THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC

A GREAT PLAN BECOMES A DISTRACTION

By Jon Rappoport

Author of the LOGIC AND ANALYSIS COURSE

qjrconsulting@gmail.com

JUNE 19, 2010. In front of a small group, I once offered this as an example of illogical reasoning:

PREMISE:  The sun is hot.

PREMISE:  Postcards are made out of paper.

CONCLUSION:  A Cadillac is a smart purchase.

One person in the group tried to argue that this made sense.  He invoked some version of Quantum Theory.  Another person said a Cadillac IS a smart purchase; therefore, the chain of reasoning was valid. 

The state of education in America… 

As every student of logic knows, a chain of reasoning begins with premises, also known as assumptions or first principles. 

Then you argue your case and, down the line, you come to conclusions.

The problem is, there are few students of logic around these days.  Therefore, a great deal of argument centers around lesser issues.

What do I mean by lesser issues?

Picture a bunch of football players who’ve forgotten the rules of the game battling with each other at the 50-yard line.  Nobody advances the ball.  Nobody tries to score a touchdown because nobody remembers what a touchdown is.  And people who watch this pitched battle at midfield argue about the tactics being employed.

Can three players jump on the back of an opponent, or only two?  Is it all right to bribe an opponent right there with a briefcase full of cash, or should that transaction take place under the stands before the game?  Can a player cruise around the 50-yard line in a golf cart and throw cans of red paint at the other team?

The grisly entertainment that is the White House and the Congress and the Supreme Court is all about this sort of infighting—and very few remember the assumptions and first principles…in other words, THE CONSTITUTION.

That’s a thing of the past, a quaint and interesting document for simpler times and simpler people.

However, if one did, in fact, remember the Constitution and what is says, most bills that come before Congress would prompt immediate outrage. Legislators would say:

“We can’t consider this!  It’s illegal!  The federal government has no right to debate this.  The proposal in this bill violates our system of limited government.  We have no power to act on this.”

At this point in our history, you would expect many spirited and profound debates in Washington about limited government and what it means, what it implies, what it allows, and what it doesn’t allow.

You would expect truly vital and lengthy debates about the expanding power of the federal government versus the implications of the Constitution.

I’m not talking about shouting matches.  I’m talking about open public debate, starting from the assumptions of the Constitution.  I’m talking about politicians who are prepared to make their arguments.

There are, of course, reasons why these debates are not taking place.  One reason?  Few people know how to make a logical case anymore. 

They don’t understand how it’s done.

They don’t understand, for example, that you need to state the assumptions of the Constitution, instead of merely glossing over them.  In a real argument, you have to reveal the premises that are the starting point for the argument.

Then you move on and, for example, cite instances where the federal government has acted to support these assumptions—or has contravened them. 

Eventually, people would see who is supporting the Constitution and who is effectively ignoring or denying that document.

Those who deny it would be forced to make an additional case explaining their denial.  Call me old-fashioned, but I think this part of the proceeding would be far more entertaining than watching football players throw cans of paint at each other. 

As many of us know, the “anti-Constitution” people make vague references to an “evolving interpretation” of the Founding Document.

Well, let’s hear that doctrine spelled out in detail.  Let’s get a chance to understand the full meaning of this argument.  Let’s discover how the principle of limited government can morph into a government that employs millions of people and intrudes into every corner of society—with force as its ultimate backup.

I think logic would start to make a comeback.  I think people would dimly begin to remember what logic is all about and why it can be so useful. 

I think many people would realize that the Constitution has been used to rationalize an avalanche of departures from the Constitution—and if that sounds like a contradiction, voila.  You’ve just made a foray into the very heart of logic. 

Perhaps the next step would be a complete “mock court” re-writing of the Founding Document, a re-writing that would show what we have actually been following all these years.

That strategy actually has a name.  It’s called reductio ad absurdum, a Latin phrase that means reduction to absurdity.  You take your opponent’s premises and show they would lead to something absurd or contradictory.

Twenty-four hundred years ago, in ancient Greece, Plato used this strategy over and over in his Dialogues.  It would help to remember it now.

But I should refrain from deciding that no one can make a case for Big Government.  Let’s see someone try—not merely in a piecemeal fashion, defending a bill here and a bill there.  Let someone argue the merits of Big from the ground up and define what this sort of government stands for and how far it is willing to go in the pursuit of its aims. 

Is it “from each according to his ability, and to each according to his needs”?  Is it taxation without representation?  Let’s see the blueprint.  Let’s see the whole thing.

