From Freedom to Servitude - Part 2: "Service Learning" through Soviet Brainwashing

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"Lenin outlined a program for an active participation by both children and adolescents in the building of socialism. ... Socially useful work should serve as a school of collectivism."[1]

Serve America Act (H.R.1388) [first called GIVE]: "...expand and strengthen service-learning programs through year-round opportunities ... in order to renew the ethic of civic responsibility and the spirit of community for children and youth throughout the United States."[2]

"Brainwashing is a system of befogging the brain so a person can be seduced into acceptance of what otherwise would be abhorrent to him. ... Facts and fancy whirl round and change places."[3] Edward Hunter, Brainwashing

"O our God... we have no power against this great multitude that is coming against us; nor do we know what to do, but our eyes are upon You." 2 Chronicles 20:12

Last March, North Dakota gave us a heart-warming demonstration of traditional voluntary service -- in minus 20 degree weather. As the rising Red River threatened to flood Fargo, willing volunteers gathered by the thousands. Before long, they had filled and stacked over 2 million sandbags to barricade the city against the raging waters. Christians prayed for victory over the forces of nature, and by God's grace, the make-shift dikes held.

About 6,000 volunteers of all ages had simply followed their conscience, worked together and met the need. Unlike President Obama's plan for government-directed "service," neither prayer nor God's comforting Truths were banned. Volunteers weren't hindered by trained facilitators and unconscionable boundaries. As the flood subsided, they were free to thank God together for the amazing victory.

Traditional American volunteerism and self-giving service has served people around the world. But it may soon be replaced with a government system of mandatory service and re-education for all ages. Obama's signature on H.R. 1388 "Serve America Act," [See 2] will usher in a new era. While people of all ages will be recruited, the main focus will be on the youth. Words such as "uniforms," "youth corps," campuses" and "boarding" [i.e. "grouped together as appropriate in campuses for operational, support, and boarding purposes" SEC. 1516] bring memories of totalitarian government-controlled youth service.[4]

"Service learning" -- the heart of this evolving program -- is grounded in Soviet ideology. Banning Biblical sharing, it reflects Communism's "dialectical materialism" and notorious "re-education" camps. Its basic formula is simple:

1. Immersion into a group [collective] environment with diverse beliefs and values. For decades, our government has been guiding migration and assessing cities on their success in building "unity in diversity," i.e. social capital."[5] Such facilitated oneness may sound benign, but the manipulative methods used to build socialist values undermine both personal freedom and family-taught convictions.

2. Dialogue led by facilitators trained to manipulate the diverse groups of servers (with their assortment of values) toward a new consensus. Edward Hunter's 1956 book, Brainwashing, gives us this glimpse of Communist mind control,

"They went about this in the 'democratic discussion' manner; this was the new principle of unanimity [i.e. consensus] .... What was truth anyway? Nobody knew. What was false? ... Everyone couldn't be wrong. Could they? Weren't they all one team? A collectivity?"[6]

3. Practice (practical experience) that seals the dialectical group teaching in the minds of idealistic servers. Lenin understood this formula well. He said,

"...the young people shall engage in the practical solution of some problem of labour in common.'"[1]

The Soviet History of Service Learning

Today the seeds of Soviet ideology are sprouting across America. Truth, facts, logic and discernment fade -- drowned by a flood of mind-dulling, time-stealing trivia and distraction and choked by the tempting tentacles of dialectical compromise.

Lenin's Soviet education system was largely organized by Nadezhda Krupskaya, his personal companion, "co-worker," biographer, and "the founder of Soviet pedagogics." In her book, On Labor Oriented Education and Instruction, Krupskaya describes the roots of Soviet mind control:

"Lenin... said that the young generation should evolve a new, communist morality that would subordinate personal interests to general ones... that the younger generation should know how to achieve solidarity in their struggle.... Being a member of the Youth League means devoting one's labor and effort to the common cause...."

"The joint work of children should be particularly valued because it is the embryo of collective labor. ... If we attribute an educational role to socially useful work, then all children must be involved in it."

"...voluntary labour, irrespective of quotas, is labor performed without expectation of reward.... performed because it has become a habit to work for the common good."[1]

Remember, all Communist/Socialist labor was government controlled. Private enterprise and personal initiative were quenched, and all were forced to submit to the government-defined "common good." Within decades, Biblical morality had been replaced by sexual license and moral depravity, and personal despair.

After the second World War, young John Noble was trapped in the Soviet gulag system. Though an innocent American citizen, he was sentenced to hard labor in an arctic slave camp. Miraculously freed after a decade, he wrote the book, I Found God in Soviet Russia, which showed the sad reality behind socialist idealism:

"The young man and his wife were both fanatical Communists, graduates of the Communist Youth Movement where he had been a leader. They had both gone to youth camps from the age of fourteen. These Soviet youth camps are not conducted for recreation but involve hard work by young 'volunteers'....

"There is marked relaxation of sexual restraints in this atmosphere and many illegitimate children are born from the casual couplings of such summer youth camp excursions.... [These] children are raised to be zealous, dedicated Communists....They have no ties but their loyalty to the State, no allegiance to God or family, no principles to stand in the way of their performing any assignment given them.

