A TYRANNY OF WASTED MINDS

Analysis of the facts relevant to global warming is so simple that it hardly even qualifies as "science.'' We need only simple graphs of temperature vs. time to dispose of the global warming myth - graphs that any 12-year-old child should easily be able to interpret.

We need, however, something more. We need citizens who value the truth enough to seek it out and to demand it of others to whom they listen, and we need citizens who are intellectually capable of reading a simple graph. By this I do not mean intelligent enough to read a graph. Only the less than one percent born severely mentally retarded lack the necessary intelligence. I mean minimally educated to the point that they will apply their brains to independently interpreting a graph or its textually stated equivalent - rather than simply trusting and parroting whatever propaganda happens to reach their eyes and ears.

The fact is that America increasingly lacks people whose interest in the truth and whose willingness to think is sufficient to permit the analysis of a set of data showing temperature as a function of time. This lack has been primarily caused by tax-financed, socialized government schools. These schools have deteriorated so severely that two generations of Americans - current students and their parents - have sharply reduced moral standards and mental abilities. There are, of course, some Americans who have managed to avoid these problems even while attending government schools, but the general effects on public morality and intellectual performance have been disastrous.

Most Americans today respond to the blessing of children by simply turning their offspring over to the state to raise. The state then divests them of moral character on the pretext of "honoring diversity'' and of intellectual ability claiming it must "not diminish anyone's self-esteem.'' Moreover, with the exception of a minority of good teachers, who are effectively neutralized by the system, the more than two million unionized bureaucrats and teachers (about equal numbers of each) wallowing in this $300 billion-per-year, tax-financed wasteland are themselves among the least capable members of our society.

We may or may not be able to stop the global warming mania. If we do not, the world's people will pay a terrible price. If, however, we are unable to recognize the problems that the very existence of this mania reveals and to correct those problems, the descent of mankind into an age of antitechnological mysticism and irrationalism with concomitant mass suffering and slaughter of human beings may well occur.

Each of us can do only a small amount toward the defeat of the global warming treaty, but most of us can do much toward correction of the underlying problems. Most of us have children, grandchildren, nieces, nephews, or friends or associates with children who need an opportunity to be more than future mindless automatons of the state.

Thousands of years of human knowledge - including especially that of recent centuries which have included the rise of science and technology and the development of inexpensive means for the dissemination of knowledge and wisdom in all subjects - are now easily available to us. It is our duty to make an intelligent selection of that knowledge available to the young people of our immediate acquaintance. They must learn to think and to learn what others have thought and discovered. They must learn not to trust and parrot unscrupulous manipulators who seek to control and ruin their lives.

Although I personally advocate homeschooling and the abolition of tax-financed schools, it is not necessary to join the 3% of American families who are now homeschooling their children in order to help your young people. Even a child in the socialist schools spends only a part of his productive time in that environment. Each child should have available - at least for use in his recreational hours - a wealth of good material in science and the humanities.

Enclosed with this Access to Energy is a flier describing the curriculum that the Robinsons have developed with the help of several colleagues. In addition to our teaching method and support materials such as exams and exercises, this curriculum includes about 120,000 pages of unedited books in the humanities and science that we have selected from among the vast storehouses of human knowledge. This is the very best collection of its kind available. (We have even included three recent years of issues of Access to Energy - not great literature, but nevertheless a source of truths of current interest.) Although there are about 20,000 homeschooled students now using this curriculum and many more expected to adopt it during the coming months, these books and materials need to be much more widely available - especially to public school children. Please consider making them available to young people whom you know.