Category Archives: Logic Course

Independent Education: the crisis and the crossroad

by Jon Rappoport

December 25, 2018

(To join our email list, click here.)

A hundred fifty years ago, at least some Americans recognized that all serious discourse depended on the use of the faculty called Reason.

Formal debate, science, and law all flowed from that source.

A common bond existed in some schools of the day. The student was expected to learn how Reason operates, and for that he was taught the only subject which could lay out, as on a long table, the visible principles: Logic.

This was accepted.

But now, this bond is gone.

The independence engendered by the disciplined study of logic is no longer a desired quality in students.

The classroom, at best, has taken on the appearance of a fact-memorization factory; and we should express grave doubts about the relevance and truth of many of those facts.

A society filled with people who float in the drift of non-logic is a society that declines.

Ideologies that deny individual freedom and independence are welcomed with open arms, because they mirror a muddled people’s desire to confirm that failure is the inevitable fate of all of us.

When education becomes so degraded that young students are no longer taught to reason clearly, private citizens have the obligation rebuild that system so the great contribution to Western civilization—logic—is reinstated in its rightful place.

Logic, the key by which true political discourse, science, and law were, in fact, originally developed, must be unearthed.

Logic and reasoning, the capacity to think, the ability to analyze ideas—an ability which has been forgotten, which has been a surpassing virtue in every shadow of a free civilization—must be restored.

Once a vital thing has been misplaced, buried, and covered over by mindless substitutions, people cannot immediately recognize the original thing has any importance, meaning, or existence.

To declare its importance makes no sense to “the crowd.” They look bewildered and shake their heads. They search their memories and find nothing.

They prefer to adhere to rumor, gossip, accusation, wild speculation, and fear mongering as the primary means of public discourse and assessment of truth.

These habits light their paths. These reflexes give them some degree of pleasure. These idols become their little gods.

To win out over such attachments and superstitions is a job for the long term.

But if our labors yield rewards, we can once again bring import to education, and to the idea of authentic freedom that once cut a wide swathe through darkness.

A string of direct and distracting abuses has saddled our schools. Among them:

* Teachers believe they need to entertain children, in order to capture their attention;

* School systems have substituted the need for public funds in the place of actually supplying a sound education;

* Under the banner of political correctness, school texts have been sanitized to the point of sterility, in order to avoid the possibility of offending, to the slightest degree, any group;

* Students rarely confront information in the form in which it is delivered to people all over the world—they confront substitutes;

* Students have, in this respect, been coddled;

* Subjects such as sex education, which belong in the family, have been delivered into the hands of schools and teachers;

* Indeed, in certain respects, schools are asked to substitute and stand in for parents;

* Masked as “learning opportunities,” various political agendas have been inserted in school curricula;

* The basis on which every historic document establishing some degree of freedom was debated and drafted—logical thought—has been eliminated from the curriculum as a serious discipline;

* Students are permitted and even encouraged to drift and grasp at superficially attractive ideas and fads of the moment;

* In this respect, freedom has been reinterpreted to mean “mental incapacity and wandering thought”;

* The vast contributions of the ancient Greek civilization, where logic as a crucial subject was born, have been obliterated, minimized or summarized in sterile fashion;

* Logic, the connective tissue which binds together the progression of ideas in rational argument, has been kept away from students;

* The result is the production of shallow minds that cannot see the architecture of reasoning;

* Students, at sea, begin to invent wholly insufficient standards for accepting or rejecting various points of view and supposed authorities;

* Students lose their true independence without ever having gained it;

* The low level of overall literacy in our schools is matched only by the non-comprehension of rational thought;

* In the presence of these and other deficiencies and abuses, students are pushed through, from grade to grade, graduation to graduation, as a bureaucratic function, regardless of their ability.

Therefore, citizens of good intent must offload this system. They must assume responsibility for teaching children the missing key to education.

Logic; the capacity to reason, to think lucidly; to separate sense from chatter; to discover deception and avoid being influenced by it; to remain free and independent from the shifting opinions of “the herd”; to maintain personal liberty in the face of every spurious enticement to abandon it; to come to grips with competitive sets of First Principles which will lead to freedom or slavery; these are the stakes in our time.

This is the crossroad.

Choose the path that can bring us the fulfillment of a worthy goal.

Choose reason over vacuous mindlessness.

We, who still know the power of the mind, and who understand how that power can be harnessed to shape independence and liberty, can bring, out of the dust of recent history, an education that truly trains the intellect.

Logic is the foundation of such an education.

If schools, which have become madhouses and factories and toxic medical dispensaries, will not teach it, we can teach it.

The Matrix Revealed

(To read about Jon’s mega-collection, The Matrix Revealed, click here.)

(My Logic & Analysis course for High School students is included in
The Matrix Revealed)

Jon Rappoport

The author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED, EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free emails at NoMoreFakeNews.com or OutsideTheRealityMachine.

The Matrix Revealed: logic as a tool for the mind

by Jon Rappoport

November 9, 2018

I originally developed and wrote my logic course as a stand-alone instruction in analysis. It is now included (at a much lower price) as part of my collection, The Matrix Revealed.

The logic course offers passages of text for analysis. Flaws are purposely placed in the text (and later explained). These flaws are fallacies often used to divert the mind.

Logic first appeared in the West as a crucial element embedded in Plato’s Dialogues. Aristotle followed up and began to codify the subject. To say these men provided a breakthrough would be a vast understatement.

They established a platform for all future thought.

Science (in its proper inquiry, drained of political interests) requires a logical approach to research and experimentation. Linking evidence to conclusions happens through the use of logic. The replication of scientific studies involves a rational inquiry into methods and standards. Without logic, the whole enterprise would collapse.

And yet, our schools don’t require the study of logic, if they even offer courses in it. Instead, ideas and values are peddled like necessities of life.

