Top Ten Political Lies

excerpt from The Left, the Right, and the State by Llewellyn H. Rockwell Jr. :political lies

Here are the top ten political lies:

(10) My new program will generate jobs.
Truth: Only the market generates jobs on net.

(9) My education program will reform schools so that they leave no child behind.
Truth: The public schools do not work for the same reason no government program can work. They exist outside the market economy.

(8) My program will save industry X.
Truth: Industry must be part of the market or else it is not really industry at all.

(7) I won’t raise your taxes but I will pass lots of new programs.
Truth: All programs must be paid for.

(6) As president, I will pursue a humble foreign policy.
Truth: Nothing in the office of the president encourages humility.

(5) This war is humanitarian and winnable.
Truth: War is nothing but a government program on a massively destructive scale, and just as error-prone.

(4) My reform will bring market-based competition. (Note: Be on the lookout for this lie, which market partisans are likely to believe.)
Truth: There is only one kind of genuine market, and it is rooted in private property and nothing else.

(3) We will secure the nation.
Truth: Government cannot provide security better than markets, any more than it can provide food or houses better than the market.

(2) Government is compassionate.
Truth: Men who seek power over the lives of others are the coldest, cruelest humans of all.

(1)You can’t love your country and hate your government.
Truth: A person who loves his country loves liberty first.

Education is Too Important Not to Leave to the Marketplace

by Ron Paul – Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity:Ron Paul

This week, events around the country will highlight the importance of parental control of education as part of National School Choice Week. This year’s events should attract more attention than prior years because of the growing rebellion against centralized education sparked by the federal Common Core curriculum.

The movement against Common Core has the potential to change American education. However, anti-Common Core activists must not be misled by politicians promoting “reforms” of the federal education bureaucracy, or legislation ending Common Core while leaving all other federal education programs intact. The only way to protect American children from future Common Core-like programs is to permanently padlock the Department of Education.

Federal programs providing taxpayer funds to public schools give politicians and bureaucrats leverage to impose federal mandates on schools. So as long as federal education programs exist, school children will be used as guinea pigs for federal bureaucrats who think they are capable of creating a curriculum suitable for every child in the country.

Supporters of federal education mandates say they are necessary to hold schools “accountable.” Of course schools should be accountable, but accountable to whom?

Several studies, as well as common sense, show that greater parental control of education improves education quality. In contrast, bureaucratic control of education lowers education quality. Therefore, the key to improving education is to make schools accountable to parents, not bureaucrats.

The key to restoring parental control is giving parents control of the education dollar. If parents control the education dollar, school officials will strive to meet the parents’ demand that their children receive a quality education. If the federal government controls the education dollar, schools will bow to the demands of Congress and the Department of Education.

So if Congress was serious about improving education it would shut down the Department of Education. It would also shut down all other unconstitutional bureaucracies, end our interventionist foreign policy, and reform monetary policy so parents would have the resources to provide their children with an education that fits their children’s unique needs. Federal and state lawmakers must also repeal any laws that limit the education alternatives parents can choose for their children. The greater the options parents have and the greater the amount of control they exercise over education, the stronger the education system.

These reforms would allow more parents access to education options such as private or religious schools, and also homeschooling. It would also expand the already growing market in homeschooling curriculums. I know a great deal about the homeschooling curriculum market, as I have my own homeschooling curriculum. The Ron Paul Curriculum provides students with a rigorous program of study in history, economics, mathematics, and the physical and natural sciences. It also provides intensive writing instruction and an opportunity for students to operate their own Internet businesses. Of course, my curriculum provides students with an introduction to the ideas of liberty, including Austrian economics. However, we do not sacrifice education quality for ideological indoctrination.

It is no coincidence that as the federal role in education has increased the quality of our education system has declined. Any “reforms” to federal education programs will not fix the fundamental flaw in the centralized model of education. The only way to improve education is to shut down the Department of Education and restore control of education to those with the greatest ability and incentive to choose the type of education that best meets the needs of American children — American parents.

Article originally posted at The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity.

