Nullification of Federal Power

by Jon Rappoport

December 18, 2010

The US Constitution was written to establish a list of federal powers, and to reserve, for the states and the people, everything else.

In 1798, Thomas Jefferson pondered this matter, because the Congress had just passed the four Alien and Sedition Acts, which he opposed.

Jefferson maintained these Acts were illegal, because the federal government had no power to create them.

Secretly, he authored a text that became known as the Kentucky Resolution. Its opening statement pronounced two general principles: the individual states maintained all powers not specifically granted, in the Constitution, to the federal government, and the federal government was not the final judge of how far its own powers extended.

“…whensoever the general government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force: that to this compact each State acceded as a State, and is an integral party, its co-States forming, as to itself, the other party: that the [central] government created by this compact was not made the exclusive or final judge of the extent of the powers delegated to itself; since that would have made its discretion, and not the Constitution, the measure of its powers; but that, as in all other cases of compact among powers having no common judge, each party [each state] has an equal right to judge for itself, as well of infractions as of the mode and measure of redress.”

According to Jefferson and his allies, the states could nullify laws passed by the federal government, after judging them to be an exercise of illegitimate central power.

Now, in 2010, groups of Americans are resuscitating these principles. One objective is the nullification of ObamaCare. Twenty states are pursuing this course and claiming that compulsory national health insurance is a matter beyond the scope of the federal government.

Medical marijuana and gun ownership rights are two more issues in the spotlight.

But these modern nullification groups are not limiting themselves to campaigns against specific federal laws and regulations. They are enunciating the general principle of nullification.

Each state, through passage of a law, for example, can refuse to honor or obey a federal law that represents unconstitutionally taken central power.

Behind all these actions is a point about the composition of the Union. Was it meant to be a tight and uniform structure, or was it intended to be a loose federation, in which some federal laws were obeyed by some states and nullified by others?

In the current political climate, after decades of increasing federal control, it appears to many Americans that a loose federation would represent sheer chaos and unworkable government.

But is that an authentic perception, or just a nervous complaint based on habit and passive acceptance of top-heavy power?

For example, suppose California relaxed its attitude toward treatment of cancer by means other than chemotherapy, surgery, and radiation, while New York maintained the stranglehold on the three big therapies? Would this be untenable? Would the union collapse overnight, or would the free market deal with the differences?

Suppose Georgia rigorously enforced all laws concerning marijuana possession, while Colorado ignored them?

Suppose Massachusetts demanded that every resident pay toward mandated health insurance, while Texas decided that health insurance was an individual choice?

Does diversity in the states amount to rebellion against all that is American, or is it just an expression of free will?

Many pundits claim that, although state nullification of federal laws is well intended, and may actually be a good idea, it would never work, because the federal government would send in agents to enforce its laws.

Really? Suppose the Texas legislature and the governor decide that ObamaCare is unconstitutional and they strike it down? And suppose federal troops are sent in? Do you think the rest of America would sit by passively, or would there be a huge outcry against Washington power, as the governor and Texas legislators are carted off to jail? I’m not talking about armed insurrection. I’m talking about 24/7 news outlets and the internet and tweets and the power of the voices of the people.

And suppose Texas didn’t stand alone. Suppose 15 other states nullified ObamaCare. Would we have 15 federal-troop sorties into those states to make arrests?

Ah, but you say, none of this would ever happen. It’s a fantasy. To which I reply: everything is a fantasy until it happens.

“Hello, this is CNN State Watch, reporting on the week’s results in state legislatures. After Monday’s passage of the federal medical-speech law, making it a crime to oppose the administration of vaccines, twenty-two states promptly nullified the law. Here is the list of those states, headed up by Ohio, where the governor issued an executive order only hours after the president signed the legislation in the Rose Garden. The president stated that he expected a greater percentage of states to strike down the new law, and was gratified by the result. He’s spending the weekend at Camp David, where he and the first family will be watching the 3-D version of Lady Gaga Goes to Mars…”

Jon Rappoport

The author of two explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED and EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29^th District of California. 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 www.nomorefakenews.com

RAPPOPORT ON RADIO X

DECEMBER 15, 2010. Yesterday, I did a one-hour commentary on nullification of excessive power and a history of America as it might have been and still could be. It’s one of the best commentaries I’ve done since I started my show, and I recommend it to you.

www.ProgressiveRadioNetwork.com

Click on the archive and scroll down to my name. The archived shows usually take a couple of days to post after the live broadcast.

