Why Wasn’t I Taught This Book in School?.

I just started reading F.A. Hayek’s The Road To Serfdom. It’s the book I’m taking to read at lunch, and I just finished Chapter 1 today. This book was originally published in 1944, yet what Hayek had to say then is absolutely relevant to today’s political climate. Apparently the general voting public has learned nothing about government or economics since this was written, and I think I know why.

I’ve said it here on numerous occasions: our public education system has been systematically dumbed-down, deliberately, with the willing cooperation of both political parties, because people who want power know it is easier to accumulate and wield if the masses are ignorant and apathetic. Books like The Road to Serfdom are verboten if that is your end.

Here’s a selection of quotes on education and government from my archives:

All who have meditated on the art of governing mankind have been convinced that the fate of empires depends on the education of youth. – Aristotle

Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe. – H.G. Wells

Reason and Ignorance, the opposites of each other, influence the great bulk of mankind. If either of these can be rendered sufficiently extensive in a country, the machinery of Government goes easily on. Reason obeys itself; and Ignorance submits to whatever is dictated to it.- Thomas Paine

We have the greatest opportunity the world has ever seen, as long as we remain honest – which will be as long as we can keep the attention of our people alive. If they once become inattentive to public affairs, you and I, and Congress and Assemblies, judges and governors would all become wolves. – Thomas Jefferson

I know no safe depositary of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power. – Thomas Jefferson to William C. Jarvis, 1820.

It is universally admitted that a well-instructed people alone can be permanently a free people. – James Madison

No people will tamely surrender their Liberties, nor can any be easily subdued, when knowledge is diffusd and Virtue is preservd. On the Contrary, when People are universally ignorant, and debauchd in their Manners, they will sink under their own weight without the Aid of foreign Invaders. – Samuel Adams

I would much rather know that a reporter hates low taxes on moralistic egalitarian grounds then have a reporter who pretends everyone “knows” low taxes are an objective, scientifically proven evil. – Jonah Goldberg, NRO

Because the present-day Republicans and Democrats are both big-government activists, they have a foundational philosophy that is the same: America is a problem to be fixed, and Americans are a people to be managed. – Rev. Donald Sensing

Ignorance and arrogance are a lethal combination. Nowhere do we see that more clearly among writers and performers who pontificate as historians when they know nothing about history. – Victor Davis Hanson

And what is a good citizen? Simply one who never says, does or thinks anything that is unusual. Schools are maintained in order to bring this uniformity up to the highest possible point. A school is a hopper into which children are heaved while they are still young and tender; therein they are pressed into certain standard shapes and covered from head to heels with official rubber-stamps. – H.L. Mencken

Government, in its very essence, is opposed to all increase in knowledge. Its tendency is always towards permanence and against change…[T]he progress of humanity, far from being the result of government, has been made entirely without its aid and in the face if its constant and bitter opposition. – H.L. Mencken

It is only from a special point of view that “education” is a failure. As to its own purposes, it is an unqualified success. One of its purposes is to serve as a massive tax-supported jobs program for legions of not especially able or talented people. As social programs go, it’s a good one. The pay isn’t high, but the risk is low, the standards are lenient, entry is easy, and job security is pretty good…in fact, the system is perfect, except for one little detail. We must find a way to get the children out of it. – Richard Mitchell, the Underground Grammarian

If a consensus of the majority is all it takes to determine what is right, then having and controlling information becomes extraordinarily important. – Masamune Shirow

History doesn’t always repeat itself. Sometimes it just screams, “Why don’t you listen to me?” and lets fly with a big stick. – John W. Campbell Jr.