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  • wait.

  • Hello again and welcome back to freedom matters.

  • I'm your host.

  • Market McIntyre at a meeting regular meeting of the board of trustees for Santa Barbara City College, January 24th 2000 and 19.

  • My guest today, former English professor Celeste Barbara faced a hostile crowd when she bravely trying to reinstate the Pledge of Allegiance to the American flag to open all of the Board of Trustees meetings.

  • The official trustee video that you're about to see shows what happened to Professor Barber as she began reciting the pledge herself during the public comments section of the meeting.

  • The screams, the shouts of mocking derision and the stopping a feat that you will hear in the background of this video came from faculty, staff and students demonstrators in an orchestrated attempt to disrupt the business of the college.

  • At that meeting, the video ladies and gentlemen, last about seven minutes.

  • Please stay with it, especially at the end.

  • You will be very happy you did after the video.

  • I'll be happy to formally introduce my friend and my guest Professor Celeste.

  • Barbara.

  • Okay.

  • Please roll the video.

  • I am here to speak against the board President's decision to discontinue the recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance.

  • A trustee's public meetings At my request, the trustees reinstated the pledge last summer.

  • I am asking that board President Miller rescind his decision.

  • First, you are an elected bodies serving at a public institution.

  • Ah, community college.

  • When you recite the Pledge of Allegiance, you are.

  • May I continue?

  • Let's please allow the speaker to continue at my request, the trustees reinstated the pledge last summer.

  • I am.

  • Please stop the class.

  • Please stop the clock until I can speak.

  • Sir, at my request, the trustees reinstated the pledge last summer.

  • I am asking that board President Miller rescind his decision.

  • First, you aren't elected bodies serving at a public institution, a community college.

  • When you recite the Pledge of Allegiance, you are recommitting your oath to uphold and defend our country's constitution.

  • No, For the record, I want the record to, uh, state that I am being interrupted.

  • I am not being permitted to speak, I would have asked everybody, please allow each speaker toe.

  • Have their say.

  • Please continue.

  • When you recite the Pledge of Allegiance, you are re committing your oath to uphold and defend our country's Constitution.

  • Secondly, no.

  • And slaves.

  • May I continue?

  • Please continue.

  • Secondly, no one is compelled to recite the pledge, nor they forced to stand here when those words air recited by the body.

  • I have never chastised anyone for that.

  • Nor have I witnessed anyone else do.

  • So for that matter.

  • I don't like it, but that's one's constitutional right, isn't it?

  • Point of order.

  • Please allow the speaker to continue.

  • No, Trustee Miller.

  • I'm making you first.

  • Excuse them, Miss.

  • I'm sorry, Trust.

  • Learn to concentrate on what our speaker saying.

  • I move that until order could be established that this meeting be adjourned.

  • Think disorder.

  • Second every meeting.

  • We're gonna be here.

  • Trista Miller.

  • We can just re Sosa's well for a couple minutes.

  • Any discussion about the motion trusting Miller?

  • Another option would be to clear the room and allow only the media to stay.

  • Let let's address the motion is already your disruptive.

  • Is there any discussion on the motion?

  • Trustee Miller.

  • I rest trust.

  • Guess perhaps we recess for a few minutes and perhaps come back.

  • I would like to see.

  • I'd like to see I'd like to see if we can get through.

  • Uh some more speakers before we have to recess.

  • But I would I would just speak in opposition to a journey.

  • I don't think we need to adjourn.

  • As I said earlier, I wanted to get through everybody's comments, and I'm asking for everybody in the audience to help us to help us do that.

  • Is there any other discussion about the motion?

  • All those in filler?

  • All right, all those opposed?

  • No, no, no.

  • Okay, I would just like to state that I'm not saying anything inflammatory.

  • By the same token, in removing the pledge from the agenda, this board is denying me and others our right to speak aloud and collectively, those profound words, I pledge allegiance.

  • Each of us has our personal reasons for cherishing the Pledge of Allegiance.

  • Here are two of mine.

  • First, in 1988 my late husband was awarded a Fulbright teaching scholarship to Humboldt University, East Berlin.

  • We lived months behind the wall.

  • It was the most profound experience of my life to date, as it was for Frank and for our son, Eric, who continues to grow.

  • From that time, we served as goodwill ambassadors to our country, behind the Soviet bloc.

  • Often I would walk along Unter den Linden, the main boulevard on the eastern side, and then I would turn my head down a side street and I would see our consulate there.

  • I would see our flag flying outside the building, and immediately my heart was stirred with pride.

  • Pride for the Marines, standing guard outside.

  • They're protecting the consulate, protecting my family in a place that represented the center of the Cold War.

  • Our flag was more than a symbol for me.

  • On every such moment that I walked along that street, that bit of cloth represented home in a faraway place.

  • Second reason for May This is a photograph of my father, Carmelo Pernik own.

