Gatto on Woodrow Wilson

Miscellaneous History
1

Wilson was the master of evil behind closed doors. Not only world government, World War 1 and perpetual war thereafter, income tax, and federal reserve counterfeiting… but also forced schooling.

Read this in John Taylor Gatto’s wonderful Weapons of Mass Instruction…

Wilson was at one time the president of Princeton University. And had this to say about the future goal of education to a group of businessmen who at the time were the leading subsidizers of forced education to get obedient serfs out of the school system (then a wing of big business):

“We want one class to have a liberal education. We want another class, a larger class of necessity, to forgo the privilege of liberal education to fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks.”

Gatto contrasts that with free markets.

“From its beginnings, forced schooling represented a big step backwards
from the exciting free market in learning offered by the bazaar
of American life, a market well-illustrated in the lives of Franklin, Jefferson,
Farragut, and many others. This asystematic system of learning
put the nation on a road to unparalleled power and wealth. And
Americas young responded brilliantly to it, out-inventing and outtrading
every old world competitor by a country mile.”

It’s amazing that all we hear is wrong with the schools is that sex ed and evolution are not being taught. OR that these “heroes” are not being paid more. No one seems to look at the major issue of force on parents and children. Or the evil motives behind this very system. It seems from the left and right it’s being used as a basis for instilling morality and mindless conformity… either to patriotism (who else but the right is stupid enough to support the “pledge”, even though it was at one time a tool of state-socialist Francis Bellamy?) or to the state religion (or both as the case may be).

Two things of interest. I was glad to see Howard Zinn having put his approval on Weapons of Mass Instruction (in the testimonial); at least for the reason that this book is then handed off to his leftist followers and some sense is instilled in people.

Also, in this video on youtube Gatto makes an interesting point about the inability of the state to even stop people if not for the homogenization and paranoia put into kids in the schools. Not only is it a tool of state consciousness, but a tool of preventing anarchist class consciousness (of distinguishing the larger non-violent class from the small tax-eating political class)

2

John, I think it is a crying shame that Gatto and Rothbard didn’t get a chance to collaborate.

Your point is important, and homogenization and fear were probably part of the rationale; of course, for the opportunist, the bug might be a feature. I’m not convinced they were that bright or that far-sighted. (Many of the people in the position of allocating funds for the furtherance of such goals are not capable of doing the work of those they seek to control.)

Here’s something that struck me as rather interesting from an historical standpoint:

http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/9l.htm

The full facts are engrossing: seventeen years after Wirt left New York City, a government publication printed the next significant chapter of the Wirt story. Its title: Hearings, House Select Committee to Investigate Certain Statements of Dr. William Wirt, 73rd Congress, 2nd Session, April 10 and 17, 1934. It seems that Dr. Wirt, while in Washington to attend a school administrators meeting in 1933, had been invited to an elite private dinner party at the home of a high Roosevelt administration official. The dinner was attended by well-placed members of the new government, including A.A. Berle, a famous “inner circle” brain-truster. There, Wirt heard that the Depression was being artificially prolonged by credit rigging, until little people and businessmen were shaken enough to agree to a plan where government must dominate business and commerce in the future!

All this he testified to before Congress. The transformation was to make government the source of long-term capital loans. Control of business would follow. Wirt testified he was told Roosevelt was only a puppet; that his hosts had made propaganda a science, that they could make newspapers and magazines beg for mercy by taking away much of their advertising; that provided they were subservient, leaders of business and labor would be silenced by offers of government contracts for materials and services; that colleges and schools would be kept in line by promises of federal aid until such time as they were under safe control; and that farmers would be managed by letting key operators “get their hands in the public trough.”
In the yellow journalism outburst following Wirt’s disclosure, Berle admitted everything. But he said they were just pulling Wirt’s leg! Pulling the leg of the one-time nationally acclaimed savior of public education. Time magazine, The New York Times, and other major media ridiculed Wirt, effectively silencing him.

Of Wirt’s earlier New York foray into the engineering of young people, New York City mayor Hylan was quoted vividly in The New York Times of March 27, 1922:
The real menace to our republic is this invisible government which like a giant octopus sprawls its slimy length over city, state and nation… It has seized in its tentacles our executive officers, our legislative bodies, our schools, our courts, our newspapers, and every agency created for the public protection… To depart from mere generalizations, let me say that at the head of this octopus are the Rockefeller Standard Oil interests.

Like many of the rest of you, I was conditioned early in adult life to avoid conspiracy talk and conspiracy takers by the universal scorn heaped upon the introduction of such arguments into the discourse. All “responsible” journalistic media, and virtually all of the professoriate allowed public access through those media, respond reflexively, and negatively, it seems, to any hint of a dark underside to our national life. With that in mind, what are we to make of Mayor Hylan’s outburst or for that matter, the statements of three senators quoted later on this page?
(More at link above.)

3

Sorry about the monolith post. Trying again.

John, I think it is a crying shame that Gatto and Rothbard didn’t get a chance to collaborate.

http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/9l.htm

The full facts are engrossing: seventeen years after Wirt left New York City, a government publication printed the next significant chapter of the Wirt story. Its title: Hearings, House Select Committee to Investigate Certain Statements of Dr. William Wirt, 73rd Congress, 2nd Session, April 10 and 17, 1934. It seems that Dr. Wirt, while in Washington to attend a school administrators meeting in 1933, had been invited to an elite private dinner party at the home of a high Roosevelt administration official. The dinner was attended by well-placed members of the new government, including A.A. Berle, a famous “inner circle” brain-truster. There, Wirt heard that the Depression was being artificially prolonged by credit rigging, until little people and businessmen were shaken enough to agree to a plan where government must dominate business and commerce in the future!

All this he testified to before Congress. The transformation was to make government the source of long-term capital loans. Control of business would follow. Wirt testified he was told Roosevelt was only a puppet; that his hosts had made propaganda a science, that they could make newspapers and magazines beg for mercy by taking away much of their advertising; that provided they were subservient, leaders of business and labor would be silenced by offers of government contracts for materials and services; that colleges and schools would be kept in line by promises of federal aid until such time as they were under safe control; and that farmers would be managed by letting key operators “get their hands in the public trough.”

In the yellow journalism outburst following Wirt’s disclosure, Berle admitted everything. But he said they were just pulling Wirt’s leg! Pulling the leg of the one-time nationally acclaimed savior of public education. Time magazine, The New York Times, and other major media ridiculed Wirt, effectively silencing him. Of Wirt’s earlier New York foray into the engineering of young people, New York City mayor Hylan was quoted vividly in The New York Times of March 27, 1922:

The real menace to our republic is this invisible government which like a giant octopus sprawls its slimy length over city, state and nation… It has seized in its tentacles our executive officers, our legislative bodies, our schools, our courts, our newspapers, and every agency created for the public protection… To depart from mere generalizations, let me say that at the head of this octopus are the Rockefeller Standard Oil interests.

Like many of the rest of you, I was conditioned early in adult life to avoid conspiracy talk and conspiracy takers by the universal scorn heaped upon the introduction of such arguments into the discourse. All “responsible” journalistic media, and virtually all of the professoriate allowed public access through those media, respond reflexively, and negatively, it seems, to any hint of a dark underside to our national life. With that in mind, what are we to make of Mayor Hylan’s outburst or for that matter, the statements of three senators quoted later on this page?

4

Your point is important, and homogenization and fear were probably part of the rationale; of course, for the opportunist, the bug might be a feature.

I’m not convinced the social engineers were that bright or that far-sighted. (Many of the people in the position of allocating funds for the furtherance of such goals are not capable of doing the work of those they seek to control.)