Thursday, July 10, 2008

The New Hitler Youth


During the Nazi era in Germany all young people were required to join either the Hitler Youth (Hitler-Jugend) for boys or its sister organization, the League of German Girls (Bund Deutscher Mädel). Members of both groups were indoctrinated in the National Socialist belief system, including its anti-Semitism and the motivation to fight for the official "party line" of the Hitler movement. Even young Joseph Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI), growing up in Bavaria, was forced to join the Hitler Youth although his parents were bitterly opposed to Nazi policies.

A year or so ago my wife and I were guests for "Grandparents' Day" at the elementary school attended by two of our grandchildren. In the classroom session our granddaughter's teacher enthusiastically presented a unit on environmentalism, laying out all the life-style changes that were supposed to be good for the earth and counter the effects of global warming. The study materials gave no consideration to the possibility that man-made climate change was only a scientifically questionable theory; the teacher listed all the things children should do to play their part in the environmentalist movement.

Then, recently, I was speaking with an older granddaughter who attends high school. In her mind, global warming is a reality brought about by malevolent human activity. I suggested that a cycle of solar warming could be the cause of temperature increases on the earth, not the factors usually cited by environmentalists. I referred to the finding that temperature increases have also been detected on Mars. Our granddaughter insisted that people were responsible for global warming on Mars as well; no logic I applied to this view could convince her otherwise, so thoroughly has she been brainwashed.

Indoctrination of our young people, on a par with that of the Hitler Youth, is a reality today in our public school system. The purpose of this indoctrination is to soften children, and through them their parents, to the efforts of a ruling elite to force life-style changes upon the entire population of our nation. Once people accept the theory that human activity is creating global warming, it's a short step to the control of all facets of our life by a small cadre of ideologues. Not only environmental behavior but social and personal activity of all types, including issues of sexuality, will come under their purview.

In short, our public education system has become the New Hitler Youth. One can only hope that the indoctrination it offers will be about as effective as some of the other things it tries to teach.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Comparing "environmentalists" to Nazi Youth may be a little bit of a stretch but the overall point you make about our children being indoctrinated by the system, for the system, to be ruled by the system is accurately portrayed.
I also am amazed at how sheeplike the general population seems to be with the whole issue of Anthropogenic Global Warming. Wasn't it just a few years ago that we were being warned that the earth was about to enter another ice age?
I see the self ordained Priests of Global Catastrophe simply as those who have figured out how to profit from whatever the government sponsored mass hypnosis flavor-of-the-day happens to be.

Anonymous said...

This is one of the reasons my kids attend a parent-participation school...so I know what is being taught there and can speak to it firsthand if I feel a need to clarify or even contradict something my children hear from their teachers.

On the other hand, your assertion that "Once people accept the theory that human activity is creating global warming, it's a short step to the control of all facets of our life by a small cadre of ideologues" seems alarmist. You're suggesting that if the people panic badly enough about something, they will turn to a small group of leaders for salvation. To some degree this is true; I remember the concern about global nuclear proliferation during the Cold War years when I was growing up, and how nuclear war was the biggest horror facing my generation. There was little an individual could do about this world situation, though, besides live in fear, which I remember doing, and write your senator, which I never did. So in that respect it is different from today, where global warming is the spectre on the horizon, because if people are in part responsible, at least we can do some things about it. Honestly, though, you're confusing the message with the messenger. Good stewardship and environmental responsibilty are Biblical values. There are more of us living on the planet than there have ever been in its history; resources are more limited, and our impact on the environment can't possibly be negligible anymore. I think what you really don't like is that the schools, which are state-sponsored agencies, are determining which morals (such as environmental responsibility, social equality, etc.) are the most valued in our society, and interpreting for our children what their socially acceptible behaviors are, rather than allowing this to be the domain of parents or the church. If this is your beef, by all means say so, but please don't feel you need to question the veracity of a theory like global warming in order to do so.