Tag: Reason

The Elimination of Reason

Guest Post by Jeff Thomas

Recently, I paid for an item with the exact amount requested, including 89 cents in change. The salesgirl stared at the coins and clearly wasn’t sure what to do. Eventually, she reached for a calculator and began to total them up one at a time: 25 + 25 + 25 + 10 + 4. Having been schooled in the age prior to calculators, I’m accustomed to doing arithmetic in my head, but this particular instance evidenced a level of “dumbing down” over the last fifty years that was beyond what I had realised.

Since the dumbing down has been so consistently prevalent over the decades, it’s clear that this is no accident, nor is it an experiment in “alternative education” that hasn’t worked out as was intended. It’s clearly the result of a conscious effort to diminish the average person’s ability to think. As such, it’s had a long gestation period and was expected to require generations, but was nevertheless a conscious goal.

But why on earth would the controlling elite of any country seek to diminish the power to reason? Surely, reason is the basis of all independent thought – the catalyst for new ideas and improvement on existing goods and systems.

The answer, in a word, is control. Independent thought is the prime enemy of those who seek to dominate a people. For that reason, those who rule will happily sacrifice technological and social progress if it means that their dominance can be increased.

Controlling both the answers and the questions

It’s the nature of humans to question their situation and their surroundings. However, a clever leader will surmise that that means he needs to not only provide the answers, but the questions. If he can keep the people preoccupied with questions that are of little consequence to him, and provide answers that are easy for the people to absorb, he will control the areas of thought and, in so doing, will diminish the likelihood that he or his actions will be questioned.

Since time immemorial, successful leaders have understood that, in order to take the attention off their actions, carefully constructed distractions are called for.

For centuries, when leaders have been under criticism by their minions, they’ve used the distraction of war. War not only tends to unify a people, it also helps them to accept the removal of their basic rights for an “emergency” period. (Of course, most leaders don’t replace the rights after the emergency has ended. War therefore is also a good tool to increase tyranny, generally.) As Ludwig von Mises observed,

“War was not an affair of the peoples; it concerned the rulers only. The citizens detested war, which brought mischief to them and burdened them with taxes and contributions.”

However, in modern times, propagandists have become far more sophisticated. Let’s look at a few. Adolf Hitler said,

“Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually, they will believe it.”

Vladimir Lenin was a great believer in the idea that,

“The art of any propagandist and agitator consists in his ability to find the best means of influencing any given audience, by presenting a definite truth, in such a way as to make it most convincing, most easy to digest, most graphic, and most strongly impressive.”

Two of the greatest inventions in making propaganda easy to sell have been political parties and television. In the days of kings, it was common to hate the king and want his downfall, but, with political parties, it’s possible to get one half of the people hating one party and the other half hating the other party. Then, all that’s necessary is to assure that each party has roughly the same amount of apparent power and the people will focus all their attention on the hatred of the opposing party and fail to notice those who are pulling the strings equally for both parties. The kings thereby remain the kings forever, whilst remaining invisible. The idea is not to defeat the anger of the people, but to redirect it. As Friedrich Hayek commented,

“The skilful propagandist then has the power to mold their minds in any direction he chooses, and even the most intelligent and independent people cannot entirely escape that influence if they are long isolated from all other sources of information.”

That last phrase is key. In today’s world, we possess the most significant propaganda tool that has ever been invented: television. Through this medium, we can create a major issue out of a minor incident, create two opposing viewpoints, each designed to appeal to one group or the other, and then repeat the propaganda unceasingly until the people have become thoroughly polarised from each other on the issue. In this fashion, we can begin with a minor incident, such as the one in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014. Arrange for one set of pundits to state unequivocally that the problem was racist Caucasian police, whilst presenting another set of pundits who just as vehemently proclaim that the problem is lawless blacks. Then, as Brother Adolf states, repeat the message endlessly – in this case, on the news seven days a week, from morning till night, for over six months.

Mission accomplished. The conservative group has redoubled its belief in the necessity for an increased police state, whist the liberal group dug in its heels on its perception of class warfare and the need for increased collectivism to combat that class warfare.

Once this issue has played itself out, it can disappear completely from the television and a new issue takes its place.