I wrote my logic course to offset this trend.

the matrix revealed

Here are the full contents of my collection, The Matrix Revealed, including the course in logic:

* 250 megabytes of information.

* Over 1100 pages of text.

* Ten and a half hours of audio.

The 2 bonuses alone are rather extraordinary:

* My complete 18-lesson course, LOGIC AND ANALYSIS, which includes the teacher’s manual and audio to guide you. I was previously selling the course for $375. This is a new way to teach logic, the subject that has been missing from schools for decades.

* The complete text (331 pages) of AIDS INC., the book that exposed a conspiracy of scientific fraud deep within the medical research establishment. The book has become a sought-after item, since its publication in 1988. It contains material about viruses, medical testing, and the invention of disease that is, now and in the future, vital to our understanding of phony epidemics arising in our midst. I assure you, the revelations in the book will surprise you; they cut much deeper and are more subtle than “virus made in a lab” scenarios.

The heart and soul of this product are the text interviews I conducted with Matrix-insiders, who have first-hand knowledge of how the major illusions of our world are put together:

* ELLIS MEDAVOY, master of PR, propaganda, and deception, who worked for key controllers in the medical and political arenas. 28 interviews, 290 pages.

* RICHARD BELL, financial analyst and trader, whose profound grasp of market manipulation and economic-rigging is formidable, to say the least. 16 interviews, 132 pages.

* JACK TRUE, the most creative hypnotherapist on the face of the planet. Jack’s anti-Matrix understanding of the mind and how to liberate it is unparalleled. His insights are unique, staggering. 43 interviews, 320 pages.

Also included:

* Several more interviews with brilliant analysts of the Matrix. 53 pages.

* The ten and a half hours of mp3 audio are my solo presentation, based on these interviews and my own research. Title: The Multi-Dimensional Planetary Chessboard—The Matrix vs. the Un-Conditioning of the Individual.

(All the material is digital. Upon ordering it, you’ll receive an email with a link to it.)

This work is all about reinstating individual power, above and beyond what the Matrix implies and stands for. It is about insight, yes—but it is also about liberating one’s consciousness from the habit of accepting life on the terms by which it is given to us.

Thought and action can align themselves with Matrix, or they can strike out in a far more adventurous and galvanizing direction. A thrilling direction unique to each individual.

Jon Rappoport

The author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED, EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free NoMoreFakeNews emails here or his free OutsideTheRealityMachine emails here.

The State weaponizes education to create ignorance

The State weaponizes education to create ignorance

Independent Education: the crisis and the crossroad

by Jon Rappoport

November 7, 2018

(To join our email list, click here.)

A hundred fifty years ago, at least some Americans recognized that all serious discourse depended on the use of the faculty called Reason.

Formal debate, science, and law all flowed from that source.

A common bond existed in some schools of the day. The student was expected to learn how Reason operates, and for that he was taught the only subject which could lay out, as on a long table, the visible principles: Logic.

This was accepted.

But now, this bond is gone.

The independence engendered by the disciplined study of logic is no longer a desired quality in students.

The classroom, at best, has taken on the appearance of a fact-memorization factory; and we should express grave doubts about the relevance and truth of many of those facts.

A society filled with people who float in the drift of non-logic is a society that declines.

Ideologies that deny individual freedom and independence are welcomed with open arms.

When education becomes so degraded that young students are no longer taught to reason clearly, private citizens have the obligation rebuild that system so the great contribution to Western civilization—logic—is reinstated in its rightful place.

Logic, the key by which true political discourse, science, and law were, in fact, originally developed, must be unearthed.

Logic and reasoning, the capacity to think, the ability to analyze ideas—an ability which has been forgotten, which has been a surpassing virtue in every free civilization—must be restored.

Once a vital thing has been misplaced, buried, and covered over by mindless substitutions, people cannot immediately recognize the original thing has any importance, meaning, or existence.

To declare its importance makes no sense to “the crowd.” They look bewildered and shake their heads. They search their memories and find nothing.

They prefer to adhere to rumor, gossip, accusation, wild speculation, and fear mongering as the primary means of public discourse and assessment of truth.

These habits light their paths. These reflexes give them some degree of pleasure. These idols become their little gods.

To win out over such attachments and superstitions is a job for the long term.

But if our labors yield rewards, we can once again bring import to education, and to the idea of authentic freedom that once cut a wide swathe through darkness.

A string of direct and distracting abuses has saddled our schools. Among them:

* Teachers believe they need to entertain children, in order to capture their attention;

* School systems have substituted the need for public funds in the place of actually supplying a sound education;

* Under the banner of political correctness, school texts have been sanitized to the point of sterility, in order to avoid the possibility of offending, to the slightest degree, any group;

* Students rarely confront information in the form in which it is delivered to people all over the world—they confront substitutes;

* Students have, in this respect, been coddled;

* Subjects such as sex education, which belong in the family, have been delivered into the hands of schools and teachers;

* Indeed, in certain key respects, schools are asked to substitute and stand in for parents;

* Masked as “learning opportunities,” various political agendas have been inserted in school curricula;

* The basis on which every historic document establishing some degree of freedom was debated and drafted—logical thought—has been eliminated from the curriculum as a serious discipline;

* Students are permitted and even encouraged to drift and grasp at superficially attractive ideas and fads of the moment;

* In this respect, freedom has been reinterpreted to mean “mental incapacity and wandering thought”;

* The vast contributions of the ancient Greek civilization, where logic as a crucial subject was born, have been obliterated, minimized or summarized in sterile fashion;

* Logic, the connective tissue which binds together the progression of ideas in rational argument, has been kept away from students;

* The result is the production of shallow minds that cannot see the architecture of reasoning;

* Students, at sea, begin to invent wholly insufficient standards for accepting or rejecting various points of view and supposed authorities;

* Students lose their true independence without ever having gained it;

* The low level of overall literacy in our schools is matched only by the non-comprehension of rational thought;

In the presence of these and other deficiencies and abuses, students are pushed through, from grade to grade, graduation to graduation, as a bureaucratic function, regardless of their ability.

