There are many forms of psychological abuse against our children, some idiosyncratic and some social.  The young girl driven to suicide by a thoughtless adult who first raised her hope for love through creating a fictitious suitor on a social networking site and then cruelly dashed that hope in a warped attempt to assist her own daughter to bully the victim is an example of just how serious psychological abuse can be.  Social abuse differs only in method not impact.  We rail at the image of children brainwashed to strap explosives on their tiny bodies, becoming human weapons for the political, religious, social or just plain perverse agendas of groups like the Taliban or the Lord’s Resistance Army.  Such psychological abuse of innocents undermines any possible validity their philosophies could warrant.  No justification exists for inculcating hate in the minds of young people.  Brainwashing anyone to make them believe what some other wishes is always wrong.  In the case of youth it is also always criminal. 

I doubt there is a single reader that has disagreed with me so far.  I want to go a step further though.  What about brainwashing by omission.  If we agree with the above arguments should it not be a natural step to say that intentionally withholding knowledge from children for the purpose of manipulating them into believing what some other desires them to believe or to think is also wrong and criminal.  That is a natural corollary of my arguments above.  Al Qaeda does not say to a young suicide bomber, ‘read this treatise by Osama bin Laden and this pamphlet by Thomas Paine and then go kill the infidel because bin Laden is right and Paine is wrong.‘  My suspicion is that Al Qaeda training facilities do not have well stocked and balanced libraries.  The abuse is not in presenting the children with a biased idea, all ideas are by nature biased, it is in presenting the idea as the only idea.  Omitting information from children in order to inculcate any social agenda is abuse.  And therefore anyone who would perpetrate such abuse should be sanctioned by our society accordingly.  Presenting children with all perspectives but saying that we as Canadians, or in this community or this family believe that one or the other perspective is the correct one is different.  That is not necessarily abuse.  A child’s country, community and most particularly family will likely be more persuasive than an obscure author.  The child may therefore be guided by such authoritative opinion but they still are aware that other perspectives do exist.  It might cross the line into abuse if we were to present the other perspectives with derision or ridicule.  This is not an exact science and a judgement call must be made at what point abuse occurs.  But the case I have in mind at the moment clearly crosses that line. 

Currently there is a bill before the Alberta Legislature that would allow parents to withdraw their children from class if the curriculum includes anything which goes against their religious beliefs.  The premier is even trying to defend this abomination by saying that it is only religious questions.  Translation:  Religious brainwashing good; any other brainwashing bad.  I’d bet you hot cross buns to pancakes (the Anglicans should get that one) if I were to demand the right to remove my child from class to avoid having them exposed to capitalist ideals,  the same god-bothering twits behind this bill (wonder what’s in their libraries?) would be pushing to remove her from my home to save her from this twisted old socialist.  Every evangelical from Lethbridge to Fort Macleod would be burning my effigy in their state of the art tele-pulpit.  So why the muted response to this legislation.  A polite whimper from the CBC (okay what do we expect, they’re Canadian) is all the coverage I have seen so far.  Of course the CBC missed a number of child abuse / religion stories until it was too late just ask Catholic choir boys and our Aboriginal people.  Capitalism encourages behaviours and causes practices that I am convinced harm innocent human beings and are anathema to the basic cooperative nature of humanity.  In simple terms capitalism to me is a crime against humanity which should be prosecuted as we prosecuted Naziism at Nuremburg.  So I would be remiss in my responsibilities as a parent to allow some pro-capitalist school system to expose my child to such obscenity.  Right?  If I firmly believe this, and I do, I should shelter my child from it.  Wrong.  I would be abusing my child.  Ignorance weakens a human being and my job as a parent is to strengthen my child to survive in a world of conflict and contradiction.  To disarm that child from the start is the ultimate abuse. 

For those who want to argue that the two things are not the same tell me why.  If you can’t defend your argument, you don’t have one.  Premier Ed Stelmach, if you pass this bill you are a child abuser.  You are a pariah in our society and should be sanctioned accordingly.  To the RCMP (let’s pretend they might listen to reason and are not just the goon squad for sordid politicians), if child abuse is an abhorrent crime within our society you must focus all of your resources into bringing Mr. Stelmach and every member of the legislature in support of this bill before the bar of justice and seek out those who use the money of god to manipulate and control society.  Save our children now and we won’t need a parade of religious leaders apologizing later.

