Using children

I remember pestering my parents about smoking.
My sister and I grew up during the time when the school system was being saturated with anti-smoking material. I remember it as any childhood memory – everything was bigger. The teachers were all-knowing, authority. “Smoking was bad. Smoking can be bad for people around you... etc.” Who knew what that would eventually become in today’s world? Not only was smoking bad for us, but the whole tobacco industry were beyond bad. Now if you’re seen with a cigarette in public, you might almost feel a need to run.

And it was all started in the school system. “Tell your parents that smoking is bad,” they said. And we did. We pestered my mom until she quit. When we went after my aunt, my mom told us to back off. We did. They did the same with alcohol of course - and probably a bunch of other stuff we didn't notice.

So what are today’s school rooms and today’s hot-button topics going to be like?

I now know.

The gutless leadership we have in our country would love to send ACORN door to door, but they no longer have to. The 2010 census will be pushed into school rooms everywhere, and children will be told to push the program on parents who may not be interested in cooperating.

Think this can’t possibly be true?

Renee Jefferson-Copelan, chief of the Census Schools Program has said that “it’s great to reach the children because children are such strong voices in their homes.” Between January and March, the Census Bureau will put into play a week of “census education” in schools. During that week, posters, teaching guides, maps and lessons will be used to indoctrinate children in more than 118,000 schools. That’s 56 million children.

Our children.

But it doesn’t stop there. Not just grade-school persuasion will be in-play, but citizen volunteers are already actively recruiting college-age students across the nation to “build support for President Obama’s agenda” while they earn college credit being “change” advocates.

Obama’s political campaign actually merged with the Democratic National Committee in January and is now being called Organizing For America. OFA is now offering internships from several websites including the teen favorite social networking site, Facebook.

"As an Organizing Intern, you'll work side by side with OFA staff and community leaders to help build support for President Obama's agenda,” reads some of the recruitment material. “You'll learn core organizing principles that are crucial for any campaign and play an important role in building our organization in your state."

Volunteers must commit to working at least 12 hours a week according to the OFA website and could receive college credit from their schools for doing so.

Set in tranquil blue tones, the Obama site also urges viewers to organize locally with their special online tools, titled lovingly, my.barrackobama.com.

“I’m asking you to believe. Not just in my ability to bring about real change in Washington... I’m asking you to believe in yours,” reads the Obama quote which tops the website page.

So where does the use of children by the current administration stop? I’m not sure it does. If they are allowed to proceed with their census programming, one can easily imagine the use of children as mouthpieces for healthy eating, anti-administration speech or actions - and from there we can see teen informants who drop the dime when they catch their parents enjoying French fries, a tall scotch or rum, a nice smoke and some ice cream. Guess I won’t have to inform on Ben and Jerry’s anymore to the White House snitch line. Kids all around the country will be doing it for me.

In 1922 an organization was started for youth in another country. Called the HJ, the organization had originally recruited nearly 25,000 youths almost immediately, from 14-years-old and up. A junior version of the group was also set up for boys aged 10 to 14. These children were viewed as future “supermen,” and were indoctrinated in the various views of their country’s leadership.

The youth groups were organized into local cells on a “community” level. By the end of 1932, more than 107,000 children were involved in the program. One year later, there were 2,300,000 members. By 1936, there were five million and by that time, membership by children was required even when the parents protested. The membership had reached eight million by 1940.

So how did this juggernaut of the young get started? The nearest anyone can accurately determine, the genesis of the whole thing started with an article by Gregor Strasser in the 1920s. The title of the article, “Make Way You Old Ones,” gained momentum in an National Socialist society, which was bringing focus to the young. The propaganda focused on harnessing and exploiting the emotions of the young within the political arena basically an environment of "change."

This youth group, the HJ, were of course, the Hitler-Jugend.

The Hitler Youth.

I think I need some tobacco, some good rum and maybe some French fries. I might even lend some small financial support to Ben and Jerry. Care to join me?