Therefore, citizens of good intent must offload this system. They must assume responsibility for teaching children the missing key to education.

Logic; the capacity to reason, to think lucidly; to separate sense from chatter; to discover deception and avoid being influenced by it; to remain free and independent from the shifting opinions of “the herd”; to maintain personal liberty in the face of every spurious enticement to abandon it; to come to grips with competitive sets of First Principles which will lead to freedom or slavery; these are the stakes in our time.

This is the crossroad.

Choose the path that can bring us the fulfillment of a worthy goal.

Choose reason over vacuous mindlessness.

We, who still know the power of the mind, and who understand how that power can be harnessed to shape independence and liberty, can bring, out of the dust of recent history, an education that truly trains the intellect.

Logic is the foundation of such an education.

If schools, which have become madhouses and factories and toxic medical dispensaries, will not teach it, we can teach it.

The Matrix Revealed

(To read about Jon’s mega-collection, The Matrix Revealed, click here.)

Jon Rappoport

The author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED, EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free NoMoreFakeNews emails here or his free OutsideTheRealityMachine emails here.

Propaganda is the art of overwhelming logic

by Jon Rappoport

November 6, 2018

(To join our email list, click here.)

One type of mind control involves defeating logic as a method of thinking.

Modern formulations of basic logic begin with the statement: You can’t have A and not-A. Which is a way of saying contradictions are unacceptable.

So it’s no surprise that mind control attempts to introduce contradictions into rational processes.

You see this in propaganda.

For example: People who are vaccinated are in danger from those who are unvaccinated. (“Keep your unvaccinated child away from my vaccinated child.”)

There is a concealed contradiction here. You can see it by merely defining (according to conventional terms) the meaning of “vaccinated.”

It means “immune,” “protected from contracting the disease targeted by the vaccine.”

But if the vaccinated person is protected and immune, then coming into contact with an unvaccinated person will bring no danger.

Therefore, the notion that vaccinated people are A) protected but not-A) in danger is absurd, a contradiction.

The easiest way to defeat logic is through deficient education. Never teach logic. Ignore it. Instead, teach specific values. Teach anything except logic. Don’t teach children how to spot contradictions.

A deficient education plus tons of ceaseless propaganda equals mind control.

Logic is a significant problem for people who want a closed and unfree society. Teaching logic tends to produce sharp and independent minds.

Logic produces personal power.

Here is another example of non-logic: A ballot initiative passed by the voters of Maui County is illegal, because it set up a new law regarding commercial agriculture, when in fact commercial agriculture is regulated by state and federal laws, which trump county laws.

There are several ways of attacking this proposition, but the most basic way is:

The ballot initiative was not aimed at commercial agriculture. It called for a moratorium on all Monsanto/Dow experiments using non-commercial GMOs.

In what has become a federal court case, the judge and the lawyers for Dow/Monsanto are proceeding from a false basic premise.

Of course, the failure in this case is a willful ignoring of the facts. The argument is: A is B. No it isn’t. A is A.

There are a number of arguments afloat these days which proceed this way:

“The science concerning ABC is settled.”

“’Settled’ means ‘true.’”

“Therefore the science concerning ABC is true.”

However, on closer inspection, “settled” means “there is a consensus among officially favored scientists.”

Science doesn’t operate according to what officially favored scientists claim. It doesn’t operate according to consensus at all. It operates according to what is true and valid—and the best way to ascertain that is through the broadest possible analysis accomplished by a wide variety of independent researchers, who attempt to replicate prior experimental results.

Even then, there is always room for reasoned dissent.

There is much, much more I could write about logic. The issues I raise in this article are basic and should be addressed in every high school, in great detail, with many illustrations.

For instance: what are the full tacit implications of the statement found at the end of every television drug ad—“ask your doctor if X is right for you.”

For instance (at a more sophisticated level): when the press reports a new outbreak of disease, claiming it is caused by a particular virus…how was that assertion determined? On what grounds do scientists say they have found the virus that causes the disease?

I ran headlong into that one while writing my first book, AIDS Inc.: Scandal of the Century, and the further I investigated HIV as “the cause of AIDS,” the more I was stunned by the lack of logic present in the argument.

Logic is a sword.

Learning its many uses, while still young, creates formidable students and citizens.

Propaganda is the art of overwhelming logic.

It works, when the mind is unprepared.

The Matrix Revealed

(To read about Jon’s mega-collection, The Matrix Revealed, click here.)

Jon Rappoport

The author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED, EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free NoMoreFakeNews emails here or his free OutsideTheRealityMachine emails here.

Matrixology 101: debates that never happen

by Jon Rappoport

November 5, 2018

(To join our email list, click here.)

In order to sustain gigantic false realities, there are honest debates that must never happen. They would reveal too much. They would shine a spotlight on vast contradictions. They would expose official storytellers to withering criticism.

And by debate, I mean extended formal conversations.

The easiest way to eliminate such debates is: never equip the young with the ability and the patience to comprehend them.

That’s working out quite well.

Let me give you an example of a debate that will never happen.

In 1987-88, while I was writing my first book, AIDS Inc., I discovered that the test most frequently used to diagnose HIV in a patient was the antibody test.

A positive test was taken to mean: the patient was carrying HIV; he was already sick or would become sick.

However, I queried an employee of the FDA. I asked: if an HIV vaccine is developed, it will produce antibodies to HIV, and then the patient will be called “immune,” correct?

