Substitute Behavior
by JIM BEERS
In the early 20th century there was an explosion of "biologists" and "sociologists" like John B. Watson making claims about how men were merely animals susceptible to "training" and "stimuli" such that, like dogs or other domestic animals, they could be "formed" into whatever we deemed "ideal". This early expression of "science as savior" was simultaneous with and intertwined with the spreading Darwinian concepts of man as just another blob of tissue that somehow evolved from mud and the Margaret Sanger school of thought that "others" (it is always others like the poor or those the powerful or "smart" deem to be undesirable) should be prevented from reproducing and killed where possible.
These "movements" and their claims were collectively an expression of and justification for much of the "progressive" thinking of those times. Communists like Lenin and Trotsky used these "new discoveries" as justifications for their ruthlessness in establishing the ideas of Karl Marx to "save" and "reform" those left alive under their reign. Nazi propagandists like Goebbels and Himmeler used these same notions to justify and explain their merciless actions to impose their Third Reich of Aryan paganism. To deny that this thinking played a major role in the World Wars, Holocausts, Pogroms, Gulags, "Disappearances", Wars of Conquest, and widespread attacks on human dignity and freedoms in the 20th century is akin to denying the nose on your face.
In the United States, "progressive" thinking readily adopted the notion that mankind was not created by God; did not have to comply with "ancient" prohibitions based on moral concepts; or honor the rights described in The Declaration of Independence. Therefore, as just another animal, man was susceptible to being "guided" and "trained" by superior (guess who) persons toward the "desirable" ends desired by rulers. Like Germany and Russia, a strong and unchallengeable central government was assumedly the place from which these smarter, superior beings would rule others. Unlike Russia, a revolutionary blood bath pitting the poor against the middle class and rich in the US was deemed impossible. Unlike Germany, the US had no heritage of strict discipline or romantic and mythical notions of bygone days to justify allowing thugs and criminals to seize "permanent" control of the central government to "restore" a " Thousand Year Reich" of tyranny and oppression.
In the United States an incremental approach to tyrannical rule by "superior" individuals was adopted. During the early 20th century the US Constitution and our society was radically changed and these changes have continued to expand both their own purpose and innumerable other hidden agendas and unintended consequences:
-In 1913 the Constitution was amended by the 16th Amendment give the central government the "power to lay and collect taxes on incomes"."without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration." This provided the unlimited funding for limitless expansion of the central government in spite of government assurances that taxes would only be leveled on "millionaires". Sound familiar?
-Also in 1913, the Constitution was amended by the 17th Amendment to eliminate the appointment of US Senators by State Legislature and to require their popular election. Like so many such changes, time revealed the hidden agenda that this change destroyed the role of US Senators as champions of their own state and created aristocratic dandies. Their role in controlling all legislation, confirming all Presidential appointees, and ratifying all Treaties made their "new" role very dangerous to Liberty and the Nation. The change resulted in their political longevity no longer relying on State interests but rather on national and international forces that provided the money, volunteers, media coverage, and influence necessary for their election and reelection.
-By 1918 all states had passed laws requiring children to attend State elementary schools. Catholics were opposed to this common schooling and created their own private schools. It took seven years of legal haggling culminating in a 1925 Supreme Court decision in Pierce v. Society of Sisters to establish that states could not compel children to attend public schools and that children could attend private schools instead. This attempt by government to assert that it would henceforth "educate" all children (like Communist and Nazi societies were to do) has always been intended to make children into adults supportive of the regime and whatever the regime wants. No one can deny that today's public school curriculums have incrementally expanded this governmental role from "reading, writing, and 'rithmatic" to "teaching" propaganda regarding such things as aberrant lifestyles, environmental worship, and animal "rights" as they concurrently diminished their role in teaching mathematics, history, and science. Simultaneously, the authority and rights of parents vis-à-vis their own children has diminished as governmental authority over those same children has expanded just like it did in communist Russia and Nazi Germany. Arguably, this claim by government to dictating unfettered "education" of the young is the most destructive power of tyrants. While no more evil power exists than the right to deny others "Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness"; the power to take away the right of parents to raise their own children in order to scandalously instill tolerance for things like abortion, euthanasia, and dictatorial government is an insidious effort to create "perfect" Socialists as in Germany or "perfect" Communists as in Russia.
