One of the things that always amazes me is the readiness of some people to call other people brainwashed. As Wikipedia reminds us, the term comes from the Korean War (see Brainwashing). The North Koreans and, latter, the North Vietnamese treated our POWs abominably. That included abuse that came to be called brainwashing. POWs in Korea or Vietnam provides some the stories of what people who experienced the sort of suffering that real brainwashing entails.
What are the closest things to brainwashing in this country?
- Many people have little choice about where they send their children to school, and if some people had their way every school in the country would teach exactly the same politically correct truths.
- A relatively small number of large corporations owns what we call the mass media. For obvious reasons, these corporations promote beliefs, news stories and political candidates that are conducive to their own special interests.
So what can we do? Four things stand out.
- Put parents in control of the education of their children. That includes who teaches them and what they learn.
- Cross-check news sources. That includes visiting news sources that promote views contrary to our own.
- Strive to severely limit the government’s power over the education system and the mass media.
- Keep the Internet free from the abuses of government power. In spite of all the abuses by people promoting spam and pornography, the Internet still provides relatively unfettered access to a wide variety of information sources.
If we value knowing the truth, then regardless of our political or religious affiliation we must strive to keep our government or anyone else from limiting anyone’s access to information. The most effectively brainwashed soul is that person who never has the opportunity to learn the truth. If our brain has never been “soiled” by the truth, then there is nothing to wash away.
Just further thoughts on “brainwashing”. Maybe this doesn’t directly apply, or maybe it does.
Certainly it applies tangentially.
It has to do with this point:
“If we value knowing the truth, then regardless of our political or religious affiliation we must strive to keep our government or anyone else from limiting anyone’s access to information. The most effectively brainwashed soul is that person who never has the opportunity to learn the truth. If our brain has never been “soiled” by the truth, then there is nothing to wash away”
The problem is the absolute inordinate plethora of (mis)information out there. You will find 18 million hits of half truth/lies for every truth. There’s little way to sort out that hydra, and social media sorts it for them, offering confirmation bias (and people are tribal, so they like that).
The most interesting thing to me is how very very quickly all of this has come about. I think of the internet in terms of weapons technology (it was a DARPA baby, after all). I was a moderator on a debate forum for a long while. We had a lot of members back then…international, and so forth. The internet wasn’t so “dangerous” and few people thought of identity theft back then. Facebook didn’t exist and social media was in its infancy. This is only a little over ten years ago. We had incredibly productive discussions between members of lots of different political ideologies back then. It was kind of like jousting for the knights of old. There was some formidable skill sets. This quickly disappeared with the advent of social media. Social media is kind of like modern explosive ordinance. Lots of memes, little substance, all designed for emotional appeal. People like their information in small short blurbs, especially if it confirms their own belief system.
(present company included, this is why I try to avoid long-winded posts if I can)
Jousting (in the sense of real, solid, discussion) is virtually an anachronism now.
We went through the virtual equivalent of the gunpowder revolution starting about ten years back, and now we’re on to bombs.
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I should probably clarify, When I say “present company included” I am speaking of MYSELF.
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I honestly bore myself if I drone on too long….
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Look at my posts. Don’t they drone on?
I am honored by your willingness to read what I write and comment.
There is a absolute inordinate plethora of (mis)information. Part of it is just the sheer number of people trying to communicate something. Much of it is the competition between news vendors competing to provide an audience for advertisers. Nevertheless, there are relatively few big media outlets. When those big media outlets deliberately choose to ignore a story our brains can easily remain unsoiled by a truth they don’t want us to know about. That vital information they chose not to publicize will be lost for most in that absolute inordinate plethora of (mis)information.
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Great post Tom and comments too! We are all brainwashed to a degree as many have commented. It’s imperative to first know this and second to remember that there is so much we don’t know. Proverbs 9:10 of course is a good place to build your knowledge from.
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Excellent point!
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@CT
Nothing wrong with a GOOD brain wash……… 😉
Heck, even the great men of old confessed their need for illumination: ‘Create in me a clean heart,’ which desire by the way implies intelligence with a directive from the brain.
