How Indoctrinated are We??

April 3, 2013

Facing the Hardest Truth on Public Education

By Daren Jonescu

There are several major obstacles to overcome if there is to be any hope of saving civilization from the grip of the authoritarian pre-education camps we call "public schools."  The most stubborn obstacle of all, however, is perhaps the one embedded in our own hearts, namely the all too human instinct to comfort ourselves with the thought that the soul-deforming corruptions of public education began in earnest only after our own school days, and hence that we ourselves escaped the harm we so easily recognize in others.

This instinct forms the rationale for the many objections I get to my calls for the complete abolition of public schooling, from people who claim that if the schools just got back to the methods of the good old days, all would be well.  In other words, these people are unwilling to see the problem as anything deeper than the superimposition of some bad textbooks or teaching methods on an essentially noble system, because to admit that the problem is more fundamental than this is to admit that one's own education was harmful, which is to concede that one was indeed harmed -- that you are less than you might have been. 

A few days ago, preparing a class of Korean undergraduates for a reading of Plato's Apology, I asked them to think back over all their years of schooling, and to tell me what percentage of their teachers did not deserve their pay.  At first, the students just smiled -- Korea's Confucian heritage demands unreflective respect for all teachers.  Finally, one young woman bravely volunteered that perhaps thirty percent of her teachers had not deserved their pay -- a much higher number than I had expected from a Korean student.  This opened the floodgates: almost all the students in the room subsequently condemned a significant portion of their educators -- one as high as sixty percent -- as unworthy of being paid given what they had actually provided for their students. 

Next, I asked them whether their own education had been worth all the money that had been spent on it over the years.  With only one exception, everyone said unequivocally that his or her own schooling had been worth every penny (or won, in this case).  When I noted that this question was, in a sense, just a variation on my previous question about the teachers, a few students grinned sheepishly, and then a few more, as they gradually got the point: they were perfectly willing to declare that much of their education had been ineffectual or counterproductive -- but unwilling to accept the logical result of this, namely that their own development had been slowed or stunted.

These were students currently in school, which is why the contradiction in their answers was so apparent, and pitiable.  For those of us who have long since finished our formal education, this natural tendency to self-protection is greatly exacerbated.  We easily see the damage done to today's young people, but draw the line at admitting that we too are damaged goods.  To defend our egos, we must deny that our own education was compromised.  And this is the major obstacle of which I spoke, for this denial implicitly detaches the current evils of public education from the institution itself.  We hesitate to condemn the institution outright, because this would mean questioning the conditions and success of our own intellectual and moral development.  We thereby vindicate the most powerful means to permanent tyranny, in order to protect our tender pride.

Were public schools better twenty, forty, or sixty years ago?  Of course they were.  But it no more follows from this that public education is not such a bad idea than it follows from the fact that the welfare state of sixty years ago had not yet incorporated socialized medicine that socialism is not such a bad idea.  Today's extensions of progressive control over an ever-increasing range of our lives did not arise from nowhere; they were made possible by earlier, gradual insinuations of the concepts and moral perspectives of tyranny into the modern West's soul. 

Likewise with education.  John Dewey did not get the progressive, individualism-crushing system he wanted all at once.  But the slow encroachment of his theories into the educational establishments of the world, beginning more than a century ago, has allowed his intellectual heirs to achieve a level of socialist indoctrination and anti-West moral degradation that, in many ways, have surpassed Dewey's most depraved hopes.  So while it may have been easier in the distant past for people to come out of public school with some of their reasoning and moral character intact, it is invalid to conclude that this relative superiority indicates anything other than that an old cancer has worsened.

Public schools from the supposed good old days were the precondition for public schools of today.  Once the premise was established that modern society's interest in a broadly educated population could best be satisfied by direct government provision and oversight of schooling, it was a very short step to the conclusion that such schooling ought to be compulsory.  And from here, it was an even shorter step to the argument that everyone ought to be provided the same education, in the same way, in the name of universality and fairness.  Thus, increasing centralization and standardization are natural (even if unintended) developments of the initial impulse to use the coercive power of government to provide something called "education" for all children.  Such a metastasizing government beneficence is all too susceptible to internal corruption by "big thinkers," central planners, and bureaucratic mother hens.  The result, all but inevitable given the initial premises, is what you see: an entire civilization undone, intellectually, spiritually and morally, in the name of "making sure every child gets a good education," or "preparing our children for today's economy."