Sleight of hand is an essential component of a magic show, which moves from one trick to another, but in government it’s a method for concealing the larger driving philosophy that gradually replaces what we thought the nation was supposed to be all about.

I once had a long conversation with a person who professed to be a church-going Unitarian.  He explained that, for him, endless Giving was the guiding force in his life—and he said government should be based on the same theme.

When I inquired about the Constitution, he merely shrugged and said, “It’s a wonderful generous document.”

I asked him to expand on that, and he said, “The Founders were charitable souls.”

I love non-sequiturs.  They allow you to run battleships through holes in your own thinking.          

Jon Rappoport has been working as an investigative reporter for 25 years.  Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize early in his career, he has published articles in LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, CBS Healthwatch, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe.  He has taught in several private schools in New York and Los Angeles, and has tutored extensively in remedial English at Santa Monica College.  At Amherst College, where he graduated with a BA in philosophy, he studied formal logic under Joseph Epstein, a revered professor of philosophy.  He is the author of the LOGIC AND ANALYSIS course, and can be reached at qjrconsulting@gmail.com        

THIRD OPEN LETTER TO HOME SCHOOLERS

By Jon Rappoport

Author of LOGIC AND ANALYSIS,

A course for home-schooled children

qjrconsulting@gmail.com

JUNE 15, 2010.  In the Information Age, a person has several choices. 

He can give in and accept mainstream news as a valid picture of the world. 

He can resort, instead, to some version of so-called alternative news and surrender to that without much thought. 

Or he can become a true independent judge of any source of information, armed with the tools to analyze it sharply and clearly.

There are many herds of sheep, not just one.  A strong individual doesn’t join any herd.  But in order to stand up to efforts to enlist him as a card-carrying sheep, he needs the capacity to examine information with logic.      

Every home school needs a logic course, in the same way that every home school needs to make sure children are literate.

These days, information is a flood.  There is really no way to pick out the good information by merely relying on the reputation of the author of an article or internet post.

We are faced with an undifferentiated mass of material that would take years to digest—and still we wouldn’t be able to catch up.

A need for tools to evaluate information impressed itself on the society of ancient Greece, because Greece was trying, to a degree, to exist as an open Republic.  Therefore, there were many new competing voices.  In its own way, Greece experienced an unprecedented flood of information.

The solution?  Set down principles and strategies for rational discourse.  Try to distinguish between valid and invalid argument.

I use the word “argument” because, in Greece, a man who considered himself a thinker or a politician was fully aware of the fact that he was often challenging others who didn’t share his point of view. 

This is well reflected in the most famous and revered of all Western philosophical works: the Dialogues of Plato.  In these conversations, Plato displays his teacher, Socrates, engaging men of Athens in conversation about the meaning of Justice and Truth and The Good.

Socrates happily maneuvered his opponents into arguments that led to absurdities and contradictions—thus proving that these men were approaching vital issues in a naïve and shallow fashion.

Reading the Dialogues gave the world its first great lesson in logic in action. 

Since then, many refinements have been added to the subject of logic.  Most useful are the so-called fallacies, about 20 major types of errors.  The fallacies are common in many arguments.

In fact, we can find them today in newspaper articles, television news, scientific pronouncements, press releases, political assertions, textbooks, corporate reports, appeals court decisions, legal scholarship, medical advice.  Everywhere.

When students are oblivious to these fallacies, they gloss over information; they passively read it; at best, they memorize it.  The one thing they can’t do is pick out the good information from the flawed information.

And this state of affairs is considered normal education.  What a horrendous joke. 

If you went back to any of the great American political encounters of the 19^th century—for example, the Lincoln-Douglas debates—not only would you find a more complex use of language, you would also encounter the unmistakable efforts of both men to engage in logical discourse.

The assumption was people of that time could understand this form of argument and counter-argument.

Why?  Because they had been educated in a different way.

Today, logic is given a brush-off. 

My course was created to remedy this situation.

I have written passages of text that resemble newspaper articles and internet journalism, and I have embedded them with common logical fallacies.  The students are taught to find these fallacies and see them for what they are.

In this way, they attain another type of literacy: logical literacy.  It will stand them in good stead for the rest of their lives.

As a reporter, week by week and month by month, I watch more and more people lose their ability to string together a logical argument.  They just can’t do it anymore—and they don’t recognize their own shortcoming.  They’ve never been taught a good logic course, and they’re floundering the in the sea of information that’s out there.

I think something needs to be done about it, and the place to start is education.  School.

