What Do You Think?

[marieodess]

I may not agree with everything the group says but they do make some points that everyone should seriously think about.

copied from:
http://www.buildfreedom.com/tl/wua4.shtml


OBEDIENCE, PUNISHMENT, AND POWER

OBEDIENCE

The well-known psychologist Erich Fromm wrote an essay, "On Disobedience," published in his book On Disobedience and Other Essays. Fromm wrote that "human history began with an act of disobedience." He was referring to Adam and Eve whose act of disobedience in eating the apple of knowledge set them "free and opened their eyes." Obedience is the root of much evil. Fromm wrote:

"Man has continued to evolve by acts of disobedience. Not only was his spiritual development possible only because there were men who dared say no to the powers that be in the name of their conscience or their faith, but also his intellectual development was dependent on the capacity for being disobedient - disobedient to authorities who tried to muzzle new thoughts and to the authority of long-established opinions which declared a change to be nonsense.

... [W]hile we are living technically in the Atomic Age, the majority of men - including most of those who are in power - still live emotionally in the Stone Age; ... while our mathematics, astronomy, and the natural sciences are of the twentieth century, most of our ideas about politics, the state, and society lag far behind the age of science. If mankind commits suicide it will be because people will obey those who command them to push the deadly buttons; because they will obey the archaic passions of fear, hate, and greed; because they will obey obsolete clichés of State sovereignty and national honor."

Fromm continues to say that in order to disobey we need courage, and the capacity for courage depends on our state of development. When we are fully developed individuals, having "emerged from mother's lap and father's commands," and having acquired the ability to think and feel for ourselves, then we have the courage to say "no" to political coercion.

In Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View Stanley Milgram writes:
"Obedience, because of its very ubiquitousness, is easily overlooked as a subject of inquiry in social psychology. But without an appreciation of its role in shaping human action, a wide range of significant behavior cannot be understood. For an act carried out under command is, psychologically, of a profoundly different character than action which is spontaneous.

The person who, with inner conviction, loathes stealing, killing, and assault may find himself performing these acts with relative ease when commanded by authority. Behavior that is unthinkable in an individual who is acting on his own may be executed without hesitation when carried out under orders.

... Obedience, as a determinant of behavior, is of particular relevance to our time. It has been reliably established that from 1933 to 1945 millions of innocent people were systematically slaughtered on command. Gas chambers were built, death camps were guarded, daily quotas of corpses were produced with the same efficiency as the manufacture of appliances. These inhumane policies may have been originated in the mind of a single person, but they could only have been carried out on a massive scale if a very large number of people obeyed orders.

... Though such prescriptions as "Thou shalt not kill" occupy a pre-eminent place in the moral order, they do not occupy a correspondingly intractable position in human psychic structure. A few changes in newspaper headlines, a call from the draft board, orders from a man with epaulets, and men are led to kill with little difficulty. Even the forces mustered in a psychology experiment will go a long way toward removing the individual from moral controls. Moral factors can be shunted aside with relative ease by a calculated restructuring of the informational and social field."

Milgram conducted some experiments to determine the degree to which people are obedient to authority. In a typical experiment there is a "teacher," a "learner" and the "authority" (experimenter) who conducts the experiment. The teacher asks a series of questions to the learner. If the learner gives an incorrect answer the teacher presses a button that supposedly administers an electric shock to the learner. Actually no shock is involved, but the learner is an actor who pretends that he suffers pain from the shock.

There is a series of buttons to administer a range of shocks, starting at 15 volts and going up to 450 volts in 15-volt increments. Every time the learner makes a mistake the teacher is to administer the next higher level of shock. The teacher is told that high levels of shock will hurt the learner and may even kill him.

Prior to a typical experiment people were asked what they thought would be the maximum shock applied. Among 39 psychiatrists, one predicted that the strongest shock would be 300 volts, two predicted 195 volts. All the other predictions were lower. Among 31 college students, the highest prediction by one student was 210 volts. Among middle-class adults, the highest prediction by three people was 300 volts.

In the actual experiments, generally, about two-thirds of teachers administered the maximum shock, despite the learner's screams of pain and demands that the experiment be stopped. In some variations of the experiment over 90 percent of the teachers administered the maximum shock. The degree of obedience to authority was vastly higher than anyone expected.

Milgram concluded from his experiments that obedience to authority is a "danger to human survival inherent in our make-up." His experiments revealed something very dangerous:
"[T]he capacity for man to abandon his humanity, indeed the inevitability that he does so, as he merges his unique personality into larger institutional structures.

This is a fatal flaw nature has designed into us, and which in the long run gives our species only a modest chance of survival...

Each individual possesses a conscience which to a greater or lesser degree serves to restrain the unimpeded flow of impulses destructive to others. But when he merges his person into an organizational structure, a new creature replaces autonomous man, unhindered by the limitations of individual morality, freed of humane inhibition, mindful only of the sanctions of authority."

My conclusion: It is people whose minds were severely damaged by compulsory state education, who easily succumb to authority. The cognitive connection between their behavior and the consequences of their behavior was greatly weakened in school. It is these dependent, obedience-trained, powerless weaklings who submit to authority.

In any case, obedience must be just about the greatest of all evils. Obedience is the surrender of personal power.