Some, comparing their own pasts to mankind's present impasse, are tempted to object here that public schools in the old style were, after all, responsible for the most prosperous and powerful society in history.  On the contrary: Public schools in the old style were responsible for the gradual undermining and destruction of the most prosperous and powerful society in history.  

Can freedom and choice be given to you?

http://jonrappoport.wordpress.com/2013/04/02/chemical-warfare-against-the-nation-right-under-our-noses/

Chemical warfare against the nation right under our noses

Chemical warfare against the nation right under our noses

by Jon Rappoport

April 2, 2013

www.nomorefakenews.com

Thirty years ago, Nancy Reagan launched her version of the war on drugs: “just say no.”

She campaigned on that slogan all over America.

She was lampooned as an idiot.

Now, some researchers estimate that 60% of the Mexican economy would crash if the drug business disappeared there. We have US street gangs operating as retailers for Mexican cartels. We have Mexican cartel soldiers living in suburban homes outside American cities, guarding rooms piled to the ceiling with cash.

US banks are laundering drug money. In Mexico, battling cartels have murdered 50,000 people over the past several years.

We have scores of serious reports from former DEA agents about the collusion of US federal agencies in the drug trade.

Right now, in Chicago, US attorneys are winning delay after delay in the trafficking trial of Jesus Niebla, a Sinaloa cartel lieutenant who was busted in 2009. The issue? Niebla’s lawyers claim the US government granted Sinaloa immunity from prosecution, in return for intell on rival cartels. The government doesn’t want possible evidence of this claim to see the light of day.

The war on drugs was lost a long time ago.

How many lives do you think have been destroyed, how many marriages ruined, how much violence committed, on the basis of booze since 1933, when Prohibition was lifted?

Legalize drugs, don’t legalize them, people find them and buy them and ingest them. They develop physical illnesses. They deteriorate.

The number of lives destroyed by drugs, and the peripheral ripples, continue to increase.

We’re left with: just say yes or just say no. And it isn’t some Sinaloa chief who says it. It’s the user, the person who swallows it or snorts it or shoots it. It always was.

For those people who love citing poverty, abuse, lack of education as the social causes of drug use, the answer is a program to lift up the poor. But despite billions of dollars in aid, over decades, such a program, in the hands of the government, hasn’t shown results. The actual intent to foster dependence on government is the covert purpose of this op.

It may be insensitive and cruel to suggest that the poor have to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and revolutionize their own communities, but it is another hard fact of life. The government isn’t going to do it. All previous attempts have ended in disaster. The condition of the poor in this country is worse than it was 30 years ago.

So even at that level of society, “just say no” applies. People who are better off may find this intolerable. They may say we can’t consign the poor to making their own hard decisions.

Police change sides or Public changes sides??

http://jonrappoport.wordpress.com/2013/03/30/how-kill-the-pigs-became-only-the-police-should-have-guns/

How “kill the pigs” became “only the police should have guns”

How “kill the pigs” became “only the police should have guns”

by Jon Rappoport

March 30, 2013

www.nomorefakenews.com

In the fabled 1960s, the cops were called pigs, and anybody on the political Left who wanted a ticket to the show knew that and mouthed it often.

At rallies, protests, and riots, people said: are the pigs here yet? I heard they were three blocks away. Wonder how many pigs they’re sending today? There! There they are! The pigs!

Now, on the Left, that tradition has morphed into: repeal the 2^nd Amendment; turn in your guns; citizens with guns are satanic; the police will protect us; a private citizen with a gun is a killer and needs psychiatric lockdown; suspend that five-year old with the gun screen-saver.

What happened?

