Liberty Liberally - Vol I Issue I - January 2021

From the Journal of Joshua Fryfogle

Liberty, Liberally First Edition

January, 2021

Facebook Banned Me, And Mussolini

Paper Can’t Be Deleted The Internet Is Inherently Insecure (and always has been)

“FASClSM should more appropriately be called CORPORATlSM, because it is a merger of state and corporate power.”

There is a permanence to paper. Not compared to the stone carvings that preceded scrolls, but human history has unrolled on paper.

- BENlTO MUSSOLlNl

By Joshua Fryfogle was banned from posting from my page on Facebook, which is a corporation, simply for sharing this quote from a well-known fascist dictator. I added no commentary to the quote, because the current events provided all the necessary context.

Why would a quote from a historical figure be so repugnant to facebook, a corporation?

You would think with all the hubbub about the (definitely not organized) Anti-fascism movement, and how great a thing it is, that it would be impossible to justify denying us the history of fascism itself - denying a direct quote from fascism’s founder!

It’s important to note that I have never had this happen before. I use facebook (a lot) as an outlet for my own selfexpression, mostly essays and thought provoking tidbits. I never violate their terms of service, so I never get got. Certainly, their terms of service ought not include any prohibition on quoting historical figures - that would definitely be fascist, right?

And certainly they don’t prohibit the discussion of fascism, which is widely had by the current corporate-preferred political class on the left.

In recent years, and more recently more so, we’ve seen social media corporations and corporate legacy media, in lockstep with certain government officials, demanding an end to free expression.

They say it’s dangerous. It’s certainly dangerous to dictators and fascists, a fact history reflects. In recent years, the internet has been used by the People to share information and organize and the state and corporate powers are making moves to silence and shape this activity. Right now they’re coming for some of those who dissent, but as their continued fascistic trajectory finds it’s path, they will inevitably silence all dissent, finally targeting the left.

That’s fascism for ya!

Now would be a good time to review the First Amendment, which guarantees our freedom of expression of conscience.

For 13+ years I’ve advocated for the individual use of the First Amendment’s freedom of the press clause, and created The People’s Paper expressly for that purpose. That publication facilitates for the individual their right to free press, but we can’t force people to use it. We print 10,000 physical copies per issue, in addition to our online blog, which are distributed far and wide - not only on the internet, but on

Alaska

paper, which can’t be simply silenced like the internet.

I’ve warned over these years that these institutions that we’ve grown to trust, to which we’ve been conditioned to deference, are actually liabilities for Liberty itself. Freedom of press belongs to the individual, and when the individual willfully hands it over to corporate media companies, they’ve simply surrendered their right.

Now, we see more clearly the power of paper, as long as everyone has a right to use it, and everyone actually makes use of it. There is no lazy liberty! We must express ourselves, for the good of the whole - to sort out our differences, instead of fascistic suppression of the same.

Social media giants have silenced a sitting president, using the internet.

Read that last line again. That’s a profound statement, with more profound implications.

Do you think that the state and corporations, working together, are anything other than fascism? The founder of Fascism said that’s exactly what fascism is, and facebook doesn’t want you to know that. Facebook banned me because I simply posted that quote.

You might ask, then, why have I used social media at all?

I used it for my own writing - even though I own a local newspaper because, if I published all my own writing in the paper, readers might get the impression that the publication is ‘my’ publication. They might, because they’ve been conditioned to, think that I am a paid journalist rather than a citizen expressing myself, and inviting them to do the same. So, while I’ve certainly written for that publication over the years, I haven’t published all of my writings in print.

Not even close. I write daily, in fact, and prolifically. If I published in print everything I write each month, this publication would be mostly my own writing. See the problem?

The real problem is that our People, individuals, rarely use their First Amendment rights to freedom of the press. Social media allows us to express ourselves, within their rules, while creating a platform that encourages fallacies and shallow argumentation.

I publish essays there, and I’m constantly surprised how many people openly express their distaste for what they perceive as “too much words”, or some other shameful embrace of ignorance.

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“Goebbels was in favor of free speech for views he liked. So was Stalin. If you’re really in favor of free speech, then you’re in favor of freedom of speech for precisely the views you despise. Otherwise, you’re not in favor of free speech.”

The internet, on the other hand, is a flickering flame.

Quickly extinguished with the flick of wrist, the entire system of communication - or just your own ability to communicate - can be turned off.

With some unknown, faraway hand on the mouse, they can simply delete your self-expression, if it goes against ‘community standards’, whatever that might mean at the moment.

The Constitution doesn’t change, they can’t go back and just edit it, it’s not a blog post. It doesn’t change with the latest update on your phone.

The Law of the Land is considered to be consistent, and all individuals are guaranteed the rights described therein. The freedom of the Press is a freedom to express one’s self, one’s conscientious concerns, as the courts have defined it. This is a broad interpretation that the individual’s freedom of the press extends beyond the printing press into all modern media of mass communication, whether radio, television, or the internet, but still, the letter of the law specifically respects the individual’s right to print things on paper with the intent of public distribution.

The ‘Press’ being described in the First Amendment is, in fact, the printing press, and nothing else.

At the time this clause was written, the printing press was a powerful weapon, a tool in the hands of average people, to express their own beliefs anonymously if necessary - in order to affect the public discourse. The founders understood how powerful this was, an antidote to the heavyhanded control of monarchs and other dictators. They had seen that it was not guns alone that secured their revolution against the monarchies of Europe, but first it was a weapon of words, made possible by the printing press.

Nowadays, we have electronic devices, that use light and technology to (temporarily) show us more information than we could ever imagine. However, more and more we see less and less information that counters the prevailing narrative. This de facto-fascistic censorship, with the government and the corporations controlling the flow of info, hasn’t technically infringed on our Freedom of the Press, but bypassed it entirely, and this danger has revealed itself more clearly than I could have possibly described it these last 13+ years.

And describe it I have.

For more than 13 years, I’ve written and warned about how the internet was a bottleneck that was easily controlled, and how the potential for control of the individual’s self-expression was great.

I’ve told people that while the internet makes it easy to express oneself, it also makes it easy to silence large segments of society, or even specific voices.

Honestly, most people didn’t want to hear it. Up until now, it hasn’t affected most people. But that is

changing, and will likely continue, and more rapidly as it does.

Now it’s clear what I’ve been saying, and why I’ve continued to strive to keep The People’s Paper and Make A Scene Magazine alive.

We’ve been able to grow, slow and steady, over the years. In spite of the naysayers saying ‘Print Is Dead’, literally from the first edition we printed, we’ve grown.

