Now the missus and I spent a day strolling the Venice boardwalk last summer and it is laughable that “medical marijuana” clinics seem to have proliferated in the numbers they have. If treating cancer pain were their true mission, would we need dozens of them every few blocks? And why is most of their clientele in their 20s? In point of fact, no medical condition exists that can’t be treated as well or better with other less controversial drugs. In fact marijuana has been available for years by prescription (Marinol) and can be ingested if needed.

I do believe that military metaphors such as the “war on drugs” have made lots of folks feel self-righteous but have accomplished little, and that it is time to decriminalize marijuana (I think all my kids just fainted). Prohibition didn’t work either. Tax the hell out of it and admit that people who intend to use it will find a way, as they do with alcohol. It is the most valuable cash crop in much of California and will remain so as long as pot users want it.

Speaking of alcohol, people often equate the two but there are important differences. (Full disclosure: I have never tried it, although I got punched in the nose in 8th grade for refusing to buy “reefer” from a classmate – this during the Truman administration!) Alcohol is a food which can be processed and eliminated at about an ounce an hour by the liver, which is an organ capable of rapid restoration when injured. Marijuana, by contrast, contains thousands of chemicals (as do cigarettes) and also delivers carbon monoxide and radiation to the lungs. Most worrisome, cannabinoids are deposited in the brain and remain there, probably forever. We know that cannabis disturbs memory, robs users of ambition, and delays the development of adolescent problem-solving ability. If you doubt it, check out the “Occupy Wall Street” protests going on all over the land. Penalties for marijuana use tend to be much more severe in emerging countries which cannot afford an unproductive horde of young people getting high (e.g. India).

All the arguments against legalization have validity and I’ve used them myself. It is a gateway drug, it is illegal, it is carcinogenic (more so than tobacco), plus the above behavioral issues. Adolescence is challenging enough, and youngsters are influenced by their peers which makes their choice of friends critical. The family remains the #1 bulwark against all the traps teenagers must avoid, including drugs and alcohol, premature and reckless sex, careless driving, etc. Government at any level is a poor substitute, especially when its messages are purposely kept free of traditional moral standards. And it doesn’t help when, for example, Obamacare enshrines the “right” of young people up to 26 to remain dependents on their parents’ insurance. Are we heading for the European model, where we stay in school until 30 and retire at 50?

Decriminalizing pot is a gamble. One hopes that law enforcement would be able to go after heavy drugs, that prison populations would go down, that tax revenues would help fund rehab programs, etc. Alcohol is far more destructive to society in terms of drunk driving, domestic abuse, and actual medical costs, but trying to make it illegal backfired. (I hope you’re all watching “Boardwalk Empire, by the way) I’m not a libertarian by any means, but it’s obvious that there are things the Nanny State is no good at, and trying to regulate stupid behavior is not an effective use of taxpayers’ dollars.

I attended a tea-party conference a few weeks ago and heard several speakers give updates on the pushback efforts going on. The Supreme Court will rule shortly on the constitutionality of the requirement to buy health insurance. As with an overtime hockey game, we know the final score (5-4) but we don’t know the winner. Never has the Constitution been interpreted to mandate participation in a marketplace. If the insurance mandate falls (it has already been ruled unconstitutional by Judge Vinson in Florida) the whole house of cards crumbles. The administration has already issued waivers to over 1100 of its political favorites, even individual businesses in Nancy Pelosi’s home district of San Francisco, making a mockery of a fiasco, if there is such an animal. One of the general principles which makes socialism anathema to most Americans is that the government gets to pick winners and losers, and the only thing new about this “waiver” scandal is its in-your-face hypocrisy. These techniques are right out of Saul Alinsky’s “Rules for Radicals”, Obama’s playbook.

Several of the speakers were from socialist countries. Sallie Pipes, a Canadian economist and author of “The Truth About Obamacare” was joined by an Italian-trained physician and an Israeli economist in warning of the mine field that is socialized medicine. As most such countries scramble to stay afloat and are looking at reforms to their antiquated systems through privatization, we, the United States are being dragged headlong into that same abyss. A judge in Ontario, in ruling against the ban on private medicine in Canada, memorably said, “Access to a waiting list is not health care.” The prime minister of Newfoundland, needing cardiac surgery, flew to Florida and had it done. “My heart, my money!” said the defiant Newfie when confronted by a hostile press on his return. We know that over 40% of Canadians on the waiting list for bypass surgery die before getting to the head of the line.

