HOW I LEARNED TO BE LITTLE MORE THAN HELPLESS

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HOW I LEARNED TO BE LITTLE MORE THAN HELPLESS
Opinion by D. Stalwart from Liberty Tree Vol.11, No.1 -Jan 2009

(If the following story sounds a bit like yours, rest assured it is not mere coincidence.)

I spent 12 years of my early life in a government reeducation camp. (a.k.a. public school. “Reeducation” and “brainwashing” are essentially synonymous.) There I learned all the important lessons of life – or rather, life as those in charge wanted me to understand it. I learned to fill out all paperwork given to me as soon as I received it. I learned to speak, eat and recreate only when given permission or when demanded by an authority figure. I learned to avoid studying any one subject deeply or spending time in deep thought, because there is always another activity. I learned that because if the “checks and balances” of the American system, I lived in the best sort of self-correcting government system in the world(!). I learned that businesses were evil polluters and only government action could solve really big problems. Like going to the moon, keeping peace on earth, and fixing the environment. But most of all, I learned I was helpless in the face of such problems, and the way to get things done right was to vote for good government officials and pay “my” taxes.

First, and most subtle lesson: governmental authority is good for you, and it is human authority figures that give you permission to exercise your freedoms.
Second lesson: you are helpless – just vote and pay for government officials to solve your problems.

Revelations take time. Much later in life, I came to realize that voting is a relatively unimportant privilege in a republic, because my life, liberty and property should be protected by the rule of law no matter who holds public office. If my rights are always protected and the enumerated powers of the Constitution always limit government, why should I care who holds any actual office? Their actions, being confined to a few granted powers, should only minimally affect me.
Over time, however, I realized a more shocking and paradoxical truth: the more We the people paid “our” taxes, the more freedom and property government took away. (Irwin Schiff said “ If you want less government you have to give the government less money.” ~ me) But these fledgling rebellious thoughts were soon strangled, because I also learned, through that other great reeducator, the media, that anyone who refused to pay their “fair share” could be jailed or lose property. Every spring, IRS propaganda drilled me to submit my paperwork. And if the media didn’t highlight enough “examples” of tax “criminals,” my fellow internees (a.k.a. friends and neighbors) freely kept me “informed” that before IRS power, I was little more than helpless.

‘Learned helplessness’. In 1967, American psychologist Martin Seligman accidentally discovered the psychological phenomenon of “learned helplessness.” In his experiment, two dogs were yoked together and given electric shocks. One of each pair was able to press a lever to stop the shocks for itself and its partner, and eventually that dog “learned” that pressing the lever stopped the shocks. But to the yoked dog without a lever, it seemed that the shocks ended at random.
Seligman then tested the dogs in a shuttle-box apparatus, where they could escape electric shocks by jumping over a low partition. A majority of the dogs who had had no control over a lever, and thus had previously “learned” that nothing they did affected the shocks, simply lay down passively and whined – even though, had they tried, they could have easily escaped.

Since then, other psychologists have furthered this experimentation and concluded that humans learn helplessness in a similar manner. One aspect of this phenomenon is “vicarious” learning; in other words, people can learn to be helpless through observing other persons encountering events outside their control. It is this aspect of learned helplessness that the IRS relies on most. As people observe the assault on “tax defiers,” they learn that there is nothing they can do to challenge the statue quo or to control the IRS.

Helpless is as helpless does Eventually, I was introduced to information the reeducation forces never meant me to find. Wading through the lies, I learned that to protect myself, I must educate myself on the law, the principles of liberty, and on government methods for keeping us enslaved. I learned all this through the brave effort of patriots who did not shirk their duty to speak publicly. I learned am indebted to their sacrifices.
But there isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t hear from patriots who, having learned such truths, are discouraged because no one in their family or immediate circle supports them. Although they may manage their personal life to minimize the damage government causes, they have come to believe they can do little about holding officials accountable or restoring our rights; they have “learned helplessness.”

Such helplessness concedes victory to the reeducation forces; is that what we really want? Never forget that we learned the truth from those who went before, and that many after us or yet around us are ripe for the truth too (or else economic circumstances will drive them to it.)
Let’s give up on helplessness. Liberty Works Radio Network will give us – real patriots – a measure of fighting back. And the “low partition” patriots must jump over is just .27 cents a day. Shall we work every day to recruit new members, or shall we sink passively to the floor and whine like dogs? The choice is ours: be helpless, or help others.

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