I think this is because we were keeping something sacred.

The printing press produces actual hard copies of our self-expression.

If you print something on 10,000 separate pieces of paper, and physically distribute those hard copies to hundreds of distribution points around your community, Mark Zuckerberg can’t possibly go round them all up, can he?

Jack Dorsey of Twitter, where they’re all atwitter about Trump, can’t decide that your take on current events isn’t acceptable. He can’t make it go away with a mouse click.

Even Josh Fryfogle (yours truly, the owner of The People’s Paper) can’t possibly un-ring that bell. Once it’s printed and distributed, it’s beyond even the reach of the individual who printed them.

You might notice that people are complaining about their perceived loss of ‘freedom of speech’, but what they’ve lost is actually more akin to freedom of the press than that of speech. While the internet allows for multi-media expression, it’s the use of a medium (the internet) that makes it more like freedom of press than speech.

Unlike freedom of press, however, is the lack of a material medium. There is nothing tangible or concrete to receive the ‘im-press-ion’ of the printing press. Nothing of permanence.

From a First Amendment perspective, this is an inherent security flaw.

While the internet makes it easy to express oneself, it makes it incredibly easy to stifle that same self-expression.

The People’s Paper and Make A Scene Magazine (which I’ve stewarded for more than 13 years) are completely devoted to the voices of local people like you. We always have been.

We’ve been publishing what local people send us, and nothing more, for all this time. We’ve stood the test of time, because we’re devoted to the mission of the First Amendment - to facilitate the free expression of the conscientious concerns of local people like you.

We relinquish control of the content of our paper, handing it over to the people in the community. Then, we relinquish control of the narrative, with each hard copy that we hand out to the public.

You’re welcome.

You’re welcome to publish your content, in a more permanent way, on paper at MakeASceneAK.com We’ll do the printing and distribution.

The liberal left? Are there any liberals left on the left?

- NOAM CHOMSKY

Liberty, Liberally

www.LibertyLiberally.com

From the Journal of Joshua Fryfogle

First Edition

Liberty, Liberally

You’re Either With Us Or Against Us I remember hearing George W. Bush say this, following the three towers falling in New York, and the Pentagon having a hole punched in it. Before the endless war on ‘terror’ really got going, (which is more like the war on drugs than a war against a totalitarian regime), W told the world that you’re either on our team, or you’re on the other team.

As a young, liberty-leaning musician/ artist type, I found this to be an absolutely foolish and un-American thing to say. I was shocked, in awe, of what this man was declaring, and of how so many seemed to resonate with this toxic viewpoint.

What about dissent? What about Liberty? George W Bush seemed to have used the palpable fear and perceived threat of that pivotal time to make Americans go along with a clearly anti-American sentiment - that there was no room to disagree.

These days, I still feel strongly about these types of issues, but it was under the reign of the second Bush that I first realized that our liberty was so easily undermined, using fear of the ‘other’.

they’re treated like an automatic enemy, and subject to pre-emptive psychological warfare. The slightest dissent from the acceptable, woke narrative - while W’s wars continue, forgotten in the background of our social justice selfishness - is attacked!

“He’s a Republican!,” they say, echoing the Republicans’ twisted talking points from twenty years ago.

They call me a Republican for disagreeing with their policies, which are more like Republican policies than anything I believe in. But they don’t talk about those things, no, they focus on some symbolic issues that are highly emotional, triggering even, while the big picture issues go largely unnoticed by the R/D duopoly.

I know why, too. It’s because they can’t effectively challenge my ideas, so they attack my character, call me names, laugh and mock - but NEVER do they engage in honest discourse.

Never do they even consider that their ideas might be wrong. But that’s understandable, from the partisan mindset.

You’re either with us, or against us.

During the W years, I was called a ‘Democrat’ or ‘librul’, over and over again. I learned a lot about how this ‘othering’ works, when I couldn’t dissent without being called something that I’m not. I wasn’t allowed, according to the Republicans of the time, to be something else. I was either like them, or I was other than them. W had set the tone of the public discourse, not just the course of the endless wars. There was no inclusiveness and tolerance of differences, there was no room for Liberty. They “protected liberty” from fear by taking liberty away from us. They locked liberty away, in an absurd inversion of reality.

And if I pointed out just how damn wrong they were, I was simply called a ‘Dem’. (Sort of sounds like ‘them’, right? Us and them?)

These days, it’s the Democrats who have embraced this Bush doctrine.

Anyone who’s not part of their team,

Readin’, ‘Ritin’, ‘Rithmetic... and Rhetoric?

From Utility To Futility

There is an old song, a century old or more, that seems to have captured the ethos of that time, when public education was preparing kids for an Industrial society.

“School days, school days Dear old golden rule days Readin' and 'ritin' and 'rithmetic Taught to the tune of the hickory stick” The lyrics shine a light on several things, not the least of which is the corporal punishment associated with the roots of public education.

While reading is included in the list of the Three R’s, as they are commonly called, and writing too (although ironically misspelled), we must not dismiss the absence of rhetoric.

Arithmetic is included, but the ability to make an argument is absent. In fact, if you did argue, they would assault you with a stick.

Now, a century later, look at us.

Are we a people who know how to engage the public discourse?

Are we individuals who can engage in debate and come to conclusions for the benefit or all? Or are we taught to keep each other in line, with the hickory stick of public ridicule?

Us and Them I write a lot about different things, things that matter to me. However, no matter what I write, there are always these online folks whose only response to those thoughtful expressions is to say the same sentiment to me that George W Bush said to the world:

Are we still being educated to be a worker bee? Or are we free?

After all, their ideas are not their own.

They’ve borrowed those ideas, they’ve done nothing to shape those ideas.

You know who did shape their ideas?

People like George W Bush, and Bill Clinton, and other partisan power players who have more in common with each other than any of them with the average individual - the average Democrat or Republican.

So the mindless insults, calling me Republican or Democrat, I see it as silly as calling me a Catholic or Muslim when I am neither. You, name-caller, are the one who has adopted the ideas of others. I’m thinking for myself, and you don’t believe that’s possible, so you try to mentally force anyone who breaks from your worldview back into your worldview.

You don’t want to challenge your beliefs, because you have no power to change them.

You are on loan to your ideological leaders, you are not free.

You say what they tell you to say, and nothing more.

At Odds & Getting Even WHY WE FAIL TO SELF-GOVERN

“The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum...”

Speaking out, speaking up, speaking freely - all of these are held sacred in our Civic Religion - but do we teach our children how to do so with skill and skepticism?