‘Ye were washed………..ye were sanctified’
‘The washing of water, by the word…………’
So yeah, count me in for a good spiritual brain wash, because there is a whole lotta dirt to sift through during the course of a day. Life can be a messy business, as in a simple ride to work seeing a thousand billboards assaulting the mind………
………so maybe a drive through brain wash for a nickel could be a new business venture? lol
(of course you do know I recognize the BAD brainwashing………..) and agree with your assessments.
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LOL I prefer the term “purified”.
We’re supposed to lead by example after all, and advocating for a good spiritual brain washing isn’t exactly persuasive to the as of yet unpersuaded.
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Maybe so, but the pure in heart understand the context. 😉
I submit that scripture has no issue with a good mind wash. Yeah, rather, there is much evidence and a need for it!
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😀 Agreed, Colorstorm!
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@ColorStorm
Well, a spiritual “brainwash” is done by someone who is perfectly holy, and He asks permission. So that is good, of course.
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Now there is a good point CT. The value of such a wash.is is direct proportion to the one doing the cleansing.
The permission idea is surely a bonus!
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Here Tom, somewhat related to the theme of brainwashing and education.
https://insanitybytes2.wordpress.com/2017/09/12/classical-education/
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Thank you for the link. Definitely related.
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Interesting post, Citizen Tom.
I can’t recall ever using the term “brainwashed”. It makes me think of Clockwork Orange.
But I use terms like “cognitive dissonance”, “social conditioning”, “confirmation bias”, “ideological blindness” and so forth quite a bit.
I think a good example is the anatomy of a cult.
Cults aren’t only religious…..they can be anti-religious.
Cults aren’t only small….they can be quite large.
Cults are measured (in my opinion), more by the cognitive dissonance of the adherents than the objective itself.
One of the most interesting things to me about a cult: When their claims actually fail on a massive scale, the group becomes MORE adherent, not less so.
For example, the claim: “The end of the earth is coming in ten days, give us all your valuables…” would seem to make people question their beliefs when that day goes by and nothing happens. But instead, the group becomes more cohesive. Here is what actually happens though: Some folks bail, the people who are still capable in some way of rational independence of thought. The most radical, most “brainwashed” stay, and determine they are the “real” adherents, and those others were phonies, and that was the fly in the ointment.
But most interesting to me is, you can see this all play itself out.
I look (for instance) at the difference between the way New Orleans reacted to a hurricane (looting on a massive scale, very little community cohesion) and the way Houston has handled it. Now, imagine what would happen if a massive natural disaster happened in Detroit. Yet the same political decisions that led to the collapse of those communities are STILL looked to as the solution. Much like Communism it “just hasn’t been tried right yet”.
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Fwiw, one can see the anatomy of a cult play itself out over time in some internet forums as well.
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That is a good illustration. When people are brainwashed, their thought have become so incoherent they have lost the capacity to think things through.
One of the thing Jesus taught was how to achieve peace, that worry is useless, that we can achieve contentment no matter how dire our situation. When we have become brainwashed, we have been conditioned to use a certain belief to obtain relief from pain, terror and confusion. The Stockholm Syndrome (from => https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_syndrome) is an illustration of how that works.
Christianity differ in that we can learn to put our trust in Jesus we experience pain, terror and confusion.
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Appears other people seem to agree with your statement about schools brainwashing students.
http://www.theblaze.com/news/2017/04/30/conservative-larry-elder-instructs-parents-on-how-to-un-brainwash-their-liberal-kids/
Regards and goodwill blogging.
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Yep!
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Amen,Tom. One thing that really helps is to understand that you will be brainwashed. It is a done deal. So chose wisely what will be washing your brain.
While critical thinking is certainly good, we can actually immerse ourselves in all the wrong things, falsely over estimating our own ability to discern and think critically. You lie down with dogs, you will get fleas, no matter how smart you are. In group preferences will pull at us too, so we will begin to go along with the crowd.
That’s probably enough weird metaphors for one day. 🙂
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Just the eternal battle between the meta-fors and the meta-against’s. 🙂
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@insanitybytes22
Well, these days we conflate the term indoctrinate with brainwash, but we are in agreement. It probably is true that most people know how to think critically; they have just been taught to start with the wrong assumptions.
