RUSH: This story has surfaced again. I had this story earlier in the week, but it has shown up again in the Drive-By Media so why not mention it to you? “Empirical Study: Indoctrinated U.S. Climate Activist Kids Can Be Used to Influence their Conservative Parents.” Yeah, somebody sent me this today and I said, “Well, I did this like three days ago.” “Well, you’d better do it again because it just hit the media.” “Why should I do it again when I beat the media with it?” “Well, if it’s in the media, you better do it!”
Anyway, here’s the upshot. A bunch of researchers in North Carolina did what researchers call as an “abstract.” They did a study out there, and they wanted to study propaganda, and if they could effectively make propaganda happen from kids to adults, which we know you can. I mean, the Germans did it. It’s not hard to do. In this case, young children were themselves indoctrinated and propagandized “with educational material deliberately designed to help them influence parents, is particularly [fathers] when the influencer is their daughter.”
In other words, what they found is that young daughters more successfully influence their fathers than their mothers, more successfully than a son will influence a mother. Daughters influence fathers, particularly if the father is conservative. What they found here is that the most effective propaganda from child to adult occurs from a daughter to a conservative dad, and they used climate change data, “educational climate change data,” propaganda, as the test, subject matter.
“The collective action that is required to mitigate and adapt to climate change is extremely difficult to achieve, largely due to socio-ideological biases that perpetuate polarization over climate change. Because climate change perceptions in children seem less susceptible to the influence of worldview or political context, it may be possible for them to inspire adults towards higher levels of climate concern, and in turn, collective action.
“Child-to-parent intergenerational learning — that is, the transfer of knowledge, attitudes or behaviors from children to parents — may be a promising pathway to overcoming socio-ideological barriers to climate concern.” So what this is, is these climate change communists are getting frustrated at their inability to persuade average Americans of the dangers of climate change and America’s primary responsibility for causing it using traditionally methods: Mainstream media.
They have decided to try and test propagandizing kids, and what they’ve found is it’s very easy! It’s much easier for kids to convince their parents of climate change than it is for the media, and the reason is that parents don’t look at their kids as activists, and they don’t see them as ideologues. They see them as sweet little innocent bundles of joy. So if little 9-year-old Susie comes home from school and starts talking, “Daddy! Daddy! I’m really worried about the polar bears. Daddy! Daddy! I’m really worried about the planet!
“Daddy! Daddy! Will I be able to live on the planet when I’m 65? Daddy! Daddy!” Apparently, they have noted some amazing success here, because particularly conservative fathers do not have any biases against what their little kids are telling them, particularly their daughters, ’cause what biases could they have? They don’t stop to think that maybe the kids themselves have been propagandized by a bunch of socialist, commie pinko teachers — or, in this case, architects all of study.
Now, when I saw this, my first inclination was to believe it, because I’ve seen it! I have seen it happen. I don’t want to mention any names. But I’m telling you, there are people that I’ve known all my life who have always been conservative — and I’m using this mainly as a way to describe them. I’m not talking about conservative activists. They’re not closed-minded people. They’ve just tended toward conservative beliefs. And then their kids went away to college and — after just a semester or two away — I don’t recognize the parents anymore. On anything.
Not just climate change, but take any issue. I’ve had friends of mine that I’ve had my whole life who agree with me and I agree with them over the subject of illegal immigration. After their kids have been gone to college — and if the kids come home regularly — those same guys that I’ve known all my life all of a sudden are saying, “You know, Rush, I think this immigration stuff… I think we’ve been wrong. It’s so overblown. It’s not a problem. The country’s still here! Look at it. We’re not going down the tubes.
“It’s really not hurting anything. These people coming here, they’re not the dregs. They’re really fine people.” You know, I’m shocked and surprised, saying, “What happened?” I don’t argue. I don’t react as though I’ve been provoked. I try to find out what happened. In more cases than I can count, it’s related to the kids going away to school and coming home and having chats with their parents, and it’s all about the parents wanting to get along with the kids and not wanting to argue with them, and there’s all kinds of factors in it.
But, anyway, this abstract, this effort has convinced a lot of people that this technique works, and particularly daughters propagandizing their fathers. The success rate is the greatest if the father happens to be a conservative male. So I just want you people out there with kids — and it may have already happened. It doesn’t have to be kids going away to college. They could go to high school, junior high, whatever. I mean, these kids are 10 years old, 10 and 12 years old in this survey.
Imagine you’ve had a lifelong belief system and a 12-year-old is able to come along and change your mind about something. How does that happen? How can a 12-year-old possibly know what you, an adult, knows? Simply not a matter of intelligence. It’s a matter of being alive long enough to accumulate significant knowledge and experience, to have informed opinions. But it’s a proven fact. The Germans managed to do it. A number of other totalitarian regimes have figured out ways of propagandizing adults with children, in some cases not their own children either.
So just keep a sharp eye. Just be on the lookout. Because once this now has been established as an effective pattern… I think it’s already there. I mean, you can see it. You can see the effects of this in advertising. We already have heard stories of young kids getting mad at their moms and dads for destroying the planet for the kind of cars the family has, or doing other things these kids hear that are destroying the planet and they start berating their parents for it. So it actually isn’t anything new.