Tag: propaganda

Education Needs Separation From State

Kent McManigal

Once again we approach that saddest time of the year: when the majority of parents send their kids back to school; back into the local government concentration day-camps.

If you’re someone who mistakes schooling for education you probably believe this is good.

School is a socialist babysitting system funded by your neighbors. If you’re OK with forcing others to fund things you want, then go ahead and support the government schools. I can’t support socialism.

Schooling is also a system where organized bullying is cheered while the freelance competition, provided by the victims’ peers, is officially frowned upon. I oppose all bullying.

I’m not saying education doesn’t happen in schools, but when it does it’s in spite of the schooling, not because of it. Kids are automatic learning machines and it’s almost impossible to short-circuit their hunger to learn. They’ll usually manage to learn everything they need to know, and more, even under the worst conditions.

The fact that many people still believe schools educate — because kids come out knowing more than they knew when they went in — is evidence of this.

The real goal of schooling is to train kids to be useful, and not too dangerous, to politicians. Don’t question too much, and only within approved boundaries. Sit down, be quiet, obey the bells, and be force-fed authoritarian propaganda.

This style of training — called the Prussian Model, after the country America copied — creates adults who are unlikely to break free from this early indoctrination and will largely comply with arbitrary orders from politicians and their attack dogs. This is useful to governments and is why governments everywhere want to control schooling.

They use the unsupportable claim “it’s for the children;” if they can also fool the adult population into believing it’s about education it works even better.

This isn’t to say the teachers are bad. Most have good intentions, they are just saddled with a toxic system. A system that shouldn’t exist. The teachers are victims almost as much as the under-aged inmates, but at least they get paid.

There are good teachers, but there are no good schools. If this claim angers you, congratulations — you are showing symptoms of Stockholm Syndrome, where captives (and former captives) begin to relate to their captors, even taking their side, defending them from criticism. Stockholm Syndrome makes people loyal to “their” school.

My appreciation for education explains my opposition to schooling. It is essential to separate education from the state before the damage is irreversible.

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Asymmetrical Warfare and 4GW: How Militia Groups are America’s Domestic Viet Cong

Brian Miller

It is interesting to hear certain kinds of people insist that the citizen cannot fight the government. This would have been news to the men of Lexington and Concord, as well as the Mujahideen in Afghanistan. The citizen most certainly can fight the government, and usually wins when he tries. Organized national armies are useful primarily for fighting against other organized national armies. When they try to fight against the people, they find themselves at a very serious disadvantage. If you will just look around at the state of the world today, you will see that the guerrillero has the upper hand. Irregulars usually defeat regulars, providing they have the will. Such fighting is horrible to contemplate, but will continue to dominate brute strength.

Col. Jeff Cooper

When one discusses the real reason for the Second Amendment – the right of citizens to defend themselves against a potentially tyrannical government – inevitably someone points out the stark difference in firepower between a guerrilla uprising in the United States and the United States government itself.

This is not a trivial observation. The U.S. government spends more on the military than the governments of China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, India, France, United Kingdom, and Japan combined. Plus, the potential of a tyrannical government is arguably upon us – with the federal government spying on its own citizens, militarizing local police departments with equipment and tactics from the War on Terror, and repeatedly searching Americans, which desensitizes them to this invasive process.

There is much historical precedent, however, for guerrilla uprisings defeating more powerful enemies. For instance, the Cold War saw both superpowers brought to their knees by rural farmers – for the Soviets, their adventure in Afghanistan against the Mujahideen, and for the United States, the Vietnam War against the Viet Cong.

In both cases, nuclear weapons could have been used against the guerrilla uprising, but were not. Even assuming the use of nuclear weapons from the position of total desperation, it’s hard to imagine they would have made much of a difference in the final outcome of either conflict. Unlike the invading armies, the local resistance enjoyed both broad-based support as well as knowledge of the local terrain.

Now imagine such a scenario in the United States. You wouldn’t be the first person to do so. From Red Dawn to James Wesley, Rawles’ Patriots series, there is a relatively long-standing tradition of American survival literature about the hoi polloi resisting the tyranny of big government, either before or after a collapse.

For the purposes of this article, consider what a domestic American terrorist or freedom fighter (after all, the label is in the eye of the beholder) organization based on the militia movement would look like in open revolt against the United States government. In the spirit of levity, we’ll call them the “Hillbilly Viet Cong.” They would most likely find their largest numbers in Appalachia, but don’t discount their power in the American Redoubt, or the more sparsely populated areas of the American Southwest, including rural Texas.

Here we have tens of thousands of Americans armed to the teeth with combat experience, deep family ties to both the police and the military, extensive knowledge of the local geography, and, in many cases, survivalist training. Even where they are not trained, militant and active, they enjoy broad support among those who own a lot of guns and grow a lot of food.

On the other side, you have the unwieldy Baby Huey of the rump U.S. government’s military, with some snarky BuzzFeed editorials serving as propaganda.

