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02/19/2010

Hit[our] youth: Dr. Janice Shaw Crouse should, won't apologize!

by Jeremy Hooper

So I've been thinking more and more about the Dr. Janice Shaw Crouse's comment suggesting that progressives are trying to create a new kind of "Hitler Youth"...

...and honestly, I just can't shake the f**ed-upiness of it all. Nor should any of us shake it, as Crouse's code word-laden rant is the exact kind of eye-opening coffin-nail that we who are being shunned behind the far-right's "moral absolutes" should unapologetically drive into this overheated movement's sarcophagus of incivility!

The "anti-family" kids who Crouse (a Concerned Women For America top dog) puts in the "Hitler Youth" camp are exactly like the ones in this writer's life. The kind of children who are brought up, from birth, to accept all people. Children who refuse to believe that intolerance is a "moral value." Those who are open and embracing of all faiths, without the desire to convert anyone to their way of thinking. Tykes who place value in diversity. The kind of kids who are encouraged to follow their natural intellectual curiosity, rather than one-sided talking points. Little ones who understand that families come in all different shapes and sizes, and that it's not "relativism" to place value in the shared love rather than the number of penises or vaginas in house. These are the exact children that Ms. Crouse considers brainwashed, even though it is her side that is unabashedly trying to indoctrinate them into believing that discrimination is a conservative principle with cherishing. How dare she attack these children and/or their parents?!

And then there's the Jewish factor. The kids who are most fully in my life are of that particular faith, the one that is obviously most directly bothered by Godwin's Law. Not only is Ms. Crouse's negligent label offensive in terms of its implications of indoctrination, it's also insanely offensive to those children who are only two or three generations removed from one of this world's most unfathomable genocides! Ms Crouse is telling the world that I, as an LGBT activist and embracer of the kids of progressive values that she has decides are "immoral," am in some ways related to those who led impressionable youth into hate for their ancestors. She's telling the kids in my life that my work (and that of many prominent, respected figures) is leading both them and me down a cruel path of self-destruction -- a path that's fit to be compared to the stepping stones that paved the Holocaust (The "Hitler Youth" movement was considered a stepping stone to the SS). And considering that she herself is motivated by aggressive evangelical Christianity which she's been wearing on her sleeve for years? Well, the dangerous implications there should not be lost on anyone who's paying attention!

Your thoughts

I'm Jewish. She can go fuck herself. I can't keep track of who we are these days. Hitler? Stalin? Mao? Pol Pot? I'm surprised they haven't called us Pope Sixtus IV yet. They're running out of villains.

Posted by: marsmannetje | Feb 19, 2010 10:24:08 AM

It's apalling how much the words associated with Nazi crimes are tossed out to instill fear in today's society. Nothing compares to this - and God willing, nothing will ever again.

Posted by: Bonnie Half-Elven | Feb 19, 2010 12:10:20 PM

Wasn't Hitler a Christianite? He certainly spoke fondly of them in Mein Kampf. And, if he had merely been ragingly anti-religion, one would think that the christians would have been gassed along side the Jews and the gays. But, as it turns out, his vile hatred was aimed in exactly the same direction that modern day Catholics aim theirs - at the Jews and the gays. Just look at the king of the catholic fiefdom, Mel Gibson. And, all the while, claiming that they are the victims. And more egregiously, attempting to paint us, the collective "us" who simply want peaceful coexistence, the "us" who are the true victims of their rabid anti-gay sentiment, painting us as the aggressors.

Posted by: Dick Mills | Feb 19, 2010 2:17:02 PM

I'm just tired. I read this blog every day. I listen to this shit every day. I'm just tired. At what point is it morally permissible to just go up to someone like that and slap her. I have read the great moral philosophers. I have a law degree. I have worked in the United States and around the world. I have made politicked my may though the most difficult of international confusion on an admittedly micro scale. I have published on international human rights and corporate America, and made friends with people of every religion imaginable. And I'm a bit drunk. And all I want to do is just walk up and slap her across the face. Part of me wants to engage in a rational debate, but she doesn't use rational terms. I just want to slap her. Does that make me bad? It's sick, it's wrong, it's base, but I just want to slap her. Not hard enough to break a tooth. Just slap her. Guilty as charged.

Posted by: adrianofnyc | Feb 19, 2010 2:48:43 PM

Addendum: I live in New York but I'm in Singapore for work, so it's OK to be a bit drunk. It's 4:00 AM here.

Posted by: adrianofnyc | Feb 19, 2010 3:02:39 PM

She talks about a lack of having absolute morals will lead to a "Hitler youth" but as we know, Hitler had absolute morals. Hitler youth promoted - strict gender roles: boys become soldiers and women become mothers; mindless patriotism toward their country; and finally hatred towards gays and Jews, (and black people and anyone not 'perfect')... Maybe people in glass houses shouldn't through stones.

Just saying.

Posted by: Corvidae | Feb 20, 2010 7:27:16 AM

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