Let’s reconsider the meaning of indoctrination. Indoctrination and brainwashing are not the same thing. If the doctrine is good, and the indoctrination is properly implemented, indoctrination can actually be a good for us.
What is happening these days, however, is that our public education system and most of the mass media has presented a secularized version of history and extolled the virtues of Socialism (ignoring the fact it has never worked). Instead of teaching our children to worship God, government-run schools and the mass media has taught them to esteem themselves. Of course, as adults that has made them easier to dupe and persuade to borrow money for things they don’t need.
Thus, each generation has been more easily persuaded to vote for politicians who lie and for the glories of big government and mounds of public debt.
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Citizen,
Indoctrination and brainwashing are indeed the same.
Even if someone is indoctrinated in what you consider a good way, that someone still is unable to think for himself or reason out why he believes what he believes.
And precious few people know how to think critically, since the science of rational thought really isn’t taught anymore, either in K-12 or the university.
Restating indoctrinated memes and quoting the Bible are not examples of rational thinking.
Because the vast majority of people can’t think rationally, they split off into groups whose members think alike.
Thus, our society became polarized.
There is just as little possibility of reaching a Bible thumper through rational thought as there is a Progressive.
A hallmark of someone who is brainwashed is that they become full of rage when someone like me presses them to reason out their position and explain it rationally.
The brainwashed person actually feels mortally threatened when the ideas he was indoctrinated with are questioned.
People like Doug feel like their manhood is brought into question.
People like InsanityB simply shun and exclude people who persist in subjecting them to critical thinking.
Shunning and exclusion of independent thinkers is a tradition among reclusive religious fanatics.
But shunning and exclusion is civilized behavior compared to what Progressives do when they come into a little power.
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@silenceofmind
The term brainwashing came from what the North Koreans did to our POWs. Brainwashing is similar to indoctrination. It does involve instructing someone in a doctrine, principle, ideology, etc., especially to imbue with a specific partisan or biased belief or point of view (from => http://www.dictionary.com/browse/indoctrinate?s=t). However, when someone is brainwashed, they receive this indoctrination while being brutalized and terrorized or at least horribly confused (from => http://www.dictionary.com/browse/brainwashing?s=t).
When we send our children to public school, are they brutalized and terrorized? No. Horribly confused? Maybe. Their teachers don’t present them with everything they need to learn, and their teachers teach them some things that are not even true.
The rage you describe (and I will leave Doug out of this) comes from the fact we have to challenge basic assumptions.
What we learn as a child, unless we are taught to constantly reexamine basic assumptions to make certain they are still valid, becomes innate to our world view and our worth as a person.
To a larger extent than I think most of us realize, we value ourselves based upon what we believe. Thus, when someone challenges our beliefs, we feel threatened and can become enraged.
Think of the story of Socrates, why he was compelled to fulfill a death sentence by committing suicide. Socrates asked too many questions, questions that challenged the assumptions of his people. His people became so angry with him, just for asking disturbing questions, that they sentenced him to death.
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Hehehe.. much like the reactions I got from various conservative blogs when asking questions to try and understand opinion. “How dare you come in this blog and dare to post questions about our opinions, you libtard!” You mean, Socrates was treated like that?
CitizenTom was the first to let me stay
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Citizen,
It is harder to indoctrinate adults than it is children since adults are more set in their ways.
A soldier, a patriot, must be subjected to violence and abuse to shatter or break his psychological structure.
Marine recruits undergo brainwashing during boot training.
But though adult, the Marine boots are volunteers and the values that are indoctrinated into them make them the best non-special ops soldiers in the world.
I used Marine boot camp techniques (greatly watered down) to indoctrinate my own students when I was a high school teacher.
But I wasn’t turning my students into mind-numbed leftists.
I was turning them into human beings.
I used brainwashing to instill love, caring, diligence and respect into the hearts and minds of inner city students who came to me hostile, rude, disrespectful, fearful.
Brainwashing is very powerful and happens everyday in the public education system.
But whereas it took me a whole year to instill Christian values into my students, it only takes a few seconds to brainwash a child or young adult into becoming a leftist for life.
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@silenceofmind
We cannot brainwash people into being loving, caring, diligent and respectful. Brainwashing is designed to undermine the hearts and minds of people, not build them up. This is not just a matter of semantics; it is a matter of intent.
