Apparently there’s a big controversy about President Obama’s plan to give a speech targeted at school kids. I’ve done some reading about it and I really just don’t understand. What’s the problem with an elected official targeting a speech about staying in school to school age kids?
Now, I do understand the argument about a parents right to educate their children and to decide what they are exposed to. I get that. I really really do. But what I don’t get is why this particularly is a big deal. Kids hear the stay in school message from assorted officials, celebrities, and other authority figures all the time. It seems to me that hearing that message from the president would be a good thing.
I also don’t understand the argument that the President is going to be brainwashing children into becoming communist (or at the least socialist) drones with this speech. How is that even an argument? When other Presidents’ gave speeches to the nation and/or school children you didn’t hear a big to-do from the liberal communists (or socialists) that their children were being brainwashed into becoming human-and-constitutional-rights-violating conservatives.
I guess the point of this post is that I think this is possibly the dumbest controversy I’ve ever been made aware of. That’s not to say that I think the afore-mentioned rights of parents in regards to their children are not important. I just think it shouldn’t be an issue. If you don’t want your kid to hear the speech, don’t let them go to school that day or ask that they be excused from class at that time. Just don’t make such a big deal about it. What I’m actually saying is that this is not that kind of situation. This situation is a very clear situation of a President giving the very important message of staying in school and parents, well conservatives in general really, getting upset because they don’t agree with the President’s politics (which are not going to be part of the speech).
In the years of Bush (the younger Bush), all of those of us who didn’t agree with his politics, his tactics, his wars, his hair, his dog, his family, or anything else remotely related to the American government, were told that we were unpatriotic. So apparently patriotism is to not disagree openly with anything your leaders do and to not publicly criticize anything American. Al this brings me to my final question:
Where’s your patriotism now?
Falling in Dead Level 
I think several factors are at play. First, not all parents are protesting. Rather, those that are protesting/removing their kids are doing so very vocally.Second, the 'tea parties' are being conducted by a relatively small number of Americans who are very vocal.Third, the Lexington Herald-Leader just reviewed a poll that found that over 40% of Kentuckians do not believe that President Obama was born in the United States, i.e., they do not recognize that Obama can legally be the President.I'm not drawing a conclusion or connection between these facts. As the Fox "News" Network says, "We report; you decide."[Signed as anonymous, but you know who posted it…]
Actually I don't know who this is… I suspect, but I don't know.Do you really think I meant ALL parents? 'Cause the use of the term "parents" was supposed to be a generally inclusive term for those parents who were actually upset about it. As for point number three… let's not even get me started about both the logical and legal fallacy of this belief. It's really annoying that people who think that would search the ends of the earth for an "official" birth certificate, but won't search the USC to see all the ways that a person can be a "natural born" US citizen (a definition section that was added several decades ago, btw). Anyway… I think we can agree this is an absolutely ridiculous point of contention among Americans right now.