I have been listening to Peace Revolution Podcast # 50, and it brought up a great point. The Magna Carta, in 1215, in affirming basic freedoms like Habeus Corpus, and basic rights regarding freedom of people, was looking backward. What do I mean by this? Philosophically, the Magna Carta was an affirmation, 800 years ago, of basic freedoms for citizens. It nailed down the due process of law (clause 39) and the right to face your accuser. The irony is rich (and disappointing) today with the advent of such freedoms stifling atrocities as the PATRIOT ACT, executive orders, and the NDAA. I find the confluence of factors at play here. Many of them having to do with the dumbing down of the USA, and the control of the media. I'll stress the period of the "Progressivism" in the early 1900's USA as being the wolf in sheep's clothing - preaching empowerment for the little guy yet consolidating and cartelizing minority Industrial Wealth and Power. It was a revolution that went on quietly, and is hidden from the young people of today in their History - oops - "Social Studies" classes. Search for Woodrow Wilson's imprisonment of people who spoke against the War for a place to begin.
None of these things would be possible with a free thinking, autodidactic, trivium educated population. How is it possible that in an era seen by the modern citizen as 'backward' and 'primitive', did they recognize that not even the King was able to arbitrarily detain / imprison / control free men? And this was in an era of the 'Divine Right of Kings'! Yet now, we have shallow debates measured by micrometers on whether the Bush or Obama administrations are "good" and "for the people", or my favorite - "racist". It is as if there is some odd sociological experiment going on. "Let's erode basic freedoms out in the open, and watch the rabble argue about nonsensical issues as we pillage their wealth". The fallacy of authority is clearly at play here.
Thankfully there are the Remnant out there, and friends of mine, some people in the press, and young people who see exactly what is going on. Ron Paul said something off the cuff a few months ago, and that was that people prefer freedom. I think he's right. There are free places in the world and people who refused to bend to tyranny, such as the Slovenian people. They seem to understand the idea of freedom of the press. They were able to fight off Yugoslavian tyranny 20 years ago. How we've lost centuries of freedom here in these United States in such a short time is baffling, frightening and unfortunately, fascinating. If the Slovenians did it 20 years ago, we can do it now. Recognizing the Corporate Media for what it is, educating yourself, understanding how leverage works, and understanding historical connections can fix this. I used to think that the saying "education is the answer" was a tired phrase - but now I believe it more than ever before.
Recommended Reading: Frederick Bastiat's The Law
Saturday, March 31, 2012
Saturday, March 24, 2012
Rich Education For Free
One of the basic tenets I follow is that the words education, intelligence, school, learning, smart and wisdom do not all mean the same thing. I get into good debates often about how one 'becomes intelligent', and can be smart. As you can imagine, almost everyone with whom I speak talks about the need to go to school to become intelligent. I do my thing and argue points, use statistics from the past, and try to explain that the people who invented school, and then made it mandatory - by FORCE, are not people that were humanitarian or kind. Not only that, they were NOT interested in making the general population smart. They were interested in creating an exceedingly manageable stock of herd animals easily manipulated who felt smart, happy and free. This is a difficult point to prove because the people with whom I discuss this with went to good schools, and are comfortably entrenched in the middle class. They firmly reject the idea that there is a better, or any other way to educate people. It becomes difficult to explain hundreds of years of philosophy, law, thought and societal management to a person in a debate / argument over a lunchroom table.
There is now an incredibly information rich place to go, if you're willing, to see all of the information on school one might want to discover. These five videos with John Taylor Gatto and the people from tragedyandhope.com have discovered the method and format to provide what I believe will be the future of education. This format can be followed for any subject, they have chosen to use it to discover the and explain the history of forced public schooling. Note how there are footnotes and explanations as the video goes on - further proving that the points made, many of them uncomfortable, are not simply 'made up'. Further explanations are provided in mirrored podcasts, with corresponding links, many of them to primary sources that have been pdf'ed. It isn't a comfortable or natural thought to think that poison gas specialists, eugenicists, and morally bereft men thought up and implemented our system. The very fact that many are unable or unwilling to question the status quo when it comes to 'education' proves that these Elite Managers can rest easy that their mission has been accomplished. Here is your intellectual self defense: The first in a 5+ hour footnoted discussion with John Taylor Gatto.
