Don't forget the biased unions as well. ;-)

Oh, man you posed such a central question to my life.

I grew up in Mass from birth in 1955 to leaving high school in 1973. In the public schools in Winchester there was such a huge confusing mass of contradictions, I pity the other poor souls that went through it with me.

But, I had the benefit of having independently found and nurtured my own intellectual development based upon Ayn Rand in that era. I subscribed to her newsletter in the day. I learned how to think, thanks to her. No thanks to the public schools, but the curriculum provided a fertile ground to apply the principles.

I wrote an English paper on why the god concept is flawed. The old teacher angrily threw it back in my face with such a look of hatred. I had a current events teacher that encouraged a principled, objective approach to reading the news every day - by bringing today's paper into class and asking the students - what do you think? And then supporting the multiple hypothesis theory even politically - without humiliating anybody. It was about how to think and how to listen. They fired him.

And then I took a "college development" course called Environmental Science. My thought was "Hah?" "What is this?" My thought at the end of the semester was "Hah?" "What is this?"

Hence I became a geologist.

But through this Massachusetts public education system, there were so many things left out. So many questions, so many issues of direct relevance to who we are as Massachusetts descendants and what happened in history. And a history that is so fundamental to the core of the questions of individual identity, liberty, and responsibility as citizens. There was a huge gap that really bothered me.

And so, I spent hours on my ten speed bicycle going over to the Lexington Green, the Concord Bridge, and into Boston to the Old North Church, the old cemeteries dating back to those eras.

I saw an old bullet hole in the frame of an old door on the Lexington Green that was fired on that day. People died.

The schools did nothing to answer my questions of why would somebody risk their very life in defiance of such odds? What is life worth if it is lived within chains of any sort? But, when do you arrive at the clear delineation in soul and mind that the ultimate sacrifice is absolutely worth it?

Sitting on the Concord Bridge contemplating these deep, fundamental soul searching questions is when I realized that they cannot be arrived at without these very questions being clearly framed - and answered.

These questions were not even on the radar in the Massachusetts public education system of the 1960's and 1970's. Despite all this readily visible history in the very neighborhood.

I resolved to leave. In my lifetime I went west early, only to find the same problems descending upon and encircling the perceived freedoms of the people of the Western US. And even worse with unconstitutional federal ownership of 87% of my now home state.

I have since learned that an old ancestor of my mine was integrally involved in those events of the late 1700's. Job Shattuck was his name from Pepperell, Massachusetts. He fought in the French-Indian Wars, he rousted out to the call to Lexington, he was at Bunker Hill, and at Saratoga. He survived the War of Independence. And then came the time between the Treaty of Paris and 1787. In Massachusetts, the rurals were facing taxation proposals from a distant government (in Boston). Thus began Shay's Rebellion. My old ancestor was pivotal to this until being chased down by (government goons) seriously wounded by saber in the leg and captured. He was thrown in prison without medical aid for months and then sentenced to hang. Daniel Shay went on to lose the rebellion near Springfield and fled Massachusetts.

Things were changing. Then Mass governor John Hancock pardoned old Job Shattuck and played a hand in introducing the cruel and unusual punishment concepts to the Bill of Rights.

I would so much like to set down with my old ancestor and discuss - What went wrong?

"...until told by their political hierarchy what the latest meaning is." Yes, trust Big Brother. Trust Newspeak.