My son Steve just forwarded me a New York Times article, the gist of which is that doctors are becoming “less conservative” in response to the changing marketplace. It is truly sad that a once-respected newspaper regularly sinks to new lows in journalistic standards. First of all, doctors have been largely apolitical. The AMA, which is referred to in the article as if it carried weight, long ago ceased to speak for anyone but itself. Perhaps one in seven doctors belongs to it, and like most organizations that are not specifically conservative, it has become increasingly liberal over the years (that is known as Evans’ Law). Next, the Times based its premise on interviews with a handful of doctors who all agreed with its point of view. That is propaganda, not journalism. More important, the point really made is unspoken; the allegiance of the doctors has shifted from their patients to their corporate or government masters. I see it every day in my travels around the state. In an editorial I had published over 35 years ago I said, “When socialized medicine ensues, the patient will no longer be anyone special to the doctor and the doctor will no longer be anyone special to the patient.” Nothing I’ve seen since then has changed my concern. Pardon me for quoting myself, but I take no pleasure in having been correct.

Everyone I’ve heard or read recognizes that attacking and dismantling Obamacare is not enough. We must change our approach to health care, and there are a great many fresh ideas on the table. All will require political courage but I think they are achievable, obviously with new leadership. Congressman Paul Ryan has proposed among other sweeping reforms a voucher system for Medicare. It has been demagogued before the ink was dry, but it deserves consideration. No one over 55 would be affected and the safety net for the truly needy would still function. But by restoring market incentives, it would put the patients in the driver’s seat, encourage research, and give the doctors the prerogatives that only they should have. Conversely, continuing down the same blind alleys will stifle innovation, allow hospitals to rot as they do in socialist countries, and inevitably lead to rationing of care and deterioration in the quality of physicians. Understand, care is already “rationed”. Not everyone can get every procedure nor should they. But who decides? Kevorkian was monster enough; imagine what he could have done with a government ID!

During the five years in which I served as Director of Medical Education at Valley Presbyterian Hospital, I always kept a couple of talks in my back pocket in case the speaker didn’t show up for our Tuesday conference. One that I actually gave was on smallpox, which after 9-11 became the subject of renewed interest as a terrorist weapon. The other was on the phenomenon of hormesis, which you may have read about recently if you’re an Ann Coulter fan.

The term refers to a remarkable ability of humans, and presumably all species, to deal with sub-lethal doses of not just radiation but also toxins of other kinds. The atomic bombs that fell on Hiroshima and Nagasaki killed tens of thousands of people; that was their purpose. However, the Commission setup by our government to study long-term effects found amazing results. In the outer circles of the blasts, miles away from the explosion, cancer rates were lower- much lower- than what would have been expected over subsequent decades. In the 80s the Chernobyl explosion occurred in Russia. As you would expect from a Soviet project, there were no safety precautions taken beforehand; reactors were not shielded, construction was sloppy and the response of the government was indifferent. However, fewer than fifty people were killed, and since the blast a generation ago there have been no excess deaths in the surviving population. The area around it still looks like a moonscape, but so does the area in Canada where nickel is mined to build those batteries so Americans can feel virtuous by driving Priuses, which are actually more destructive to the environment than SUVs.

Some forty years ago a natural “experiment” occurred on the island of Taiwan. Huge housing units were built and occupied by thousands of families in one busy area. It was then discovered that radioactive cobalt had been incorporated in the steel. The authorities disclosed the problem to the public but decided to study the effects rather than tear down the entire edifice. Again, cancer rates among the exposed people have been remarkably lower than normal.

In parts of the world included little-publicized places in the United States, people pay premium dollars to go to spas located deep underground where they are exposed on purpose to high levels of the radioactive gas radon. Many people swear their arthritis has been cured and they’ve never felt better. Now, I see ridiculous claims for all sorts of weird treatments every day on the internet, and I’m not rushing off to Montana for the cure. But the general principle seems to hold consistently that we can improve our ability to deal with the environment by experience, just as our immune systems respond to antigens by building resistance. Leakage from the Japanese reactor has the environmental extremists yelling “The sky is falling” as they always do, but my sense of the threat is that except for the poor souls who drowned when the tsunami struck the plant, there will be no excess deaths, the food supply will be safe, and the resourceful Japanese will recover. Leaking radiation from a damaged but well-constructed nuclear plant is to an atomic bomb what a lava lamp is to a volcano.