Could the Hillbilly Viet Cong take down the USG? Maybe, maybe not. But it’s difficult to imagine that the USG could take them down.

Indeed, even with a number of nasty little toys on the side of the federal government, we live in an age of a technologically levelled playing field. This is true even when it comes to instruments of warfare. While the USG has nuclear weapons, it’s worth remembering that a pound of C4 strapped to a cheap and readily available commercial-grade drone is going to break a lot of dishes.

This sort of guerrilla insurgency has a name: It’s called fourth-generational warfare (4GW), and you might be surprised to learn that you already live in this world.

Continue reading Asymmetrical Warfare and 4GW: How Militia Groups are America’s Domestic Viet Cong at Ammo.com.

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Don’t Let Mass Shooters and the New York Times Destroy Freedom of Speech

Thomas L. Knapp

“Online communities like 4chan and 8chan have become hotbeds of white nationalist activity,” wrote the editors of the New York Times  on August 4 in the wake of a mass shooting in El Paso, Texas. Then: “Law enforcement currently offers few answers as to how to contain these communities.”

Wait, what? Is the Times really implying what it looks like they’re implying? Yes.

“Technology companies have a responsibility to de-platform white nationalist propaganda and communities as they did ISIS propaganda,” the editorial continues. “And if the technology companies refuse to step up, law enforcement has a duty to vigilantly monitor and end the anonymity, via search warrants, of those who openly plot attacks in murky forums.”

Translation: The New York Times has announced its flight from the battlefield of ideas. Instead of countering bad ideas with good ideas, they want Big Tech and Big Government to forcibly suppress the ideas they disagree with.

Not so long ago, the Times‘s editors endorsed a very different view:

“One of the Internet’s great strengths is that a single blogger or a small political group can inexpensively create a Web page that is just as accessible to the world as Microsoft’s home page. But this democratic Internet would be in danger if the companies that deliver Internet service changed the rules so that Web sites that pay them money would be easily accessible, while little-guy sites would be harder to access and slower to navigate. Providers could also block access to sites they do not like.”

Now the Times says providers have a “responsibility” to block access to sites the Times doesn’t like. That’s quite a change. And an ugly one.

There are plenty of good reasons, both moral and practical, to oppose the suppression of white nationalist and other “extremist” web platforms.

Free speech is a core moral value for any society that aspires to freedom of any kind and to any degree. We must — MUST — have the right to form our own opinions, and to express those opinions, no matter how ugly others may find those opinions. Without that freedom, no other freedoms can survive.

As a practical matter, “extremists,” like everyone else, will choose to state, promote, and argue for their beliefs. If they can do so in public, those beliefs can be engaged and argued against. If they can’t do so in public, they’ll do so in private, without anyone to convince them (and those they quietly bring into their circles over time) of the error of their ways. The rest of us won’t have a clue what might be in the offing — until the guns come out, that is.

It’s appalling to see the New York Times endorsing an end to the freedom that undergirds its very existence and the prerogatives of every other newspaper and soapbox speaker in America. The only substantive difference between the editors’ position and that of the El Paso shooter, allegedly one Patrick Crusius, is that the shooter did his own dirty work.

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Teletrouble

Kilgore Forelle

Nobody asked but …

Maybe it’s because I got my driver’s license renewed last week, but my phone is ringing off the wall with calls that usually start like this, “hello, this is Bob (or Chuck or Wayne or some other macho moniker) on behalf of the Police Fund for [whatever].”

Firstly, yes, that’s correct, we here in Kentucky must seek the permission of the state to engage in human action, and pay for it, and get placed on all kinds of lists, official, semi-official, quasi-official, and pseudo-official.  I mutter under my breath, Robert A. Heinlein’s admonishment,

I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do.

I do not tolerate police fund drives, much less those that are conducted by mercenaries (paid fundraisers).  In particular, I don’t tolerate fund drives that purport to be for the benefit of some underprivileged set.  I can just see the wretches held incommunicado someplace for a week, listening to and watching 24/7 propaganda.

— Kilgore Forelle

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“Politics Awaits”

Bryan Caplan

Consider this scene from Quentin Tarantino’s WWII epic, Inglourious Basterds.  German movie star (and war hero) Fredrick Zoller is trying to persuade Joseph Goebbels to switch the venue for his new movie’s premiere.  Zoller’s real motive is to impress his would-be girlfriend, Shosanna, who owns a small theater.

GOEBBELS: How many seats in your auditorium?

SHOSANNA: Three hundred and fifty.

GOEBBELS: That’s almost four hundred less than The Ritz.

FREDRICK:  But dear Goebbels, that’s not such a terrible thing. You said yourself you didn’t want to indulge every two-faced French bourgeois taking up space currying favor. With less seats it makes the event more exclusive. You’re not trying to fill the house, they’re fighting for seats. Besides, to hell with the French. This is a German night, a German event, a German celebration. This night is for you, me, the German military, the high command, their family and friends. The only people who should be allowed in the room, are people who will be moved by the exploits on screen.

