Preston sighs with a grin. "That's why they pay me the big bucks."
Wyoming
Spring 2017
Since most of the nation's shooting academies had been squeezed out of business by regulation stopping just shy of prohibition, many of them simply relocated to Wyoming's ample space and supporting gun culture. Consequently, Wyoming enjoyed the highest quality of shooting instruction in the world. Thousands of annual students from across the country and globe enrolled, especially ex-gunowners from England, Australia, and Canada. Attending a 1000yd .50BMG rifle course at "Half-Inch Harvard" became the newest sport of the wealthy. The gun-free Japanese flocked in by the hundreds to shoot Winchester .30-30s and single-action Colt .45s. Germans, forbidden to own any military-pattern rifle, loved to rent battle rifles.
Schools blatantly serving outsiders tended to be located near Cheyenne (just 2 hours from Denver's DIA), or Evanston (an hour from Salt Lake City). The "domestic" schools were sprinkled about Wyoming, many of them in the Big Horn Basin for its good year-round weather.
In a phenomenon not seen in America since the 1770s, thousands of statewide riflemen are training together in the form of citizens' militias. Many drill as 4-man teams — popularly called "knots" — for their flexibility (e.g., as a .50BMG countersniper team, or battle rifle patrol), divisibility (e.g., a pair of sniper/observer teams, or four recon scouts), and blendability (2 per squad, 8 per platoon). Four-man knots offer concentration of force, yet can move with stealth. As most knots are composed of men who have known each other for years (and thus nearly impossible to infiltrate), their unit integrity — a main key to effectiveness — is superb. Their security is tight, and improving.
They generally practice fieldcraft, fire-and-maneuver drills, and target recognition out to 600yds. Specially constructed "jungle lanes" are used by competing knots to test their skills. Also, shooting competitions open to the public attract much local weekend interest and further enhance popular support of the gun culture (as was common in Switzerland until the 1990s).
In most of rural Wyoming, a man going about his daily business with a slung rifle is rarely cause for concern, or even comment (except perhaps to ask about sights, trigger, stock, etc.). In the towns and cities, nearly half the adults openly wear sidearms, and another 20% or so carry them concealed. This was not an affectation, but a badge of citizenship. Nearly every Wyomingite was, in effect, his or her own Gadsden flag — calmly but implacably warning others Don't Tread On Me.
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1 States without sales tax are: Alaska, Delaware, Montana, New Hampshire, and Oregon.
States without income tax are: Alaska, Florida, New Hampshire, Nevada, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Washington, and Wyoming.
Alaska and New Hampshire have no sales or income tax, but a very high property tax.
Thus, it makes implicit sense to live in South Dakota or Wyoming and shop in Montana, or to live in Washington or Nevada and shop in Oregon. New Hampshire is fine for employment and shopping, but live in Vermont or Maine for their lower property taxes.
2 Although several states have very low property taxes (e.g., Arkansas, Kentucky, West Virginia, New Mexico, and Mississippi), no state has ever dispensed with residential property taxes altogether.
PLAYBOY INTERVIEW:
JAMES PRESTON
a second candid conversation with
Wyoming's Laissez-Faire Party Governor
James Preston's administration, with the enthusiastic support of the Wyoming legislature, proposes to divest the government of public education and turn it completely over to local, private concerns. Senator Schumer went so far as to call his goal "cannon fire on Fort Sumter."
Even though 57% of Wyoming voters favored the privatization of education in a recent constitutional amendment election, several lawsuits have been filed in federal court to prevent it. Plaintiffs include the NEA, AFT, and other teachers' unions, as well as a consortium of Wyoming parents.
Two years following our first interview, we spoke with Governor James Preston about his "separation of education and state."
Governor Preston, PLAYBOY is very pleased to have you back for a second interview.
Thank you, Tom. I certainly enjoyed the first one.
Wyoming is the first state ever to propose dismantling its public education system. Much of the country seems horrified by this.
Horrified, eh? Perhaps they wouldn't be so shocked if they'd asked themselves why any government on these shores is involved in education in the first place. If one lives with a malignant tumor long enough it acquires the status of a vital organ.
But to address your question, education is a matter of parental, not state, concern. We in Wyoming are reclaiming our right to eliminate the forcible government indoctrination of our children. The Special Election will be held in August, and we are confident that the proposed constitutional amendments will be ratified.
The shrieking from the NEA about this is just amazing. They apparently believe that education is not possible without government schools. Well, they're half right, at least.
How so?
Government education does require government schools. (laughs)
You have been consistently and intensely critical of public schools, calling them "training camps for future slaves." How can you justify that claim when this country still enjoys the greatest amount of personal freedom in the world?
First of all, to compare our level of freedom to that of other countries is not accurate or even helpful. As I've long been fond of saying, "America is merely the healthiest patient in the cancer ward." The comparison should be made against (1) the theoretical ideal, and (2) against the greater freedom America once had until the 1920s. To compare our freedom to the rest of the world only serves to slyly misdirect us from the freedom we ourselves have already lost. It's a way of shrinking the yardstick of measurement. Contrasted to other nations — sure, we're still six feet tall. However, contrasted to ourself —which is the only proper standard, in both the philosophic and historic senses — we have become a midget.
