YOU'VE GOT TO BE TAUGHT TO HATE AND FEAR

It's fun to mock that wacky crazy loony Michelle Bachmann. Where the heck does she get these nutball ideas?

U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann says she fears the Obama administration will create "re-education camps for young people, where young people have to go and get trained in a philosophy that the government puts forward and then they have to go to work in some of these politically correct forums." ...

Here's what Bachmann said on Minnesota radio station KTLK-AM ... this weekend (in reference to The Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act, a proposed expansion of the AmeriCorps program that Obama may sign into law this week):

...I believe that there is a very strong chance that we will see that young people will be put into mandatory service. And the real concerns is that there are provisions for what I would call re-education camps for young people, where young people have to go and get trained in a philosophy that the government puts forward and then they have to go to work in some of these politically correct forums....

But is Bachmann crazy? Or is she just repeating what she's been told -- by, say, the editorial page of Investor's Business Daily last September?

... Big Brother had nothing on the Obamas. They plan to herd American youth into government-funded reeducation camps where they'll be brainwashed into thinking America is a racist, oppressive place in need of "social change."

... The Obamas want to create a boot camp for radicals who hate the military -- and stick American taxpayers with the bill.

Or The American Spectator:

...in Congress's rush to pass a huge expansion of "national service" programs, almost exactly as outlined by Obama in a 2007 speech, few congressman likely realized that the details included "campuses" with "superintendents" of uniformed youth, formed into "cadres," and indoctrinated even in math and science classes in the ideals of "service learning" financed through a "social innovation fund" funneled through favored "community organizations." (ACORN, anyone?) Even elementary school students would be recruited for these government-sponsored efforts.

As the Washington Examiner editorialized, it all sounds like a "creepy authoritarianism" on the loose....

Or Michelle Malkin, in her nationally syndicated column:

... Especially troublesome to parents' groups concerned about compulsory volunteerism requirements is a provision in the House version directing Congress to explore "whether a workable, fair and reasonable mandatory service requirement for all able young people could be developed, and how such a requirement could be implemented in a manner that would strengthen the social fabric of the Nation and overcome civic challenges by bringing together people from diverse economic, ethnic and educational backgrounds."

...Taxpayers GIVE their money to SERVE a big government agenda under the guise of helping their fellow man. It's charity at the point of a gun.

Last November, John Derbyshire of National Review wrote two posts about this, each titled "Arbeit Macht Frei."

This all comes from the (more or less) respectable press. I haven't even drilled down to talk radio or blogs or Glenn Beck.

This is why my only problem with Democrats' decision to target Rush Limbaugh was that the targeting was limited to him. We're long overdue in this country for a thoroughgoing exposure of the right's paranoid, extremist underbelly -- everyone should know the crazy talk that passes for sane and normal on the right. People who aren't fans simply don't know, and this stuff is everywhere.

Imagine if, after the fall of 2001, the vast majority of American liberals began to believe that Bush deliberately caused the 9/11 attacks. Imagine if that notion was heard daily on nationwide cable news channels and top-rated talk radio stations, and appeared regularly on op-ed pages.

That's pretty much where we are regarding the right.