Small Things Are Bigger Than They Appear

There are so many big things going on in the world, it’s hard to focus on a small-ish issue. But because of all that it means, I think this is something to pay attention to.

There’s a German family, the Romeike family, that I’ve written about several times. They came here seeking asylum 15 years ago, based on persecution in Germany. They were not allowed to homeschool there. This was based on a law from the late 1930s, during which time the Nazi regime did not tolerate any child being out of the control of their indoctrination. The law continues for reasons the German people will have to answer to. But the Romeikes report that the schools were changing their children in ways they didn’t like. The schools, by the way, while not still pro-Nazi, are atheist, and the family is evangelical Christian. They considered private schools, but those schools are required to use the same curriculum, and they found the environment there even worse. So the parents pulled the children out of school for their safety and best interests. But the state had other ideas. They threatened fines and imprisonment. Ultimately they would threaten to take the children from the parents. It was untenable, so the family sought asylum here, in 2008.

The Romeike family, homeschooling in Tennessee in 2010
photo from NY Times article March 1, 2010

In 2010 a US circuit judge granted their asylum, along with a strong statement about parents having a right to make decisions regarding education and religion for their own children. This was during the Obama administration. Out of the blue (no apparent request from Germany), the DOJ insisted on overturning the ruling and kicking this law-abiding family out of the country.

I wrote about the family in 2011, and updated a couple of times in 2013. The links are below. I hadn’t heard much in a long time. The family was staying as long as appeals were making their way through the courts. HSLDA (Home School Legal Defense Association), their legal counsel, show on their timeline that, in 2013, the 6^th Circuit heard oral arguments and then didn’t grant a rehearing. So there was an appeal to the US Supreme Court. Again, the Court didn’t grant a rehearing. That final word came down March 2014. The very next day DHS, under public pressure, decided to let Romeikes stay under order of supervision and "indefinite deferred action status."

Although nothing changed on the Romeike’s part, the Biden administration—the very ones determined to let anyone, criminal or not, flood in at the southern border—now use their ICE discretion to pluck out this family. In September the Romeikes were given four weeks to vacate the country, but October 11 they were given a delay of one year.

Why target this family? They have been in no trouble during the 15 years they have lived here. They have supported themselves (i.e., no government aide; some of their court costs, I believe, have been helped with donations). They have been contributing community members. They have not violated any agreements. They aren’t terrorists or drug dealers. So, again, it is out of the blue that the administration decides to target this family—and the family has not been told the reason.

The Romeike family in 2008 when they came here, and a recent family photo.
Photos are screenshots from their interview on the Glenn Beck program.

What happens with a family over 15 years? They have two more children—born here as Americans, according to current law. (I believe they had five when they came here.) Their children have grown up. Two are married to American citizens, and one has an American-born citizen baby, just a month old.

The administration nevertheless wants the Romeike parents to return to Germany, where they face both hefty fines and imprisonment. They have no home there and no means to make a living—which means they will be imprisoned, and the state will take custody of the minor children. The American-born children can stay in the US, but without parents or family or means of support, so that’s not going to happen. The married adults are expected to return to Germany without spouses and children (or they can all immigrate and subject themselves to German laws), and that’s not going to happen either. The minor children, except the American-born ones, are expected to return to Germany and submit themselves to state custody. Some of them may not even remember the language or recall ever living in Germany.

In an interview with Glenn Beck, the parents aren’t sure what to do. As law-abiding people, they are willing to leave the US if ordered. But they are not willing to return to Germany and lose their freedom and their family. They may be searching for another place to land, but at this point they say they don’t know where to go.

Why is this a bigger issue than it appears? It is a travesty. It is wrong. But it also shows the risk to all of us. The ruling power goes out of its way to wield power against regular people—like us. This appears to be persecution because of religious belief, possibly also simply the assertion that we the people—not government—have certain inalienable rights, which include the parental right and responsibility to direct the care and upbringing of our own children.

As Lenin said, “Give me four years to teach the children and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted.” Tyrants want control over the ideas being taught to children, to perpetuate their control over the next generations.

There’s a point I remember Jordan Peterson making (I don’t have the reference right now) where he talks about a question people ask him, about what a person should say to a Nazi official who asks if you’re hiding Jews in your home. Do you lie, when telling the truth would lead to their death? He says a better question is, how many times did you—and the rest of the community—fail to tell the truth or speak up prior to the Nazis coming to your door to find the Jews you have to hide? Why did you let it get to this point?