In other words, if a routine blood test reveals antibodies to HIV, the patient will be told he either has AIDS or will get AIDS—but if those same antibodies are produced by a vaccine, the person will be said to be immune to HIV.

The anonymous FDA employee answered me by mail, on a piece of paper without the FDA letterhead. This is what he essentially said:

If an HIV vaccine is developed, people who take it will be given a letter they can carry around with them. If they are ever tested for HIV and the test comes up positive, they can show the letter to their doctor, to prove they are immune, rather than dangerously infected.

Otherwise, there would be no way to distinguish between “in danger of dying” and “immune.”

Extraordinary, to say the least.

This opened up a huge can of worms about several issues, one of which was the actual meaning of antibody tests.

Until 1985, positive antibody tests were generally taken to mean: the patient’s immune system is in good working order; his immune system contacted the virus in question and warded it off.

But after 1985 (and not just in the case of AIDS, but for any virus under the sun), the same antibody test was taken to mean: the patient is already ill or he will become ill.

Millions and millions of antibody tests have been given to people around the world. Just a few of the viruses tested for: SARS, West Nile, Swine Flu, Ebola.

Think about the effects of a doctor saying: “You’re positive for a very dangerous virus.”

Think about the 180-degree turnaround in interpreting the meaning of a positive test.

It generally went from “You’re fine,” to “You’re infected.”

I can think of several independent scientists who could weigh in on a debate about these tests, against official scientists.

It would be revealing, to say the least.

But it would only be revealing for people who could follow the logic and the illogic of the participants.

Otherwise, it would be like listening to a tape played backwards.

The ultimate backup plan for stifling all important debates is: never equip people with the ability to follow and understand them.

These days, this plan is called education.

Long ago, I was a schoolteacher. I found that, if I taught students logic in a straightforward way, step by step, with many examples, they responded. They caught on. They liked catching on.

It made them smarter and thus happier. It made them feel more powerful, because they were.

Every student deserves to earn that experience. It’s a tragedy and crime that so few are given the opportunity.

The antibody test is just one of a number of enormous issues in modern medicine that, if opened to real debate, would cause a seismic shift in society…assuming there were enough listeners who could track the lines of reasoning.

A true home-schooling movement should take notice of all this.

Teaching logic is work. Good work. It pays off in brighter students. It opens doors that would otherwise remain closed. It adds real substance to the idea that home schooling stands for individual independence and power, rather than State control.

The Matrix Revealed

(To read about Jon’s mega-collection, The Matrix Revealed, click here.)

Jon Rappoport

The author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED, EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free NoMoreFakeNews emails here or his free OutsideTheRealityMachine emails here.

Freedom from mind-controlled education

by Jon Rappoport

September 24, 2018

(To join our email list, click here.)

Over the past few years, I’ve written extensively about clap-trap higher education, which is turning out to be a combination of values-indoctrination, peer pressure, conformity, Leftist ideology, peppered with an astounding number of vague unexamined generalities. It adds up to intellectual starvation by attrition. It’s a war against the mind carried on by attempting to shape and control and limit the mind.

If you took the worst features of fake discourse and analysis and rolled them up into a ball, you would get college.

This is one reason why I wrote a basic logic course for high school students and included it in my collection, The Matrix Revealed.

From my own experience as a student, and from teaching teenage students, I discovered an encouraging fact: a little bit of logic goes a long way. Students respond. They wake up, for example, when they find out what a generality is, when they read examples, when they run them to ground, when they discover how many generalities end up in blind alleys with no factual support.

It’s as if the mind says, “I didn’t realize this before! I’ve been waiting for this! I want to analyze information. Here is a basic tool. I’m ready. Let’s go. I don’t want to be fooled anymore.”

The basic condition of a mind is ALERT. It’s only through the introduction of nonsense, contradiction and vagueness that the mind sinks into the mud and gives up and goes on autopilot.

There is a problem for the denizens of higher education: Students armed with logic eventually become independent. They resist indoctrination of any kind. They can perform their own investigations. They can handle information. They can discount and reject nonsense. They see through hidden agendas.

A teacher has to be ready for that and welcome it. Most teachers don’t want to face such intrusions. Open territory, open inquiries, far-ranging questions upset the planned status quo.

What should be the most exciting aspect of learning is taken as a threat.

In this regard, too many teachers are cowards. They can’t face the music of logic.

Higher education is mainly a group of designed set-pieces, whose purpose is arriving at a predictable result. Students armed with logic will rip those pieces to shreds, look at the elements, put them back together in new ways, and expose shortcomings and outright fraud. What students take to be an adventure most teachers look at as a deeply disturbing tornado.

This is the most profound meaning of censorship. The teacher essentially says to the student, “You can’t go there. Don’t think about what you’re thinking about. Don’t ruin the pattern. Don’t go into spaces where the truth is up for grabs. We’re trying to arrive at a destination, and I decide what that destination is.”

True education always contains factors of rebellion against authority—but this isn’t a mindless attack, it’s done with logic and evidence and honed thought. It can be done with a decent attitude and respect, so long as the teacher is willing to open the door to deeper and deeper analysis.

Then the classroom would be an exciting place. Then students would come in with bright eyes and minds. Then all bets would be off. Then teachers would learn new things. Then the atmosphere would crackle with possibility. Then both students and teachers would look forward to discovering what they don’t know. Then the real party would begin.

Then mind control would be a laughable absurdity.

Welcome to real school.

The lights go on. The minds go on.

The world is revealed to be a different place.

The Matrix Revealed

(To read about Jon’s mega-collection, The Matrix Revealed, click here.)

Jon Rappoport

The author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED, EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free NoMoreFakeNews emails here or his free OutsideTheRealityMachine emails here.