In 1968, if you asked a leftie college student whether a black man living in the inner city had a right to own a gun to protect himself against the cops, the answer, ten out of ten times, would have been yes.

Now, that leftie kid will be talking about the insanity of anybody owning a gun. Except for the cops.

Well, three things have happened since the 1960s. The end of the military draft, and the end of anybody caring who smokes pot or who has sex with who. Those changes melted away the whole “movement.”

A professor friend taught at UCLA during the turbulent 60s and early 70s. He told me as soon as the Vietnam war was over, the campus transformed in a flash. Students were suddenly all about finding a niche in the job market after graduation. Boom. Switch on, switch off.

The titanic idealism was put away in a drawer and filed under “crazy shit I did.”

The one remaining piece from the 60s that has endured is hatred of big corporations. But gradually, a parallel mindset has developed. First, grudging acceptance of big government; then toleration; then admiration.

Now, the Left is all about big government and the “positive changes” it can make.

And when I say the Left, I also mean the center, and a great deal of the right, because they’ve come along for the ride, too. They are the Left now.

In 1968, a big-time liberal presidential candidate, Hubert Humphrey, was the target of riots, by the Left, at the Democratic National Convention. Those riots tore apart half the city. Two years earlier, a march, by the Left, on the Century Plaza Hotel in LA, where Democratic President Lyndon Johnson was staying, sealed his fate. It was the last stone. Johnson, who had presided over the war on poverty and the creation of “The Great Society,” the biggest federal program since FDR’s New Deal, was mangled into oblivion.

Johnson announced he wouldn’t run for office again in 1968.

If Pelosi, Reid, Frank, and Obama had been around then, they would have been hammered in the same way by the Left. If they were for the war in Vietnam.

That was the big key, the war. Or to be precise, the military draft.

“Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?!”

Meaning: “I won’t risk my neck going to Nam!”

The elite Left has become the personification of the soccer mom now. Worries about everything. Danger everywhere. Needs more helmets. Schedules more play dates. Wants more state surveillance. “If you’re against intrusion on your privacy, maybe you have something to hide.” “Keep the poor bottled up in inner cities, give them anything they want, just don’t let them into my neighborhood.”

The Left has also become the promise of a vague fairyland new age. “We’re all in this together.” “We can raise up the lowest among us (by printing more money).”

Does fear possess You??

Big Government: An Unnecessary Evil That Should Be Abolished

Friday, 29 March 2013 05:44 Brandon Smith

http://www.alt-market.com/articles/1417-big-government-an-unnecessary-evil-that-should-be-abolished

There are two types of people in this world; those who worship the ideal of centralized command authority, and those who do not.  Those who value freedom regardless of risk or pain, and those who value slavery in a desperate bid to avoid risk and pain.  When I consider the ultimate folly of man, in the end I look to the meek and unquestioning masses who strive to avoid risk, because it is they who always end up feeding the machines of war, despair, and tyranny.  The power thirsty halls of elitism surely instigate and manipulate the tides of this wretched ocean of quivering souls, but ultimately, the weak-hearted and weak minded make all terrible conquests possible.  

They live by the rule of fear, and their fear drives them to seek control; control of their environment, control of others, and by extension they believe, control of the future.  They attempt to mitigate their overwhelming fear by containing the world and sterilizing it of everything wild, untamed, and unknown.  They dream of a society of pure predictability, and zero responsibility.  They are willing to sacrifice almost anything to attain this position of artificial comfort.    

The concept of “big government” appeals to such people for many reasons…

Government in most cases is nothing but an abstraction.  It is merely a tool that serves the interests of a particular group of people at any given time.  Modern politics is an expression of the foolish cat fight between factions of people to decide who gets to wield the weapon of government and impose their ideology on the rest of us.  At least, that’s what it almost always devolves into.  The great illusion of the system, though, is that ANY group of average people ever actually wields any power.  The truth is, big governments are always operated by very small and exclusive clubs of root beneficiaries out of the sight of the population. 

