Culture Warrior (14 page)

Control the children and you control the future.

—THE ART OF CULTURE WAR,
O'REILLY TZU

It was just another day in the San Juan Islands village of Friday Harbor, Washington (population: 2,000) when Sheriff Bill Cumming got a call that an elderly woman had been mugged. Apparently, two young men had knocked the lady to the ground, grabbed her purse, and run off. Since Friday Harbor is not exactly South Central Los Angeles, the sheriff had a good idea that a local troublemaker named Oliver Christensen may have been involved. There were only a few hellions in the little town and Christensen immediately became a suspect.

Sheriff Cumming also knew that Christensen, seventeen, was dating fourteen-year-old Lacey Dixon, a troubled young girl who lived at home with her single mother, Carmen Dixon. Doing what any good law-enforcement official would do, the sheriff called Mrs. Dixon and asked her to find out if her daughter had any knowledge of the crime.

The next time Oliver Christensen called the Dixon house, Lacey took her cordless phone into her bedroom and shut the door. But, unbeknownst to the girl, her mother snapped on the speakerphone in the kitchen and was taking notes. Sure enough, Christensen bragged to the fourteen-year-old that he had hidden the elderly woman's purse in some bushes.

Based partially upon the information Carmen Dixon subsequently provided authorities and her testimony in court, Christensen was convicted by a jury of second-degree robbery and sentenced to a couple of years in state prison. Subsequently, his conviction was upheld by a Washington State Appeals Court, but then the big guns of the secular army were brought in.

The ACLU, ignoring the actual crime, mounted an intense campaign to free Oliver Christensen based on the theory that Carmen Dixon had “violated” her daughter's privacy by listening to her phone conversation. ACLU lead attorney Douglas Kunder was blunt: “I don't think the state should be in the position of encouraging parents to act surreptitiously and eavesdrop on their children.”

Disturbingly, the very liberal and secular Washington Supreme Court eventually sided with the ACLU and Christensen's conviction was overturned. The court ruled that the fourteen-year-old's privacy had, indeed, been violated and her mother had no legal right to the information she had gleaned from her daughter's conversation with the assailant. Carmen Dixon was stunned and told the media: “It's ridiculous! Kids have more rights than parents these days. My daughter was out of control, and that was the only way I could get information and keep track of her.”

The prosecutor, Randall Gaylord, was also outraged: “I'm concerned that a fourteen-year-old's right to privacy now trumps the parent's right to be a parent.”

Even the Associated Press, no bastion of traditional thought, began its news story on the court's decision this way: “In a victory for rebellious teenagers, the state Supreme Court ruled that a mother violated Washington's privacy law by eavesdropping on her daughter's phone conversation.”

The state of Washington did retry Christensen, this time without Carmen Dixon's testimony. A jury again found him guilty, but he walked free after nine months in prison because the judge, Vickie Churchill, declined to give him more jail time. All of this skirmishing cost the taxpayers tens of thousands of dollars, and what did it really accomplish? Well, if you're in the S-P corps, it accomplished a lot for your side.

Remember, the ACLU is not an organization that does anything in a vacuum. The S-P spearhead knew exactly what it wanted to achieve when it marched into Carmen Dixon's life: that is, a court ruling demonstrating that a parent has no right to supervise a child surreptitiously. For the secular-progressive movement to achieve its goals in America, it must undermine traditional parental authority and convince children there's a brave new world out there that does not include being raised in the traditional way. The S-P goal is to diminish parental authority that, in the past, had been unquestioned.

This is a strategy—mentally separate children from their parents—that has been practiced by totalitarian governments all throughout history. In Nazi Germany, there was the Hitler Youth. Chairman Mao created the Children's Corps in Red China. Stalin and Castro rewarded children who spied on their parents. That's the blueprint. If you want to change a country's culture and traditions, children must first abandon them and embrace a new vision. Hello, secular-progressivism in the USA. I'm not saying these people are little Adolfs; I am saying they have adopted some totalitarian tactics in their strategies.

Another factor in the S-P vision for our kids is the development of sexual awareness at an early age. This strategy encourages children to mimic adult behavior and forge relationships outside the home. Thus, children separate themselves from parental influence earlier in life and are less likely to embrace the old-school values of their parents.

Here's a pretty amazing example of what I'm talking about. A few years ago in Los Angeles County, the Palmdale School District came up with an “educational” survey for students ages seven to ten. As part of that survey, the kids were asked to rate the following activities according to how often they experienced the thought or emotion:

         

• Touching my private parts too much.

• Thinking about having sex.

• Thinking about touching other people's private parts.

• Thinking about sex when I don't want to.

• Washing myself because I feel dirty inside.

         

Remember, these questions were put to kids as young as seven years old! Do you think about having sex? What the heck is going on?

