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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
We’ve got an opioid problem for drugs people need a prescription for, and you think we wouldn’t have a problem where they can just freely buy it? Or is it, you just don’t care if people over dose? It’s just their own terrible decision, is that right?
Alrighty then.
Accusing me of not caring is what they call an ad hominem argument.
I care about a lot of things, but I don’t want the government to pass laws about all of those things. As it is, we have had horrible problems with coke & heroin, and they’re illegal. The problem is already there.
Yes, of course I care, but I also care about everyone having the right to be free. If my neighbor wants to put cocaine into his body, I don’t see why you or I should be able to use force to stop him.
No one has thought it through at all. All I know is the Feds have to sell it at cost.
This bears repeating.
The question is, how is piling on more or different government force is going to improve things?
If you legalized heroin, cocaine, and LSD or whatever, the drug problem would be ten times worse, not better. Let alone all the other social problems I was alluding to above.
There is no utopia. There will be problems whether you legalize it or not.
This is one issue where I part ways with Buckley.
We agree on that. In the mean time, watch the various metrics. I know what will happen.
No, there is no utopia, but do you really think ten times as many people will use those drugs, just because they’re legal?
Actually, it would have to be more than ten times as many for the problem to become ten times worse. Another reason for legalizing is the idea that using such drugs would be safer (because they could be used more openly). Also, getting help for addiction wouldn’t mean admitting to a serious crime.
Sorry. I just couldn’t resist.
@manny, @rufusrjones, and @thesockmonkey, I’d like to recommend we leave this topic alone. It’s not going anywhere, and I don’t want it to escalate.
We agree on the problem of the social fabric becoming frayed – if not entirely torn – the lenses through which we view the solution here differ enough that further agreement would be hard to achieve. Thanks to @manny and @thesockmonkey and others for excellent position statements and valiant attempts at communication.
So much better crafted than my comment, @nandapanjandrum!! Thanks!
I was done anyway. The war on drugs is fiscally negative.
Am I being detained?
LOL!
I predict I will eventually get this weird. LOL
No . You’re released on your own recognizance. Don’t blow it!
I believe serving your country in any capacity would be a good thing. I don’t subscribed to the view that our youth are so far gone / indoctrinated that it won’t help. And I think if you take the long view perhaps a program like this could change things after a few years where the leftist/socialist indoctrination could level and/or reverse as folks serve and see the nation differently. As for military service, I am good with that too. I know what it did for me, my son, and others and maturity is the perfect word. You learn to work with others from diverse backgrounds, under stress to achieve a common goal, selflessness (which we all could use a little more of), discipline (which some, ahem, thrive on), and a sense of responsibility. This is not a cure all but it surely cannot hurt.
HooWah, @dajoho! Thanks for commenting – and reminding me that I’m still such a civvie. :-)
Now, this will come in handy, for certain :-). It’s gorgeous, @robtgilsdorf! Thanks so much! (Now that you’ve responded, ST: Thoughts re: the military and bringing the unfocused or at-risk to functioning adulthood – from earlier in the thread?)
Pat Condell says Welcome to Progressive Utopia; good to make sure your inner Eeyore is alive and kicking. Get off of my lawn.
And, for some inside baseball humor, it’s Every Rubin Report Ever
Dave Rubin bugs the crap out of me as reflected in that cartoon, but he may be only crack in the mind I’m a Democrat.
That’s almost the same as my question. In the case of Germany, what would have been the right time to overreact?
It is pretty hard to answer but I happen to have read mountains about Wiemar Germany and the rise of Nazism when I was younger, and at present I just see only the mildest of analogies and vast differences. We remain prosperous. Wiemar Germany suffered virtual economic collapse leaving the masses softened up for both saviors and scapegoats. We’re almost the opposite. We suffer a surfeit of cynicism. Political violence was widespread there. It just isn’t here. At worst we suffer from the kinds of mundane corruption that afflicts nearly all polities, and less severely than most. Those realities in 1920s Germany were predicates to the kind of monopoly on culture and power that the Nazis were able to accumulate. I just don’t see them right here right now. Not that we’re immune. Surely we’re not and I’d bet my last nickle that there will come a day when it all collapses into something awful. But we’re a ways away I think, and we have institutions, and a culture and history and national ideology that provide quite a bit of insulation. We’re fortunate to live where and when we do IMHO. It’s still a golden age in the Western World, even if our civilization is slightly past its prime.
You’re not supposed to say that out loud, you’re practically begging the barbarians to breach the gates!
I think the secret is out.
Well-argued, @catorand! I especially appreciate that you don’t see an immediate threat, but that we’re also not immune. Thank you so much.