The dumbing-down of America began in earnest back in the 1930s with FDR's 'plan' to subjugate American citizens by means of 'social welfare'. Just prior to that, Wilson and friends forced a 'central bank' onto Americans, the Federal Reserve, owned and operated NOT by our own citizens, OR our own government, but mostly by FOREIGN bankers, the upper .01% of the world's mega-rich. Together, the welfare state and the banking elite began to grab power from the American people. The money of the ultra-wealthy bought, yes, LITERALLY BOUGHT political figures, financed their rise to power in our Congress, in the White House, and in every small town's elected offices in America. This banking conglomerate managed to install those who became ingratiated to them, or, as even Mitt Romney once suggested, "politicians who owed them". They moved on to make the federal government responsible for the education of American youth, and gradually, stealthily made students anything BUT educated.
The average high school senior can't even balance a checkbook. Faced with financial decision-making, 'Little Johnny/Jane' can't even manage their allowances, they grow up to have little or no concept of economics, have no clue how to prepare for paying mortgages, loans, or plan for retirement, so is it any wonder we've seen a new all-time high of foreclosures, bankruptcies, and collapse of the American economic system? Our children, for the past 80 years, simply have NOT been given proper, if any, instruction in the basics of personal finance, or how to manage their lives successfully once they are out in the REAL world.
They can't read well, can't spell, can't write because of the poor quality of their so-called 'education', and a terrible thing called phonics. A recent president of the United States required phonetic spelling on his teleprompter! An entire nation of people have been DUMBED-DOWN! America threw out the old system of education, known as the Trivium learning method.
Emperor Julian of Rome, on June 17, 362 A.D., decreed that all teachers in the empire must be examined, endorsed and sanctioned by the emperor. His primary purpose was to use the educational system as a propaganda weapon for the formation of public opinion.
Immediately thereafter he declared Christians to be insane and demented because of their contradictory views and practices; and refused to allow them to be teachers. His aim was to turn all schools into centers of pagan religion. The effect was to "forbid masters of rhetoric and grammar to instruct Christians." Julian "considered such studies conducive to the acquisition of argumentative and persuasive power." Augustine wrote, "Was he [Julian] not a persecutor that forbade the Christians to be taught the liberal arts [Grammar, Logic and Rhetoric]?" (The City of God, by Saint Augustine of Hippo. 18:52)
The parallels between Julian's actions and our modern socialized education are startling.
Federal legislation requires that all school teachers in the socialized schools be examined, endorsed and sanctioned by the Federal Department of Education.
"The Congress declares it to be the policy of the United States that...this title builds upon what has been learned: [including]...The disproven theory that children must first learn basic skills [=GRAMMAR & LOGIC] before engaging in more complex tasks [=RHETORIC] continues to dominate strategies for classroom instruction, resulting in emphasis on repetitive drill and practice.... A school wide program shall include the following components: ...help provide an enriched and accelerated curriculum [=RHETORIC BASED] rather than remedial drill and practice [GRAMMAR & LOGIC]."
That is how we came under 'Outcome-Based Education' (O. B. E.). It is mandated in all socialized schools. Federal legislation was formulated to forbid the teaching of the Trivium, the educational system that produced the great thinkers of past times, declaring it to be a "disproven theory." Let us recall that SOCRATES, PLATO, ARISTOTLE all applied the Trivium form of education. What does THAT prove? Nothing, obviously, to our Congress.
Gone are the days when a student had to learn to actually read real words, or learn basic skills in order to complete an education. Today, a music instructor doesn't even have to ask students to learn to READ music...they just teach them a song which they memorize and play back, mindless of how the song came into being.
Today's educational system makes things so simple, so FAST, that any student, with minimal effort can 'graduate'. "NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND" means what it says! In spite of poor performance, even if they can't read, write, or do basic sums, even if they don't know what verbs, logic, or interest rates are, just push them through, make certain they don't engage in INDEPENDENT thought, instill in them the horrors of questioning authority, make them all "team-players", and foremost, make sure they realize they OWE THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT/THE STATE for all that they have received in the halls of higher learning!
