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All They Need Is a Name
Over the last few weeks, I’ve felt ill-at-ease about the shootings at Parkland in a way that went far beyond the deaths and desperation that has followed the episode. I finally put my finger on my perceptions. And it raised great concern for me. Let me summarize first what has been happening nationwide regarding the shootings, students, and protests.
Students are obviously in great emotional pain and are motivated to take action following the traumatic experience of the shootings. They have come together for a primary cause. They have made the National Rifle Association their primary focus/scapegoat, and secondarily the legislature. They are saying to everyone that you are either anti-gun or against their teens. Companies have boycotted the NRA. Those who didn’t support the calls for new legislation are the enemy. Hundreds of students and adults all over the country have organized protests. Millions of dollars have been donated to their cause, including GoFundMe sites, many of which are for the survivors and their families; included with the donors are Oprah Winfrey, George Clooney, and his wife.
Meantime, these young people have been receiving an education that is deeply influenced by Leftist doctrine, hating and demonizing those on the right, and demanding that students be listened to and cared for.
Now I’d like to shift gears and hope that you’ll bear with me. As I describe the following historical period, I’d like you to see if you can identify parallels and whether they stand up to scrutiny.
In Germany in the 1920s Hitler Youth groups were created. By 1933, membership increased to 100,000; by 1936, all other youth organizations were abolished. Although boys and girls were organized separately, both types of groups were highly disciplined. In 1938, Hitler made the following statement:
These boys and girls enter our organizations [at] ten years of age, and often for the first time get a little fresh air; after four years of the Young Folk they go on to the Hitler Youth, where we have them for another four years . . . And even if they are still not complete National Socialists, they go to Labor Service and are smoothed out there for another six, seven months . . . And whatever class consciousness or social status might still be left . . . the Wehrmacht [German armed forces] will take care of that.
The Third Reich looked to the schools to carry out further indoctrination:
Nazi scholars and educators glorified Nordic and other ‘Aryan’ races, while denigrating Jews and other so-called inferior peoples as parasitic ‘bastard races’ incapable of creating culture or civilization. After 1933, the Nazi regime purged the public school system of teachers deemed to be Jews or to be “politically unreliable.’ Most educators, however, remained in their posts and joined the National Socialist Teachers League. 97% of all public school teachers, some 300,000 persons, had joined the League by 1936. In fact, teachers joined the Nazi Party in greater numbers than any other profession.
Indoctrination included new textbooks that lauded the Nazi causes, anti-Semitism, and racism.
Group leaders played an important role, too:
Youth leaders used tightly controlled group activities and staged propaganda events such as mass rallies full of ritual and spectacle to create the illusion of one national community reaching across class and religious divisions that characterized Germany before 1933.
By 1939 the Hitler Youth became the largest youth organization in the world with over 7.3 million strong within its ranks. A new law was issued on March 25, 1939, conscripting any remaining holdouts into the organization amid warnings to parents that unless their children were enrolled they would be forcibly removed and placed in the custody of state run orphanages.
Now I realize that we are a long way from becoming a Germany; our culture does not embrace Prussian discipline, and our youth tend to choose peace, philosophically, instead of war. Yet I’m also observing a great deal of anger that may have as much to do with the times as it does with a school shooting. I see school teachers indoctrinating our young people across the country with Leftists ideas and ideology, as well as the accompanying demonizing of those who are “the enemy.” I see teenagers who are looking for a way to find “a home,” a place where they feel safe and included. I see millions of dollars pouring into their cause, and unidentified people or organizations appearing to guide their activities. The media is intimately engaged, and social media is being exploited to publicize their agendas.
It’s easy to point to other causes that eventually died out: Occupy Wall Street; anti-war protests (Vietnam and Iraq). But today’s activities have a uniform, vulnerable (teen) population with a centralized cause, possibly shadow supporters and millions of dollars. And I see no way to mollify the participants or focus the energy in a constructive way.
Is Germany a cautionary tale? Am I overreacting? What do you think?
