A former victim of government brainwashing informed me of some of its features such as “From Day One at government school, I was taught to worship Lincoln and how he ‘saved’ the Union. I was taught that anyone can grow up to be President. I was taught to revere our great Two Party System. I was taught that America is golden because of its democracy, and that all patriots should vote every chance they get so the Voice of the People is heard. I was taught that the People can ‘vote out the varmints and clean house at the next election’.”
There is a simple antidote to all such propaganda. It is to ask questions and keep asking them. There are hundreds and thousands of questions, and if people do not ask them, perhaps it is because curiosity in this realm of life seems to have such a small payoff. If you or I did or believed all those things religiously, to what end or ends would it be? What would be the results? Are we to suppose that it automatically produces good? How do I know that this system is right? And creates good? Politics is not, after all, mathematics or chemistry. If the Framers worried so much about corrupt men (i.e., all men) corrupting governments, why should we not suspect the same of Americans and their governments? Why should we not seek better and think of this system as far from golden? Why is the Union sacrosanct? Is there really a Voice of the People? If we believed that, on what matters does it properly have a say and power, and on what matters does it not have a say and power? How am I to reconcile what I am being taught to worship with such messages as those of Buddha, Jesus Christ, Moses or Lao-Tze? One can multiply questions indefinitely. If the system is so good, why are 47 million Americans on food stamps? Or are we supposed to think that’s good?
2:55 pm on July 20, 2013