GOEBBELS:  I see your public speaking has improved. It appears I’ve created a monster. A strangely persuasive monster. When the war’s over, politics awaits.

[Table chuckles.]

While this is all fiction, it’s profound fiction.  Ponder Goebbels’ last phrase: “Politics awaits.”

Fredrick shows zero understanding of policy.  Indeed, it’s hardly clear that he even understands the optimal way to plan a movie premiere.  So what has Fredrick displayed?  A talent for demagoguery.  He scorns foreigners – “every two-faced French bourgeois taking up space currying favor” and “to hell with the French.”  He panders to nationalist identity: “This is a German night, a German event, a German celebration.”  And Fredrick scorns and panders eloquently enough to bemuse the Minister of Propaganda himself.

When you watch Inglourious Basterds, Goebbels’ reaction to Fredrick’s appeal seems obvious, even banal.  Why?  Because Goebbels is speaking like a generic politician, not a Nazi.  And when he does so, we all nod, because deep down we know the ugly truth that demagoguery rules the world.  We’re just afraid to say it.

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Schools or Bars?

Kent McManigal

Someone was showing me a satellite photo of a place where I used to live. A place where I honed a lot of my outdoor skills. Now the entire area behind my former house, which used to be wooded, has been replaced by a gigantic high school. Yes, I get that nothing stays the same. But there are good changes and bad changes. This is a bad one.

I didn’t share the person’s enthusiasm for such “progress”– but as I’ve said before, almost my entire family is involved in government schooling in some way and they feel it’s just peachy-keen. They confuse schooling for education.

I grumbled that this was about the worst thing they could have put there. She said, “It’s better than a bar“. Interesting example.

Before I could stop myself, a slight scoff escaped my lips. But I shut up before turning it into a fight. I’ve saved the fight for here.

She prefers a kinderprison because her religious beliefs tell her that alcohol is the worst thing ever. It might even lead to dancing or sex. She’s ignorant of the realities, preferring her insulated prejudices. If it’s something other than attending church, it’s sinful (I exaggerate only slightly). Never mind that government schools (in many places) are a prime factor in getting young people to reject religions other than Statism. She ignores that reality, too. She wants both of her religions at the same time.

Yes, too much alcohol can be bad. It can cause archation and other poor choices. It can ruin your health or kill you, but it’s not the only thing which can.

I’ve spent some of the best times of my life in bars, drinking Dr Pepper and singing karaoke. I avoided fights. I’ve enjoyed some nice dances. And yes, I’ve found some sexual partners, too. Only one of those was a real mistake. That’s a better track record than my experience at school.

But, by even her own professed (though unexamined) standards, a school is no better.

The inmates in kinderprison find sex partners. They have dances. They help each other obtain alcohol and other mind-altering substances. They get into fights, and they engage in (or suffer) bullying– an activity almost exclusive to schools. They engage in almost all the same activities a bar would offer, plus some bad activities you won’t find at a bar.

But what about the institutions themselves?

No one is forced to go to a bar.

Refuse to attend a school and you or your parents may end up in jail (or worse).

No one is forced to fund a bar against their own free will, even if they dislike bars as much as she does.

No matter how much you hate government schools, you are forced to help fund them. Even if you have no kids attending them. Even if you choose (and pay for) alternatives; you’ll just be forced to pay twice. If you refuse to comply you will be murdered.

If you choose to go to a bar you won’t be forced to drink. You won’t be forced to dance, sing, or go home with a stranger. You can almost always avoid any fight that comes your way… if you choose to do so.

If you are forced to go to a school you will also be forced to ingest the government-supremacist propaganda. You WILL be subjected to brainwashing techniques to cause you to accept ordering your life to the ringing of a bell. Waiting for permission to use the restroom. Your time away from school will also be claimed as belonging to the school, through “homework” and other controls. You will be trained to believe answers come from “authority“, and compliance is the way to avoid punishment. You will be taught lies sold as facts. That’s mental abuse, and emotional abuse. You will be damaged in some way.

If you live next to a bar, you will possibly have drunk people crossing your lawn. They might pass out or puke in your grass. They might do property damage.

I live next to a kinderprison and I have kids crossing my yard every day; dropping litter, damaging plants and landscaping. I’ve had kids puke in my yard as they cross. They ignore my “No Trespassing sign”– someone actually destroyed a sapling right beside the sign a few weeks ago.

Opposing a school is seen as anti-social when the schools themselves are anti-social institutions.

No, a bar would be much better than a government school. In almost every way.

A bar is ethically superior to a school because bars are voluntary and schools are not. That’s the bottom line. Bars are voluntary; schools are murder.

Give me a bar over a school any day!

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