Culture wars and Military Industrial Complex
I don't like arguing with people and being accused of thinking I know it all, putting me on the defensive, instead of discussing so the subject. So I am trying a new approach, the following comes out of Chris Hedges's book Empire of Illusion. He is a winner of the Pulitzer prize so he may have more creditability that I do. My argument is the Military-Industrial Complex, through educations, and the 1958 National Defense Education Act have had huge social, economic, and political ramifications. Culturally we are what we defended our democracy against. That which is left of the culture we once transmitted through public education has been terribly distorted with a focus on the rapid advancement of technology and leaving moral training to the church.
Here Chris is quoting Henry Giroux, professor of English and Cultural Studies at McMaster University in Canada.
"The emergence of what Eisenhower had called the military-industrial-academic complex had secured a grip on higher education that may have exceeded even what he had anticipated and most feared," Giroux tells me. "Universities in general, especially following the events of 9/11, were under assault by Christian Nationalists, reactionary neoconservatives, and market fundamentalists for allegedly representing the weak link in the war on terrorism. Right-wing students were encouraged to spy on the classes of progressive professors, the corporate grip on the university was tightening, as was made clear not lonely in the emergence of business models of governance, but also in the money being pumped into research and programs that blatantly favored corporate interest. And at Penn State, where I was located at the time, the university had joined itself at the hip with corporate and military power. Put differently, corporate and Pentagon money was now funding research projects, and increasingly knowledge was being militarized in the service of developing weapons of destruction, surveillance, and death. Couple this assault with the fact that faculty were becoming irrelevant as an oppositional force. Many disappeared into discourses that threatened no one, some simply were too scared to raise critical issues in their classrooms for fear of being fired, and many simply no longer had the conviction to uphold the university as a democratic public sphere."
Here Chris is quoting Henry Giroux, professor of English and Cultural Studies at McMaster University in Canada.
"The emergence of what Eisenhower had called the military-industrial-academic complex had secured a grip on higher education that may have exceeded even what he had anticipated and most feared," Giroux tells me. "Universities in general, especially following the events of 9/11, were under assault by Christian Nationalists, reactionary neoconservatives, and market fundamentalists for allegedly representing the weak link in the war on terrorism. Right-wing students were encouraged to spy on the classes of progressive professors, the corporate grip on the university was tightening, as was made clear not lonely in the emergence of business models of governance, but also in the money being pumped into research and programs that blatantly favored corporate interest. And at Penn State, where I was located at the time, the university had joined itself at the hip with corporate and military power. Put differently, corporate and Pentagon money was now funding research projects, and increasingly knowledge was being militarized in the service of developing weapons of destruction, surveillance, and death. Couple this assault with the fact that faculty were becoming irrelevant as an oppositional force. Many disappeared into discourses that threatened no one, some simply were too scared to raise critical issues in their classrooms for fear of being fired, and many simply no longer had the conviction to uphold the university as a democratic public sphere."
Comments (43)
I never heard of this in my many years as a prof. But it may have happened at more prestigious institutions. On the other hand there have been numerous publicized attempts by various student and faculty groups to keep conservative speakers from expressing their opinions on campus.
Quoting Athena
No argument there. The USAF even funded one of my minor research projects that had no military applications. The Cold War has had a profound effect on society.
Could you please provide more information? What was that research about?
A major branch of research is public opinion and how to influence it. When I was young, I loved taking part in surveying people until I finally realized the purpose of the research was increasing the ability to manipulate them. This, also being a main part of how the Nazi party came to power and some of the best research coming from Germany before the US realized the value of it. Did your research have anything to do with the behavior of crowds?
I at odds with those who managed the cold war. Having us duck under our desk and putting our hards over heads, would not have been adequate protection in a nuclear war, so it was pointless unless the point was to cause fear and control the sheep.
The war on communist as though they could have no values that could be acceptable was a bit insane. The association of the US with God, was very powerful and I believe very much part of the problem we have today. Trump standing in front a church he has never entered and holding up a Bible as though to assure us he has God's authority, is something that should not have happened and is very much a part of the cultural conflict don't you think?
Our national destiny to spread from coast to coast is not as popular today as it once may have been, and taking this destiny to having military control of mid-east, associating it with the Power and Glory of God, following the Vietnam war division between those of us who support war and those of us who do not, heats up our cultural conflict doesn't it?
I am not surprised. My concerns are known as conspiracy theory and the belief that Eisenhower's warning should be ignored, and the lack of interest in looking into the details is powerful! It is like Trump using fear and anger and making us distrust everyone but him, just as the Nazi's did when they came to power. Those who are unaware of what is done to control the masses are in the dark and I think they want to stay there.
However, the eruption following watching a police officer gloat as he has his knee on a man's neck until the man is dead, has been as a major earthquake to our understanding of reality. I am hoping this earthquake continues to awaken our consciousness.
Infinite compositions of linear fractional transformations. Pretty much pure mathematics. :cool:
And a week later greatly increased its military budget.
The problem with your argument is the same as the problem with any "haven't things gone to pot, weren't they better in the old days" argument. Something about them good ol' days caused things to become the living hell they are now. Your lauded system of education pre-1958 can't have been that good because it produced a generation of people willing to design, implement, vote for, and otherwise allow the very system you now decry.
What of the external stimuli that allowed such a system to be created by its constituents? Surely it wasn't merely the gilded education system of the post-war boom that pushed American society from the good old days to the living hell it is now? And your argument holds the implication that there ever was a 'good ol' days'. Most famously, Emmet Till was lynched in 1955, McCarthyism ended the year before that, and people lived in constant fear of nuclear annihilation.
I suppose the idea I'm trying to forward is that living in what our parents & grandparents most definitely saw as a hellscape caused them to want to try to create a utopian society, or at least one safe from Soviet and racial threats (those being the most obvious in my mind). And that society, which was designed to survive the Cold War, brought on its own set of issues.
That is interesting. Where can a person get more information about this?
