From BlackInformant.com
Need a way to measure just how far our public school system has fallen? Compare these questions from a 1954 civics class to the questions a current 8th grader brings home. It’s called the dumbing down of America, folks. WAKE UP PEOPLE!
From FFF
by Jacob G. Hornberger
If there was ever an area in which public-school indoctrination has been effective, it’s with respect to the Great Depression and Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal. It is impossible for any student to escape public school without having his mind molded to accept the officially approved version of events: The Great Depression was the result of the failure of America’s free-enterprise system; after the Depression hit, President Herbert Hoover did nothing, placing his total faith in free enterprise; and Franklin Roosevelt saved America’s free-enterprise system with his New Deal programs.
As libertarians have discovered, the indoctrination is entirely false. The truth is that the Great Depression was caused by the Federal Reserve, a federal agency. The Hoover administration enacted several government interventions that made the Depression worse than it would have been. Roosevelt’s New Deal socialist and fascist programs not only ensured that the Depression would get worse but also guaranteed that it would last much longer than ordinary.
The details behind these truths were provided last Monday night in a great talk by Larry Reed, president of The Foundation for Economic Foundation, as part of our Economic Liberty Lecture Series that we run in conjunction with the George Mason University Econ society, a student-run group of libertarians who have a passion for Austrian economics. The title of Larry’s talk was “Lessons from the Great Depression.”
Larry explained the role of the Federal Reserve in causing the Depression. He first pointed out that it would be difficult to find a better example of where a government agency has failed so dismally to achieve its goals. The purported reason the Fed was established in 1913 was to stabilize the economy and maintain the strength of the dollar. Since then, there have been one Great Depression and several recessions. And the value of the dollar is worth 5 cents compared to what it was worth when the Fed was created, thanks to the Fed’s printing presses. As Larry pointed out, even current Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke has acknowledged that the Fed, not free enterprise, caused the Great Depression with its erratic expansion and contraction of the money supply.
Larry then pointed out that contrary to popular opinion, the Hoover administration didn’t just sit back and do nothing. Among the most notorious and destructive interventions that Hoover enacted was the Smoot-Hawley Tariff, which contributed to the crunching of the economy.
In fact, the irony, as Larry pointed out, is during his presidential campaign, FDR came out in favor of lower taxes, reduced federal spending, free enterprise, and limited government. It all turned out to be false. Instead, FDR embarked on a massive socialist-fascist array of programs, such as the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA), the Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA), Social Security, undistributed profits taxes, and much, much more. Those interventions succeeded in paralyzing business activity for more than a decade.
After the Supreme Court declared the NIRA and the AAA unconstitutional, Roosevelt was outraged. Larry pointed out that after his reelection in 1936, he proposed his infamous court-packing scheme designed to pack the Supreme Court with his lawyer cronies who he could count on to uphold his alien schemes. The plan went down to defeat, but in the long run FDR succeeded, especially as justices began retiring.
Larry’s talk was eloquent and easy to follow and understand. It’s a perfect presentation for anyone who is still operating under the misconceptions that are commonly held about the Great Depression and the New Deal. The talk is also a fantastic refresher for those who already know the truth about this part of our nation’s economic history.
Here is the link to Larry’s talk: http://www.fff.org/comment/com0911b.asp.
From Strike The Root
I’m halfway through a reflective book written by an old curmudgeon. Part patriot, part historian, all gadfly, Gore Vidal wrote Imperial America: Reflections on the United States of Amnesia in 2004, just before the upcoming national elections. Almost a time capsule coupled with dire prophecy, the book is a sober, sometimes cynical look at America . Vidal warned specifically against the electronic voting boxes and the Help America Vote Act ( HAVA ) especially. Yet Vidal optimistically entertained the idea GWB might lose the 2004 election.
Not a chance.
“We hate this system that we are trapped in, but we don’t know who has trapped us or how,” wrote Vidal. “The American press has generally shied away from telling us about ballot fraud . . . . Yet at the dawn of the empire, for a brief instant, our professional writers tended to make a difference.”
Vidal traced that “dawn” back to the Spanish-American War at the turn of the 20th Century. Yet the historian in him also notes that we’ve always been empirical, back beyond the so-called Mexican War more than 50 years before that. So why haven’t our professional writers of today readily admitted that we are indeed an empire and have been an empire for a very long time, and yes, that we indeed “create our own reality”?
So I posed the question to various well-known and respected writers from the left, right and center: Does the American Empire deserve to die, and if NOT, why not?
