People were not angry about the news … they were enraged!  When more than a million readers saw it right before their eyes, in black and white, in an award-winning newspaper column, droplets of blood oozed from pores in their foreheads.

John McCaslin, a distinguished member of the news media, started it all.  He has been a broadcast news anchor, an award-winning correspondent for United Press International, and a member of the White House press corps.  He has served as conference chairperson of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists, which bestowed upon him a best-column award.  He writes the nationally syndicated “Inside the Beltway” column for the Washington Times and the Los Angeles Times Syndicate.

Those are particularly influential newspapers.  The Associated Press has listed the Washington Times as the third most widely quoted newspaper in the nation, with a circulation of about 100,000, and the Los Angeles Times is the largest newspaper in California and the largest metropolitan daily newspaper in the United States, with more than 2.8 million readers daily.  The Washington Times and the Los Angeles Times Syndicate is a major source of news distribution around the world.

On 29 May 2004, the National World War II Memorial, in Washington, D.C., was formally dedicated.  Six days later, Mr. McCaslin wrote the following in his column:

Bob McEwan paid a visit to the new World War II Memorial in Washington this week and "got an unexpected history lesson."

"Since I'm a baby boomer, I was one of the youngest in the crowd," Mr. McEwan tells Inside the Beltway.  "Most were the age of my parents, veterans of 'the greatest war.'  It was a beautiful day, and people were smiling and happy to be there.  Hundreds of us milled around the memorial, reading the inspiring words of Ike and Truman that are engraved there."

Mr. McEwan made his way around to the memorial's "Pacific" section, where a group had gathered to read the determined words of President Franklin D. Roosevelt when he announced the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor:  "Yesterday, December 7, 1941 — a date which will live in infamy — the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked."

One woman, says Mr. McEwan, read the words aloud:  "With confidence in our armed forces — with the unbounding determination of our people — we will gain the inevitable triumph."

Suddenly, the woman became visibly angry:  "Wait a minute," she told her husband.  "They left out the end of the quote.  They left out the most important part.   Roosevelt said — 'so help us God.'  ... I know I'm right.  I remember the speech."

The couple shook their heads and walked away.

As Mr. McEwan puts it, "The people who edited out that part of the speech when they engraved it on the memorial could have fooled me.  I was born after the war.  But they couldn't fool the people who were there.   Roosevelt 's words are engraved on their hearts."

Those exact words were, "With confidence in our armed forces, with the unbounded determination of our people, we will gain the inevitable triumph — so help us God."

A great number of people who read the nationally syndicated column are upset that the American Battle Monuments Commission, an independent agency of the executive branch of the federal government, has falsely tried to change the way that future generations view history.  Millions more are circulating e-mails about the matter, adding their own comments, such as that it is “a lousy trick to play on the American people” and asking, “Who gave them the right to change the words of history?”  A recent communiqué calling the matter to my attention ended, “People need to know before everyone forgets.  People today are trying to change the history of America by leaving God out of it.”

Perhaps what the United States Government has engraved at the National World War II Memorial has distressed you, too.  Do you think it was wrong for the commission to exorcise from the end of President Roosevelt’s quotation the words “so help us God”?

Do you think it was accidental?

Do you think it was intentional?

I hope that you do not think any of those things.  For, if you do, then you are not thinking intelligently.

Let’s examine the facts, as I did when the misquotation was first called to my attention.

On 7 December 1941, at about 1 p.m. in Washington, D.C., just as President Roosevelt was finishing his lunch in the White House, he received a telephone call from Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox.  The Empire of Japan, he learned, had just attacked American naval and military forces at Pearl Harbor, at the American Island of Oahu, in the Hawaiian Islands.

Later that evening, Roosevelt told his secretary, Grace Tully, “I’m going before Congress tomorrow and I’d like to dictate my message.  It will be short.”  Then he dictated one of the most famous speeches of the twentieth century, asking that the Congress declare that since the time of the attack a state of war had existed between the United States of America and the Empire of Japan.

His first draft of his speech began, “Yesterday, December 7, 1941, a date which will live in world history, the United States of America was simultaneously and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.”  Later, in his third draft of the speech, he changed the words “world history” to “infamy” and the word “simultaneously” to “suddenly.”

Then, at the end of the sentence, he added the words "without warning."  Those two words, however, were misleading.  There had been warnings.  For example, in response to Japan’s previous seizure of southern Indonesia, the United States had placed an embargo on shipments of oil to Japan.  The effect was crippling, and the Empire of Japan had considered it an act of war by the United States.  For President Roosevelt to subsequently portray Japan’s attack as entirely unexpected would have been dishonest.  The American people conveniently believed that it had been a surprise, but there had been numerous warning signs.  So, after a second thought, President Roosevelt changed his mind and crossed off the words "without warning."