Outraged, a group of Palmdale parents asked that exact question. But because school officials dodged and weaved, they couldn't get any answers. So the parents sued the district in federal court. The issue went all the way up to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, the most liberal federal court in U.S. history. Predictably, the court ruled against the parents.

Judge Stephen Reinhardt, whose wife, Ramona Ripston, is the executive director of the ACLU in Southern California (can you believe this?), wrote the unanimous opinion, which stated that parents of public school children have no fundamental right to be the exclusive provider of sexual information to their children. Reinhardt was direct: “Parents are possessed of no constitutional right to prevent the public schools from providing information on that subject to their students in
any forum or manner
they select.”

Consider the implications. By that reasoning, a school could conceivably bring in a dominatrix to describe the glories of S&M to first-graders and parents would have no recourse. But Reinhardt wasn't through. This incredible pinhead went on to write: “No such specific (parental) right can be found in the deep roots of the nation's history and tradition or implied in the concept of ordered liberty.”

This kind of intellectual gibberish is part of the S-P manifesto, which even denies that, throughout American history, parents have traditionally had full discretion in matters of sexual disclosure to their children. Think about it: The S-Ps are now saying that the government should be allowed to introduce your kid to sexual matters even if you, the parent, object! Whatever the authorities choose, in whatever form, and in pursuit of whichever point of view is acceptable to the courts! Benjamin Franklin would have had these people
caned.

Obviously, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals is firmly in the secular camp. You may remember that it was this very crew that ruled the words “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance were un-Constitutional. That ruling, thank
God,
was thrown out and, indeed, the Ninth has been overturned about 75 percent of the time by the U.S. Supreme Court, according to
Cal Law,
California's legal news source. Even so, the fact that a powerful judicial body like this believes parents should have virtually no say in what their young children see and hear about sex in the public school system is beyond chilling.

Of course, parents who do not want their seven-year-olds asked if they “thought about having sex” were shocked. Their lawsuit against the school district was based on the belief that they had been “deprived of their right to control the upbringing of their children by introducing them to matters of and relating to sex in accordance with their personal and religious values and beliefs.” Silly them, thinking parents have a right to bring up their own kids according to a specific belief system.

You will not be surprised to learn that the initial sex survey ruling propelled waves of joy throughout the S-P ranks. Parental authority had been radically diminished by a federal court, and as noted, that is a primary secular-progressive goal. Our S-P pal George Lakoff puts it bluntly: “Children are shaped by their
communities.
” The emphasis on the word “communities” is provided by Lakoff, himself, on page 90 of his
Elephant
book.

The S-P strategy with respect to children is not subtle. You can't achieve a brave new world without tearing down the bad old world. In order to change the thinking of America, you have to sweep out traditional Judeo-Christian values and replace them with radical secular-progressive values. If the public schools buy into the S-P agenda, which many of them do, then children will be exposed to another way of thinking apart from what their parents believe. Thus, the public schools have become a major battleground in the culture war, and hostilities are heating up.

Professor Lakoff has reinforced his S-P vision of education with this definition on how the government should set up the learning apparatus: “A vibrant, well-funded, and expanding public education system, with the highest standards for every child and school, where teachers nurture children's minds and often the children themselves, and where children are taught the truth about their nation—its wonders and its blemishes.”

This pointed advice underscores my point: The S-P movement wants more authority for teachers and administrators and less for parents. Since most colleges are now firmly in the S-P camp, and colleges train the teachers of your children, just do the math. In addition (sorry), the secular-progressives are adamantly against vouchers for poor kids that would allow them the option of attending private schools. Why? Easy question. Most private schools would never even consider a sex survey for second-graders because that would be an intrusion on parental authority. In general, moreover, private schools pose a grave threat to the S-Ps because many of them reject secularism and teach traditional values. Public schools, however, are quite a different story. As mentioned, more and more of them are becoming S-P friendly.

It is fascinating, if a bit scary, to watch the S-P game plan to target American children in action. S-P indoctrination of kids is the goal, but the strategy is largely hidden behind the touchy-feely “nurturing” description of education. However, if you cut through all the bull, the key question is clear: If S-Ps are sincerely looking out for the kids, what is the secular-progressive philosophy on criminal justice, especially when children are directly affected? A brutal criminal case in Vermont and a civil lawsuit in Massachusetts shed some powerful light on that question.

                  

                  

At six years old, Susie (not her real name) was by all accounts an adorable child. Cute and generally nice to be around, Susie enjoyed the rural outdoor life in northern Vermont. But then, oddly, Susie began to change. She became withdrawn, sometimes sullen, and she didn't want to leave her house all that much. The innocent smiles of her toddler days become only a memory to those who knew her.

Susie lived with her uneducated mother and stepfather in a trailer home. Every Sunday, beginning when the girl was six years old, her mother's friend from high school, a laborer by the name of Mark Hulett, then thirty, would babysit for a few hours. This arrangement went on for about four years, until Susie was ten. And during that time, Hulett repeatedly raped the little girl.