We wonder why we have so much discord in society, but the inability to argue effectively, for the purpose of finding truth, has made our civic process an empty vessel where the elite gather. Those who do not work in the factories or fields, who were afforded a liberal arts acumen, they occupy the halls of power.

And we wonder why there’s discord in society.

Our education system should be preparing our children to contribute to the public discourse. Instead, it prepares them to go to work for a corporation. Meanwhile, corporations are expanding their use of technologies that increase profits by eliminating skilled human labor.

Rhetoric and argument as a curricular study is still a major part of higher education, especially in Ivy League schools where the most powerful people are prepared for their power. But Rhetoric is truly a fundamental piece of classical education. The education that the elite receive prepares them for power. The education the rest of us receive prepares us for anything but.

Fortunately, we have access to all information. The level of saturation of information, and the ability to avail ourselves of that information, is unprecedented. Yet still, the topics of logic, reason, formal argument, all

- NOAM CHOMSKY, THE COMMON GOOD We don’t have a civic process, not in fact. We have one in theory. But in practical reality, we have an adversarial process.

The adversarial process, which is more at home in the judicial system, was not the intent of our civic process. The civic process, in theory, allows that all ideas be heard and weighed by the People, who use their own freedom of assembly, or press or speech, to engage the other People with words and reason.

The civic process, in theory, does not include the two-party dynamic that has, practically speaking, replaced it.

Instead, it treats each individual voice as that of the individual to whom it belongs. Our representatives were, in theory, supposed to re-present those ideas, at a time in history when

technology and trust were lacking.

They would elect those who would represent them, and those elected individuals would - get this - put aside their own opinions in lieu of the will of the People.

These days, because our civic process has been pushed aside by these adversarial interlopers, we’ve drifted completely from that course. Instead, our candidates brag about their own strong opinions, openly, as if that isn’t contrary to the core idea of representative government.

The entire Primary Election Season is a farce. It’s not constitutionally mandated, and has no constitutional purpose. These groups exist outside of the civic realm, and act as activists for

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aimed at finding truth, are not taught to our children when their minds are most elastic. Instead, they are prepared for the workforce.

This is a tragedy, that we’ve created such an education system that does not prepare our children to be engaged in their own civic process. We teach them that they are free, yet do not teach them what to do with that liberty.

It’s a loss for us all.

We need a healthy and homogenous respect for our human ability to reason, respecting that capacity in each other and ourselves. We need - NEED - to be educated to that end.

As technology appears to approach Kurzweil’s singularity, it behooves us all to recognize that the future hangs in the sky like a comet that approaches, seeming slow until at last it’s fast.

Very soon, the job market will be disrupted in a fundamental way, and the majority of our people will not be prepared for life without work.

The skills to engage the civic process have not been afforded to them, while other curricula meant to teach them utility has only prepared them for future futility.

In the world a century ago, survival depended on our ability to work, but Western liberal societies still lifted up Liberty and the civic process - even while beating the children with sticks if they argued with the teacher. It was a complex dichotomy that is dissolving more each day.

This was a necessary thing, in a world where labor was the means of survival.

But the world that is just around the bend will not be friendly to the individual who cannot communicate clearly. AI, automation, these and other technologies are going to displace most jobs, and the worker will be left at a disadvantage, disproportionate to those who know how to interface with this interconnected age of technology.

“Dear old Golden Rule days...”

Reciprocity - maybe another R for the list?

The people in school today, they’re being taught and trained to take on tasks that will - WILL - be done better, faster, and cheaper by technology, by they time they’re out in the world looking for jobs. Without the ability for these people, the majority of people, to reciprocate with society, we are setting these children up for a profound, existential futility, and an inability to express this effectively.

We need to reciprocate, in order to be fulfilled. Without a sense of purpose and fulfillment, society degrades.

Just like hunters were displaced by the farmer, the worker will be replaced by technology... the magnitude of this coming change is so important that we really need to have an in-depth public discourse about it.

But class has started, so shut up, or I’ll hit you with a stick.

Dark Regime The communists would kill me As I am inclined to poetry To craft with skill these words that rhyme They’d turn these lines into a crime The communists would come for me The tyrants they hate prose as well They hate that there is truth to tell To share with those who might not see The facts so that they might believe The tyrants they would come for thee The dark regime would do me in If they could but to upend The freedom of expression we Have been given, liberally To say the dark regime must end - Joshua Fryfogle

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From the Journal of Joshua Fryfogle

First Edition

Liberty, Liberally

Facebook Banned Me, And Mussolini

Coercive Violence Or Cooperation?

Continued From Page One

We’ve been dumbed down, folks.

It’s not the individual’s fault that they were born into the age of willful ignorance. It’s not our fault that our culture has been scoured by this scourge. This was done intentionally, over time, by corporations who benefit from a populace with little to no discernment. It’s easier to sell us stuff we don’t need if we don’t have the skills to think critically. It’s also easier to rule us, if we don’t know how ruling people works. (see page six, An Education Fit For Kings) The politicians who crave power, with their craven disregard for the Constitution, and with their brazen coordination with corporations, they’re the ones who know what’s up.

They know that most of us have given up on our civic responsibility. They know, because they are almost all liars, and we keep electing them anyway. So why wouldn’t they take advantage of any opportunity to take power, when we willfully hand it over, again and again?

In the coming months and years, unless something pivotal occurs, the fascism that’s been widely and wildly parodied by black-clad “Antifa” LARPers will come to fruition.

Those same establishment-approved ‘revolutionaries’ who think themselves woke will wake up to a world without the Liberty they’ve exploited for their supposedly subversive efforts.

They weren’t subversive at all, it turns out. Infact their ranting about fascism has seemingly summoned actual fascism - and they’re cheering it on!

Mussolini would certainly see, as he defined it, that the alliance between big tech, legacy media giants, and the government, is exactly what a fascist takeover looks like. He told us this, in no uncertain terms. Facebook doesn’t want that clear message from a fascist dictator to get out, apparently. I thought we should all be anti-fascist?

The newspapers of 1933 Germany were all too glad to support fascism, too, until fascism assured that they must support fascism.

I tried to share that simple quote from the founder of the fascism movement, on Facebook, and that corporation had already programmed it’s algorithm to seek out and silence exactly that quote.

Nothing to see here, folks.

No, seriously - your post has been removed. No one can see it.

At Odds & Getting Even CONTINUED FROM PAGE 2 pre-determined causes, each seeking to affect the civic process that is otherwise the will of the People. These groups do not represent the People in any one district, county, state, or federal jurisdiction; instead, they represent a platform of ideas that are agreed upon through quasi-democratic internal process. This process is private to that organization, and is not subject to the Law of the Land. This is diametrically in opposition to representative government, and our candidates for those constitutionally mandated offices don’t even bother hiding their private allegiances.