In addition, in President Roosevelt’s third draft of his speech, he inserted a paragraph that evolved into the final version that he delivered to the Congress the next day:  “No matter how long it may take us to overcome this premeditated invasion, the American people, in their righteous might, will win through to absolute victory.”

That sentence in its entirety, exactly as he spoke it, is what is accurately engraved on an “Eastern Corner” of the National World War II Memorial.

Now there are other quotations engraved on the memorial, too, by Colonel Oveta Culp Hobby; Admiral Chester W. Nimitz; Walter Lord; Generals Dwight D. Eisenhower, Douglas MacArthur, and George C. Marshall; and President Harry S Truman.  There is even another quotation by President Roosevelt.

Nowhere on the memorial, however, is the quotation that the woman supposedly read to her husband.  It was never engraved there!

The quotation that the woman supposedly saw is from a subsequent part of President Roosevelt’s speech.  It was an addition suggested by Harry Hopkins, a presidential advisor.  It read, “With confidence in our armed forces – with the unbounding determination of our people – we will gain the inevitable triumph – so help us God.”  It is an entirely different quotation from a later part of Roosevelt ’s address.

In other words, there is no misquotation whatsoever engraved on the National World War II Memorial.  Millions of people have become enraged over nothing!

There is plenty of responsibility to go around.  Let’s start with both Mr. McCaslin, who called the public’s attention to the issue in his nationally syndicated column, and the news medium that published the allegation worldwide.  They are guilty of atrocious research.

In addition, a few anonymous individuals have plagiarized portions of the column by rewriting it as their own revelation, claiming that they were there when the woman discovered the erroneously engraved quotation and that they saw it with their own eyes.  A few others claim to have personally researched President Roosevelt’s speech and verified that he was misquoted; then they have broadly circulated their “confirmation” on the internet.  They are guilty of knowingly disseminating false information.

Then there are millions more who have learned of the alleged misquotation and felt enraged.  They are guilty of neglecting to expand their attention to President Roosevelt’s actual speech.  They are also guilty of failing to examine his words in that speech.  Moreover, they are guilty of continually assuming that a major news distribution service with an international reputation for top-notch editorial quality publishes only facts.  They are sorely naive.

Although the news media claim to only report the news, factually they make the news, in part by continually disseminating falsehoods (for which they are virtually never held accountable) to a degree and extent that the public has yet to grasp.

Every person who has learned about the supposedly inaccurate engraving and who has been distressed by the omission of the words “so help us God!” is guilty of thinking unintelligently.

Now, let’s step back from this single incident and view a more expansive picture.  The news media published the bogus allegation that the executive branch of the federal government inaccurately engraved a quotation by President Roosevelt at the National World War II memorial.  That phony allegation was harmful to society.  The greater tragedy, though, is that it is just one example of the innumerable items of false information that are disseminated to the public daily by word of mouth, the postal service, the internet, books, magazines, newspapers, radio and television, that billions of people around the world continually fall into the trap of believing.

There is a reason that even highly educated people readily believe such garbage, which is this:  In the absence of knowing and continually applying “The Genius Formula” (which I explained in detail in “The Genius Formula Series” of “The Mega Genius Lectures”), people essentially believe what is most convenient and disregard everything else.

Here is the essence of how more than 99 percent of the human race thinks.  After one arrives at a conclusion about something, or about someone, or about life, he is inclined to believe everything else that he encounters that supports his point of view, because doing so makes him feel right.  Consequently, as time passes, he solidifies his belief … regardless of facts, which he seldom checks out.  Furthermore, this automatic thought process -- which values “feeling right” much more highly than “identifying truth” -- is the same slipshod thought process that he used to reach his original conclusion, which, therefore, is at least as likely to be false as true.

What is the result of this mind-set?  It is a person who has numerous erroneous beliefs, including some of magnitude, but believes almost everything that comes along that supports those beliefs – since that is what seems most convenient.  Then he soon wonders why his health, success, and happiness are so unstable, and fleeting.  Then he conveniently concludes that life is just like that.  Then he struggles to cope with his hard life, as best he can.  Then he dies.  Such is the normal method of reasoning and living of most individuals, regardless of their education and positions, and of humanity, on this planet at this time.

Every day, however, people from all around the world -- from the United States to the United Arab Emirates ...  from Great Britain to Indonesia  ...  from Australia to Canada -- are learning a workable technique to begin deprogramming their irrational thought processes, including this elementary pitfall of thinking like the masses.

They are learning and using “The Genius Formula,” and discovering that it is a far more intelligent, and easier, way to live their lives.

Mega Genius^®

15 July 2005

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