Milgram concludes his book by quoting from an article by Harold J. Laski, titled "The Dangers of Obedience":
"... [C]ivilization means, above all, an unwillingness to inflict unnecessary pain. Within the ambit of that definition, those of us who heedlessly accept the commands of authority cannot yet claim to be civilized men."

America - the United States -was born through a brave act of disobedience. The signers of the Declaration of Independence risks their lives and their fortunes. They could have been hanged for treason.

Disobedience creates civilization. Obedience causes its collapse.

THE NATURE OF THE COMMAND

Elias Canetti has written a penetrating analysis of power called Crowds and Power. He says about commands:
"An action performed as the result of a command is different from all other actions. It is experienced and remembered as something alien, something not really our own."

Canetti makes these points about commands:

Often they have to be obeyed and executed immediately.
They come from outside yourself.
The source of a command is something alien.
The source is recognized as something stronger than yourself.
The power behind a command must not be open to doubt; and it must be ready to prove itself by force.
It is astonishing how seldom new proofs are necessary, how long the original proof suffices.
The power of those who give commands appears to grow all the time.
"Power discharges commands like a hail of magical arrows; those who are hit must surrender themselves. The command wounds them and also summons and guides them to the seat of power."
"Those most beset by commands are children. It is a miracle that they ever survive the pressure and do not collapse under the burden of the commands laid on them by their parents and teachers. That they in turn, and in equally cruel form, should give identical commands to their children is as natural as mastication or speech. What is surprising is the way in which commands are retained intact and unaltered from earliest childhood, ready to be used again as the next generation provides victims... No child, not even the most ordinary, forgets or forgives a single one of the commands inflicted on it.

... What spurs men on to achievement is the deep urge to be rid of the commands once laid on them.

Only commands which have been carried out leave their sting lodged in the obeyer. Commands which have been evaded need not be stored; the 'free' man is not the man who rids himself of commands after he has received them, but the man who knows how to evade them in the first place. But the man who takes longest to rid himself of them, or who never achieves it, is undoubtedly the least free."

PUNISHMENT

Solving the "punishment problem" is no easy task. Here are some considerations:

Punishment tends to increase the cost of crime, hence tends to serve as a deterrent. In his book Punishing Criminals: Concerning a Very Old and Painful Question Ernest van den Haag argues convincingly that punishment serves as a deterrent.
In the U.S. most crime rates continue to rise year after year.
For many crimes, the risk of getting caught is miniscule.
According to Van den Haag, "Our present emphasis on incarceration as the main punitive or corrective device is less than two hundred years old and largely an American invention."
Of all countries, America has the largest percentage of its population in jail. The percentage is about twice that of the second highest "crime country" - South Africa.
Government intervention in the economy (practically all of it unconstitutional) vastly reduces the opportunities for legal economic activities, hence serves as a major inducement to crime.
Anything government does contrary to the U.S. Constitution (Chapter Ten) is a crime - even if the Supreme Court rules it "constitutional." Government could be the greatest criminal of all. (See The Economic Rape of America: What You Can Do About It by Frederick Mann.)
There is a common-law principle that for a crime to occur there must be a victim (corpus delecti). There are no so-called "victimless crimes."
By my standards, whenever a policeman interferes with someone engaged in a lawful activity, in terms of the Constitution, then that policeman is committing a crime. This would apply in the case of the prostitute or pimp practicing prostitution without violating anyone's rights. Even though mostly they only "do their jobs - obeying authority," much of what policemen do "in the line of duty" is criminal - by the standards of the U.S. Constitution. Hitler's men also "did their jobs - obeying authority - in the line of duty."
Forcing innocent children into state schools for "compulsory education" is, in my opinion, one of the most destructive crimes imaginable. It is the most unusual punishment for people who have not even been accused of a crime.
In Actualizations: You Don't Have to Rehearse to Be Yourself Stewart Emery wrote:
"The first postulate of behavior modification is this: If somebody does something for which he or she receives positive acknowledgement, or positive reinforcement, he is more likely to repeat the behavior...

... [I]f you do something and nobody takes any notice of it at all, you are less likely to do it again. In other words, any behavior that is consistently ignored will ultimately cease. (... [T]hese are all tendencies, not absolutes.)

... If you do something and you are punished - negatively acknowledged - the results of the negative acknowledgment are unpredictable, except under circumstances wherein the only kind of acknowledgment you ever get is negative; then negative acknowledgment will lead to a repetition of the behavior... If, when you were growing up, the only time you got acknowledged was when you did something that your parents did not like, then the administration of negative acknowledgment, or punishment, led you to continue to repeat behavior that led to your getting punished... Let's look at the consequences.

It is most obvious in our penal system. People are in jail because they did something that got negatively acknowledged. The reason they do things that get negatively acknowledged is that they think that is the only way they can ever get any kind of attention. The more we give them negative acknowledgment, the more negative behavior they will manifest."

My suggestions for solving the "punishment problem":

Consider the central theme of this book:
"To feel that we are worthwhile individuals, to know that we exist, we have to express our power - feel that we are in control. This imperative to express our power and experience control is central to human behavior. Every human does something to express his or her power in the world. This power can be expressed creatively or destructively.
Humans first attempt to express their power creatively. If such attempts fail repeatedly, they experience themselves as powerless. They may feel helpless and hopeless, and become depressed. What they experience is that they cannot make a positive difference in their own lives or in the world. A cognitive breakdown occurs between their actions and the results they produce. Mentally and intellectually they cease to understand the connections between their behavior and the consequences of their behavior. Then they express their power destructively.