We’ve lost our way.

The civic process involves you, and your representative that you elect should be someone of character, who will simply represent the will of their constituents, people like you, within the Constitution.

And between the Will of those constituents, and the Law of their constitutions, the representative should serve that role by largely putting aside their own passionate beliefs. (see page five, The Elect Few) This type of freedom described in our founding documents has never quite been had like we have it - on paper at least. We’ve only strived for it, idealized it, but realizing it is a perpetual, individual process that free people must do for themselves. This type of liberty of the individual is meant to measure the true will of the people. Without these Constitutional protections, then the individual voices of natural human beings cannot be represented effectively.

Instead, special interests of all kinds find a foothold in our process through the primary and most pervasive of special interest groups - the Democratic Party and the GOP. And between these two poles we are pulled, back and forth. Our elected representatives aren’t bound by the true duality of our system of government, which is the constitution and the constituents, the Law and our Liberty, but instead they’re pulled this way and that by these two private parties in an endless enmity. They contrive a controversy between them, an emotionally engaging controversy that makes our civic process impossible.

Instead of consensus building, with a true majority represented, and representatives devoted to their own constituents, we have two private political parties that struggle in a back and forth process, both acting as champions for their causes, and making many of us followers of their drama.

But in fact, most people who vote in the general election (read that: actual election) claim to be neither R nor D. And neither of those political parties

Liberty, Liberally

on their own represent anything close to a simple majority of the People.

At Odds And Getting Even

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Knowing that a large percentage of US citizens are willing to fight and die for their liberty, this being common knowledge and part of our history as a nation, consider how irresponsible it was to even suggest a mandate. If masking was really the goal, if slowing the spread was really what we were striving for, then attacking liberty with threats of mandates was very counterproductive.

The pushback was predictable, yet still, on the heels of massive police brutality protests, we were told that the police should force us to wear masks.

Why not an advocacy campaign, with proper training on how to wear the mask effectively, followed by a rational explanation as to why these masks that we don’t normally use for any other coronaviruses are now effective against this new coronavirus?

That would have been a convincing approach.

Remember how willing we all were to wipe down our carts, and wash our hands, and use hand sanitizer? That was all voluntary, and it was created through advocacy and cooperation not threats of police force.

If masking is so important, and lives truly depend on it, why would they take the one approach that would certainly cause pushback? Why would they attack liberty with threats of force? Do they not know where they are?

Furthering division while simultaneously giving people a false

The adversarial process is meant to discern and decide when two conflicting accounts are compared. There must be a controversy, under the law, for court to proceed. This adversarial process is not peaceful, but contentious. It is not civil, and it cannot be civic.

sense of security about the virus - that’s what talking about mask mandates has yielded. People treat their mask like a lucky rabbit’s foot that they wear while they casually peruse the thrift store... News flash, folks, there’s only one way to make sure you don’t spread or contract the virus, and it’s not the mask. Stay home. If you’re judging people for not wearing a mask, while you’re out there risking people’s lives so you can shop for a new (to you) dinette set, well...

But the pro-mandate folks don’t want to be inconvenienced in a way that is scientifically proven to prevent transmission. Life’s not that important, apparently... No, they want something that’s symbolic, that makes them feel okay about not doing anything meaningful to stop the spread, while they continue about their day-to-day lives as usual, while judging those who question their sanity.

Here’s the thing - people don’t like threats of force. It’s not complicated.

We’re hardwired to pushback against threats of force.

When you say mandate, you mean to enforce it. It’s a threat of force.

Coercive violence and control is abuse.

You don’t have to be a psychologist to know that people don’t want to be threatened, they want to be persuaded through peaceful means. They want to be convinced, not controlled.

This is doubly so here, in a land where individual liberty is the lawful predicate for our founding.

I Fear Fearful Fools I do not fear a virus Though it sometimes kills As will the environment I do not fear it, still

The two poles of politics continuously compel each other in an offense/defense dynamic that justifies the feelings it engenders. The two sides, they’re always about with their whataboutisms, each apparently attempting to get even with the other. It never ends.

Nature has ‘force majeure’ We can not litigate As there is no one among us Fit to arbitrate Instead I fear illiberal law Meant to force my hand Coercion, violence and control The artifice of man

The two-party takeover of our government is ancient history. It’s been happening as long as people have existed. We have this innate ability to ponder right and wrong, good and evil, and the passion to parse the nuance of that, ad infinitum.

State control kills with force The spirit it subjects Treating souls like property And as such, it protects

We tend to see the world as an endless array of opposites. In reality, many of those opposites are only degrees apart, on a spectrum. Darkness, for example, is only the relative absence of light.

I do not fear a virus Or nature that gives life Just because it sometimes ends With pestilence and strife

The near ubiquitous appearance of duality in our perceived reality has more to do with our applying it to the world around us, in order to assess our surroundings, than it does in describing them. That duality is only a relative perception made through our limited senses.

Not like I fear fearful fools Who, against my will, Would abuse our rule of law And fear of force, instill - Joshua Fryfogle

But still, that’s how we see things.

That’s why it’s important that we understand, our very perception of reality is often invisible to us. We do not readily consider or question our own perception, it’s just not what humans do. We’ve always trusted our senses, and our senses seem to indicate that some things are hot, and others cold - even though we have thermometers that show degrees of difference.

The Civic Process that we were supposed to have had, the one that the founders envisioned, was not split down the middle. It was a process that had degrees of difference, from one individual to the next. The Liberty to self-govern was to say that we didn’t need champions to face off to the death. We didn’t need a grand display of mortality or might. We were supposed to have come together under the First Amendment, and shared our conscientious concerns without regard for our safety. We were supposed to use our freedom to educate ourselves about that freedom, in order to use it freely, to take part in the civic process, in an ongoing process of selfgovernance...

You Are Self, As Is Self-Evident The first amendment includes no standard of proof requirement. You have a right to express yourself, from a conscientious perspective, and without having to prove your point of view.

The value of the first amendment is that it says that anyone can express themselves, freely, and the rest of us can take it or leave it. That is the function of the first amendment, in all it’s clauses.

The fact that corporate media companies create products called ‘the news’ and that some have done investigative work to present evidence of certain things, none of that displaces the true purpose of the first amendment, which is to document the inherent right of the people to express unpopular opinions.

Full stop.

The adversarial process that occurs in court, in contrast, requires that you present evidence and argument that fulfills a standard of proof. But you expressing yourself, in life, in general,

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is not a court of law. It’s you, being free.