I welcome your inquiries about my course, LOGIC AND ANALYSIS.  qjrconsulting@gmail.com   

Jon Rappoport has been working as an investigative reporter for 25 years.  Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize early in his career, he has published articles in LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, CBS Healthwatch, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe.  He has taught in several private schools in New York and Los Angeles, and has tutored extensively in remedial English at Santa Monica College.  At Amherst College, where he graduated with a BA in philosophy, he studied formal logic under Joseph Epstein, a revered professor of philosophy.   

THE CULT OF VICTIMHOOD

JUNE 14, 2010.  At a recent “inspirational conference” a friend attended, speaker after speaker marched up to the podium to recount a horrible life story of abuse that eventually turned into gold.

I believe the speakers were trying to say they had been victimized and THEN picked themselves up and made successful lives, but in my role as cynic in such matters, I wondered how much the victim-story had been USED AND PROMOTED to make that success happen.

Anyway, at least several audience members wondered how they could possibly compete with the speakers because, damn it, they didn’t have a history of massive abuse they could use as a banner headline in their own lives. 

I’m citing this conference as a cameo of the society at large.  People—but kids, especially—are always looking for stories that will “play well.”  What happens when the trend turns negative, when it’s perceived that you need a loser’s saga?

In recent years, the compelling need for such a story has become more obvious.  Television reality shows and talk shows are a bundle of best-selling tales of victimhood. 

Add into that mix the relentless advertising of diseases and disorders paid for by drug companies, and you have a blueprint for popularity: “I’m screwed bad.”

It’s a badge of honor.

I’m screwed bad, and I need help.

The whole culture is brimming with stories about victims.  And you can bet kids with a few smarts are getting the message.

Q:  What do you have, kid?

A:  Well, I was diagnosed with ADHD.  The doctor wanted to put me on Ritalin, but my parents said all that was nonsense.

Q:  That’s nothing.  Can’t you come up with something better?

A:  Let’s see, my father hit me once.

Q:  With a golf club?  A sledgehammer?  There was a brain injury?

A:  No.  It was a rolled-up newspaper.  It was an accident.  He was trying to swat a fly in the kitchen.

Q:  Come on.  That’s so lame it’s ridiculous.  Were you ever shot in a drive-by?

A:  What?  No. 

Q:  Did you ever get real drunk and smash up the car and almost die?

A:  No.

Q:  You’re pathetic.  Don’t you at least have a favorite relative who died in a horrible fire and marked your psyche forever?

A:  No.  Is something wrong with me?

Q:  You bet.  What’s wrong is there isn’t enough wrong with you.  Don’t you get it?  Are you in the closet, sexually speaking, and afraid to come out?

A:  No.

Q:  Do you have a congenital genetic disease?

A:  No.

Q:  Are your parents getting a divorce?

A:  No.

Q:  You’re in deep trouble.

A:  I can see that.  I need to cook up something.

Q:  How about this?  Your eyes are backwards.  What you should be seeing out of your left eye you’re seeing out of your right eye, and vice versa. 

A:  Hey, that’s pretty good.

Q:  It‘ll give you some interesting talking points.  You’re a weirdo who can’t live in the world.

A:  Yeah, I get it. 

Q:  You keep parlaying that as you get older, you could probably write a PhD thesis about it.

JON RAPPOPORT

www.nomorefakenews.com

NEEDS, RIGHTS, DESIRES, AND ENTITLEMENTS

JUNE 9, 2010.  There are many messiahs among us. 

They have various visions of the future, but these visions have a common denominator: the future will be One Thing for Everyone.  It will be a single choir singing the same tune.

Why?  Because the messiahs can’t stand plural reality, open reality, fertile reality.  The messiahs want a locked gate on their uniform paradise.

And to make sure the future has that gate, they need Authority, a guiding hand to bring us all into the same campground and keep us there.

Contrast this to the description of limited government embedded in the Constitution.

Then flash forward to the present, when government is the official messiah.  If a person has a need, the government will determine whether it is a right.  If a person has a desire, the government will say whether it is an entitlement.

Although the Bill of Rights enumerated what the government couldn’t do to hinder freedom, the new meaning of “right” is “what I deserve without working for it.”

Imagine what would happen if the president stepped out of the shadows and frankly said: “Here is a list of things you can get without working for them—and in order to give them to you, we’re going to strip assets from other people.”

It’s far worse than that, however, because government is the only entity who can deliver new rights—and that means government will define and enforce the coming paradise.

Consider the psychology of this operation, from the user’s point of view.  It’s as if you spent a few hours with a child and explained to him that he deserved certain things, and it would up to him to decide what these RIGHTS were—and then he could whimper, whine, beg, demand—and maybe he would succeed in getting them.

