core statist philosophies. The upshot is: your child can be taken away from you and placed in a foster home where the child can get the proper education. It’s for the children and the public’s safety.
The fear by some is that Barack Obama favors the UN and will have a democratic controlled congress that will ratify these two measures.
I’m afraid these highsounding documents are filled with weasel words that can be interpreted any way the state wants. One more reason to have judges appointed by someone who believes a strict interpretation of the Constitution.






I’m surprised at your basis for opposing the Law of the Sea Convention. Limiting reasons by which a country may seize vessels at sea has long been an objective of the United States. We opposed Chile when it seized US flag tuna vessels outside their territorial sea. The US shipping industry prefers to support freedom of the seas and limit coastal state reasons for seizing vessels or impeding their transit.
The US Navy and the US Coast Guard helped write the navigation provisions of the LOS Convention and they are very supportive of the result. In cases where we need to board or even seize a vessel, we work through the Proliferation Security Initiative to facilitate obtaining permission from the flag state, and if the flag state isn’t party to the PSI, we work though the post state to which the vessel is sailing.
In fact, we are already party to the Geneva Convention on the High Seas, which is a bit more restrictive over boarding and seizure than is the 1982 Law of the Sea Convention. Opposing the LOS Convention will be futile if you don’t also call for the US to denounce the 1958 Geneva Convention.
So, are you going to try to convince the US to abandon the 1958 Convention on the High Seas, even though we have been working by its terms quite successfully for 50 years?
Then again, you can always take Phyllis Schlafly’s advice over that of every living Chief of Naval Operations and every living Commandant of the US Coast Guard, but I’d rather go with the advice of the people who serve at sea.
In addition to Phyllis Schlafly, Jean KirKpatrick spoke out against it, the Heritage Foundation is against it, as is the Cato Institute.
I have no idea about LOST, but CORC is definitely one we should not let get its camel’s nose in our door.
Number one: The UN has no grounds to claim authority over our children. Or any of our citizens. We were doing just fine until the NEA and its sister groups go their clammy hands on our school system. And the UN is the last place any sane person would go for advice about anything.
If anyone’s interested in following the long, sad and dreary history of education in America, I recommend two places to start: First, Diane Ravitch: Left Back: A Century of Battles Over School Reform
Ravitch follows the story of massive incompetence and greed in the school systems since about John Dewey’s time.
The other is Charlotte Iserbyt: The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America
This one takes the position (and backs it with lots of research) that it wasn’t incompetence and greed, it’s a deliberate long-term plan to change our educational system from one focused on teaching and learning, to one focused on “members of a global work force with prescribed attitudes about social change”. In other words, happy, willing droids, able to fill increasing numbers of low-paying, menial jobs, while more than willing to vote for political systems that will throw them a few scraps “from cradle to grave”.
“But what about the jobs that take skills and intelligence?” That’s why the elite, and the powerful, send their kids to real schools.
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