Here are the corresponding podcasts, with the discussion broken up into 15 minute sections, with a round table discussion about the topics brought up. Under the podcast are links to the source material mentioned by Mr. Gatto and Mr. Grove and the discussion group. It is difficult to imagine a more thorough way to learn - all in one place and without leaving your house. Notice how the group discussion is more informative than many, if not all of the lectures / classes you've been forced to sit through.
http://peacerevolution.podomatic.com/player/web/2011-10-09T13_37_14-07_00
Use podcasts 41 - 45 for information on the Ultimate History Lesson and the discussion.
http://peacerevolution.podomatic.com/
If you don't have 21 hours at your disposal, then this video is a good beginning place - the information is true, and if you're intellectually curious it might pique your interest:
There is now an incredibly information rich place to go, if you're willing, to see all of the information on school one might want to discover. These five videos with John Taylor Gatto and the people from tragedyandhope.com have discovered the method and format to provide what I believe will be the future of education. This format can be followed for any subject, they have chosen to use it to discover the and explain the history of forced public schooling. Note how there are footnotes and explanations as the video goes on - further proving that the points made, many of them uncomfortable, are not simply 'made up'. Further explanations are provided in mirrored podcasts, with corresponding links, many of them to primary sources that have been pdf'ed. It isn't a comfortable or natural thought to think that poison gas specialists, eugenicists, and morally bereft men thought up and implemented our system. The very fact that many are unable or unwilling to question the status quo when it comes to 'education' proves that these Elite Managers can rest easy that their mission has been accomplished. Here is your intellectual self defense: The first in a 5+ hour footnoted discussion with John Taylor Gatto.
Here are the corresponding podcasts, with the discussion broken up into 15 minute sections, with a round table discussion about the topics brought up. Under the podcast are links to the source material mentioned by Mr. Gatto and Mr. Grove and the discussion group. It is difficult to imagine a more thorough way to learn - all in one place and without leaving your house. Notice how the group discussion is more informative than many, if not all of the lectures / classes you've been forced to sit through.
http://peacerevolution.podomatic.com/player/web/2011-10-09T13_37_14-07_00
Use podcasts 41 - 45 for information on the Ultimate History Lesson and the discussion.
http://peacerevolution.podomatic.com/
If you don't have 21 hours at your disposal, then this video is a good beginning place - the information is true, and if you're intellectually curious it might pique your interest:
Saturday, March 10, 2012
Education / Intelligence / School / Worldview / Teaching
There are some key turning points in history that are obvious. The rise of Alexander the Great, the collapse of the Roman Empire, the Renaissance, the Industrial Revolutions and World War I are some of the bigger ones. However, some of the turning points are less "loud".
Turning Point #1
As I read the writers of the Old Right, it seems that the changing of the original debate of 'laissez faire' is quietly, a key turning point. The original laissez faire debate was between entrepreneurs and private citizens vs. The State. "the phrase stems from a meeting in about 1680 between the powerful French finance minister Jean-Baptiste Colbert and a group of French businessmen led by a certain M. Le Gendre. When the eager mercantilist minister asked how the French state could be of service to the merchants and help promote their commerce, Le Gendre replied simply "Laissez-nous faire" ("Leave us be", lit. "Let us do")." Notice how the battle, the debate, was between producers and government. The irony is rich as the State wanted to "help" business, and French businessmen declined help from the State. This argument was subtly changed with the advent of Marxism, which then switched the debate (in a clumsy and plagiarized manner) from the original meaning to the 'workers vs. the big businessmen'. Marxism / Socialism has not only caused the deaths of millions of people, but it has also thrown much of the developing world into permanent backwater status. Like many of our narratives today, it is a false one as Crony Corporate Capitalism is at fault for our economic problems, yet the "free market" is blamed. Nothing could be further from the truth.
This narrative is part of the crux of this post. In school, we learn, either directly or through connotation, that the free market is bad, and capitalism is all about greed and horrid speculation. The State is good, benevolent and healing. Public school is the vehicle for which this narrative is framed. How did this happen? How did the libertarian experiment that was these United States adopt such a twisted tale?
