The Face Of Indoctrination : A Continued Series

So now this sort of thing is acceptable to conservatives?

A biography of the former Alaska governor and self-described "mama grizzly" is set for release in September by Christian book publisher Zondervan.

"Speaking Up: The Sarah Palin Story," is one in a series of biographies aimed at 9- to 12-year-old readers. Others feature 2007 Heisman Trophy winner Tim Tebow and U2 frontman Bono.

Kathleen Kerr, an acquisitions editor for Zondervan's Zonderkidz division, said the subjects are prominent figures who children hear about in the news and role models for tweens who are "working for the betterment of the world in which we live and who are motivated primarily by their Christian faith."

Or what about this, even more blatant, form of indoctrination by a conservative icon...

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Granted, the book isn't written by Palin - I known you're shocked - but the message is still the same, target students in an effort to rewrite even recent history in order to continue to frame a consistently false and misleading narrative.

Anyone remember the optional video speech that Obama was to give to students? Yeah, you remember the is got from prominent conservative.



Here's Michelle Malkin, in all her purse-lipped faux rage.

The activist tradition of government schools using students as junior lobbyists cannot be ignored. Zealous teacher's unions have enlisted captive schoolchildren as letter-writers in their campaigns for higher education spending. Out-of-control activists have enlisted their secondary-school charges in pro-illegal immigration protests, gay marriage ceremonies, environmental propaganda stunts, and anti-war events.

There was even a call to keep children at home on that day, fearing that a message of working hard, studying, and bettering yourself would somehow turn all the kids in public schools into brainless automatons. From my point of view, the standardized testing mandated by No Child Left Behind has already done enough damage in that regard.

Conservatives have a long and well-recorded timeline of distorting and destroying history. We haven't seen this type of push to re-write who and what our country ever - at least not in my lifetime. We won't see Beck challenged when he makes specious claims regarding FDR. We will never hear parents' concern over a book that is geared towards pre-teens that has a clearly established religious bent. We won't hear these challenges from conservatives because they actually favor indoctrination, because the world that they live in isn't the "real America". There's is a fantasy world where they are the perpetual victims of bias, intimidation, and smears. So to compensate for their inability to see this nation for what it is, what it was, and what is truly should be, they must project their own failings upon everyone else.

The Face Of Indoctrination

This sort of thing really troubles me.



What does an 11 year old really know of the world outside of what his parents teach them?

This isn't to diminish the mental prowess of some kids. After all, there have been children as young as 13 to graduate from Harvard, but they aren't the ones being hauled into the Fox"News" studios to talk about political bias in the media or schools. Kind of makes one wonder if kids like Sam are simply trotted out in front of the cameras to further the narrative that the world is unfair to conservatives.

More to the point, if Sam is so passionate about the alleged unjustness of what has happened to him, he isn't nearly as fired up as this kid. Honestly, he seems a bit unsure of himself. Perhaps that his conscious whispering to him that what he's doing isn't entirely honest.

But this is a win/win for Fox"News" and the kid ( or should I say, his parents ) considering the fact that if the teacher, the school principal, or the school board superintendent were to come on to refute Sam's specious claims, they would be roundly criticized for attacking a child. That's what makes this whole spectacle disgusting - Fox"News" uses a child to further their agenda and claims that there has been no response from those accused of wrong-doing knowing full well that if there is a response they can readjust their narrative to show abuse of a child.

And I thought that conservatives were against indoctrination.

Indoctrination Exposure

I'm guessing that Janine Turner kind of lost her mind after Norther Exposure.

She's leading this bizarre conservative charge to indoctrinate the children of America. She's even got her daughter in on it.



Their "Mission Statement" reads like a Tea Bagger educational manifesto.

Constituting America’s
mission is to reach, educate and inform America's youth and her citizens about the importance of the U.S. Constitution and the foundation it sets forth regarding our freedoms and rights.

They even have a contest going where they have kids reading from cue cards.



The continued fetishization of The Constitution, the Founding Fathers, coupled with the notion that America has been turned upside down since Jan. 20th 2009 has brought about some really interesting actions by conservatives. Much of this has been motivated by fear and abject ignorance in heaping amounts, and most conservatives in this country are glad to be spoon fed all day long.

The website Constituting America is a rather dizzying place to visit, and I'll have more on it as the weeks progress and we get closer to the Midterm Elections. I'm certain that the creepiness of this whole project will increase in exponential formation should Republicans not make substantial gains in November.

The bottom line of this for me is that someone as loopy as Janine Turner is openly advocating for conservative indoctrination of America's children. This project isn't a true educational tool, unless you're wanting your kids to look like those faceless creatures from The Wall right before they got ground up in the sausage grinder.

