Fronting Intervention: Using Invisible Children to Sell War to Children

You know, don’t you, that you have to invite vampires into your home or they are not capable of entering, or better, they are forbidden to enter by some kind of law that governs the undead. (It’s important to have rules in the necromantic realms as it shows that there is order in all of God’s creations, even the evil ones.)

I was put in mind of this “rule” when I read the “School Diary” column in yesterday’s local paper. It was penned by a Bloomington South High School student and was headlined, “School diary: Rights of life, liberty, pursuit of happiness are far from universal.“ It’s nice to see we learn the proper way to start a piece of propaganda in our high schools.

I have been less than amused by this feature of our newspaper as I find it a cynical form of “market capture.” However, with this piece yesterday I have discovered that it has at least one benefit to the citizens: it serves the function of putting on display not only the minds of students (products of education systems!) but also opens a door to the ways they are being instructed or indoctrinated, directly and indirectly. This cannot be measured by the NAEP, or ETS, or any of our corporate schemes called “testing services.” And so I thank the Herald-Times.

Now, like most polite adults when confronted with a simple response to the world I usually just smile, nod, and keep moving. This is especially true when confronted with the words of children (forgive them, Father) as they attempt to mimic the world they are being asked to inhabit. I cringe, sure, but that’s the extent of my response. Not so with this piece.

Okay, enough of prefatory apologetics. I will reproduce in full and comment within.

School diary: Rights of life, liberty, pursuit of happiness are far from universal

By Holly Hays InSchool columnist
November 22, 2011, last update: 11/22 @ 1:03 am

As Americans, we are given the unalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Each day, we are living in a relatively free country, where we are able to take those basic rights for granted and close our eyes to the fact that many others in this world may not get to enjoy them.

Do we take this “rights” for granted anymore? I hope not, because you don’t have them: the death penalty has been applied preemptively by our President and his CIA army with only accusation as “evidence”; we hold citizens in detention under conditions of torture, indefinitely, without even filing charges; oh, we do the “pursuit” thing quite as a matter of addiction. This is perhaps the truest thing Jefferson ever wrote. Of course, we actually take away freedoms from all other nations if we get the chance. We have lots of obfuscating terms for this action. Mostly we call this “national interest.”

Read the rest at B-Town Errant.