Click Here For Deliberate Dumbing Down - Making Johnny Stupid

Deliberate Dumbing Down - Making Johnny Stupid: "Your Intrepid Correspondent was talking in a high school to a class of seniors about the career of Adolf Hitler, but there was a problem. I wasn't discussing Hitler the way I was supposed to. For instance, I was explaining that Hitler was of course a far leftist, a Socialist, a National Socialist, that he believed in total government and therefore that he and the Communists were natural allies, an affinity that found expression in the Hitler-Stalin Non-Aggression Pact.

The immensely curious and fascinating thing about the confrontation was that these seniors could not understand what I was saying, not even enough to disagree. They never did figure out whether I was a good guy or not. They responded not to the ideas I was voicing but to the names I spoke. Whenever I mentioned Hitler, they booed. When I mentioned FDR, they applauded. I realized that the names were buttons. They had been trained, not educated, to respond when those buttons were pushed. "