This phenomenon is at the root of practically all individual and societal problems.

Understanding this phenomenon and its implications leads to the solution of practically all individual and societal problems."

As our standard for judging whether or not an act constitutes a crime we should apply the Constitution, common law, or the "basic principles for civilization" I advocate below.
If someone violates the rights of or damages another, there needs to be restitution by the perpetrator to the victim.
Consider these principles of correction:
(1) The first priority of correction is "meta-correction" - whatever method or approach to correction we apply, must itself be subject to continuous correction and improvement.
(2) The second priority for those interested in correction is self-correction.
(3) The third priority is to realize that all aspects of our own lives are subject to correction and improvement.
(4) The fourth priority is to realize that corrective feedback from others (irrespective of its nature) can be utilized to great effect - or simply ignored.
(5) The fifth priority is to learn what works and what doesn't work in our attempts to correct others.
(6) The sixth priority is to correct others.
Personal power is the solution to practically all human problems.
BASIC PRINCIPLES FOR CIVILIZATION

(1) Individuals own their own lives, minds, and bodies, and may do with them anything that doesn't violate the equal rights of others.
(2) Individuals have the right to own property.
(3) No individual or group has the right to initiate fraud, force, or violence against another or his/her property.
(4) Individuals have a right to communicate and to not communicate (freedom of speech and right to privacy).
(5) Individuals have the right to associate and to enter into agreements and contracts. For a contract to be valid it needs to be entered into knowingly, voluntarily, and intentionally.
(6) Individuals have the right to produce and exchange, and own the products of their labor. No individual or group has a right to another's production, or property, or any part thereof.
(7) For a crime to occur there has to be a damaged party (corpus delecti); there are no so-called "victimless crimes."
(8) In criminal trials, the accused has a right to trial by jury.
(9) Juries have the right and the duty to judge both the facts and the law (jury nullification). (Chapter Twelve).
(10) In the absence of coercion, order and cooperation develop spontaneously. Leadership by example is more beneficial than leadership by force, violence, compulsion, or fear.
(11) These principles apply, irrespective of age, race, birthplace, gender, or sexual preference.
(12) For a right to be valid its exercise may not impose a positive obligation on another. A valid right does not depend on anyone else doing anything; it only depends on others not taking certain actions. Any supposed "right" that would impose a positive obligation on another or others is null and void.

MAXIMIZING PERSONAL POWER

These principles are designed to maximize personal power. They basically consist of "don'ts" rather than "musts." And the "don'ts" effectively say, "Don't do anything that reduces the individual power of another."

But personal power does not really come from without. It comes from within. Power granted by another is of some use. The problem is that whoever has the power to grant power, also has the power to take away power. Individuals have to develop their personal power. Here are some steps you can take to increase your power:

Make the conscious, deliberate choice to increase your power.
Make a list of the things you like about yourself.
Make a list of the things you don't like about yourself. Choose one of these things for improvement. Find ways to improve it.
Improve your diet and exercise.
Read the book Positive Addiction by William Glasser, M.D. This is one of the most profound and practical books on power I have come across.
Choose and develop your positive addiction(s) - running (physical) and meditation (mental) are the most popular positive addictions.
Does your job empower you? What can you do to increase your power in this respect? Do you need to change jobs?
Is there a product or service you can develop and deliver profitably in your spare time?
Become a specialist in some area.
Do you often suffer from negative emotions? If so, there are books in the Annotated Bibliography that may help you master your emotions.
Do fears hold you back? Identify your major fears. Find ways to become stronger than your fears.
Start a Human Power Group - see Chapters Eight and Fourteen.
What else can you do?

[marieodess]

http://www.buildfreedom.com/tl/wua3.shtml


ARE OUR SCHOOLS CONCENTRATION CAMPUSES FOR MIND DESTRUCTION?

THE MOST VALUABLE INFORMATION

If someone gave you some information which is identical to the information you already have, how much would you value the information given to you. Well, you might put a small value on it because it confirms your knowledge and maybe helps you feel a little more secure. But it is unlikely that you would pay very much for it.

From this it follows that the most valuable information could be the most different from the information you already have.

But there is a problem: New information could be different and useless or different and useful.

Please do not summarily reject information in this book because it is very different from what you now know. Even if you initially have strong objections to some new information, you may find that your objections are satisfactorily answered later.


THE CONSEQUENCES OF "EDUCATIONAL" MIND DESTRUCTION

Much attention has recently been focused on child abuse. In my opinion, by far the worst and most damaging form of child abuse is called "compulsory state education." Personally, I would rather not have a child than subject it to incarceration in a concentration campus for mind destruction.

A report in The Arizona Republic of September 16, 1992 reflects the extent of the mind destruction wreaked by our "educators." A study found that 64 percent of elementary-school teachers say that the health of pupils is declining, while only 5 percent see it as improving. And "92 percent of the teachers listed psychological and emotional difficulties as the most common health problem. Researchers said those resulted mainly from divorce, neglect, low self-esteem and separation of family."

The report didn't say anything about the fact that most of the parents of the pupils had themselves been incarcerated in concentration campuses for mind destruction - most of the teachers had of course suffered the same fate.

The extent of the mind destruction of our youth is also reflected in increased rates of mental illness, suicide, violent crime, and further child abuse.