It looks like that is being discussed in other threads, but how does it apply here? I am very open to explanations.
It might be better to ask questions rather than jump to conclusions. However, I will use your post to open the subject of college education today, not equally being literate.
We might be able to fault what Eisenhower called our "domestic education" for promoting inequality and a status quo of privilege that is no longer acceptable? I am not sure, and that is certainly open for discussion. But for sure that past education promoted independent thinking and literacy and a culture essential to our liberty. That is no longer true. The talk today is about college graduates not being literate and not capable of forming good arguments because of the lack of education for the Higher Order Thinking Skills. There are military and religious reasons for this.
In the past we used the Athenian model for education, promoting well rounded, individual growth and we used the Conceptual Method of education. With the focus on technology came specialization and the Behaviorist Method of education which is also used for training dogs. This change brings us to the concern of college graduates being illiterate.
The social, economic, and political ramifications are huge and this brings us to Trump, a president who ignores science, neglects to gather information, and makes decisions without much thinking. A president with Wrestlemania mentality and we can watch him in the WrestleMania ring on youtube. A president too focused on the economy, and some say his own re-election, and lacking a world few essential to our position in the world leadership. To be clear this is not about Trump, it is about the education we have had and all the people who follow him. The US adopted the German models of bureaucracy and education. Now the US is what it defended its democracy against. This is a cultural and political crisis.
Obviously it didn't because the generation it produced contained and supported the instititutions responsible for the very industrialisation of education you're complaining about. How can you claim they were successfully inculcated with a "culture essential to our liberty", and in the very same argument accuse them of designing a system to train illiterate robots? Is designing a military-industrial education system something which you find to be essential to our liberty?
Oh my goodness my mother would sit up in her gravy and applaud you if she could. I absolutely love what you said. May I quote an old text?
"A democracy thrives upon criticism. When a free people, alert to change, studies its institutions to make them serve more richly the aspirations of the common man, it necessarily discusses the points at which improvements seem to be needed. On the public forum and in the national press interested citizens concentrate their attention upon defects in the democratic pattern to the extent that a Martian observer might draw the conclusion that, in the opinion of its followers, democracy is a failure.
What the observer does not understand is that the public critics accept the fundamental principles of democracy so completely that they do not argue about them. The purpose of public criticism is to improve the ways and means of carrying out these fundamental principles and not to destroy them."
From the "Democracy Series" a grade school level series used in the 1940's to mobilize us for war.
Today, I don't think anyone could list 8 of the democratic principles that can be found in old textbooks. I came to collecting old books about education and textbooks because when my school teacher grandmother died, I wanted to know what it meant to defend democracy in the classroom. Only when democracy is defended in the classroom is it defended, because the defense of our democracy and liberty depends on each one of us. Our military force can not defend our democracy. We have perverted our democracy exactly as the republic of Germany was perverted by the Prussian love of military might.
The first major military take over of education was in 1917 when we mobilized for the first world war. Because our national defense depended on patriotism, education for citizenship remained a priority until the military of technology of the second world war. Air warfare and the nuclear bomb made the rapid development of military technology essential, and all the businesses that had war contracts with the government very much wanted the Military-Industrial Complex. But in 1917, the world was in crisis because Germany was more technologically advanced than any other nation, and especially the US was far behind modern military technology. Today patriotism has little to do with our war capabilities because our military technology requires our money more than our sons and daughters. Compare Iraq with Vietnam. Our military force depended on young men and women in Vietnam but not so much when we invaded Iraq. The focus of modern warfare is technology and the ability to pay for it. Trump has improved things by increasing the exportation of this military technology. Is this the way to a better world?
Don't overlook the insidious effects of VA education benefits that sent many, many former soldiers from WWII (and later) to college.
I quite agree that the Military Industrial Complex (MIC) was. is, and probably will remain alive and well. I would like to quarrel with your chronology and widen your target aperture.
In focusing on the post WWII MIC, you are overlooking some other malignant influences: Don't forget about rampant capitalism: exploitative, often ruthless, anti-union, and focused on necessary (from their perspective) class warfare (which is what their anti-unionism is about, among other things). The manipulation of the public got a big boost in the work of Edward Bernays (1891-1955) the 'father of public relations'. Bernays was the nephew of Sigmund Freud.
The "bigger half" of the MIC is big business, the globe-circling ouroboros, infinite tail-swallowing snake. When a handful of capitalists (literally, less than 11) hold more wealth than 1/2 of the global population, you are dealing with something pretty powerful. Not to mention there are another couple thousand inordinately wealthy individuals out there, protecting their interests.
But getting back to the NDEA: Wasn't one of the benefits of the NDEA and VA education benefits a tidal wave of students (and income) that lifted all university departmental boats? Were not the humanities and/or liberal arts departments in much better shape after WWII on into the 1970s, then they later became (put on shorter rations at best)?
Another concern you have is
Quoting Athena
Sure, simple conditioning works better for training dogs than having long discussions with them. I've had long discussions with my very smart dog, and I can report that it didn't improve her behavior one wit (she was, of course, a very good dog).
It happens to be the case, like it or not, that human beings, dogs, monkeys, rats, and crows share many neurological characteristics. That's why we also learn in ways not much differently than other animals. Psychology's first big (and successful) project was to understand how we learn. So it is that the methods of the rat lab became the 'image of psychology'.
In saying that, please note, I am not equating a human mind with a dog's mind. The scope of human mental activities is far vaster than a dog's, and our brains are far more complex, and utilize additional methods of learning, knowledge acquisition, imagination, and so on and so forth.
Hey, Athena: I think we share a lot of discomfort, dissatisfaction, and disagreement with the world as it has been made. My disagreement here is that there are just more villains than the Military Industrial Complex.
I remember, no matter if I was dealing with a store, a medical facility or a bureaucracy, my information was private, and I was treated as though the decisions were mine, not some assholes policy that serves the businesses we must deal with and not us. My generation is horrified by what has happened to our personal power and perhaps if this thread continues long enough there will be a better appreciation of the culture we have destroyed.