So what of the Good Humor truck? The memory of Pavlov's salivating dogs and the running children stirred another memory of an animal behavior class I took 50 years ago. The teacher was a fan of Konrad Lorenz (1903-89), the Austrian ex-Nazi animal behaviorist that was a prisoner of the Russians for several years after WWII. He is a hero to modern animal welfare advocates and someone credited as a founder of the modern Green Party in Germany. One of Dr. Lorenz's observations concerned Substitute Behavior.
As I remember it, substitute behavior, was defined by an example wherein a fox gets into a chicken coop and chases a chicken around until the chicken is cornered and realizes it cannot escape the fox. What the chicken did next was an example of substitute behavior: the chicken very often began pecking and scratching on the ground as if feeding, oblivious to the impending doom.
While I do not subscribe to this animal observation as being relative to individual humans, I do suspect that contrary to the comparisons Dr. Lorenz and his students were assuming, the occurrence of substitute behavior in human societies is both real and a threat to Freedom.
Take illegal immigration of recent years. We don't even know how many are living in the nation. We can't even talk about the cost of their health care to the rest of us or their affect on jobs available to American citizens. Questions about their cost impacts on school budgets, their affects on Social Security and tax collections, their crime rates, or the costs of resulting incarceration go unanswered while charges of racism are lodged against hapless questioners. Attempts to shut down the illegal flow go unsupported by both parties and enforcement of immigration laws are either frustrated by "sanctuary" cities or by business claims of jobs going unfilled by Americans unwilling to work. As students and retirees can no longer find part-time or temporary jobs that all seem to be filled by illegal immigrants we all decry "lazy" youngsters and Social Security recipients that "refuse" to work.
So what do we do about the illegal immigration problem? As the politicians of both parties pay lip service to the "solutions" they advocate on one hand and then submarine the very same solutions on the other (to get votes) we do what? We teach Spanish to our children! After a recent stint of babysitting my grandchildren I was struck by how all the TV shows for kids (most of which are on government-sponsored channels and produced by government-sponsored "artists" receiving government grants) never let up on teaching American kids to speak in Spanish. Why Spanish? Why not French or Russian or German or Chinese? Like the chicken in the corner, the little munchkins are expected to grow up to feel comfortable as they are swallowed up in another culture while their own parents' concepts of freedom and rights and cultural traditions disappear. Substitute behavior? I'll let you be the judge.
One other example bears mention. Take environmental extremism and radical animal rights. Recent decades have seen "environmental" laws like the Endangered Species Act destroy the Constitutional protections for private property both real and personal. We have seen people and domestic animals killed by protected and forcibly (by government) spread predators like wolves and cougars and grizzly bears. We meekly submit to more and more laws that seize private ownership and use of horses and gamefowl and pets to satisfy urban elites that seek the forced compliance of others with their own emotional wishes. Public property has become an oxymoron as Wilderness Declarations, Roadless Areas, Closed Areas, Electric motor areas, permit requirements, and draconian law enforcement and penalties continued to proliferate in order to get politicians reelected and to justify increased funding for bureaucrats. Rural communities and rural employment disappear as grazing, logging, and fish and wildlife uses are eliminated. Commercial marine fisheries collapse as we refuse to control the marine mammals that keep them suppressed. Abortions and euthanasia increase as we establish legal rights for chimps and teach the young about how animals are "just like us" and should never be harmed for any reason. Fish and wildlife management, like forest management and range management have been all but eliminated as forest fires become ever more widespread and deadly, as ranchers go out of business, as loggers disappear and lumber prices soar, and as necessary control of wild fish and animal numbers and distributions are resigned to the vagaries of mythical notions like "Native Ecosystems" and "too many people living in (fill-in-the-blank)'s habitat".
So what do we do about these environmental and animal rights disasters? Taking a leaf from teaching Spanish to kids being engulfed in an illegal immigration tsunami, we focus all our attention on an impossible and ineffective crusade to reduce carbon in the atmosphere to "prevent" an imaginary phenomenon - "global warming". Just as the government-sponsored Spanish classes have a hidden agenda of resigning the young to the loss of their parents' world, so too is the Chicken Little "the sky is falling" falderal about the omnipresent carbon in our atmosphere intended to (like the chicken pecking for imaginary grit or seeds as the fox pounces) make the young and old accepting of more taxes and more government (national and international) control of our lives. This latter is perhaps one of the largest and most wide-ranging hidden agendas disguised in environmental nonsense to ever come down the pike.