In their book Teaching as a Subversive Activity Neil Postman and Charles Weingartner report as follows:

"... [T]he number one health problem in the United States is mental illness: there are more Americans suffering from mental illness than from all other forms of illness combined. Of almost equal magnitude is the crime problem. It is advancing rapidly on many fronts, from delinquency among affluent adolescents to frauds perpetrated by some of our richest corporations. Another is the suicide problem. Are you aware that suicide is the second most common cause of death among adolescents? Or how about the problem of 'damaged' children? The most common cause of infant mortality in the United States is parental beating."

THE NATURE OF THE MIND DESTRUCTION

"One had to cram all this stuff into one's mind, whether one liked it or not. This coercion had such a deterring effect that, after I had passed the final examination, I found the consideration of any scientific problems distasteful to me for an entire year... It is in fact nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not yet entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry; for this delicate little plant, aside from stimulation, stands mainly in need of freedom; without this it goes to wrack and ruin without fail. It is a very grave mistake to think that the enjoyment of seeing and searching can be promoted by means of coercion and a sense of duty."
- Albert Einstein

"Some day, maybe, there will exist a well-informed, well-considered, and yet fervent public conviction that the most deadly of all possible sins is the mutilation of a child's spirit; for such mutilation undercuts the life principle of trust, without which every human act, may it feel ever so good and seem ever so right, is prone to perversion by destructive forms of conscientiousness."
- Erik Erikson

Jonathan Kozol is a teacher. In 1967 he wrote Death At An Early Age: The Destruction of the Hearts and Minds of Negro Children in the Boston Public Schools, for which he won the National Book Award.

Kozol taught for a year in a Boston school. Two weeks before the end of the year he was fired for reading a poem by a widely-recognized black poet whose work was not part of the compulsory curriculum. Kozol recounts how some teachers spoke of their black students as "animals" and referred to the school as a "zoo." He tells of the many beatings using bamboo whips. He provides extensive details of "pedagogic brainwashing" - for example, children are taught that "true obedience is true liberty." He quotes 15 such slogans.

"Well, that was 25 years ago," you might say, "Things have changed dramatically since." In a recent article (The Arizona Republic, September 3, 1992),columnist Walter Williams wrote, "The education that most kids receive is nothing to write home about; however, that received by black youngsters is criminal... 46 percent of white - and 54 percent of black - Chicago public school teachers have their own children in private schools." Williams also cites statistics that indicate that the more money is spent on education, the worse are the results.

Kozol is also the author of Illiterate America, which claims that one-third of adult Americans are illiterate. Among blacks, 44 percent of adults are illterate. That was in 1985. The situation today is probably even worse.

On April 2, 1992 a letter from a concerned parent appeared in The Arizona Republic under the heading, "What is my son learning in kindergarten? Violence." Some extracts from the letter:
"Guess what my son learned at school this year. He learned aggression. He learned how to tell others: "I'm going to kill you. I'm going to break your arm."

I don't think he should have learned that in kindergarten...

I ate lunch with my son, and I found out the reason he had come home with so many bruises, abrasions and complaints of children abusing him. Another child had forced him to stay in a corner for the whole recess or get beaten up. (The playground teacher didn't see anything.) He was devastated.

Another time, four months after school had begun, he came home so pleased: "Mommy! Guess what! Today was the first time I got to play on the swings." Now it was my turn to be devastated."

John Taylor Gatto is a teacher. Each year from 1989 to 1991 he was named New York City Teacher Of The Year. In 1991 the New York Senate named him State Teacher Of The Year.

Gatto confesses to being "the 7-lesson schoolteacher." These are the seven lessons:

Confusion. Gatto admits that everything he teaches is out of context.
Class position. Children must know their place and stay in the class where they belong. "The children are numbered so that if any get away they can be returned to the right class."
Indifference. "Nothing important is ever finished in my class nor in any class I know of."
Emotional dependency. Gatto says that he teaches children to surrender their will to the chain of command, using "stars and red checks, smiles and frowns, prizes, honors and disgraces."
Intellectual dependency. The most important lesson. Children must wait for the expert authority to make all the important decisions, to tell them what to study. There is no place for curiosity, only conformity.
Provisional self-esteem. Because it is so difficult to make self-confident spirits conform, children must be taught that their self-respect depends on expert opinion. They must be constantly tested, evaluated, judged, graded, and reported on by certified officials. Self-evaluation is irrelevant - "people must be told what they are worth."
You can't hide. Children are always watched. No privacy. People can't be trusted.
According to Gatto, these are the consequences of the seven lessons:

The private Self is almost non-existent; children develop a superficial personality borrowed from TV shows.
Desperate dependence.
Unease with intimacy or candor; dislike for parents; no real close friends; lust replaces love.
Indifference to the adult world; very little curiosity about anything; boredom.
A poor sense of the future; consciousness limited to the present.
Cruelty to each other.
Striking materialism.
The expectation to fail; the idea that success has to be stolen.
Gatto says it takes about 100 hours for most children to learn the three Rs (reading, writing, and arithmetic). He also says:
"After years of wrestling with the obstacles that stand between children and education I came to believe that government monopoly schools, compulsion and all, are structurally unreformable. They cannot function if their central myths are abandoned, so no amount of tinkering will correct what is wrong, although the danger is that tinkering can make these places more cosmetic. They are corrupt: like a rotten pear they have lost integrity and cannot be made whole."


