Recently, I had occasion to view a segment of NBC’s The Tonight Show in which host Jay Leno walks around New York City asking ordinary people a series of simple and basic questions. I was stunned by the general lack of education of the respondents.
From people not knowing who was the first President of the United States or how many stars are on the American flag, to a black woman who had never seen a picture of former Secretary of State Colin Powell and who when asked if she knew the last name of this man whose first name is “Colin”, answered, “Cleanser”; it was astonishing to see and hear the level of ignorance to which the average American has sunk.
The United States has become a country with one of the most poorly educated populations in the developed world. Ordinary people do not know about the founding documents of our Republic - The Declaration of Independence and Constitution for the United States. They do not understand our laws, our rights, or the limitations imposed on our governments by state and federal constitutions.
The American heritage is one of rugged individualism, adventuresome spirits, creativity and innovation, and recognition of fundamental rights that come from God, not government. However, the general population of the United States has forgotten, or even worse, never learned what makes us truly unique and special among the people of the world.
Before the Republic of the united States of America (sic) was born, all nations on earth functioned as two-class societies; with the aristocracy or nobility comprising the upper classes, and the commoners making up the lower classes. Only the nobility could own property, participate in making laws, or operate businesses. Commoners were doomed to be servants of the upper class, with no chance of ever bettering their lives. Their stations in life were determined by birth, and not by their achievements or accomplishments.
Then along came a group of highly intelligent, learned men, who stated for the all to hear, that our rights come not by grant of any king, but because we are children of the Creator of All Things. This was a truly radical concept for the times, and despite the many obstacles in their path, these men won all Americans the right to live free from government control of their lives.
The War of Northern Aggression (Civil War) was fought to protect and defend from attack by the Northern forces, the rights and freedoms belonging to all Americans. That war was not about the North saving the Union; it was about the South preserving the principles on which the Union was founded. We all know how it ended.
Our land was soaked with the blood of the last of the freedom lovers directly descended from the original American Revolutionaries. These people remembered the reasons for the original Revolution. They died in a losing effort to maintain freedom for their posterity.
After the War of Northern Aggression, the remaining Americans were a beaten people - physically, emotionally and spiritually. Their vulnerability made them excellent targets for the dumbing down of the population that was to occur over the next hundred years.
The situation was further exacerbated with the fraudulent imposition of the Federal Reserve Act on an unsuspecting population. For 75 years, since patriot President Andrew Jackson revoked the charter of the second United States central bank, the American people enjoyed unprecedented prosperity, without a central bank to regulate and control their finances. In 1909, the Aldritch Plan was soundly rejected by Congress. The people did not want anything to do with a third central bank.
Then in 1913, only four years after its sound defeat in Congress, the Aldritch Plan was resurrected under the psychologically manipulative name, Federal Reserve Act, for the proposed central bank would not be federal, provide any financial reserves for the country, or act on behalf of the financial well being of the American people. This bill was also doomed to failure, but in a special session of Congress, called during the Christmas break, three representatives passed the Act and thereby unconstitutionally turned over to a private banking cartel the power to create and regulate money in the United States.
Sixteen years later, these same bankers orchestrated the collapse of the economy in what today is known as the Great Depression. In less than two decades, the most prosperous Republic on earth had been economically destroyed by a cabal of international bankers. This further decimated the passion of the American people.
With the rise of Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany, the final nail was prepared for the coffin of the American soul. It is common knowledge that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt prodded the Japanese until they attacked Pearl Harbor, thus giving FDR an excuse to enter the War. This resulted in killing off the bravest of our brethren; those who stood truest to the principles enshrined in our Declaration of Independence and protected by the Constitution for the United States.
The twentieth century saw the industrial revolution, the restructuring of the American financial and banking system, and the injection of the federal government into the educational system. Public schools stopped teaching America’s founding principles or even general civics. I recall meeting a 29-year-old woman who had never read the Declaration of Independence until she attended one of my freedom seminars. Yet, she read the Communist Manifesto as part of her ninth grade public school curriculum!
It is interesting to note that I was unable to answer all of the questions contained in the eighth grade final exam given to public school students in Salina, Kansas in 1881. I’m a pretty intelligent guy, but these questions were really difficult! It seems that back then, students were expected to know this kind of information in order to graduate from eighth grade.
Not one public school student from today’s United States would be able to pass that test. Not one.
Our children have been taught to be docile and obedient. They have learned not to raise controversial issues; to go along in order to get along; that a good citizen is one who supports the government. They have learned thoroughly un-American lessons.
Most significantly, they have learned to not be critical thinkers. Our modern society has an unthinking population, and unthinking they will remain, unless we - the few who can still think - do something to change the direction in which our country is heading, and restore to our population their heritage of truth, justice, and freedom for all.
The United States has become a thinking man’s desert; a place where the unthinking are rewarded and the intelligent and creative are punished. What significant differences these are from our Founding Fathers’ visions of and hopes for our Republic. We have fallen so very far from the pinnacle of their dreams.
Would that the thinking people who still remain among us take action to restore our country to a land where people come to live free, enjoy the fruits of their own labors, and seek and administer justice for all people, regardless of class, social distinction, wealth, or position. If they would only do so, then we can still establish an island of hope in the midst of a sea of injustice and oppression.
It is this oasis in an otherwise thinking man’s desert that we must create. Once we do so, we will finally be in a position to reclaim our country as the Land of the Free and Home of the Brave.