Emperor Julian would be proud of America's educational achievements. He would jump for joy that we have fashioned mindless automatons who line up nicely, who do as they are told, in the manner that pleases the "gods" up on yon HILL. 'POLITICAL correctness' rules! Think about that term..."POLITICALLY correct"! We've traded all our independent thought and logic for that, for politics!
The average citizen in America can't quote the very short Declaration of Independence, have no idea what the Articles of Confederation were, can't say how many Constitutional Amendments there are, nor WHAT those are, can't name the Presidential Cabinet members, all Supreme Court Justices, don't know the names of all their state's federal or local officials, have no clue what bills are before Congress, never read that Patriot Act, don't know how to contact the very people they installed as their representatives in government without looking it up. We, the people don't have a clue what the boys up on Capitol Hill are planning for us, what new laws they're enacting, what kinds and how much PAYOLA they're taking from PACs, from lobbyists, from bankers, from Wall Street 'Big Names', from people connected to the criminal element, from foreign 'investors'. We just don't make it our business to know how our nation is being governed!
We couldn't care less about honest American history, world history, or anything resembling philosophy. We don't know when our political "parties" were formed, or on what basis, nor how they've METASTASIZED into the cancerous growths we see today that are tearing this country apart. Most don't even know where the phrases "left wing/right wing" or "liberal/conservative" came from, nor do we imagine life without the "GREAT DIVIDE" that separates not only our House of Representatives and Senate, but every wee burg in America, and often even families.
"DADDY WAS A REPUBLICAN/DEMOCRAT AND THAT'S GOOD ENOUGH FOR ME!"
FACTS become the most frightful things we can encounter, worse than those monsters 'neath our beds, for FACTS may, MAY INDEED, prove us WRONG! We can't be wrong! We are Americans, and more than that, we are DEMOCRATIC/REPUBLICAN Americans! DIVIDED WE STAND, DIVIDED WE HAVE FAILED, BUT DIVIDED WE MUST SURELY BE! That's the way we were 'taught"! That's just the "American Way", by all the gods that ever were! It IS "us" against "them"!
If you're not "my kind", you are the ENEMY!
Most Americans don't know a 'red herring' from a tuna fish can. They can't, therefore, recognize the many ways logic can be employed to MANIPULATE MINDS. Logic, TO MOST, is just one of those "hard, boring classes they made me take", and once free of the burden of having to THINK LOGICALLY, the human mind is ripe for the plucking!
One of the definitions of propaganda is: '"The organized attempt through communication to affect belief or action or inculcate attitudes in a large audience in ways that circumvent or suppress an individual's adequately informed, rational, reflective judgment.'"
A statement can be illogical without being propagandist, and we may, at one time or another, all make logical mistakes. The difference is that propagandists deliberately manipulate logic in order to promote their cause. That is why it is CRUCIAL to learn about both logic and propaganda.
The Nazi Propaganda Ministry, headed by Dr. Joseph Goebbels, took control of ALL forms of communication in Germany, EVERYTHING: newspapers, magazines, books, public meetings, rallies, art, music, movies, and radio. Viewpoints in any way threatening to Nazi beliefs or to the regime were censored or eliminated from all media. Some books were completely removed from classrooms by 'censors', and textbooks, newly written to agree with the FATHERLAND, were brought in to teach students blind obedience to the party, love for their dictator, Hitler, and antisemitism. After-school meetings of the Hitler Youth and the League of German Girls trained children to be faithful to the Nazi party. German propagandists were known for their ability to create extensive and varied forms of propaganda, using words and images that were carefully chosen and deliberately used to give life to old anti-Semitic prejudices, to elicit opportunistic tendencies, to quickly quench dissent, and turn neighbor against neighbor, child against parent.
Hitler is often quoted as saying, “What good fortune for governments that people do not
think.”
Writer Max von der Grün told what impact the German propaganda machine had on
him during his service in the German army:
"'It is easy to understand that if, for whatever reasons, these words are hammered into a
person’s brain every day, they soon become a part of his language, and he does not
necessarily stop and think about where they come from and why they were coined in
the first place.'" [Max von der Grün, Howl Like the Wolves: Growing Up in Nazi Germany (New York: William Morrow,1980), pg. 76.]