Educational Misinformation

I'm guessing that on most weekends Beck finds himself in the fetal position on the bathroom floor praying for the Ambien to kick in as he rocks himself back and forth murmuring - "pro-gress-ive".....



All the tangentical portions of this clip aside - and I could write all day long about how Beck's machinations regarding progressive causes is completely displaced from reality - you really get a sense of Beck's megalomania when he talks about the "privilege" of education.

I'm really trying to figure out if he means that one must be of a "privileged" class in order to have a proper education or if he means that when you are educated you become this person of "privilege". Coming from a person that allegedly champions the "rights" of people, I'm wondering why he is saying that education isn't one.

While education (not the teaching of bizzaro-world America that Beck lauds) is a right, and one can be seen as privileged to be in one particular institution versus another, the very thesis that Beck is pushing isn't all that new within the conservative realm. It's about how education can be tilted toward a "conservative" point of view.

You see, the ultimate iron of Beck's incessant blubbering is that he is actually advocating for indoctrination into a conservative mindset. All one has to do is watch his program and listen to his guests ( like "writer" Jonah Goldberg who's book Liberal Fascism was is the catalyst for almost 90% of Beck's anti-progressive tirades ) and you will begin to understand that Beck actively begs and pleads that children be indoctrinated with conservative ideology.

Object Lessons

I've blogged about Jonathan Krohn before. He's the tween conservative fire-brand that has been coached by his parents to be a mini-Hannity. His book has been all the rage in conservative circles since his speech at CPAC09



Ads for this tome of conservative, pubescent, angst in the modern world have been popping up again around the internet and I have to revisit this, if only for this reason - what happened to childhood?

I'm not going to get all sentimental and pander to base emotions by conjuring images of kids playing in sandboxes, on swing sets in the summer, or splashing around in the public pool with their friends. I'm just wondering why kids are being forced to "grow up" so soon.

After all, what does this kid ( yes, he's a kid for fuck sake ) know about the real world or childhood for that matter? I can recall at 14 that I knew very little about what life had to offer, and was honestly from a very "sheltered" family. I learned at my own pace, made mistakes and assumptions, and took life one step at a time.

But that was before the internet, before technology had such a foothold in the process of growing up, and before the 24 cable news wars. Growing up back then was much different but there was still such a thing as indoctrination, only now kids like Krohn have people like Hannity, Limbaugh, and Fox"News" to speed the process up.

I can't say this enough, but I honestly feel sorry for this kid.

Elective Reasoning

Leave it to my state ( Kentucky ) to fall in line with the indoctrination stylings of Texas.

Senate Bill 142, sponsored by Sen. David Boswell, D-Owensboro, will now go to the full Senate as early as next week.

The bill calls for the Kentucky Board of Education to establish guidelines for an elective course on the Bible's literary structure and its influence on “literature, art, music, mores, oratory and public policy.”

The bill states that the course must follow all federal and state laws in “maintaining religious neutrality and accommodating the diverse religious views of students.”

While the Kentucky Senate believes that it can get away with teaching the Bible in schools because they are using the word "elective" in the language contained in the Bill, the problem is that this new curriculum is going to be used to essentially teach "life skills". How will this be taught and not preached then?

But then Radcliff Senator Elizabeth Tori made a very troubling statement that shows the her legislative stylings are likely motivated by mythical creatures from biblical text. At least that's what she thinks has happened here.

Sen. Elizabeth Tori, R-Radcliff, told co-sponsors Boswell and Sen. Julian Carroll, D-Frankfort, that “an angel was sent down on your shoulders” prompting “you to put this bill together.”

“I‘ve said for many years that until we put God back into our households, things in society will not change for the better,” Tori said. “Your bill is the first step to that change.”

I don't think there is s clearer violation of Church and State that can be noted.

Singing A Different Tune

While the conservative Right is in twitching rage over a song that a group of school kids that sang a song about Barack Obama, it seems that these same people can't recall something that happened just a few short years ago. And, considering the context with which this happened, it makes it even harder to believe that these same conservatives just happened to "forget"

....such "propaganda" has not been limited to despots, dictators and the Obama White House. As a savvy source points out, back in 2006 children from Gulf Coast states serenaded First Lady Laura Bush with a song praising the President, Congress, and Federal Emergency Management Agency for their response to -- of all things -- Hurricane Katrina.

The event took place at that year's White House Easter Egg Roll and included roughly 100 children from Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. President Bush, it seems, wasn't in attendance during the song itself. But he was there earlier, when the First Lady read the book, Will You Be My Friend: A Bunny and Bird Story by Nancy Tafuri, to the children.

More from The Huffington Post.

But the other side of the story doesn't stop there.

Has anyone seen the documentary Jesus Camp?