Turning Point #2
Well, it adopted the Prussian School system. The Prussian army was defeated by Napoleon III. One of the reasons for this loss was that the Prussian soldiers were thinking for themselves, and didn't blindly follow orders. A system was needed to change a freethinking and strong people into an order-obeying monolith. In comes the advent of "schule". The Power Elite in these United States saw the benefits to them via this collectivist system. America at the time was a freewheeling, gold standard having, entrepreneurial place, especially if you were a white male. This was not to be tolerated. If a regular citizen was smarter, more determined, and harder working, he could outdo your business and make you have to compete for clientele. This caused prices to go down (as they do in a free market), and the gold holding Americans, who understood economics and were exceedingly literate, were able to flourish as their saved capital (gold, land, business) grew in value. To snuff out this fierce, rugged individualism, an education system had to be created under false pretense. The idea, in theory, was to 'educate the masses'. The irony is that the masses didn't need to be educated, and rejected schooling for decades. It took about 60 years, but the collectivist school was eventually rammed into place and now we promote obeisance to the state and worship false gods. Erich Maria Ramarque, in his classic "All Quiet on the Western Front" tells us that the First World War was caused by the tricks of schoolmasters, and the famous Protestant theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer said that the Second World War was the inevitable product of good schooling. The following video does a wonderful job at looking at the advent of Organized Public School. Interestingly enough, it mentions that almost totally fraudulent Horace Mann came back from Prussia lauding the School System there, but neglects to mention that school was out of session during his time there. An individualist crushing institution based on whole cloth.
Recommended reading: The Underground History of American Education.
"Tolstoy's Writings On Education" - Ernest J. Simmons
Turning Point #1
As I read the writers of the Old Right, it seems that the changing of the original debate of 'laissez faire' is quietly, a key turning point. The original laissez faire debate was between entrepreneurs and private citizens vs. The State. "the phrase stems from a meeting in about 1680 between the powerful French finance minister Jean-Baptiste Colbert and a group of French businessmen led by a certain M. Le Gendre. When the eager mercantilist minister asked how the French state could be of service to the merchants and help promote their commerce, Le Gendre replied simply "Laissez-nous faire" ("Leave us be", lit. "Let us do")." Notice how the battle, the debate, was between producers and government. The irony is rich as the State wanted to "help" business, and French businessmen declined help from the State. This argument was subtly changed with the advent of Marxism, which then switched the debate (in a clumsy and plagiarized manner) from the original meaning to the 'workers vs. the big businessmen'. Marxism / Socialism has not only caused the deaths of millions of people, but it has also thrown much of the developing world into permanent backwater status. Like many of our narratives today, it is a false one as Crony Corporate Capitalism is at fault for our economic problems, yet the "free market" is blamed. Nothing could be further from the truth.
This narrative is part of the crux of this post. In school, we learn, either directly or through connotation, that the free market is bad, and capitalism is all about greed and horrid speculation. The State is good, benevolent and healing. Public school is the vehicle for which this narrative is framed. How did this happen? How did the libertarian experiment that was these United States adopt such a twisted tale?
Turning Point #2
Well, it adopted the Prussian School system. The Prussian army was defeated by Napoleon III. One of the reasons for this loss was that the Prussian soldiers were thinking for themselves, and didn't blindly follow orders. A system was needed to change a freethinking and strong people into an order-obeying monolith. In comes the advent of "schule". The Power Elite in these United States saw the benefits to them via this collectivist system. America at the time was a freewheeling, gold standard having, entrepreneurial place, especially if you were a white male. This was not to be tolerated. If a regular citizen was smarter, more determined, and harder working, he could outdo your business and make you have to compete for clientele. This caused prices to go down (as they do in a free market), and the gold holding Americans, who understood economics and were exceedingly literate, were able to flourish as their saved capital (gold, land, business) grew in value. To snuff out this fierce, rugged individualism, an education system had to be created under false pretense. The idea, in theory, was to 'educate the masses'. The irony is that the masses didn't need to be educated, and rejected schooling for decades. It took about 60 years, but the collectivist school was eventually rammed into place and now we promote obeisance to the state and worship false gods. Erich Maria Ramarque, in his classic "All Quiet on the Western Front" tells us that the First World War was caused by the tricks of schoolmasters, and the famous Protestant theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer said that the Second World War was the inevitable product of good schooling. The following video does a wonderful job at looking at the advent of Organized Public School. Interestingly enough, it mentions that almost totally fraudulent Horace Mann came back from Prussia lauding the School System there, but neglects to mention that school was out of session during his time there. An individualist crushing institution based on whole cloth.
Recommended reading: The Underground History of American Education.
"Tolstoy's Writings On Education" - Ernest J. Simmons
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