The expectation of truth distilled, the expectation that the media can, or should, provide us with easily digested, pure information - that’s a con. It can’t be done. Just read what all of the great philosophers wrote about ‘truth’ and you’ll see what I mean. You do not have a right to ‘truth’, and any expectation that someone else can make a profession out of truth itself can only let us down, eventually.

The first amendment is just an acknowledgement of something that is Self-evident. Within your Self, you have the capacity to think and feel and formulate information through your subjective experience as an individual.

This is sacred, as is intimated in the first clause of the first amendment, and recognized in all subsequent clauses of the first amendment. Not because you’re right, but because you have that right.

From the Journal of Joshua Fryfogle

First Edition

Liberty, Liberally

The Individual As A Civic Creator

“The love of liberty is the love of others; the love of power is the love of ourselves.”

- WILLIAM HAZLITT

The Liberty To Love Compassion is the trait individual. It is love itself.

of

an

There is no group or collective compassion.

This is why the individual - the Self - must be empowered in society. Selfsacrifice is, inherently, an individual action, presumably from a place of compassion, as is the individual’s prerogative.

There is a common conflation among a loud minority that the government ought to provide more and more, controlling more and more, and that this hierarchical providence ought to serve as charity, magnified. They even bring Jesus into it, even though they are mostly not Christians themselves.

(If that isn’t religious bigotry...)

Without Liberty, there is neither charity, nor compassion. If it weren’t for Liberty, the collectivist couldn’t even make an argument from pathos.

Liberty of the individual creates the concept of compassion, because taking pity on those in need is a matter of free will over nature. Nature takes no pity.

Mother Earth is a womb and a tomb.

The individual, who lives, has an inherent right that we’ve called ‘Selfevident’ in our founding documents, declaring our intent to defend each individual’s Liberty.

When we dethrone the individual from their own lives, and we put them under a hierarchical structure that enforces itself upon them, in order to

deprive them of their own property, which is properly held by them, that is not the first step towards charity.

That does not constitute compassion.

Forced taxation and redistribution of our resources, for warfare and/or welfare, is abuse of power. Calling it charity, or compassion, is gaslighting the victims.

This weird, unhinged perspective that if we were compassionate, or charitable, or (God forbid) Christian (gasp!), then we would want the US Federal Government to repurpose our resources without meaningful oversight - it’s simply a bombastic worldview. I reject it, completely.

More recently, this fallacious argument has morphed, casting shade on those who question the government’s authority and efficacy in regards to new restrictions on... well... everything. The world has been thrust into a confusing and chaotic situation.

The information is muddied, and we have studies to support opposing views.

The enforced urgency that is palpable is completely dependent upon the flow of information, which is openly controlled by a handful of corporations. And those same corporate companies propagate the audacious lie that our individual Liberty, the root of compassion itself, must be chopped.

We’re told that we are being indifferent and heartless if we just say ‘Hold up!

Wait a minute!” If we don’t consent, they’ll force us, as they shame us for not wanting it.

The government that gives and takes resources is not inherently compassionate. It can’t be. Only individuals have a heart.

Only you have love to give.

Liberty & The Liberal Arts To Defend Liberty We Defined Liberty...

To defend Liberty...

Liberty

we

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defined

...using the Liberal Arts.

is nothing more than that. The liberal approach, using the liberal arts, is the peaceful approach to self-governance, being Liberty itself.

The word ‘liberty,’ like the word ‘liberal,’ comes from the Latin word ‘liber’, which means both ‘book’, and ‘free’. Liberty and Library have the same root. Make of that what you will...

Respecting the liberty of each individual, we use the liberal arts to make our case, to explain our perspective, and other liberals, who join in that search for truth, argue for truth.

Liberty exists not in a material way, but because we said so. We said so with grammar, rhetoric, and logic - the first three of the liberal arts. We used those liberal arts, liberally, in writing our Declaration of Independence and subsequent constitutions.

But the materialist doesn’t believe in truth, or liberty, and sees both only as a flawed ideals to be exploited to their own destruction. They aren’t skilled rhetoricians, but sophists and nihilists, embracing dishonesty as a means to an end.

Contrary to this liberal approach to civic expression, we have the materialist, the Marxist, the mob approach. Using force to overcome the liberty of some, they can’t make a logical argument, even if their grammar is on point, so their rhetoric

Liberals are supposed to make use of this peaceful means of liberty, liberally, basing their work in the search for truth. Not for coercive control over others, but for peaceful, consensual civic expression.

Liber Meaning 'book', can also mean the adjective 'free' The Latin root for many English words referring to freedom, such as libertarianism, liberalism, liberty, Liberia("free land"), and liberation Freedom (disambiguation) in Latin and Romanian (libero in Italian); see also Gratis versus Libre Liber is a Roman god whose name meant, ‘the free one’.

If each individual contributed their own perspectives and opinions to a public discourse, we would not have the false expectation of objective truth.

Objective truth is not the goal of our free expression, as described and protected by the first amendment, but a means for gauging the consensus.

When the individual expresses their differences, they’re expressing themselves.

When they express ideas that they’ve heard from others, even if they feel strongly in favor of those ideas, they are not expressing themselves.

Self-expression is self-evidence of an inherent capacity to express unique perspectives. The fact that we can create proves that we will, and should.

But some would rather not, and a few would rather that we all not.

We have the potential, now more than ever, to tap into the individual creativity of everyone, but we must make it easier for unique ideas (especially controversial ideas) to be heard, instead of setting up barriers to the same.

Each individual represents a new view, potentially a better view, but all ideas must be taken as ideas. Instead, ideas that differ from the preferred talking points are attacked by the talkers who all talk the same.

If we’re planning to make use of our creativity, which is forever oriented to the self as it’s source, now is the time.

For thousands of years humanity has had to repress these individual freedoms, even though we’ve all dreamed our dreams and wanted something better for ourselves.

The parties, they’re collectives. There are only two parties, according to the two parties.

The individual creativity that’s been burned at the altar of alternating power, it’s been a powerful sacrifice for so long, it’s burned into our psyches. The archetype of hierarchical rule is even seen in our familial structure... But maturity is leaving one’s childhood behind.

Collectivism superimposes another familial order, where the collective removes that responsibility to mature from the individual - along with any power the individual might otherwise exercise. Our individuality is our only source of creative solutions, and our problem is that we’ve denigrated the value of the individual, by giving way to party politics and other collectivist world-views.

Fear of being called names, shamed, deplatformed, censored, cancelled, all of these mindless responses to dissent put the individual in fear. Silencing new ideas, in lieu of these ancient ideas of collectivism, has always been the way of the world.

