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Raising Up Compliant Children in the American Police State
May 1, 2014
As I show in my book A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State,
far from being bastions of free speech, today’s public schools are
microcosms of the world beyond the schoolhouse gates, and increasingly,
it’s a world hostile to freedom. Indeed, within America’s public schools
can be found almost every aspect of the American police state that
plagues those of us on the “outside.” In this way, young people in
America are first in line to be transformed into compliant citizens of
the new American police state.
Zero tolerance policies,
which punish all offenses severely, no matter how minor, condition
young people to steer clear of doing anything that might be considered
out of line, whether it’s pointing their fingers like a gun, drawing on
their desks, or chewing their gum too loudly.
Surveillance technologies,
used to track the activities of students, accustom young people to life
in an electronic concentration camp, with their movements monitored,
interactions assessed, and activities recorded and archived. The
Department of Education has created a system to track, archive and
disseminate data on every single part of a child’s educational career
with colleges and state agencies.
Metal detectors at school entrances and police patrolling school hallways acclimatize
young people to being viewed as suspects. The problem, of course, is
that the very presence of these police officers in the schools results
in greater numbers of students being arrested or charged with crimes for
nonviolent, childish behavior.
Weapons of
compliance, such as tasers, teach young people to fear the police and
that torture is an accepted means of controlling the population.
One high school student in Texas suffered severe brain damage and nearly
died after being tasered. A 15-year-old disabled North Carolina student
was tasered three times, resulting in punctured lungs. A New York
student was similarly tasered for lying on the floor and crying.
Standardized testing and Common Core programs,
which discourage students from thinking for themselves, create a
generation of test-takers capable of little else, molded and shaped by
the federal government and its corporate allies into what it considers to be ideal citizens.
Overt censorship, monitoring and political correctness,
which manifest themselves in a variety of ways, from Internet filters
on school computers to sexual harassment policies, habituate young
people to a world in which nonconformist, divergent, politically
incorrect ideas and speech are treated as unacceptable or dangerous. In
such an environment, a science teacher criticizing evolution can get
fired for insubordination, a 9-year-old boy remarking that his teacher
is “cute” can be suspended for sexual harassment, and students can have
their posts and comments on social media analyzed by an outside
government contractor.
So far I’ve only mentioned what’s happening within the public schools. It doesn’t even begin to touch on extracurricular activities such as the Explorers program, which trains young people to be future agents of the police state. Then there’s the military’s use of video games and blockbuster movies to propagandize war and recruit young people.
What’s really unnerving, however, are the similarities
between our own system of youth indoctrination and that of Nazi Germany,
with its Hitler Youth programs and overt campaign of educational
indoctrination. I’m not suggesting
the U.S. is attempting to raise up a generation of Hitler Youth.
However, our schools and society at large are teaching young people to
march in lockstep with the all-powerful government—which may be just as
dangerous in the end.
Don’t take my word for it. The United States Holocaust
Memorial Museum provides some valuable insight into education in the
Nazi state, which was responsible for winning “millions of German young
people … over to Nazism in the classroom and through extracurricular
activities.” The similarities are startling, ranging from the dismissal
of teachers deemed to be “politically unreliable” to the introduction of
classroom textbooks that taught students obedience to state authority
and militarism. “Board games and toys for children served as another way
to spread racial and political propaganda to German youth. Toys were
also used as propaganda vehicles to indoctrinate children into
militarism.” And then there was the Hitler Youth, a paramilitary youth
group intended to train young people for future service in the armed
forces and government.
Hitler
himself recognized the value of indoctrinating young people. As he
noted, “When an opponent declares, ‘I will not come over to your side,
and you will not get me on your side,’ I calmly say, ‘Your child belongs
to me already. A people lives forever. What are you? You will pass on.
Your descendants however now stand in the new camp. In a short time they
will know nothing else but this new community.’”
We’re certainly not doing ourselves or our young people
any favors by allowing them to be indoctrinated into a police state
mindset from early on, with no knowledge that they have any rights or
any sense that they are the descendants of revolutionaries who stood up
to tyrannical regimes.
Yet if there is one glimmer of hope for this younger
generation, it may be found in the unlikeliest of places: young adult
literature, specifically dystopian literature, which is all the rage
among young people today. Serial books such as Harry Potter, The Hunger Games, The Bone Season and The Giver all
speak to a growing awareness among young people that the future
awaiting them is far from secure, and that freedom ultimately rests in
their ability to take on the powers-that-be.
LRC Blog
- The Non-Apartheid (But Segregated) State of Israel
- It’s Just an Engineering Problem
- Sheriff Ed Brown: The Delusional Dictator of Onslow County, N.C.
- Our Heroes in Uniform
- Biting the Hand that Feeds Its Bloodlust
- Lindsey Graham Is a Threat to Liberty
- To: Rutgers University Board of Governors
- Peikoff on Snowden
- Large Rutgers Sit-in Protests Condi Rice Appearance
- Obama the Golfer
Podcasts
- Lew Rockwell: What’s Anarcho-Capitalism?
- Bill Sardi: Defending Health Against the Government
- Lew Rockwell: the NY Times Doesn’t Like Me
- Lew Rockwell: The Truth Shall Make Us Free
- Ralph Weber: Against Fascist Healthcare
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