“Our founding fathers never intended the country that they created to be an empire,” replied Paul Craig Roberts, former top Reagan Treasury official.
Roberts, who penned such un-Reaganite columns as “The Rich Have Stolen the Economy” and “The US as Failed State”, added: “The political system is unresponsive to the American people. It is monopolized by a few powerful interest groups that control campaign contributions. Interest groups have exercised their power to monopolize the economy for the benefit of themselves, the American people be damned.”
American people be damned?
So the empire would then deserve to die, right?
“Short answer: Yes,” replied columnist Dave Lindorff. “If America cannot change and become a nation that promotes peace and harmony and defends and encourages real democracy, then it is more of an evil than a good and as an empire, especially, deserves to die. Nothing good can come of empire, which is fundamentally exploitative.”
Lindorff composes columns for Counterpunch.com such as “Depleted Uranium Weapons: Dead Babies in Iraq and Afghanistan Are No Joke.”
Some conservative media heavyweights might disagree.
“Doug — I think the USA should return to the limited government of our Founders — I laid out that case in America For Sale,” wrote conservative Jerome Corsi. His book titles, like The Late Great U.S.A and The Obama Nation, would seem to imply that America, as a nation or republic was doomed, mostly due to liberal policies rather than a concerted, behind-the-scenes, bipartisan effort.
Likewise longtime activist and 9-11 truth advocate Devvy Kidd politely replied to me: “Do I believe our constitutional republic should die? Of course not. Do I support the destructive foreign policies over the past five or six decades? Of course not. A return to true constitutional government under our Constitution will do just fine.”
Nice to see some people believed a return could happen before we expire, like Rome , during the worst abuses of the Caesars.
“I suppose all Empires deserve to die in the end, usually when the marginal rate of return to inhabitants becomes too burdensome, as with Rome ,” concurred Alexander Cockburn, editor at Counterpunch.com.
“Key for me is that all empires overreach and self-destruct,” replied columnist Stephen Lendman, of the Centre for Research on Globalization. “We sure as hell are doing it big time, and one of my (radio show) guests makes an important point. Having been a former high-level insider, she believes the power elite has given up on America . They’re sucking all the wealth out of the country and us, taking it abroad with our jobs, and when the economy is fully drained, down the trash we go. Meaning? America is just another banana republic. I believe her, and also believe all empires die, no exceptions. We truly deserve it and not a moment too soon. We won’t be missed.”
STR columnists seem to have a better grasp than most, since they appear to consider the power of the individual vs. the power of the state on an almost daily basis.
“As to your question, the first part would definitely be yes,” wrote Alex Knight, “though that need not mean the death of America . . . . Remember, the thrust of your question was empire — something America need not be, wasn’t once, and would be better off NOT being. All of that said, it is possible that the end of the American empire will also involve total domestic implosion–revolution, civil war–who knows what. There are a lot of possibilities that extend from answering Yes.”
Do ALL empires deserve to die? Or just some more than others?
George Smith wrote: “The word ‘deserves’ is a bit tricky, but otherwise if you’re asking whether I would like to see the empire die, the answer is emphatically yes. Empires necessarily entail war and a resource-consuming military establishment . . . The government has been very successful in keeping Americans believing most of what it does is, at worst, a necessary evil. With that kind of support, the empire can make the claim it deserves to exist.”
History is undeniable. All empires die. No exceptions; only a matter of time when. Whether all empires deserve to die, even our own, is arguable. In any case, the implication is that we the people do not. Whether left, right or centralist, the implication is that the republic may be a distant memory or a myth but a fond one. No power of recollection, no road map back, no more Manifest Destiny (if we ever had one), unless some serious, SERIOUS reunification happens soon. An ethical revitalization, if one is ever possible, at the most crucial moment in a tottering empire’s lifespan.
Personally, I believe that all empires deserve to die, some sooner than others. Just imagine the tens of millions of innocent people crushed beneath the juggernaut of the American Empire in the past century and then try your best to justify their deaths. Could you? If you can, than yes, America deserves to survive and thrive, but if not, we deserve the trash heap as a grand idea that failed, drowned in blood. I wish it were not so, but wishing doesn’t make it so, only worthy efforts.
Good Luck to us all, and to those nations around us.