Radiation is with us every day. Airline pilots are exposed to considerable levels at the altitudes they prowl, but no ill effects have been noted. The harnessing of radiation has benefited mankind tremendously in medical diagnosis. I hope nuclear power will not be set back by this event because we need it so badly.

Perhaps you’ve heard about the doctor, Kermit Gosnell, who was finally arrested after decades running an abortion mill in Philadelphia where he kept a museum of baby parts after systematically butchering not just early fetuses but fully developed infants capable of surviving outside the womb. Those born alive were murdered by snipping the spinal cord. His staff has also been arrested; none of the eight employees (as young as 15) had any medical training. Gosnell himself had no specialty training. His patients were almost all black, as is he, and poor, which he is decidedly not – his operation brought him a reported $1.8 million a year. At least two women died in his care.

Where was the government? Aren’t there agencies charged with oversight of such a “clinic?” Yes and no. You see, abortion is a “right” created out of thin air by the Supreme Court 38 years ago. Governors of both parties have deliberately refused to “interfere” in the exercise of abortion rights by women in Philadelphia and elsewhere. It was the stench, the rats, the rumors of both mother and baby deaths that finally brought down Kermit the Creep and his House of Horrors.

Clearly I am no fan of abortion. When the court ruling came down in 1973, my scientific training insulated me somewhat from the moral dimension of that decision. Most states had already ruled abortion legal in most cases, and there was the prevailing opinion (largely fictional) that “back-alley” or “coat-hanger” procedures were killing many women who would be safer in approved clinics. But it wasn’t long before abortion touched me personally and I dedicated myself to doing what I could to support the Pro-Life cause.

In the last four years I’ve been privileged to serve as Medical Director of the Pregnancy Counseling Center in Mission Hills. A year ago through the kindness of our donors we installed an ultrasound machine. I took an on-line course and became certified to oversee the work done by our wonderful nurses, and the Clinic even furnished me with an iPad so I could review the ultrasounds while away from the Valley. Our site is close to Planned Parenthood, the leading abortion provider in the country and the site of countless violations of law regarding failure to report incidents of rape, incest and human trafficking. Did you know that its founder, Margaret Sanger, was a Nazi sympathizer and spearhead of the eugenics movement in the 30s, which among other things sought to eliminate blacks? Today abortion is five times more prevalent in blacks as in whites. Jesse Jackson used to be pro-life, as was Dr. King (his niece Alveda is an outspoken pro-life advocate). But since the Reverend ran for president his politics changed. Eighteen million black babies have been aborted in the United States since 1973.

I’ve wandered off the subject, which I’m allowed to do because it’s my blog and I’m old and crotchety. But it is a source of shame to me that so few doctors will stand up for the most helpless, not just babies but the elderly, the disabled, the inconvenient among us. When Sarah Palin used the expression “Death Panels” to refer to Obama-Care, she struck a nerve. By appointing (without congressional approval) Dr. Donald Berwick as his czar, a man utterly committed to rationing medical care (but not for his family), Obama gave the game away. Families and personal physicians have done a fine job of making end-of-life decisions for decades. As a member of our Bio-Ethics Committee at Valley Presbyterian for many years I’ve seen this process up close. It works. It is always painful. It will not work better or be easier if government flunkies intrude in the picture.

Another instance of doctors abusing their authority and mandate has been showcased lately during the protests going on over budget shortfalls and unsustainable pensions and health benefits, especially in Wisconsin. Doctors have openly offered to sign excuses for hooky-playing teachers and others. No big deal, say some, but it is shameful and I hope those individuals are punished appropriately. The excuses specify that the “patients” have been evaluated by the signing doctor. You folks know how hard it is to get a legitimate P.E. excuse out of me for your child. To put my name on the dotted line for a political protester (whichever side they’re on) is a violation of professional ethics, not different than writing a prescription for a patient I haven’t examined.

Salmonella has about 1500 strains, all but one (typhoid fever) native to birds and therefore transmitted via their eggs. The present situation is apparently linked to a large operation in Iowa owned by a fellow with a long record of public health violations. He once paid a $2 million fine but apparently still hasn’t cleaned up his act. The disease is generally mild except in the immunocompromised, including infants and the elderly. Cooking eggs thoroughly kills the bacteria, but sunny-side-up or soft-boiled eggs and even French toast are not guaranteed to be safe. Antibiotic treatment is usually unnecessary and may even prolong the carrier state (remember Typhoid Mary?)
The most common type of food poisoning used to be staphylococcal, the bug that causes most abscesses, boils, etc. Typically a contaminated worker in a bakery would infect a product such as cream puffs or eclairs, which if unrefrigerated for some hours would act as a culture medium, especially in hot weather. Public education and better sanitation among food handlers seems to have made this variety of food poisoning uncommon.

