President Obama is set to address the nation’s schoolchildren next week, presumably to propagandize them into his evil agenda of turning the country into Communist Russia (pronounced “roo-shuh”) and offing granny to save money on health care just as they do in his native Kenya. There are even instruction manuals to enlist the support of the teachers unions in brainwashing our youth.
Michelle Malkin has a huge exposé on this scandal:
Instead of practicing cursive, reviewing multiplication tables, diagramming sentences, or learning something concrete, America’s kids will be lectured about the importance of learning. And then the schoolchildren, from pre-kindergarten through 12th grade, will be exhorted to Do Something — other than sit in their seats and receive academic instruction, that is.
What is it that something they’re supposed to do? They’re not saying but apparently they want the kids to figure it out for themselves.
The activist tradition of government schools using students as junior lobbyists cannot be ignored. Zealous teacher’s unions have enlisted captive schoolchildren as letter-writers in their campaigns for higher education spending. Out-of-control activists have enlisted their secondary-school charges in pro-illegal immigration protests, gay marriage ceremonies, environmental propaganda stunts, and anti-war events.
And that’s without the cult-inducing powers of a presidential speech!
Stephen Green would keep his son out of public school that day if his son were old enough and he urges you to do the same.
Nope, Obama can’t just say hey to the kiddies and encourage them to do their homework. He has to make this a — what does the Left call it? — a teachable moment. A speech-in, if you will. Teachers have even been given handy instructions on how best to integrate The One into the classroom.
AllahPundit thinks this is overreacting a mite,
One pap-filled 20-minute speech about working hard and serving others is so lethal a threat to tender minds that they have to be yanked off the premises for the day to shield them from it?
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If this turns out to be some hamfisted attempt by The One to pitch his agenda to kids — which would be politically insane given the outcry it would cause, a sneak preview of which may be found here — there’ll be ample time for outrageous outrage later. For all the media fainting spells over Obama’s oratory, you can count on one hand the number of truly memorable lines he’s uttered; I doubt he’s going to come up with such a corker next week that kids will be planning their lives around it. Remember, this is the same guy who can’t sell universal health care, the virtual raison d’etre of the Democratic Party these days, to the Blue Dogs.
Steve retorts:
Yes, the speech itself will almost certainly be harmless. I don’t expect anyone’s kids to be coming home and berating their parents for being against this program or that agenda. I do expect Allah has it quite right, that this speech will be just another Daddy Speech, meant to encourage my son to work hard in school.
But you know what? The President of the United States — whether an Obama a Bush or a Lincoln — is not my son’s daddy. That’s my job. We’ve had enough nannystatism, and enough daddystatism, too.
I actually agree with every word of that. Granted, “stay in school” is such an innocuous message that it’s hard to object to its being presented. But do we really need to add to the already inflated sense of the president of the United States as our national daddy? The man’s in charge of one branch of the federal government; he’s not king.
Still, as Doug Mataconis points out, this is hardly new. Why, Ronald Reagan himself gave such as speech. So did both Presidents Bush. Indeed, Reagan went to far as to answer questions from the kiddies on federal budget priorities and gun control!
MichaelW thinks the whole thing is “creepy” and says it’s different than what Republican presidents have done. For example, Bush 41 was telling kids to stay off drugs. He sees a more nefarious agenda from Obama:
President Obama has already shown that he’s not above using children to advance his political agenda, so it’s not surprising that those opposed to his aims would be a bit skeptical of his speech. Adding to the wariness is the fact that he only seems to make these speeches when he needs help with bolstering his political capital (e.g. the “race speech” after Jeremiah Wright blew up in his face). After the battering his health care insurance reform plans took in August, it almost seems too convenient that he would suddenly want to address all the school kids in the nation, right about when he’s planning to try and save the one program he truly wants to enact.
But Allah’s right on this. Not only is it hard to believe Obama is going to say anything that rises above the level of pabulum but, if he does, the national outrage will make the health care town halls look like love-ins.
I tend to agree with Joanne Jacobs that the whole thing is innocuous, if unlikely to much matter: “I think the president is going to ask kids to work hard in school and teachers will try to get them to pledge to work hard in school and most of them will work just as hard this year as they did last year.”
