Where's a brave heart when we really need it?

Isabella to Wallace: (The king) proposes that you withdraw your attack. In return he grants you title, estates, and this chest of gold which I am to pay to you personally.

William: A lordship and titles. Gold. That I should become Judas?

Isabella: Peace is made in such ways.

William: SLAVES are made in such ways!

— From "Braveheart"

To succeed in American politics at almost any level, it seems, one must master the art of compromise.

Even the most uncompromising political figures, folks such as U.S. Rep. Ron Paul, will admit they can't get much accomplished in the halls of Congress if they don't give a little.

Unfortunately, that makes things easy for those in charge of setting the agenda. They overshoot their target, settling for a "compromise" which happens to be what they were originally looking for.

Consequently, an agenda of social engineering has been steadily advancing in this country for at least 30 years, with individual liberty systematically being stripped away, all in the name of "compromise."

Disastrous educational ideas were introduced in the 1960s to intentionally "dumb-down" American schools — especially the populations of our inner cities. The evidence is available, and it is irrefutable.

Social welfare enslaved that semi-literate population into dependence on the federal government, and wave after wave of special-interest "social reforms" purposely fomented and continued hatreds, rather than abating them.

Rather than fostering the American "melting pot," we have Balkanized the diverse population of this country. People are identified by "what" they are, instead of "who" they are. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream has been horribly manipulated and mangled.

The art of compromise has left us with a government which controls and intrudes into our private lives, which has saddled us with taxes which are not only heavy, but incomprehensibly complex. Most of us spend so much time working harder just to pay our taxes, we don't have the time to become informed and politically active enough to do anything about lowering them!

The next great compromise on the horizon, I fear, is S.1186, The Careers Act. It is the final piece in the troika (following Goals:2000 and the School-to-Work Act) which will change America's schools from places of knowledge and education into job training centers.

The legislation is backed heartily by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce — an organization of businesses with interests around the globe, not just the U.S.

S. 1186 calls for the issuance of skills certificates (job licenses) instead of diplomas. Children who are home-schooled could thus be locked out of employment. It will give each state's Governor the power to appoint Workforce Development Boards which will control local implementation of a federal curriculum; that system is already in place in Texas.

The Texas State Board of Education is even now considering adding such certificates to the list of options for students to obtain a Distinguished Achievement Program diploma. Materials passed out to KISD students last week, in fact, apparently assumed the State Board would approve the idea, since the option for the job skills certificate was listed as one of the items which could contribute to a DAP.

Do we really want multinational corporations deciding what our children learn, in order to make them productive little worker drones? Are we, in fact, nearing the time when government orders will determine "career choices" for our children? When did we vote to make schools job centers, instead of places of learning?

Sadly, we don't have a William Wallace to stand up, uncompromising, and tell the feds, "Go back to Washington, and tell them: Texas' sons and daughters are yours no more!"