Hepatitis A (“infectious hepatitis”), now controlled by an excellent vaccine, has caused many outbreaks of food poisoning, although the long incubation period (2-6 weeks) makes it hard to detect. A few years ago the L.A. School District had a large outbreak spread by strawberries. For the life of me I can’t understand why the schools still don’t require vaccination when they do require it for hepatitis B and several other diseases. In my CDC days a bizarre epidemic of hepatitis A occurred at a naval base in New Jersey, a “common source” epidemic with a bell-shaped curve of occurrence. What made it odd, and clearly criminal, was that all the cases involved officers and their wives, and eventually some of their children. Turns out a certain career private (he had been demoted several times for insubordination) diagnosed himself with hepatitis based on his jaundice and dark urine, so he urinated into the mayonnaise that went into the potato salad at the Officers’ Mess. The Navy’s punishment was classified. Fortunately everyone recovered.

Another source of hepatitis food poisoning is contaminated shellfish. There’s some rule about not gathering clams, oysters and the like during certain months but some enterprising fellows about the New York – New Jersey waterways were making lots of money breaking the law, digging through the ice in the Raritan Bay to collect these critters. Many folks eat clams and oysters raw or steamed, which it turns out does not kill the hepatitis virus. Researchers at that time also discovered what the ancient Hebrews must have known thousands of years ago; shellfish feed themselves by pumping and concentrating garbage, making them quite adept at transmitting germs.
The investigation which included CDC became rather complicated when it turned out that the Fulton Fish Market was run by the Mob as one of their front operations.

There are other kinds of food poisoning as well. During my two years in Berkeley reports came to us of a huge and dangerous epidemic in the north following an annual gathering of thousands of Sikhs. It was an enormous picnic of sorts, with their traditionally spicy food prepared in large metal cauldrons. We quickly learned that Sikhs do not appreciate Western medicine, do not like government authorities nosing into their business, and carry large knives. We were able to get some information, however, and to treat some of the seriously ill patients. The prolonged cooking as done by them was allowing toxic amounts of heavy metals to leech out of the cookware into the food. This was an unusual example because of the size of the outbreak, but we also learned that many individuals were using old refrigerator shelves to barbecue on, and that toxic amounts of cadmium were being ingested by unwary backyard celebrants. These are historical curiosities nowadays but probably still occur in third-world countries.

With November approaching, there is one other important type of food poisoning worth mentioning. Clostridia are anaerobic bacteria which thrive only in the absence of oxygen, producing well-known diseases such as tetanus, diphtheria, botulism and an important type of diarrhea known as C. difficile which tends to occur in hospitalized patients given high doses of antibiotics. Leftover turkey and to a lesser extent chicken can transmit the toxin from these bugs if cooking temperatures are not high enough to penetrate the entire carcass.

I hope I haven’t spoiled everyone’s appetite!

There are over 200 wineries around here. So far I’ve only tasted two. Sounds like it may be time to try another. Be well, friends.

By now you’ve received my letter announcing my departure from private practice after 44 years. At 75 (which they tell me is the new 74) I might be expected to retire. However I wouldn’t if I could. I love what I do too much, and I’m blessed with good health. Except for a 4-week cancer break in 2001 I’ve never taken a sick day, making me the Cal Ripken of pediatricians. The opportunity to sell the practice arose last year and it was a one-time chance to stop the tailspin that I (and most of my colleagues) had been experiencing since the failure of managed care and the recession. There was uncertainty as to where that would lead, but now we know.

I am too independent-minded to work full-time for someone else. The incessant bureaucratization of medicine, the erosion of authority, the replacement of bedside skills with high-technology razzle-dazzle, and now electronic record-keeping have all come between the doctor and his patient. Seventy years ago we headed down a path which joined health insurance with employment, and federal and state government now account for half of all coverage, with all the political fallout that entails. Predictably, the “marketplace” for health care is a mess, partly because no one has any idea what a fair charge is, especially the consumers. In the future virtually all primary care will be group-centered. Perhaps that will be a good thing for both of us.

