Why the Regimentation of American Life is Making Us All Worse Off
The Quote by Ayn Rand on the Regimentation of American Life:
“He thought of all the living species that train their young in the art of survival, the cats who teach their kittens to hunt, the birds who spend such strident effort on teaching their fledglings to fly – yet man, whose tool of survival is the mind, does not merely fail to teach a child to think, but devotes the child’s education to the purpose of destroying his brain, of convincing him that thought is futile and evil, before he has started to think.
From the first catch-phrases flung at a child to the last, it is like a series of shocks to freeze his motor, to undercut the power of his consciousness. “Don’t ask so many questions, children should be seen and not heard!” – “Who are you to think? It’s so, because I say so!” – “Don’t argue, obey!” – “Don’t try to understand, believe!” – “Don’t struggle, compromise!” – “Your heart is more important than your mind!” – “Who are you to know? Your parents know best!” – “Who are you to know? The bureaucrats know best!” – “Who are you to object? All values are relative!” – “Who are you to want to escape a thug’s bullet? That’s only a personal prejudice!”
Men would shudder, he thought, if they saw a mother bird plucking the feathers from the wings of her young, then pushing him out of the nest to struggle for survival – yet that was what they did to their children.” –Ayn Rand
How American Life Has Changed
You might have been surprised by the inclusion of that Ayn Rand quote. When I first discussed the concept of the regimentation of American life in my article on the danger of bending the knee, it was in the context of both adults and children having completely organized lives in which everything they do and say has been prescribed by some higher authority. Kids play organized sports, adults work boring corporate jobs, and everyone has to follow the guidelines of thought put forth by the leftists in academia.
From our first day at school to our last day of work, we are told not to be entrepreneurs or think for ourselves, but instead to do what others tell us. Rather than playing a pickup game of whiffle ball on the neighborhood corner, we play organized tee ball with coaches and uniforms. Rather than studying what we are interested in while in college, we take classes that will “lead to a good job at an established company.” Instead of starting a company, we work as a nameless drone for a corporate behemoth. Rather than explore the woods, we follow trails through parks and natural forests. We don’t read what we’re interested in, we read what others say we should. And so on and so forth. Every action is the result not of reason, but of someone else saying what to do.
But to merely lament that fact would miss the point. It’s a tragedy that Americans are no longer the resilient, independent, self-confident people that they were during the days of Lewis and Clark. What is worse, however, is why many of our countrymen have devolved from lions to lemmings.
And that is why the above Ayn Rand quote is relevant. It explains the foundations of the regimentation of American life. From their first days in school, kids are taught by their Marxist-leaning teachers not to think, but to obey. They are brainwashed into blindly reporting to and following authority figures rather than doing what they think is best.
“Sharing is caring.” “Don’t stand up to a bully, just report him to your homeroom teacher.” “Why don’t you want to join a team, doesn’t that sound more fun that being left alone after school?” “Don’t talk or squirm during class, sit and listen to this politically correct version of the Thanksgiving story!” Etc.
Past generations weren’t taught in that manner. Yes, discipline was harsh, but the lessons learned were far greater. Kids learned how to stand up for themselves by punching a bully in the nose. They played on their own or with a merry gang of friends. They went shooting, hunting, or fishing in the woods, or, when the wilderness was unavailable, played with other kids in their neighborhood or street corner. When in school, they learned facts, not opinions, because they were being taught what to think rather than how to think.
The result of that was self-confidence, a natural predisposition for innovation, and self-reliance. Just watch movies like “The Sandlot,” “American Graffiti,” or “Dazed and Confused.” Read The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, or stories about George Washington as a young man. The children of yesterday weren’t fragile little automatons, as kids now are. They were tough and ingenious. Rowdy and witty. Defiant and full of promise.
Because they had those qualities, they were able to succeed in adult life. They founded businesses of their own rather than working for those that already existed. When the going got tough, as it often did during the 19th and early 20th centuries, American men did what they needed to.