I’m on with guests and commentary every Wednesday at 4-5PM PACIFIC TIME.

JON RAPPOPORT

www.nomorefakenews.com

WHEN HEALING MEETS MARKETING

THE PERFECT STORM

By Jon Rappoport

www.nomorefakenews.com

DECEMBER 5, 2010. About ten years ago, I decided that the medical cartel could become the most dangerous of all power groups on the planet. I have not changed my mind.

My decision is based on looking up the road 40 or 50 years and inferring what the picture will look like then.

It’s clear to me that drug companies, as they carve up markets and create new markets, are eagerly anticipating the day when every human, from cradle to grave—actually from inside the womb—has the status of Patient.

A person is born a patient and dies a patient. And in between, he receives 40 or 50 key diagnoses of physical and mental diseases/disorders and takes prescribed drug and surgery treatments.

More than that, though, he is stamped with the label, Patient, and he learns that everyone is in the same boat. “We’re all patients, this is a medical world, and it’s normal to be disabled in some way.”

People become proud, yes, proud to be victims. They wear their diagnoses as badges of honor. If you can’t see this trend, you’re not looking.

And universal health care insurance guarantees continuous treatment all the way along the line.

Every medical diagnosis becomes an excuse not to perform, not to excel, not to pursue big goals with large ambition.

Nowhere in the search to gain recognition as a victim do circumstances conspire so well as in the medical arena. It’s perfect. There’s no argument. The doctor told you you have X disease. That’s that. It’s not political. It’s not agenda-driven. It’s science. The proof is laid out on a silver platter. You ARE a victim.

In the coming future, every move a person makes, every step he takes will come under the umbrella of the doctor.

And, again, the main supporter of this system will be the patient himself. That’s how beautiful the marketing is.

In case you’ve been living in a cave for the last 30 years, drug companies and their researchers can invent any vague disease label they want to—and then they can invent five or six sub-categories of the label—and they can set out rules on how to diagnose each sliver of the label—and of course the doctors will make these diagnoses and prescribe drugs. It’s marketing and “healing” at the same time.

Parents who don’t have a clue will submit their children to this system—especially if the government pays for it—and the children will grow up trained to think of themselves as patients/victims…and the only contest will be: who has the most drastic diagnoses and treatments? Who can most proudly wear the badge of honor as Patient?

“Last month, they had to remove my head for five minutes while they fixed my brain.”

“Wow. Well, they put me in a body cast for three months and I couldn’t move, except for my left thumb.”

Cradle to grave.

If you go back and read Huxley’s Brave New World again, you’ll notice the factor of “patient pride.” It isn’t just that the society is controlled, the citizens are idealistic about it.

That’s where the victim industry is heading.

Against it, we have, what?

A little thing called individual freedom. Which includes the right to refuse medical treatment, no matter who prescribes it under what regulations.

People imagine that this right is some arcane matter best debated in medical-ethics journals. It’s an obscure curio.

They couldn’t be more wrong.

As I’ve been writing, the ObamaCare plan contains the seeds of a future in which, by law, the citizen will have less freedom to determine his own medical fate. The walls will gradually close in.

The Founders knew what they were talking about when they warned of the incursion of government and the loss of freedom. At every crossroad, since then, the issue of freedom has resurfaced as the unavoidable key factor.

Well, we’re at one of those crossroads again.

JON RAPPOPORT

Jon is the author of LOGIC AND ANALYSIS, a unique course for home schools and adults. To inquire: qjrconsulting@gmail.com

PART TWO, SERIOUS CONSULTING

WHAT IS “CHANNELING?”

DECEMBER 3, 2010. Based on the response to my last article about my consulting practice, I’m offering several follow-ups. Here is the first.

When you create, in art, in invention, in life, you move past conventional borders and systems.

In creation, you become different. You slip into new territories. Nothing is walled off from you. You can go anywhere, including places that don’t yet exist.

