From Plato ( 428/427 or 424/423–348/347 BC), philosopher in Classical Greece and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world:
We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.
Private charity often leads to gratitude and efforts at self-improvement among the recipients. Welfare encourages the opposite. From Walter E. Williams at lewrockwell.com:
Before the massive growth of our welfare state, private charity was the sole option for an individual or family facing insurmountable financial difficulties or other challenges. How do we know that? There is no history of Americans dying on the streets because they could not find food or basic medical assistance. Respecting the biblical commandment to honor thy father and mother, children took care of their elderly or infirm parents. Family members and the local church also helped those who had fallen on hard times.
During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, charities started playing a major role. In 1887, religious leaders founded the Charity Organization Society, which became the first United Way organization. In 1904, Big Brothers Big Sisters of America started helping at-risk youths reach their full potential. In 1913, the American Cancer Society, dedicated to curing and eliminating cancer, was formed. With their millions of dollars, industrial giants such as Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller created our nation’s first philanthropic organizations.
Generosity has always been a part of the American genome. Alexis de Tocqueville, a French civil servant, made a nine-month visit to our country in 1831 and 1832, ostensibly to study our prisons. Instead, his visit resulted in his writing “Democracy in America,” one of the most influential books about our nation. Tocqueville didn’t use the term “philanthropy,” but he wrote extensively about how Americans love to form all kinds of nongovernmental associations to help one another. These associations include professional, social, civic and other volunteer organizations seeking to serve the public good and improve the quality of human lives. The bottom line is that we Americans are the most generous people in the world, according to the new Almanac of American Philanthropy — something we should be proud of.
To continue reading: Before and After Welfare Handouts
From Francois De La Rochefoucault (1613–March 1680), French author of maxims and memoirs:
We are so accustomed to disguise ourselves to others, that in the end, we become disguised to ourselves.
From Esther Pauline “Eppie” Lederer (1918-2002), better known by the pen name Ann Landers, American advice columnist and nationwide media celebrity:
Class is an aura of confidence that is being sure without being cocky. Class has nothing to do with money. Class never runs scared. It is self-discipline and self-knowledge. It’s the sure-footedness that comes with having proved you can meet life.
Given governments’ record the last few decades, you’re crazier if you believe establishment war narratives than if you don’t. From Caitlin Johnstone at caitlinjohnstone.com:
There has still been no retraction or correction of The Guardian‘s demonstrably false and completely indefensible claim that two normal antiwar Twitter accounts were controlled not by real people but by bot programs based in Russia.
This is the sort of environment that has been created by the ongoing Russia panic that is plaguing the western world: one wherein mainstream news outlets can openly lie about dissenting voices and antiwar activists, refuse to retract or apologize for those lies, and suffer no consequences.
And yet they still have the gall to paint anyone who expresses doubt about the narratives they advance about Russia and Syria as crazy, kooky conspiracy theorists. Google the words “conspiracy” and “Syria” right now and you’ll come up with countless editorials with headlines like “Syria war: The online activists pushing conspiracy theories“, “Disinformation and Conspiracy Trolling in the Wake of the Syrian Chemical Attack“, and “SYRIA GAS ATTACK CONSPIRACY THEORIES FUELED BY TUCKER CARLSON AND FAR-RIGHT FRINGE“.
They’re using the highly stigmatized label “conspiracy theories” to paint healthy, normal skepticism of a notoriously untrustworthy power establishment as mentally unsound paranoia.
The other day I wrote an article about the shocking number of blatant attack editorials the mass media machine has been churning out on anyone who questions the establishment Syria narrative, and that output has not slowed down since. Warmongering empire loyalists like senior Huffington Post editor Chris York have been hard at work making sure the output of McCarthyite smear pieces remains on rapid fire, accusing anyone advocating skepticism of the same establishment which lied us into Iraq and Libya of being a tinfoil hat-wearing nut job.
