Roy G Biv

"How will the kids learn their colors?" That was my husband's reaction as we watched a local news story about a parent who objected to a rainbow motif in a classroom.

He, like me, remembers learning our colors via the rainbow and the familiar acronym of Roy G Biv. That's red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet, for the uninitiated.

 Bing generated image.

Fascism has come to the Roanoke Valley dressed up as "concern for the children," as book banners and school patrols go after what they consider items and persons who "groom" or "indoctrinate" children, ostensibly trying to "turn" young people into homosexuals or transgenders or whomever it is these folks are afraid of.

Ban one book, and where does it end? Is the next one to go some beloved story like Little Women, which is, after all, about strong young girls (and we can't have that). Remove one rainbow, and the next thing to go will be unicorns and leprechauns, I suppose. And why do these people - some of whom do not even have children - get to say what can and can't be happening in a library, a classroom, or any other place? And if they're so hellbent on protecting children, where were they when some were murdered this weekend by gunfire in Florida? Are they protesting for gun control? No. They seem pretty content with letting a child bleed out in the street.

We watched the first two hours of FDR on the History channel last night, and I highly recommend it. We are taping the remainder of the series and will watch it before the week runs out, I expect.

It really brings home the issue of fascism, which I consider any effort to ban a book to be, so I will end with this rather long quote that I am borrowing from Heather Cox Richardson, who borrowed it from an Army pamphlet from 1945. I looked up the original but it's easier to copy and paste. Yes, I can be lazy.

Keep this in mind and then determine who is really a Democrat, a Republican, and a Fascist. I know what I think. I think the people who keep calling Republicans Rinos are really the fascists. Real Republicans know better and are trying to keep our Republic strong. Anyway, this is worth the read:

Fascism, the U.S. government document explained, “is government by the few and for the few. The objective is seizure and control of the economic, political, social, and cultural life of the state.” “The people run democratic governments, but fascist governments run the people.”

“The basic principles of democracy stand in the way of their desires; hence—democracy must go! Anyone who is not a member of their inner gang has to do what he’s told. They permit no civil liberties, no equality before the law.” “Fascism treats women as mere breeders. ‘Children, kitchen, and the church,’ was the Nazi slogan for women,” the pamphlet said.

Fascists “make their own rules and change them when they choose…. They maintain themselves in power by use of force combined with propaganda based on primitive ideas of ‘blood’ and ‘race,’ by skillful manipulation of fear and hate, and by false promise of security. The propaganda glorifies war and insists it is smart and ‘realistic’ to be pitiless and violent.”

Fascists understood that “the fundamental principle of democracy—faith in the common sense of the common people—was the direct opposite of the fascist principle of rule by the elite few,” it explained, “[s]o they fought democracy…. They played political, religious, social, and economic groups against each other and seized power while these groups struggled.”

Americans should not be fooled into thinking that fascism could not come to America, the pamphlet warned; after all, “[w]e once laughed Hitler off as a harmless little clown with a funny mustache.” And indeed, the U.S. had experienced “sorry instances of mob sadism, lynchings, vigilantism, terror, and suppression of civil liberties. We have had our hooded gangs, Black Legions, Silver Shirts, and racial and religious bigots. All of them, in the name of Americanism, have used undemocratic methods and doctrines which…can be properly identified as ‘fascist.’”

The War Department thought it was important for Americans to understand the tactics fascists would use to take power in the United States. They would try to gain power “under the guise of ‘super-patriotism’ and ‘super-Americanism.’” And they would use three techniques:

First, they would pit religious, racial, and economic groups against one another to break down national unity. Part of that effort to divide and conquer would be a “well-planned ‘hate campaign’ against minority races, religions, and other groups.”

Second, they would deny any need for international cooperation, because that would fly in the face of their insistence that their supporters were better than everyone else. “In place of international cooperation, the fascists seek to substitute a perverted sort of ultra-nationalism which tells their people that they are the only people in the world who count. With this goes hatred and suspicion toward the people of all other nations.”

Third, fascists would insist that “the world has but two choices—either fascism or communism, and they label as ‘communists’ everyone who refuses to support them.” (Emphasis mine)

It is “vitally important” to learn to spot native fascists, the government said, “even though they adopt names and slogans with popular appeal, drape themselves with the American flag, and attempt to carry out their program in the name of the democracy they are trying to destroy.”

The only way to stop the rise of fascism in the United States, the document said, “is by making our democracy work and by actively cooperating to preserve world peace and security.” In the midst of the insecurity of the modern world, the hatred at the root of fascism “fulfills a triple mission.” By dividing people, it weakens democracy. “By getting men to hate rather than to think,” it prevents them “from seeking the real cause and a democratic solution to the problem.” By falsely promising prosperity, it lures people to embrace its security.        -- Heather Cox Richardson

Which do you want to be? The book burner or the book saver? The person who admires rainbows or the one who denigrates them because of their own personal insecurities and hang-ups? Just who do the children need to be saved from? 

I really have to wonder.