Logic Is NOT Persuasive
Deborah Venable
11/11/12
Great
news week, huh? How’d y’all like that
election turnout and outcome? Anybody
still have faith that the system works?
(Actually, it works quite well – it just needs to be better defined and
understood in its present form.)
The
time is fast approaching when the American people can no longer rest on their
laurels of ignorance. There are simply
no excuses for such ignorance in the world today.
We
are at the hundred year mark and beyond for some of the most vicious and
deliberate dismantling of a near perfect government system that the world had
ever known. The “union” that was
“saved” by the outcome of the War Between States was rendered almost
immediately vulnerable to this criminal tampering, which then allowed the
disintegration and destruction that we are all living with today. This all came about for one reason –
suddenly the individual states lost their sovereignty and dignity to an
overpowering federal collective. That
federal collective then proceeded to install a financial behemoth, negatively
change the Constitution, and attack individual states and individual citizens
with horrific representation and financial consequences.
A
hundred years later, individual citizens and states are at the mercy of a truly
evil federal collective. If and when we
are able to find good people to send to Washington D.C. to represent us, they
end up all too often corrupted in short order by the evil they were sent there
to fight. Our government is supposed to
work from the bottom up, but it cannot as long as the top does not draw its
resources and spirit from the roots – and this one definitely doesn’t.
The
people at the top are all installed in their power positions. We the people may like to think that we
elect them, but we don’t. They are
predestined, hand picked, groomed, and installed by the aforementioned
financial behemoth. Granted, some of
them turn out to be better than others, but none for a very long time have been
true statesmen.
I
think my father was right when he said that Harry Truman was a true statesman,
(albeit not perfect) and I don’t think we have had one since. Reagan came close, but even he was tainted
with some unstatesmanlike outside pressures.
We could parse the rest of the presidents over the last hundred or so
years and come up with perhaps a few more sterling qualities, but there
obviously haven’t been enough to bring about the kind of change we need. The kind of human qualities that believe in
drawing spirit and resources from the roots – God and the people namely, takes
a special breed of leader, and we haven’t had one lately.
You
cannot draw spirit and resources – strength if you will – from your roots if
you do not have any. When I said that
we don’t really elect our leaders any more, I am specifically talking about
those at the top. Granted, the recent
patriotic efforts of grass roots conservative groups have managed to influence
the election or installation of some exemplary characters in Congress and some
statehouses, but the money necessary to run campaigns these days eliminates
many more who should be there. It
always boils down to the money after all, and roots get buried in it.
I
find it absurd, embarrassing, and horribly corruptive that political campaigns
raise and spend ungodly amounts of money.
People working on campaigns these days are more interested in collecting
money than they are influencing votes because money IS the ultimate influence
on votes. Nowadays, unless you involve
yourself in the efforts to give or collect money for campaigns, you are
perceived as uninvolved in the whole process.
Does that sour on anyone else’s stomach?
So,
the financial behemoth rules the country’s conscience and enslaves more and
more individual spirits as it continues to diminish our freedoms. No wonder so many people feel so out of
control when it comes to electing those who would represent us in
government. Many have jumped on the bandwagon
of “vote for no one – elect no one and abandon the system because it just
doesn’t work any more.” Well, they
certainly have a right to that opinion, but whom does that really help? The financial behemoth spends a lot more
money trying to convince folks not to vote than it does to promote the
democratic process. That’s the whole
idea – shrink the voter base and influence within it is a much easier task to
undertake. Before you dismiss this
idea, consider the obvious push back against the grass roots efforts that have
been successful in just the last two years.
There
are people wandering around Washington D.C. now still trying to get their
bearings, who were sent there two years ago through the efforts of grass roots
conservatives, and they have no idea what went wrong with their starry-eyed
optimism that they could make a difference.
You can hear them whisper, if you listen closely enough, that they had
no idea just what they would really encounter when they got there. Some of them talk out loud, of course, and
have brought attention to some things, and that is good, but the bottom line is
that they will be swimming against the tide to stay where they are long enough
to overcome the behemoth. When they get
tired enough, they will be swept up in that tide and be officially bought souls.
Money
buries the roots. It is just that
simple. Constituencies are paid off
with it and political careers are built by it.
Getting the money out of the political process is absolutely necessary
to rebuild the system to function for and not against freedom. Good men do not live by bread alone, but
evil ones most certainly do.
Good
people are starving for knowledge and truthful information, and many are trying
to fill that need that the old media abandoned a very long time ago. Here again is the problem of money
influence. I am a capitalist, so I am
certainly not against the capitalist approach of supply and demand to reap
rewards for both. However, money can
taint the truth like nothing else can, so filling the need for truthful
information must bypass much of the financial reward that suppliers could glean
simply to ensure against the taint. I
fear that much of the new media is more concerned with what sells than what
saves. As such, it is up to consumers
of this information to be shrewd and examine each and every possible motive of
the suppliers. Careers in media are
made and broken the same way political careers are – by the application of
pressure from the financial behemoth.
Honest
media people and politicians will tell you not to believe the information they
provide until you check it out for yourself.
They are simply there, like a good teacher really, to wake up your own
conscience and brain cells to the truth you can discover on your own. It is hard work, but the rewards will serve
you much better than large financial gains, and you will probably be able to
reap some of those also.
All
that said, I must reiterate once again that logic is not persuasive. Never has that been borne out to a greater
degree than it was on November 6th.
This is just one dictionary definition of logic: a science that deals with the
principles and criteria of validity of inference and demonstration - the
science of the formal principles of reasoning.
Experience
is unquestionably the best teacher of logic, but the experience must be correctly
defined to be persuasive. In other
words, the child who is told not to touch the hot stove needs to know from
whence the pain comes when he does it anyway.
If he is lied to about whose fault it is that he got burned, the
experience was meaningless, and the logic in the warning is not
persuasive.
This
has always been a fascinating subject to me, but I fear that most folks don’t
give it a second thought. If money were
not so persuasive, perhaps logic would have a better chance, and real education
could once again replace indoctrination as the best solution to ignorance.