It is important to understand the change is both education and bureaucratic. We have been disenfranchised and lost so much personal power, it is hard to think of a reason to defend what we have become. We can't do anything today that is not controlled by a policy that we had no say in making. My grandmothers generation would not go along with what has happened to us. I so remember the day she walked away from a teaching job because the administration interfered with her discipline of a student.
Not that long ago, we did not marginalize people because of what is in a criminal of credit file. Our laws protected our privacy and our government could not track us through our education, banking, medical care. Only our libraries refused to open our private records to the government. This is not the democracy we defended in two world wars.
Now please, what you are speaking of when you say "designing a system to train illiterate robots". Where did you get that information? I know there is a very popular book about education that misleads our understanding of past education and I am fully ready to argue from past books that make it clear, our teachers who became teachers around the time of the first world war, fully believed they were defending democracy in the classroom and preparing each individual child for life by helping each one discover his/her our interest and talents. Since 1958 all those not going on to higher education have been cheated out of the education they need to self-actualization.
In the past, we judged people by their character and virtues, not by their technological merit.
I welcome your arguments.
Your generation (my generation to an extent, I'm well north of 50) raised the very people currently taking that power away. Why aren't you prepared to take any responsibility for that?
All you've done is listed a whole load of stuff wrong with current society, much of which I completely agree with, but you hark back to a time when things were 'better' in some way. My argument is something in that generation caused this state of affairs.
The people responsible for creating and maintaining the state of affairs you're lamenting were raised by the generation you're treating with reverence. They can't possibly have been that great, they raised a generation of monsters.
I think the problem is a failure to understand the Military-Industrial Complex.
I would not be making my arguments if the first day I walked into a second-hand book store to find a book that listed the American values all children learn, I had not walked out with a copy of the 1917 National Education Association Conference and Charles Saralea's 1912 book "The Anglo-German Problem". Germans are fascinating people! While in the US our domestic education was about citizenship and culture, the German education was all about science and technology. In 1917 we added vocational training in a rush to catch up with Germany and have enough typists, engineers, and mechanics for modern warfare, but not until 1958 did we more fully adopted their model of education.
The US was basically a nation of innocent children living for a love of God. While the Prussians who took control of Germany were living for the love of military might. Can you imagine this? It is explained in several books, that verify each other.
As war came to involve everyone it became a complex organization touching every aspect of a civilization. Every aspect. Germany was the first nation to nationalized workers' compensation, health care, and a pension plan. Look at veteran's benefits in the US and perhaps think about what happened to Rome when military leaders began ruling Rome. Historically military men have taken care of their own, and Germany applied military bureaucracy to the whole of Germany. This includes all the social benefits the allies did not have! It includes Social Security and everyone having a number, a very handy thing for the state to have when it goes to war. Imagine war without numbering people and things. How important do you think those numbers were in the Civil War compared to how important they are to modern warfare. Number and document. Number and document. This is a little cultural change compared to telling "his story" in the past. Imagine history being a number, not a name.
If I write too much no one will read, so I hope I have sparked some interest that opens the way to say more in another post. The point is the Military-National Complex is about the organization of a nation, not just a separate branch of the government.
Excuse me, I have taken responsibility for raising consciousness ever since I realize what happened and why. That has been about 40 years. Exactly what do you think I should be doing? LOL perhaps you think I have a lot more power to change things than I do?
What have I said that you do not believe is true? And how many people do you think have the information I am providing because only a huge and united mass, with infromation, can make a difference? The Germans didn't see anything wrong until it was too late. How is any generation of Americans supposed to do better than the German's did, and where are they to find the necessary information, or why should they even know they need to look for it?
Quoting Athena
Quoting jgill
Quoting Athena
It's not part of an argument. You asked a question and I answered it. It simply illustrates the support the military gave (gives) to scientific research having no immediate military application. I don't consider that a bad thing. But, then again, I served in the military so I guess that makes me a part of the dreaded MIC.
I don't doubt your intentions, but raising conciousness (whatever that is) is not the same as taking responsibility.
Quoting Athena
That's simple...
Quoting Athena
No one else made us do this, so we obviously did not defend our democracy against anything.
Quoting Athena
This is self evidently false because if the past education promoted those things then those emerging from it would not have created the society we have today, would they?
Quoting Athena
Again, self evidently false because democracy was defended in the classroom and it lead to a generation of teachers and leaders who no longer defend it in the classroom.
Quoting Athena
Again, self-evidently false. Pre-1958 education cannot possibly have lead to self-actualization because it produced the very people who came up with and implemented mechanical industry-serving post-1958 education.
An interesting side, here: During and after the civil war, there was considerable difficulty identifying how many, from what company, from what state, and names of dead soldiers. There was no system of identification. Beginning to solve the problem of identifying soldiers (dead or alive) was a major impetus to the growth of the Federal Government. If benefits were to be paid, accurate information was needed
Quoting Athena
Sure, because the MIC is co-extensive with the mid-20th century culture on to the present. That's an immense amount of complexity to get one's head around. Just for example, people who are dithering about the militarization of police departments are not always aware that the drive to load up your local police with tanks is coming from the Pentagon, not from your local police station.
Why are we singing the national anthem before pro-football or pro-baseball games. Because somebody in the pentagon thought that would be a good idea.
Quoting Athena
Come now, Athena! The US has never been innocent. No other country has either. Let me divide this up: There are the leaders (from the Mayflower on down), there are the gung ho followers, (the core group--not too large) then there are the masses.
The English Colonies, and then the US, has pursued some highly guilt-producing practices: mass genocide conducted against the Aboriginal peoples, enslavement, wanton disregard of civil rights, ruthless exploitation, waste, fraud, abuse, and so on. The leaders and core group set the policies and the masses are roped into supporting and/or carrying out the policies.
When we talk about nations--Germany, Burma, Liechtenstein, the United States, whichever... we might want to avoid using language appropriate to morally responsible agents. Nations don't have friends; they don't have morals. They have interests, and they tend to pursue their best interests.