John Holt is the author of Instead of Education. He suggests that we learn best from "doing - self-directed, purposeful, meaningful life and work." He advocates the abolition of "education" - which he describes as "learning cut off from active life and done under pressure of bribe or threat, greed and fear." He says:

"Next to the right to life itself, the most fundamental of all human rights is the right to control our own minds and thoughts... Whoever takes that right away from us, by trying to 'educate' us, attacks the very center of our being and does us a most profound and lasting injury. He tells us, in effect, that we cannot be trusted even to think...

Education... seems to me perhaps the most authoritarian and dangerous of all the social inventions of mankind. It is the deepest foundation of the modern and worldwide slave state... My concern is not to improve 'education' but to do away with it, to end the ugly and antihuman business of people-shaping and to allow and help people to shape themselves."

Phyllis Schlafly is author of the book Child Abuse in the Classroom. She writes:
"A remarkable real-life drama took place in seven American cities during March 1984. Hundreds of parents traveled to one of seven locations to testify at U.S. Department of Education Hearings on proposed regulations for the Protection of Pupil Rights Amendment.

More than 1,300 pages of testimony were recorded by court reporters as parents, public school teachers, and interested citizens spelled out their eye-witness accounts of the psychological abuse of children in the public schools. They related how classroom courses have confused schoolchildren about life, about standards of behavior, about moral choices, about religious loyalties, and about relationships with parents and with peers.

These Hearings explain why we have 23 million adult illiterates who graduated from public schools, and why young people are experiencing high rates of teenage suicide, loneliness, premarital sex, and pregnancies.

These Hearings explain how schools have alienated children from their parents, from traditional morality such as the Ten Commandments, and from our American heritage. These Hearings explain why children are emotionally and morally confused and why, in the apt colloquialism, they need need to "search for their identity."

These Hearings explain what children have been doing in their classrooms instead of learning to read, write, spell, add, subtract, and the essentials of history, geography, and civics. These Hearings explain how children learn in school to be "sexually active," take illegal drugs, repudiate their parents, and rationalize immoral and anti-social conduct when it "feels" good in a particular "situation."

These Hearings speak with the thunderous voice of hundreds of parents who are angry at how their children have been emotionally, morally, and intellectually abused by psychological and behavioral experiments during classroom hours when the parents thought their chidren were being taught basic knowledge and skills. Parents are indignant at the way that educator "change agents," spending federal tax dollars, have used children as guinea pigs for fads and experiments that have been substituted for real learning."

Schlafly draws attention to Senator S.I. Hayakawa's warning in 1978 that U.S. public schools had rejected the notion of education as the acquisition of knowledge and skills. Instead they practiced education as "therapy." Schools had replaced "cognitive education (which addresses the child's intellect, and teaches knowledge and skills) with affective education (which addresses the child's feelings and attitudes, and spends classroom time on psychological games and probing personal questionnaires)." Schlafy continues:

""Therapy" techniques used in the classroom include violent and disturbing books and films; materials dealing with parental conflict, death, drugs, mental illness, despair, and anger; literature that is mostly negative and depressing; requiring the child to engage in the role-playing of death, pregnancy, abortion, divorce, hate, anger and suicide; personal attitude surveys and games (such as Magic Circle) which invade the private thoughts of the child and his family; psychological games which force the child to decide who should be killed (such as the Survival Game); explicit and pornographic instruction in sex acts (legal and illegal, moral and immoral); and a deliberate attempt to make the child reject the values of his parents and his religion...

The originators of "therapy" education began peddling their notions in the 1930s at about the same time that the teaching of reading started its steep decline. This psychological experimentation only existed in spots here and there around the country until 1965 when federal funding through the Elementary and Secondary Education Act began to finance curriculum and teacher training for the entire country...

The reader might also wonder, why was there no media coverage of these seven days of Hearings involving intensely controversial issues, dramatic presentations by hundreds of concerned parents, and documented accounts of child abuse in the classroom?

... To our knowledge, there was no television coverage at all and fewer than half a dozen newspaper articles in the entire country. Why the silence about such an important and dramatic event... ?

The testimonies at these Hearings were given by men and women who were, for the most part, total strangers to each other. Yet the message was the same from every part of the country. It came through loud and clear that child abuse in the classroom is a national disease carried to every state by the Typhoid Marys of federal funding."


Stewart Emery is author of the book Actualizations: You Don't Have to Rehearse to Be Yourself. He says:
"In our society, when we talk about raising children, we are really talking about driving them crazy. What education is about is conditioning people to be irresponsible and stupid. It teaches them to be skillful technologists and useless people... At the end of the "educational" process we have become technically semi-competent human machines, and as creative human beings we have turned into morons."

Ayn Rand was a novelist and philosopher, best known for her books, Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead. Among other books, she also wrote The New Left: The Anti-Industrial Revolution, with a chapter, "The Comprachicos."

Comprachico is a Spanish word meaning "child-buyer." The comprachicos were a nomadic association, notorious in the seventeenth century. They bought and sold children - special children, children turned into deformed freaks, used in freak shows to amuse the public. At an early age they placed a young child in a porcelain pot with a grotesque form. As the child's body grew, it had to assume the shape of the pot. The result was a deformed freak for people to laugh at.

