Democratic Senator Barbara Boxer of California, a bottomless fountain of foolishness, has proposed a measure that would permit governors to deploy National Guard troops to provide "security" at government-run schools.
"Is it not part of the national defense to make sure that your children are safe?" Boxer asked during a Capitol Hill press conference in the misguided belief that this content-free trope somehow constituted compelling wisdom.
She blithely stated that her proposal wouldn’t be a violation of the Posse Comitatus Act (which was supposed to prevent the domestic use of the military for the purpose of law enforcement) because it would allow governors to re-purpose troops who are already being used for drug interdiction operations. That is to say, the militarization of schools wouldn’t constitute a new Posse Comitatus violation, but rather expand on an existing one.
Boxer’s proposal to militarize the schools could have been taken directly from "The Origins of the American Military Coup of 2012," a terrifyingly prescient essay published twenty years ago in Parameters, the journal of the U.S. Army War College by military historian Charles J. Dunlap. This glimpse of a dystopian future takes the form of a long letter written by an officer awaiting execution as a traitor to the junta that has seized control over the United States in the wake of military disasters abroad and socio-economic turmoil at home.
"It wasn't any single cause that led us to this point," writes the condemned patriot to a friend. "It was instead a combination of several different developments, the beginnings of which were evident in 1992." Rather than de-mobilizing at the end of the Cold War, the ruling establishment expanded the military’s mission overseas and made it an even more pervasive presence at home.
There is a sense in which Boxer’s proposal is redundant, since armed "warriors" are already deployed in countless schools nation-wide: They are called "resource officers," but they are taught to perceive themselves as front-line troops on a combat footing.
"You've got to be a one-man fighting force," self-styled counter-terrorism "expert" John Giduck exhorted police officers at the 2007 National Conference of School Resource Officers in Orlando, Florida. "You've got to have enough guns, and ammunition and body armor to stay alive.... You should be walking around in schools every day in complete tactical equipment, with semi-automatic weapons.... You can no longer afford to think of yourselves as peace officers.... You must think of yourself [sic] as soldiers in a war because we're going to ask you to act like soldiers." (Emphasis added.)
"Resource Officers" are not present for the protection of children; their mission is to intimidate them, and – with increasing frequency – make criminals out of them. A detailed story published by The Guardian of London points out that in 2010, police deployed in public schools issued roughly 300,000 "class C misdemeanor" citations to school children, most of them for trivial disruptive behavior, such as "inappropriate" dress and excessive use of perfume. Those infractions can result in fines, community service, or even time behind bars – and an arrest record that can ruin the student’s future educational and employment prospects. This is a splendid illustration of the "school-to-prison pipeline" in operation.
Although horrific mass shootings like the one at Sandy Hook Elementary School are vanishingly rare, "lock-down" drills in which SWAT teams conduct training exercises involving hostage or terrorism scenarios are increasingly commonplace. Many of those "hostage rescue" drills are better described as hostage-taking exercises, since they are used as pretexts for warrantless searches of lockers and student property.
Vista Grande High School in Casa Grande, Arizona, held a lock-down drug sweep on October 31. As had happened before in other schools across the country, the students were confined to their classrooms, then led in small groups to another room where they were forced to line up against a wall and be searched with the help of drug-sniffing dogs.
This exercise introduced a new element: Among the four law enforcement agencies involved in the search was a group of prison guards employed by the Corrections Corporation of America, the nation’s largest for-profit prison contractor.
Read the rest here.
Nearly every adult with whom I discuss education seems routinely preoccupied with the "socialization" that mass education provides.
ReplyDeleteIt's hard to overcome their mindset when you propose homeschooling, adding there are plenty of outside activities that will expose children to people of various ages.
I was in high school (NJ) during the Clinton years; by my junior year, we were required to fill out a questionaire on our drug habits. The only thing I had done was consume alcohol. Hundreds of kids, I assume through hallway gossip, etc., filled out this form honestly. How stupid of them.
Weeks later, police and drug-sniffing dogs were brought in to search lockers. I believe there were one or two kids taken in.
One day, I was brought in to the school nurse/principal for questioning when a teacher perceived my behavior to be strange. I didn't feel well, which exacerbates my audio-visual perception deficits. They took my blood-pressure and physically examined me while giving me an interrogation. I truthfully told them I'd taken some Robitussin.
It's virtually become a crime for adolescents to even take OTC medicine. Nothing came of that incident, but I knew from then on that I was being watched more closely than say, the football team. As many of us know, America's choice "team players" get away with murder compared to the square peg kids.
This is not only a process of militarizing this country. It is also the development of a sort of caste system; an attempt to categorize and label people so their chances of gaining position and influence is minimized.
I'm happy to witness the internet slowly breaking this down. Children are perfectly aware that their parents did not have cameras in the schools.
Millions of us have gone through the DARE program and/or Scared Straight. I know full well what these programs are all about now.
If you don't have problems of "deliquency" in your community, these bastards want to make sure you get them. The police-state moves in, lockstep.
Great article from Grigg, as always. Liberals these days tend to support NDAA, Drone Strikes, the Patriot Act, taking away gun rights and guns, and heavy regulation of the market. How is that in any way different from fascism?
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