Everywhere we look, the religion of humanism surrounds us. And it is a "religion."  

We must start to realize that and we must demand "equal time" in the schools and elsewhere.  

The humanists agree that they are a religion. A scholar has written on their website, "Humanists have been debating the question of whether humanism is a religion for years, and many are now tired of that debate, considering it only a semantic question." They’re correct that it was "only a question of semantics" until the humanists chased every other religion out of the schools in the last few decades. Now it is no longer "semantics." It is a very important question. 

Their website also quotes one of the thirty-four signatories of the 1933 Humanist Manifesto as saying, "Religion is primarily a thing, not of beliefs or organizations, but of the deepest emotions of human life, of emotional drives, attitudes, aspirations….Religion is a way of life, not a kind of belief or a particular organization." 

How can we disagree with them? 

The religion of humanism has become our "national religion" just as they desired in 1933. 

The U.S. Supreme Court may be closer to agreement than we realize. Back in 1963, the Court wrote, "We agree, of course, that the State may not establish a ‘religion of secularism’ in the sense of affirmatively opposing or showing hostility to religion, thus ‘preferring those who do believe in no religion over those who do believe.’" Although the Court did not think this had occurred in the case before it, it definitely said that there is such a thing as a "religion of secularism." 

Although we may not have had the problem of humanism dominating our culture back in 1963 when the Court wrote that decision, can anyone deny that we have that problem today? 

As we witness the tragic treatment of our most vulnerable children by the DSS, we must realize that the cult of "social work" springs from the religion of humanism. 

The early social workers were usually Christians and Jews who were merely trying to help families with their mundane needs such as finding places to live and obtaining money in a crisis. But the whole model changed in the 1930s when the humanists were drafting their Manifesto. By 1940, Boston University, for example, had created an autonomous School of Social Work. They now had their own priests and priestesses where a student can come to study the religion. They don’t allow Christianity or Judaism to enter their thoughts; it is all "secular." Any student can become a priest or priestess if they have enough money, just like the Director of the Walker Home and School which has the unfortunate Tara Gavigan held hostage. All you need is a few years and some money and you can get a Ph.D. and require everyone to call you, "Doctor." 

With this in mind and with great admiration for state Rep. Marie Parente, who was interviewed in this issue, we must disagree with her in two aspects. 

• We do not need more "social workers." This is like requesting more teachers who have gone through teachers college and rejecting excellent people who have graduated from the top schools with degrees in chemistry or mathematics. Rep. Parente must realize this because she says she would really like to see people with a master’s degree in clinical psychology. However, we will find a lot of humanism attached to that degree also.  

• We must eliminate the mandated reports that are required of all doctors, teachers and other professionals who are in contact with children on a regular basis. If we don’t trust a doctor to decide whether he is seeing a case of child abuse, then how can we trust a fresh, young social worker just out of college to make that decision? 

The courts of Massachusetts are not protecting the rights of our citizens under the due process clause of the Constitution. They’re permitting the state to use a trick to deny those rights. 

The tragic plight of Tara Gavigan who is in the hands of the DSS is only the latest example of the failure of the courts. 

The "trick" they are allowing is to permit the state to declare that a particular subject is not a "criminal" one. This enables the state to use its full powers against a citizen without due process. It means that the citizen does not have the protections that are given to a murderer or a thief. 

Our courts are agreeing that many trials do not concern a "crime" even though a citizen can be fined by the state or punished in many other ways. Any normal citizen would call it a "crime." But in an attempt to lower the number of cases in our overcrowded courts, the courts allow this trick to take place. 

This allows the DSS to remove a child from his home and his family without any hearing because the state says it is not a "criminal" matter and the rights of "due process" do not apply.  

Not many people realize that the state’s case against Rev. Cobble for spanking his child was a "civil" case, brought under a law that was written by the DSS, not by the legislature.  

Why do our courts, which are "celebrated" across the world with the renowned Harvard Law School to guide them, allow this? Under our Constitution, no child should be removed from his or her family without the most severe proof.  

Although the Commissioner of the DDS, Jeffrey Locke, a former District Attorney, and the other bureaucrats will say this is not practical, they know better. For example, if a social worker believes a case is so serious that a child must be taken immediately without a hearing, they can go to the police and travel together to investigate a home without a warrant if they believe a statutory crime of child abuse is taking place. If they don’t like that method, they can figure out some other way that will give the child and parents their rights of due process. 

No child should be taken from his home without the consent of the parents until a criminal trial of child abuse against the parents has been held.  

Another example where the rights of due process have been eliminated is when a restraining order is used against a husband. When a wife complains about physical abuse by her husband, the state says it is not a "criminal" matter. Therefore, her word is accepted by a judge without question and the state removes the husband from his children and from his home without any meaningful hearing. Many times, the husband is not aware that a hearing has been held that has accused him of conduct that anyone except a judge would say is "criminal." 

The trick is even used in speeding violations, which are now a "civil" matter even though many fines and other penalties can result against the citizen as a result. 

The tragic loss of due process in our society is something about which all lawyers and judges in Massachusetts should hang their heads. 