Illiteracy leads to censorship

Illiteracy leads to censorship

by Jon Rappoport

March 7, 2018

“…intellectual freedom is a deep-rooted tradition without which our characteristic western culture could only doubtfully exist. From that tradition many of our intellectuals are visibly turning away. They have accepted the principle that a book should be published or suppressed, praised or damned, not on its merits but according to political expediency. And others who do not actually hold this view assent to it from sheer cowardice.” (George Orwell, 1953)

When those who control public discourse, in a nation, see that they are losing to upstarts, that their flimsy ideas are being supplanted by much stronger ideas from these newcomers (who are actually traditionalists), the shocked controllers turn to the more direct strategy of censorship.

In terms of substance, and even popularity, the ministers of truth are losing; so they abandon reasoned discourse altogether. They desert this fertile, competitive, and NECESSARY territory. They no longer debate. They ban.

Among their supporters are crowds of illiterates.

There are many people who, because their education was a vaporous thing, have no interest in the written or spoken word.

The reason is obvious: they can’t read.

Their natural impulse is to make excuses. “Who needs books?” “People who write books are showing their privilege.”

For these excuse-makers, book burning would mean NOTHING. All that matters is: what slogans should I shout?

For the illiterate, a book is a mystery. How could anyone put all the words together and write one? Somehow, the author must have a secret method of downloading the book from an elite source, a cloud, a machine, a trick in their DNA.

A book, a report, an article, a study, an essay—millions of people in “advanced societies” don’t have a clue. When censorship tightens, who cares? It’s just words.

IT’S JUST WORDS.

Long ago, when I taught school, I had an experience I wish many people could share. Twenty children in a 10th-grade classroom. No student was reading up to that grade level. Each student was reading at a DIFFERENT (sub-standard) level. Time to teach reading. How could it be done? It couldn’t.

Elite societal players welcome illiteracy. They love it. It’s one of their cherished goals. Ignorance is good. More than that, illiterate people are easy to convince that repressive censorship isn’t a problem. It’s just something that “happens.”

If you don’t have “the right ideas,” you should be censored.

IT’S JUST WORDS.

Words are useless “things” like tacks and marbles and crayons and paper clips. Who cares?

“Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it. Every concept that can ever be needed, will be expressed by exactly one word, with its meaning rigidly defined and all its subsidiary meanings rubbed out and forgotten.” (George Orwell, “1984”)

At its root, illiteracy becomes a form of reductionism. What can be comprehended, discussed, debated, or reasoned shrinks.

IT’S JUST WORDS.

Illiteracy is more effective than political correctness. Untold numbers of people can’t understand the sentences that are floating and flying by them every day. They register this by building up anger. Unfocused anger. They are perfect fodder for know-nothing social and political movements that requite violence and repression. After all, they were repressed, weren’t they? Weren’t they left hanging out in the wind by their education, their schooling? Now is the time for revenge.

Along the way, censorship becomes a very good thing. They were limited in what they learned; therefore, limit everyone else. Why not?

IT’S JUST WORDS.

There is a sub-text percolating in many, many schools: “All right, you students, this is your education. We’re going to keep you from learning the language. We’re going to hold it back from you. At the same time, we’re going to praise you and push you ahead from grade to grade. You’ll know something is wrong. But you’ll accept what we do to you. It’s easier. You’ll take a ride through school, and then we’ll dump you out into the world. We’re making rebels wholesale. Ignorant rebels. Rebels without the tools for THINKING. You’ll have to find a place where thinking isn’t important. Good luck. Here’s a suggestion. Find a group where all you have to do is yell and throw rocks. Learn what to yell. Demand your right to get EVERYTHING FOR NOTHING. That is all.”

Do you want a piece of interesting news? I can offer it, based on my experience of the past 17 years writing online. The declining system of education creates a vacuum. And into that vacuum, writers who do value language step forward, and they do present actual ideas. This is a large vacuum, so it can accommodate many writers.

They are creating new realities.

And readers show up.

Miracle of miracles.

These writers and readers are the “replacement team.” They are standing in for the colleges and universities and the sloganeers.

They are not censoring themselves or anyone else.

They are proliferating language, not reducing it.

Here is the secret: the history of humans reveals that language does, in fact, expand. It doesn’t lie down and die. It doesn’t wait for know-nothings to catch up. It doesn’t wait for anyone. Poets and novelists and playwrights and essayists find and invent new branches of word and thought.

Their present is the future. They are making the future every day.

And as far as pure ideas go, no matter how hard some people have tried, Jefferson and Madison and Tom Paine and John Adams are not dead yet. Their shaped principles embedded in sentences live on.

If at some point, the entire population of the planet were illiterate, except for four writers, those four would invent a new ocean that can’t be contained—and somehow, readers would show up.

Perhaps you think I’m describing a kind of magic, and maybe I am, but I’m also giving you ironclad fact. It has always been so.

The Internet may have been invented with machine language, but the writers who have appeared on it are multiplying their own language.

They are outdistancing the machine.

They always will.

Exit From the Matrix

(To read about Jon’s mega-collection, Exit From The Matrix, click here.)

Jon Rappoport

The author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED, EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free NoMoreFakeNews emails here or his free OutsideTheRealityMachine emails here.

The State weaponizes education to create ignorance

The State weaponizes education to create ignorance

Independent Education: the crisis and the crossroad

by Jon Rappoport

February 14, 2018

A hundred fifty years ago, at least some Americans recognized that all serious discourse depended on the use of the faculty called Reason.

Formal debate, science, and law all flowed from that source.

A common bond existed in some schools of the day. The student was expected to learn how Reason operates, and for that he was taught the only subject which could lay out, as on a long table, the visible principles: Logic.

This was accepted.

But now, this bond is gone.

The independence engendered by the disciplined study of logic is no longer a desired quality in students.