Why the Public School System Fails

submitted by jwithrow.public school

Journal of a Wayward Philosopher
Why the Public School System Fails

January 8, 2015
Hot Springs, VA

The S&P opened at $2,036 today. Gold is checking in at $1,212 per ounce. Oil opened just under $49 per barrel. Bitcoin is trading hands at 286 per BTC, and the 10-year Treasury rate opened at 2.00% today.

The markets have kicked off 2015 with some healthy volatility! The S&P has dipped as low as $1,985 only to bounce back up. Oil has drifted as low as $47, bringing energy stocks down with it. The 10-year rate has dipped below 2% and threatened to drift lower. Bitcoin has fallen below $300 for the first time since 2013 and gold has climbed as high as $1,221.

Last month we contemplated raising children in the modern world and we decided compulsory education was not, in our humble opinion, in the student’s best interest. We reckoned that for any real learning to occur the student would have to be free to engage a topic of their own choice and then have the space to inspect, poke, jab, nudge, kick, and maybe even dance with that topic on their own timeline. Of course this method is the exact opposite of what is employed by the compulsory public school system that says the student must learn this topic in this way on this timeline with this grading scale and he better not interact with his neighbor while doing so.

As always, it is a minority position we take on the important matters of child-rearing and education. Perhaps this is why we had such an affinity for “Don Quixote” as a youngster. While the public school system is accepted as “normal” today, it is important to understand its origin.

The current public school system model was founded in Germany in the 1800s. The Germans called their model the “gymnasium” system and it was organized in part by the German military. This system separated students by grade and limited their interaction with students of differing ages. The intent was to foster a robust bond between the boys for they would be expected to train and fight together in the military as adults. Sure enough, this system created fiercely loyal soldiers.

Meanwhile, across the Atlantic in America, students were either educated at home or in small groups that were not separated by age. Individualized education in America was less geared towards memorizing facts and figures and more geared towards fundamental reading/writing/arithmetic, common sense, and self-confidence.

Age diversity helped older students develop responsibility and leadership skills by guiding the younger students along. Younger students got the benefit of both adult tutelage and guidance from the older kids. While seemingly a small point, having two distinct perspectives on the same topic goes a long way towards fostering critical thinking. Peter Gray, in Free to Learn, discussed this very dynamic as he observed students in Sudbury Valley School.

America began moving towards the German “gymnasium” model after the Civil War with the political class using force to move the shift along. Massachusetts passed the first compulsory school attendance law in 1852 and all states had compulsory school attendance laws on the books by 1918. Reading the work of John Dewey, one of the leading educators in 20th century America, provides troubling insight into why the shift was facilitated.

“The mere absorbing of facts and truths is so exclusively individual an affair that it tends very naturally to pass into selfishness. There is no obvious social motive for the acquirement of mere learning, there is no clear social gain in success thereat.”

The political objective was the centralization and control of education in order to reduce the American spirit of individualism and make students more malleable and group-oriented. John Taylor Gatto expanded upon the political shift of American education in his books Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling and The Underground History of American Education: A School Teacher’s Intimate Investigation Into the Problem of Modern Schooling.

History and political motives aside, Gatto also outlined and then expanded upon several points that demonstrate how the public school system is “dumbing us down”. They are as follows:

1. It confuses the students. It presents an incoherent ensemble of information that the child needs to memorize to stay in school. Apart from the tests and trials that programming is similar to the television, it fills almost all the “free” time of children. One sees and hears something, only to forget it again.
2. It teaches them to accept their class affiliation.
3. It makes them indifferent.
4. It makes them emotionally dependent.
5. It makes them intellectually dependent.
6. It teaches them a kind of self-confidence that requires constant confirmation by experts (provisional self-esteem).
7. It makes it clear to them that they cannot hide, because they are always supervised.

Gatto’s points refer to the public school system itself; not to the individuals working within the system. Most school employees at the local level are well-intentioned and work hard to improve the quality of their school. But they are forced to operate within the confines of the gymnasium system and they are forced to use government-approved politically-correct textbooks. More money will not change this dynamic, it will only further empower the Department of Education and impoverish the public.

So what is a concerned parent to do? Opt out!

Until the morrow,

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Joe Withrow
Wayward Philosopher

For more of Joe’s thoughts on homeschooling and educational alternatives please read “The Individual is Rising” which is available at http://www.theindividualisrising.com/. The book is also available on Amazon in both paperback and Kindle editions.