Rand uses the practice of the comprachicos as an analogy to describe American "education." She refers to our "educators" as "the comprachicos of the mind." Children's minds are forced to assume the shape of a grotesque "intellectual pot." Rand describes the result:

"The students' development is arrested, their minds are set to respond to slogans, as animals respond to to a trainer's whistle, their brains are embalmed in the syrup of altruism as an automatic substitute for self-esteem... They would obey anyone, they need a master, they need to be told what to do. They are ready now to be used as cannon fodder - to attack, to bomb, to burn, to murder, to fight in the streets and die in the gutters. They are a trained pack of miserably impotent freaks, ready to be unleashed against anyone."

COMPULSORY STATE EDUCATION IS UNCONSTITUTIONAL, COMMUNISTIC, AND CRIMINAL

The U.S. Constitution (Chapter Ten) makes no mention of education. Most of our Founding Fathers took it for granted that education was a private matter. (At the time of the American Revolution, almost certainly, there was a higher rate of literacy than we now have.) The U.S. Constitution says:

Amendment VIII: Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.
Amendment XIII, Section 1: Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
In my opinion, compulsory state education violates Amendment Eight, in that it is a "cruel and unusual punishment," and Amendment Thirteen, in that it constitutes "involuntary servitude."

In The Communist Manifesto Marx and Engels advocated ten steps necessary for a communist takeover. Step 10 is "Free education for all children in public schools." Readers interested in further perusing the link between communism and compulsory state education may want to read Is Public Education Necessary? by Samuel L. Blumenfeld. For additional background material, including an annotated bibliography, consult The Twelve Year Sentence edited by William F. Rickenbacker.

Compulsory state education is coercive power at its worst. Innocent children are herded into concentration campuses where they are effectively stripped of individual power. They are brainwashed to be powerless individuals, owned and cared for by omnipotent big-daddy government.

TOWARDS A SOLUTION

Among other books, Paul Goodman wrote Compulsory Miseducation and Growing Up Absurd. He contends that the idea that children can be educated through compulsory state education is a mass superstition:

"When, at a meeting, I offer that perhaps we already have too much formal schooling and that, under present conditions, the more we get the less education we will get, the others look at me oddly and proceed to discuss how to get more money for schools and how to upgrade the schools. I realize suddenly that I am confronting a mass superstition."

Ivan Illich is the author of Deschooling Society. He says that most learning does not occur in school, but happens casually - "Normal children learn their first language casually, although faster if their parents pay attention to them." In contrast, he says that, "All over the world the school has an anti-educational effect on society... The escalation of the schools is as destructive as the escalation of weapons but less visibly so." Illich also writes that, "the institutionalization of values leads inevitably to physical pollution, social polarization and psychological impotence." Illich advocates that we disestablish schools.

The solution I propose for the individual family is: Don't let your children go anywhere near a government school; send them to a private school; or, better still, teach them at home. In about 100 hours you can teach them the three Rs. Then you show them how to use a freedomry. You may also want to show them how to use a computer. Above all, teach your children how to learn. The Annotated Bibliography at the end of this book provides some references regarding home schooling.

In Chapter Eight I propose the creation of "Human Power Groups" and I suggest that one of their functions could be to organize private, independent schools.

The ultimate solution I propose is complete separation between School and State, and the repeal of all laws regarding education. Compulsory state education is a formula for the collapse of civilization. It must be abolished.

[marieodess]

http://www.buildfreedom.com/tl/wua11.shtml



AMERICA - CAPITALIST OR COMMUNIST?


By "capitalism" I mean an economic system characterized by private property and voluntary exchange. By "communism" I mean an economic system characterized by public property and compulsory exchange. The myth that the America is a "capitalist country" is widespread. According to the Communist Manifesto by Marx and Engels (first published in 1848), the following ten steps are necessary for a communist takeover:

"Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.
A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.
Abolition of all right of inheritance.
Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.
Centralization of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly.
Centralization of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the state.
Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the state; the bringing into cultivation of wastelands, and the improvement of the the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.
Equal liability of all to labor. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.
Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries, gradual abolition of the distinction between town and country, by a more equitable distribution of the populace over the country.
Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children's factory labor in its present form."
For each of these ten planks I now give the measures that could be interpreted as implementing the plank, as well as my "communist percentage," determined by the extent to which I think the plank has been implemented:

1. Abolition of Property Rights.

U.S. Constitution, Article 1, Section 8: The Congress shall have the power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises. (Taxes on things, including property.)
Zoning laws and regulations - the Supreme Court ruled zoning constitutional in 1921.
Federal ownership of land; Bureau of Land Management - in Nevada 87% of land is federally owned.
Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) - broad powers to seize any private property during "emergency."
Communist percentage: 25%.

2. Heavy Progressive Income Tax

U.S. Constitution, Article 1, Section 8: The Congress shall have the power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises. (Taxes on things, including income.) The Sixteenth Amendment classifies income tax as an indirect tax, or tax on a thing, as opposed to tax on a person.
Corporate Tax Act of 1909.
Revenue Act of 1913.
Social Security Act of 1936.
Communist percentage: 85%. (Maybe 15% of the population don't pay the taxes.)

3. Abolition of Rights of Inheritance

U.S. Constitution, Article 1, Section 8: The Congress shall have the power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises. (Taxes on things, including inheritances.)
Estate Tax Act of 1916.
Social Security Act of 1936.
Communist percentage: 30%.