George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Robert E. Lee, Teddy Roosevelt, Warren Harding, Dwight Eisenhower, JFK, LBJ, Nixon, on down to Donald Trump are, for better and for much worse, moral agents who are responsible. I'm a responsible moral agent; you're a responsible moral agent. The pentagon, as such, is not. General Motors is not. The chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (some moral agent) IS. So is the CEO, CFO, CETC. of General Motors.
I also write too much verbiage, so I'll stop here, and start again.
I heartily loathe the military industrial, corporate business culture of not just the US, but of much of the world. It's various devious, detrimental unto diabolical designs are loathsome in their entirety. I've spent quite a bit of time since the mid 1960s thinking about the MIC.
I'm a big fan of Chris Hedges. I don't share his leftist outlook but I do appreciate his analysis of the warfare state and how it functions. I've noticed that while the US comes apart on domestic issues, there's broad bipartisan support on our awful foreign policy. Congress just decided last week to keep troops in Afghanistan past the election. We've only been at war there for 19 years. We're still in Iraq too. When does this insanity end?
To someone like me who cares about foreign policy, it's almost as if the domestic chaos is a smokescreen to take the public's mind off the wars, which continue unabated.
Nah, it must just be a coincidence. Pay no attention to the wars.
We do live in Ike's prediction.
I certainly didn't mean to put you on the defensive but I have the curiosity and sense of wonder of a child.
I don't think I want to be judgmental about the good or bad of military research, but was looking for denial or confirmation of what I am reading in books about the military and industrial take over of higher education. This is about cultural change, right?
A democracy needs people to be generalists so we have some idea of the meaning of things we vote on besides our own personal interest. When we are generalists we can all talk about the issues and work together to reason through things. According to the books, specialists tend to have their own jargon and that leads to others not understanding what they are talking about. Specialization goes with ideas of superiority and inferiority and this can become very unfriendly. I think when we specialize, we develop social and political problems?
Ah did you get when we entered the first and second world wars, we most certainly did defend our democracy in the classroom and we stopped doing this in 1958 when the National Defense Education Act was passed? I know this because I buy the old books about education and the textbooks. The reason for this change is in the past our national defense depended much more on patriotism than technology.
Everything I am saying is about war and education and how the two go together, and the social, economic, and political ramifications of how military technology changes public education
When I say the change in education has made us what defended our democracy against, you said
"No one else made us do this, so we obviously did not defend our democracy against anything."
That seems a strange thing to say. We would be speaking German if at the beginning of WWI we had not rushed to bring our nation up to the level of German military technology and this includes bureaucratic technology that has radically changed politics! In 1916, our education had nothing to do with technology and vocational training. It was all about literature and culture. So here we are in lulla land totally unprepared for modern warfare, and Germany was swallowing up one country after another. This technology is as much about bureaucratic technology as it is about weapons.
"The German military organization is the world's model, at least from the standpoint of immediate accomplishment of results, and therefore we can hardly do better than to emulate it in its perfect working.....
There had developt in Europe and in America, among those active in the cause of universal peace, a trend to discredit the military service and by every means discourage young men from entering the services of their countries in their armies and their navies."
" J. A. B. Sinclair 1917 National Education Association Conference. There was no National Education Association before the urgent need to mobilize our nation for war.
Charles Sarolea wrote a book warning the world Germany was mobilizing for war and his book was ignored until WWI began.
In 1958 it was the USSR and nuclear warfare threatening us. Our national defense depends on us staying ahead of others in this arms race.
World events demanded we imitate Germany and become the most powerful military force on earth, or do you have another idea of how we could deal with that reality?
Now about my responsibility exactly what do you think I should have done? At first, there was no internet so I could not raise awareness. I have been on the internet for several years now, only be attacked, banned, hurt again, and again. Everyone seems to want to prove me a conspiracy idiot and how wrong I am, and if that does not silence me, I am banned from forums. I PROMISE YOU, MY SENCE OF RESPONSIBILITY HAS MEANT YEARS OF BEING HURT AND COMING BACK TO TAKE ANOTHER BEATING. I was hoping this forum would be different but here I am defending myself from someone who wants to blame me for what happened and says I don't know what I am talking about.
[b]I want you to know statements like this
"This is self evidently false because if the past education promoted those things then those emerging from it would not have created the society we have today, would they?"
hurt me deeply.[/b]
How many years do you think you could care so much about something and keep trying when people who have never read a book on the subjects of Germany, bureaucracy, and education attack you like that? Why would you tell me to be responsible and then tell me how wrong I am?
Our lives were not all about money before the war and we did respect our elders, and no one of quality would be as disrespectful as you. Lawyers were lawyers because of a love of justice, and doctors were doctors because of a love of healing, and teachers were teachers because of a love of our nation and teaching, and reporters thought they were defending our democracy with their reporting. You didn't live that past so why do you think you know it? Disrespectful- know nothing know it alls, are our cultural crisis and if I can not change this, I will be glad to leave this planet.
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Germany, in world war 1, didn't "swallow up one country after another". They didn't even get to Paris. America entered that war not to protect it's democracy, but to protect it's economic interests.
Quoting Athena
All of Europe was mobilizing for war in the early 20th century. That's a major reason there WW1 started.
quote="Athena;433888"]Our lives were not all about money before the war and we did respect our elders, and no one of quality would be as disrespectful as you. Lawyers were lawyers because of a love of justice, and doctors were doctors because of a love of healing, and teachers were teachers because of a love of our nation and teaching, and reporters thought they were defending our democracy with their reporting. You didn't live that past so why do you think you know it?[/quote]
Unless you are 106, you didn't live that past either.
It's really not that complicated.
Generation 1 are responsible for bringing up generation 2 to cope well with whatever is thrown at them.
If generation 2 fail to cope (come up with bad policies in response, or fail to reverse bad policies after they're no longer appropriate), then generation 1 has done something wrong (or failed to do something right).