What I’ve chosen to do is “take my act on the road”, so to speak. I have already been working some nights and weekends at Urgent Care centers around the city, as well as covering practices in both private and community settings. It’s a bit of a gamble because the work is rarely made available more than a few weeks ahead of time. However I’m assured that there will be plenty. Much of my family lives in the Silicon Valley, which I hope to visit more often. Cynthia is excited about all the farmers’ markets and antique shops, and Gucci will get even more attention than usual.

Thank you all for the unforgettable experiences, for the honor of being part of your families, for the trust you’ve placed in me. As the letter mentions, my cell phone is 818-414-6777 and my e-mail, as you obviously know, is harry@doctormaller.com. I’ve also taken a box for my snail mail: P.O. Box 7725, Van Nuys 91409. For the foreseeable future we’ll keep our home here and would love to hear from you.

In the last 24 hours the equivalent of a tsunami has hit health care in the form of a sweeping “reform” passed by one party in Congress, despite growing opposition from the public. I’m disappointed and like most of you, frightened of the long-term implications of this enormous change that will, if it stands, affect every person out there, most of all the young.

I cast my first vote on the south side of Chicago. It was not an experience likely to elevate my opinion of the process. I learned first-hand what a “community organizer” does and why. Back in those pre-ACORN days they were called “ward heelers”. At 8 a.m. a drunk, badly-dressed goon stood in the doorway of the local polling place, a barber shop, handing out lists of candidates to be voted for, right under the American flag. When I tried to get past him and told him what he could do with his list he said, “Well could you at least vote for MY judge?” Ironically I had spent a day in court as part of my psychiatry training, observing that very judge and I did vote for him because he seemed caring and professional. He later became governor of Illinois (Otto Kerner) and went to jail for corruption, which is a common career path in the state of Illinois.

The current crop of White House operators come straight out of the moral vacuum that is Chicago politics. Every vote is bought, every transaction tainted by cronyism, and few even try to hide it. Like the Mafia and the drug cartels, the power brokers build parks, schools, gyms, housing, etc. to give themselves a veneer of respectability while creating more and more dependency and perpetuating the cycle of corruption.

While our economy staggers, while Iran and the Islamofascist world menace us, our single-minded president and his minions have chosen to focus on a “crisis” in health care that happens to represent a naked power grab of one-sixth of our economy. Nancy Pelosi said “We have to pass this bill so we can find out what’s in it.” Alcee Hastings, an impeached federal judge who now sits in Congress as Chairman of the Rules Committee, is caught on C-SPAN camera saying “We ain’t got no rules – we makes them up as we goes along.” The president wants us to believe that this multi-trillion-dollar legislation will lower costs while insuring over 30 million more people and that pharmaceutical research and medical care will be available no matter how many punitive taxes and onerous regulations they pile on.

As fourteen months of pseudo-crisis have unfolded, millions of Americans have realized what they voted into office. This is socialism on steroids. In the face of a 3-2 level of opposition, these Chicago thugs have installed an unconstitutional and fatally flawed program that is not about health care but about controlling votes. We are at the tipping point where the producers of wealth are becoming outnumbered and outvoted by those who live off them, and where the debt incurred by our children and grandchildren can never be repaid. As Margaret Thatcher famously said, “The trouble with socialism is that sooner or later you run out of other people’s money.” But this program does create “jobs”; i.e. 16,000 IRS agents to enforce its provisions. I wonder if they’ll all be be named Guido.

Hope is not lost – it never is in America because we’re not Europeans. The “benefits” don’t start until 2014, which gives us time to put a new Congress in place which can undo some of the damage. The requirement to buy health insurance is so blatantly unconstitutional that even the 9th Circuit must be embarrassed. Not to sound like the happy kid in the manure pile saying “There must be a pony in here,” but the health care system we’ve evolved in the last 45 years is so messed up that this may be an opportunity to wind up with real reform. In earlier blogs I’ve outlined the keys: a competitive national health insurance market; insurance for major expenses only; malpractice reform (“What do you call five trial lawyers at the bottom of a lake? A good start.”) Either we put patients and doctors in charge or we go down the path to destruction of what is, for all its faults, the best health care in the world. Government can’t run the 50% of medicine it already controls. States are lining up to sue the Feds over Medic-Aid because they’re broke. Social security is a Ponzi scheme like the one Bernie Madoff is serving 150 years for. The CEO of United Health Care made about $785 million last year, but if your child had an ear infection in 1998, he might not be covered for future ear problems for the rest of his life.

My wife wants us to go see “Alice in Wonderland” tomorrow night. Aren’t we already there?

The state of education is like the weather. Everyone talks about it but no one has any idea how to fix it. But it is too important to ignore.

