Camp Is Not the Place for Extremist Views

The article on “Camp Conspiracy” (July 25) makes me wonder if Rush Limbaugh was ever an attendee.

At first I was amused. Then infuriated to find out what they do to these children. They take them to the mountains and inundate them with articles that support their positions of hate. When they said they were Christians, I could not imagine a more clear example of wolves in sheep’s clothing.

I feel sorry for the children because now they will live in fear. I truly doubt that any of those children would ever have to worry about a night raid by the LAPD.

Further, I wonder if they know how much good the United Nations has done in promoting peace. I guess, after 50 years, we have forgotten the significance of the organization and what it means to participate in two world wars within 24 years.

DANIEL J. KOLHOFF

Los Angeles

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The Birch program offers a bevy of recreational activities, lectures on international conspiracies, all in an ultra-nationalistic setting.

This brings to mind another right wing organization’s use of youth programs to inculcate their extremist views into the minds of the young. This other group also used physical education and appeals to patriotism. They also warned against global Marxist conspiracies, while calling themselves the only hope for the future. This group was the National Socialist Party. Its youth program was the Hitler Youth.

Just an observation, but there is something wrong with using summer camp to indoctrinate teenagers with political ideologies.

TOMAS RUBALCAVA

Los Angeles

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The John Birch Society may be beginning to scratch the surface on the issues of privacy and right to information as opposed to “disinformation,” but this summer camp is based on nothing less than a conspiracy itself--a summer getaway reserved for privileged youth who learn from paranoid control maniacs that mass transportation is the common enemy.

Have any of these kids ever been forced to rely on public transportation in their entire lives? This is manipulation and paranoia at its worst.

ABIGAIL CLAIN

Philadelphia, PA.

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I suggest that those who wish to proselytize youth should be careful of facts. Instructor Orlean Koehle is quoted as claiming that “extinction isn’t necessarily bad” because “dinosaurs became oil deposits.”

Not so. Oil deposits begin as an accumulation of the tiny bodies of one-celled marine plankton. Moreover, it obviously does not require the extinction of any species to form fossil deposits, only the death and preservation of individuals.

MARTHA SCHWARTZ

San Pedro