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Citizen,
You know not whereof you speak.
Brainwashing can be used for good or evil.
I used it for good.
I actually got into the hearts and minds of my students and rearranged the furniture.
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Shrug. I disagree with the way you are using the word “brainwashing”.
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Citizen,
Unlike you, I am someone who has actually applied the principles of brainwashing successfully.
You, having 0-ZILLA understanding of actual, real-life brainwashing, can’t rationally agree or disagree.
That is because reality is what it is, regardless of whether you agree with it or not.
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True enough.
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@silenceofmind
Check this out.
https://insanitybytes2.wordpress.com/2017/09/12/classical-education/
When we teach people we care about, we try to indoctrinate them in the things we care about. When we brainwash people, we use them. I think you care about your students.
The type of things you wanted your student to learn cannot be taught with brainwashing.
I suspect you got your students by behaving a bit gruffly. I also suspect the reason you hold their attention is that they figured out you cared about them. You want to call that brainwashing? Shrug. Teaching people to love and to think? I don’t think so.
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Citizen,
InsanityB banned me so I don’t go there anymore.
What I did with my students was very systematic and purposeful, just as Marine boot training is very systematic and purposeful.
I was told that my students loved each other and cared for each other more than any other students in the District.
The District I worked for was one of the largest in the country.
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..and mental elitists like you…?
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Is it really truth or is it simply trying to use critical thinking to interpret a level of truth from whatever facts can be acquired and drawing your own conclusion? The current divisiveness is a perfect example that truth can be simply a perception.. more like the glass half filled or half empty. Both are facts but interpret differently. Consider this.. the glass is half full of air. If you favor air then this is a good thing for you. If you favor water then the glass being half full of water is a good thing for you. Maybe the real issue is the glass itself, and/or who filled it.
A glass is clear, hence the results of your truth is what you see.. it half supports your preference. But if the glass is a non-transparent cup… and the only source of any idea as to how much is in it rests with the person who filled it who tells you… that’s trust, credibility.. and faith, to establish a level of fact which cannot be confirmed by multiple sources.
Welcome to democracy… and it’s getting worse (better?).
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Doug,
The political and economic doctrines of Progressives such as yourself are not only different but diametrically opposed to those doctrines developed by the America’s Founding Fathers.
They are not simply matters of “interpretation.”
People who are indoctrinated (brainwashed) will believe anything regardless of whether it is true or not.
For example, Progressivism is a proven failure, both in practice and as determined by reason.
Yet Progressive doctrines are spewed forth from nearly every educational, political, media and economic orifice in Western Civilization and beyond.
Why?
It’s because tyranny and poverty are the natural states of human affairs.
Only the America’s Founding Fathers, in all the history of mankind, designed and built a society that actually worked for everyone to bring endless prosperity, freedom and hope to all of mankind.
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I’m a conservative progressive, thank you. I realize my anti-Trump blog (that openly presents a non-partisan approach) tends to encourage right wingers to assign me some variant of being liberal in order to better justify their Leader representing their cause, rather than separating their cause from their Leader.
Also, being “brainwashed” is technically a condition, albeit not overly scientific. You are enjoying assigning it to those who fail into not believing in what YOU believe in, politically and it seems, religiously. Non-believers=brainwashed. It’s a handy category to justify further what you want to believe in. The warm fuzzy you can retreat into at the end of the day.
Progressivism has been proven a total failure? That’s rather broad, Tom. Like.. in the history of man? I think not. In America? It’s been a piece of our historical past that has made us the nation we are today.. just like conservatism, et al.
You assign an awful lot of infallible godliness in the Founding Fathers, Tom. I revere them for their guts and achievement at a tumultuous time in their history. I will defend to death the precepts they put down that became our Constitution. But it was meant to be a dynamic document, subject to change to adapt to changing conditions. When Congress passes a law to build some stupid pork barrel project like the “bridge to nowhere” I am putting my life on the line to defend that just as much as the First or Second Amendment or any other amendment. It’s the process I defend.
