by Kjos Ministries
Last March, North Dakota gave us a heart-warming demonstration of traditional voluntary service — in minus 20 degree weather. As the rising Red River threatened to flood Fargo, willing volunteers gathered by the thousands. Before long, they had filled and stacked over 2 million sandbags to barricade the city against the raging waters. Christians prayed for victory over the forces of nature, and by God’s grace, the make-shift dikes held.
About 6,000 volunteers of all ages had simply followed their conscience, worked together and met the need. Unlike President Obama’s plan for government-directed “service,” neither prayer nor God’s comforting Truths were banned. Volunteers weren’t hindered by trained facilitators and unconscionable boundaries. As the flood subsided, they were free to thank God together for the amazing victory.
Traditional American volunteerism and self-giving service has served people around the world. But it may soon be replaced with a government system of mandatory service and re-education for all ages. Obama’s signature on H.R. 1388 “Serve America Act,” [See 2] will usher in a new era. While people of all ages will be recruited, the main focus will be on the youth. Words such as “uniforms,” “youth corps,” campuses” and “boarding” [i.e. “grouped together as appropriate in campuses for operational, support, and boarding purposes” SEC. 1516] bring memories of totalitarian government-controlled youth service.[4]
“Service learning” — the heart of this evolving program — is grounded in Soviet ideology. Banning Biblical sharing, it reflects Communism’s “dialectical materialism” and notorious “re-education” camps. Its basic formula is simple:
1. Immersion into a group [collective] environment with diverse beliefs and values. For decades, our government has been guiding migration and assessing cities on their success in building “unity in diversity,” i.e. social capital.”[5] Such facilitated oneness may sound benign, but the manipulative methods used to build socialist values undermine both personal freedom and family-taught convictions.
2. Dialogue led by facilitators trained to manipulate the diverse groups of servers (with their assortment of values) toward a new consensus. Edward Hunter’s 1956 book, Brainwashing, gives us this glimpse of Communist mind control,
“They went about this in the ‘democratic discussion’ manner; this was the new principle of unanimity [i.e. consensus] …. What was truth anyway? Nobody knew. What was false? … Everyone couldn’t be wrong. Could they? Weren’t they all one team? A collectivity?”[6]
3. Practice (practical experience) that seals the dialectical group teaching in the minds of idealistic servers. Lenin understood this formula well. He said,
“…the young people shall engage in the practical solution of some problem of labour in common.'”[1]Click here to read this entire article.