Our Idiot King scoured the earth looking for the nasty people.  Like wheat in a field he mowed down all who stood before him hoping to find those few evil grains.  Many thousands of people died in far off places with funny names.  But that did not matter.  Only the few thousand of the entitled people mattered.  The Idiot King would show the nasty people how wrong it was to kill innocent people by killing anyone who looked even vaguely like them.  The Idiot King came upon a man named Saddam who had known his father in a place called Iraq.  “Saddam is the leader of the nasty people” said the Idiot King.  “He has magical weapons of mass destruction and he is preparing to use them against our people.  He must be stopped.”  And so the people told their King to send his armies forth and slay the evil Saddam.  A great military leader called Rumsfeld who once had been a friend of the evil Saddam and had called him a great leader told all the peoples of the world that he knew just where to find the magical weapons.  But when they got to Iraq the diabolic Saddam had thrown away all the magical weapons just to make the Idiot King look like an idiot.  The Idiot King was furious.  He needed no help from Saddam to look like an idiot he was quite capable of achieving that on his own.  In his righteous fury, for the Idiot King was very righteous and was particularly loved by those who succumb to speaking in tongues and laying hands on televisions to be healed, the Idiot King hanged the evil Saddam in true Texas fashion, as something called a reality show. 

The people gathered together on the fourth anniversary of the the Idiot King’s inauguration and crowned him King for another four years.  They knew that the evil Saddam had tricked the poor Idiot King.  But though Saddam was one of the nasty people because he prayed on Friday, the people of the Idiot King came to know that he had not been one of those who had attacked them.  And so the Idiot King convinced the little beaver who lived to the north of his land to attack a group of people known as students in a place called Afghanistan.  The little beaver was happy to help because it wanted the Idiot King to like it and not roll over on it in bed.  Apparently there was some perverse relationship between the little beaver and the Idiot King and the little beaver wanted to make sure it could be on top.  The little beaver sent its little army forth to fight the nasty students who had let the leader of the attack on the Idiot King’s people crash at their place.  They tried and tried and pretended to be just like the people of the Idiot King but the nasty students fought back which was definitely unfair.  So the little beaver found a clone of the Idiot King from a place very much like Texas, called Alberta.  And the little beaver’s Idiot idolized the Idiot King from below and sent more and more of his armies to fight for the interests of the Idiot King.  Even in the face of rising evidence of the futility of the task. 

Though Saddam was dead the Idiot King could not quiet the quarrelsome people of Iraq.  They resisted and the Idiot King came to believe that another people were helping Saddam’s people against him and so the Idiot King told his people that they had magical weapons too.  The people had told him to attack Saddam when they thought that he had those weapons.  Why would they not respond the same if he said these new people from a place called Iran had them too.  He was right for he knew the thoughts of his people were as simple and credulous as his.  The people of the land rose up and railled against the nasty people of Iran.  Crying to the world that they were evil and must surrender their magical weapons or be destroyed.  Especially those who spoke from a little glowing box called a television (see above for reference to the healing powers of this box).  And so boys and girls the Idiot King knew what he must do.  He must attack.  That is what the people wanted.  The talking heads in the box said so. 

Now the Idiot King had to move fast.  His time was almost over.  On January 20, 2009 he knew he had to go back to his village and resume his role as a simple village idiot once more.  No longer would he prance across the country and around the world as its most important idiot.  So with Christmas approaching he decided to send a gift to the nasty people of Iran, a whole bunch of flying machines full of bombs and people who would float down from the sky and others who would land on the shores of Iran from ships while more walked or rode across the border from Iraq.  Thus would end the interference of the nasty people of Iran and their arrogant leader with the name the Idiot King could not pronounce because it was multi-syllabic.  He would destroy the magical weapons and his people would always be safe. 

And so the Idiot King laid down his crown and went back to his village to sit back and behold all his idiocy.  Smiling on his porch he heard how everyone in the neighbourhood of Iraq and Iran began to follow his example and attack each other.  Soon places farther away began to see the wisdom of the little village idiot and they sent forth their armies to do battle.   Then someone used the magical weapons and there our story ends with the former Idiot King, now just a village idiot again, sitting on his porch basked in the glow of a great mushroom cloud.  A hot dry wind blowing over him.  In the distance can be heard the death shriek of the spirit of hope. 

“But teacher, what was the difference between these people that they hated each other so?”  “Our greatest minds have been unable to answer that question for they were all known as human beings.  They were all the same.  They had two arms, two legs, two eyes.  All of them had red blood pumped through their bodies by a heart.  But for some reason they each convinced themselves that they were better than their neighbours.”  “Will we ever have a World War 3 here teacher?”  “No children.  No.  For whenever we get too full of ourselves we just look up at that glowing cinder in the night sky that once was a beautiful blue planet and we are washed with the gift of humility and know that all life is precious and no problem is insurmountable and so we talk to those who disagree with us rather than fight.” 

The End.