The only thing I agree on in your reply.. is that tyranny and poverty are A natural state of human affairs (not “the”). But so also is benevolence, the constant struggle for political and social equality, a pursuit of life, liberty, and some level of individual happiness… and love.
I see you prefer looking at the glass half empty.
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@Doug
You replied to silenceofmind.
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Hot damn… I apologize to Tom and all who are present. Dunno how the hell I did that.
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Doug,
Conservative Progressive is an oxymoron.
It’s a term that exemplifies the fantasy world of Progressives where if you think it, it must be true.
Also, you are employing a standard Progressive rhetorical tactic which is to destroy the difference between fact and fiction.
For example, “It’s been a piece of our historical past that has made us the nation we are today.. just like conservatism, et al…”
…which is incoherent and just pure nonsense.
That’s because “what made us the nation we are today,” has absolutely nothing to do with a glass half full (your take on things) or how opposing philosophies are about reality, not perception (my take on things).
Clearly, you have demonstrated my claim that Progressive thought is devoid of reason and reality.
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Uhhh.. and this is the point where I’m supposed to dream up an articulate verbal rebuttal that proves my ego is greater than your’s? Sorry. Certainly you’ve proven to illustrate only that your “reason and reality” differs from mine. Rather than superfluous generalities you might try substance next time. You can win the pissing match, my friend.
And.. I apologize yet again to Tom and everyone for my error.
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Doug,
We aren’t supposed to do anything around here except have a conversation.
And where did the “pissing match” come from?
What you have done is state that you agree with me; that Progressive thinking is actually, objectively different from that of the American Founders and not just a matter of subjective perception.
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Doug
I will happily let silenceofmind debate you, but I do think this paragraph needs to be challenged specifically.
Progressives tend think Conservatives worship the Founding Fathers. No. We just respect their humility. Most of them did not forget that like other men they could be tempted by the desire for power. That is why they put so many checks and balances in our Constitution. So they the People could control it, they even went so far as to make the Federal Government clumsy and inefficient. The Federal Government generally only works efficiently with respect to military matters. Still, they put a check on the President even with respect to the Army. Article 1, Section 8 includes this clause.
Every two years at least — no matter what — the President has to ask Congress for money to operate the Army and the Air Force.
Was the Constitution intended to by a dynamic document? Well, there is a process for amending it, but other than that? No. The Supreme Court is supposed to interpret the Constitution in accordance with what its writers intended. Does the Supreme Court sometimes have to guess? Are there situations that the writers did not foresee. Of course, but for the most part that is not a problem. The real problem is what the Founders did foresee. Men are tempted by power.
Read the Constitution. Read the Federalist Papers. Consider that the biggest problem the Framers of the Constitution had to contend with is convincing the People that the Federal Government would not become too powerful. Yet that is exactly what has happened, and one of the major reasons for that is that the Supreme Court now interprets the Constitution to mean what they want it to mean, that is, dynamically. The popular excuse among Democrat Liberal for this is that the Constitution is a “living document.” Yet the whole point of the Constitution is to limit the powers of the Federal Government by defining them. If the judges nominated by the President and confirmed by Congress can arbitrarily extend the powers of the Federal Government, regardless of what the Constitution says, then the document serves no discernible purpose.
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Actually, the Supreme Court isn’t sitting around picking randomly what to make Constitutional judgments on.. Congress passes a law then it may or may not get challenged for Constitutionality. Consider this thought… there’s no question government has gotten bigger, but has it gotten more powerful? And if so, in what way? That appears to be your dispute. There is no singular potentate calling the shots. Congress represents the people and passes the laws. If government is too large for some people and you find it more convenient to assign blame on a party level then that’s called democracy. But neither party has had any dominant control consistently in the last 250 years. Yet you are trying to assign blame for a government too large.
Point of order… the Court is NOT obligated to take into consideration ONLY what the original intent of the Found Fathers “might” have been. They use that along with the intended CURRENT social considerations on what constitutes life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.. and equal application under the law. I can give an example right now… the Second Amendment.