The classroom, at best, has taken on the appearance of a fact-memorization factory; and we should express grave doubts about the relevance and truth of many of those facts.

A society filled with people who float in the drift of non-logic is a society that declines.

Ideologies that deny individual freedom and independence are welcomed with open arms.

When education becomes so degraded that young students are no longer taught to reason clearly, private citizens have the obligation rebuild that system so the great contribution to Western civilization—logic—is reinstated in its rightful place.

Logic, the key by which true political discourse, science, and law were, in fact, originally developed, must be unearthed.

Logic and reasoning, the capacity to think, the ability to analyze ideas—an ability which has been forgotten, which has been a surpassing virtue in every free civilization—must be restored.

Once a vital thing has been misplaced, buried, and covered over by mindless substitutions, people cannot immediately recognize the original thing has any importance, meaning, or existence.

To declare its importance makes no sense to “the crowd.” They look bewildered and shake their heads. They search their memories and find nothing.

They prefer to adhere to rumor, gossip, accusation, wild speculation, and fear mongering as the primary means of public discourse and assessment of truth.

These habits light their paths. These reflexes give them some degree of pleasure. These idols become their little gods.

To win out over such attachments and superstitions is a job for the long term.

But if our labors yield rewards, we can once again bring import to education, and to the idea of authentic freedom that once cut a wide swathe through darkness.

A string of direct and distracting abuses has saddled our schools. Among them:

* Teachers believe they need to entertain children, in order to capture their attention;

* School systems have substituted the need for public funds in the place of actually supplying a sound education;

* Under the banner of political correctness, school texts have been sanitized to the point of sterility, in order to avoid the possibility of offending, to the slightest degree, any group;

* Students rarely confront information in the form in which it is delivered to people all over the world—they confront substitutes;

* Students have, in this respect, been coddled;

* Subjects such as sex education, which belong in the family, have been delivered into the hands of schools and teachers;

* Indeed, in certain key respects, schools are asked to substitute and stand in for parents;

* Masked as “learning opportunities,” various political agendas have been inserted in school curricula;

* The basis on which every historic document establishing some degree of freedom was debated and drafted—logical thought—has been eliminated from the curriculum as a serious discipline;

* Students are permitted and even encouraged to drift and grasp at superficially attractive ideas and fads of the moment;

* In this respect, freedom has been reinterpreted to mean “mental incapacity and wandering thought”;

* The vast contributions of the ancient Greek civilization, where logic as a crucial subject was born, have been obliterated, minimized or summarized in sterile fashion;

* Logic, the connective tissue which binds together the progression of ideas in rational argument, has been kept away from students;

* The result is the production of shallow minds that cannot see the architecture of reasoning;

* Students, at sea, begin to invent wholly insufficient standards for accepting or rejecting various points of view and supposed authorities;

* Students lose their true independence without ever having gained it;

* The low level of overall literacy in our schools is matched only by the non-comprehension of rational thought;

In the presence of these and other deficiencies and abuses, students are pushed through, from grade to grade, graduation to graduation, as a bureaucratic function, regardless of their ability.

Therefore, citizens of good intent must offload this system. They must assume responsibility for teaching children the missing key to education.

Logic; the capacity to reason, to think lucidly; to separate sense from chatter; to discover deception and avoid being influenced by it; to remain free and independent from the shifting opinions of “the herd”; to maintain personal liberty in the face of every spurious enticement to abandon it; to come to grips with competitive sets of First Principles which will lead to freedom or slavery; these are the stakes in our time.

This is the crossroad.

Choose the path that can bring us the fulfillment of a worthy goal.

Choose reason over vacuous mindlessness.

We, who still know the power of the mind, and who understand how that power can be harnessed to shape independence and liberty, can bring, out of the dust of recent history, an education that truly trains the intellect.

Logic is the foundation of such an education.

If schools, which have become madhouses and factories and toxic medical dispensaries, will not teach it, we can teach it.

The Matrix Revealed

(To read about Jon’s mega-collection, The Matrix Revealed, click here.)

Jon Rappoport

The author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED, EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free NoMoreFakeNews emails here or his free OutsideTheRealityMachine emails here.

Logic and the Constitution

Logic and the Constitution

by Jon Rappoport

January 30, 2018

Note: I include a basic logic course in my collection, The Matrix Revealed. I present an 11-hour audio section, “Analyzing Information in the Age of Disinformation,” in my collection, Power Outside The Matrix.

Yesterday, my article, Logic and the Declaration of Independence, traced the structure of Thomas Jefferson’s formal argument for breaking away from England.

Today’s college students would have a very difficult time perceiving that argument, since they rarely study logic at any depth.

But it would be nearly impossible for them to probe the Constitution and find the basic underlying premises.

The preamble to the Constitution contains rhetoric that gives no warning of what is to come.

Preamble: “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

To exhume the purpose of the Constitution, one would have to read it and study it, and then decide what the document is driving at.

But since logic is no longer taught as a required subject in schools, the door is open to all sorts of bizarre reactions to the presence of ANY information.

Here are four favorites:

One: grab the headline or the title of a document, make up your mind about how you “feel,” and ignore everything else.

Two: Actually read the document until you find a piece of information that appeals to you for any reason; latch on to it, and run with it in any direction. In all cases, the direction will have nothing to do with the intent of the document.

Three: From the moment you begin to read the title of the document, be in a state of “free association.” Take any word or sentence and connect it to an arbitrary thought or feeling, associate that thought with yet another arbitrary thought…and keep going until you become tired or bored.

Four: Ask the most aggressive person you can find what the document is about and accept whatever he says.

You might be surprised at how many people use these four “methods of analysis.”

The very idea that the author of the document is making a central point doesn’t really register. And certainly, the notion that the author is providing evidence for the central point and reasoning his way from A to B to C is alien.

