Category: Politics

Two of the Suspected Puppet Masters

While reading pages 3 and 4 of John Taylor Gatto’s Weapons of Mass Instruction I wondered if it was true that two congressional investigations, one in 1915 and one in 1959, came to the identical conclusion that school policy… was being deliberately created far from public oversight to be secretly inserted into the school mechanism by a sophisticated, highly nuanced campaign of influence, invisible to public awareness.

Assumptions Concerning Apparent Discrepancies Relating to the Dates of the Investigations:

1.) The 1915 congressional investigation has been assumed to be the Commission on Industrial Relations (also known as the Walsh Commission) that was authorized by Congress in 1912.  The investigation was concluded in 1915, and the commission published the final report of its findings in 1916.

2.) The 1959 congressional investigation has been assumed to be the Select Committee to Investigate Tax-Exempt Foundations and Comparable Organizations (also known as the Cox Committee, and later the Reece Committee) that was authorized by the 82^nd Congress.  The committee began its investigations in 1952, and it published the final report of its findings in 1954.

Research Results:

The Walsh Commission (1912-1916):  Randall G. Holcomb’s Writing Off Ideas: Taxation, Foundations, and Philanthropy in America contains the following account of the Walsh Commission’s role in our history:

In 1916 Congress created a Commission on Industrial Relations which concluded that a handful of wealthy individuals, after gaining control over a large segment of the U.S. economy, and pushing for political control of the nation, were using nonprofit foundations to gain control over the nation’s educational system, over its health care system, over social services, and other facets of American life.  Congress was concerned that despite the use of antitrust laws to control the power of the small group of capitalists that exerted so much control over the economy, they were using foundations as a capitalist tool to further their own interests. [Emphasis Added]

Continue reading John Taylor Gatto Fact Check #11: Congress Investigated the Secret Puppet Masters Part I: The Walsh Commission

While reading page 3 of John Taylor Gatto’s Weapons of Mass Instruction I wondered if it was true that in 1939 an executive director of the National Education Association claimed that the NEA would “accomplish by education what dictators in Europe are seeking to do by compulsion and force.”

Research Results:

Unverified: The statement was made in 1933 by Louis Alber, a mouthpiece of FDR’s National Recovery Administration. (Wondering if Alber joined the NEA after leaving the NRA, I searched the NEA website for Louis Alber and found no matches for his name.)

Verified:  Louis Alber claimed that the United States government was trying to accomplish certain aims of Hitler and Stalin through public education.

Continue reading John Taylor Gatto Fact Check #10: Literally Hitler & Stalin?

While verifying some of the claims made in pages 2 and 3 of John Taylor Gatto’s Weapons of Mass Instruction I caught myself wondering why a Nobel Prize winning eugenicist’s August 1939 presentation of a Geneticists’ Manifesto was only vaguely referenced in the most prominent online biographical articles that turned up in my research.  I suspected that there might be something alarming in the text that some might want to leave forgotten.

Fortunately, the full text of the Herman Joseph Muller’s Social Biology and Population Improvement (commonly referred to as the Geneticists’ Manifesto) is available online.

A Quick Historical Background: Hermann Joseph Muller attended the Seventh International Congress of Genetics in late August of 1939.  While enjoying the stimulating company of the leading eugenicists of his day, Muller presented a paper that offered an answer to the question of how the world’s population could be “improved most effectively genetically.”  Muller’s paper was enthusiastically endorsed by his peers, not least among them the ever-meddling Julian Huxley.

Unpacking the Horrors: Below you will find brief summaries of some of Muller’s most poisonous ideas.  The complete text of the Geneticists’ Manifesto follows.  I’ve inserted bracketed numbers in the text that correspond with my summaries so that you may test the accuracy of my interpretations.

1.) The task of genetically improving mankind cannot be attempted without first prepping humanity through worldwide social conditioning.

2.) Humans need a powerful world government that can protect them from themselves.

3.) It will be taken for granted that women’s reproductive duties will complement their role of providing a cheap source of labor in a planned economy. Societal and economic realities will be recast so that it will be easier to keep women away from their homes and children.

4.) It will be necessary to safeguard superior breeding stock through permanent sterilization and abortion.  Fortunately, once properly conditioned, genetically inferior potential parents will consider it an honor to step aside so that the “best children possible” can be bred by those whom evolutionary progress has separated from evolutionary offal.

5.) Citizens of the world must be taught a scientifically correct philosophy concerning eugenics.  (Devotees of Lamarck could threaten everything.)

6.) The idea that an individual can pursue personal “success” should be viewed as a threat to the advancement of the good of peoplekind at large.

7.) Universal genius will become a birthright. (This only sounds good on the surface.)

8.) Eugenics will solve all of the problems of modern civilization. (Science will solve the problems created by science?)

A One Sentence Summary of the Paper: A more perfect humanity is our destiny, but in order to reach it we must first hand over control to a benevolent global leadership that is necessary to guide and protect us on our journey to becoming gods.

Continue reading John Taylor Gatto Fact Check #9: Eugenicist Wins Nobel Prize One Year After the Holocaust Ends Part III

While reading pages 2 and 3 of John Taylor Gatto’s Weapons of Mass Instruction I found myself looking to find answers to the following questions:

Question #1:  Did an Eastern European scientist named Max Muller win a Nobel Prize for scheming to use X-rays to override normal genetic laws?

Question #2:  Did the mad scientist’s Geneticists’ Manifesto (that called for state action to separate worthwhile breeding stock from the great mass of evolutionary dead end material) garner signatures of support from leading American and British biologists?

Question #1 Research Results: See my previous blog post.

Question #2 Research Results:

Verified:  The Ethics of Human Gene Therapy (p.108) provides the following historical and biographical background:

The first statement to outline three spheres for possible human genetic enhancement was drafted by classical geneticist Hermann J. Muller during the Seventh International Congress of Genetics held in Edinburgh, Scotland, in August 1939.

At the congress the participants were challenged by Science Service to respond to the following question:  How could the world’s population be improved most effectively genetically?”  The reply to this question, signed by 23 scientists, was popularly known as the “Geneticists’ Manifesto.”  [An odd disclaimer immediately follows.] The manifesto by no means adopted the perspective of biological determinism.  Rather, it accented both social and genetic changes that could enhance human well-being.

Red Flag #1: The verbal sleight of hand in the disclaimer indicates that there is something to hide.  It is nonsensical to claim that Muller was “by no means” advocating biological determinism when this assertion is followed by the claim that Muller wanted to genetically modify human beings.  Noting that Muller desired to complement genetic modification with the imposition of global changes in social order does little to soften the literate reader’s view of the sickness in Muller’s mind.

Continue reading John Taylor Gatto Fact Check #8: Eugenicist Wins Nobel Prize One Year After the Holocaust Ends Part II