There. Fixed that for ya.
An article from the libertarian “Foundation for Economic Education” (the oldest “free-market” think tank in the U.S., established 1946) quotes extensively from Hayek to support the argument that “all education is propaganda”:
The need for such official doctrines as an instrument of directing and rallying the efforts of the people has been clearly foreseen by the various theoreticians of the totalitarian system. Plato’s “noble lies” and Sorel’s “myths” serve the same purpose as the racial doctrine of the Nazis or the theory of the corporative state of Mussolini. They are all necessarily based on particular views about facts which are then elaborated into scientific theories in order to justify a preconceived opinion.”
Or, in the case of “systemic racism,” a completely unscientific theory.
Ask yourself whether we live in a “free” society, if you can lose your job, your platform or other source of income, or be forced out of elected office for expressing your opinion, or for rejecting the arguments made by others. Or, in an age when nearly all political speech is taking place on private property (social media, hosted websites, donations via a payment-rails oligopoly) when you can be silenced for your views, or for even agreeing with views that the Owners (who are blackmailed by The Mob) don’t like. (Fun example: Reddit now bans people for merely upvoting content that The Mob deems Wrongthink.)
Progressive doctrine and values have become “truth.” Truth has become flexible: hence the oft-used nonsensical phrase “my truth." Yet it is not subjective; the truth of The Mob is objective truth. Dissent is a cardinal sin.
You don’t need to be a free-market fanatic (I’m not) or fall for reductio ad Hitlerum propaganda techniques like Hayek’s (I don’t) in order to see the problem with our current situation – or to conclude that, with three generations of children (since the 1960s) taught by Zinn-like demagogues to hate their country and their civilization, state “education” is the root of our ills.
When you take the “V” out of “LIVES,” you get this sign, which can mean a couple of things.
The big difference between the Soviet/China dictatorships and the Western “democracies” is that, esp in the U.S., the use of violence by the government is limited by law. This means that they have to be much more sophisticated in their propaganda. To see the difference, examine any piece of state propaganda that comes out of North Korea, China, or (if you want to dig a little) even the old Soviet mouthpieces. It’s lame by comparison with our own press. (Yes, the New York Times is propaganda, too. So is everything else you read. If you can find a news article that contains no perspective or opinion, including at the editorial or curation level, please send it to me. It might be evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence.)
But if you get ‘em young, you get ‘em easy. First-graders don’t argue back. And then when they grow up, they turn into university freshmen and PhD candidates that don’t argue back, either. They don’t know how to defend or challenge views. You can see this when you argue with them. They become emotional, outraged. They can scarcely get beyond slogans when articulating their opinions.
For those of you that don’t mind any of this, because you are converted and agree whole-heartedly with The Mob’s “truth,” the traitor-hero Snowden has some words for you:
Arguing that you don’t care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don’t care about free speech because you have nothing to say.
Or alternatively, because “you like what everyone is already screaming into megaphones (that they just happened to have in the boot of their Civics!) and waving pre-printed signs about.” That’s the same as “having nothing to say.”
A lot of The Mob do care about privacy; this is why they wear masks to their “protests.” But they don’t care about speech, because they currently hold the cudgel.
That won’t be the case for long.
A moment of reckoning is coming for the Left, and it will be a lot like 1989. In retrospect it will be found that, as in the Soviet bloc, a lot of people that were posting signs in their yards and windows, and plastering bumper stickers on their Civics only did so to avoid persecution. They never believed any of the lies.
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