  • In late December 1944 he took a German bullet in his lung.

  • He lost two ribs.

  • As a consequence and very nearly his life.

  • He fought in the Battle of the Bulge, receiving a Purple Heart and Bronze Star for meritorious achievement.

  • After the war, my father studied to become an engineer in optics.

  • Although his career was primarily in defense and aerospace satellites, he also designed the camera scope that is today used in colonoscopies.

  • 30 seconds remaining That's because I've had timed it.

  • At four minutes, I was forced to start, I think way.

  • Stop the clock.

  • You know, you could have timed it at home.

  • It was four minutes.

  • Please continue.

  • I'm almost done.

  • He designed the Collins colonoscopy scope.

  • He was willing, at age 20 to sacrifice his own life for country.

  • And he would later invented device that it's now saved thousands of lives.

  • Those are two reasons why I recite the Pledge of Allegiance.

  • I am going to recite it now because the flag is because the flag is I'm holding up a flag.

  • I would ask anyone who would like to stand with me.

  • I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice.

  • Predicted what a show.

  • That was disturbing.

  • I've seen it about seven times.

  • Um, and my guests just tried to look at it several times, and you can imagine it is disturbing to her as well.

  • But now we shift gears and we want to formally welcome my dear friend, my fellow classmate of 1995.

  • Uh, we joined the faculty at Santa Barbara City College together.

  • During this period of time, Professor Barbara has been an exceptional teacher, influencing thousands of lives and teaching them some of the fundamental values and principles of freedom that we cherished today.

  • So let's I wanna welcome you to the show.

  • It's so good to see you.

  • I'm sorry to put you through that again, but I really wanted the audience to see the cost of freedom.

  • When people say I agree, I agree.

  • Um, let's start with that.

  • Let's start with that.

  • We try to start each show with asking the guest two share with our audience, your fundamental principles and values of freedom.

  • It's all yours.

  • Well, thinking about freedom over the years, I think I'm like most Americans.

  • I've always taken our freedoms for granted, and by that I mean that I'm never really.

  • I've never really been consciously aware of it in the way that we're not consciously aware of breathing.

  • It's that natural toe Americans in a way that it's not natural to anybody else on the planet who lives outside this country, and it's it's kind of like when you begin to think about it in that way, I think about when you're conscious of your breathing.

  • If something traumatic happens, For example, take a gondola to the top of the Rocky Mountains and jump out, as I did one time and run up the steps, and suddenly you can't breathe, your heart's pounding and then you're aware of your breasts trying to breathe again.

  • And that experience of freedom first happened to me in 1988 when my family and I traveled to West but East Berlin, East Berlin, behind the wall.

  • And I came to understand what freedom meant for Mia's American because I could experience it inside a communist country.

  • For us, freedom is the freedom to the freedom to fail, freedom to read whatever we choose to freedom to freedom, to sit here in this studio and speak with you.

  • Whereas in East Germany, German Democratic Republic, its freedom from freedom from homelessness, freedom from hunger, freedom from being confronted with ideas that the government is uncomfortable with that sort of thing.

  • So I've always since that time since 1988 been conscious of how special freedom is.

  • Until four years ago, when I had that breathless feeling again of, you know, stepping out of the gondola and I can't breathe.

  • And that happened on our campus.

  • You were there four years ago in spring, when the art department created a teepee wooden, a colorful wouldn t p directed on West campus, and I saw it on Friday when it was erected.

  • It was lovely.

  • It was all wooden.

  • It had colorful panels, was beautiful.

  • And I remember thinking, Oh, I'm gonna bring Henry and Charlie here next week My grandson By Sunday, the college pipeline email was a Twitter before Twitter, I suppose about this teepee.

  • And then it was either Sunday night or Monday.

  • Then college president Laurie Gaskin issued a profuse apology about the teepee and what's going on here.

  • And I came back to school and the teepee was gone, and we all know what that was about.

  • Your viewers may not be, but one person who claimed to be Native American was offended by it.

  • He got together a group of his supporters, including faculty.

  • They met over the weekend with students and their art teacher, who, by the way, had erected this in mid semester.

  • Lost in all of this was the reason for it.

  • It was designed to stay up for three weeks during midterms as a place of respite, where students who were experiencing the stress of midterm exams go and relax.

  • It was a gift to the students.

  • It was dismantled.

  • There were apologies given, and then I waited.

  • I waited for someone to come out and say, Wait a minute, First Amendment.

  • This is a violation off the First Amendment on a public college campus in the United States, and nobody said anything.

  • I always wait 24 hours and then I got on pipeline and I e mailed out, and I think I was the only person.

  • There may have been a few others, but I'm pretty sure I was the only person who spoke up for those students there.

  • Professor, an hour right to be creative, to create art and not have it dismantled.

  • And that has stayed with me.

  • I'm still angry about it, and it has stayed with me ever since, and I don't believe I will ever stop being aware of how precious our freedom is.