Isn't that what's happening in America right now?
Surely you don't really think "communists and fascists" are the only ones who use propaganda? REALLY? You're WRONG!
"'Lead this people into war, and they'll forget there was ever such a thing as tolerance. To fight, you must be brutal and ruthless, and the spirit of ruthless brutality will enter into the very fiber of national life, infecting the Congress, the courts, the policeman on the beat, the man in the street."
WHO SAID THAT? WOODROW WILSON, about 1916. Surprised?
With the help of a propaganda apparatus that was unparalleled in world history, Wilson forged a nation of immigrants into a fighting whole, purely by PROPAGANDA!
[See a fine presentation of this incredible organized machine here:http://www.propagandacritic.com/articles/ww1.cpi.html] [Some of the following is quoted from that article.]
On April 13, 1917, Wilson created the 'Committee on Public Information (CPI)' to promote the war domestically while publicizing American war aims abroad. He hired a journalist known as a "muckraker" to head this effort, George Creel. This CPI implemented "voluntary guidelines" for the news media and helped to pass the 'Espionage Act of 1917' and the 'Sedition Act of 1918'. The CPI never had explicit enforcement power, but it nonetheless "enjoyed censorship power which was tantamount to direct legal force." Like modern reporters who participate in Pentagon press pools, journalists grudgingly complied with the official guidelines in order to stay connected to the information loop from the White House.
Behold America's finest propaganda machine as it was born!
"'Censorship was only one thing CPI's did. With the sophistication of a modern advertising agency, the CPI examined different ways by which information made its way to the population, then flooded these channels with pro-war material. The CPI's domestic division was composed of 19 sub-divisions, and each focused on a PARTICULAR type of propaganda.
One of the most important elements of the CPI was the Division of News, which distributed more than 6,000 press releases and acted as the primary conduit for war-related information. According to Creel, on any given week, more than 20,000 newspaper columns were filled with material gleaned from CPI handouts. Realizing that many Americans glided right past the front page and headed straight for the features section, the CPI also created the Division of Syndicated Features and recruited the help of leading novelists, short story writers, and essayists. These popular American writers presented the official line in an easily digestible form, and their work was said to have reached twelve million people every month.'"
HOW EASY TO SUBJUGATE THE MINDS OF AMERICAN CITIZENS! IT IS MUCH EASIER TO DO THAT TODAY, AFTER 80 YEARS OF DUMBING-DOWN AMERICANS!
RE-EDUCATE YOURSELVES, AMERICANS! LEARN THE TRICKS USED TO MAKE YOU STUPID!
Here are some good examples of how faulty logic can trick you into believing LIES...read, LEARN, OR PERISH!
1. Podunk Community College should not require a freshman writing course. Harvard does not require a freshman writing course and the students there get along just fine without it.
False Analogy. It is false because the two items do not have strong enough similarities to predict that what happens in one will happen in the other.
2. Everyone wants to get married someday. A good self-concept is important in attracting a husband or wife. Therefore, everyone should develop a good self-concept.
False Premise. This example starts a logical statement with an assumption that is false; not everybody wants to get married. So even if the conclusion drawn is valid, the argument it is built on is not.
3. Suds 'n Spuds is a great restaurant: you can see how shining clean the kitchens are!
Distraction or "Red Herring." This example distracts the audience from far more important criteria used to establish whether or not a restaurant is good. Even if - to invent a name - Monsieur Taco has a shining clean kitchen, it might well be a lousy restaurant with horrible food and an awful waitstaff!
4. Ms. Bauer is an incompetent math teacher. She always wears blue jeans.
Ad hominem. "Against the person." Instead of evaluating any faults in teaching technique/theory/pedagogy, it calls attention to things about the teacher as a person which are UTTERLY unrelated to her performance and abilities.
6. Look at this fourteen-year-old child who has run away from home to hide her shame ... pregnant, unwashed, friendless, penniless, at the mercy of our social service agencies. Can you still claim that sex education should be taught in high school?
Appeal to Pity. Tear-jerking description. Question is posed so disagreement would appear heartless. Similar to (yet different from) Red Herring, above.