Generation 2 are responsible for bringing up generation 3 to cope with whatever is thrown at them...
I don't understand why you're having such trouble comprehending such a simple concept.
If generation 2 implement, or fail to reverse, policies which are bad, then generation 1 has failed in their task of preparing them for whatever is thrown at them.
If such a situation has occurred (and I agree it has), it is patently foolish to look back to the approach which absolutely, without doubt, lead directly to where we now are. We have to change something about the previous approach otherwise we will just re-run the same process.
It's like you're setting a ball rolling down a hill, you're fine with it near the top whilst it's going quite slowly, soon it gets out of control and starts running away from you. Your solution is just to take the ball back to the top of the hill because you liked it there. But we know exactly what will happen if you start the same ball rolling down the same hill the same way. It will be fine for a while and then start running out of control, just like it did last time.
As for your faux offense, any complaints about the state of affairs implicitly blames someone (even if only of dereliction). If you want me to say nothing about the fault in your generation, why do you get to harp on about the faults in mine, or my descendents.
I am concerned that our push for technology was necessary at one time, but it lacks wisdom. The 1958 National Defense Education Act was to expire in 4 years, and obviously that did not happen. We neglect history and do not have the perspective we need for good judgment. I think our expectations of technology were unrealistic and that we need to rethink our direction and where we want to go from here.
Please share your source of that information so it can be discussed. There was a lot of defending of colonies but that was far from being prepared to fight off an invasion with an army equal to Germany's army.
Are you a parent? How old are your children? Most of us understand conditioning our children to be good children and that is about all we know about parenting. I have not found a child who could comprehend what talk about and without that discussion it is not possible to begin the discussion on what needs to be done. I am not convinced the necessary discussion can occur with you and you think you know a lot and appear to have some interest.
Even if a parent and all the children in that family understood what I am saying, they would be powerless to do any more than share the information with others and hope they join the effort to raise awareness and plan for something better. I have been trying to do that for many years and you can see how well that goes. The world is full of uninformed people who insist I do not know what I am talking and that prevents a discussion from going any further. So now please tell me what I can do to save our democracy and liberty. Take the responsibility. I am glad to give it to you.
You do not know as much as you think know, especially not my opinions about education past, present or future, and the discussion would go much better if you stopped assuming and started asking questions. Do I think the Dick and Jane early readers were the best books? No! Dick and Jane and all the other test books were racist and sexist!
Or wait. Just give me 8 democratic principles. Most older books list 10 or 12 principles so if you are literate surely you can tell us 8 of them. Explain what morals and science have to do with our liberty. If you can not do these things, you are not ready to prepare your children to defend the republic our forefathers gave us. If you are willing to take the responsibility you say I should take, and can not answer the questions, what are you going to do about that?
Yeah, so why did the media convince an isolationist populace? Idealism for democracy? Possible, but then why not enter earlier? A more likely rationale is that, apart from pro-democratic sentiment, which certainly existed, there was also the matter of all the credit given to England and France. If they lost, that money would be gone. So there was a strong economic incentive to intervene. And America's behaviour in the interwar period was almost entirely focused on their economic interests.
Quoting Athena
I recommend "The Sleepwalkers" by Christopher Clark. But that all the european nations where gearing up for war in the early 20th century really is common (among people interested in the period) knowledge. You can probably read it on Wikipedia.
Why not enter earlier is easy to understand! Number one, in the US government, does not tell the people what to do. The people tell government what to do. This is the meaning of a patriotic defense. Only when we accept a war is our patriot duty and the will of God does our congress agree to a war. Schools and the media were used to get US citizens to agree to the war.
Industry wanted to close our schools, claiming the war caused a labor shortage, but teachers argued an institution for making good citizens was good for making patriotic citizens. We could not have done so well in mobilizing for war and maintaining the war effort without our schools.
Secondly, the US was not prepared for war. We are not appreciating the technological crisis when we were a low technology, intense labor society, and women volunteered to knit socks for soldiers, and children used their lunch money to buy US bonds. People are thinking of war as we know it today, but this is how we came to know war because of Prussia. What we have today is very different from the past.
The Prussians took control of Germany following the 30 years war, and they central public education and focused it on technology for military and industrial purposes. The US did not have the typist, mechanics, and engineers need for modern warfare, because our education was about citizenship, and Americanizing immigrants, not vocational training. We did not have the trained manpower for a modern war.
Likewise, England's education was about character and being a good Englishman. It rejected Germany's education for technology because education for technology is a great social/economic leveler and England wanted to protect its classist society. The US education was about transmitting a culture, not about vocational training. The US did adopt Germany's education for technology in 1917 and this was a wonderful thing as it led to our growing middle class. Education for technology is vocational education and has always been for slaves. Our liberal education was for free men. Now we are back to education for slaves and we are in a cultural crisis. We don't care enough about education to understand such things. I doubt if anyone here has paid much attention to education. I am spent years studying this stuff, and because what I say is not in agreement with what everyone knows, I the person who doesn't know what she is talking about.
[qoute] I recommend "The Sleepwalkers" by Christopher Clark. But that all the european nations where gearing up for war in the early 20th century really is common (among people interested in the period) knowledge. You can probably read it on Wikipedia.
[/quote]
When the library opens I will check out the book.
I will check it out.
Some countries were colonizing and using military force to defend their colonies. However, if they had been preparing for war, things would have been very different. I will allow Sarolea to explain.
"Under present conditions of international relations, as a continental Power, Germany needs no powerful navy but needs a powerful army. In at least one definite sense it may be said that to Germany the army is essentially defensive. On the contrary, England, as an insular and maritime Power, needs no mighty army but needs a mighty navy. In the same special sense to England, the navy is essentially the defensive weapon. To put the position and mutual relationship more clearly; if to-morrow England started raising a powerful army of 500,000 soldiers, assuming that it could not conceivably be directed against France and Russia, but that it could only be used in alliance with France and Russia in a joint attack against Germany, Germany would legitimately take alarm; and she would naturally argue that England would not make such tremendous sacrifices merely to send out an eventual punitive expedition to Nigeria or China. She would assume that England was preparing for an attack on Germany. And in just the same way when Germany is adding to her formidable army a formidable navy, which could only be used against England, she cannot wonder if her naval policy gives rise to the gravest apprehensions and if the English people draw the inevitable inference that Germany, if not indeed contemplating an immediate attack, is at least preparing for such an eventuality when she judges that its necessity has arisen".