  • Did you never again?

  • Did you get a sense at that time that it has been a major shift in higher education away from the open freedom to express controversial notions and the power of just a single person claiming to be offended by somebody else's expression of freedom was changing the whole climate.

  • The culture of education was changing.

  • Does this occur to you?

  • Absolutely.

  • I call it the tyranny of the minority voice.

  • I don't mean minority as in minority ethnic group, but the tyranny of a single voice, which seems to turn our bill of rights on its head.

  • Because, of course, the Bill of Rights, those first wonderful 10 amendments were written to protect the individuals citizen from the tyranny of the government.

  • Remember, founders were fearful of government.

  • They didn't really want tohave to create a government.

  • And so that was that was their gift to us to the ordinary people.

  • And now suddenly we have individuals who art seemed to be usurping these liberties that we all enjoy, and it's it's not based on law.

  • It's not based on reason.

  • It's based simply on.

  • This is how I feel now.

  • These are students who are invoking the I call it the feeling axiom, um, students.

  • But where these students get this idea they don't come up with it themselves.

  • I mean, I don't think they don't know.

  • And so where do they get, Where do they get this idea that they have the right to stop?

  • Everybody else is exercise of freedom because they perceive themselves as being offended.

  • Who teaches them this?

  • The teachers are colleagues, but also the parents, right?

  • I mean, you know, I don't know about that.

  • I don't know that I entirely agree with that.

  • Unfortunately, the parents too often their two hands off.

  • I wish that Maura, of our parents of college age Children will understand that they still well, they're not Children, but they're not yet adults.

  • College is supposed to be that sort of transition period between, you know, living at home with mom and Dad and childhood and actually being thrown out of the nest so they aren't entirely free yet.

  • And I wish more parents would be engaged with what's happening with their young people on campus.

  • What kind of course is air you taken taking visit the campus?

  • Um, look at their silly by, you know, see what?

  • See what they're reading.

  • Question.

  • What's going on there when you and I first joined the faculty at Santa Barbara City College.

  • She in the department and me in the philosophy department.

  • That's what 23 years ago, going on 24 years ago, when Peter MacDougal and as people come up to me and ask me about my experience, my 23 years and I'm sure it must happen to you, I respond to this parent issue by saying, I think the parents have taken their eye off the ball.

  • I think they were too busy with other things.

  • They we had a marvelous college when it was under the auspices of the direction of the old board of trustees, old in both senses of the word.

  • They were older people, but they were preserving traditional values and principles that everybody could agree on, not just in one side of the other.

  • And Peter MacDougal.

  • I mean, he certainly had his criticisms, but he supervised a very fair and just administration off.

  • Opposing views are welcome, and he made that very clear, very clear, especially after 9 11 when there was a lot of controversy.

  • But over the years, I think that I think our citizens have for gotten the Senate, Barbara City College of 23 years ago was not Santa Barbara City College of Today.

  • It's an entirely different no.

  • It has entirely different mission, which has nothing to do with it.

  • Very little to do with education.

  • I want to explore with you.

  • Since you were the creator and the administrator of the great books curriculum, Professor Barber is most famous and most remembered at Santa Barbara City College.

  • Like people like me and others who remember the great good that there's did, she instituted a program called the Great Books Curriculum.

  • It started in Kansas.

  • I believe a couple of Chicago Chicago was cancer.

  • I'm gonna let you explain a job.

  • What is the great books?

  • Curriculum?

  • The great books curriculum was designed by a good pal of mine, Bruce Scans, who was an English professor at will but right Junior College Community College in Chicago.

  • Do you know that school Yes, and the students there are.

  • Many of them are first generation, working class minority, and he had been concerned that because of his students backgrounds, that they had not become familiar with the great works of Western and world culture, and he thought that they were missing out on something that these ideas, these values are so important.

  • You know, it's part of our DNA.

  • It's what makes us what we are is modern people.

  • And he felt that they were being cheated.

  • So he created the great books curriculum.

  • And it could basically be any course on campus, not simply English history, philosophy.

  • But the science is mathematics.

  • The only requirement is half of the readings at least, must come from the core reading list.

  • We Most of the time we think of that University of Chicago, the cannon, the canonical works, the other half could come anywhere else.

  • Popular literature, for example.

  • And the two sets of readings are linked thematically through the themes of justice.

  • Oh, rite of passage.

  • Yes.

  • Yes.

  • Like, great, interesting way Adopted it.

  • Well, I adopted in consciousness.

  • Yeah, truth.

  • God, God!

  • Truth, goodness, beauty, The basics that we discussed loss.

  • And I heard him give this talk.

  • I was at a conference in Washington, D c.

  • And I was so over, I was just overwhelmed by and I thought we need this at City College.

  • Yeah, we D'oh!

  • So I took it back to my Dean Jack column Oh, Jackal, Jackal.