If there were laws against this sort of excursion, you would be called a master thief, a master spy.

You can devise theorems and axioms, principles and premises—but they are all provisional, and eventually you simply break into new territory. There are no permanent categories. Your work becomes a scintillating absorption, and you move through layers and veils and themes of emotion—but you aren’t the victim as you may be in daily life.

What is given to us as the shape of reality becomes the occasion and the platform for new flight into the upper-conscious layer of experience.

Beyond a certain point, success opens out like a gigantic network of interconnecting streams of energy.

You give up that sense of false certainty from which only a few drops of dry wisdom can be squeezed. You gain access to fertile energies.

There is no clarity you can’t grasp and no mystery you can’t embrace.

And why is this so?

Because at some point, like a tree trunk that spawns forked branches, you accept the notion that life is growth into the New. It is discovery on a scale you always wanted.

This is the prospect for adventurous minds.

In my consulting practice, I set my sights on high achievements. In other words, I discard old themes and instead operate according to what anyone, freed from blocks, would desire.

At the same time, I recognize that people hold themselves back, and they raise doubts to themselves about their own best dreams and ambitions. By identifying these blocks, it is possible to move past them, in the same way that a navigator can surpass obstacles in flight.

Now we come to a very important point. I will try to describe it clearly. We have all heard about “channeling.” The idea that some people can transmit what they receive from “other sources.” It is clear that in many or most cases, this is a phenomenon where a person is actually “listening to” a part of his own consciousness.

He is listening to a part of himself which, much of the time, is separated from his daily life and thoughts.

Here is what is happening: At some point, the person has decided that his upper-conscious layer of comprehension and creativity does not work in the world. It doesn’t fit in. It doesn’t have a function to which he can dedicate himself.

For many reasons, this decision is made. So be it.

So it appears there is a split. On the one hand, there is ordinary experience and all it contains. And then there are those rare moments when the person has glimpses of this upper-conscious layer.

He doesn’t quite know what to do. He isn’t equipped to explore this split.

But in fact, the upper-conscious layer is as much a part of him as his arm or leg is.

And if he could access and inhabit the upper-conscious layer more often, he would understand this.

That is the goal of my consulting.

Healing the rift or split between ordinary consciousness and the upper layer requires several steps.

One, identify a central direction in which the person would like to advance—for which he has a passion.

Two, identify the key blocks or obstacles that have prevented this progress, so that, as a navigator, he can surpass them.

Three, launch an ongoing process in which, by use of certain techniques, he can access the upper-conscious layer far more often and recognize it as Self.

I have compressed my work so that these three elements can be laid out in one session.

The techniques I offer to each person—depending on his/her situation—are specific and can be done by him on a daily basis, on into the future.

Gaining access to the upper-conscious layer opens the door to greater imagination, greater creativity, greater joy, greater success. These are not merely words. They are experiences that form the basis for a wider, newer life.

JON RAPPOPORT

for inquiries: qjrconsulting@gmail.com

www.nomorefakenews.com

SERIOUS CONSULTING

DECEMBER 2, 2010. Most people don’t want to access their own imagination. They want to use the products of other people’s imagination. That’s the limit of their courage.

As many of you know, I have been working with private clients for years. This type of consulting is unique.

It focuses on imagination and power.

Recently, this work has escalated.

Some people, surveying the economic scene, have realized that, more than ever, they need to tap into imagination as the primary force for shaping a future that frees them from constant minute-to-minute worrying.

These people have made a leap.

They not only want new solutions. They want a new way to approach their own desire and their own vision.

My consulting work doesn’t present patterns of success to people. It doesn’t present a picture and say “copy this.”

Imagination equals power.

Again, here is the problem. Most people won’t commit to their own imaginations. They just won’t. They want to access the products of other people’s imaginations. That’s their farthest reach. That’s their limit.

And do you know the consequence of that?

Well, think of it this way. If a person denies his own freedom, he has a tendency to want to limit the freedom of others. In some cases, he wants to destroy it.

The same condition applies to imagination. If a person denies his own, he tends to deny imagination even exists. And if he sees it anywhere, he derides it, tries to step on it.