Parallels between the USA in 2009 with Nazi Germany and Communist Russia are all around us, a few examples should suffice:
-National school lectures and school songs glorifying a "great" leader.
-Government calls for stirring poster art depicting a new leader and a new world. (Leni Riefenstahl where are you when we need you?)
-Propaganda everywhere (from schools to the UN) about how bad everything was previously.
-Assurances everywhere that a "new" America will "right" past American wrongs.
-Constant radio and TV exposure of the new leader and new policies just like Ray Bradbury's "Soma" in Fahrenheit 451.
-An explosion of government spending for public works, controlling businesses, and supporting friends.
-Acknowledged criminals in high government positions.
-No "checks" or "balances" on a single party government with radical change policies.
-A ruling government stuffed with radical individuals representing radical changes.
-Pitting one group against another by blaming some for the problems of others.
-Denigration of opponents as simple fools motivated by dark purposes and ignorance.
-Government claims of the need for censorship to silence dangerous "liars".
-Government claims that the "old" system is broken and a "new" system is needed.
-New friendships with former enemies and betrayal of old allies.
-Secret (due to complexity and length) radical laws rushed through without any public awareness.
-Elimination of the "conscience clause" protections for health workers that recognize abortion and euthanasia as immoral and repugnant. (Everyone must comply or be marginalized.)
-Intimidation of religious leaders by a combination of favoring religious dissidents and threatening taxation of churches and closure of religious charities and hospitals.
-Powerful bureaucracies complicit in whatever is done as long as they are accommodated.
-Thugs attacking protesters and disrupting meetings labeled as "reactionary".
-Idiotic nature worship like Hitler's "Pre-Roman Plant and Animal Communities".
-Animal protection touted as simultaneously helpless and infirm humans are "eliminated".
-Public condemnation of former leaders by a sanctimonious new leader.
-Threatened prosecution of former leaders and those that worked under them.
-Secret alliances between the new leader and criminal groups that intimidate others and influence elections (until elections are no longer "necessary"?).
-A government role in what we eat and drink and how we live like those Nazi films of neatly arranged Germans exercising happily in the sunlight.
-Increasing government ownership and/or control of all real and private property.
-A Court system and judges like that portrayed by Burt Lancaster in the movie Judgment at Nuremberg.
-Taxing increases that clearly eliminate citizens' savings rates and citizens' living standards while making any commerce simply government-run programs.
-Hostile media touted as why Constitutional rights like freedom of speech are outmoded.
-Gun ownership and availability targeted as no longer tolerable.
-Political leadership that publicly proclaims concern for the "people" while increasingly ruling as absolute rulers unaccountable to anyone but themselves, their continued rule, and the welfare of their ruling clique members (just like Chicago).
Let's see, what should we do? Since we don't scratch and peck in the dirt, perhaps we should kick a stone and order a Big Mac. Like the cornered chicken about to become fox chow we are also about to meet our end.
Evidently one of those old crackpot lefties hit one nail on the head. While individual humans with free will and their "Creator"-given rights are capable of facing any problem and solving it, collectively Americans have behaved just like Konrad Lorenz's chicken cornered by the fox to the detriment not only of ourselves but of our progeny. Ben Franklin said it best when, while leaving the Constitutional Convention, he was asked what sort of government we were to have, "a republic or a monarchy?" He replied, "A republic, if you can keep it". Thankfully the Founding Fathers, to our great benefit up to now, had never heard about substitute behavior.
Jim Beers
25 September 2009
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This article and other articles written by Jim Beers since January 2009 can
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Articles by Jim Beers written from March 2006 to January 2009 can be found
at http://jimbeers.blogster.com (Jim Beers Common Sense)
Jim Beers is available for consulting or to speak. Contact: jimbeers7@comcast.net
- Jim Beers is a retired US Fish & Wildlife Service Wildlife Biologist, Special Agent, Refuge Manager, Wetlands Biologist, and Congressional Fellow. He was stationed in North Dakota, Minnesota, Nebraska, New York City, and Washington DC. He also served as a US Navy Line Officer in the western Pacific and on Adak, Alaska in the Aleutian Islands. He has worked for the Utah Fish & Game, Minneapolis Police Department, and as a Security Supervisor in Washington, DC. He testified three times before Congress; twice regarding the theft by the US Fish & Wildlife Service of $45 to 60 Million from State fish and wildlife funds and once in opposition to expanding Federal Invasive Species authority. He resides in Eagan, Minnesota with his wife of many decades.
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