POISONING YOUNG READERS

By Lee Duigon
December 15, 2011
NewsWithViews.com

What poison are we pouring into young readers’ minds?

I’ve been invited to discuss this topic on Kevin Swanson’s “Generations Radio” show on the Internet (this afternoon, in fact, at 1:30). To bone up on the subject, I went to the library and selected two books at random. I stayed away from Twilight and Harry Potter because I had preconceptions about them. The books I grabbed were completely unknown to me.

I wish they were still unknown to me.

Because the books were selected at random, I think it fair to assume that their themes are common within the genre. If you’re interested, the two books were Misfit by Jon Skovron and Blue Moon by Alyson Noel. It’s highly unlikely they’re the only two of their kind.

Both books are pitched to teenage girls. Maybe publishers don’t think boys read much. Both are about girls who have colossal occult powers: one because her mother was a goddess/demon, the other because she’s one of the “immortals.”

I suppose such books are meant to stimulate the imagination: as in the days of Noah, when “God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.” (Genesis 6:5) Actually the material herein is supremely unimaginative—dull, predictable, trite. Blue Moon in particular is a treasury of New Age clichés. The fact that these books have rave reviews all over the Internet only proves that anybody can post reviews on the Internet. It seems you can slip any number of clichés past inexperienced readers who have been mal-educated in public school and anesthetized by television.

What are girls being asked to imagine?

Most importantly, they are being enticed by a vision of a universe without God. Oh, there are gods in here, all right—all kinds of puny, penny-ante godlets whose chief attraction is their total lack of authority. The real God, the Judge of all the Earth, is absent; so there can be no judgment. Everybody does what’s right in her own eyes. Anyhow, they have no need for God because these very special girls are virtual goddesses in their own right. It would be impious to tell them what to do.

This is toxic. Teenagers are old enough to recognize and kick against their own powerlessness in relation to the adults in their lives, especially their parents. They want power of their own. This is what makes them so vulnerable; this is what gets them into trouble. These books offer a vision of power and independence, absolute autonomy, that it would be unhealthy to acquire a taste for. Look what happens when a 16-year-old gets behind the wheel of a car. You mustn’t try to hold them back from growing up; but if you just toss them the keys and say “Do as thou wilt,” you’re begging for trouble.

In these books, it is the adults who are powerless—a vision sure to be tempting to teenagers. Unimpeded by obtuse and ineffectual parents, guardians, and school teachers, the teenage characters have sex, spend money, play hooky, keep late hours, and do anything else it enters their heads to do. Maybe I’m old-fashioned. Maybe this really is what it’s like to be a teen today in the mainstream of our dying culture, with adults who are too stupid or too self-absorbed to know or care.

If there is no God, there is no forgiveness for sins, and no redemption. The New Age sidesteps this truth. A teenage goddess doesn’t need forgiveness. Nor do you need it if you’re perpetually reincarnated—along with your devastatingly handsome, perfect, big fat wussy soul-mate—into one Harlequin Romance of a life after another. When I try to imagine the sort of mind that can absorb this oozing twaddle without reaching for the barf-bag, I tremble for the immediate future of the human race.

Are the authors and publishers of such books purposely trying to soften their readers’ brains? Is this how they prime them to believe in Global Warming? Is this where all that “hope and change” stuff came from?

Here are books that promote and glamorize the most fat-headed narcissism ever seen outside of Washington, D.C. The authors are camp-followers in the army of paganism, ushers in the theater of pernicious idiocy. What are parents thinking of, buying these books for their children? Even the drab, mindless dialogue found herein reads like an endless stream of text messages from one clueless dingbat to another.

Nancy Drew, come back! A whole new generation needs you.