He is stepping on the most powerful force there is. He’ll gain nothing by it—except to further diminish himself.

My work involves liberating the power of imagination.

I find great success when a person commits to expanding his own conception of how far and wide he can create a future.

If he can’t make that commitment, if he piles up one excuse after another, he will sink like a stone.

If he looks for a cloud of magic to descend on him and transform his life, and if, in the meantime, he waits and waits and does nothing, he loses.

If he obtains some kind of inspiration from lofty words, but never moves off the dime, and instead merely observes “the passing show,” he experiences a sense of decay.

This commitment I refer to—does it involve struggle? Of course it does. Nothing truly important comes without effort. This puts some people off. They associate struggle with drudgery, because that has been their experience. But work in the direction of making imagination manifest in the world is uplifting, fiercely satisfying, and ultimately joyous.

JON RAPPOPORT

www.nomorefakenews.com

for inquiries: qjrconsulting@gmail.com

MEDICAL DIAGNOSIS: CONFUSION

NOVEMBER 23, 2010.  These days, doctors often run antibody tests on patients to see if they have a particular disease.

What is an antibody test?

In the simplest terms, it is aimed at detecting a person’s immune system responding to the presence of a specific germ.

A doctor suspects you have disease X, which is caused by virus Y.  He takes a blood sample, and that sample is examined for the presence of antibodies which are specific to virus Y.

If you test positive for the presence of those antibodies, he says you have disease X.

However, there is a vaccine that is supposed to protect a person from disease X, and this vaccine does what?

IT PRODUCES ANTIBODIES SPECIFIC TO VIRUS Y.

In that case, you are said to be immune from virus Y.

That’s right.

This is what is called a contradiction. 

In the first instance, when your body naturally produces antibodies to virus Y, the doctor tells you you have disease X.

But if the vaccine produces those same antibodies, you’re said to be immune to disease X.

In purely practical terms, this contradiction is good for business.  Medical business.  On the one hand, they diagnose more cases of a disease.  On the other hand, using the same logic to obtain an opposite conclusion, they sell more vaccines.

Have fun with the contradiction.  Chew it over.  Maybe you’ll decide we’ve humans have evolved to the point where we don’t have to pay any attention to logic.  Maybe not.

JON RAPPOPORT

www.nomorefakenews.com

Jon is the author of LOGIC AND ANLYSIS, a unique course for home schools and adults.  To inquire: qjrconsulting@gmail.com

A VACCINE CHALLENGE TO MAINSTREAM RESEARCHERS

HAS A TRUE CONTROLLED STUDY ON A VACCINE EVER BEEN DONE?

By Jon Rappoport   

NOVEMBER 22, 2010.  Before I describe and issue the challenge, I have to state that most controlled tests of drugs never meet adequate standards of science.

There are flaws and gaps and holes.

How should a controlled trial be done? 

Let us suppose we are going to test the safety and efficacy of a new vaccine to prevent X, a disease researchers claim is caused by Virus Y.

There will be two groups.  The first group of 700 children will receive the vaccine.  The second group of 700 will receive a neutral harmless solution.

No one operating the trial will know which group actually gets the vaccine and which group gets the “placebo.”

Here are the conditions that should be met in the study.

First, we must establish that disease X is really caused by Virus Y.  A third group of 700 children who have been diagnosed with X are tested.  In at least 90% of the 700, Virus Y must be found by direct isolation.  This means no indirect tests are run.  (No antibody assays or PCR-type assays are acceptable.)  Technicians must find Virus Y in at least 630 children. 

Second, in these 630 children, technicians must find Virus Y in sufficient quantities to make it obvious that the virus can cause harm.  Mere traces of Y are not enough.  You need an army to make war on the body. 

I will tell you that this first step alone, this first condition, will disqualify the rest of the study in many instances.  It will turn out there is insufficient evidence to maintain that researchers have found a specific disease entity caused by a specific germ.

If, however, this first condition is met, we go on to phase two.

This second condition assures us that the two groups of 700 children are initially comparable.

The general immune-system status of all 1400 children must be matched.  We can’t have an overbalance of immuno-compromised children in one group, for example. 