And, I am convinced that the government indoctrination of our schoolchildren has been largely to blame for this unnecessary decline.
Really? How so?
Well, because it was the stated and published goals of the public educators in the early 19th century. Their object was not quality education, but docile citizens. Not independent thought, but conformity. Intellectuals of every era have distrusted the common man, likening him to a coarse beast of burden which must be kept under yoke. They greatly feared popular uprisings. Shay's Rebellion in 1786 Massachusetts — which sparked the Annapolis and Philadelphia constitutional conventions — was still fresh on Bostonians' minds in 1818 where the first public school movement began in America. Then, many educators traveled to Prussia to learn their methods.
Why Prussia?
Gatto's fine book Dumbing Us Down outlined the whole sordid story. When Napoleon trounced Prussia in 1806 at the Battle of Jena, intellectuals decided that the reason for their defeat was a failure of the troops versus their commanders. They concluded that Prussian soldiers were too independent and thought too much for themselves.
As if soldiers would fall into philosophical debates over Kant in the field?
(laughs) Pretty much! No commander wants an army of deeply contemplative troops. (laughs) This reminds me of a story about Henry Kissinger. He was once asked if he feared assassination. He thought for a moment and replied, "No, because only an intellectual would ever choose me, and even then he couldn't decide to pull the trigger!" (laughs)
But seriously, the Prussian intellectuals believed that their citizens simply were not obedient enough and hesitated to fire on the enemy. The US Army noticed the same thing during World War Two when researchers discovered that only 20% of American soldiers would fire on an exposed enemy. The Army addressed this, and by the Korean War some 55% of soldiers would fire to kill. By Vietnam it was 90%. With the conditioning from violent fil
ms, video games, and military simulators, the percentage today is about 100%.
This has spilled over into our police, who have donned an alarmingly military guise. Federal law enforcement is now predominantly composed of agents with little onsite conscience. For example, a very high percentage of FBI agents for the past 50 years have been Mormons and/or ex-Marines.
Why is that?
Because their members are naturally "Yes, sir!" type of folks, which explains why the FBI wants them. They are what Erich Hoffer calls "true believers." They will obey even the most ghastly orders if there is a sufficient gloss of God and Country.
As an ex-Marine myself, I got only as far as captain since everybody knew that there was only so much crap I'd take! (laughs)
Anyway, the Prussians' goal of education was to create pliable students to be molded into compliant citizens. Meaning, those who work and fight at the behest of the government, and never have to decide to pull the trigger. This was accomplished by purposely not training the students how to think.
How did Prussian schools teach students not to think? Teaching not to think sounds like an oxymoron. Mustn't education, any education, awaken minds and activate the thought process?
No, not at all. Teaching by rote a series of disconnected facts is not the same as teaching one to actually think. What the Prussians did was unequivocally premeditated. They rearranged their school system into three tiers, as a very broad pyramid. About 1% of students were taught to think in the Academie. These would be the future leaders, doctors, lawyers, business chairmen, etc. About 5% were somewhat taught to think in the Realshulen. They would become the middle managers and politicians. Some mental faculty was required, but not too much! (laughs)
The rest, 94% of students were left in the Volkschulen to learn harmony, obedience, and docility. Cooks, mechanics, laborers, and, most importantly, soldiers. Reading was very much discouraged, as it tended to provoke dissent amongst the proletariat. It still does.
How were these Prussian Volkschulen different?
Their most telling trait was severe regimentation. The very word Kindergarten means "garden of children." Think about that. The Prussian educators not only had to get their indoctrinating paws on children as young as four years old, but they had the nerve to refer to them with a horticultural analogy. "Sorry, Inge, you're not a unique person, you're just one plant in the garden." Children are not a bunch of plants to be grown and harvested!
I never thought of it quite like that, but the analogy is inherently dehumanizing.
Absolutely. The battle for the metaphor is the most important, as it pre-structures thought, and thus action. In fact, we could continue their farming analogy even further. The testing which placed students in their "proper tier" of schooling were like threshers separating the Academie wheat from the Volkschulen chaff.
Yes, that follows. So, how were things taught in the Volkschulen?
They took the grand subject of Life and chopped it up into little subsets. Instead of illuminating the mysteries of living as a holistic system — as it most certainly is — they cleaved mathematics from music, philosophy from language, and so on. They taught the pixels, but not the picture formed by the pixels. In doing so, they created adults who could not see.
Could you elaborate on that?
Of course. Thinking really is all about seeing. Our brains are wired to receive information mostly by sight, about 80%. In fact, PET scans of the brain have proven that visualizing an object stimulates the same area of the brain as actually seeing the object. The eye is merely the camera for the recording tape of the brain. We only know what we have seen. That's why dreams often seem so real. The taped version is just as vivid to the mind as the live version. Physiologically, there's almost no difference. That's why sports trainers stress the repetitive visualization of movement —constant mental rehearsals. It actually imprints athletic memory, as the mind cannot distinguish between mental versus physical rehearsal.