  • Um, and I asked if I could do it.

  • They said I could, but no Budget zero budget, zero budget zero.

  • But we're supposed to operate a program with no budget.

  • I did it.

  • I did.

  • I did.

  • They gave me a little bit of money for photocopying, okay?

  • And I I I did.

  • I did.

  • And, well, I ran with it.

  • And then eventually, the last five years, I was there.

  • I was the recipient of an APP guard Grant.

  • $24,000 a year.

  • Yeah, our former vice president didn't think that was much, but what I did with that 24,000 and it was wonderful.

  • We worked with the local high school Santa Barbara High School, Middle College.

  • I brought in lecturers.

  • I hired actors every year.

  • We would have one great read and it wasn't orange is the new black right.

  • It was the Odyssey and tickle Me readings from Plato and one book, and we would just build a fall program around that book.

  • Fabulous, Fabulous.

  • I was so proud of that program.

  • The one disappointment I did have was that I had always wanted that program to be picked up by teachers in the Met program in English, which, as you know, the Met program really targets up primary Latino students, marginalized students.

  • And I thought that they would benefit from this.

  • And I did speak to those those faculty several times in meetings and they always resisted.

  • They just refused.

  • And I thought, Boy, that's just a damn shame the greatest benefit that I learned from my students because I would I would interview my students.

  • How are you doing with the great books curriculum?

  • And they would say, because I never I never imposed any testing with.

  • I let them read what they wanted to again in the syllabus.

  • I gave them the reading list, and then they were free to roam around.

  • All they had to do was tell me what, which, which readings that they were doing.

  • That's all I asked them to do.

  • If they wanted to submit a report, I would defend great, but they weren't obliged to, and with one common thing.

  • Every student that I asked it was in the Great Books curriculum program with Professor Barbara Was it taught it taught them how to learn how to learn on their own without me.

  • Yes and yes, that's what an education it might understanding of things is that we go to school not to be a perpetual slave to a professor, but rather to be a free individual that has a robust life of ideas.

  • I used to tell my students on the first day of class, I would say, I'm not here to give you the answers.

  • My job is to teach you how to ask the right questions.

  • I know that sounds cliche, but that's what I wanted them to do, to be able to question, to have an open mind and to open themselves up to new experiences, not just to be confined to read what it's about their so called called Limited World.

  • If you read, that's the That's the wonderful thing about the great books is that they're timeless, their eternal my colleagues, many of them when I would broach them about Hey, why don't you think about the great books for your class?

  • Well, how many women are on the list?

  • How many gays air on the list?

  • How many African?

  • And it's like being counters and they don't understand.

  • Lead, antimony read antiquity Well you bring up a very good point.

  • I just want t Look back for a moment.

  • You wrote your book with your son when you were behind the wall.

  • So this big?

  • Yes, and it had a profound impact.

  • I've read the book and I encourage other people to get the book.

  • What's the title of the book again with the title Ghosts of Easterlin on Amazon, right?

  • I just had a had a brain.

  • It's a mom and son venture and and we we timed it with the 25th anniversary of the wall coming down.

  • It was a project Eric always wanted to dio We I bit the bullet and I did it even though I was teaching an overload that semester.

  • Now that experience, together with the great books curriculum experience that you had, uh obviously has disturbed you has has disturbed your sleep.

  • A CZ the saying goes, because you're seeing as I as I did.

  • Both of us were seeing the education standards, practices of education, shift from competency and literacy and logic and evidence to feelings.

  • Yes, and it was it was palpable.

  • We could feel it happening, uh, at every at every what they call them in service faculty meeting at the beginning of every semester, we're all herded into the auditorium, the gymnasium where all herded into the gymnasium and weigh our waterboarded and were brainwashed by a Social justice activist agenda, which were then told that we should integrate this into our classes.

  • I was horrified.

  • Offices.

  • What you're telling me that I have to, I have to be aware of of of how many black people I have.

  • How many Latinos?

  • How many?

  • I don't know.

  • If anybody's Gae In Michael, I don't ask.

  • I don't care if they're gay.

  • I guess I don't really care.

  • But it became important to the college for some strange reason that we start counting these things and putting the emphasis on these things.

  • And now we've gone full term.

  • I I remember I did apply for a full time job there one time, and it was about 1997.

  • I think I applied, and I made it to the second tier.

  • So I went before the committee in the English Department, and I knew the question was coming.

  • You know, how do you make your minority students feel comfortable in your class?

  • you know, what do you do for them?

  • And I knew it was coming, and I thought long and hard about my response.

  • And I knew that if I spoke honestly, I wouldn't get the gig.

  • They used Bogota's Lee idea and I said, And I said, I said, I treat everybody in my classroom the same and I did and you didn't get the job and I didn't get the job.

  • But I live with myself, right?

  • So I've experienced this time.

  • I still work there.