Likewise, the general nutritional status of the two groups must be evenly matched.  This is common sense, as well.  If 500 children in the first group are eating a junk-food diet, as opposed to 100 in the second group, that would be a major flaw.  Tests for nutritional status would be conducted.

The medical and medical-drug histories of all the children in both groups would be brought to the table.  We need to make sure these histories are clean, because we don’t want children weakened by such past treatment to take part in the trial at all.

As closely as possible, we want to make sure that children who have suffered adverse effects of environmental chemicals are ruled out of the study.

Now, we give the vaccine or the placebo to all 1400 children.

The children are closely monitored for 18 months, during which time all possible adverse events are recorded.  These would include any episodes of illness, fever, mental imbalance, and, of course, any cases of disease X that arise in either group.

At the end of the 18-month period, the frequency of all possible adverse events are investigated, and we have a picture of the placebo group versus the vaccine group.

We continue to monitor both groups for the next five years, to record how many cases of disease X occur in the placebo group versus the vaccine group.

Then we will know something.  Did the vaccine work to prevent disease X?  Was the placebo group just as successful, or more successful, in warding off X? 

(I will grant that markers and tests for initial immune status and nutritional status and definitions of vaccine-related adverse events—all these factors are up for grabs and controversies.  But unless these matters are settled, no accurate studies can be done.)

Here is my assertion: this kind of controlled study on vaccines has never been done.  It has never been done for any vaccine anywhere, at any time.

And I have no reason to believe it will ever be done.

If you can show me the existence of this kind of controlled study on a vaccine, send me the citation.

If none exists, we can say that the kind of test which would assure us vaccines are safe and effective has never been carried out.

Of course, researchers are fond of arguing back that the reduction of infectious diseases in populations by vaccines is an established fact.  Sorry.  There is a literature that claims most, if not all, infectious diseases were dying out before vaccines were introduced.  And if a disease that was vaccinated against did not appear later on, but other strange and troubling and severe disease conditions surfaced, we are not assured the vaccine was safe.  Nor should we be.

JON RAPPOPORT

www.nomorefakenews.com

Jon is the author of LOGIC AND ANALYSIS, a unique course for home schools and adults.  For inquiries: qjrconsulting@gmail.com

WHEN DOES GOVERNMENT STOP GROWING?

NOVEMBER 22, 2010.  If history is any judge, government keeps growing.  It’s a tree whose nutritional needs are fed by money—and it can create money, so it feeds itself.

I’m not aware of any organism in the natural world that manufactures its own food.

Of course, eventually everybody looks around and realizes that the invention of money out of thin air has reached an impasse. 

Suppose, as national governments face bankruptcy because no one takes their money seriously, they will be forced to cut services and pensions.  Will that stop their growth?

Or will they find other ways to expand their functions?

Such as criminal arrests, prosecutions, new laws defining a wider range of what is criminal, and then more arrests and prosecutions…

Governments never seem to catch on to the idea that they aren’t like businesses.  A company, of course, wants to expand.  But a government—at least the republican form of constitutional government—is supposed to be acutely aware of its mandated limits.  It’s supposed to operate within a narrow context.

However, it doesn’t work out that way.  Government links its own survival to the notion of getting bigger.

In America, the judiciary was tasked with assuring that constitutional limits would prevail.  That idea went the way of an extinct species a long time ago.

Now we have government as a protection racket:  “If you the citizen will depend on us, we’ll protect you.  If you can’t see your need to rely on is, we’ll invent new ways you have to, until you see the light.”

As this process develops, the idea of freedom and what it means begins to disappear.  Well, it would, because freedom isn’t about government protection. 

Dependence replaces freedom.  Dependence needs a public relations team.  The idea has to be dressed up and explained in a way that motivates and even inspires people—because it doesn’t work so well when you come right out and say to people, “We want your dependence.”  It doesn’t have a proper ring to it.  It doesn’t sell.

So the PR “humanitarian” element comes in.  “It’s good for everyone if we all rely on each other.  We all need each other.  We’re a great big village of eight billion people.  No object or person exists apart from every other object or person.” 

People like this.  They believe it’s true.  It feels like a religion.