The smaller this dominant group becomes, the more corrupt and criminal the government generally is.  A government reaches a state of despotism whenever its functions are twisted for the sake of an elite few to the detriment of the common man, and when it ignores the natural inborn rights of the individual for the sake of some fabricated collective .  If one were to closely examine the birth of every iron-fisted oligarchy throughout history, they would find a cyclical pattern of centralization; the removal of checks and balances, the removal of legitimate public involvement in the political process, a dependent and infantized citizenry, and the rise of a “bureaucratic class” which regards itself as superior and born to lead.  All steps taking place within Western societies today.  

Unfortunately, the masses tend to view big government as an inevitability of life; as a natural extension of culture.  Rarely if ever do they ask what tangible purpose it serves.  Are they really getting what they want out of their government?  Or, is the government taking what it wants from them?

I have always found the worshipful attitude that some citizens ascribe to government simultaneously fascinating and disturbing, because these people are not bowing down to a wise and benevolent entity.  Rather, they are bowing down to their own delusions of what they believe that entity to be.  The most dangerous and insidious of governments present themselves as a kind of social vanity mirror.  They allow the citizenry to project their collective desires, biases, shortcomings, and fears, and reflect back an image that entices and placates the majority.  The lies and manipulations of big government are designed to satiate our basest fantasies, but what we see as a concrete edifice of political and legal might, in the end, is a mirage mired in the fog of our own naïve expectations. 

So, the question again arises; if the structure of big government is built upon deceit and misrepresentation, what tangible purpose does it really serve?

The answer is no purpose…at least, no purpose that elevates and enriches the public at large.

Big government is not a “necessary evil”.  It is just evil.  Like the ring of Sauron, it lures in the weak with promises of power, but this power is a ruse.  Each side of our false left/right paradigm, Democrat and Republican, thinks that if only THEY were the bearers of the ring they would “finally use it for good”.  But once in their possession, they are overtaken, overwhelmed, and corrupted by personal temptation. 

The Democratic Party, with all of its proclamations of humanism and respect for civil liberties, is a perfect example.  How quickly did the rank and file Democrats turn away from their anti-war, anti-torture, anti-banker, anti-surveillance, anti-tyranny stance once Barack Obama, a self proclaimed Democrat, was placed in office?  Very quickly!     

And what about the common Republican?  How many of them utterly abandoned their ideals of limited government, reduced spending, Constitutional rights, and Christian understanding as soon as Bush and the Neo-Con regime was installed?  Most of them!

And when all is said and done, who has reaped profits and gained dominance during both disastrous administrations?  The corporate high priests and international banking cartels, not the oblivious participants of the fake political theater.  Yet, a masochistic cycle of misplaced trust in the system on the part of the masses continues... 

If these latest signs of big government corruption aren’t enough to make the public question the validity of the establishment, I’m not sure what will…

The Rape Of Cyprus

Even in the face of unmitigated government theft, I still hear the occasional rationalization of the Cyprus debacle.  Defenders of the bailout measures (which the EU demanded) allowing the confiscation of private citizen savings to pay off government mismanaged debt, argue two things:

1) The banks that were targeted contained “Russian blood money” and hidden funds, so confiscation really amounted to a “punishment of rich criminals” rather than the Cyprus public. 

2) It is “better” that the citizens go along with the confiscation of a percentage of their accounts, rather than lose everything through collapse. 

Just to be clear, any sizable Russian funds being stored in Cyprus were removed before the bailout measures were instituted.  Therefore, the assertion

Firing Wall

Did Che really say this ?
Did he practice what he preached ?
where does this thinking lead to in the future ? ?
Does one rule by terror ?
Is this what he meant ? ?

"To send men to the firing squad, judicial proof is unnecessary...These procedures are an archaic bourgeois detail. This is a revolution! And a revolutionary must become a cold killing machine motivated by pure hate. We must create the pedagogy of the The [Execution] Wall! (El Paredón)" --Ernesto 'Che' Guevara

Critical Thinking, Theory, whose standards?