  • Yeah, but for a pittance, right?

  • I can remember this joint.

  • I remember my most recent department here lecturing me and scolding me because I wasn't feeling I wasn't.

  • I wasn't making I wasn't making an effort to drive a welcome wagon.

  • Uh, I didn't know that.

  • My responsibility is professor of philosophy was to drive a welcome wagon.

  • Oh, you woken me.

  • Do you feel welcome, Mike?

  • Wow, What about you?

  • Do you feel welcome?

  • What could I do to make you feel you have a basket of fruit?

  • It's it's insanity when you think about that.

  • Professors of philosophy there now supposed to be police officers, probation officers, psychiatrists, psychologists and welcome one.

  • Drivers.

  • It's just about it just Well, I made them feel welcome.

  • And the way I made them feel welcome is every day I stepped into that classroom, I was happy.

  • I always had a smile on my face.

  • I had a little table in the front.

  • I would say You're not allowed to sit on tables, but I did swing my feet back and forth and I was cheerleader for whatever we were reading.

  • And I made them feel welcome because whatever we were reading every student in that classroom new from me, that they were capable of reading that book off understanding whatever challenge I through with them.

  • I knew that they were capable, and I treated them with respect.

  • I always did.

  • I love teaching the one thing I miss.

  • I've been retired for years.

  • I miss being in that classroom I loved by students.

  • And, you know, all those years I never had a student complain about me not respecting their feelings, or I don't blame the students.

  • The students are being force fed this garbage and they're being harmed.

  • Their being handicapped for life.

  • Yeah, I believe that our most vulnerable students, many of them.

  • First generation are being handicapped for life by this coddling.

  • Treat them like the young men and women They are.

  • No.

  • We got about 26 minutes left in the show.

  • Believe it or not, this is going very, very quickly.

  • But it always does.

  • I want to swing right now into something that's near and dear to your heart.

  • It's called the Constitution of the United States.

  • This is, after all, freedom matters.

  • We are dedicated to helping people understand the Bill of Rights.

  • At least the Bill of Rights.

  • There were 27 amendments to the Constitution and the medallion, and I actually did a podcast where I went through all 27 amendments and he questioned me about what's this one?

  • What's this one?

  • I got him.

  • All right.

  • Thank God.

  • But you, uh, let's turn to this Pledge of Allegiance.

  • A lot of people have asked me.

  • Well, why in the world did Celeste Barber go to the trustees?

  • I think it was in July.

  • Hey, May was in Mrs May and nursed you.

  • Uh, you You gave every member of the board of trustees a copy of that.

  • Show that to a camera there you go.

  • Fairness.

  • And she keeps this with her.

  • And she gave everybody a copy and it's annotated.

  • Oh, I'm an English teacher.

  • It's actually annotated.

  • Why did you do that?

  • Why did you bring copies of the Constitution of the United States to a Border Trustees meeting?

  • Because it's under the gun.

  • It's being threatened, Uh, perhaps more threatened, that it ever has in our history.

  • Um, you know, as I said, that difference in freedom for me, East Berlin and hear differently.

  • But that's it.

  • That's it, too.

  • That's a different country.

  • I love that distinction.

  • This is happening in our country.

  • Fellow Americans are now arguing, debating that the Constitution is no longer relevant.

  • It needs to be updated.

  • Improved, evolved, evolved, evolved evolution.

  • Yes, evolution.

  • Devolution is, though, is, though, as though as though every change is a good thing.

  • And I'll tell you, I heard recently somewhere that somebody actually argued that all we really need are the 1st 10 amendments.

  • Everything else is pretty much redundant on.

  • I've thought of.

  • That idea appeals to me because I treasure the Bill of Rights is the 1st 10 amendments, and for me, the 1st 1 is the most important one.

  • It's the foundation.

  • It's kind of like Moses and the 10 Commandments.

  • You've got that first commandment, you know?

  • Hey, buddy, there's only one God, I and I'm in charge.

  • And if you don't have and if you don't respect to understand that First Amendment, nothing else matters that follows and we used to talk about the Second Amendment, the big threat is to the First Amendment.

  • Well, I believe that the Second Amendment was written so that nothing happens to the first, of course.

  • And, ah, a side story.

  • Years ago, I used to be in favor of gun control, Your listeners, your village.

  • You know, I know.

  • I was once a Democrat.

  • So was I.

  • Yeah, I left.

  • I left the party because they were no longer my party.

  • You have that in common with Ronald Reagan and Charlton Heston and Mark Magadan, three notorious, notoriously critical and in fact, the Democratic.

  • The Democrat Party is no longer democratic.

  • Well, even Nancy Pelosi is feeling the Democratic Party slipper lakes good for her.

  • She deserves it.

  • But so you brought this to the meeting of rotted because I thought they needed to have it.

  • Understand?

  • Remember, they take an oath of office to defend the Constitution of the United States.