"...children are also taught in school that they must constantly be on the lookout for 'reactionaries' [like America's 'right-wing extremists'?] and, further, must report any neighbor who talks against Communism or acts suspiciously, even if this may come to involve their own parents."[7]

Service Learning in America

The American version of service-learning was planned by socialist educator John Dewey almost a century ago. His formula, like Lenin's, is simple: affective learning (based on feelings rather than facts), followed by dialogue and group experience that helped seal the information in young minds. [See Chronology of the NEA]

Back in 1958, concerned congressmen invited Edward Hunter, an American expert on Communist brainwashing, to testify before the Committee on Un-American Activities in the House of Representatives. The Congressional transcript includes this testimony:

“I spent 30 years, a little bit more perhaps, in countries under various forms of Communist pressure and attack. What I am witnessing in America is no different from what I saw in those other countries. ...

“I see, primarily, as part of this softening up process in America, the liquidation of our attitudes on what we used to recognize as right and wrong, what we used to accept as absolute moral standards. We now confuse moral standards with the sophistication of dialectical materialism, with a Communist... theology which teaches that everything changes, and that what is right or wrong, good or bad, changes as well. ... There is no such thing as truth or a lie....

“The objective of Communist warfare is to capture intact the minds of the people and their possessions, so they can be put to use. This is the modern conception of slavery."[8]

Hunter's book, Brainwashing, reflects his interviews with victims of the Chinese "education reform." These survivors were trained through cruel but sophisticated "brainwashing" tactics to betray their nation, embrace socialism, "confess" lies, and serve the Communist propaganda machine.

Hunter described how each new "consensus" destroyed the victim's factual basis for resistance. And as minds were purged of Biblical hope and traditional values, unquestioning compliance became the norm:

"The long-range objective of brainwashing is to win converts who can be depended on to react as desired at any time anywhere. This is the inside-out meaning they give the word voluntary.... Even when he stands by himself, the truly indoctrinated communist must be part of the collective. He must be incapable of hearing opposing ideas and facts, no matter how convincing or how forcibly they bombard his senses. A trustworthy communist must react in an automatic manner without any force being applied. Only then is he the 'new Soviet man'..."[9]

It's happening today! Most American youth have abandoned the factual discernment that characterized America in the past. In many families, this change has already accomplished a socialist goal: to separate children from the traditional values of their parents or grandparents.

In 1971, fifteen years after Hunter wrote Brainwashing, Saul Alinsky's revolutionary manual, Rules for Radicals, was published. Alinsky, whose socialist disciples mentored Barack Obama, prepared the blueprint for the radical "community organizers" of the last three decades. He knew that "common involvements, "facilitated by "community organizers" such as Obama, would build the needed relationships:

"One of the factors that changes what you can and can't communicate is relationships. There are sensitive areas that one does not touch until there is a strong personal relationship based on common involvements. Otherwise the other party turns off and literally does not hear...."[10]

By 1992, American leaders were set to implement this system as part of mandatory education. In a letter to Hillary Clinton, America's First Lady, Marc Tucker, President of the National Center on Education and the Economy (NCEE) wrote:

"We think the great opportunity you have is to remold the entire American system for human resources development.... What is essential is that we create a seamless web of opportunities, to develop one's skills that literally extends from cradle to grave and is the same system for everyone... regulated on the basis of outcomes that providers produce for their clients, not inputs into the system."[12]

The word "outcome" reflects a planned result that's essential to social transformation. Continual assessments help refine the process. [See Reinventing the World]

Mandatory or Voluntary?

The original version of H.R. 1388 included a statement about developing "a workable, fair, and reasonable mandatory service requirement for all able young people." It was deleted. Perhaps the word "mandatory" stirred up too much criticism. In any case, those exact words had simply been moved to H.R. 1444, a less conspicuous bill. It states,

SEC. 4. DUTIES (b) ...In carrying out its general purpose under subsection (a), the Commission shall address and analyze the following specific topics:

(6) Whether a workable, fair, and reasonable mandatory service requirement for all able young people could be developed, and how such a requirement could be implemented in a manner that would strengthen the social fabric of the Nation and overcome civic challenges by bringing together people from diverse economic, ethnic, and educational backgrounds."[13]

Many have wondered if H.R.1388 would include the Civilian Security Force that Barack Obama mentioned in a campaign speech in Colorado Springs. "We cannot continue to rely on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives that we've set," he said on July 2, 2008. "We've got to have a civilian national security force that's just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded."[14]

Who would be the targets of such a civilian militia? What kind of domestic violence does he expect?

The Department of Homeland Security may have answered that question. On April 7, Secretary Janet Napolitano released a report titled "Right-wing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment." Suggesting that violence could erupt from "right-wing," anti-abortion, and "lone wolf extremists" as well as veterans, and others who are unhappy with today's government, it raised questions about the potential use of a civilian militia to silence concerned "resisters" across America.

Such intentional vilification of ordinary Americans reminds me of Hitler's shrewd strategy:

Through the ages, Christians have been faced with a common choice: Follow the crowd and culture -- or take a stand on your convictions. What will you choose?