From The Future of Freedom Foundation
Yesterday, I blogged about the indoctrination that is an inherent part of any government school system, whether in Cuba, the U.S., England, North Korea, or any other country. Government officials have a vested interest in ensuring a citizenry that accepts the official version of things and a citizenry that is compliant, obedient, and supportive of the government. Over a period of many years, people’s mindsets are molded to encourage them as adults to let off steam by carping about the foibles and inefficiencies of politicians and bureaucrats but never to challenge, in a fundamental sense, the role that government plays in people’s lives.
Let’s compare the public school systems in Cuba and the United States. They are similar in the fact that governments in both countries own and operate the systems. Children who attend the schools are there because the law has mandated their attendance. The schoolteachers and administrators are government personnel. Whether at a national, state, or local level, the textbooks must be approved by the government and the curriculum is set by the government. In both countries, attendance is “free.”
Of course, that doesn’t mean that the indoctrination is the same in both countries. In Cuba, for example, it is ingrained in schoolchildren that the CIA, with its program of assassination, torture, and regime change, is a force for evil in the world. In the United States, Americans schoolchildren are taught that the CIA is a force for good in the world and that it is essential to the national security of the country.
It would be difficult to find a better example of a purely socialist program than public (i.e., government) schooling, especially given its central-planning features. Thus, it’s not a coincidence that Cuba’s public-school system is the pride and joy of Fidel Castro, one of the world’s most ardent devotees of socialism.
Interestingly, while public schooling is also the pride and joy of Americans, most of them have no idea that America’s public school systems are socialist in nature, which itself is a testament to the success of the indoctrination that takes place in the institution. From the first grade to the twelfth, Americans are taught that public schooling is one of the core features of America’s “free enterprise system.”
An even better testament to the power of indoctrination in public schooling, however, is the conviction that it instills in students that socialist programs are essential to society. A good example of this phenomenon occurs in the health-care debate. Whenever libertarians suggest that the solution to the health-care crisis is simply to repeal Medicare and Medicaid, health-care regulations, and medical-licensure laws, most Americans go ballistic. Without Medicare and Medicaid, the poor and the elderly would die from lack of medical care, they cry. Without regulations and medical licensure, quacks would be conducting brain surgery on people, they say. Free markets are fine but not in such an important area as health care, they claim.
How have people arrived at such deeply held convictions? Take a wild guess!
Oh, by the way, national health care in Cuba is also a pride and joy of Fidel Castro.
Perhaps the best example though of the power of indoctrination in public schooling is with respect to the very idea of public schooling itself. Whenever libertarians suggest that this entire socialist system should be junked, that school and state should be separated, and that a total free market in education should be established, statists go haywire. Free enterprise is great, they say again, but not in an important area like education. Why, how would the poor get educated without public schooling? they ask. With a free market in education, we’d quickly end up with a nation of dumb, illiterate people, they say.
Another example of what public schooling has done to instill a faith in socialism and to damage people’s faith in freedom and free markets is with respect to the overall welfare state itself. Whenever libertarians call for a repeal, not a reform, of this immoral and destructive way of life, statists respond, “Without the welfare state, the poor would die in the streets.”
Of course, that’s ludicrous, especially given that free markets are the means by which the poor are able to maintain increasingly higher standards of living. For example, compare a nun here in the United States who has taken a vow of poverty with a nun in Guatemala who has done the same. The nun here will have a much nicer standard of living as a result of the positive economic spillover that inevitably takes place in a wealthier society.
An important prerequisite to getting America back on the right track is a restoration of people’s faith in freedom and free markets and an understanding of why socialism is so immoral and destructive. Fortunately, what public schooling has done to inculcate a love for socialism and to inculcate doubts about freedom and free markets is reversible. Libertarians are proof positive of that.
From WND.com
I frequently receive e-mails from readers professing admiration for our (ahem) “simple” life. (For those unfamiliar with our lifestyle, we have a homestead farm, a home business, and we homeschool our kids.) What many people don’t understand is the sheer hard work the “simple” life entails. Difficult? Undoubtedly. Worth it? Unquestionably.
We live this way because we’re big believers in personal responsibility. We try to be responsible for every major aspect of our lives – our jobs, finances, health care, food and children’s education. To us, it’s simply what grown-ups do.
Apparently, that’s what makes us different. It’s not that we live rural or milk a cow – it’s that we’re independent.
Do you have any idea – any inkling at all – how much more streamlined our nation would be if everyone preferred independence and refused to allow others, especially the government, to be our mommies and daddies?
Thomas Sowell had a superb article this week on the issue of personal responsibility. “Whether the particular issue is education, economics or medical care,” he wrote, “the preferred explanation tends to be an external explanation – that is, something outside the control of the individuals directly involved.”