4. Confiscation of Property of Emigrants and Rebels

Confiscation of property of American Indians.
IRS confiscation of property without due process.
Internment of Japanese-Americans during WW II; confiscation of their property.
Confiscation of drug-merchant property.
RICO Act of 1970 (Racketeering Influenced & Corrupt Organizations) - used as a basis to confiscate property.
Communist percentage: 20%.

5. Monopoly National Bank

U.S. Constitution, Article 1, Section 8: The Congress shall have the power to coin money, regulate the power thereof.
National Bank Act of 1863 - established federal monopoly.
Federal Reserve Act of 1913.
Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), 1933.
Communist percentage: 90%. (Maybe 10% of transactions are done by barter or private currency.)

6. Centralization by the State of Communication and Transportation

U.S. Constitution, Article 1, Section 8: The Congress shall have the power to establish post offices and post roads.
U.S. Constitution, Article 1, Section 8: The Congress shall have the power to regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several States.
Interstate Commerce Act of 1887 - placed railways under federal regulation; created Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC).
Federal Highway Act of 1916.
Air Commerce Act of 1926.
Federal Radio Commission, 1927.
Federal Communications Commission, 1934.
Civil Aeronautics Act of 1938.
Interstate Highway System, 1944.
Federal Aviation Agency, 1958.
Department of Transportation, 1966.
Communist percentage: 80%.

7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the state; the bringing into cultivation of wastelands, and the improvement of the the soil generally

Department of the Interior, 1849 - now includes: Bureau of Land Management, Forest Service, Bureau of Reclamation, Bureau of Mines, National Park Service, Fish and Wildlife Service.
Department of Agriculture, 1862.
Anti-trust Acts, 1902.
Department of Commerce and Labor, 1903.
Tennessee Valley Authority, 1933 - Hoover Dam, Muscle Shoals Project.
Communist percentage: 40%.

8. Equal liability of all to labor; Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture

First labor unions, then called federations, 1820.
National Labor Union, 1866.
American Federation of Labor, 1886.
International Workers of the World, 1905.
Department of Labor, 1913.
Railway Labor Act of 1926.
Civil Works Administration, 1933.
Agriculture Adjustment Act of 1933 - farmers receive government aid only if they relinquish control of farming activities.
National Labor Relations Act of 1935.
Works Progress Administration, 1935.
Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 - set minimum wages.
Civil Rights Act of 1964 - effectively the equal liability of all to labor.
Davis-Bacon and Walsh-Healy Acts - require government contractors to pay "prevailing wages."
U.S. Unemployment Service.
Communist percentage: 60%.

9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries, gradual abolition of the distinction between town and country, by a more equitable distribution of the populace over the country

Farmers Home Administration (FHA).
Zoning.
Government subsidies favor large agribusinesses.
Communist percentage: 10%.

10. Free education for all children in public schools; Abolition of children's factory labor in its present form

Gradual shift from private education to state funded education began in the New England States in the early 1800s.
Smith-Lever Act of 1914.
Smith-Hughes Act of 1917.
Federal school lunch program, 1935.
Fair Labor Standards Act, 1938 - children work only with government approval.
National School Lunch Act of 1946.
National Defense Education Act of 1958.
Federal School Aid Act of 1965.
Communist percentage: 95%.

The average for my "communist percentages" is 53.5%, that is, according to these criteria America is halfway between capitalism and communism. Note that for four of the most important criteria - education, communication, banking/currency, and taxation - my "communist percentages" are very high.

Note that the U.S. Constitution specifically empowers Congress to implement five of the communist planks. In practice, Congress has demonstrated its power to implement, at least to some extent, all the communist planks.

Also note that the two essential distinguishing characteristics of capitalism are private property and voluntary exchange. The U.S. Constitution gave Congress wide powers to violate private property and voluntary exchange. In practice, this is exactly what Congress has been doing. The Bill of Rights has slowed down Congress's march towards communism. But gradually the Supreme Court has been effectively dismantling the Bill of Rights. Today many courts rule defense based on the Bill of Rights inadmissible, particularly regarding tax matters.

Capitalism is individual power. Communism (including socialism and much of modern "liberalism") is coercive state power. Private property and voluntary exchange constitute individual power. Government ownership and regulation attempt to eliminate individual power.

The solution is for individuals to seize back the power they have relinquished. The next three chapters will tell us how.

[marieodess]

http://www.buildfreedom.com/tl/wua9.shtml


IS GOVERNMENT A SOLUTION TO ANYTHING?

People often debate or argue about the "role of government." But there is a basic argument that is almost always overlooked. It is a very simple argument:

If you examine anything being "done by government," you will find human beings doing whatever is being done. They may also use equipment and machinery, but the most important work is done by individual human beings. If you go to a school, you will not find any "government" that runs the school. You will find a principal, a number of administrative people, and several teachers - all individual human beings. No matter what government monopoly you examine, for example a police station, you will find that the important work is done by individual human beings. If you visit a military installation, or a court, or a jail, or a veterans hospital, or a road being built, you will find individual human beings doing the work.
The fact that these human beings call themselves "government," does not imbue them with magical powers to do their jobs better than those individuals who do not call themselves "government."
Furthermore, the fact that certain individuals organize themselves into an institution called "government," does not imbue them with magical powers to do their jobs better than those individuals who do not so organize themselves.
In general, people who don't call themselves "government," can do anything humans can do, at least as well as people who call themselves "government."
Is there any evidence that just because people call themselves "government," or they organize themselves into an institution called "government," they can do their jobs better?