 I do wonder about the definitions or rather just how others are using the definitons, particularly when they have an agenda. It means for me a lot more thinking to try and get to the facts and throw out the rubbish, ( without throwing out the baby in the bath water), which simply can be tiring  understand, sort out, and then explain.

Just bear with me as I try to understand all these definitions and issues and question my comprehension.

Of course it begs just what is my agenda??

http://www.criticalthinking.org/pages/three-categories-of-questions-crucial-distinctions/482

Three Categories of Questions: Crucial Distinctions

Many pseudo critical thinking approaches present all judgments as falling into two exclusive and exhaustive categories: fact and opinion. Actually, the kind of judgment most important to educated people and the kind we most want to foster falls into a third, very important, and now almost totally ignored category, that of reasoned judgment. A judge in a court of law is expected to engage in reasoned judgment; that is, the judge is expected not only to render a judgment, but also to base that judgment on sound, relevant evidence and valid legal reasoning. A judge is not expected to base his judgments on his subjective preferences, on his personal opinions, as such. You might put it this way, judgment based on sound reasoning goes beyond, and is never to be equated with, fact alone or mere opinion alone. Facts are typically used in reasoning, but good reasoning does more than state facts. Furthermore, a position that is well-reasoned is not to be described as simply "opinion." Of course, we sometimes call the judge's verdict an "opinion," but we not only expect, we demand that it be based on relevant and sound reasoning. Here's a somewhat different way to put this same point. It is essential when thinking critically to clearly distinguish three different kinds of questions: Those with one right answer (factual questions fall into this category). What is the boiling point of lead?  Those with better or worse answers (well-reasoned or poorly reasoned answers). How can we best address the most basic and significant economic problems of the nation today?  Those with as many answers as there are different human preferences (a category in which mere opinion does rule).Which would you prefer, a vacation in the mountains or one at the seashore? Only the third kind of question is a matter of sheer opinion. The second kind is a matter of reasoned judgment — we can rationally evaluate answers to the question (using universal intellectual standards such as clarity, depth, consistency and so forth). When questions that require better or worse answers are treated as matters of opinion, pseudo critical thinking occurs. Students come, then, to uncritically assume that everyone's "opinion" is of equal value. Their capacity to appreciate the importance of intellectual standards diminishes, and we can expect to hear questions such as these: What if I don't like these standards? Why shouldn't I use my own standards? Don't I have a right to my own opinion? What if I'm just an emotional person? What if I like to follow my intuition? What if I don't believe in being "rational?" They then fail to see the difference between offering legitimate reasons and evidence in support of a view and simply asserting the view as true. The failure to teach students to recognize, value, and respect good reasoning is one of the most significant failings of education today.
(Paul, R. and Elder, L. (October 1996). Foundation For Critical Thinking, Online at website:www.criticalthinking.org) --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_theory In philosophy, the term critical theory describes the neo-Marxist philosophy of the Frankfurt School, which was developed in Germany in the 1930s. Frankfurt theorists drew on the critical methods of Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud and has at its heart a criticism of ideologyand the principal obstacle to human liberation.[2] Critical theory was established as a school of thought primarily by five Frankfurt School theoreticians: Herbert Marcuse,Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Walter Benjamin, and Erich Fromm. Modern critical theory has been inluenced by second generation Frankfurt School scholar Jürgen Habermas as well by György Lukács and Antonio Gramsci. In Habermas's work, critical theory transcended its theoretic roots in German idealism, and progressed closer toAmerican pragmatism. The concern for a social "base and superstructure" is one of the remaining Marxist philosophic concepts in much contemporary critical theory.[3] Whilst critical theorists usually are broadly defined as Marxist intellectuals[4] their tendency to denounce some Marxist concepts, and to synthesise Marxian analysis with other sociologic and philosophic traditions has been attacked as revisionism, by Classical,Orthodox, and Analytical Marxists, and by Marxist-Leninist philosophers. Martin Jay said that the first generation of critical theory is best understood as not promoting a specific philosophical agenda or a specific ideology, but as "a gadfly of other systems".[5]

Pope and Papacy allegiances

http://islamversuseurope.blogspot.co.nz/2013/02/a-negro-counterjihadist-pope.html#comment-form

I have edited some needless comments.