Do you see a difference between colonial behaviors and the major powers paring for war against each other?
You're defining current US foreign policy as defending the world? Our destruction of Libya and Syria under Obama? Our futile invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan? Our incursions into Somalia and Niger?
I'm afraid you and I will need to agree to disagree. US foreign policy is not benign, is not about defending freedom, is not helping anyone. On Bush's watch the US became a torture regime, and under Obama the torture became institutionalized. This is wrong. It's evil.
You realize this is contradictory, right? Americans decide for themselves, yet schools and media tell Americans what to decide.
Quoting Athena
That didn't change before the US entered the war. It was after entering that the US rapidly set up what would become the most powerful military in the world. They could have started that process in 1914.
Quoting Athena
It'd help if you didn't paint history with a broad brush and made absurdly sounding claims like "vocational training is training for slaves".
Quoting Athena
Sure. Imperial Germany's naval expansion was the great blunder of the 20th century. But you're forgetting that, while Britain did not have a large land army, France and Russia did. And it was the fear of the "Russian Steamroller", together with the characteristically Prussian penchant for fast and decisive military action regardless of the risks, that lead to Schlieffen.
Assuming is not a good thing. How about our trouble with Iran begins during the Eisenhower administration because he used the CIA to create a rebellion in Iran that took out the democratically elected leader and put in his place a tyrant because the US wanted to be sure it had control of Iran and not the USSR. That was a disaster as we brought in our troops making matters worse until the Iranians rebelled again and threw us out. I would be glad to go on about the wrongs done by our military-industrial complex, and how screwed the taxpayer is and how completely powerless we are if that is what people want to discuss. But that conversation would only be pathetic venting and do absolutely nothing to make things better. I am so angry about the perversion of our democracy and the place to make a difference is education.
Had we been paying the real price of oil from the 1950's until fracking, our gasoline would have cost at least as much as the Brits were paying for gasoline and many of us could not have afforded it because the real cost of oil is the military expense of controlling it and that went sky high during the Reagan administration when we took control of the Persian Gulf and granted arms to people like Sadam.
Bin Laden did not attack the people of the US. He attacked the military-industrial complex and we should have thanked him and taken advantage of this moment to take power away from the military-industrial complex but really is that our biggist problem compared to global warming and doing to our water supply what we have done to our oil supply, and -----
Does anyone remember when we thought our constitution prevented the federal government from controlling public education? How about remembering when the government could not track us through education, banking, and medical care and now our cell phones? What do you think of having to have a government-approved ID to ride public transportation? And that wall we are building with taxpayer money walls us in and well as walling others out. No more fleeing to Canada to avoid the draft and the No Child Left Behind bill mandates schools to give military recruiters students names and addresses.
Bring it on, dump your anger here, then maybe people will start taking discussion of education seriously. This is supposed to be a philosophy forum and this thread is about the military-industrial complex and culture change. I didn't think this forum got political. We were known around the world as a nation that stood against war. Iran loved us because we helped them get rid of British control. Making America great again did not mean a military power controlled by neocons and paid for by taxpayers. And our education was based on the Enlightenment, not technology for military and industrial purpose which I have said is education for slaves and is destroying our democracy.
I will be back in a few minutes, but I just unloaded and then read your statement and I want to correct you. Liberal education is for free men. Education for technology has always been education for slaves. It most certainly is not education for free men prepared for leadership. It would be so much easier to have this discussion if people asked questions, instead of assuming things.
What is contradictory? You doubt that public education was used to mobilize us for WWI and WWII? You doubt that was essential to congress approving the US entering the wars? Would you like quotes from my sources of information?
What didn't change before the US entered the war? The Prussian take over of Germany following the Thirty Years war?
I don't think a post the size of a book would work very well. No one would read a post that big, but providing some details of history is essential so I will.
Oh please, France, and especially Russia, did not have the developed military technology of Germany.
France and Russia did not have education for technology for military and industrial purposes, any more than Britain or US did. The Prussians were so much more ahead in the war game because they understood things about war the rest of the world did not.
Please take a minute to consider what those countries thought was important about education. France was riding high on being the cultural leader of the world and when it came to war they were in the past. England's education prepared the young to be good Englishmen and they wanted to protect their social classes and rejected education for technology. The US was working with the ideology of the Enlightenment and totally focused on liberal education for citizenship. In 1917 the US adopted education for technology, but it retained education for citizenship until 1958. That is bolded because I say too much and people won't read it all and this is the most important point.
"The war of the future is a problem of economic organization of the most difficult nature and highest technological achievement, such as has never been hitherto demanded from any army. The old military qualities must give way to the organizing qualities. No doubt the courage and endurance of the individual soldier must remain for all times the foundation of military power, but organizing genius is required in order not to waste that courage and endurance. This is clearly shown from a mere examination of the colossal numbers engaged. To transport, to locate, and to feed these masses of men is the daily preoccupation of the military authorities. That they rightly understand the nature of the problem is certain, but it is very doubtful whether the problem can ever be adequately solved by commanders who are recruited from the Junkertum. Anxiety only arises with regard to their other qualifications. We know that our nation possess in its industries successful organizers, brains accustomed to direct great quantities of material and "personnel"- men who create new conditions of life for whole economic districts without having to appeal to any mystical authority. As democratic politicians, we may often have to oppose bitterly those captains of industry, but if it comes to war we shall be willing to be led by them."