It's no coincidence that when one has a eureka moment, one says, "Oh, I see!" What Prussian Volkschulen did was intentionally prevent the child from ever opening its mind's eye. The goal was to keep the people at large mentally blind. Sure, the masses stumble about fairly well in the pretense of seeing — just as a blind person with a cane can walk across town — but make no mistake; they are stumbling about in the dark by feel.
By segregating subjects and teaching them out of order, the mind's eye is never trained to see the "big picture." Vision, I tell you, is the key to nearly everything in life. If you can't see it, you can't know it or do it.
I understand your point, but I'm not convinced that merely teaching by subject necessarily stunts mental growth.
OK, let's take mathematics for example. It is without dispute that the USA scores lowest in math amongst the Western world. I recall we may have beaten Portugal once, but not by much. (laughs) The most exciting thing about math is not the numbers, but the theory. Mathematics is a way of understanding particular kinds of relationships. Numbers are simply the alphabet of expression.
For example, what is, oh, 7 times 19? It's 133. Now, did I multiply 7 times 10, which is 70, and then 7 times 9, adding the 63 to the 70? No! I took a shortcut. Why go through all of that when 7 times 20 is 140, and 7 times 19 is merely 140 minus 7? But kids aren't being taught to take shortcuts, because they can't see the numerical landscape and recognize shortcuts when they exist. They're taught to literally go by the numbers, like a blind man tapping with his cane.
What is not seen is not understood. See? (laughs)
Yes, I do. But does your analogy hold for higher mathematics?
Well, if we know that A has a specific relation to C, and that A also has a specific relation to B, then we can figure out what B is to C.
That's algebra. To use what you know to learn what you don't. Calculus is even more fascinating, because it explains relationships at an even deeper level.
Physics, especially quantum physics, gets really hairy. Either Life has the possibility for many states and is forced by observation to be in one particular state, or Life is many worlds in simultaneous coexistence which appear to us as a single state. Whichever it is, the math of quantum physics contends that Life is much more surreal and inexplicable than imagined under Newtonian physics.
But instead of firing up students about the marvel of math, "teachers" immediately bog them down in quadratic equations and log tables. It's like trying to teach dancing by steps but without the rhythm.
My point is this: mathematics is merely one tool for understanding and enjoying Life. Art is another. So is science. Music, et cetera. The mind — the awakened mind — uses all of these rays of light in its "lens" to see, to understand. The more rays of light, the more chromatic your picture. This was the avowed purpose of the long-lost classical education.
On a related note, it constantly amazes me how much of Life can be grasped by analogy. We learn about Life analogously through nature, through human relationships, and through science. It's all grist for the mill.
So, back to the Prussian system of education.
Yes, the Volkschulen.
They broke up Life into pieces. By dividing Life, they conquered free inquisition. They conquered thought itself. Then, they broke up the pieces into units, and units into small blocks of classtime lasting 50 minutes.
First, regiment the entire student body by artificial age groups. No more one-room schoolhouse. This separates older students from younger ones, which reduces socialization and nullifies any generational continuity. I mean, do you work or vacation solely with 34 year olds? It's ridiculous, but accepted without a thought in government schools.
You're right...no where else are you placed in a strict age group.
If you really dwell on it, it seems quite odd. I don't think that we even remotely understand the sociological damage it's done.
So, children are clumped together by age — their first experience at being a part of a collective. Then, get them accustomed to movi
ng by a series of ringing bells. The bell commands when to sit down and stay, when to stand up and leave, when to eat, when to play, and when to go home. Pavlov's bell — day in and day out — -for 12 years! Class starts and then ends 50 minutes later. Who can possibly learn anything during these cruel and artificial blocks of time? Just when you've become interested in a lesson, it's time to rush off with the herd to the next class. The whole arrangement is little more than moving cattle from field to field. Hey, another analogy!
No problem! PLAYBOY interviews are known for free-form digressions.
Yes, well I'll try not to abuse the privilege. So, what were we talking about? (laughs)
Anyway, the New England educators of the 19th century studied Prussian education and imported it to America. Massachusetts passed the first compulsory attendance law in 1852. Parents who resisted had their children taken from them by the state militia. Barnstable on Cape Cod held out until the 1880s. By 1900 compulsory attendance laws were universal. It is vital to understand that none of this was necessary, as basic literacy was 98% before government schools, after which it never exceeded 91%. Just as in Prussia, reading was discouraged. After all, illiteracy is the first and the most effective form of censorship.
Basic literacy had to be maintained until the advent of auditory mass propaganda, the common household radio of the 1930s. After the 1950s, TV did all the speaking, and literacy was thereafter shot to hell.
Anyway, the school year grew longer and longer, from 12 weeks to 10 months. When I was a child, we weren't in school after Memorial Day or before Labor Day. We'll probably see it grow to 11 months if the current bill in Congress passes. As if 10 months of crappy schooling isn't enough! The State has increasingly asserted that your child belongs to them, not to you. This is undiluted Communist and Nazi doctrine.
Molon Labe! Page 47