If aliens from another dimension ever land on Earth and make themselves known, you can be sure they’ll be asking for third, fourth, and fifth eye surgery to alter lens-refraction, so they can perceive 20/20 in this universe, and a cluster of senators will sponsor a bill to fund it with tax money.

Perhaps the mostly deeply ignored fact about the Constitution is this: people wrote it to establish a federal government before there was any such government.

People built the government.  Therefore, the rights listed in the Bill of Rights were people’s way of saying to the very government they were creating, “Don’t try to encroach on us.”

Now, however, most people flaccidly believe the GOVERNMENT is granting US those rights.

It was never that way.

But once the fallacy is in place, government becomes the dispenser.  As such, it can invent new definitions of, and new kinds of, rights and destroy the fabric of society.

For example, the federal government can say: “We have passed a law that defines what illegal immigration is.  This is how we’re going to enforce that law.  We’re not going to enforce it.  Furthermore, we’re going to extend certain benefits and free services to the aliens we designate as illegal.  And those benefits will be funded by the taxpayer.  In other words, we’re going to take people’s earned money and use it for those we have designated as criminals.  You see, the United States isn’t a real country.  It’s part of a global society, and in that society, everybody deserves things.  These things are now called rights.”

And as that signal is given, many messiahs and dreamers step forward and say, “Yes, all this is good.  This will give us, eventually, the universal paradise of love we’ve been seeking.  Everyone will feel that love.  Give it enough time.  Everyone will feel the love that comes from charity and giving.”

If you don’t like that example, try this one.  The government passes a national health-insurance plan.  The government says, “This great gift to all people can’t be paid for unless we take money that isn’t ours from people who earn it.  We take that money by forcing everyone to buy health insurance or pay a penalty.  And we may raise taxes.  We’re doing this because everyone has a right to medical treatment—more specifically, to the kinds of medical treatment we deem appropriate and effective and safe—and to none other.”

And again the many messiahs and dreamers step out into the light and say, “This is good.  This is the expression of caring and love.  We are moving closer to heaven on Earth.”

What does any of this have to do with the notion of limited government spelled out in the Constitution?

“Well,” some say, “it has very little to do with it.  But that doesn’t matter.  What matters is doing the right thing for the greatest number of people, and how you get there is irrelevant.  Obviously, government, generally speaking, is the most powerful force in the world, so government should be prodded until it carries the banner of altruism into every corner of the planet.” 

Really?  In that case, let’s hurry up and pass an Amendment canceling the whole Constitution and replace it with The Church of Doing Good, to which taxable membership will be mandatory.

Coming at this from a slightly different angle: freedom, the messiahs say, was invented so we could give freedom away by giving everybody everything.

However, as it plays out, when you embolden government to be the main messiah, it becomes coercive master of us all.  It can tell us what to do whenever it wants to.  And it wants to.

This fact doesn’t trouble the little messiahs.  They fervently believe forcing people into paradise is necessary, is justified, and pragmatically speaking, may be the only way to get there.

There are a whole host of religious groups and non-profits and advocacy groups and the like, who live to extend Goodness and Charity—and for them such matters as the Constitution and private property mean absolutely nothing.  They are “more evolved,” and they know it.  They are univeralists who are doing the Work.  Factor in the communitarians and the communists and the socialists—in a nice way, of course—and those who see the banner of sympathy and altruism as the selling point for accumulating more power, and the kids who live for hope and change and a better world…and you have a considerable force pushing America into a vision of Daddy and Mommy taking care of everyone.

This force tries to work through government to make their dream come true.       

Rather than concentrate solely on the latest incursion, I believe it’s long past the time when people should begin considering the overall picture.  What vision do you favor?  What is your philosophic view?

And if that view is contrary in letter and spirit to the Constitution, what is your advice on how we should handle the Constitution? 

JON RAPPOPORT

www.nomorefakenews.com

RAPPOPORT AND BREGGIN ON RADIO

JUNE 9, 2010.  Today I’ll be interviewing the great champion of individual rights, psychiatrist Peter Breggin. 

Many years ago, I read his classic, Toxic Psychiatry, and found a north star for my continuing research on the dangers of the pharmaceutical industry.

Peter is a man who is not afraid to change course and change his mind.  In the process, he has weathered the storms of criticisms and attacks from colleagues.  He has also become the conscience of his profession.

For decades, Peter has unfailingly documented, spoken out against, and disrupted the Capture of psychiatry by pharmaceutical interests.