  • That is their chief responsibility as elected officials, not It's not simply inside the Beltway know where those characters are.

  • It's in every elected office in this nation.

  • You take an oath of office to defend the Constitution of the United States, and they are no longer doing it.

  • And that day going back four years ago when the college dismantled a work of art, a gift to our students and was proud of themselves for yes, for apologizing, that was a shameful day on that campus so that that shocked you into action.

  • How was this received?

  • Did every member of the board actually take Take the Constitution or were some left on the table?

  • No, no.

  • They all took it.

  • They all.

  • They all took their copy.

  • But I heard that people, other people who were there, were not happy because of what I said, and that I was talking about the First Amendment that day and voices being silenced on campus.

  • At the time, there was a conservative group that had formed a conservative group for students, and they wanted to open up the dialogue not just for conservative students but to invite everybody to the table.

  • And I was critical thinking, Yes, and I was their man in D.

  • C.

  • And I was there to remind everyone about the First Amendment.

  • And a friend told me he was there as well said, Well, somebody in the audience and a young woman said She is so triggering me Since when?

  • Just because it is the Constitution.

  • Trigger any.

  • And then, of course, I trigger them madly on January 24th when Oh, goodness gracious, I recited the Pledge of Allegiance.

  • Now, Now what?

  • What?

  • What prompted you to actually push for the pledge to be restored?

  • Because it does have a history people, people have said to you and me that well, she's asking for something that never happened before.

  • Well, no, it did happen before, but it was dropped over the years.

  • It simply was not done and doesn't make it right.

  • Doesn't make it right.

  • It doesn't make what?

  • How did you connect?

  • What happened to you in in East Berlin with your your great books curriculum and then the tempest in the teepee?

  • If Aiken and then the Constitution of the United States.

  • And then you made this push to restore the Pledge of Allegiance to the flight.

  • Can you connect all those dots I can?

  • When Frank and Eric and I went to East Berlin, it was my decision that he apply for the Fulbright teaching Grant because I felt this was our opportunity as Americans to be goodwill ambassadors for our country.

  • I had grown up under the threat of the nuclear bomb, the Cold War.

  • I didn't want that for my son, for Eric, who was only 10 years old.

  • And I thought, we can go back there.

  • We can live there for six months and we can show them what Americans are like.

  • And we can learn about them and be good.

  • What?

  • We were among the first ordinary Americans who were not affiliated with the Communist Party or the State Department.

  • Just ordinary Americans living there and set an example and maybe in our own way, begin to tear down that wall.

  • So I did that out of patriotism.

  • I've always loved my country.

  • You know, when I was growing up, all of the neighborhood kids, all of our fathers fought in the Second World War.

  • I don't know a single kid whose dad didn't fight, and we were always aware of that.

  • Mindful of it, proud of.

  • Our dad grew up when they came back from the war.

  • That's when we grew up.

  • Yes.

  • And that's why the Constitution.

  • And so it's always been precious for me.

  • You know, I can remember in great school, you would start my 1st 2 years, you'd start with a prayer.

  • I was always a public school brat.

  • They dropped that.

  • But then we always began with this.

  • Shut it with a prayer.

  • Remember that?

  • Yes.

  • Yes, I I want to know what the Catholic school that was.

  • I figured.

  • Well, you know, that's only happening in the Supreme Court.

  • Ended that it was short lived.

  • It was kindergarten and maybe first grade.

  • And then thereafter throughout elementary school, it was the pledge and then a patriotic song that followed.

  • And I just grew up with that.

  • And when I went to that meeting in May to speak to the First Amendment and I wait a minute, this meeting didn't There's something wrong with this meeting.

  • Yeah, the flag is there, but I was there but there was no pledge.

  • Not that well, maybe it's because it's a joint meeting with student body.

  • Maybe that's where they left it off small room.

  • So then the next meeting, I made a point of watching it.

  • No pledge, and I was stunned.

  • So I sent a letter to the trustees.

  • Two of them responded, and then president of Veronica Gallardo.

  • She brought it back in July, and I was thrilled.

  • And then again in January with a a teacher herself, elementary school teacher.

  • She understands.

  • She does.

  • She does.

  • And then when the new president of the board came in, it was taken off and he did that unilaterally.

  • Yes, he did.

  • There was no consultation with the faculty Senate, the student Senate.

  • Yeah, I didn't want any publicity for this.

  • And in fact, when I wrote him in January, I wrote him privately.

  • I didn't write the other one remembers.

  • It was a private note on Dhe.

  • Then he wrote back the infamous email back and racist racism, nativism and white nationalism.

  • And then I responded again and he didn't respond back to me, so I thought, Well, I'm just gonna go to the Thursday board meeting and I will explain why the Pledge of Allegiance is important to me and try to appeal to the other board members.

  • And I'm going to say the pledge, I'm an American.