Published in Culture
The Frankfurt School is real and all of that Alinsky stuff works. There are professional Alinsky guys organizing this stuff. They get dropped in like paratroopers.
Obama is recorded stating he wanted a civilian army as numerous and well funded as the military. He envisioned PC warriors with tasers enforcing doctrine His way. So to give in to the left is to put us on the road to Hitler.
Of course I’m the guy with the NRA sticker who will never give up his guns. I don’t care who comes for them, a cop friend, George Clooney, anyone……I will shoot and kill until I die.
I didn’t know Obama said that, @docjay. That’s a little unnerving. We’re NRA, too, and armed.
Oh, please make it George Clooney. Pretty please!
Percival–I had no idea . . .
We cannot continue to send our children to Caesar for their education and be surprised when they come home as Romans.
– Voddie Baucham
When did we abandon the idea of two years of military service for young men after high school? This may not be a very popular idea (see Susan, I’m inviting disagreement here), but I think we should bring it back. Those kids who come from crummy homes will get some discipline so that they feel pride in themselves, and, most importantly, those who are wandering in the wilderness for a career, just might learn a trade they can take with them when they get out.
No. You’re not overreacting. The Left has had America’s schools for longer than the Nazis had Germany’s.
The Obama/Holder social justice agenda as implemented in the schools in Miami-Dade and Broward counties probably got Travon Martin killed. Despite that, the system continued to “work.” It almost certainly made sure the Parkview murderer was on the loose.
Martin’s death provided opportunities that weren’t wasted. The media lie machine that developed around it was ready to roll in Ferguson and Baltimore to create Black Lives Matter. These latest deaths aren’t being wasted either.
Also, this is a multipurpose operation: Trump beat Hillary in Florida by less than 120,000 votes. This is about flipping Florida.
To do that, the media/Democrat machine is organizing around the shooting. It’s recruiting and training the ground troops, testing propaganda memes, deciding who will be designated for the next two minute hate, and conditioning the troops to hate on demand.
The real question is how cynical we should be: Do you think Obama and Holder are cynical enough that those deaths are an intended consequence?
Or do you think yes, minimizing the arrests is the right policy, and the deaths, while perhaps inevitable, are unintended since without the policy there would have been other deaths?
Either way, the Left is waving the bloody shirts.
There will be other issues to organize around. This is a big country. It’ll need more than one Reichstag fire.
You won’t get disagreement from me!! In fact, we talked about service to the U.S. in something other than specifically military. No, I don’t mean those organizations where we help third world country. I think you’re right!
Now I am worried. You are much better informed than I am, so when you share these ideas, it’s frightening. What to do?
The only antidote is to teach our kids and grandkids how to think for themselves. Using reason and a solid understanding of real history the person of average intelligence can see through the propaganda of the left or any other statist philosophy. We must not teach a Utopian view of western civilization, rather teach it warts and all. That will stand up better to the warts only version now being promulgated in our schools and universities as well as in the media.
This struggle against the left is just the latest version of liberty vs statist. It permeates all of recorded history just in different versions and has always been used to subjugate the masses to the benefit of the elites (in terms of status, not necessarily ability). Exposing that history is the best inoculation. And we must insure, each of us, that our next generations understand that the American system, even with its faults, has been, so far, the best way to hold statists who would dominate and enslave them in check. It must be preserved and improved where possible. Government is necessary but also dangerous unless it is limited.
Tearing down the system because it isn’t perfect almost always results in a much worsened situation. Even the American Revolution (War of Independence ?) didn’t destroy the existing liberties but rather served to protect and improve them, admittedly at great cost. But that is a rare exception, liberty is normally built up over time but lost quickly when a civilization either loses the understanding of its importance or the desire to maintain liberty. Liberty is hard for it requires personal responsibility but enslavement is even harder to bear.
Whaddya mean? Ol’ George is on the preferred target list.
Molon labe, George.