External. That means you’ve shoved the responsibility for your education, your income or your medical care onto someone else.
Our government now encourages the removal of responsibility for our actions. If you take away the consequences of bad behavior, the incentive to improve is also gone. If a woman is given money, housing, medical care and (worst of all) accolades for having a baby out of wedlock, why should she stop having babies out of wedlock? More babies equal more goodies and more praise for the “difficulties” she “overcomes.”
Low-income people are seen as a problem for society to “solve” without considering that – get ready to rain insults upon my head – most people are low-income because of their personal choices. (Not all, but most.) Having kids out of wedlock, refusing to take advantage of educational opportunities, having bad habits, engaging in risky behavior, refusing to work … it all adds up to a life of poverty by choice.
My husband and I also chose to embark on a life of near-poverty. In our case, though, we made the decision to sacrifice financial gain and nine-to-five gridlock for living closer to the land and closer to home. We aren’t looking for others – or the government – to alleviate our low-income status.
Sowell points out that “Americans can have the best medical care in the world without having the best health or longevity because so many people choose to live in ways that shorten their lives.” [Emphasis added.] In other words, people refuse to take personal responsibility for the fact that they overeat, under-exercise, smoke, drink, do drugs, engage in risky behavior and otherwise act like idiots … and then complain they’re not living to be a hundred years old. “Americans can end up ruining the best medical care in the world,” says Sowell, “in the vain hope that a government takeover will give us better health.” HellOOO??
Every time the government provides us with goodies – Social Security, education, medical care, welfare – it further enslaves us with golden shackles. The government wants us to be dependent on it because that’s the only way it can increase its power and reach. But benefits come with expenses – and those expenses are forcibly funded by people at the point of a gun.
So quit being lazy, folks. If you want your children educated, stop asking the government to do it for you (they do a lousy job anyway). If you want medical care, stop demanding the government provide it (they’ll screw it up, guaranteed). If you want a car, a job, a vacation … start looking at your own resources, ingenuity, creativity and personal support system to provide it. It’s not my responsibility to give you these things; nor is it your responsibility to give them to me. Government largesse forcibly removes my money to give it to you and vice versa. “Force” is the operative word.
Every time the government passes legislation to provide a benefit, be wary. It means the incentive to provide that thing for yourself is proportionately reduced … and you become a slave to the government for that item. It’s a vicious spiral. Lack of incentive creates a crisis for the government to solve, which it then solves by providing more goodies and taking away more incentives. When will it end? Not until we’ve become the U.S.S.A. instead of the U.S.A.
We’re well on our way to that extra “S.” Even the words of our founding documents (which were written to insure our freedom to be self-sufficient) have been bastardized and twisted to justify a nanny state. The “promotion” clause in the Preamble to our Constitution – which says the government will promote the general welfare – is probably the single most misused phrase. Promote does not mean “provide.” “Promote” means the government will get the hell out of the way so people can provide these things for themselves.
In other words, if it’s not laid out in the Constitution or Bill of Rights, it’s not (or shouldn’t be) the federal government’s job to do it for you. Unfortunately, our government has convinced us that it’s supposed to “do it” for you – and greedy, lazy people welcome it. What used to be free and independent citizens are now pigs at the trough, gobbling up every benefit the government can offer in exchange, apparently, for their immortal souls.
That’s what this nation has become: Greedy pigs at the trough, not the free and independent citizens we were meant to be.
Our wise Founding Fathers, who get wiser every time I read their writing, were well familiar with the pitfalls of socialism. The American colonies had already tried and discarded that experiment. They knew the dangers of asking the government to provide everything because of the incentives (and freedoms) it took away. This isn’t rocket science, people. It’s just common sense.
Uh-oh … unless common sense isn’t common anymore.
On second thought, we’re in trouble.
Wow! Just finished the longest Lew Rockwell Show episode yet: America’s Slow-Motion Fascist Coup. It didn’t take me the whole 50 minutes to figure out why Lew decided to use this whole conversation rather than cut it down to the usual 15 minutes or so.
This is an extraordinary exchange (not really an interview in the traditional sense at all). Forget Obama, here is real hope! Light bulbs turning on, the real enemy (the state) becoming clear and new alliances forming… This is the way to destroy the divide and conquer strategy the U.S. State has used so effectively to keep it about “left” vs. “right” or whatever instead of what it should be about… Regular folks vs. that gang of thieves writ large. Thrilling!