Sure.. it’s great we all have the right to keep and bear arms. But who decides down the line at a time not too far away when weapons do not hurl projectiles with the squeeze of a trigger? Who decides when “ray gun” technology will cause huge devastation and that questions the practical application of the Second Amendment as written? I don’t use this to debate some futuristic right to bear arms. I mention this because we don’t know what the future is that the Court will have to take into consideration, besides just what the boys from 1776 were thinking of at the time the Constitution was written. Throughout the years judgments have been rendered based on current situations and not what the FF people thought it should be in the 1700’s.
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@Doug
The Constitution is a charter. When the Framers wrote this charter, they did not include a Bill of Rights because they thought it would confuse the issue. The Federal Government was not supposed to do anything that is not in its charter. To clarify that matter, we have the 10th Amendment.
All public officials take an oath to support and defend the Constitution. If we can reinterpret that document to mean whatever we think is in accordance with CURRENT social considerations and so forth, then that oath does not amount to much. It is way too flexible.
So what about the Second Amendment. I suppose it is possible some terrorists might already be carrying suitcase size nukes, but I don’t think that is a Second Amendment issue. Even recent history, since the invention of machine guns, tells us that there is a far greater than a properly armed citizenry. During the 20th Century, totalitarian states demonstrated that they are quite capable of genocide on an enormous scale. Nazi and Communist governments arrested unarmed citizens, hauled them off to concentration camps and gulags, and exterminated them by the tens millions.
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“All public officials take an oath to support and defend the Constitution. If we can reinterpret that document to mean whatever we think is in accordance with CURRENT social considerations and so forth, then that oath does not amount to much. It is way too flexible.”
That’s why it’s WE THE PEOPLE.. Tom. Here’s an observation… if the Constitution as written is to be left alone then there’s no need for a Congress or a Supreme Court because there’s no need for laws that help to improve our way of life. It’s like trying to amend The Bible… and most of us consider that the final word, although even that is open to interpretation.
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@Doug
There are two processes that the Constitution provides for its amendment. The Constitution identifies the functions of the Congress, the President, and the Supreme Court, and it provides parameters within which they operate. The Congress, the President, and the Supreme Court have no authority to amend the Constitution on their own.
The object of interpreting the Bible is the same object the Supreme Court is suppose to have, determine what its authors intended us to understand Constitution to mean, not to derive a new meaning.
Imagine you have an ethical dilemma. So you go to the Bible, but you are not able to come to a conclusion. So you go to your pastor. Do you want your pastor to tell you how what the Bible says applies to your particular problem, or do you want your pastor to tell you what you want to hear?
When we go to the Supreme Court these days, lots of people want the court to tell them what they want to hear, and that’s a problem. The Supreme Court is suppose to function as an honest arbitrator. However, just as we can tempt our pastor to tell us what we want to hear, we can also tempt the members on the Supreme Court.
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Humans created the Constitution, humans create the laws, humans interpret. We are only human, Tom. So what do you think would work?
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I think getting the government out of the education business would help. Nobody trusts politicians. It isn’t so much that politicians are bad, but the compromises they have to make reek. And some of them don’t deserve any respect. They are demagogic. So why do we put them in charge of the education of our precious children? Think about it.
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You dispute government involvement in education.. and you’re not happy with our election process because people you don’t agree with get elected?
Ok, Tom… for the sake of discussion.. what would you reform in education; by that I am guessing you have a preferred curriculum in mind?
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@Doug
I have policy objectives. Since I am not running for every office in the land, people I don’t agree with will always get elected.
I don’t have a preferred curriculum in mind for other people’s children. I believe parents have the right to choose who teaches their children and what they are taught.
We play this game where our government taxes the stuffing out of people and then offers their children a “free” education. Then we have the nerve to say that parents have a choice. Well, the elites do, but the rest of us think a large part of our choice has been taken from us.
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In a majoritarian democracy, what tends to happen is that the majority picks some demagogue who promises to fill everyone’s glass at someone else’s expense. Eventually the demagogue uses the powers that the majority has given him to fill the glasses of his supporters and punish and destroy his opponents.
In a republic, we are supposed to fill our own glasses. If we need help, then we ask for our neighbors to help us out of charity.
And it’s getting worse (better?). Do we have a republic or a majoritarian democracy? How many people are using the government to get their glass filled at someone else’s expense?
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Good reply. Tom. I rest with that. In fact, I rather like that… getting their glass filled at someone else’s expense… thing.
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