I tire of my argument so I am sure readers are tired of it too, but this needs to be understood.... Cheney and Haliburton controlling oil and other resources essential to war and supplying our military. Making huge fortunes and not being part of the military. Hello America, the military-industrial complex is a fact of our lives, not just a conspiracy theory. The Prussians realized total warfare far ahead of the rest of the world and realized industry is just as much a part of the war effort as the military. In case you miss the point- industry is leading our military decisions. As Germany did, we are using our military to protect our economic interest and this is far beyond our national defense goals before the second world war. There were some exceptions in the days of colonization but today our military goals are far beyond what they once were. We bravely used force to make weak and almost primitive societies bend to our industrial well, but that is not equal to being prepared for war with our equals and competing with our equals for finite resources, and statically controling areas of the world and military essential resources.
Mention of bureautic change being a big technology change has not gotten attention. "In the past, personal and political liberty depended to a considerable extent upon government inefficiency. The spirit of tyranny was always more than willing; but its organization and material equipment were generally weak. Progressive science and technology have changed this completely." Aldous Huxley
Assigning Social Security numbers to every individual is very important to the efficient management of a population and the bureaucratic ability to manage a bureaucracy the size of Social Security would not be impossible without adopting Prussian military bureaucracy and applying it to citizens. THE US HAD EXTREMELY INEFFICIENT GOVERNMENT AND WOULD NOT HAVE BEEN CAPABLE OF RUNNING A BUREAUCRACY SUCH AS SOCIAL SECURITY. This post is too long, and so incomplete, but know it is the combined work of Hoover and Roosevelt and the crisis of the Great Depression, that gave the US Big Government.
I have studied the history of education since ancient times and I disagree with you. Historically there have been many different purposes for education and different groups holding the responsibility of education. Scholasticism was the effort of the Catholic church and centered on Aristotle, supporting the authority of the church of course, but also lifting humanity out of the dirt and setting us up for the age of Englightenment and the return of liberal education. Scholasticism moved philosophy into science and the modern age. Liberal education is about freedom and that is why I opened this thread.
Mythology was the bases of education since mankind gathered around the fire and began telling stories. Mythology has always been about transitioning the young into adults and social bonding. That is a very different purpose of education than serving the elite.
This thread would not exist if our education had not changed from the humanistic goals to technological military-industrial complex goals.
You might be interested in Thomas Jefferson and his concern that education is essential to a strong and united public. The ideology of our democracy begins with the philosophy of ancient Athens and was developed through the age of Enlightenment and this root of the education is far from education that benefits the elite.
Where does your understanding of education come from?
I agree with pretty much everything you say; and even with some of the same passion.
I'm not sure why you directed this at me, but I'll take the liberty of using your excellent post to add some of my own thoughts; as I say, mostly in complete agreement.
Quoting Athena
I am well acquainted with the CIA's deposing of Mohammad Mosaddegh and the installation of the hated Shah. I saw a documentary on tv once. Mosseddegh spoke for the rights of the people of Iran to control their own resources and their own destiny. Clearly he had to go. Leading to the people overthrowing the Shah and leading to the Mullahs and Jimmy Carter's hostage crisis and all the rest right up to today. Perfectly well aware. I hope I've made it clear that I'm a very longtime critic of US foreign policy and fan of Chomsky.
Quoting Athena
Yes. I agree totally. And one of my great frustrations is that the warfare state, as some libertarian blogs might call it, is deeply bipartisan. Joe Biden represents the warfare state. Trump, by the way, ran in opposition to it; and to date has not started any new wars and has kept John Bolton from starting one with Iran. Just to toss in a little politics.
Quoting Athena
Yes. Agreed totally. Oil. "The Great Game" as they called it in the 1890s, when the movers and shakers and spies of the world realized that oil was the key to the twentieth century.
I will confess, though, that I've always enjoyed driving and that I am going to drive my gas-guzzling automobile till the last drop of fuel is extracted from the last pollution-spewing refinery in the world. So there's that.
Quoting Athena
That made me laugh. I'm as naive as you, I wish such a think were imaginable. I do not think Americans were quite in the mood to go, "Wow, you know, this is a good opportunity to throw out the military-industrial complex and the big predatory banks and start over." Nah, that wasn't gonna happen. Instead lust for vengeance, invade a couple of countries while not ever having a proper forensic and criminal investigation of the perpetrators. You know the fix was in from day one, right? I was there. I'm not saying the underlying events were anything other than what the 9/11 Commission says they were -- but from that moment onward, everything was a psy-op to whip up the country to march off to the list of wars specified in the PNAC document.
So Bush and the neocons. Bad people, right? But what of the Dems? Hillary, and DiFi, and Biden, and all the other so-called "liberals" who always seem to be on the yes side of every war. That's the thing. The endless warfare state is bipartisan. Mainstream GOPs -- which Trump crushed -- and the Dems. The entire GOP/Dem alliance wants war and Trump ran against the wars. People should try to remember that.
Quoting Athena
I'm afraid I'm not big on global warming one way or another. I like an open road and a tank full of fossil fuel. Tail fins. That's when America was great!
Quoting Athena
Yes, I read the paleo-libertarian blogs. And there's a lot to be said for the point of view. Have you seen the condition of public education? The kids can't read, write, or think.
Do you happen to know which demographic is the most in favor of school vouchers so that parents can send their kids to independent private schools? African-Americans. That's right. They know their kids are being set up for a lifetime of failure in the public schools and they want to be able to get GOOD educations for their kids. I think the federal government has done a terrible job with the public schools.
Quoting Athena
Yes, I read the cosmo-libertarian blogs too. I oppose the surveillance state. I oppose greatly the social credit score system being implemented by China, and coming here soon unless people wake up.
Quoting Athena
I oppose a national ID and I definitely oppose having to show any kind of ID to ride public transportation. How'd we end up talking about this? I'm a libertarian, but some people think that has a bad connotation, so I call myself an independent centrist with libertarian leanings, if that helps to categorize me. I totally oppose any restrictions on anyone doing anything that doesn't infringe on others rights. You want to get on the bus, get on the bus.
Why do you ask?