Now, he has taken another daring step forward, linking the act and goal of therapy with the philosophical foundations of the American Republic.

We’ll speak about this sea change and what it could mean for the future of the individual and the nation.

To listen live:  www.ProgressiveRadioNetwork.com   Click on the “listen live” button.

To pick up the interview later in the archive (a day or two after broadcast): http://garynull.squarespace.com/the-jon-rappoport-show/

JON RAPPOPORT

www.nomorefakenews.com

ANOTHER OPEN LETTER TO HOME SCHOOLERS

By Jon Rappoport

Author of the LOGIC AND ANALYSIS COURSE

qjrconsulting@gmail.com

JUNE 7, 2010.  Home-schooling parents do what they do for different reasons.  For some, the main thrust is getting their kids out of public schools.  Others want to give their children specific religious education.  In some cases, what actually happens in the home-school classroom is secondary.

I’m interested in the fact that home-schooling parents can give their kids a far better education on their own.  It’s possible.  It’s happening all over the world every day.  The standards of some home schools are extraordinary.  In those cases, the parents have a passion about knowledge and achievement, and the children do, too.

If you are one of those parents, for whom what happens in your classroom is of paramount importance, I’m talking to you.  I’m also talking to parents who want to strive to make their classrooms reach new levels of accomplishment.

I wish to point out that the subject and discipline called logic is a foundation stone of a superior education.  It can’t be ignored.

Unfortunately, it has been ignored.  Why?  Because logic as a distinct pursuit has become invisible in almost every culture.  It has been forgotten to the point where most people don’t even know it exists.  So how could they remedy the problem?

Most children who learn something about logic find it peripherally through other subjects, like mathematics and chemistry.  They sense its presence lurking in the background.

However, a true and specific study of logic is much more powerful than what can be surmised through related subjects.

Logic is its own territory with its own knowledge.  That became true for the first time in history, 2400 years ago, in ancient Greece, when Aristotle wrote about it.

In those sections of his massive work where Aristotle took up logic, he wasn’t writing about science or mathematics or history or literature.  He was carving out a singular path.

There was a more recent time, a hundred years ago, when logic still had some life left in it, in public schools.  Young students were taught the so-called logical fallacies.  These fallacies were errors that could occur in any presentation on any subject, in any debate or argument.

The understanding of logical fallacies was a durable tool one could use for his whole life.

It still is.

However, to make the tool work, we need to present young students with realistic passages of text, the sort of material they encounter in real life, not just in some abstract little fantasy world.

Students need to chew on these passages and learn how to find the logical fallacies contained in them.  This is called work.  It isn’t meant to be a walk in the park.  This isn’t about winning gold stars for “being you.”  It isn’t about pouring endless “positive messages” into children’s heads with the hope that you can force them to have “self-esteem.”

When kids learn logic and learn how to use it well against real articles and press releases and political-speak and subtle sales pitches, they gain a tremendous confidence that is a true version of self-esteem.  They become strong and very, very smart.

When I designed my course, after 25 years of experience as a journalist, I wrote passages that resemble very closely what you read in newspapers, magazines, books, and on the Net.  I embedded logical fallacies in these pieces, so students could root them out and examine them and realize what was going on.

We live in an age of propaganda.  Smearing one’s opponent, using innuendo, making statements solely calculated to bring out emotional responses in the audience, building vague circumstantial arguments, repeating the same half-truths over and over, distorting history—these tactics are just the beginning of what often passes for truth in our time.

Students (and adults) need to be able to see through such nonsense, and they need to have the ability to take it apart piece by piece, like a clock that runs on the wrong time.

Students need to have the power to see what basic principles a person is arguing from—to see through the obscuring haze of emotional appeal to the heart of the matter.

Students need to be able to differentiate between good evidence and flimsy evidence, when they are considering an argument that is trying to win their support.

These are not small matters. 

For example, many years ago, I interviewed a rather popular politician in depth.  I asked him a number of questions, aimed at trying to find out what his basic principles of government consisted of.  It was like pulling teeth, but I finally got through the operation and discovered…nothing.  He was a rank opportunist, and the slogans he floated were no more than attempts to maintain support from his constituents, so he could stay in office. 

When I pointed this out to him, he smiled.  He said, in an unguarded moment, “What do you think politics is about?”

This was early in my career as a reporter, and I thought to myself, “I’m on the right track.”

I had spent several years, as a student, studying logic, and without it, I never would have been able to dissect this hoaxster and penetrate his defenses. 

Somewhere along the line, we need to make a stand.  We need to deal with information and people, when it’s important, by using real logic in real situations.  There is a great deal at stake.

