Obama's indoctrination 'campuses'

Editor's note: This is the final installment of a four-part follow-up to Michael Ackley's April 13 column on government-sponsored volunteerism. Read Part 1, "The streets of Laredo." Read Part 2, "The president, by George." Read Part 3, "Voting: A revolutionary idea."

The Laredo VISTA experience taught my wife and me a lot about government, particularly government programs ostensibly meant to "empower" people.

Lesson 1: Government's prime motivation is self-preservation. This applies as much to bureaucracies as it does to individuals, elected or appointed.

Lesson 2: To government, empowering people is fine – as long as the powers that be remain in power. It won't knowingly expend funds to alter the status quo.

For example, the only successful, direct assault on the structure of poverty in Laredo, circa 1967, was organized by two VISTA volunteers who quit the program. Doug Ruhe and Neil Birnbaum, veterans of the civil rights movement, dropped out to work with local firebrands and organized a successful strike. They ended up putting across a citywide, $1.25-an-hour minimum wage.

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Lesson 3: Government spending always is linked to Lesson 1. Thus, government will spend thousands to avoid embarrassment, to deflect criticism or to promote allies, all the while pinching pennies in its supposed services.

Lesson 4: Most importantly, true empowerment, in a democratic republic, now and forever, lies in the ballot box.

Any of these points may be expanded upon at length, but let us concentrate on Lesson 4, because it is evident Barack Obama understands it very well. That is why this young man is president of the United States and that is why he and his party are allied with and promote the voter registration efforts of outfits like ACORN. That is why he and his party are willing to expend billions on the expansion of programs like VISTA, as well as a mandatory, so-called "volunteer" program.

The difference between the programs Obama envisions and our early War-on-Poverty VISTA of 1966-67 is that while we received precious little training, you can bet that new "volunteers" will have indoctrination pounded into them.

While the volunteers of our era represented diverse viewpoints (we even had a conservative in Laredo), the volunteers of the Obama epoch will be homogenized adherents to the doctrines of diversity, white guilt, entitlement and affirmative action.

The administration and the congressional majority understand that indoctrination is what the new "volunteerism" of the GIVE Act (Generations Invigorating Volunteerism and Education) is about, though they are attempting to conceal their intentions. For example, you will find the training centers established by the legislation originally were to be called "camps." Now the wording has been changed: "Camp" (as in "re-education camp") is now the benign-sounding "campus."

Undereducated, contemporary college graduates will be ripe for the plucking with this kind of obfuscation, especially since they already have been softened up by ideologically driven, America-hating professors.

If our worst fears are realized, the new cadres will be the shock troops of a new, fascist order. We've already seen the intimidation tactics of organizations like ACORN, and the recent disruption of former Rep. Tom Tancredo's talk at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Imagine these ideological ranks swelled by thousands of publicly financed "volunteers."

I would say to young people: By all means, volunteer. But stay away from the new government programs. There are plenty of charitable efforts in your own community to which you can contribute without selling your soul for such inducements as help with your college debt. Keep in mind the lessons listed above, and add to them your own observations and readings.

Finally, remember that in this democratic republic, government is not your friend. It is not entitled to that exalted status. Under the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, it is ever your servant – but only if you recall Lesson 4 and express your will through the ballot box.

Read Part 1, "The streets of Laredo."
Read Part 2, "The president, by George."
Read Part 3, "Voting: A revolutionary idea."