7. Suds 'n Spuds is a great restaurant; no one has reported someone dying of poisoning yet!
Appeal to Ignorance. Your argument on something is supposedly true because its opposite has not been proven true. ("See that door move on its own?! Zoinks! GHOSTS! Run, Scooby!") Similarly, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
8. Either we continue to build nuclear weapons or we will fall prey to the Russians (or Taliban or Chinese or Iraqis or whomever).
Either/Or Fallacy. Writer pretends only two choices exist.
9. It has been proven that all heroin addicts smoked marijuana in their youth. Therefore, smoking marijuana leads to heroin addiction.
Post hoc, ergo propter hoc. "After this, therefore because of this." Heroin addicts probably really started on mother's milk; does it lead to heroin? Other examples: "The cock crows, then the sun comes up, therefore the cock is responsible for raising the sun every morning" and "President Reagan's peacetime military buildup - for which we're all still paying - led to the fall of Communism."
13. Students who take earth science instead of physics are lazy. Susie took earth science instead of physics. Lazy Susie should be kicked out of school.
Non Sequitur. "It does not follow." Even if we were to believe the premise ("students who take earth science instead of physics are lazy"), there is nothing in the line of reasoning that indicates lazy students should be kicked out of school; let poor Susie alone!
14. Juan is an impressive speaker because he always touches his listeners deeply.
Circular Reasoning or "Tautological Reasoning." The very meaning of "impressive" includes the idea of touching someone deeply - intellectually or emotionally. In an argument this is ineffective and absurd, just as "he is handsome because he is good looking" would be.
18. No, you vegans cannot order a bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwich with peanut butter instead of bacon! Then everyone would start wanting substitutions on their BLT sandwiches.
Slippery Slope. One instance will inevitably lead to many more? NOT necessarily so!
[For the entire article, see: https://www.msu.edu/~jdowell/135/FaultyLogic.html]
Now, here's where we are today...the vast majority of us don't have a clue what's going on up on Capitol Hill. We may not even know the names of those up there! We stopped questioning much of anything and instead BLINDLY ACCEPT what the propaganda mills, what our "elected officials" tell us. They tell us by means of the mainstream media. ALL OF THAT MEDIA IS OWNED BY JUST SIX MEGA-CORPORATIONS, JUST SIX!!! SO, HOW CAN WE EVER HOPE TO HEAR/READ THE TRUTH WHEN ALL WE ARE FED IS PROPAGANDA BY SIX CORPORATIONS WHO BUY OUR POLITICIANS AND WRITE THEIR AGENDAS FOR THEM?
<<The six corporations that collectively control U.S. media today are Time Warner, Walt Disney, Viacom, Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., CBS Corporation and NBC Universal. Together, the "big six" absolutely dominate news and entertainment in the United States. But even those areas of the media that the "big six" do not completely control are becoming increasingly concentrated. For example, Clear Channel now owns over 1000 radio stations across the United States. Companies like Google, Yahoo and Microsoft are increasingly dominating the Internet.
But it is the "big six" that are the biggest concerns. When you control what Americans watch, hear and read you gain a great deal of control over what they think. They don't call it "programming" for nothing.>>
PROGRAMMING THE AMERICAN MIND
[ http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/who-owns-the-media-the-6-monolithic-corporations-that-control-almost-everything-we-watch-hear-and-read ]
"'THEY DON'T CALL IT PROGRAMMING FOR NOTHING'"!
BECOME DE-PROGRAMMED, AMERICA! UNPLUG FROM THE MATRIX! THINK! EXIST AS INDIVIDUALS, NOT AS PART OF A MINDLESS COLLECTIVE!
TO HELL WITH POLITICAL PARTIES, AND ALL ELSE THAT SERVES TO KEEP US DIVIDED AND AT EACH OTHERS THROATS! IF WE DON'T STAND UP TO THE LIES AND TREASON GOING ON IN AMERICA, WE'LL SOON BE GROWING OUR NAILS, SHARPENING OUR TEETH, AND WIND UP BACK IN CAVES PLOTTING HOW TO TAKE OUR NEIGHBOR'S FOOD AND FIRE!
WAKE UP! RESISTANCE HAS NEVER BEEN FUTILE!
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