Young people can learn logic with tremendous enthusiasm.  They can discover an essential tool for approaching information in all forms.

A home school with logic as part of its curriculum can become a powerhouse. 

I fully realize that parents need to learn logic first, before they teach it.  They need to study the course themselves and master it.  So I’m available, during this process, to answer any and all questions that arise.

Logic is a great adventure.  A person can embark on the adventure at any time, by deciding to.

Jon Rappoport has been working as an investigative reporter for 25 years.  Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize early in his career, he has published articles in LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, CBS Healthwatch, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe.  He has taught in several private schools in New York and Los Angeles, and has tutored extensively in remedial English at Santa Monica College.  At Amherst College, where he graduated with a BA in philosophy, he studied formal logic under Joseph Epstein, a revered professor of philosophy.  Jon can be reached at qjrconsulting@gmail.com     

OPEN LETTER TO HOME SCHOOLERS

By Jon Rappoport

Author of the LOGIC AND ANALYSIS COURSE

qjrpress@gmail.com

JUNE 3, 2010.  When logic is taught at all, it is usually handled in an abstract fashion.  Students examine very simple patterns of reasoning and learn which patterns are correct and which are incorrect.

When analysis of realistic text is taught at all, it usually involves dissecting literature to find out what the author is “really trying to say.”

I wasn’t satisfied with either approach.  So when I created my course, I changed the priorities.  Students do learn something about abstract thinking—but they are also taught how the most important and destructive fallacies seep into news reports, PR releases, scientific journalism, internet editorials, and political arguments.

The core of the course consists of text passages that resemble the kind of information people encounter every day.  These passages contain multiple logical errors, and with the help of the teacher, students root out the errors and, in the process, become much smarter, much sharper, less easily fooled.

The Founders of this country wrote a 1^st Amendment to the Constitution that enshrined free speech as an essential element in the new Republic.  They clearly understood that, for this to work, citizens needed to be able to analyze information and make independent choices in every area of life.

Or to put it another way, if citizens were unable to handle free speech (uncontrolled information), the whole Republic would sink into a swamp.  Deception and confusion would reign, and the basic principles of the Great American Experiment would drown in a sea of forgetfulness. 

Look around you.  Look at the size and power of central government.  Compare this situation to the content of the Constitution and its forthright description of limited government.

What happened? 

Well, one of the chief things that happened was the gradual diminishing of the Citizen Mind. 

In particular, citizens lost the ability to analyze and see through the ongoing political debate about the future course of the Republic. 

Logic, which was first revealed to the world in the cradle of Western civilization, Athens, 2400 years ago, has faded from the education curriculum and sunk below the waves. 

I created my course as a step toward restoring the genuine power of the individual.  After all, at the heart of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution is the determination to form a society in which the individual is primary.  If that is lost, we have lost everything.

I believe home schooling is our last and best opportunity to elevate the individual to his/her rightful place.

I understand that parents have many reasons for wanting to home school.  Among these reasons is the desire to avoid the social engineering that has been injected into the public educational system.  However, clinging to the conventional curriculum in the classroom, even if that classroom is the living room or the kitchen or the patio, is not going to remedy all the problems of public schooling.

The great missing factor in public schools is logic, as it was once taught.  Information without true logic is like government without a Constitution.  The result is a spreading fungus.

Feel free to contact me with inquiries.  I’m happy to send you an outline of the 18-lesson LOGIC AND ANALYSIS course.

qjrconsulting@gmail.com

Jon Rappoport is the author of LOGIC AND ANALYSIS, a course for high school students and adults.  He has been working as an investigative reporter for 25 years.  Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize early in his career, he has published articles in LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, CBS Healthwatch, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe.  He has taught in several private schools in New York and Los Angeles.  At Amherst College, where he graduated with a BA in philosophy, he studied formal logic under Joseph Epstein, a revered professor of philosophy.  Mr. Rappoport can be reached at qjrconsulting@gmail.com  His work can be found at www.nomorefakenews.com and www.insolutions.info      

THE PATRONS OF IMAGINATION

By Jon Rappoport

qjrconsulting@gmail.com

MAY 27, 2010.  Yesterday, on my radio show, I interviewed Catherine Austin Fitts.  She had some very profound, original, and forceful things to say about the current economic crisis and its wider implications.

I highly recommend listening to the show in the archive.  You can pick it up in the next day or two at http://garynull.squarespace.com/the-jon-rappoport-show/

As a result of the interview, I’m writing this article.     

