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Patm
Active Member  Posts: 194  Posted: Sat Jul 23, 2005 10:32 am <strong>Written By:</strong> Patm
<strong>Date:</strong> 2005-07-23 10:32:12 <a href="/article/223212637-citizenship">Article Link</a> I also stumbled across a document called “The Social Contract”. Sure, I’d heard the term before but I thought it was just a concept, not an actual written document. The paper can be found at <a href="http://www.constitution.org/jjr/socon.htm">http://www.constitution.org/jjr/socon.htm</a>. It truly is intellectual stuff, but strangely enough, I understood it all. There are many things in this document that just make sense or, as Thomas Jefferson would have said, they are “self-evident”. I can see why its name is tossed around so much; this is an extremely important work. Another great revelation (to me anyway) was the work of Ludwig Von Mises at <a href="http://www.mises.org/efandi.asp">http://www.mises.org/efandi.asp</a> What Marx was to communism; Mises seems to have been to capitalism. He completely describes capitalism and how it works. Again, I knew of capitalism as a concept but had no idea it was described so completely. Note: I am not endorsing capitalism according to Mises, just point out that these documents exist. While I’ve seen many sites espousing right wing, left wing, libertarian, totalitarian and every ideology in between, one site in particular stands out. In it, an American ex-patriot explains why he left the United States. <a href="http://www.bidstrup.com/exile.htm">http://www.bidstrup.com/exile.htm</a>. His fourth point dealing with education particularly struck me. Here is the text, reprinted with permission from the Author, Scott Bidstrup. “Fourth, the public education system has been carefully subverted for the purpose of ensuring that Americans end up generally undereducated and incapable of critical thinking and reasoning, so the elite can rule without interference by the "rabble" or the "great unwashed" demanding the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. By de-emphasising critical thinking and reasoning skills, Americans with all their years of education, know a lot of facts, but are generally incapable of doing independent, critical thinking that might lead to conclusions at variance with the consensus generated and maintained by an elite with an ingeniously slick propaganda machine. Civics is no longer taught, so most Americans don't even understand the meaning of demagoguery, much less understand how to recognize it and, more importantly, neutralize it. Instruction in critical thinking and classical logic, with rigor, from the very beginning of education is why civil war soldiers were able to write letters home with far more erudition than many college graduates can write today, even though those civil war soldiers had an average of only three years of public education. They often quoted classical Greek philosophers and pondered the philosophical meaning and consequences of their suffering. During the Lincoln-Douglas debates, simple farmers and trades-people would sit and listen to intricate political theorizing with rapt attention for hours - and even college graduates today would hardly be able to even understand the transcripts of those debates, much less follow the reasoning. That's a huge difference, and a major setback for the cause of the Enlightenment and the values that underlie democracy. The rigorous teaching of critical thinking, logic and philosophy is why Switzerland, one of the richest nations in the world, has a population, three forths of which never went beyond the equivalent of the American sixth grade, yet nevertheless is one of the economic, scientific and cultural powerhouses of Europe, and has the admiration and respect of the rest of the planet. The elitists don't like hard questions being asked about why they are entitled to the sole exercise of power to the exclusion of the masses. Without widespread critical thinking and reasoning, there is little effective dissent, so they don't have to worry about their privilege being questioned. Democracy cannot be sustained for long in such an atmosphere, and the elites know that and want it that way, and worked hard over the last half century to implement and maintain that policy. They have succeeded brilliantly, and most Americans only sense a problem with their educational system, but have no clue as to what that problem actually is or what to do about it.” As a former member of the Canadian Military, I typically watch documentaries on the world wars. What Scott said of the American Civil War soldiers seems to also be true of WW I veterans. I have seen on TV and read in books, many letters home from common soldiers of that era and I do remember thinking just how profound some of those letters were. It sort of half-wondered why it was these people could write such compelling letters and stories when it was still common for working class people to “drop out” while still at elementary levels. Note: I went and looked up Demagogue, which means “a leader who obtains power by means of impassioned appeals to the emotions and prejudices of the populace”. A very important idea started forming in my mind after reading this piece. I could feel something nagging at me but couldn’t quite figure out what it was. The last Internet resource I’ll mention is a site that lists many foreign newspapers and other news resources, many of which are in English. I was suspicious of our Canadian media for a long time; this site was the nail in its coffin. Reading through papers from places as Diverse as London England, The United Arab Emirates and Venezuela, I was presented with irrefutable proof that our media is nothing but a propaganda machine for the “elite”. Headlines of world importance weren’t even mentioned in the back pages of newspapers here. Not even a 10 second sound bite on TV. See for yourself at <a href="http://www.thebigproject.co.uk/news">http://www.thebigproject.co.uk/news</a> While the Internet is a wonderful place to learn things, books are also a vital source of information. I’ve read many books during my search and just about every one of them has been yet another revelation. The latest book I read is “Unequal Protection, the Rise of Corporate Dominance and the Theft of Human Rights”, by Thom Hartman. After reading firsthand accounts from the Boston Tea Party I had a pretty good grasp of what that nagging idea was forming in my mind. It was while reading about Alexis De