One good thing about the election of the new Pope is that we can be fairly sure it won't be a Muslim. In this day and age, though, can we be absolutely sure?

Labels: Catholic church, Pope, Vatican 

global warming questions

http://joannenova.com.au/2013/02/peer-review-failure-science-and-nature-journals-reject-papers-because-they-have-to-be-wrong/

ExWarmist

February 13, 2013 at 5:24 pm · Reply

Hi AndyG55,

I disagree, I strongly suspect that John Brookes has learnt many things since coming to this site, such as,

[1] The tropospheric hotspot is the fingerprint of man made global warming, and the key indicator of +ve feedback to increasing concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere and that it is missing.

[2] That (most?) CAGW sceptics accept that CO2 in the atmosphere has a warming effect, and that it is a reasonable (but unproven) working assumption that CO2 increase in the atmosphere is due to human industrial emissions.

[3] That increasing CO2 emissions in the atmosphere is good for the biosphere, and could be a net benefit for human society.

[4] That a well formed scientific hypothesis is in principle falsifiable, and that it should provide specific, measurable predictions about future events that can be tested with empirical evidence.

[5] That climate models are not empirical tests, and that climate models have poor skill at predicting the future, which implies that the climate models are loaded with false assumptions about how the climate system actually works.

[6] That there is a PR campaign around Man Made Global Warming that is disconnected with the actual empirical science, but the PR campaign has the louder voice than the empirical science.

[7] That funding for CAGW adherents far outweighs funding for CAGW skeptics.

[8] That (most unhappily) the UNFCCC has a definition of climate change that has nothing to do with actual climate descriptors such as temperature, humidity, etc,

I could go on.

The challenge for John (as I see it – and I could be wrong), is the cognitive dissonance between his abstract, intellectual understanding of the above points, and his visceral, emotional need to subjugate himself to a higher authority.

Communism values

http://ibloga.blogspot.co.nz/2007/01/ayatollah-khomeinis-fling-with-four.html

This is also the problem we see in Communism. Communism values equality of resources (not equality of opportunity), over free will, and inevitably, Communism has led to the enforcement of equality of assets through coercion.
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another part in the same debate that was above the above comment
"...stop blaming the religion and the majority of its people on the actions of a few."

Do you think we should also stop blaming the Nazis for the Holocaust? After all, it was only a tiny, tiny portion of all Nazis that raided their houses, threw them on trains, lured them into the "shower rooms" and pushed the Zyklon-B buttons.

It's the same with the Muzzies - they can't EVERYBODY be blowing up infidels ALL the time - do you understand the word "logistics"
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part of another comment, same debate
In the long run, I do have hope, but I'm sorry, I do not have hope for them in the short run.

It seems obvious to me that, when a person studies history, he will find that great civilizational changes are rarely, if ever, brought about without great violence.

I often point to the successes of the American wars against Germany, Japan, and the American South, as examples of how massive violence actually seemed to have to be used to effect change. Violence wasn't the only thing that needed to be used, but massive violence was the mechanism which brought about submission, which resulted in the United States then being able to force its will on the people's of those three cultures. 

In each of those cases, the United States stepped in in the aftermath and rewrote Constitutions and forced change in the foundational ideologies by banning the teaching of the previous ideology outright.

We were as cruel ideologically in the aftermath of the war as we were physically cruel during the course of those wars.
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You may wonder why, if I know about Itjihad, and if I think it is a positive thing, then why do I talk about Islam with so little nuance.

The answer is because I think Islamism, from what I have read, and I've read alot, is dominant throughout almost all the Islamic world.

I think we are past the time for nuance. When it is time to go to a debate, you bring notes, and references. When it is time to go to war you bring a gun.

Guns have very little nuance about them.
It will be a very sad day that comes to pass, and to paraphase Churchill, the sooner it is bought to a head then the less damage and cost to people.