“You see, it isn’t about government getting bigger and enforcing dependence and redistributing wealth.  No, no.  It’s about government acting in line with a universal law.  Interdependence.  We’re all in this together.  Government is just a part of the equation.  Government, therefore, is humane.” 

Government is, well, a church.  It’s an aid operation.

We must all save everybody, and government is our best vehicle for doing that.  Sure.

There will be the usual parent-child disputes and misunderstandings.  Of course.  That’s natural.  You may not like what government does on Tuesday, and then next week, on Thursday, you may not like what it does.  But all in all, we recognize we’re in this together, and if we try to cut government out of the equation, through some misguided sense of independence, the parent will have to slap our wrists, to remind us of the universal principle…

The government tells us that even with a money crunch, even with a reduction of services, it will somehow find new ways to help us.  It won’t desert us. 

And after all, who cares about freedom anymore?  That’s a worn-out concept.  It doesn’t have zing left. It’s flat, like an old bottle of carbonated water.  Once upon a time, it was bracing.  But these ideas don’t last.  They come and go.  Isn’t that what it’s all about?  Trends.  Fads.  Here today, gone tomorrow.  Freedom was a gimmick.  It sold, and then it didn’t sell.  So we have to find something new and shiny.  Marketing operates that way.  You hype a product for a while, and then people tire of it.  So you have to change the packaging.  Or you put nuts in it, and sprinkle it with sugar.  You make it low-fat.  Then low-carb.  Then gluten-free.  Instead of sugar, you say cane sugar.  Then you discontinue the line altogether.  You shift to another product. 

Take the war in Afghanistan.  At first, it was about going after Bin Laden.  Then it was the Taliban.  Then, when we went back in, it was about building a sustainable government.  Then it was about helping the villagers.  The soldiers were really social workers with food stamps.  Freedom?  American freedom?  A minor PR point.

Government is marketing.

JON RAPPOPORT

www.nomorefakenews.com

Jon is the author of LOGIC AND ANALYSIS, a unique 18-lesson course for home schools and adults.  To inquire: qjrconsulting@gmail.com

TSA AIRPORT PAT-DOWNS

NOVEMBER 18, 2010.  In case you’re living inside a tree, I’ll mention that US airports are now doing full body scans of passengers, and apparently there is a radiation risk, or there might be a radiation risk, or there is no risk, or the risk is “minimal.”

I found a TSA employee a few blocks away from LAX selling tinfoil hats.  Business was brisk.  But that’s another story.

If you decline the scan, because you don’t like the health odds, or because you object to having your nude photo taken and distributed on the internet, you can opt for the pat-down.

This is a same-sex grope.  Unless the TSA employee is a transsexual.  In that case, you construct your own definition of what is happening.

Now, having read stories about disgruntled passengers who didn’t appreciate their “junk” being shaken by strangers in an airport, I have come to the following conclusion:

Soon, there will be an incident of sexual intercourse.

And the TSA employee who carried out this form of inspection will say, “It depends on what the definition of ‘is’ is.”

Someone with a cell phone will capture the act on video, and it will garner 500 million hits in the first six hours.

ABC will win the sweepstakes, and having paid the victim four million dollars, Diane Sawyer will do the sensitive interview.

Drudge will discover the victim is a divorced mom with three kids from Cleveland—and moonlights on the side as a hooker.

She will say (but not to Diane Sawyer), “That was the most expensive trick I ever turned—by a long shot.”

Diane, however, will offer, in a low breathy voice: “We know at least one terrorist who had a bomb in his anus, so we must ask, was it only vaginal sex in the airport?”

And the mom/hooker will reply: “If I had gone for the anal, you guys would be paying me ten million for the interview.”

Homeland Security will, upon consideration, issue a release: “Sex is probably the best way to determine whether a terrorist intends to board a plane.”

During this entire episode, President Obama will be visiting US troops in Guam.  He will spend a week with a little-known tribe rehearsing a rain dance.

Hillary Clinton will be aboard a space shuttle orbiting Earth.

In Washington DC, several groups will issue statements demanding a gay and lesbian pat-down option. 

Unobserved, Osama Bin Laden will fly commercial from JFK to LAX, making stops in Columbus, Houston, Phoenix, and San Diego.