Every significant breakthrough in human history has been enabled through imagination.  It’s the leap.  It’s the vision unfettered by imposed restrictions.

It’s the future as yet unrealized, glimpsed in the mind.

Given that this is the case, one wonders why financial patronage isn’t poured like a Niagara into imagination, to support it, extend it.

The answer is simple.  Those who have the vast resources to do it can’t see past what I called Set One.

Set One is the collection of their own perceived problems.  For many, these are personal problems; for others, who look at wider vistas, these are also problems of humanity and civilization.

In either case, Set One circumscribes the individual. It binds consciousness so the individual can’t see anything else.

The individual absolutely can’t see what might happen to revolutionize consciousness itself.  That’s the last possibility he will entertain.

Imagination revolutionizes consciousness down to its core.  It shakes up What Is and replaces it with unfolding Possibility.  And having made that change, the individual gazes at reality with new eyes.  All codes and symbol structures disintegrate.  From there on out, it is pure creation.

The men of this world who control money and everything it means are fabulously wealthy prisoners of Set One.  They view their own amassed fortunes as rivers that flow directly into the arenas of problems—in order to solve those problems.

That road has a dead end.  For example, the current financial crisis the planet is facing is the smash-up that occurs BECAUSE money has been used to solve money over and over—until the whole idea of money becomes ridiculous.  Until money is pure fabrication of numbers stuffed into a yawning abyss that can never be filled.

Money as the problem and money as the solution to that problem are the final act in the play of Set One.

However, money launched to support imagination finally makes money make sense.

Because ultimately money is a symbol that REFERS TO IMAGINATION.

The hidden history of civilization is a history of FORGETTING WHAT MONEY REFERS TO.  In that sense, the grinding effects of civilization on the individual, in the long run, are the catalogue of illustrations that reveal what happens when we all forget that money is a symbol that marries imagination in action.

Patronage of imagination is remembering.  It is an act of remembering the psyche and spirit of the free individual who creates.

The extraordinarily wealthy come to view reality as TOYS.  Pieces on a game board.  They rearrange the pieces.  They position their toys.  They discard old toys and buy new toys.  They collect toys.  They label them.  They arrange people as if they were toys.  This is the game they play.  They can only see the game.  Imagination is not a game.  It is pure creation.  There are no boundaries.  There are no mandatory pieces or toys.

Some will undoubtedly take this article as a criticism of the free market.  It’s not.  The free market is fine.  This article is about what the future could be—not as some final shape or destiny, but as an exploding epoch of unshackled imagination in action, along every avenue of human endeavor.

The highest achievement of the free market is money fueling great imagination, and the great money men of this world had better realize it.  Their preoccupation is leading them into substituting synthetic endless money for CREATION.  Along that channel, they will only see their own wretched reflection in a shattered mirror.

There is a kind of equation here.  THE OBSESSION TO CONTROL=FAILURE OF IMAGINATION.

When the elites view the planet as a game board, they naturally slip into the only kind of solution they can entertain: control the game.

This can go so far as depopulation and gross restriction of freedom.  And it works, as far as these power players are concerned, because they are viewing with a profound detachment.

They are detached from people, and also from their own imaginations.

Imagination seeks and generates possibilities that have never existed before.  Many so-called scientists are fond of saying imagination is nothing more than the reshuffling of old ideas in the brain.  They say this for one reason and one reason only.  They are philosophic materialists.  They believe that all causation is merely a long chain of events in which each “billiard ball” strikes another billiard ball.  They do not believe in freedom.  They would never consider that something can come from nothing.

But that is exactly what happens in imagination, which is not a material thing or process.  Imagination invents.

Materialists who become desperate enough will manipulate people, in order to make them into destructive agents.  Then, the materialists will look at these manipulated people and say, “Do you see?  You can’t trust these mobs.  You have to control them to within an inch of their lives.  You have to plan out their societies for them.”

This is the morality of materialists at the end of their tether.

At the same time, a relatively free country like America has been disintegrating into spectatorship for a long time.  In this process The People surrender their own imaginations to entertainment.  Bread and circuses.  The real revolution would be a revolution of imagination, in which people at large immersed themselves in creating, inventing, on a new open level.

Then the chains of master and slave would be snapped.  Then and only then.

To opt for THIS, to become a patron of THIS would signal a new epoch for the human race.        

JON RAPPOPORT

www.nomorefakenews.com

qjrconsulting@gmail.com

LOGICAL FALLACY

By Jon Rappoport,

Author of the LOGIC AND ANALYSIS COURSE

qjrconsulting@gmail.com

MAY 23, 2010.  Since I sent out the outline for my logic course, I’ve received numerous inquiries about this 18-lesson program. 