As stated above, in creating this means of propaganda, we have first created the question in the mind of the people, then we have spoon-fed two opposing answers – one designed to appeal to those who are by nature conservative and one to those who are by nature liberal. If we do our job well, the groups will become so blindly polarized that no social gathering, such as a dinner party, will contain both liberal and conservative invitees, or it will be a disaster.

All liberals will be unified in their thinking, just as all conservatives will be. Of course, those who are libertarian will be vilified by both of the other groups, as they represent a third alternative. (The success in indoctrinating a people and destroying their ability to reason can be measured by their vehemence in rejecting a third choice of reason.)

However, reason must be blocked out on a continuous basis, or there’s danger that it may return over time. As early as 600 BC, Lao Tzu had figured this out:

“The muddiest water is cleared as it is stilled.”

Hence the importance of the endless repetition of the message. As a news item, Ferguson was deserving of a minor mention, perhaps once a week. But by suspending the outcome (whether charges would be laid against the officer), fuel could be added to the rhetoric fire day in, day out, for months on end. When it had finally outlived its usefulness, it was time to create another event. Of course, one shooting every six months in a population of 320,000,000 is a minor blip, but, through the continuous carpet-bombing of the viewer’s brain with the same rhetoric, two such events a year would seem like an epidemic.

Once we reach this level of thought control, it’s possible to offer utterly unacceptable candidates for public office and still have them gain election. All that’s needed is that they parrot the same rhetoric the people have become dependent on as a replacement for reason.

Whether it be Communist Russia, Nazi Germany or Fascist America, once the people have been successfully conditioned to allow Big Brother to dictate thought, the next step has always been totalitarian rule.

Editor’s Note: Unfortunately most people have no idea what really happens when a government goes out of control, let alone how to prepare…

The coming economic and political collapse is going to be much worse, much longer, and very different than what we’ve seen in the past.

That’s exactly why New York Times best-selling author Doug Casey and his team just released an urgent video. Click here to watch it now.

Click to visit the TBP Store for Great TBP Merchandise

QUOTES OF THE DAY

“Money is not humanity’s best subject. And although our body of scientific knowledge grows with each passing year, when it comes to financial matters, we somehow keep stepping on the same rake — that inescapable pattern of financial boom and bust.”

James Grant

“There’s a verbal tic particular to a certain kind of response to a certain kind of story about the thinness and desperation of American society; about the person who died of preventable illness or the Kickstarter campaign to help another who can’t afford cancer treatment even with ‘good’ insurance; about the plight of the homeless or the lack of resources for the rural poor; about underpaid teachers spending thousands of dollars of their own money for the most basic classroom supplies; about train derailments, the ruination of the New York subway system and the decrepit states of our airports and ports of entry…

‘I can’t believe this in the richest country in the world. …’

The social wealth of a society is better measured by the quality of its common lived environment than by a consolidated statistical approximation like GDP, or even an attempt at weighted comparisons like so-called purchasing power parity. There is a reason why our great American cities, for all of our supposed wealth, often feel and look so shabby. The money goes elsewhere…

Poverty—both individual and social—is a policy, not an accident, and not some kind of natural law. These are deliberate choices about the allocation of resources. They are eminently undoable by modest exercises of political power, although if the state- and city-level Democratic leaders of New York and northern Virginia are the national mold, then our nominally left-wing party is utterly, hopelessly beholden to the upward transfer of social wealth to an extremely narrow cadre of already extremely rich men and women.”

Jacob Bacharach, The Egregious Lie Americans Tell Themselves

Language: The Indispensable Fundamental Actuator of False Orthodoxy

By Doug “Uncola” Lynn via TheBurningPlatform.com

In Ayn Rand’s penultimate magnum opus, “The Fountainhead”, there was a minor antagonist by the name of Ellsworth Toohey whose raison d’etre was to undermine Rand’s ideal man and protagonist, Howard Roark.

Although Toohey considered his parasitical power as having a major stifling effect on capitalistic society, in reality, all his cumulative efforts ended up as a mere minor footnote in the long march of Man; as evidenced in the story’s denouement and ensuing towering city skylines.

Of course, much of Rand’s life consisted of excoriating the parasitical aspect of the Collectivists and their government, as both defined by dependency; in stark contrast to the rugged self-reliance of the men who moved the world.