From FinancialSense.com
According to the CDC, 66% of adults over the age of 20 are overweight or obese. That is approximately 140 million adults. Somewhere between 15 and 20 million Americans can be classified as alcoholics. As many as 50% of those on welfare are alcoholics. There are 225 million people over 18 years old and 32 million of them do not have a high school degree. There are 32 million adults or 14% who are illiterate (23% in California, 22% in New York, 20% in Florida, 17% in New Jersey). The United States’ spending per pupil in public schools at $9,266 is in the top 5 in the world. New York and New Jersey spend $14,000 per pupil and one-fifth of their adults are illiterate.
Forrest Gump, when asked “Are you stupid or something”, responded “Stupid is as stupid does”. A person’s appearance does not prove they are stupid. It is their deeds and actions which prove whether they are stupid or not. The terms stupid and idiot are not politically correct in today’s America. Intellectually challenged, IQ disadvantaged, aptitude deficient, brain power wanting, and acumen poor might satisfy the PC police. Let’s take a look at their definitions according to Webster’s Dictionary and assess whether they might apply to anyone in the increasingly socialized United States of today.
Is Barack Obama like the Nazis or Adolf Hitler? Does even asking the question make you a right-wing nut or a partisan hack? Is it distasteful to mention Hitler or the Nazis to make a point? Let’s take a sober look at the answers to these questions below:
Many of the issues of our times are hard to understand without understanding the vision of the world that they are part of. Whether the particular issue is education, economics or medical care, the preferred explanation tends to be an external explanation – that is, something outside the control of the individuals directly involved.
Education is usually discussed in terms of the money spent on it, the teaching methods used, class sizes or the way the whole system is organized. Students are discussed largely as passive recipients of good or bad education.
But education is not something that can be given to anybody. It is something that students either acquire or fail to acquire. Personal responsibility may be ignored or downplayed in this “non-judgmental” age, but it remains a major factor, nevertheless.
After many students go through a dozen years in the public schools, at a total cost of $100,000 or more per student – and emerge semi-literate and with little understanding of the society in which they live, much less the larger world and its history – most discussions of what is wrong leave out the fact that many such students may have chosen to use school as a place to fool around, act up, organize gangs or even peddle drugs.
The great escape of our times is escape from personal responsibility for the consequences of one’s own behavior. Differences in infant mortality rates provoke pious editorials on a need for more prenatal care to be provided by the government for those unable to afford it. In other words, the explanation is automatically assumed to be external to the mothers involved, and the solution is assumed to be something that “we” can do for “them.”
While it is true that black mothers get less prenatal care than white mothers and have higher infant mortality rates, it is also true that women of Mexican ancestry also get less prenatal care than white women and yet have lower infant mortality rates than white women. But, once people with the prevailing social vision see the first set of facts, they seldom look for any other facts that might go against the explanation that fits their vision of the world.
No small part of the current confusion between “health care” and medical care comes from failing to recognize that Americans can have the best medical care in the world without having the best health or longevity because so many people choose to live in ways that shorten their lives.
There can be grave practical consequences of a dogmatic insistence on external explanations that allow individuals to escape personal responsibility. Americans can end up ruining the best medical care in the world in the vain hope that a government takeover will give us better health.
Economic issues are approached in the same way. People with low incomes are seen as a problem for other people to solve. Studies that follow the same individuals over time show the vast majority of working people who are in the bottom 20 percent of income earners at a given time end up rising out of that bracket.
Many are simply beginners who get beginners’ wages but whose pay rises as they acquire more skills and experience. Yet there is a small minority of workers who do not rise and a large number of people who seldom work and who – surprise! – have low incomes as a result.
Seldom is there any thought that people who choose to waste years of their own time (and the taxpayers’ money) in school need to change their own behavior – or to visibly suffer the consequences, so that their fate can be a warning to others coming after them, not to make that same mistake.
It is not just the “non-judgmental” ideology of the intelligentsia but also the self-interest of politicians that leads to so much downplaying of personal responsibility in favor of external explanations and external programs to “solve” the “problem.”
On these and other issues, government programs are far less likely to solve the country’s problems than to solve the politicians’ problem of getting the votes of those who think the answer to every problem is for the government to “do something.”
Let’s assume that a U.S. president authorizes the CIA to rape the family members of suspected terrorists as a way to get them to talk. He also authorizes his subordinates to place the suspected terrorists on a rack that stretches them apart until they confess and disclose all details of their suspected terrorism,…
