What Is Old

  Hey, parents- are your kids out of school yet? Well, if you live in Florida and are off your rocker, you can sent your pint-sized Adolf or Eva to the Tampa 912 Project's camp for kids.

  Kids 8 to 12 will learn a Christian version of the Tea Party platform, learning to say things like "I believe in God" and "I work hard for what I have and will share it with who I want to. The Government can't force me to be charitable."

  The day camp was founded by ultra-Conservative writer Jeff Lukens and will be staffed by volunteers from Glenn Beck's creepy 912 fan club. Mr Lukens got the idea from a similar, but monthly club in Kentucky and thinks that the low $15 admission will fill the hall daily.

  Admitting that he knows zero about actual public school curricula, Mr. Lukens asserted "I do know they have a lot of political correctness. We are a faithful people, and when you talk about natural law, you have to talk about God. When you take that out of the discussion, you miss the whole thing." Aha! I never knew that the modern Tea Party, founded on the ideas of a Jew-turned-Atheist immigrant from Russia was a Christianist movement, but according to Mr. Lukens and Mr. Beck, it has to be.

  So what kind of fun and exciting things can your little brownshirt expect to enjoy? Here's a sampling of delights that even Jon Stewart couldn't invent:

One example at Liberty: Children will win hard, wrapped candies to use as currency for a store, symbolizing the gold standard. On the second day, the "banker" will issue paper money instead. Over time, students will realize their paper money buys less and less, while the candies retain their value.

"Some of the kids will fall for it," Lukens said. "Others kids will wise up."

Another example: Starting in an austere room where they are made to sit quietly, symbolizing Europe, the children will pass through an obstacle course to arrive at a brightly decorated party room (the New World).

Red-white-and-blue confetti will be thrown. But afterward the kids will have to clean up the confetti, learning that with freedom comes responsibility.

Children will blow bubbles from a single container of soapy solution, and then pop each other's bubbles with squirt guns in an arrangement that mimics socialism. They are to count how many bubbles they pop. Then they will work with individual bottles of solution and pop their own bubbles.

Disclaimer: due to many people thinking the previous segment is a parody, I assure you that these are among the activities as presented by Mr. Lukens, and while bizarre, are very real

There is an upside in my mind about sending kids to this thing, especially if you're a Teabagger, and hear me out. It may seem improbable, but mom and pop Mussolini might actually learn something. Their kids will go back to home and school molded into selfish, greedy little pricks. Maybe the folks won't like it. Or maybe they will love their new-and-improved, perfectly molded, pocket-sized domestic terrorist. They'll adore Jimmy more when he spews about the evils of the 3/5ths of a man president and union thug teachers and about how immigrants are taking the apple-picking job away from his fat ass. Teamommy and Teajadi will revel as Jim-Jim recounts his speech about not giving money to them darky flood victims and increasing the size of the armed forces and how rape is a blessing from God. Yes, everyone will be happy, except the parents of the brown kid who just thought it was a Jesus thing, only to be confined to the sandbox and told that everyone's problems were his fault.

  I really wish that this 912 camp was a story from the Onion, but it's very real. I remember my grandmother being alive. I told her about some things that the white kids did to other kids in the Air Cadet troupe, and she told me a few things. She told me that they would come again, and that they probably wouldn't be in Germany. And she was absolutely right, except in this instance, we have our warning. You see what seems new is often very old, and as the Spanish Inquisition preceded the Salem witch trials and they preceded the Greek Genocide, this new Christian revival is a direct descendant of the kind of very real fascism that many people still recall. The Tea Party movement may have began as a secular concept, but it is absolutely not inclusive anymore. 

  The old fascists banned abortion, homosexuality, and birth control. While apologists claim that Hitler, Franco,  and Mussolini were at least agnostic, they were so absolutely religious that they were given veto power over whom the Pope could appoint as bishops. The Nazi movement was a Christian movement, make no mistake- Hitler even said so several times on stage and in his own hand. (“Only in the steady and constant application of force lies the very first prerequisite for success.  This persistence, however, can always and only arise from a definite spiritual conviction. Any violence which does not spring from a firm, spiritual base, will be wavering and uncertain.”)

 He complained about the disabled being a waste of resources and immigrants stealing the jobs of those more deserving solely by the color of their skin or religion. He hated even white Jewish converts only because of their religion. There are thousands of quotes by 912ers that echo the speeches of the three fascists of 30s and 40s Europe because there really are very few original ideas left to discover.

  Like the fascists of yore, the 912 movement wants to start filling your kids with selfish, xenophobic, misogynistic, and downright bigoted ideas when they're very young. They have discovered that it's far more difficult to carve a Venus out of a block of stone than it is to make a Play-Doh snowman. The men who sent our relatives to places with names like Buchenwald and Bergen-Belsen were children once who listened to their teachers and leaders and went to day camps. The soldiers were boys before they became monsters, and it is my fear that in the Tea Party movement of the USA and Christian Heritage movement of Canada, we're cultivating our own master race of Christian criminals who will stop at nothing until they rule the world.


"The anti-Semitism of the new movement was based on religious ideas instead of racial knowledge. Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: ... I am fighting for the work of the Lord." - Adolf Hitler


Photo copyright 2010 Jonathan Hynkle. Shot using a Nikon D90. Some rights reserved.