We live in this land, during this flash of light that has faded since the Enlightenment. The glow is still there, or maybe it’s just a lingering after image of a camera flash, leaving behind only a memory of what has passed.

Imagine that it’s not the past, that it’s not a snapshot of something that isn’t relevant anymore. Imagine that you still can and should use your individual creative capacity to express your differences, even from those you most identify with, and that it’s okay to be wrong. You have a right to be wrong. Imagine that we’re not searching for objective truth, but for subjective comparison through peaceful cooperation and civic engagement.

Imagine what might manifest, if we could simply agree to peaceful public discourse, instead of adversarial conflict.

Or, declare yourself as tribute for the party and shut up. Either way, it’s up to you... it’s always up to you, the individual.

Sonnet of the State And the state is a campfire we must guard For while it provides the warmth we all need And it fills the bellies of those it feeds It might leave all that you love black and charred Like a gun we must treat it with respect It is not so benevolent per se Neither is it evil, as some might say Our view towards it must be circumspect The circle round the fire must be kept close And we must stand nearby, as to contain The reaching flames and the floating ember We know we never know when the wind blows All we have is from ashes that remain And so we’d all do well to remember

Politicians, Policy and the Police You know how we complain that corrupt police officers are not held accountable for incidents of brutality?

They aren’t held accountable because all police officers have ‘immunity’ under the law, even the corrupt ones.

Politicians (including city council members) also have ‘immunity’ under the law. That means that if our courts come to the conclusion that these mask mandates (or mandatory business closures) were unconstitutional, (against the law), the politicians who infringed on our constitutional rights won’t be held accountable. They have immunity, under the law, from the law - just like the police have.

We expect police to not abuse this immunity. We expect them to follow the constitution, by respecting the rights of the individual.

Public confidence is a necessary component of a Liberal government. Totalitarians don’t need your approval.

It is individuality that leaves the family, and brings back to that family the sustenance it needs. It is individuality that acts independently of the collective, for the benefit of the collective. In nature, the individual must be creative, finding new ways to navigate life successfully. And if done well, new generations of individuals will do the same, ad infinitum.

And when they don’t respect individual rights, and are subsequently not held accountable, because of their immunity, we say the system is broken.

When local legislators create these mandates that infringe on individual liberty, they are also unconstitutional.

And the elected representatives who institute those unconstitutional infringements of individual liberty will never be held accountable. Just like those corrupt police are rarely held accountable when they infringe on individual liberty.

Those who would send the police to use force against peaceful people are certainly breaking the law of the land - the constitution. Some politicians though not all - are willing to break the law of the land (the constitution) to achieve an end result that they think is best.

They think that if they can find a rationale for increasing their power, even if that rationale is poorly thought out, that this gives them plausible deniability. And it does, in a court of law, because of immunity doctrine.

This is no different than the immunity that protects corrupt police officers, like Kamala Harris, but I digress...

CONTINUES ON PAGE

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From the Journal of Joshua Fryfogle

First Edition

Liberty, Liberally

There’s Freedom There

The Elect Few “I Swear To God...”

The Marketplace of Ideals

Express your Self!

If you think something, say it. It’s okay to be wrong. It’s your right, in fact, under the law. The main thing to think about is that the public discourse remain an accurate reflection of the will of the people. If not, it’s not democratic in spirit, but in name only.

We’ve made a mockery of open discourse, mocking those who would dare to speak unpopular ideas.

Human history shows us that this is a pattern we follow, a predictable default.

If someone says something you find repulsive or wrong, afterwards you know that this is a perspective that exists. Now you’ve faced reality, assessed it - you are aware of something that you wouldn’t have imagined before.

It’s important that you and I not betray our consciences by remaining silent.

And in that we’ve been guaranteed such

freedom to finally express the human spirit, individually, our responsibility to one another is found.

What we individually believe to be true need not be true, it only needs to be spoken.

If every individual felt free to be wrong, and would not suffer ridicule or worse for failing to embody truth, then we would all contribute our perspective without reservations. This would allow us to tap into genius, which is always the catalyst of great change, and it’s always ridiculed or worse before it’s accepted.

Our experiment in Liberty must be to undo that instinct to attack the heretic.

Our experiment in Liberty must be to reassess everything, all the time, and have no sacred cows in the public square.

There’s freedom there.

Politicians, Policy and the Police CONTINUED FROM PAGE

Whether they are police, or politicians, it is the policies that are the problem.

Most of the time, most politicians and most police are sincere public servants.

But when politicians create policies that are unconstitutional, or when the police enforce policies that are unconstitutional, that’s called “abuse of power”.

Those on the political right defend the police, because as a whole, they see the police as individual public servants who are doing their job. Those on the political left defend the state and it’s policies, because as a whole, they see politicians as individuals who serve the public. We, the People, should feel free to criticize either the police or the politicians, because unlike the rest of us, they both have immunity from the laws they enforce - regardless of the fact that most of them are good people.

But it doesn’t matter if most of our police are good, and neither does it matter if most of our politicians are good. If the bad apples from these two groups of people, who have immunity

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from the law, are willing to ignore the Constitution and our rights in their pursuit of policy enforcement, they make the rest of them look bad.

I’m of the opinion that there are many more corrupt politicians than there are corrupt police. It seems apparent to me that it is the politicians who create the policies that the police then enforce. So when we blame the police, but ignore the policies, and the politicians who created those policies (like Joe Biden’s 1994 Crime Bill), our indignation is misdirected away from the source of the problem entirely.

When a self-proclaimed “progressive” politician speaks ill of our individual liberty, when they say that our freedom is in the way of their policies, they are no different than a corrupt cop. They are saying that they shouldn’t be bound by our rights as individuals. They are telling you that they intend to use force and coercion - they are willing to use the police - to gain submission and compliance - all for public safety, of course.

Your Ability To Respond Is Your Responsibility In public discourse, bad ideas have an inherent value. Wrong notions, based on misunderstandings, serve a practical function in public discourse.

However, fear of being perceived as ‘being wrong’, and how our mind associates ‘being wrong’ with being inadequate, holds us back from the true and full benefit of bad ideas.

Bad ideas aren’t valuable in the sense that we should adhere to them. That would make them good ideas. Bad ideas are valuable to the public discourse because they allow all of us to benefit from the processing power of the People as a whole. But it’s entirely dependent upon these thoughts, these ideas, both good and bad, being presented to the public for consideration.