I’ve been more than a spectator but less than an expert. I’ve been taught by unforgettable teachers in grade and high schools; I’ve graduated from an Ivy League college and an even better medical school. My children have ranged from college dropout to law school, all of them doing well with no correlation to their academic status. My oldest grandson is a freshman in college, I hope for education and not indoctrination.

I read recently that a school superintendent somewhere (?North Carolina?) decided that American History should be taught henceforth starting after the Civil War. In that spirit, let’s drop the first two years of medical school and law school. Wanna learn to fly? Skip ground school – just take the keys and try it out. Is this the dumbest idea you’ve heard in a while? Or do you agree with the lady that nothing important happened in America before 1865? Or is it just that our children would be too stressed out having to learn what happened before then, or why America is exceptional, or what the Constitution and Declaration say or mean?

An impertinent reporter recently toured the campus of Berkeley asking random students who their favorite president was and why. Lincoln was first (but no one could say why) followed by
Obama and Benjamin Franklin (who was never president); the actual winner was “I can’t think of anyone.” Half of the freshmen entering elite schools like Berkeley require remedial English and math. Spelling is no longer considered important; to correct one’s spelling might damage his or her self-esteem, you see.

My practice has been impacted directly by the sad state of our education system in the San Fernando Valley, which is part of the sprawling and underperforming LA Unified School District. Those families with the means choose private or parochial schools, which generally turn out a far better “product” at less cost. For most families those options are out of reach. Over the years I’ve seen hundreds of families move to the outer valleys with better schools, or even go back home to places with frigid winters and muggy summers, just to get their kids out of LA. But more and more have opted for home-schooling, including some of my largest and highest-achieving families. It’s a wonderful choice for those parents who can handle it. But it is not without its critics, who as far as I can see care more about teachers’ unions and bureaucratic jobs than about our kids.

We usually describe special interest groups such as unions and government employees as “liberal” because that’s usually how they vote, but they are the true reactionaries in our society, standing in the way of innovation and free choice and leaving our kids short-changed and less able to compete in the global economy. Indeed the only “choice” these folks usually support is abortion; everything else is to be decided by “experts”. The most outrageous example I can think of is the betrayal of a popular school voucher program for the poor, almost 100% black kids in D.C. by the Obama administration.

There are many reasons why some kids fail. In our minority cultures, education is often derided as “turning white” or some such rubbish. I’m very proud of a young Latino friend who has become an engineer despite his family’s efforts to dissuade him. A protegé of mine, a young black pediatrician whom I’ve known since she was 11, thrived at Stanford and UCLA because she is super-bright and committed – but she also had the wind at her back because everyone in her family expected great things from her. And she had more than that – an intact, devout family that would have been typical of American blacks through most of their history until the sixties.

In the last two generations we have seen chaotic changes in our society, largely attributable to government’s clumsy attempts to address social problems that are not part of their constitutional mandate. One of the greatest of these failures has been the teaching of our children. Liberal programs generally sound good on paper but rarely work out that way, nor are they even looked at critically. Head Start, which seems to exist largely to employ thousands of busybodies to make nonsensical rules like “every 3-year-old needs a TB test”, has been evaluated recently and found to be an abject failure; by second or third grade there is no difference between their graduates and other children who didn’t participate. We have been inhaling diesel exhaust by the ton for 40 years so kids can be bussed all over town to achieve absolutely nothing. Basic skill classes, tough subjects that make stronger minds, classic works of literature are too often set aside so that the ever-present “self-esteem” merchants can peddle their psychobabble and our munchkins can learn about all the “-isms” and go on to major in pseudo-sciences like Diversity, Ethnic Studies, Gay-Lesbian-Transgender-Whatever Studies, or pursue the phantom of man-made global warming.

Over a hundred years ago my grandparents, teenagers without means, bravely came to America to escape persecution and to enjoy the blessings of freedom. My generation of Jewish kids excelled in school because we were expected to! The Asian immigrants of today are so like us. So are many of the Latino and African children, but their climb is harder.

Last week a proud father brought in his 12-year-old son, just arrived from Ecuador, for his first visit. His father had come here a couple of years ago and worked to make it happen. He said without irony, “My son is here to live the American dream.” And he teared up.

That dream didn’t start in 1865, and I hope it never ends. Do our parents of today know what their children are not learning? I don’t know who first said it but I love this quotation: “To know nothing of what happened before you were born is to remain ever a child.” Indeed.