Today, I want to focus on one of many logical fallacies.  I want to show you how understanding it can make a great difference in grasping the guts of public discourse.      

In logic, there is an error called AFFIRMING THE CONSEQUENT.

Here’s a little background.  Take this statement: IF IT SNOWS, THEN THERE ARE CLOUDS.

The first part of the statement, the “if” part, is called the antecedent.  The second part, the “then” part, is called the consequent.

Affirming the consequent goes this way:  IF IT SNOWS, THEN THERE ARE CLOUDS.  THERE ARE CLOUDS.  THEREFORE, THERE IS SNOW.

This is an error in logic.  Why?  Because, to put it simply, you can have cloudy days without any snow at all.

Here it is again:

IF IT SNOWS, THERE ARE CLOUDS.

THERE ARE CLOUDS.

THEREFORE, THERE IS SNOW.

WRONG.

There might or might not be snow.  We don’t know. 

Now, let’s take a real-life example of this situation.  Let’s dress it up and confuse it.

“Scientists who support the notion of manmade global warming are vigorous in their defense of the theory.  They are willing to take their battle into the hall of government, because they view the planetary climate changes as ominous for all of us.  These researchers are passionate in their recommendations that laws must be passed—laws which will cap carbon emissions all over the world before it’s too late for the human species. 

“Despite criticism from opponents who say scientists should remain in their labs and refrain from overt politicking, these researchers are forging ahead.  You have to ask yourself why.  Once all the debris of partisan bickering is swept out of the way, what’s left is the obvious truth: these scientists have worked the numbers and they have seen the disastrous crunch toward which we are rapidly heading.  They are doing what they must to avoid a grim outcome for an industrialized world.”

Now, when we boil down that argument, what we get is something like this:   

If global-warming scientists have found that man has, in fact, pushed himself to the brink of destruction, then these scientists will make a strong push to cap carbon emissions all over the planet. 

These scientists ARE pushing hard to cap carbon emissions.

Therefore, these scientists have discovered the truth: man HAS caused the planet to warm up to a very dangerous level.

WRONG.

This argument is affirming the consequent.

See that.

See that the pattern is the same as in the simple example of the snow and the clouds.  Or in this pattern:

IF A CAR HAS A GOOD ENGINE, IT WILL GET YOU FROM HOME TO THE SUPERMARKET.

THE CAR DOES GET YOU TO THE SUPERMARKET.

THEREFORE, IT HAS A GOOD ENGINE.

WRONG.

The car might or might not have a good engine.  We don’t know whether it does based purely on the fact that it can get you to the supermarket.

IF A SCIENTIST KNOWS THE TRUTH, HE’LL PUSH FOR ITS PRACTICAL APPLICATION.

HE IS PUSHING FOR ITS PRACTICAL APPLICATION.

THEREFORE, HE MUST KNOW THE TRUTH.

WRONG.

He might or might not know the truth.  Pushing for its application is no guarantee he knows the truth. 

It’s often the unstated but implied reasoning that is used to make an argument.  When you see the implied reasoning and lay it out, you can see the error.

But it gets a lot worse than this.  A lot worse.

I recently found an article that made a complex argument about bio-warfare research.  When I boiled it down, I was left with this:

Laboratory X did research on bio-war germs in the 1960s.

Dr. Y worked at Lab X in the 1960s.

Dr. Y was an associate of Mr. Z, a former CIA agent.

Therefore, Lab X synthetically made the Swine Flu virus.

WHAT?

When you tear the fat away from the argument and see the bones, you realize how absurd the argument really is.

Of course, there are some people who are disposed to believe it anyway.  They want to believe it.  They will take any tidbit and use it to bolster what they already believe. 

And when you point out how foolish the above argument is, they’ll say, “You mean you don’t believe these labs make viruses?”

Excuse me, but that’s not what THIS PARTICULAR argument stated.  Get your head on straight. 

A disciplined study of logic is vital for sane public discourse.

Jon Rappoport is the author of LOGIC AND ANALYSIS, a course for high school students and adults.  He has been working as an investigative reporter for 25 years.  Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize early in his career, he has published articles in LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, CBS Healthwatch, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe.  He has taught in several private schools in New York and Los Angeles.  At Amherst College, where he graduated with a BA in philosophy, he studied formal logic under Joseph Epstein, a revered professor of philosophy.  Mr. Rappoport can be reached at qjrconsulting@gmail.com  His work can be found at www.nomorefakenews.com and www.insolutions.info