Get ready for Michelle in 2020, maybe:
William Jacobson again:
Drudge agrees:
I can see lots of problems with trying to bring it back. For example, the feminazis will cry discrimination, the boys headed to college will ask for deferments, and then there will be those who will compare it to Hitler’s youth. The cold hard truth is, and I know this as I raised two boys and two girls, it takes boys longer to grow up than girls.Too many young men today lack the discipline of a father, and boot camp takes care of that right away.
It’s tough. These kids raised in their protected havens with little knowledge of history (as you point out @okiesailor) have no clue about the meaning of losing one’s liberty.
No. Just no. Please
Me too. Sometimes I just want to crawl into my wonderful bed, cover myself up and forget all the troubles in the world. We are fighting for the very survival of a culture the Dems are doing their best to kill. Sigh.
I remember when he said this. If memory serves, it was right before Independence Day, 2008. I don’t know which freaked me out more: that he proposed spending $700B on a civilian security force, or that he did so and no one said a peep. Those were scary days.
I hate to be the blood thirsty voice of reason, but FWIW my overreaction to Obama’s rhetorical excesses makes me wary of trotting out Hitler comparisons. You don’t like what the public school teachers are teaching? Put your kids in a private religious school, or teach them yourself to think for themselves. The one thing we should not do is “leave the kids alone”.
Can you teach critical thinking skills or is it part of our DNA? You either have it or you don’t?
It can be taught through education and or good parents and authority figures.
Well, now my hair is standing on end. Darn it! I never heard him say that. I don’t have kids, but I can see why a lot of folks are ditching the education system and finding other resources. We need more Hillsdale Charter Schools!!!
Susan Quinn: Students are obviously in great emotional pain and are motivated to take action following the traumatic experience of the shootings.
Their motivation is based on lies, whether already in their heads or planted. After a tragic event, everyone wants to do something to prevent a recurrence, but the emotional cloud blinds people to what really can—and should—be done. Nope, they are pawns, and easily manipulated in their trauma.
True dat.
Here, I disagree. Our children are indeed being indoctrinated into violence. The Antifa are currently made up of college-aged people (not necessarily students, BTW). The left would love nothing more than to turn teenagers into an Antifa “Youth Movement”, not unlike the Hitler Youth.
You are not overreacting. I’m willing to bet there are connections to Democrats, the MSM, and George Soros (funding).
I don’t think it’s natural–because I learned it. It transformed my world.
But they contradict themselves, dontcha know? World peace, but beat the daylights out of the “enemy.”
I made this connection a long time ago with the soccer mom phenomenon. From the 1990’s (or maybe the mid 80’s) on, kids have been raised in a more collective way. Supervised play was already common in Europe, and that was true in 1920’s Germany and earlier. The communist states also have had their own youth groups.
Child raising in the United States has become more organized, more group oriented, with the advent of “play dates” as another example.
Growing up in the mid 1960’s, I had an almost alien experience compared to today’s kids. We made friends on our own. My brother and I moved into a neighborhood during summer when school was out (I was ten or eleven years old), and we met friends in that neighborhood while playing outside, unsupervised.
There were a few organized activities available, such as Little League baseball, and Pop Warner football, and my brother and I did attend a YMCA daycamp one summer. But it wasn’t all encompassing like it is for a kid today. We weren’t made to do it.
This probably contributes to the sense of helplessness of today’s kids because less self reliance is required of them. I’ll even go so far as to say that today’s safer playgrounds with less hard sharp edges with the equipment has a part to play in sheltering less aggressive kids, usually boys (the aggressive ones are playing with their skateboards and doing other extreme games when they can get away from their parents).
So what would I tell today’s parents? Hold your breath, and start with bicycle safety helmets. Don’t make your kid wear one. It’s a risk, but a small one. It probably pays dividends in the end.
Yeah, but are you also dangerous? I hope so.
Of course it can be learned but, as with most things, genes play a role. People are not blank slates.
That’s the Antifa all right. “Embrace peace, or we’ll beat the **** out of you!”
@alsparks, I’d politely suggest that a bike helmet is worth it; skip the elbow/knee protectors instead…More scrambled brains, we don’t need.
Are skills the same as techniques and habits?