So, with this one family’s case, is there something we can do? Yes, some small things:

·        Contact your representative to support H.R. 5423, a bill proposed in September to give relief to the Romeike family. (Info about the bill here.)

·        We’re past an October 11 deadline, but still, there is a petition at HSLDA where you can sign your name in support of the Romeike family. (Pressure from the public is what led the Obama administration to give them “indefinitely deferred action status” back in 2014.)

·        Donate, if you’re able, to the defense fund for the Romeike family at HSLDA.

·        Let your friends know about this family. Let it be part of your conversation about school board races and parental rights. While there are people of both parties who don’t care much about homeschooling, only one side's administration is persecuting them.

Maybe, if we do whatever we feel capable of doing in a small issue like this—along with a whole lot of other people stepping up and speaking up—maybe the bigger issues will also get solved. Whether that outcome happens or not, at least we will have placed ourselves on the side of good and right.

 

Where I’ve Written about the Romeike Family

·        Parental Rights, October 26, 2011 

·        The Parental Right to Educate, March 22, 2013 

·        You Might Be Living Under Tyranny If... Part II, May 17, 2013 

 

Other Resources

·        “Judge Grants Asylum to German Home Schoolers,” New York Times, March 1, 2010. 

·        “Meet One Family Biden Wants to Deport,” Glenn Beck Special, episode 309, October 4, 2023. (This may be behind a paywall; I wasn't able to also find it on YouTube.)  

·        “Romeike Case: History and Timeline,” HSLDA, September 18, 2023. 

You Might Be Living Under Tyranny If... Part II

In Wednesday’s post we covered three scandals in the news right now revealing the tyrants running our federal government. I hadn’t planned on a part II, but there is some follow-up information on these scandals, as well as a couple of additional issues exemplifying the tyrannist attitude.

Romeike Family Update

You might be living under tyranny if the administration makes arbitrary decisions about who can be allowed to enter the country, regardless of the law or natural rights.

We talked about the Romeike family from Germany (recently on March 22 and earlier in October 2011), here in the US legally since 2008, based on seeking asylum when their native Germany severely fined and threatened the parents with jail time and loss of custody of their children. In 2010 a US circuit judge granted their asylum, along with a strong statement about parents having a right to make decisions like education and religion for their own children. Out of the blue (no apparent request from Germany), the DOJ insists on overturning the ruling and kicking this law-abiding family out of the country. Why? To declare to the American people and the world that there is no inherent right to parent your own children; government reserves the “right” to impose its decisions on parents and their children.

This should be an easy win for the family, as it had been the first time. But this week the ruling came out against the Romeikes; they lose their right to be in the US, because the judicial system has decided the threat of losing their right to parent and maintain custody of their children is not sufficient to gain asylum. To paraphrase, "We can’t go willy-nilly granting asylum to people just because they could lose their family and their freedom from imprisonment; bad stuff happens all over. We don’t want to encourage people to come here for freedom, or we’d get some kind of unmanageable influx."

Meanwhile, if someone comes here illegally, because economic conditions are inferior where they come from (or not), even if they commit a crime, the DOJ feels so strongly that they should be allowed to stay that it sues states (Arizona, for example) for any effort to protect its own borders.

The road hasn’t ended quite yet for the Romeikes. There are still a couple of levels of appeal. And then, if all continues to go against them, I hope they will be allowed to find another less tyrannical country that will accept them, rather than be turned over to the oppression facing them in Germany. 

Sibelius Obamacare Overreach

You might be living under tyranny if the government tries to control your health care decisions. The IRS, already proven untrustworthy, is put in charge of health care financing. (Note: a single judge decided the government had the right to force Americans to buy health insurance if you called it a tax, even though the monstrous bill passed by the slimmest of margins, following various shenanigans, only because of the insistence it was not a tax.) If things weren’t bad enough, the IRS happened to seize some 60 million personal health records.

Further, you’ve got the head of Health and Human Services, Kathleen Sibelius, pressuring health care industry providers, over which she has oversight, to do her bidding to recruit participation in Obamacare. This does not convince anyone of the intention to provide more and better health care at lower, fairer prices. Prices might actually be 100%-400% higher than predicted.  

Targeting for Political Reasons

You already know you’re living under tyranny when you’re a target for being a patriot. Targeting of organizations because of their pro-Constitution (and therefore presumably anti-regime) beliefs, is bigger than the IRS policy of tagging organizations applying for 501(c)4 status. Individuals have been targeted for IRS audit as well. And corporations have also been targeted—being forced to publicly announce any of their political or issue-related donations. The purpose here is the chilling of First Amendment freedom to express ideas.