This fits an established pattern which we have discussed previously, wherein proponents of US-led military intervention accuse those who question their narratives of being mentally unsound. There is a word for the tactic of convincing someone that they are crazy in order to manipulate and control them, and that word is gaslighting. It is a textbook abuse tactic, and it isn’t okay.
To continue reading: Never Let Anyone Call You Crazy For Doubting Establishment War Narratives
Posted in Foreign Policy, Geopolitics, Governments, Media, Psychology, War
Tagged Establishment, Propoganda
It’s getting increasingly difficult for boys to emerge from childhood and become responsible men. From Matt Walsh at theburningplatform.com:
Our culture is very bad for boys. It’s bad for girls, too. It’s bad for everyone. But I think we fail to recognize and appreciate the unique struggles that boys face. Partly we fail to recognize it because we are too busy worrying about the Patriarchy’s persecution of women. Partly we fail to recognize it because, collectively, we just don’t care that much about boys. Partly we fail to recognize it because men are not as likely to talk about their own plight. And partly a man will not talk about it because everyone, even his fellow men, will only laugh at him and downplay the problem.
There are many factors at play, and they all lead to a pretty dire situation. Men are told about their privilege, but if you look at things honestly you will not see much evidence of this privilege. On the contrary, you will see several profound disadvantages suffered by men in general and boys in particular.
Here, I think, are the four biggest:
1) Our culture preys relentlessly on a boy’s weaknesses.
Let’s imagine the world the average 13-year-old boy inhabits. He has long since been exposed to hardcore pornography, and probably watches it regularly. Then puberty hits. His hormones are going haywire. His brain is hardwiring itself to focus obsessively on sex. He cannot really help it. He is now fertile, even as the girls his age, for the most part, are not. He feels the biological impulse to go out and find a sexual partner, though he does not understand this urge and his conception of human sexuality has been perverted and confused by the porn habit he developed in sixth grade.
The boy cannot escape sex. It is all over his computer. All over his phone. All over social media. All over the TV. All over the music he listens to. He goes to school and his female classmates are dressed like strippers. He goes anywhere and that’s how the women are dressed. It seems that everyone is doing everything they can to make a degenerate and a creep out of him, even as they demand that he control himself. We ask for self-discipline and self-control from the boy while providing him with no tools to develop them. Rather than tools, we give him temptation. Non-stop temptation, everywhere he goes, all day, every day, right at the moment when his brain is least capable of overcoming it.
To continue reading: The Four Terrible Things That Are Destroying Boys In Our Culture
Doug “Uncola” Lynn asks a timeless and provocative question. From Lynn at theburningplatform.com:
When I was in high school we had an English teacher who had the kids carry the ring of a toilet seat to the bathroom instead of asking him for a hall pass. Although this took place before the selfie and social media days, it was mentioned in passing as a humorous anecdote in a story printed in the school newsletter. In turn, it was picked up by the city paper, then a regional publication, and by the time the “story” hit the national news, it had been twisted into the teacher forcing the students into wearing the toilet seat around their necks.
That was my first personal experience with hot air expanding up through the media stratosphere before, quite unscientifically, converting into bullshit raining down from on high. It was like watching a game of “telephone”, whereby one media representative whispered “truth” into the earpiece of another, and onward up the line, until the national media was shouting “child abuse” through their collective bullhorns. Although each media outlet should have individually vetted the story they, instead, repeated the error of an earlier source.
Indeed, there are many reasons why lies travel around the world twice as the truth ties its shoes. When searching for veracity in a world of deception, it’s like a wind forever blowing in our faces. Fighting that gale is comparable to swimming the breast-stroke against a raging rapids, or rock-climbing in a bad hailstorm without a helmet: We get nowhere fast and end up with a thundering headache.
We stand at the edge of the abyss, at one-minute to midnight, in the black of a storm. Pummeled by crosswinds of lies, we hear the sounds of war drums in the distance as the roar of economic uncertainty, and waves of debt and currency fluctuations pound the shoreline all around.
To continue reading: Sincere Questions in a World of Lies
