Preparing Yourself In The Ongoing Battle For Your Mind

If you have listened at all to the Big Picture Morning show, you know that we have what I consider a healthy skepticism of what is passed on to us as news and “official” information. In fact, our motto is “we may tell you the news, we just don’t necessarily believe it.”

Connor Boyack has a new book coming out, and when it caught our attention, I knew I wanted to talk with him about it. If you don’t know, Connor started the Libertas Institute here in Utah, and has been a champion freedom and liberty, and has played a key role in getting several pieces of legislation passed to protect the rights of individuals, and curb government intervention in our lives. 

Additionally, Connor is working very hard to see that the principles of limited government and individual rights and responsibilities are presented to the upcoming generations by way of his highly successful Tuttle Twins book series. That series has also been made into a cartoon series that young viewers can watch via the Angel Studios app.  

Connor joined us on the radio this morning to give a preview of his new book, Mind Wars: Avoiding Deception in the Age of Manipulation. 

Connor talked about one of the cautions he wants readers to understand, and a part of the motivation for the book. “This is the book I've been working on for the better part of two years, and it is my attempts to try and help people understand the psychological battlefields that we're in and how to navigate them successfully,” Boyack said. 

In the book, Boyack presents several examples how people labeled as “experts” have the wrong information and that too much belief in people with certain letters following their names may have become somewhat deified in today’s society and that he sees a danger in that. 

"I talk about the danger of having a culture of experts, individuals who are propped up in their opinions or their claims merely because of a certain acronym that they have after their name, a degree that they obtained, you know, doctors wearing white lab coats to try and visually convey their authority. And so I share a bunch of examples. Going through COVID, we know how Fauci, who supposedly represents science, was unquestionable by the media and others. Go back years, you can look at the ramp up to the war in Iraq after 911, the claims of weapons of mass destruction over and over again,” Boyack said.  

And the danger? “We individuals without the capacity to go investigate things on their own, of necessity, rely on the testimony and the claims of supposed experts, because they are more ‘in the know’. They're in those meetings, they're doing that research. The problem is we run into the boy who cried wolf scenario. These people keep lying to us again and again. Our problem is that unlike the villagers, we keep trusting the boy despite the fact that he keeps lying to us. And so and in the book I share these examples to say, ‘hey, let's develop some skepticism of those in authority, because even if they're not malicious, they often get it wrong and we base our decisions off of something that is incorrect,” Connor told us. “Let's be a little bit more skeptical and cautious in terms of trusting other people, even if they have, you know, a lab coat or an acronym after their name,” Boyack continued.  

When asked if it was possible that experts could also come with an agenda, Connor held nothing back. “100%! As a homeschool dad, this particular point you're making resonates with me because I can't tell you how many times I've heard teachers or school administrators cited as the experts. ‘Oh, parents don't know how to teach. Parents don't know how to make sure their children are, you know, college and career ready. You know, teachers are the experts we need to trust them. We need to give them all the tools.' (One) silver lining of COVID is that that argument has totally exploded, and we have an abundance of examples in which teachers are more activists and expert educators, and parents truly are the experts of their own children,” Connor explained. 

Connor then told us that he believes there is movement in society, and that people are beginning to look deeper into the information they are being presented. He hopes his new book will be a guide to those  

“I think there are a number of people who are more awake now and realizing OH, wait a minute. We grew up in this world in which all these people were telling us what to do and demeaning and diminishing our own knowledge and our own capacity to identify truth. They were saying no, don't develop that. Just trust me! But now we're in a world where a lot of people have woken up to the ruse and are looking around saying OK, now, now I know better. What do I do? The goal of my book Mind Wars is to meet those people where they're at and say, aha, OK, your eyes have been opened a little bit. Red pill. Now here's how you can fortify yourself and your children in the psychological battlefields we’re in.”

Mind Wars: Avoiding Deception in the Age of Manipulization is avaialble to pre-order now and will release on February 15th. 

There's a lot more Connor had to say and you can listen to our entire segment with Connor Boyack below, and you can find out more about Libertas Institute by clicking here.