Blackjack Pershing shot POWs with pig blood-coated bullets (or buried them with pigs in mass graves, the details are murky), which was brutal but ended the Filipino Insurrection. The Doughboys marched off to fight the Great War and stopped the Germans cold during the Kaiserschlact as French and British troops retreated around them. Great inventors like Edison, Tesla, John Browning, and Samuel Colt achieved astounding technological advances. Industrialists and tycoons like Vanderbilt, Carnegie, and Rockefeller built fortunes for themselves and made America better off with their innovations and the resulting productivity gains. Desperadoes and cowboys tamed the Wild West without much help from the government. Americans did what they had to and thrived when given the freedom to utilize their natural tenacity and innovative minds.
All of that happened because the regimentation of American life had not yet begun. Americans were free because America was still a free country. They could be individualistic and do whatever they thought best, knowing that while Uncle Sam wouldn’t help them out in any way other than making opportunity open to all, he also wouldn’t hold them back. Because of that mindset, America was on top of the world. Our businesses and economy grew mightily, our military was undefeated and undefeatable, and Americans were generally happy and proud.
Then, around the middle of the 20th Century, when the Baby Boomer generation came of age, things changed. The regimentation of American life began. Schools stopped teaching our young minds how to think and instead taught them what to think. Kids didn’t play and explore on their own, but instead were taught to do what coaches, teachers, and bureaucrats told them to. America stopped being free and became organized.
The result of all that was a collapse in the American spirit. We lost Vietnam because that generation couldn’t make the sacrifices required of it or endure the hardships required of it. Our businesses struggled because innovation slowed down. The generation of scientists and innovators before them went to the moon in a decade; now, we have gradual improvements to the iPhone each year or so. And, worst of all, Americans forgot the American Creed; rather than recognizing that they only had a right to opportunity, they became convinced they had a right to be taken care of by the government. Thanks to that shift in mindset, economy-draining welfare programs were established. Those programs sapped our “spirit of capitalism” and destroyed our predisposition toward innovation and entrepreneurialism. Why build a business if you can instead collect an unemployment check?
All of those bad trends have continued through today. The regimentation of American life has marched onward. America’s children know less than ever, but have been completely brainwashed into believing the same Marxist propaganda as their teachers. They don’t stand up for themselves, pave their own path, or learn how to live the individualistic type of life that our Founders valued so highly.
That complete shift in mindset has resulted in successively less and less able generations. They can’t think for themselves or strike out on their own, handle themselves in a fight or march to the beat of their own drums. Thanks to the regimentation of American life, America’s young adults look to authority figures to solve every problem.
But those authority figures are interested in control, not helping people. They’ve arranged their battalions of snowflakes and use them to act with outrage at the slightest improper remark or refutation of leftist orthodoxy. Dissenters are doxxed, canceled, and silenced when leftist leaders demand it. Conservatives on campuses are attacked. Conservatives in business are fired for expressing their views. BLM has become sacred and saying something as innocuous and true as “all lives matter” or “Jill Biden shouldn’t be called Dr. Biden” will get you wiped off the face of the Internet and your career ended.
As tempting as it is to simply blame the aggressors, the leftist outrage mobs, they’re not really to blame. They’re just sheep that are following orders. The process, the regimentation of American life, is to blame. When all of society is organized, all of society looks for a leader to give them orders. If men can’t think for themselves, they look up to those who tell them what to think. That’s the case in cults, combat, and culture. And now it is the case in America.
If America seems like it’s becoming a totalitarian nation, that’s because it is. Not the type of totalitarianism that we saw with Stalin and Mao, leftists here aren’t that brutal. Yet. No, we have the type of soft totalitarianism that CS Lewis decried as the worst type: the tyranny of the nanny state. We are comfortable, cared for, and under constant supervision. The government helps us live, but, in return, it tells us how to live.
Past generations wouldn’t have accepted that and current ones shouldn’t. America is supposed to be a land of freedom. It should be the country shown in “Easy Rider,” sung about in “Should’ve Been a Cowboy,” and written about by Mark Twain. Americans should do what they want and live with the consequences, not do what they’re told in an attempt to avoid consequences.
Fight back. Think for yourself, not in the prescribed manner. Say what’s on your mind, not what others say you should say. Do what you think is best, not what others tell you to. That’s the American way. Or at least it was before the regimentation of American life began. Let’s try to bring it back; it’s the only way out of this nightmarish era of control and regimentation.