An Al Jazeera story will escape notice: “Today, leaders of the Wahabi sect announced the launch of a new air service in the United States.  Traversing a variety of local routes, the commercial planes will accept only Islamic passengers, and will be flown and serviced by Islamic crews.  Explosion Airlines is set to debut in March of 2011.”

JON RAPPOPORT

www.nomorefakenews.com

BOWING TO THE LEAST

NOVEMBER 17, 2010.  Don your robes, pick up your candles, and shuffle down the aisle of the new faith.    

A central aspect of education has become one of serving the needs of children who only know they want to be entertained and catered to.

These are children who have taken on the appearance of miniature adults who sense that society has swung their way.  Their nameless and faceless battle has been won.

They have achieved a status which has no relationship to achievement. 

From the point of view of the adults, who need to justify and rationalize their capitulation, this is a “special generation.”  These children have come into this world with astonishing wisdom.  They are the prophets and deliverers of the future.  They have been touched by a miracle the universe has granted.

Schools must be built that acknowledge that fact and make learning beautiful.  After all, small gods will be sitting in the seats of rooms.

And if, by some error of judgment, the facilities are not up to the highest standards of comfort and accommodation, education will be stifled and set back.

Rather than delivering the substance and details of subjects, the schools should be technological temples devoted to the transmission, by osmosis, of the blooming fruits of the culture.

Perhaps I am exaggerating.  But only because the ideal has not yet been reached. 

How can a course be taught, if the textbook is old and a bit ragged—when, all around us, we have glossy cars and razor-thin laptops and little buds for the ears?  Why would children so insulted want to learn?

If a point to be taught in a classroom requires that 30 or 40 examples be strained over by the students, four or five will do, because to push on further would be inelegant and tiring.  The teacher would “lose” the students.

Somehow, a course needs to be instructed so that teacher and student can skip around from one interesting tidbit to another, never tempting the onset of dreaded boredom.

Education is there to serve the needs of the children.  This simple formula must be understood and interpreted to mean that the impulses of the children come first, and through that mesh the teacher will navigate, assuming that the child is already brilliant and correctly instinctive. 

If the teacher stumbles and fails, it is his fault.  He transgressed.  He violated the native intelligence of his pupils.  He must retrace his steps and start again.

Not only in education, but throughout society, serving the needs of others is the prime directive.  The only argument is about how this can best be accomplished. 

The genius is the person who can anticipate all possible needs of others and take steps to fulfill them.

History is rewritten to prove that all innovators were working from a deep concern for the mass of humanity.  They knew what the people required, and they enacted solutions.  This was the only basis for invention and creation. 

In that sense, the Collective was always the first and final goal—according to the revisionists.  The individual creator was merely a carrier and an empty vessel.  When he had been filled to the brim with understanding of the Collective’s needs, he leaped forward and gave humanity the next great breakthrough.  His distinction was his emptiness.  He had no personal desires.  He had risen above that morbid level of living and thinking. 

And now we have The Children.  Civilization must bend to that collective will.  It must gear its efforts to the inchoate needs of the purest among us.  It must worship at that altar.

And if the worship is not learned well enough, then we can turn to the animals and trees and the rocks, and we can elevate that religion.  We can find what we looking for in the substance of stones.

We can always dig deeper and discover a more fundamental illustration of the Collective and deny the individual in more massive and persuasive ways.

We stand at these gates.  This is the promise we are buying and selling. 

Intense and personal desire was always the flaw.  Peace will only come when we have negated it to zero.  Then we will finally be able to pass, back and forth, the coin of the new realm.  A nothing that transcends all struggle.  An amnesia that passes all understanding. 

Children will stand at the front of society’s classrooms and explain this nothing in their ingenious ways.

Equality will have been reached.  We will exist in a pleasant fog of an unending summer morning.

Like butterflies, we will flit three seconds here, three seconds there.  We will occasionally feel the diffused sunlight reflecting from our wings. 

JON RAPPOPORT

www.nomorefakenews.com

Jon is the author of LOGIC AND ANALYSIS, a unique course for home schools and adults.  To inquire: qjrconsulting@gmail.com