A college liberal education? These days it could be imparted in a matter of weeks, simply by hammering a small set of values into students’ skulls—along with requisite guilt and fear at the prospect of wandering off the reservation.

Logic as a subject is viewed with grave suspicion, as if it might involuntarily take a person down the wrong track and dump him in a politically incorrect ditch—a fate to be avoided at all costs.

Therefore, the practice of rational analysis is on the way out. Too risky. Besides, the preferred method of dealing with opponents is screaming at them, shoving them off stage, and whining about “being triggered.”

Studying the Constitution reveals that its driving force is: the limiting of centralized power.

Checks and balances, separation of powers, enumerating federal powers and yielding all other powers to the individual States and the people—it’s all there, but today’s students would have a hard time seeing it, much less understanding WHY.

Today, the centralized federal government (and its corporate collusions/partnerships) is an awesome colossus. Most people take that as a given.

Unlike the Declaration of Independence, which announces every move it makes and explains why, the Constitution reveals its purpose and method from the inside, so to speak, after analyzing it.

The Constitution was a pact among the former colonies, the newly formed States. The States were not eager to submit to a central government.

The abusive experience of Europe, behind the new citizens, was Rule From Above, by tyrants. Individual rights and private property had been hard won. They had to be protected at all costs.

So: bind up the central government; set one branch against another; allow only certain specified centralized powers; leave the rest to the States; permit as much individual liberty as possible. In fact, individual liberty was at the heart of the document.

Naïve students, demanding purity and perfection in the document, will never find it. For example, the Constitution was fully ratified in 1790, and slavery was formally abolished in 1865.

The logic of the Constitution was a two-step: limit federal power; these are the ways to accomplish it.

One could argue for or against each piece—but first he would have to recognize the pieces were there. These days, attaining that recognition is a serious problem.

Who would want to teach logic to students? What a waste of time. The purpose of education these days is injecting values and slogans and attitudes; and associating those values with attractive images. For that, you don’t need a mind. You only need mush that can be shaped.

And after what passes for a high school education, the mush is there. It has no clues about processes of thought.

Nevertheless, just suppose a teacher wanted to go where no one has gone for a hundred years or so. How would he start? Where would he start?

At the bottom.

Find a coherent newspaper article about politics. Have the students read it. Then ask them: what does the first paragraph state? What is it saying?

You may be surprised at the variety of opinion.

“It says Martians will be here soon.”

“It says President Obama was born in Hawaii.”

“It says cooking rice is easy.”

“It says I’m triggered and vulnerable.”

Carry on a discussion for as long as it takes, until most of the students know what the first paragraph actually states. This may be a half-hour, a week, a month. Who knows?

Repeat the process with each paragraph of the article. If that takes a year, so be it, because you can’t move further until students understand the text. I know that is a mystical and esoteric notion, but accept it on an experimental basis.

Next step: ask the students whether the author of the article is trying to make an overall point. Ask them what that point is.

“His point is he doesn’t like working-class people.”

“He loves cats.”

“He wants everybody to move to Mars.”

“He’s political.”

“He’s asking us to give money to Marco Rubio.”

Your work is cut out for you. Keep going until the fog clears. Have the students read the article over and over until most of them see the actual point the author is trying to make.

Then—how did the author try to convince you his point was correct?

Then—did you see a hole in his attempt to convince you? A gap? A wrong move?

This is the general sequence of steps. Basically, you’re sticking the students’ noses in the text. Again and again. You’re focusing them on specifics. You’re showing them the difference between their own opinions and random associations and what the author is saying.

You’re doing the one thing they’ve avoided doing. You’re standing in for every incompetent teacher they’ve ever had. You’re reversing years of desultory derangement in classrooms.

You’re making students more intelligent. That’s a very tall order. It takes commitment. If you don’t have it, get out of the business.

Mainstream news is a wonderful source for non-logic.

Logic topples arbitrary authority.

Logic allows you to move inside a complex argument. Once inside, you can give the argument a haircut and see its essence.

The interesting thing is: once people actually know what an author is saying; once they know what conclusion he’s reaching; once they know how he’s getting there; they can see the flaws and the omissions and the insupportable inferences.

They can see the line of reasoning, from beginning to end.

The lights go on.

A heretofore mysterious territory comes into focus.

The differences between fact, lie, assumption, argument, polemic, and propaganda emerge and the mind begins to breathe.

Perhaps for the first time.

Beginning in ancient Greece, coming up through the Middle Ages, and into the 19th century, logic was one aspect of education called the Trivium (“the three”): in sequence, a student learned grammar, then logic, then rhetoric.

Except in scattered places, where people have consciously instituted a revival of the Trivium, that integrated method of teaching is gone now.

Instead, in primary and middle schools, we have superficial coasting through many academic subjects, minus the necessary exercises and drills to ensure that students grasp material. In other words, we have imposed ADHD.

Finally, studying logic gives a student an appreciation of consequences. For example, a politician announces a high-flying generalization, as a plank of his platform. Two things ought to follow. The student does his best to translate that generality into specific terms which actually mean something. Then he traces what would happen if the plank were, in fact, put into effect; what would the consequences specifically entail? There are always consequences—it’s just that most people never see them or think about them, because they haven’t the foggiest idea about how to flesh them out and map them.

Logic: one of the great contributions to civilization, left to die on the vine.

It needs to be resurrected, in full flower.

power outside the matrix

(To read about Jon’s collection, Power Outside The Matrix, click here.)

Jon Rappoport

The author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED, EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free NoMoreFakeNews emails here or his free OutsideTheRealityMachine emails here.

