WE'VE LOST CONTROL

By Andrew Williams

When people lean on a government for support, they seem to think they're hearing this old song:

Lean on me when you're not strong

And I'll be your friend

I'll help you carry on

But what's really being sung is the litany of the Catholic Church: Give us your children until they're six, and then they're ours forever.

American parents have, by and large, abrogated their rights as parents to the state. They've given the government the right to determine what vaccines and drugs should be given their children, and when. They're largely obedient to the state's dictates as to when, what and where they should be taught. Instead of using reason, logic and hard data to make their own decisions regarding their offspring, they've turned that task over to government functionaries-statisticians, bureaucrats, teachers, doctors, legislators.

What's the result? First and foremost, there are now approximately six million kids on Ritalin, an amphetamine prescribed for so-called AD(H)D. Ritalin's side effects include cerebral atrophy, increased repetitive behavior, neurological disorders such as tardive dyskinesia, decreased blood flow to the brain, disruption of the production of growth hormone, depression, psychosis, insomnia, agitation, social withdrawl and a predisposition in its users to use other stimulants such as cocaine and methamphetamine. Also, there has been a ten-fold spike in the last decade in cases of autism, which has been at least circumstantially linked to early vaccination (18 months to 3 years). Evidence suggests that early vaccination can impair the function of the still-developing immune system, which includes the brain. And autistic children also routinely display robotic, repetitive behavior.

Apparently-at least, according to this new paradigm--childhood is a disease. The cure is drugs and vaccines (doctor prescribed, natch) to make children tractable (just like The Good Olde Days) and more suited for boring, repetitive tasks, like the jobs most of them (if they're lucky?) will find when they grow up. Instead of a generation of inquisitive, creative minds, we appear to be raising a crop of highly introverted, conformist automatons.

(Do I rant? Very well, then-I rant. But anyone who's read anything of mine here knows I give facts and resources to back up my "wild" statements. For example, the phenomenon of cerebral atrophy due to use of Ritalin is well documented. Sources include Talking back to Ritalin by Dr. Peter Breggin, the journal Psychiatry Research (Vol.17, 1986) and the Archives of General Psychiatry (July 1996). And as with other essays I've written, you will find links at the end of this piece to informative websites.)

I will not go so far as to say that all children are being targeted in this apparent pogrom against childhood. But with millions of kids on such brain-disabling drugs as Ritalin and Prozac, and thousands of kids displaying autistic behavior within hours or days of vaccination, it does not seem out of order to suggest that the most vulnerable of our children are being in/directly targeted for a Darwinian program to see whether they will survive such bio/chemical onslaughts in order to become drones for the New World Order.

Social critics such as Frank Zappa, Ivan Illich and others have long believed that public schools have a Search and Destroy program to seek out and neutralize creativity. The rampant drugging and vaccination of schoolkids would seem to be the biochemical/pharmacological part of that plan. Making highly intelligent, vibrant, fun-loving, playful, creative young'uns into dull, inert, test-takers and rote-learners would be the logical thing for a government seeking ultimate power and control to do. And since even liberal commentators acknowledge that America is a police state, what could be more logical than to clamp down in advance on potential troublemakers and political dissidents, a la Minority Report?

The best and the brightest are being turned in to the worst and dimmest, and most parents either acquiesce or feel helpless to intervene. Those parents who do protest the forced drugging of their children are threatened with charges of child neglect and removal of the child from the home. Those who give in can see their children turn into robotic, obedient drones with bouts of insomnia, tardive dyskinesia, and inordinate cravings for stimulants. In other words, premature adults.

Are we so envious of children and childhood that, subconsciously, we wish to deny its growing pains and joys to our progeny? Are we so desirous of illusory safety that we will allow the chemical numbing of our most vulnerable citizens? It seems that we are. And in doing so, we are reaping a whirlwind that will tear our society apart.

But we are not toothless yet. As KMFDM tells us, "there is a way to refuse and resist-we don't need to be ruled by the iron fist." We can start by educating ourselves, by home-schooling, by careful examination of curricula. It won't be easy. But neither is childhood. And it is by "taking arms against (the) sea of troubles" of childhood that we ,"by opposing, end them." And that is how we learn to learn and grow. Just as Nature intended.