  • I have a right to go to a public meeting and bring my flag because I wasn't sure if they still had a flag there and say the Pledge of Allegiance at a public meeting.

  • And I had already decided if they refused to bring it back, that I was going to come to every every other Thursday meeting until there was no more breath and me left and recite the pledge in public comment because that's my right and it's important.

  • You don't have to say it if you don't want to.

  • You don't have to stand up, you can turn your back.

  • You could be as foolish as you want and many do.

  • And they yes, the videotape that we saw the beginning.

  • I don't think there's a lot of crowd coverage, but in subsequent meetings of the board, after you got the pledge restored us, which we want to talk about for a couple of seconds here.

  • But you will see people in the videos.

  • If, by the way, all of you folks can can go to these these school board meetings, you go to the Santa Barbara City College trustees meeting.

  • In fact, any any, any meeting that is conducted that is not a personnel meeting.

  • You cannot go to a personnel meeting.

  • But any other meeting?

  • Uh, you us, a tax paying citizen can go to that meeting in Santa Barbara City College.

  • You cannot be kept out of any meeting and some of the meetings You actually have.

  • Ah, voice that you could speak up.

  • I know that the College Planning Committee, you can attend that and you can speak up any public meeting on a lot of people don't know that.

  • And, uh ah, lot of this problem would not be happening if people would just forgo a round of golf, forgo watching their stock portfolio, get off of Facebook for a week and go down to your school board and your city college board of trustees, attend the meeting, watch and listen to what's going on.

  • Because if you do, you're gonna wind up like Celeste Barber and Mark McIntyre horrified.

  • I have a request for your audience.

  • May I make it?

  • Yeah, yes.

  • Where's your camera?

  • Right there.

  • Make it if you believe, as I do, that the Pledge of Allegiance is important and it's representative of our freedom.

  • Freedom of speech, freedom to freely express how much we love this country.

  • Then I would urge you to work to restore it to the public sphere.

  • If you have Children in grade school, go to your school, go to your child's classroom.

  • Are they saying the pledge every morning?

  • If you belong to the Rotary Club or the Woman's Club or the Elks Club or any other club, does that organization recite the Pledge of Allegiance at the beginning of a meeting?

  • As Americans, that's that's a small thing to do.

  • But if you allow it to be taken away from us, you never get that that right back again.

  • And it's important it matters.

  • This country matters.

  • Uh, we have all have ancestors who came to this country and worked hard and struggled and sacrificed for us, and we must never let anybody, any group, take it away from us.

  • And I'll tell you, when I go to those board meetings now, I always sit up toward the back about midway up and then behind me, it's It's the protest.

  • Peacefully leaving, except the only time they're silent, is when we recite the Pledge of Allegiance.

  • And it's always unsettling to me because I'm standing there and I'm suddenly aware that I hear my own voice and nobody behind me.

  • Former colleagues of mine in the English department, Friends of your students, friends of mine are not reciting our pledge.

  • I would't least expect one or two or three, but they're all in lock.

  • Step in mind.

  • Think group, the group Think, Yeah, group think it's Orwellian.

  • It's It's so disturbing and they're they're harming arts.

  • Our students are wonderful students.

  • And if you go to the elementary schools, if you go to the high schools and you ask the students or even the teachers, do you teach civics?

  • No.

  • Do you teach the Constitution?

  • No.

  • Do you teach the Bill of Rights?

  • No.

  • What do you teach in your history?

  • Well, we teach about slavery and rape and the evils of capitalists.

  • So when I say as a critic of higher education that our schools have been taken over by what I call a, uh, cultural Marxism use that expression.

  • It's like saying plates on the guy.

  • Deal is, it actually is a thing.

  • And those who practice cultural Marxism, they're not ashamed of it.

  • They'll tell you we are.

  • Cultural marks is just like some people say, Well, I'm a platonic idealist or I'm a Conti and utilitarian whatever it is that happened today.

  • So if you go to the school to your schools, get more involved in your scores and find out how they're dealing with the basic freedoms and one of their principles of one of their values and why are they catering to the feelings of their students instead of challenging their students?

  • Just think about freedom to think about what their principles of freedom.

  • Where do you think it's going?

  • Uh, we've got about 10 minutes.

  • Where do you where do you think?

  • Education.

  • Not just higher education.

  • There are various proposals.

  • I'll just give you a couple of them To shoot at one is to let it go, and it will sort itself out.

  • That's the little days, a fair kind of approach.

  • Thea other one is, uh, well to only protest those things that you really think are important but let the elected officials and let the administrators let them sort it all up.

  • That's a sort of a a mild form of pragmatism, I would say.

  • Then there's the third group that, uh, says that, uh uh, all of our students, all of our faculty, must be in a socialist frame of mind a cultural Marxist frame of mind on We have to do away with the Constitution of the United States.

  • We have to open our borders.

  • We have to, uh uh uh uh.

