The question is how can America be educated to understand what freedom means? ignorance: does not want to read, nor understand, and has never read the Declaration of Independence, nor does he understand his first Right and Duty;
What freedom is not: a tyrannical government; Dissent represents what Freedom is. Jefferson: "If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." (as cited in Padover, 1939, p. 89)". . . whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government; that, whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice, they may be relied on to set them right." (as cited in Padover, 1939, p. 88)
four basic principles: that democracy cannot long exist without enlightenment., that it cannot function without wise and honest officials, that talent and virtue, needed in a free society, should be educated regardless of wealth, birth or other accidental condition, that the children of the poor must be thus educated at common expense." Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppression of body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day. . . . the diffusion of knowledge among the people is to be the instrument by which it is to be effected.
How many Americans even know who Jefferson was? Where I live, football is more inportant than education. Parents have been known to hold their boys back so they could play another year of highschool ball. Highschool coaches make tons more than teachers. Many schools are failing...but not the football teams.
How do we teach people the difference between what is really happening vs propaganda? How do we get the people to understand what a free press is and how it isn't working now. Will we wake up before being put to sleep? Slavery isn't freedom. I believe we are entering into a new age of Serfdom. The m.a.s.s.e.s support the elite. M.a.s.s.e.s are expendable. They have no rights because they are basic property of the elite. Today's reality and the American Dream seem to be growing further and further apart. if a frog is placed in a pan full of cold water, and the heat is turned up gradually enough, the frog will fail to sense the danger, and instead of jumping to safety, it could quite unknowingly allow itself to be cooked. In a similar fashion, the media continues to be used to desensitize and/or misinform the general public into repeatedly accepting domestic and foreign policies that are very often diametrically opposed to the best interest of the majority.