“It is no crime to be ignorant of economics, which is, after all, a specialized discipline and one that most people consider to be a ‘dismal science.’ But it is totally irresponsible to have a loud and vociferous opinion on economic subjects while remaining in this state of ignorance.”
– Murray N. Rothbard
On December 6th, I wrote and published Vociferously Ignorant. I started off with the Rothbard quotation above and went into why and how ignorance of economics is so widespread … and bad.
The picture of popular ignorance is larger than that. In a society where “everyone is a winner”, skill, talent, effort, work and achievement are neither respected nor striven for. All opinions are equal. Universities discourage inquiry and innovation, while training conformity, memorization and recitation.
The real victims of such a world are those thinking that the popularity of their opinion indicates the correctness of it. For them there is no point in questioning, researching and learning anything beyond the accepted norms.
This is the perfect world for the manipulators. It makes the masses simple to orchestrate, easy to move and thoroughly under control.
It is also a culture where the outliers are dismissed and dissent vilified. We do, after all, pose a threat to the controllers.
From within this framework comes advice to the crackpots from their normalized friends and family. People who love the eccentrics try to save them from the follies of their dissidence.
It is to those preaching this brand of salvation that I lay down
the following rules of engagement:
If you don’t know what the COMEX is and how the prices of precious metals are determined, do not give advice on gold and silver.
If you do not know how the Federal Reserve works or what the Bank of International Settlements is, do not give advice on the strength of paper currencies.
If you don’t know Keynesian from Austrian Economics and why one of them exclusively dominates government and educational positions, don’t give advice on economics.
If you don’t know of the Rothschild family’s role in the last 200 years, don’t pretend to know the why of recent history’s pivotal events.
If you don’t know who The Bilderberg Group is, don’t try to explain international politics.
If you don’t know that 6 companies control 90% of the media, don’t try to explain current events.
If you don’t know who is funding political campaigns, don’t try to explain pros and cons of various candidates.
If you haven’t heard of Larry Silverstein, don’t try telling us who took down the World Trade Center on 9/11.
If you don’t know the relationship between the 6 CEOs of mainstream media and those of the military industrial complex, don’t try explaining bombings, revolutions and civil wars around the world.
If you don’t know who profits from the war on drugs, don’t give advice on which ones should be legal.
If you don’t know who directs the US Department of Agriculture, keep your opinions on food safety to yourself.
If you don’t know the relationship between the AMA, big pharma and Washington DC, save your medical advice.
I could go on a while longer in this vein, but suffice it to say, there are many reasons I do not enthusiastically embrace most widely accepted themes. For the most part, I just stay out of these conversations. I have plenty of experience arguing them, in the classical sense of that word, before coming to recognize that it takes more than a single hearing of the truth to accept a different reality.
I try to produce here on this blog, some of those many hearings of that different reality. I use hundreds of links to other sources. I work as hard as I can to help anyone find and reinforce a knowledgeable comprehension of the world we inhabit.
After over a dozen years of political activism wherein I gave hundreds of public performances, I am now convinced those efforts are only capable of explaining a position, but incapable of swaying opinions.
It is only here on the Internet where people can open themselves to other possibilities, seek corroborating or countervailing evidence and develop opinions based on a rationally analyzed world.
Sure we will get parts of it wrong, but that is a ton better than accepting the Bilderberg news feed and getting all of it wrong.
The habit of receiving and analyzing various inputs not only helps develop wise opinions, it gives us practice in changing them with the arrival of new evidence.