We’re culturally programmed to think of bad ideas, once they are made public, to be an albatross around our own necks. No one wants credit for a bad idea. But bad ideas must be identified, in order to identify good ones. So when we hold back from presenting our perception, for fear of public ridicule, we’re denying the public discourse it’s necessary fodder for our own self-governance.

An incomplete idea, a bad idea, a good idea with a fatal flaw, all of these must be heard. But most of us aren’t listening anyway. And the few of us who are listening are a perpetual peanut gallery, casting aspersions at anyone who dares to share a new point of view.

This is a social problem, and it probably points to our human history of hero worship. But our form of government is not in need of heroes.

Our system makes each of us our own master. But with great power comes

Liberty, Liberally

great responsibility, and there is no responsibility more obvious than the ability to respond. Whether you’re right or wrong, your ability to respond is protected under the constitution.

The idea of ‘dangerous ideas’, for example, deserves to be held to the scrutiny of rational people, so that this ouroboros of idiocy is laid bare.

But the person who thinks it ought not feel shamed personally, as we’re all just vessels of thought. Still, this circular censorship can only prevent progress, by stifling the individual from expressing ideas, not only for fear of public ridicule, but for fear of literal reprisal from those who would enforce these thought crime laws. However, the person who has the notion that some notions ought not be had, even this conundrum of a person ought not fear the rest of us.

How do we train ourselves to listen to and truly hear each other? By creating protections under the law of our inherent right and responsibility to think and share the product of that thought with those around us, we only create the possibility for this Hearing to be had. But the unfolding of our self-governance must come from within the individual, while the fear of public speaking is a fear that can be petrifying. In fact, it’s the most common phobia.

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I see office-holders, elected by the people, as suspending their own Liberty, and serving - literally, becoming subservient to - the People they represent. I do not see public office as a power position, but the absolute opposite.

Corruption of this concept in the public awareness is the biggest selfgovernance problem we face, in my view.

The People, the individuals, hold all the rights. As individuals, we are free, says the constitutional documents we’ve long-ago published. We have all the rights, and by representative, all the power. Well, that’s how it’s supposed to be...

We’ve accepted instead that our elected leaders should be ideologues, with whom we mostly agree, usually.

We’ve largely given up on the idea of influencing these elect few. Instead, we just vote for candidates on the “Can They Win/Can They Lie Well” axis.

We know that they’ll have undue power once elected, we know they won’t even fulfill their promise to ignore the constitution in lieu of their own professed passions, and we accept that as a reality. We vote to mitigate the downward spiral of our system, and we think ourselves wise for doing so.

But that’s not how the law of the land constitutes our national character.

No, under the Law, the People have the power, and the Public Servants serve the public. Duh. The politicians’ strongly held opinions should be a deal breaker. Their promises to advance one agenda over ‘the other’ are an admission of their intent to ignore their oath of office - another catechism of the constitution that we’ve made merely ceremonial.

The Individual has more power than any elected official, according to the law of the land.

Elected officials open themselves up to corporate media scrutiny. It’s harder for the media to attack a private citizen using their own first amendment rights. But politicians are fair game, sacrificial lambs. If any of them go against the grain, the establishment cronies of the two-party-problem are quick to agree that the heretic be burned. They attack elected officials, and it works - but only because we elect ideologues.

The oath of office is all about NOT being an ideologue.

Oath of Office example:

“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God.” Let’s take it one clause at a time, starting with the primary clause of this single sentence...

“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic;”

This is the primary clause that is only amended by the subsequent clauses.

It predicates all other clauses on the Constitution, and recognizes that enemies thereof can come from within or without.

“...that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same;” The second clause is reiterating that they will be unwavering in their commitment to the Constitution, just in case that primary clause wasn’t clear enough.

“that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion;” This third clause states that they aren’t being coerced, they have no doubts in the oath they’re taking, and that they aren’t taking the oath in order to evade detection of ulterior motives.

“and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God.” In the final, fourth clause, they commit to doing the duties of their office, described in the primary and preceding clauses, ending with an invocation of deity.

Notice what’s not included!

There is no reference to fulfilling campaign promises, is there? They aren’t required to fulfill their promises, as their oath of office only mentions their obligation to the Constitution.

Neither is there a mention of allegiance to their respective political parties. Nowhere does it mention that they won’t be a ‘RINO’ or a ‘DINO’. That is a foreign concept to our constitutional system of selfgovernance through a representative Republic. They swear instead to not hold any other allegiances above their allegiance to serve their Constituents under the Constitution.

Constitutionally speaking, these people are bound to servitude, by a voluntary oath, and they ought to put aside their own strongly held beliefs in the process. They ought to re-present the will of their Constituents, within the bounds of the Constitution. That’s what they’ve sworn to do, after all.

When a local or level-up politician does go against the parties, when they do say something that might be fundamental to their oath of office, the corporate media attacks like the lap-dogs of the duopoly that they’ve always been. They don’t fulfill the function of the freedom of the press that belongs to each individual, they exploit the same. They work for the establishment, and they attack anyone who gets the bright idea to serve the people and not the parties’ interests.

It’s time that we talk to our politicians like the servants that they are, instead of pretending with the pomp and circumstance our tax dollars have afforded them. They aren’t sacred, they are servants by choice.

They say they want to serve, but do you feel served?

And if I pray, the only prayer That moves my lips for me Is, 'Leave the heart that now I bear, And give me liberty!'

Despite the fear of public scrutiny, in spite of naysayers who say nothing of their own, each of us should feel empowered to speak! Because we are empowered. By law. And with that power to express ourselves, within that lawful ability to respond, we all find our most profound responsibility as a person.

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- Emily Bronte From the Journal of Joshua Fryfogle

First Edition

Liberty, Liberally

An Education Fit For Kings

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Learning How To Learn As We Learn

Liberal Arts are The Arts of Freedom

A fundamental change to educational curricula is needed.

The Seven Liberal Arts, that original curricula from which all curriculum must come, was an educational process that was first created for the ruling class.

When we think about things, we come to reasonings and rationales that we know must be consistent.

Priests, kings, the favored few, they held knowledge in high regard, and used their knowledge to maintain and increase their own power.

Peasants weren’t given such educations, in large part due to the expense of book-making, though also as a matter of law. The scribes made copies of all works, which were distributed to those in power, who were allowed to explore such things. The printing press took books from the hands of scribes and made millions more for the masses. But until that time, and that technology, books were an expensive, handcrafted copy, each and every one.

Kings and the ruling class had access, and education, to interpret such works.

The average serf remained a slave to the king, should the king demand anything of them.

They weren’t allowed education, nor could they afford one.

Liberal means ‘free’, The classical seven liberal arts are, first and foremost, the first three.