Tocqueville, that the thought bloomed into full clarity. In 1835, after visiting and studying the new democracy that was America, Alexis De Tocqueville wrote a book titled “Democracy in America”. Several excerpts from the final chapter in this book, "What Sort of Despotism Democratic Nations Have to Fear" were included in Unequal Protection. “I am trying myself to choose an expression which will accurately convey the whole of the idea I have formed of it, but in vain; the old words despotism and tyranny are inappropriate: the thing itself is new; and since I cannot name it, I must attempt to define it. The first thing that strikes the observation is an innumerable multitude of men, all equal and alike, incessantly endeavoring to procure the petty and paltry pleasures with which they glut their lives. Each of them, living apart, is as a stranger to the fate of all the rest--his children and his private friends constitute to him the whole of mankind; as to the rest of his fellow-citizens, he is close to them, but he sees them not;--he touches them but he feels them not; he exists, but in himself and for himself alone; and if his kindred still remain to him, he may be said at any rate to have lost his country. Above this race of men stands an immense and tutelary power, which takes upon itself alone to secure their gratifications, and to watch over their fate. That power is absolute, minute, regular, provident, and mild. It would be like the authority of a parent, if, like that authority, its object was to prepare men for manhood; but it seeks, on the contrary, to keep them in perpetual childhood: it is well content that the people should rejoice, provided they think of nothing but rejoicing... This, it every day renders the exercise of the free agency of man less useful and less frequent; it circumscribes them well within a narrower range, and gradually robs a man of all the uses of himself. The principle of equality has prepared men for these things: it has predisposed men to endure them, and oftentimes to look on them as benefits. After having thus successfully taken each member of the community in its powerful grasp, and fashioned him at will, the supreme power then extends its arm over the whole community.... The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided: men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting: such power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to be nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals... What I understand from De Tocqueville’s description is that he is warning of a loss of democracy and freedom through self-absorption and apathy. Powerful forces would take over democracies and become a form of feudalism never before seen in the history of the world. The general population would be dummed down and made ineffectual in politics. Without an awareness of the absolute requirement for participation in society, people would withdraw from their communities as a whole and operate only as lone individuals. What happens to your neighbor matters not as long as you keep your little slice of the pie. When that slice of pie gets smaller, it deflects your anger away from the true culprits and against your neighbour, further reinforcing the atomization of society. I am not a citizen This is the idea that was planted by Bidstrup that blossomed under De Toqueville. From the examples of those past generations, in books, websites, letters home and documentaries I have come to think that citizenship is more than simply residing in a country. Citizenship in a democracy requires knowledge, thoughtfulness, vigilance and effort. Democracy is far more fragile than I had ever thought. The founders of the United States gave many warnings of future dangers, all of which have been forgotten by the general population, pushed aside as irrelevant under the protective tutelary power of our governments and their moneyed masters. Our education system has ceased to educate. Most schooling today is not education, but training. We are trained to be production units, not educated to be citizens. You likely remember the hubbub in the media a short while ago about how our institutions are “not properly training people for success in the workplace”. At the time, I thought it was a great point. Now I see the truth behind the spin, the corporate will is for society to cease learning what little is being taught of the humanities (Intellectualism) in order to become better “timid and industrious animals”. Now I finally realize just how far we have strayed from Democracy. Corporations have successfully implemented the despotism that De Tocqueville warned of. Our media, being a powerful corporation, is the instrument of this despotism – facilitating the transformation of our population from a society to a mere herd. A single dictator does not rule us, it is a dictatorship made from a multitude of corporations. There is no conspiracy to create despotism, only a common will for greater profits. This form of despotism is hard to recognize as it has no face and no single name. It is not a conspiracy as such, just a collection of entities with a mutual goal – profit. It can only be recognized for what it is when you start asking questions. Picasso said, many years ago, “Computers are useless, they can only give you answers”, I think I understand that comment better now. The media has been shoving answers down my throat all my life. It wasn’t until I started questioning, that I was able to see those answers as the verbal equivalent of Prozac ™. Keep us docile, keep us focused on the goal – produce and consume, but pay no attention to that man behind the curtain. I am going back to school. I want to learn how to be a true citizen, a real human being. I want to be that which I have been insidiously taught, all my life, to have disdain for. I want to be an intellectual. The books I found most important along this journey. · "Surviving the Global Financial Crisis: The Economics of Hope for Generation X", Paul Hellyer (former Deputy Prime Minister and other Cabinet posts in Canada) · Confession of an Economic Hit Man, John Perkins · The Real Terror Network, Edward S. Herman · Unequal Protection, Thom Hartmann | |
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Patm
Active Member Posts: 194 Posted: Sat Jul 23, 2005 5:05 pm Yep, I'm familiar with them, and prosperity.uk etc. Check out http://www.canadianactionparty.ca, I received my membership card about a week ago.
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