Real History

submitted by jwithrow.History

Journal of a Wayward Philosopher
Real History

October 15, 2014
Hot Springs, VA

The S&P is checking in at $1,851 today, gold is up to $1,236, oil is down to $80.34, bitcoin is around $396, and the 10-year has plummeted to 2.01%.  The 10-year Treasury rate must have been afraid of its shadow this week.

Wife Rachel said my entry yesterday about the history of fiat currency bored her so much she fell asleep reading it.  Sorry about that.

I see history as quite fascinating.  Not the history that comes in Department of Education approved politically correct textbooks, mind you, but real history.  Real history isn’t piecemeal highlights with names, places, and dates to remember; it is so much more important than that.  Real history doesn’t show up in textbooks or in classrooms.

Real history is friend Wade’s family letters housed on his family farm in South Carolina.  The letters were written by the original owners of the farm – his ancestors – and they have been passed down from generation to generation since.  Real history is a five-bedroom brick home sitting atop “town hill” in Covington, Virginia built by my great-great-grandfather after emigrating from Lebanon in the late 19th century and opening a restaurant.  This house comes complete with a Lebanese-style tiered garden on the side of the mountain.  I can only imagine how many other pieces of real history are out there, passed down from generation to generation and discussed over Thanksgiving dinner.

But what is important with real history?  Not so much the names, dates, and places as interesting as they may be.  Instead, it is the ideas, values, and lessons that come with real history that are really important.  These intangibles, if heeded, are what truly shape the future.

The textbook history tells me Napoleon invaded Russia and his army got wiped out.  What do I learn from this?  Don’t invade Russia?  I will be sure not to make that mistake.  Real history tells me great-great-grandfather emigrated from Lebanon, opened a restaurant, and worked like crazy to create a better life for his family.  I am a part of that legacy.  What do I learn from this?  Free enterprise has the power to liberate and elevate individuals, families, and communities.  This is a real, actionable lesson that is much more valuable to me than learning not to invade Russia.

Real history is mostly ‘private’ information while textbook history is ‘public’ information.  What’s taught in the classroom and what comes on the news is also public information.  Our society places a very high value on this public information; we love to hang around the water cooler and talk about it.  It is to the point now where we seem to think that public information is all there is.  We think the school teaches us everything we need to know and we think the news reports all aspects of all events to us every day.

Our worldview, which determines how we think and act, is shaped by this public information.

The problem is public information is riddled with holes and often less than helpful.  “Don’t invade Russia” is sound advice but I was extremely unlikely to do so in the first place.  If we value public information then we waste quite a bit of time on things that aren’t very relevant to us at all.  Should Ray Rice have been banned?  Should I buy Alibaba stock post-IPO?  How will the mid-term elections go?  Who will run for President in 2016?

Who cares?!

Football is just entertainment and unless you had Ray Rice on your fantasy team his private life probably doesn’t concern you much.  Alibaba is the largest e-commerce company in the world and its IPO was welcomed with all manner of press and hoopla.  But IPOs are designed for the insiders to get rich by selling their private stock to the public at an inflated valuation.  This works best when the media pumps up the IPO story over and over again.  You don’t want to be on the public side of an IPO, you want to be on the private side.  And the mid-term elections are largely irrelevant as is the presidential election in 2016.  No matter who wins the debt will continue to spiral out of control until the U.S. dollar is supplanted from its perch as the international reserve currency… probably by the IMF’s “Special Drawing Rights” (SDR).  No amount of campaigning and voting will prepare you for the inevitable; probably best to stop wasting time and start preparing for the Great Reset now.

Public information is similar to the fiat currency we discussed yesterday.  Maybe a little bit of it won’t do too much harm but go past that line and you are going to be in a world of financial hurt.  So in this humble philosopher’s opinion: focus on real history and private information.  The rest is probably just noise.

Hopefully this one doesn’t put wife to sleep.  On second thought, maybe it’s for the best.

More to come,

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Joe Withrow
Wayward Philosopher

For more of Joe’s thoughts on the Great Reset and regaining individual sovereignty please read “The Individual is Rising” which is available at http://www.theindividualisrising.com. The book is also available on Amazon in both paperback and Kindle editions.