Upon seeing the power of the drug companies in the stories we have reported about 1) hepatitis B vaccine and 2) ritalin, it was frightening to hear about some young doctors going to Caribbean Islands and other places courtesy of the drug companies. 

"Oh, it’s no big deal," they reply. "All the doctors do it. We aren’t influenced by it." 

Aren’t influenced by it?  

There was a time when even the appearance of a conflict of interest would have made any professional man shudder, but not today. And these doctors we are talking about are not poor. They are very wealthy people. 

What has happened to our sense of values? 

Another example is the latest "pork" being shoveled to us from Washington. In our state, it is going to places like Boston College, Tufts’ medical campus, Boston Medical Center and many others. 

Are we really to believe that these grants from Sen. Kennedy and other politicians do not make the life of the incumbent politician much easier? How can the recipients disagree with someone who holds so much power over them? 

We are witnessing the corruption of a society. And it is our money. They take it from us and then return it in small amounts. We should be grateful. 

Meanwhile, you mothers who work every day to pay those taxes instead of staying home with your children, remember this. Any tax cut is "only for the rich." You’re not really paying taxes; you just think you are. 

The NAACP is fighting the end of busing all over Massachusetts, despite the fact that overwhelming numbers of black parents prefer to have their children attend a neighborhood school. 

Its Boston chapter is considering a lawsuit to overturn a decision of the Boston School Committee to end its race-based, student assignment plan, which now reserves half of the seats in its schools for children in the neighborhood and the other half for children in the larger school zone. 

The president of the Boston chapter of the NAACP called the plan "an insane policy that will send this city back to the Dark Ages," and a Professor of Education at Harvard, Charles Willie, attacked the new plan as the return of segregation.

Similarly, in Springfield, the president of the local branch of the NAACP, Darnell L. Williams, said that "his members don’t believe that schools will have true equity if they are not racially mixed."

But others disagree. "The NAACP is an organization that is now obsolete. Its mission is accomplished. The head of the organization is now fomenting racial divisiveness in our society and disrupting normal racial relationships in the City of Boston," Chester Darling, an attorney for parents who fought to end Boston’s race-based, school assignment policy, told Massachusetts News.

"The city of Boston has already wasted close to a million dollars in legal fees for cases that are sure losers," Attorney Darling said.

NAACP Ignores Black Parents

The NAACP has long ignored those black parents who oppose busing for racial integration. In 1997 the Boston Globe series, "Rethinking Integration," reported that, "More and more voices in the black community are reexamining the issue, lamenting what was inadvertently lost in the years since Little Rock and expressing a surprisingly favorable view of the self-help and pride associated with the segregation era."

Despite the rulings of the federal courts, Massachusetts schools were never "segregated," and the disruptive effects of a forced integration are disfavored by the citizens. Opinion polls show that parents have long opposed busing for integration by three-to-one margins, among both blacks and whites. And a 1996 survey found that a majority of black parents favored school choice. (The survey was by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, a Washington think tank.)

But federal judges like W. Arthur Garrity, who died in September, ignored these views. "While I pray for his soul, I only wish he had consulted with black and white parents," former Boston Mayor Ray Flynn said.

A national civil rights leader says, "Rather than merely forcing schools to end illegal racial segregation, which had been outlawed since 1954, judges became social engineers bent on achieving certain racial and ethnic mixes within individual schools, regardless of the consequences for students, faculty or the communities in which the schools were based." Those words are by Linda Chavez, President of the Center for Equal Opportunity.

The NAACP has ignored or suppressed dissent from within its own ranks. Damon Harrison, the Vice President of the North Shore NAACP, disagrees with his organization and is supporting a lawsuit to overturn Massachusetts’ 1965 "Racial Balance Act," which provides subsidies to school districts that try to achieve a certain racial proportion in their schools. But he is careful to say that he is not speaking for the NAACP. 

Three years ago, the national office of the NAACP dismissed Robert H. Robinson, president of a New Jersey branch, for saying that a quality education was more important than integrated schools. They also suspended the Yonkers, New York, president for his criticism of busing, and his successor resigned in protest at the organization’s stifling of free speech.

No Evidence of Benefits from Integrated Schools

There has never been any clear evidence that black children perform better in classrooms with whites. This has been known since the 1960s, but the racist assumption that black children cannot learn in predominantly black schools continues to be affirmed.

University of Delaware historian Raymond Wolters, author of the award-winning study of school desegregation, The Burden of Brown, concluded that the media had distorted the purported benefits of integration on black academic performance. "If there is one thing that characterizes the work of scholars in the area it is a lack of consensus," he says. "For every study that proves that desegregation is accompanied by academic gains, another proves the opposite."

Many have come to see the racist assumptions behind the claims. As Justice Clarence Thomas put it, "It never ceases to amaze me that the courts are so willing to assume that anything that is predominantly black must be inferior."

The Clinton administration Justice Department usually takes the side of the NAACP. One reason is that continued federal involvement allows bureaucrats to block education reforms, like charter schools, that they oppose on policy grounds – even though these help students of all races, says Roger Clegg, general counsel of the Center for Equal Opportunity in Washington.  

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