Grammar, rhetoric, and logic - these three of the seven were the foundation of an education for a sovereign. These were (and still are) the keys to freedom,

which kings did learn in lieu of the labors of the commoner.

Liberalism, as a movement, was the belief that all people have free access to all information, rather than excluding everyone but the few who ruled.

Liberalism is the belief that every individual has Liberty, and that liberty starts with the liberal arts.

the

When exploring reality, be it material or situational, we come to conclusions from which we expect to yield some experience that will be useful in the future. In this way, any experience we have leads to ‘having experience.’

Our education system ought to recognize that we’ve long ago drifted in our mission to raise up children who are fit to self-govern.

So our growth, intellectually and emotionally at least, hinges on this frame, that we learn how to learn, while we learn.

Without a proper liberal arts education, not to be confused with an improper and ironically named sophistic ‘liberal arts degree’, the average child could discern better than most adults without that education. These three curricular studies, grammar, rhetoric, and logic, teach liberty to the individual.

This improves our ability to learn, and we reach a point of exponential learning.

What is liberty, if not the ability to act on your own will, and what is your own will, if not your own?

The will of the king was demoralizing to the people, because kings used their own Liberty over the people. The antidote to that power disparity was to give that same education to everyone.

This neutralizes the negatives of the exclusive Sovereignty of Kings, and lifts the serfs from serfdom to freedom.

“A primary object should be the education of our youth in the science of government. In a republic, what species of knowledge can be equally important?

And what duty more pressing than communicating it to those who are to be the future guardians of the liberties of the country?”

- George Washington

“The advancement and diffusion of knowledge is the only guardian of true liberty.”

- James Madison “I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves ; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power.”

But because learning works in this way, it is discouraging in the beginning.

The individual, who is doing the thinking and perceiving, cannot help but notice how slow going this ‘learning’ is, and they want off. This is why little children resist the work of homework, and why adult students look forward to being out of school.

They do not realize that this exponential growth of the intellect is exactly what they should expect. This allows the student of life to relax into the rigor of intellectual curiosity.

Continued intellectual pursuit ought to be redirected to our continued circumstantial reality.

We are still capable of great growth, and our intellect is capable of so much more. But without a culture of intellectual curiosity - being the free will of humans everywhere - we are automatons to the species.

Humanity is capable of learning, enlightening themselves. All they need do is to make the effort, consistently, throughout their lives. Continue to expect exponential levels of life, as the intellect becomes more robust and orders of magnitude more effective.

The effect is two-fold. The individual becomes more capable of thought, and society becomes the beneficiary.

Our schools systems were first imagined to satisfy the industrial revolution, which was truly revolutionary. We left behind the agrarian life that was common to common people at the time, and entered into the machine, figuratively (and sort of literally) speaking. The made for great factory workers, which made for great wealth production. The tensile strength and ingenuity of these metal menageries made for a brave new world, but it needed workers, not farmers. Some individual to keep the machines under their control.

But the classical liberal education that the founders enjoyed, and from which this nation was born, that was left behind to prepare the People to be industrious.

- Thomas Jefferson

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Liberty, Liberally From the Journal

Learning in this way, over time, creates great potential in the individual.

Now, that time of industry has all but passed, and the next phase of humanity will be assisted by AI and automation.

This, too, will come exponentially.

It’s almost here.

And we’re illprepared, as a People.

Look to the web for proof. As a whole, we don’t know how to discern, actively, in the world of information.

And no surprise, either, since the systems of curricula have become devoid of classically liberal education.

As a note, ‘liberal’ in this context has to do with freedom to think and express oneself, freely. The modern political connotation of ‘liberal’, being the left side of the partisan political schema, is a corruption of the word. Here I’m using it correctly. A person who is illiberal doesn’t believe in liberty of the individual, and a person who is liberal does.

Liberty is rooted in the Latin ‘liber’, which means both ‘book’ and ‘free’.

The Industrial Age brought metallurgy and mechanism together, necessitating that the individual who plants was themselves chopped and the root. We had to work to survive, as farming become more efficient with the use of industry.

The removal of classically liberal education from the common curriculum has removed from the student a proper use of the Liberty that they all have, under the Law. The government must guarantee these liberties, that is their one job.

That’s the oath that they take.

Our ability to sort things out, to make sense of things, to test and consider the outcome, to make record of things we’ve discovered through our intellectual capacity, that is the sum total of culture and society. The quality of that outcome, shaped by the net total of processing power of the People, is shaped in how we’re educated.

The founders of this great experiment, they weren’t educated for factories to use them for labor. They took for themselves the education of kings, and established sovereignty in each individual. They called it liberty, and it was the right of kings given to everyone. They learned the things that rulers knew, and knowledge is power.

We don’t know a lot about that, though, because we’ve accepted that education stops at a certain point.

We’ve come to accept the work/ entertainment dichotomy of life as a payoff for suffering through the education process.

After all, the workforce isn’t changing, it’s being replaced via technology. No wonder, since our education system, first created to inform and form factory workers, has simply come up short.

Our education system needs to teach people how to continue learning, and that is freedom itself. There is liberty in a library, for those who learn, liberally. The exponential potential inherent in each of us, the human capacity to learn, is instead stifled by curricula that only mention classical liberal education, and instead still prepares our children for a workforce that won’t exist in coming decades.

Our ability to use language and learning must be instilled in us. It exists only in potential, without a teacher to teach it.

If students leave the education process excited about leaving the education process, then something is systemically wrong. They should instead leave the process feeling grateful to have had such an education that has made the world accessible to them.

Students are excited about life and leaving behind learning forever. This is systemic failure for any society. It’s not the teachers’ fault, or even the administrators - it’s the fault of those who’ve shaped the curriculum, long ago. They set in motion a machine that is made obsolete by the technological age, and now it is only a monument to that historical epoch.

Liberty is literally liberally learning.

It’s root Latin word connects these ideas, meaning both ‘book’ and ‘free’.

The earliest curricula of the Western world, the seven classical liberal arts, have been reduced to communications degrees for a small sector of the economy, and even that is reserved as a higher education focus.

Liberty ought to be the defining characteristic of our education process, and classically liberal education ought to be sought out and brought in to the schools. Clearly, our kids won’t have the jobs that our system currently prepares them for, so we have a mandate to make a change. Their future literally depends on their ability to successfully navigate the world of information, because the material world is increasingly becoming subservient to the same.

Liberty without learning is always in peril and learning without liberty is always in vain.

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Joshua Fryfogle - John F. Kennedy

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From the Journal of Joshua Fryfogle