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Liberal Politics: The honorable traditions of shaping young minds

Posted November 23, 2007

“The attitude toward private property is quite similar to that of previous collectivists. Democrats MAKE you share your toys. Not that sharing is bad, as every Republican parent will agree. But you can only MAKE someone share if you consider his property your’s — or the government’s.” — J. Christoph Amberger

by J. Christoph Amberger, TFN

Baltimore — (TFN): During the Cold War, my mother’s family lived locked up securely behind the Iron Curtain in that socialist paradise on earth they euphemistically called the German Democratic Republic. Accordingly, I was exposed to real-life socialism at an early age.

happy tractorist in socialist paradiseMy mother, a straight-A student as she never tired to point out, had been denied a university education because her mother owned a restaurant. As the communists put it: “The educational privilege of the property-owning classes had been broken.” My uncle and cousins had to inform the state security on every visit our family made. And my father was detained at the border a couple of times, one time for having a contraband newspaper wedged in the back bench of his rental car.

Don’t be surprised that no-one in my family was a real fan of socialism. And still, we’d get the occasional whiff of the totalitarian propaganda that had turned our cousins into petty informers. Simply because, apart from books printed on bad paper, there really wasn’t much my East German relatives could send to us children in Capitalist West Berlin.

I remember that the children’s books produced by the Communists in East Germany all had a “valuable lesson” attached. They reinforced the need to conform to the tenets of Marxism-Leninism, of class struggle, and of state-mandated collectivism. Mothers in these books were all burly tractorists in “people-owned” agricultural collectives… imparting to their offspring the dangers of capitalism and individualism… and constantly shaking angular fists with the equally burly soldiers from the victorious Red Army.

You’d think that pious nonsense would have come to an end when communism collapsed onto itself back in 1989.

why mommy is a democrat

But you’d underrate the “conservatism” — or as they call it in Germany these days, the Ostalgie or “Eastalgia” — of collectivist ideologists. The most blatant and shameless re-incarnation of Cold War-style socialist indoctrination of children I found recently is a book called Why Mommy is a Democrat. Author Jeremy Zilber intends to “help parents communicate important political values to their children” and believes that his book reflects his passion for progressive politics, sense of humor, and his academic training in fields such as political psychology and socialization.

It sure does. So does his choice of one Yuliya Firsova as an illustrator— who apparently learned her trade in the pre-glasnost Soviet Union illustrating books for Young Pioneers of the glorious farmers’ and laborers’ state.

(It would explain the somewhat anti-semitic aura given off by the Evil Capitalist/Republican who features in every cartoon — a mixture between the Millionaire from Gilligan’s Island, Batman’s Penguin, and Jud Süß.)

The saccharine morality tales involve a cartoon squirrel mother and two cartoon squirrel children demonstrating how living in lockstep with liberal mantras creates paradise on earth. Where East Germany’s tractorist matron would quote the Party as the source of all wisdom, the politically correct squirrel mom invokes Democrat mantras.

mommy makes us share our toysA reviewer on Amazon.com sums up the message quite succinctly: This beautiful picture book teaches children “that Mommy Government will solve all your problems and is always there with another suckle at the government teat. One day soon, Mommy Government will control everything, just like she does in North Korea, and a wonderful, risk-free utopia will blossom where every day is a happy ending.”

If you’ve as much as warmed a chair for ten minutes in English Lit. 101, there are certain things that do become quite obvious in this book. As one reviewer put it: “It seems the ideal nuclear family to Democrats is a Democrat mommy with her children. No father here, and none necessary.”

Certainly not — after all, it takes a village to raise a child!

The attitude toward private property is quite similar to that of previous collectivists. Democrats MAKE you share your toys. Not that sharing is bad, as every Republican parent will agree. But you can only MAKE someone share if you consider his property your’s — or the government’s. If you’re the parent. Or the nanny. Or the nanny state.
happy young democrats not sharing their toys with the poor schmuck

An entity diametrically opposed to the individual and individualism.

(I dare you to used line after climbing across the fence at the Kennedy compound on Martha’s Vinyard.)

Now, my eagle eyes have detected a far more nefarious thing in one of the cartoons. Surprised that nobody has picked up on it yet. Look at it closely.

Is it just me or do the blocks the brave Young Pioneer squirrels are playing with, as that callous Millionaire and His Wife saunter by, actually spell out “DO POT”?subliminal messagesmore subliminal messages

As one of my highly respected associates in the office put it: “You know, the thing about subliminals is that they say more about your brain than the message.”

But it’s fun just the same.

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Posted by J. Christoph Amberger · Filed Under Politics 

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