Quoting Athena
I sometimes defend actions and positions taken by Trump; and overall, I support Trump for reelection. I am hardly blind to his many faults, and I don't agree with some or even many of his positions. On the wall, I oppose Trump with all my might. I happen to have a high interest in US-Mexican relations. The wall is bad optics, it's disrespectful, it's provocative, and most of all, it's ineffective. Wouldn't stop drugs, wouldn't stop the flow of people, wouldn't stop anything. Just make more human misery and insult Mexico, which is our friend, neighbor, and third largest trading partner.
On the other hand, let it be noted that Obama deported more Mexicans than Bush or Clinton and even Trump did; and that it was Obama who built the cages and put kids in them. Remember: The screwed up government is bipartisan. Very important point.
Quoting Athena
At the time of its passing I heard it referred to as No Lobbyist Left Behind. Pork-laden politicized bill I gather.
Quoting Athena
Me personally? Did I miss something? Hope you'll clarify.
Quoting Athena
People who take education seriously advocate for school vouchers and basically demolishing the publi schools and the teachers unions that have destroyed them.
Quoting Athena
Oh ok well you're right. Same thing happened to me, I was trying to be analytical and objective in one of the Trump threads and got attacked for this and that, and decided that anything political here is basically like arguing on Craigslist or Facebook.
But I think there's nothing wrong using examples ripped from the headlines to illustrate larger points.
As far as the mil-ind complex, I am 100% with you and the passionate and eloquent words you wrote.
Quoting Athena
Yes. And I guess you'd call this getting political, but as an old anti-war type from the 60's and 70's, I'm shocked and appalled at the way the Democrats and even the left have suddenly gone all-in on the wars and the intelligence agencies and the generals as long as they think they'll get Trump.
And yes it started the moment Hillary voted for the Iraq war. At that moment the mainstream Dems had to take a side; and they sided with the warmongers. And now 20 years later we're at war in seven or so Middle East and North African countries and Pelosi and the Dems keep funding. Did you know that a resolution to end the Afghanistan war was voted down a week or two ago? It's insane. The mainstream GOP and the mainstream Dems did this. Trump ran against the warmongers in 2016 and they will throw everything they've got at Trump to get control so they can have their wars again.
Hillary was the warmonger. Trump was the peacemaker.
Quoting Athena
November 22, 1963 is the date that deal went down. And Trump is the first president since JFK to directly challenge the intelligence agencies. Make of that what you will.
Quoting Athena
Haven't you heard? The wokesters and Antifa and BLM are opposed to enlightenment values. Free speech is "privilege." I assume you follow current events so that I don't have to cite chapter and verse here. Noam Chomsky's been #cancelled for advocating free speech.
Quoting Athena
Right on. I agree. I just wish that I could explain better to people that everything you say is true; AND that Trump represents opposition to all those things; and Biden represents the restoration of the unholy neocon-neoliberal alliance that's led us to this point.
Well, thanks for such a stimulating post that got my typing fingers flowing. I'm sure I'll soon be in trouble for something I wrote.
Quoting fishfry
I am undecided about the international good or evil of Trump. I sure do not like him giving Israel the green light to close Palestinians out of Jerusalem. But the most important point might be the difference fracking has made? When Reagon told us we did not need to conserve oil, he was lying to us! At that time mid-east oil was essential to our economy and for economic reasons we had to get control of mid-east oil. If fracking had been more developed when Sadam is in control of Iraq, that war would have been avoided. In fact, Israel would not have become so strong with the help of the US if our economy did not depend on the control of oil. We have to defend our control of oil exactly as Rome hand to secure its supply of gold, for the same reason and has the same results of militarizing the nation. The Military-Industrial Complex is about economics.
Even if we could supply our own oil for hundreds of years, our banking system is tied the petrodollar. If the world stopped trading oil in dollars, our banking system would collapse. Oil is to our economy what gold was to Rome. That makes me very nervous about Trump because if the rest of the world follows Saddam's switch to trading oil in Euro's, we are in big trouble. The main reason Saddam did that was he objected to our connection with Israel. It is pretty important the world likes us and wants to play ball with us and I am not sure Trump is maintaining that? Which puts into question, who is managing the Military-Industrial Complex? Fracking has changed things.
Quoting fishfry
This is disastrous! The most important role of education in a democracy with liberty is cultural unity. There are two ways to maintain social order; culture or authority over the people. Jefferson understood this and devoted his life to universal education for a strong and united Republic. For nearly 200 years we had education for citizenship. That was replaced with education for a technological society with unknown values. Now we are dependent on authority over us to maintain social order and this is getting ugly!
I do not the National Education Association as the problem with education, but giving control of education to the military. This ended defending our democracy in the classroom and lead to leaving moral training to the church. Historically the church has not been good at keeping things peaceful. Leaving moral training to Christians is a huge problem leading to our very serious cultual divide. The book "NEA: Propaganda Front of the Radical Left" by Sally D. Reed is a must-read for anyone wanting to understand the cultural divide we have today. Christians are very well organized to control education but they are loosing because science is getting the upper hand. In a few days we will see who wins the struggle for our nation, the Christians or the people who put their faith in science.
I better stop here because people don't like long post. I hope to reply to more but not all at once.
I do not believe our education was about benefiting the ruling elite because I have books about the history of education, and collect old books written about education and primary grade text books. That most certianly was not how Jefferson, nor any of the education experts I have read, have said about education. The priority purpose of education was Americanizing immigrants, prevent social chaos and the end of our democracy with liberty. Education for technology was added as we mobilized for the first world war, and we could not have won the war without that change in education because we were not prepared for a war with advanced technology. That change in education greatly benefiitted all labor class people, because it prepared them for trades that provided better wages and better working conditions. But we retained education for citizenship until 1958.
We can see the result of replacing the former education for citizenship with education for a technological society with unknown values. We are now bracing for acts of war that we fear may follow the election no matter who wins the election.
We took our democracy for granted and we are in big trouble! We have culture wars and this cultural divide is likely to turn violent.