Paul A. Ibbetson
Man-made global warming: convert the children, change the world
By Paul A. Ibbetson
If you want to create a movement that will encapsulate a nation over time, the majority of your propaganda resources are best allocated toward changing the hearts and minds of the children, not the adults. This tactic is a viciously well-known and time-tested strategy of dictatorships worldwide. During the rise and reign of Adolf Hitler, no other target of Nazi propaganda took higher priority than Germany's youth. As early as 1937, 97 percent of all teachers belonged to the National Socialist Teachers' Union and the "created facts" within the textbooks in Nazi schools were a reflection of the mindset that Nazi Germany wished its children to carry into the future.
Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin were just as focused to educate the Soviet Union's youth through propaganda for the communist philosophy. Through youth organizations like Soviet Pioneers, Komsomol and the Centers for Scientific and Technical Creativity for Youth, the children were taught a specially crafted version of reality that benefited the rulers of the country.
The chronicling of propaganda efforts aimed at children is painful to view, but nonetheless it is a reality of history. In its frequency of occurrence, the end goal has remained the same: convert the children, change the world. It would be nice to be able to say that with the fall of many of these disastrous socialistic dictatorships the era of loathsome acts of lying to children and making them pawns in dubious schemes on a national scale has ended, and along with it the victimization that it brings. The truth is that not even America is that fortunate.
Crafted from the same socialistic and atheistic foundations as the previous examples, we see today a full-scale push by the green environmentalist propaganda machine to not only teach today's children a falsified version of climate change science, but also to create liberal activists that will place their votes, money and time into perpetuating one of the biggest scams of modern times: the idea that man is single-handedly destroying the planet.
Al Gore's 2006 documentary release An Inconvenient Truth, while boring to many, had a simplicity meant to capture the hearts and minds of children. Yep, Gore's game was to create fear, and that fear was focused toward the youth of the next generations. Grandiosely false depictions of polar bears clinging for their very lives to diminished icebergs were not marketed to skeptical adults, but to impressionable children. When it comes to fear tactics and the not-so-veiled political agenda of today's liberal environmentalists, we only have to look to educational propaganda such as that forwarded by Scholastic.com and their book/video, "The Magic School Bus and the Climate Challenge" to see that propagandizing children is still taking place.
The Magic School Bus educational set and its distribution company were first brought to my attention by E. Calvin Beisner, Ph.D., Founder and National Spokesman of the Cornwall Alliance. His assessment of the Magic School Bus Climate Challenge book/video was that it was a combination of an unwarranted guilt trip and unsubstantiated fear mongering.
Doubt it? Just read the product description from Scholastic.com, Like it or not, global warming is a hot topic, and it will affect the younger generation the most. So why not turn to the teacher kids like the most, Ms. Frizzle! Only the Friz can boil all the hoopla down to the scientific facts in a fun and informative way. With trademark simplicity and wit, Joanna Cole explains why the earth is getting warmer, and Bruce Degen's bright, action-filled illustrations make the science easy to understand and fun to learn... Teachers will cheer! Kids already love the Magic School Bus, and the(y) [sic] love to do what's right by the planet. At last, a way to teach the curriculum and make an impact! A note from Joanna Cole: While I was writing The Magic School Bus and the Climate Challenge, all I could think about was the kids who will read it. I wanted to give them hope. More than that, I wanted to tell them how their own actions as children can help solve the crisis of global warming. You will see a real blueprint for this in the book. Our young readers will be voters before we know it, and educating them today will influence their actions as they grow older. Wouldn't it be wonderful if The Magic School Bus could help change the climate for the better?
Co-author Joanna Cole's simplicity of propaganda takes us right back to the Goebbels style of indoctrination. Scare the target group (children), offer an enemy (fossil fuels, oil industry, capitalism), offer a savior (green technology as implemented by large-scale liberal government), and then send the newly educated minds straight to the polling booths. Cole calls it making an impact; I call it dirty propaganda tactics enacted on an innocent population.
The Climate Challenge version of the Magic School Bus series should be driven to the scrap heap of educational resources where false teachings are made into inconsequential square blocks. However, that alone would not fix the greater problem. The citizens of this country must be the overseers of truth on this issue as it is disseminated to the next generations. If not, we may very well be enslaved tomorrow by the fruits of today's liberal environmental propaganda. Enslaved based on a false premise, and at the hands of our own children, children that we have failed to protect today.