In The Fountainhead, a discussion took place whereby Toohey said he wanted to make the “ideological soil” infertile to the point where young heads would explode prior to expressing any individuality (or similar to that).  Then, later, near the end, Toohey asked Roark what Roark thought of him, and the egoistic, self-reliant architect replied: “But I don’t think of you.”

In reality, is it possible today to ignore the Collective? Or, has it propagated sufficiently to where it can be ignored no longer?

Continue reading “Language: The Indispensable Fundamental Actuator of False Orthodoxy”

Waging War on Doublethink

The Liberal Left has been waging war on the productive and sane for almost a century now, constantly attacking facts with feelings, and reason with rage. These people strive first and foremost to reduce white productive males to lackadaisical effeminate trannies. Next on their agenda is to completely dissolve the notion of individuality, and replace it with the Rule of Uniformity, a concept lovingly crafted for us by beings who are so “enlightened” that they have ascended beyond the bounds of biology or mortal understanding.

Its all bullshit, of course, but they have been steadily gaining in power thanks to their message of Comfort and Protection, appealing to the need for Mothering that the stupid and lazy require to affirm their own pointless existence.

Leading the charge in this foolishness is the Germanic block of countries which span Central and Northern Europe. They’ve taken self-flagellation to the point where its an art form, with each nation striving to prove to the world just how accepting they have become in this post-WW2 era. The current leader in this race to the bottom is Sweden, a nation of legendarily attractive and war-like people bent on committing cultural suicide in an attempt to appease the Left.

Still, all is not lost. Some Swedes retain their cultural identity, and are willing to directly challenge the entrenched left on their foolishness.

This little lady brightened my day, we can only hope more like her are inspired to defend sanity.

The War on Free Speech – U.S. Department of Justice Subpoenas Reason.com Over Comment Section

This is the same crap the Chatham police pulled when some douchebag complained about a comment from Stuck. The right to free speech is dying rapidly. Half the comments on this blog exceed the comments listed below. Liberals would say everything on this site constitutes hate speech and must be stopped. Anyone who doesn’t agree with liberals or government is considered a dangerous terrorist in their warped demented minds.

Guest Post by Michael Krieger 

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The United States Department of Justice is using federal grand jury subpoenas to identify anonymous commenters engaged in typical internet bluster and hyperbole in connection with the Silk Road prosecution. DOJ is targeting Reason.com, a leading libertarian website…

The D.C. court was right — the government won’t start issuing grand jury subpoenas every time someone writes “my husband left underwear on the bathroom floor again; I could just kill him.” But they won’t because they don’t have the time, inclination, or the resources.

Instead, they will use their discretion to decide when to bring their vast power into play to pierce the anonymity of internet assholes (or for that matter, people who may have valid points on political matters but express them in the wrong fashion). That discretion is much more likely to be exercised where, as here, the person being trash-talked is a powerful federal judge in the district of that U.S. Attorney’s Office, a judge that the office must appear before every damned day. The power is more likely to be exercised on behalf of establishment political figures, not outsiders. The power is more likely to be exercised when it is consistent with the politics of the administration.

The D.C. court implies that we can trust federal prosecutors to use the grand jury power to pierce the anonymity of political firebrands even when their rhetoric is clearly protected by the First Amendment. That the government will investigate anonymous political rhetoric in even-handed fashion, whether that rhetoric comes from a magazine known to be friendly to the government and its establishment, or one that is, like Reason, prone to question both.

– From the excellent Popehat article: Department Of Justice Uses Grand Jury Subpoena To Identify Anonymous Commenters on a Silk Road Post at Reason.com

Continue reading “The War on Free Speech – U.S. Department of Justice Subpoenas Reason.com Over Comment Section”

GUNS & POT

If you include states that have legalized marijuana for medicinal purposes only, there are now 24 states that permit pot. There are 42 states where an adult non-felon’s right to carry a concealed gun is either unrestricted or subject only to permissive “shall issue” laws. Sixteen states fall into both categories.

If you limit yourself to places that allow marijuana even without a prescription and concealed carry even without a permit, you settle on the freest state in the union – Alaska.

Now we now know the real reason RE lives there.