Children’s Chorus excerpted from the motion picture adaptation of George Orwell’s “1984.”

Is Barack Obama the incarnation of Big Brother or does he fancy himself as a dictator or a divine right monarch? Perhaps he would prefer to be “President for Life” like Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe.

I was frightened and disturbed by the familiarity of the children’s campaign video that is circulating on the Internet. The exploitation of children for political purposes is nothing new, but Obama supporters have taken it to a sickening new low. If any other candidate or his supporters had staged a similar event, Obama’s leftist friends would report those responsible to the Department of Children and Family Services.

Watching the preschool students in the music video praising their leader is something that one might expect to see in a totalitarian state. Throughout the campaign, Obama has been accused of conducting events that look like a cross between a religious revival tent meeting and a Bund rally by others, but now I am beginning to believe it. There is something fundamentally dishonest and sinister about this campaign and something particularly thuggish about the methods that it is prepared to utilize to achieve its ends.

“Truth squads” are being organized to threaten Obama critics in Missouri. Despite Obama’s expertise as an adjunct constitutional law lecturer, he is prepared to suspend the First Amendment to muzzle his foes. Throughout the campaign, the Obama team has repeatedly threatened to subject its critics to legal prosecution and to report broadcasters to regulatory agencies that control their licenses.

In the Thirties, Erich Maria Remarque’s epic novel, “All Quiet on the Western Front” was adapted into an award winning motion picture by director Lewis Milestone. The scenes depicting the brutality of trench warfare were so authentic that for many years afterwards when historical documentaries were being assembled and genuine camera footage of the First World War could not be located segments from “All Quiet on the Western Front” were routinely substituted. Few, if any, viewers noticed the difference. The film had a strong antiwar and pacifist message that did not appeal to members of the National Socialist Party. When the film was exhibited in Weimar Germany, Brown Shirts disrupted the showings by vandalizing movie theaters and setting off smoke and stink bombs in the auditoriums.

Locally, the Obama campaign has used similar radical bully tactics to silence its critics and those with opposing viewpoints. For more than three decades Milt Rosenberg’s nightly radio program “Extension 720” has been a cultural and intellectual treasure. The program has addressed numerous topics and has never shied from away from discussing politics and contemporary affairs. Recently, the program attempted to conduct discussions with Stanley Kurtz and David Fredosso on separate nights. Kurtz has been researching Obama’s ties to William Ayers, the unrepentant Weatherman terrorist who paired up with Obama on the Annenberg Challenge project. Fredosso has written a controversial book, “The Case Against Barack Obama.”

Rather than engaging in an exchange of ideas, the Obama campaign refused to send representatives to participate in the radio panel discussion and actively solicited support from its followers to disrupt the telephone call in portion of the program. Instead of debating the facts, the Obama team chose to slander and libel its critics. The mean spirited attacks were coordinated by the campaign that circulated talking points and e-mails calling for Obama supporters to protest the program and to try to interrupt the broadcast call in segments. They even went so far as to launch ad hominem attacks against Professor Rosenberg. Rosenberg is, of course, a long term member of the University of Chicago faculty. Obama was an adjunct instructor at the same university, but that did not prevent his surrogates from maligning a university colleague.

Team Obama has even designated speakers to conduct outreach programs intended to deflect criticisms and concerns being raised about his candidacy in the Jewish community. In order to calm fears regarding Obama’s religious affiliation, some of the speakers have resorted to lying by describing Obama as a “life long Christian.” This can hardly be reassuring to supporters of Israel who find fault with Obama’s elastic rhetoric on Middle East policy.

If you believe this, Barry Soetoro (the name that Obama formerly used while residing in Jakarta) was never registered to attend school as a Muslim student while living with his mother and stepfather in Indonesia nor did he accompany his stepfather to prayer services at a local mosque. None of his biological father’s relatives are Muslims either. Obama’s mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, who has been variously described as an atheist, an agnostic or a secular humanist. Now, she is a simple Kansas farm girl and the second coming of Dorothy from “The Wizard of Oz.”

According to the Brothers Grimm, the Pied Piper caused the children of Hamelin to follow him away from their village. The children disappeared and were never seen again.