Reason magazine is still off on its blind lunatic course — yesterday's added example of propaganda in action

© 2026 Peter Free

 

19 June 2026

 

 

Background

 

 A few days ago, I maintained (on X) that Reason had gone off factual accuracy's rails — when it denied that the Epstein Class controls the United States.

 

 

Similarly yesterday, Reason . . .

 

. . . uninsightfully maintained that Americans revere the Founders' free enterprise because We the People are familiar with the Founders' thinking.

 

This attributed familiarity with American history implicitly being opposed to the unstated (and much more accurate) perception that the American public is controlled by interminable decades of Oligarchy-friendly propaganda.

 

Propaganda that Reason, and every other Big Capital-controlled outlet, spews.

 

Here is Reason's train of thought in excerpts:

 

 

As the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence nears, it looks like Americans overwhelmingly approve of their country's cardinal principles.

 

That's the top-line finding from a recent survey conducted by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) about the legacy of America's founding.

 

73 percent of the younger generation still agreed that "the founders deserve respect…for how they set up the United States."

 

And 74 percent of Gen Z respondents agreed that "studying the political principles of the founding fathers can help inform our decisions today."

 

Support for Founding principles was also impressively robust across party lines: 92 percent of Republicans and 77 percent of Democrats said that it was "more important than ever to teach all kids the history of the founding fathers."

 

The AEI survey also revealed surprisingly broad support for capitalism. Among 5,306 respondents, 82 percent said it was "very" or "somewhat important" to teach about "the benefit of free market capitalism" in high schools. Only 4 percent said that it should not be taught.

 

[I]t would seem that Americans are fundamentally committed to the values and freedoms of the Founding.

 

"Much has changed since the late 1990s," the AEI report reads, but "still, most Americans in 2026 report that they are familiar with our founding documents and endorse long-standing civic ideals such as freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and equal opportunity."

 

© 2026 Ari Shtein, Americans Still Believe in the Founding—and Want Schools To Teach Capitalism, Reason (18 June 2026)

 

 

If one were to conduct an accurate test of . . .

 

. . . the American public's knowledge today, close to zero percent would be able to name the Founders.

 

Much less mildly accurately provide an overview of the philosophical battle lines — or why those took the form they did — as those principles were laid out by Federalist Papers and other  writings and debates.

 

 

In truth

 

We Americans are colossally ignorant regarding the United States' (or anyone else's) history.

 

Instead, we are mind-controlled by the parasite-favoring institutional constructs that have emerged since the nation's founding. And which have an Oligarchical model of public control in mind.

 

 

The illusion of democratic and economic freedom . . .

 

. . . in the United States persists only because deluded (or deluding) media, like Reason and the American Enterprise Institute continue to propagandize it.

 

No one in the Rich Establishment wants Americans to recognize just how much they are blood-sucked by virtue of a system that deliberately and structurally enserfs and enslaves them.

 

 

The moral? — If genuinely successful . . .

 

. . . widely spread small person-originated capitalism is the goal — communist China (incredibly enough) provides a startlingly more effective and successful societal model, than the United States does.

 

And if lifting humanity out of poverty is the aim, China's population-based achievements again obliterate the American model.

 

This paradox between attributed and actual intent — and those competing intents' correlation with achieving genuine public economic wellbeing — is worth thinking about.

 

But since realism and critical thinking are requirements for engaging in such an analysis, we can be assured that no one (with power to wield), will.