IDOLATRY

In Man and Superman George Bernard Shaw wrote, "Government is the organization of idolatry." The dictionary defines "idol" as:

A representation or symbol of worship;
A false god;
A pretender or impostor;
An object of passionate devotion;
A false conception or fallacy.
An idolater is a worshipper of idols. Idolatry is the phenomenon of worshipping idols. What do we call the belief in the "magical power" of government? What about the belief that because people call themselves "government" - or they organize themselves into an institution called "government" - therefore they have "magical powers" to perform miracles? Superstition, perhaps?

WE NEED PLANNING, COORDINATION, AND MANAGING

Certain "communal" activities need to be performed. For example, in a city certain things need to planned, coordinated, and managed. If you go to any city, you will find some human beings doing just this. They may use computers and other equipment, but the essential planning, coordination, and managing is always done by human beings. If you visit a large company, you will find the same thing. We absolutely do need planning, coordination, and managing. We have it. People do it.

DO WE ALSO NEED COERCION, VIOLENCE, AND MONOPOLIES?

Generally, the people who call themselves "government" operate on a different basis from that of the people who don't call themselves "government." The following assumptions seem to underlie the behavior of the people who call themselves "government":

We are the only ones qualified to do the things we do; therefore we must have a monopoly to do the things we do and no one else may do them.
In particular, we must be the only ones who have a monopoly on legalized violence.
Because we are so highly qualified, we can't persuade people to do what we want; therefore we must use coercion, violence, and armed police to force them to follow our orders.
Because we are so highly qualified, we can't persuade people to pay for our wonderful services; therefore we must use coercion, violence, and armed police to force them to pay.
Because we do our jobs so well, we must use coercion, violence, and armed police to force people to not compete with us.
Some of our friends (who don't call themselves "government") are uniquely qualified to do the things they do (like doctors and other special-interest groups); therefore we grant them monopolies (licences), so they don't have to compete with unqualified quacks in a free market. Guess what this will do to medical costs - and the licence fees and campaign contributions we'll be able to collect!
Governments utilize coercive power, the power of violence, the power that stems from the barrel of a gun, power over or against people, government power at the expense of individual power. Government is organized violence. Governments, over time, tend to do their utmost to eliminate individual power. With a few exceptions, governments do not solve problems, they create them.

THE WEAKEST ARGUMENT FOR GOVERNMENT

If we don't have government there will be chaos, disorder, crime, poverty, illiteracy, homelessness, drug abuse, pollution, etc, etc.

Answer 1: How do you know? Answer 2: Such a list almost always consists of problems we already suffer from - in other words, if we have government there will be chaos, disorder, crime, poverty, illiteracy, homelessness, drug abuse, pollution, etc, etc.

The people who call themselves "government" need such problems in order to justify their jobs. It is in their interest to create such problems and make them worse. The worse the problems, the bigger the bureaucratic empires they create, the more money they get, the more power they obtain, the more people they control.

The bigger the government, the greater the problems. A politician like Bush may say that he will reduce government and lower taxes because he thinks it will help him get re-elected. In practice Bush has greatly increased his own bureaucratic empire. His administration has expanded government regulation with abandon. He promised, "Read my lips, no new taxes," and then raised taxes. Under Bush, deficit spending has ballooned out of control.

PROBLEMS ARE SOLVED BY PEOPLE, NOT BY GOVERNMENTS.

Once you realize that governments consist of people, and that whatever is being done is done by individual human beings - even though they may use machines and equipment - then it becomes embarrassingly obvious that only people can solve problems. The entire notion that government can or should do anything becomes quite absurd.

In their book Breakthrough Thinking, Gerald Nadler and Shozo Hibino write that "an organization, as a collective body, can't approach a problem." They have a section on "political and governmental horrors." They indicate that politics and government "are the graveyards of misbegotten problem solving." Politicians and bureaucrats have three basic types of "solutions":

Pass a law.
Throw money at the problem.
Appoint a committee to study the problem.
In terms of problem-solving methodology, all three types are at best inefficient.

I would go further and suggest that as soon as people call themselves "government," there is a considerable probability that they acquire some kind of "magical power in reverse" - they somehow become less able to solve problems. Nadler and Hibino say that, "Government is operated mainly by bureaucrats, and bureaucrats' classic criterion in decision making is not fulfillment of project purposes but protection of their jobs."

Some people say government is a fecal alchemist - everything they touch turns into feces.

GOOD PEOPLE IN GOVERNMENT

There are good people in government who produce worthwhile results. These valuable results are produced, not because the good people call themselves "government," but because they are good, competent, skillful people. If these people were to leave government - stop calling themselves "government" - I expect they would be able to produce even better results.

ANARCHY OR SELF-GOVERNMENT

In the coming chapters you will be provided with some tools you will be able to use to greatly increase your economic and social power. You will gain both greater power to govern yourself and freedom to operate your business or financial affairs on the basis of voluntary exchange - as intended by the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Call it anarchy, or call it free enterprise, or call it individual self-government. It is the solution to both personal and societal problems.