Day 26 – 52 Books in 52 Weeks

Well, this ought to be interesting. I started reading Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler. After reading Darwin’s The Origin of Species along with Erwin Lutzer’s When a Nation Forgets God, I thought this would sort of pull things together (though destroy my two remaining brain cells which I’ve named Herman and Sherman).

The version of Mein Kampf I’m reading was translated by Ralph Manheim and contains an introduction by Abraham Foxman.

As Abraham Foxman states in his intro, this book is the “bible of National Socialism.” This book is so controversial that in Europe, many governments regulate the production and distribution of the book, often restricting it to “qualified academics.”

Hitler used “an extreme form of race-oriented social Darwinism” to pull his themes of anti-Semitism and his distrust of Marxism together. Keep in mind that this book was written some 18-20 years prior to WWII. Hitler was the chairman of a small pan-German party who attempted a coup against the Bavarian government – and failed miserably.

Foxman states that the book, obviously, is not a historical document and that the “autobiographical” sections are attempts of Hitler’s to portray himself in a favorable light. He says these sections, “must be construed, rather, as pieces of propaganda, actively omitting, fabricating, and twisting historical fact to achieve a desired effect” (page xvi).

On page xxi of the Introduction, Foxman points out something that Dr. Lutzer expands on in his books Hitler’s Cross and When a Nation Forgets God. Foxman says, “Its (Mein Kampf) shortcomings seem obvious; its atrocious style, puerile digressions, and narcissistic self-absorption should be clear even to the casual reader. Its theories are extremist, immoral, and seem to promise war and catastrophe if taken seriously. But somehow this book and its author were embraced by a civilized nation and its lunatic plan was actually put into effect.”

I’m only thirty-five pages into Hitler’s book and already I can see his ego. It is huge, to put it mildly. Chapter one is basically about his childhood and how much he hates the fact that Austria isn’t under Germany’s control. You can already see the hatred spewing through his words.

On pages 12-15 Hitler touches on the subject of indoctrinating kids saying, “It is a struggle for the soul of the child” and “it is the seed-bed of the coming generation.” If you look at education in the U.S. today, you hear about parents being sued or in some way punished if they oppose the curriculum.

As a Christian, I hear a lot of this through Christian media outlets: parents pulling kids out of the public school system because the school says you have to teach evolution (and omit any reference to Creationism), and you have to teach first-graders about sex (both hetero and homosexuality) and birth control, and you can’t pray in school, and you can only refer to the Bible as just another piece of literature … then these parents who pull their kids from that school are sued, have their children taken from them, or are ridiculed. The government is trying to tell parents what their kids should know and when. I’ve even heard that there is legislation in the works where homeschoolers have to follow the curriculum of the public system. What’s the point of that? Yes – indoctrinate the next generation with what you want – not necessarily what is best.

A CBN 2007 web article states:

Dr. Michael Mitchell, an education researcher, found that being popular, aggressively competitive, materialistically driven and self-confident are traits promoted in conventional schools.

And concludes with this:

A nationwide survey conducted by The Barna Group shows that 80 percent of Christian families send their children to public schools where their faith is attacked. Based on the study’s findings, it appears that their kids are the ones being “evangelized” by the religion of secular humanism. More than half of their Christian teens believe Jesus actually sinned and only nine percent hold to moral absolutes, while 83 percent of children from committed Christian families attending public schools adopt a Marxist-Socialist worldview, reports the group.

Consistent with these figures, Christian producer and occult expert Caryl Matrisciana reports that 75 percent of public-schooled American youth brought up in Christian households disown their Christian faith by the first year of college. NHERI finds that this is only true for less than four percent of homeschooled youth.

Hitler was right: indoctrinate them early if you want them to follow you in the future.

I have a feeling this book is going to take a long time to get through. People in this country really need to wake up and think for themselves.