It is my sincere desire to provide readers of this site with the best unbiased information available, and a forum where it can be discussed openly, as our Founders intended. But it is not easy nor inexpensive to do so, especially when those who wish to prevent us from making the truth known, attack us without mercy on all fronts on a daily basis. So each time you visit the site, I would ask that you consider the value that you receive and have received from The Burning Platform and the community of which you are a vital part. I can't do it all alone, and I need your help and support to keep it alive. Please consider contributing an amount commensurate to the value that you receive from this site and community, or even by becoming a sustaining supporter through periodic contributions. [Burning Platform LLC - PO Box 1520 Kulpsville, PA 19443] or Paypal
-----------------------------------------------------
To donate via Stripe, click here.
-----------------------------------------------------
Use promo code ILMF2, and save up to 66% on all MyPillow purchases. (The Burning Platform benefits when you use this promo code.)
Can’t get over the Ayn Rand quote at the start. Our minds and thumbs are indispensable. Teach your children how to use both. A mother bird plucking a fledlings feathers is like telling your child to be seen and not heard. I NEVER told my children that. I also NEVER told them “because I said so.”
‘Don’t tread on me.’
Auntie is just about ready to go full “Mommie Dearest”:
The unregimentation really begins at 1:05
One of the wisest things I’ve ever read is: WE ARE ALL BORN TO CHANGE THE WORLD; INSTEAD, WE ARE TAUGHT TO CONFORM TO IT.
Tens of thousands, or perhaps hundreds of thousands of years ago, man learned to domesticate animals to serve his needs. Man then learned he could domesticate his fellow men and make them serve his needs, but it required more than just food and water.
Because man was a thinking animal, it was necessary to dominate and influence his thinking in order to dominate and claim authority over him. In early days religions, and fear of Gods, served this purpose, allowing leaders to claim connections with Gods to justify their exploitation of other men.
As science progressed, men became less fearful of Gods as they understood much of what they feared was just nature and not the anger of Gods. This made people harder to control and the idea of individual sovereignty or self ownership along with human rights became popular, forcing even Monarchies and dictatorships to grant basic human rights to prevent uprisings.
One of these rights that people desired was education. It was not long before Rulers realized that education could be manipulated to serve the same purpose that fear of Gods used to provide.
The Prussians had much success instilling compliance with authority their model of education. It was a model that discouraged individual thinking and rights, and encouraged blind obedience and subservience to authority.
US government and industrial leaders were looking for just this kind of strategy to train Americans to adapt to factory work with its long hours, poor working conditions, and mind numbing redundant tasks. The Prussian educational system was just what they needed.
Enlisting the Whig political party, who were also supporters of increasing Federal powers, Central Banking and suppression of individual and States rights, they began to study and implement the Prussian Educational System.
It is the same system we have today.
Good article, with which I agree for the most part.
At the risk of being “picky”, though, I would say that our military who served in and during the Vietnam war were more than able to make “the sacrifice”….and in fact, many made the ultimate sacrifice. It was our politicians….sitting at home…who were unable to make the sacrifice. They not only got us into that mess, but hesitated to get us out because they didn’t want to look bad.
We lost Vietnam because we were fighting a morally indefensible war. The government never could give the American public a rational reason for being there slaughtering millions of people we were claiming to be there to help.
America stabbed Vietnam in the back at the end of WW2, after promising them sovereignty in exchange for their help defeating the Japanese.
Have you ever heard of American troops fighting and dying in Vietnam in WW2? No, because the Vietnamese defeated the Japanese there themselves, just to have the US betray them and support Frances reoccupation of Vietnam after the war.
Blaming the loss in Vietnam on the boomers of whom 52 thousand died, and millions came home mentally deranged is something only a complete asshole who is ignorant of history and the truth would do….
source on that promise of sovereignty?
History books. Try it sometime
More shit-tier takes from GenZ Cuckservative. Next he’ll be telling us that there is no place in the Republican Party for anyone not eager to have pederasts fuck their kids.
Conservatism is a another scam to keep you from actually doing any of the things that would actually succeed. Stop falling for it.
http://dissident-mag.com/2021/04/06/get-off-the-sinking-ship/
Another fuctard liberal comment.
You’re the liberal fucktard, you’re just too stupid to understand it.