© Paul A. Ibbetson
August 5, 2011
If you want to create a movement that will encapsulate a nation over time, the majority of your propaganda resources are best allocated toward changing the hearts and minds of the children, not the adults. This tactic is a viciously well-known and time-tested strategy of dictatorships worldwide. During the rise and reign of Adolf Hitler, no other target of Nazi propaganda took higher priority than Germany's youth. As early as 1937, 97 percent of all teachers belonged to the National Socialist Teachers' Union and the "created facts" within the textbooks in Nazi schools were a reflection of the mindset that Nazi Germany wished its children to carry into the future.
Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin were just as focused to educate the Soviet Union's youth through propaganda for the communist philosophy. Through youth organizations like Soviet Pioneers, Komsomol and the Centers for Scientific and Technical Creativity for Youth, the children were taught a specially crafted version of reality that benefited the rulers of the country.
The chronicling of propaganda efforts aimed at children is painful to view, but nonetheless it is a reality of history. In its frequency of occurrence, the end goal has remained the same: convert the children, change the world. It would be nice to be able to say that with the fall of many of these disastrous socialistic dictatorships the era of loathsome acts of lying to children and making them pawns in dubious schemes on a national scale has ended, and along with it the victimization that it brings. The truth is that not even America is that fortunate.
Crafted from the same socialistic and atheistic foundations as the previous examples, we see today a full-scale push by the green environmentalist propaganda machine to not only teach today's children a falsified version of climate change science, but also to create liberal activists that will place their votes, money and time into perpetuating one of the biggest scams of modern times: the idea that man is single-handedly destroying the planet.
Al Gore's 2006 documentary release An Inconvenient Truth, while boring to many, had a simplicity meant to capture the hearts and minds of children. Yep, Gore's game was to create fear, and that fear was focused toward the youth of the next generations. Grandiosely false depictions of polar bears clinging for their very lives to diminished icebergs were not marketed to skeptical adults, but to impressionable children. When it comes to fear tactics and the not-so-veiled political agenda of today's liberal environmentalists, we only have to look to educational propaganda such as that forwarded by Scholastic.com and their book/video, "The Magic School Bus and the Climate Challenge" to see that propagandizing children is still taking place.
The Magic School Bus educational set and its distribution company were first brought to my attention by E. Calvin Beisner, Ph.D., Founder and National Spokesman of the Cornwall Alliance. His assessment of the Magic School Bus Climate Challenge book/video was that it was a combination of an unwarranted guilt trip and unsubstantiated fear mongering.
Doubt it? Just read the product description from Scholastic.com, Like it or not, global warming is a hot topic, and it will affect the younger generation the most. So why not turn to the teacher kids like the most, Ms. Frizzle! Only the Friz can boil all the hoopla down to the scientific facts in a fun and informative way. With trademark simplicity and wit, Joanna Cole explains why the earth is getting warmer, and Bruce Degen's bright, action-filled illustrations make the science easy to understand and fun to learn... Teachers will cheer! Kids already love the Magic School Bus, and the(y) [sic] love to do what's right by the planet. At last, a way to teach the curriculum and make an impact! A note from Joanna Cole: While I was writing The Magic School Bus and the Climate Challenge, all I could think about was the kids who will read it. I wanted to give them hope. More than that, I wanted to tell them how their own actions as children can help solve the crisis of global warming. You will see a real blueprint for this in the book. Our young readers will be voters before we know it, and educating them today will influence their actions as they grow older. Wouldn't it be wonderful if The Magic School Bus could help change the climate for the better?
Co-author Joanna Cole's simplicity of propaganda takes us right back to the Goebbels style of indoctrination. Scare the target group (children), offer an enemy (fossil fuels, oil industry, capitalism), offer a savior (green technology as implemented by large-scale liberal government), and then send the newly educated minds straight to the polling booths. Cole calls it making an impact; I call it dirty propaganda tactics enacted on an innocent population.
The Climate Challenge version of the Magic School Bus series should be driven to the scrap heap of educational resources where false teachings are made into inconsequential square blocks. However, that alone would not fix the greater problem. The citizens of this country must be the overseers of truth on this issue as it is disseminated to the next generations. If not, we may very well be enslaved tomorrow by the fruits of today's liberal environmental propaganda. Enslaved based on a false premise, and at the hands of our own children, children that we have failed to protect today.
© Paul A. Ibbetson
The views expressed by RenewAmerica columnists are their own and do not necessarily reflect the position of RenewAmerica or its affiliates.
(See RenewAmerica's publishing standards.)