Logic and the Declaration of Independence

Logic and the Declaration of Independence

—What are your premises? State them. What implications flow from your premises? State them. What conclusion do you draw? State it. In a bygone era, this used to be called a formal logical argument—

by Jon Rappoport

January 29, 2018

Note: My collection, The Matrix Revealed, contains a basic logic course. And my collection, Power Outside The Matrix, contains an extensive 11-hour audio presentation, Analyzing Information in the Age of Disinformation.

Logic, these days, has been replaced in schools with a mind-control apparatus that involves the following:

EVERY POINT OF VIEW IS EQUAL.

EVERYBODY HAS TO CONTRIBUTE TO THE WHOLE.

TRUE CRITICAL THINKING, WHICH IS THE EXCLUSIVE TERRITORY OF THE INDIVIDUAL, LEAVES PEOPLE OUT OF THE GROUP AND IS THEREFORE PREJUDICIAL.

If you favor this new formulation and think it’s useful, I have condos on Jupiter for sale.

The point of modern education, more and more, is:

“Good people belong to the group.”

“The Group is everything.”

“If you don’t belong to the Group, you have a mental disorder.”

Why is all this emphasis put on the Group?

The answer to that question also gives you the reason logic isn’t taught in schools anymore:

The independent self-sufficient individual is being phased out.

The independent individual who knows how to think and make lucid judgments on his own is a threat to the EMERGING RELIGION OF GLOBALISM.

Some people think education has been hijacked for the purpose of training children to become robotic workers for the State. That’s partly true, but education is also the proving ground for the religion of the Group.

This religion doesn’t need or want logic. Logic would be disruptive. It would differentiate one student from another.

A few years ago, I spoke to a teacher who was introducing his class to logic. He told me, “These are very bright kids. They’re all going to college. They said they couldn’t learn logic. They couldn’t do it. They had some kind of mental block.”

As we talked further, it became obvious that the mental block was an idea of THE GROUP. These kids had already been indoctrinated into “cooperative thought.” They instinctively realized that, if they studied logic, the Collective would break apart. Each student would have to stand on his own, and that prospect was frightening.

A person either wants to think for himself—and knows how to—or he prefers the hazy hive-like existence of belonging to something that is less than he is.

It’s that simple.

Several years ago, I came across a letter to the editor of Commentary Magazine, from its January 1979 issue. The author was a Thomas Jefferson scholar, Wilbur Samuel Howell.

Howell made several key points. As a college student, Jefferson studied philosophy and logic under Professor William Small, at William and Mary. Small had come to the college from Aberdeen, Scotland, where he had studied under William Duncan, a renowned logician and author of Elements of Logick. Indeed, Jefferson later remarked that Professor Small had gone a long way toward shaping his life.

Therefore, it’s no surprise that the Jefferson-authored Declaration of Independence would adhere to a logical structure. Indeed, the Declaration is a kind of argument from first premises, through to a conclusion.

I went back and read the Declaration, and I’ll open up its logical structure.

It begins with this:

“When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.”

Jefferson, in this prologue, indicates that the people should state their reasons for separating from a ruling power. Before he goes on to do that, he enunciates his first premises.

All men have rights, and to secure them, they create governments.

Second, the people have the authority to abolish any ruler that tries to destroy those rights, and, in its place, the people should institute a new government.

Third, when a long history of tyrannical abuse proves that the old government cannot be corrected, the people have a duty to overthrow it.

Here is the relevant text:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. –Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.”

What remains is for Jefferson to list the abuses of the British Crown; to prove, in other words, that the King has, in fact, brought on such a stream of tyrannical actions.

Well, here are the abuses—the first 20 of a longer list:

“He has refused his assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

“He has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

“He has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of representation in the legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

“He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

“He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

“He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the legislative powers, incapable of annihilation, have returned to the people at large for their exercise; the state remaining in the meantime exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

“He has endeavored to prevent the population of these states; for that purpose obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither, and raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands.

“He has obstructed the administration of justice, by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers.

“He has made judges dependent on his will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

“He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.

“He has kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies without the consent of our legislature.

“He has affected to render the military independent of and superior to civil power.

“He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation:

“For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

“For protecting them, by mock trial, from punishment for any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these states:

“For cutting off our trade with all parts of the world:

“For imposing taxes on us without our consent:

“For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury:

“For transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offenses:

“For abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighboring province, establishing therein an arbitrary government, and enlarging its boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule in these colonies…”

At this point, Jefferson makes it clear that the colonists have tried, without success, to correct these tyrannical abuses through peaceful means. They are not acting in haste:

“In every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms: our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

“Nor have we been wanting in attention to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity.”

Jefferson then announces his conclusion, based on the prologue, the original premises of his argument, and the examples he has cited to show that the heart of these premises is true:

“We, therefore, the representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress, assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name, and by the authority of the good people of these colonies, solemnly publish and declare, that these united colonies are, and of right ought to be free and independent states; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as free and independent states, they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent states may of right do. And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.”

—Fire, passion, even poetry, held within the flow of a logical progression.

Jefferson was not only a devoted student of logic, he wanted to make the great case for freedom and independence by using its power.

In his mind, freedom and logic were connected.

If in our schools, in 2017, logic as a distinct subject has been reduced to paltry terms, how are students able to grasp the majestic nature of freedom, as expressed in the Declaration? How are they able to understand that living in freedom is more than vaguely drifting from one slogan to another, one addled piece of political rhetoric to another?

Note: James Madison, thought of by many as the father of the Constitution, studied logic intensely at the College of New Jersey. The course followed the pattern laid down in a famous 17th-century book, Logic or the Art of Thinking.

The Matrix Revealed

(To read about Jon’s mega-collection, The Matrix Revealed, click here.)

Jon Rappoport

The author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED, EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free NoMoreFakeNews emails here or his free OutsideTheRealityMachine emails here.