I wanted to point out that 501(c)4 status implies that there will be political and issue advocacy purposes, including lobbying related to the organization’s mission. Donations to such an organization are not tax deductible. The advantage is only to the organization; it has a cultural, social, or educational benefit and purpose rather than making a profit, and therefore it does not have to pay taxes on money going through the organization. This is the kind of organization Obama spent his career years creating. So he knows what they can accomplish—and that is why he wants to ensure that those he considers ideological enemies are prevented from succeeding in their missions.

screen shot from Glenn Beck's 5-15-2013 show

Glenn Beck sought input to name the combination of scandals. His news people will start saying “Intimigate,” but for his purposes, he is changing the spelling to “IntimOgate,” with the O being the Obama logo. 

Implausible Deniability

You might be living under tyranny if your tyrant combines a claim of leadership skill with a claim of unawareness of the behaviors of rogue underlings. Why would the underlings so frequently behave in tyrannical ways, if the tyrant’s leadership didn’t create the spoken or unspoken understanding that oppression against the enemy is acceptable, even expected—as long as you don’t get caught?

Thursday the president held a brief and pointless press conference, repeating that he knew nothing about the IRS problem. Actually, what he specifically said was, “I can assure you that I certainly did not know anything about the [inspector general] report.” He didn’t say he didn’t know about the policy or practice of targeting political enemies. He specifically denies knowing only the findings in the report. And his swift action to hold people accountable? Accept the resignation of the acting IRS Commissioner, who was stepping down in June anyway. Take that, IRS! That is what the wrath of an outraged president feels like, when he’s out to protect our freedoms.

Oh, and in case you didn’t know, that division that targeted Tea Party groups the last couple of years? Their leader was promoted to run the Obamacare office of the IRS—because Obama was so outraged. Yeah, that’s it.

He didn’t know what happened in Benghazi. And his Secretary of State was out of touch as well, both of them unaware it wasn’t a spontaneous response to an internet video, even though all the rest of us knew it was a terrorist attack.

His DOJ head didn’t know about the AP phone record overreach either. (And of course can’t be blamed for the collection of data related to phonecalls from the AP that just happened to connect to the legislative branch.) He knew it was in response to one of the most crucial leaks of classified information in our lifetimes, a clear danger to the American people, and therefore worth getting the legal permissions for the invasive move. But it wasn’t important enough to mention such a threat to the president, who remained unaware entirely until he heard about it on the news. Nor did Attorney General Eric Holder remember any details, because he recused himself from the case early on, for reasons that he couldn’t recall.

Did we mention that this administration, in five years, has prosecuted more whistleblowers (for leaking classified information that endangers the country?) than all of the previous presidencies combined? It’s an everyday event for the DOJ, but the AG wouldn’t know about that.

If any more scandals pop up in the coming days, be assured the president will hear about it on the news, just like the rest of us. Comedian/commentator Jon Stewart put together a collection of the president’s new favorite buck-stops-somewhere-else explanation about knowing nothing before the news reports. It’s a 5-minute clip; the part about the president getting his briefings by the news starts at about 2:40 in:

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Indecision Political Humor,The Daily Show on Facebook

 

This much scandal is upsetting. But it also could be a good thing. We’re hearing about the news. In such a flood that it’s hard to take in, but at least these things are being reported. And, because of the AP scandal, some news sources might actually begin to make assumptions other than, “those are just right-wing conspiracies,” and think, “maybe the president hasn’t been entirely truthful up till now.”

All along it has been my hope we could have clarity. Let truth prevail, and not deception. I still believe people who know the truth choose freedom and civilization, rather than tyranny and savagery.

The Parental Right to Educate

We’ve been covering education topics for a few posts now, mostly in preparation for current related news. Last Friday’s post presented the concept of the parental right and responsibility to educate their children. Monday’s post covered definitions of curriculum and textbooks, to take away some of the mystique of the experts. Wednesday’s post covered more skepticism of centralized control, revealing the lack of connection between accreditation and educational outcomes.



The Romeike family in 2010
photo from NY Times story

Today I want to cover a particular case. I mentioned this case back in October 2011. A German family, the Romeikes, an Evangelical Christian family with six children, found that the German public schools did not meet their family’s educational needs. They found that local private schools (which, in Germany, are required to teach the government dictated curriculum used in public schools) were an even worse environment. They came slowly to look into homeschooling, which is illegal in Germany, and has been since long before WWII. A few people do it undercover. (I actually know an American homeschooling family who worked in Germany for a year, that managed to stay under the radar during their stay.) The Romeikes finally saw it as their best option, believing that, if caught, the outcome would be fines they were willing to pay.

