The Michigan Militia

It was the late 90’s and several militia groups, most famously the “Michigan Militia” had bloomed in the thumb-area of Michigan, just down the road from my college. The populist rage that would a decade later birth the Birthers and the Tea Party was a post-Waco response to a perceived lack of liberty and fear of certain death from outside forces.

A guest speaker came to Alma College when I was there to speak about militias. He was a journalist who had been covering the rise of these groups. And because he received frequent death threats, including ones from people who lived a few miles away, threatening his very presence in the state that day, his lecture was certainly small-liberal-arts-college-scandalous. Security was high. We the students wondered if the militia would show.

Toward the end of the lecture, which was held in a packed auditorium, the floor was opened for some Q+A. It was then that my friends and I turned to see the balcony full of non-students. One woman stood up and spoke to something I had never heard before.

She said that she teaches her 4 and 5 year-old children how to load and clean their guns. That this is about teaching safety.

The 19 year-old me was shocked by this revelation. That she would try to teach so young a child about gun safety seemed unimaginable.

I also knew that she was speaking to her way of life. Trying to prove to our guest, and perhaps more likely to us, that children should get comfortable with guns.

Growing up in a part of Michigan that is not unlike the thumb, I had never heard of this. Northern Michigan is rural. Lots of woods and lots of farms. Many of my friends hunted. There were no shortage of guns. But none of my 4 or 5 year-old friends touched them.

At this moment, I’m imagining handing a gun to my 5 year-old and trying to teach her this message:

1. This is dangerous.
2. Don’t play.
3. For your safety, I’m teaching you how to use this.
4. Never use it.
5. You may have to use it.
6. Love everybody.
7. Kill bad people.
8. Bad people try to hurt you.
9. I’m handing you something that can hurt you.
10. I love you.

And the thought dries my mouth and slumps my shoulders.

If my job as a parent is to raise my children to be well-functioning adults, I truly don’t know how to wrap my brain around this logic. And if I can’t, what hope does my 5 year-old? The one who still trusts me and believes that I can protect her. The one who wants to be a doctor-cowboy-ballerina-mother who rides a unicorn.

Teachers don’t command and determine the worldview for their students. We listen to our students and determine how best to help them live into the vision we build together. We don’t scare students and feed them mixed messages about violence and morality: that killing is never OK…except when it is. Brain and child development science tells us that young children can’t process that information.

What they do process is that their number one role models, their parents, want them to touch and feel a weapon.

The Walking Dead

[Warning: Season 4 spoilers of The Walking Dead below. Skip to the end if you haven’t watched yet!]

Yesterday, I wrote about The Walking Dead and its ethics. In my analysis, I referenced Carol, an abuse survivor who lost her only daughter in Season 2 to zombies after she had gone missing. Carol clearly claims responsibility for her daughter’s undeath.

Several months later, Carol is training the children in the group self-defense.

The line from the one to the other is easy to see and just as easy to understand. Heck, I might feel the exact same way.

However, we see through her story arc in Season 4 a troubling corrosive characteristic. That she is lying to the group’s leader and training the children in secret. She kills two infected people to prevent the spread of a virus that was killing the prison population, also in secret. And when confronted with how corrosive these actions were to the group, she shows no remorse, which leads to her exile.

Her belief in “the greater good” was blind to what she was doing to “the greater good”.

She clearly was not responsible for Mika’s death. I would never claim that. Nor that she caused Lizzie’s mental illness. But what we watched was a woman who was bent on teaching children something they couldn’t understand while missing what they were trying to communicate to her. This was consistent throughout Sunday’s episode. Even as she internalized what they were teaching her.

Carol was trying to protect them in a way that could never protect them.

This contrasts directly with Carl, who at an older age was taught how to use a weapon after he already had. And we are still witnessing the psychological scarring that has affected his character. As an adolescent, he should be considered nobody’s ethical role model.

Teaching Well

We know from brain science that the message children receive isn’t the one we plan to give them, but the one we demonstrate in our actions and words.

When we spank a small child because she did something we don’t like, her brain doesn’t primarily associate that action with spanking, but Mom or Dad with spanking. She doesn’t so much learn not to do something but that you are willing to do something to her.

We’d be best to worry less about what we are trying to impart on our children, and concern ourselves more with what we actually do impart. Often that’s a confusing message about how much we actually care about the people around us and what it means to do good.

What messages do you want to send? 

How might you send the messages you intend?