  • What's the word?

  • They use D structure?

  • Yes, D structure, capitalism.

  • And, uh uh, this is this is the duty that we have.

  • There's 1/4 group of people which I belong to, and that is the only way we can get our kids back.

  • The only way we're gonna schools back is to defund all public schools just to deny them taxpayers deny them tax dollars and then let each individual community sorted up.

  • Now, if Santa Barbara, what's their fund?

  • Communist run schools.

  • They won't get any money from Washington.

  • But if they want to pay for that myself, fine.

  • No problem.

  • Dig into your bank account so some of your stocks don't go to that bunch of, and you could see how it how it goes.

  • What do you reaching for your reaching for the cop?

  • You're waiting for the Constitution.

  • I'm reading for the Constitution because the answer is here.

  • It's the 1st 3 words we the people, we the people, Um, again, I'm a public school bread.

  • I believe in public schools.

  • But we, the people, the school's belong to us, and it's our responsibility.

  • And I think that's the problem.

  • We've become complacent.

  • It's our responsibility to bring our school's back, to be responsible to our Children, our communities.

  • First thing what I would do if I if a angel came down and kissed me on my for it, I would get rid of the Department of Education, give everybody a 30 day notice, go out and get a real job.

  • No more Department of Education.

  • Get the federal government out of the States.

  • Secondly, in the state of California, I would take state control away and return it to the local schools.

  • They took it away because they wanted to make it more equitable.

  • Equitable.

  • I think about the 19 mid 19 seventies.

  • If I'm correct has education improved in this state, Know it's gotten worse.

  • So bring it back to the local communities are saying the counties in the local counties, local school board.

  • I mean, L A.

  • Is lost, but aside from a lie, but bring it back to local control where it was, where it thrived for so long, it became the envy of the the envy of not only the United States but the envy of the world we had in California in the late sixties early seventies, before Kent State and before Jesse Jackson watched across Stanford campus, shouted, Hey, hey, ho ho!

  • Capitalism has gotta go on.

  • Then they d structured the core curriculum probably don't know this fellow fellow Sand apartments, but in 1972 after Ken stayed after the Jesse Jackson hole, kerfuffle wth the liberal arts core was gutted.

  • It used to be you could not get a liberal arts education degree unless you took a course in philosophy, especially logic.

  • You got to take a course in in American history, off course in Western civilization and ah course in literature and a language, a foreign language.

  • There were five elements to the court.

  • They also I think had a mathematics required.

  • But nothing is beyond algebra.

  • Nothing beyond that.

  • Now, after 72 uh, the students decided what was going to be in the court.

  • So if if you were gonna major in history, you never need to take a class in American history.

  • We have a PhD at City College in the history department that, um, has never taken a course in American history or a Western civilization.

  • So they don't know what's in the curriculum off the great books.

  • And as we sit here and speak, Cal State University system is considering removing one of the two requirements for history taking, you know, to class courses in history.

  • Six units of history there actually debating that now, making it just one history, class, one, anyone.

  • So it could be the history of Samoa, I suppose, I suppose.

  • But just one history costs also know West Cal State all the Cal State hold hold An Allstate.

  • Yeah, and I was reading about it recently, and of course it begins, you know, rather innocuous.

  • Well, we're just talking about it, thinking, you know, how does it feel?

  • And that's how it begins.

  • And then it in short order it goes from Well, we're just talking about it to suddenly, you know, it's written in stone, right?

  • There are two state initiative laws that were signed by Jerry Brown that go to the restructuring of the curriculum for R K through 12.

  • One of them is that it's gonna be mandatory now that every student go to get a high school diploma.

  • You don't happen.

  • You don't have to take class and the Bill of Rights.

  • You don't have to take a class in Western civilization.

  • You don't have to take your class in the Constitution.

  • No, but you do have to take a multi cultural class.

  • That's now a state mandates good.

  • So now that has become the holy Grail of education.

  • Why?

  • I've never I've never had it explained the second.

  • The 2nd 1 is even more pernicious.

  • Alex Madaj and did a whole article he published yesterday.

  • And this is the, uh, uh, beginning and kindergarten.

  • It is now a state mandated to goes into effect in May.

  • This May, it goes into effect that strangers are gonna be teaching kindergarten students about sex and how to have sex and how to be cross gendered and how to be gender fluid, as they say, and how to negotiate sex kindergarten suits.

  • And I say that weight to counter that is for parents, grandparent's community members to stand up, go to those schools and tell them no, join the p t.

  • A.

  • Go to the classroom.

  • If that's what they're doing in your child's classroom.

  • You get that kid out.

  • Remember, they get 88 funding every day.

  • Your child is not in that classroom.

  • They're losing money.

  • And maybe they won't listen to one parent but five parents.

  • 10 parents There is There is a statewide movement.

  • I met with a lady yesterday, Grace Wallac

wait.

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