It turned out the fines were onerous, and the government threatened to take the children away from the parents, and possibly imprison the parents as well.

They did the legal thing; they went through the legal system in Germany first. Failing there, and with the threat of family dissolution looming, they came to the United States in 2008 and requested asylum. That was granted in 2010, by a judge in Tennessee, who spoke strongly in favor of their parental rights.

There was reason to rejoice, but it didn’t last long. The Department of Homeland Security (the Immigration and Naturalization Service, under DHS) stepped up to insist the judge had ruled incorrectly, and that the family should not be granted asylum.

There are some specific guidelines for qualifying for asylum. Being persecuted for religious reasons is one; so is being part of a specific targeted social group, which it is argued homeschoolers are. The judge in his ruling spelled out why the family qualified, so he was following the law, even though circumstances were unusual.

The case comes up for appeal before the Sixth Circuit Court on April 23^rd. It’s unclear to me how the case is set up. The Romeikes won the original case, so no need for appeal. So the government must have stepped in to insist on appeal, forcing the family to re-defend their position.

If this were simply a question of asylum, there might be some conceivable reason for pressing the question. If we allowed just anyone feeling unhappy in their home country to come here, we would be hard-pressed to accommodate the rush. But this family has been here since 2008. During the two years it took to get the ruling in their favor, they were productive and contributing members of society. During the additional three years, they have continued their noble behavior—and there has not been a sudden increase in similar requests for asylum based on homeschooling prejudices (or even religious prejudices) from Germany or elsewhere.

So the administration has stepped in, pretty much out of the blue, targeting a clearly harmless family for deportation—when the known outcome will be termination of custody of their own children, plus hefty fines and prison terms. Not only will they lose the right to educate their children as they see fit, they will lose the right to have a relationship with their children, and will have their lives essentially ruined and livelihood ended. That may not be a death threat, as with many asylum cases, but it’s pretty severe.

This is an administration that just set free a large number of illegal aliens who had been incarcerated. They have sued the state of Arizona for even asking people taken into custody for other infractions whether they have legal status. “Everyone is welcome, and we hope you’ll be voting for us soon,” is practically the announced immigration policy.

So why go to so much trouble to expel this particular family that came here legally?

I’ve wondered if there was pressure from Germany, which is an ally, and would appear somewhat embarrassed by the accusation of oppression that the request for asylum implies. There may be something behind the scenes, but there’s no mention of a request for extradition or any such thing in the stories I’ve read. And it seems unlikely there would be such a request. Germany’s stated purpose for the anti-homeschooling law is that they want to discourage factions and separateness within the country; having the family leave means problem solved.

Whether there’s some backroom discussion with Germany or not, this prosecution by the federal government clearly exposes this administration’s belief: there is no parental to right to see to the care, control, and upbringing of children, nor is this administration willing to protect any so-called parental rights.

Not all natural rights are spelled out in the first Ten Amendments to the Constitution. The reason even those are amendments is that natural rights were understood and accepted, so much so they didn’t need to be mentioned. It was fear that people might someday become corrupt enough not to understand and accept the natural God-given rights that led to the addition of the Bill of Rights. But it was so far from their thinking that anyone would come to believe someone other than parents owned the responsibility for raising the next generation that they didn’t even think to spell it out. Parents choosing how to best raise their children is simply part of a person’s life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. Only in severe cases of abuse and neglect would society (or government) have a role to step in to protect the child.

But this administration is more corrupt than the founders imagined. The insistence on challenging the Romeike decision is a way to codify the administration’s belief that parents do not have rights concerning raising their children—the government wants to make it clear that they believe they have the right to control, to indoctrinate.

Inalienable rights cannot be given up. But just as people can lose their freedom to slavery, any inalienable right can succumb to usurpers if people do not stand strong against the tyrannists. Usually the loss happens little by little. “Free” public schools have been used for the incremental usurpation of parental rights. This administration is testing how far they have already come toward the tyrannist plan to dictate what and how children are taught.

When this federal government puts forth a curriculum (as it has with Common Core), claiming it is best for all our children, it doesn’t matter what is in the curriculum and whether it could be effective as a teaching tool. Such curriculum must be rejected, because the issue is parental rights—and we know that any curriculum they provide comes from the worldview that parents do not have rights.

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* You can learn more on the Romeike case at these links: this story from 2010, this story from The Blaze March 15th, and this video with HSLDA, who are helping to defend the Romeikes.