An interesting coda to this story is that this song was actually peformed as part of Black History Month.

The Face Of Indoctrination

I came across this pic at Bob Cesca's blog and several questions popped into my head.



This kid, who doesn't appear to be one hopeful chest-hair more than 11 or 12, likely knows nothing about Racism, Communism, or McCarthyism, or even the political process other than what he hears about from this own family. But, there are several things that we can postulate from this pic alone.

The dog-tags likely belong to his father. Could he be another pseudo-radicalized member of the military that we have seen pop up in sporadic frequency over the past 9 months? Is this boy subjected to racist rantings at the dinner-table fueled by cheap whiskey and personal failures? However, the boys appearance leads me to believe that he isn't from a lower-income home. He appears to be well taken care of, and his mother or father seem to have enough money to throw away on a trip to DC and right-wing fringe coture.

However, even at that age, aside from hearing the inane ramblings of his parents, he is likely smart enough to do a little research on his own. Is he afraid to, or has he become so steeped in abject ignorance that he is numb to it all now? With the ever elevating technical abilities of America's youth and their ability to use the internet better than most adults 2 and 3 times their age, one would have to wonder how a kid this age even believes one putrid ounce of what his family apparently believes in.

What Was That About Indoctrinating Children?

Just caught a tweet from Lee Stranahan about an oddly place commercial airing today on Cartoon Network.

...on the day before conservative crazies are about to pull their kids out of school so President Obama won't 'brainwash' them with her commie talk about personal responsabilty and gettting an education, there's an ad about 'socialized medicine' running on The Cartoon Network.

The ad makes statements that have been debunked over and over such as "You will pay for free healthcare for over 20 million illegal aliens."

A bit of quick research shows that it's the same ad that CREW said MSNBC should pull from it's older demographic because it goes "beyond misleading and well into delusional."

I wonder what dim bulb at CN decided it was a good idea to accept the ad?

The Face Of Indoctrination

Whenever I hear a child this age speaking about "freedoms" and what this country is loosing, I often times feel rather sorry for them. One can but wonder what their home life is like.

Are they homeschooled? After all, the ultra-conservative - and blisteringly religious - set tend to favor homeschooling over public ( and sometimes even private ) institutions of learning.

And to that effect, what has this girl been taught of American history?

It's far too easy to speak in glittering generalities of what has and what hasn't happened in and to America - what has been done in the name of this country, for either good or ill. Actually, there is no "ill" done in America's name when conservatives speak.

In the end, this girl is being used as a tool, a gimmick, by her parents. I honestly feel sorry for her.

Conservative Media Suddenly Concerned Over "Indoctrination"

Joshua Rhett Miller of Fox"News" writes about a grade school ( K-8 ) where children of the 2007 class had created a mosaic. This particular piece of art seems to be drawing the ire of "concerned parents and community members".

Symbols of communism and marijuana and a prediction that "capitalism will fail" aren't exactly the sort of end-of-year messages you'd expect from an eighth grader.

But that's precisely what some students at the Black Pine Circle School, a private school in Berkeley, Calif., chose to include in their "Class of 2007" mosaic.

The symbols, which are prominently displayed outside the school, have prompted questions about the appropriateness of images like a hammer and sickle and a marijuana leaf on school grounds — and have led critics to say they are blatant proof of political indoctrination of young children.

That's right, a private school. A school where tuition for one year ( 10-month session ) costs more than $17,000 dollars.

Aren't the Fox"News" crowd always calling for "school choice" and "vouchers for private schools" and the like? Yes, they are. Only they want indoctrination on the other end of the spectrum.

The topics of choice at Fox usually support anti-governent stances, promote irrational fear of the new Fox versions of "socialism" and "fascism". They give guests a platform to promote racial divisiveness and misinformation on climte change, health-care, the economy, and the education in America.

This is the most widely watched cable news network in America. Fox"News" thrives off indoctrination. Of course, all those that are watching do watch for various reasons and may not watch for long. Still, you get my point.

It would be interesting to talk to the families of the students that made this mosaics. It's fair to say that indoctrination starts at home, not at school.

Of Gimmicks, Indoctrination, And Children

In any case where a child has not put themselves into the media spotlight, or their family hasn't put them there, I would say that talking about them is off limits.

That being said, which one of these kids do you think has been coached endlessly with Right-Wing talking points?



Don't you just love the way that Doocy feels he has to explain what mini-Hannity was saying to the 11-year-old that just graduated from college.

Notice how the other kids were calm, honest, and forthcoming with their responses - even though they seemed compeltely disinterested with the questions given - while Krohn was practically auditioning to replace Glenn Beck or O'Reilly. This is what right-wing indoctrination does to children.