Obama speech: a ploy to brainwash schoolchildren?!

Throughout August, I watched in utter stupefaction as grownups, displaying a perverse mix of ignorance and arrogance, turned Town Hall meetings on health care reform into schoolyard rows.

Therefore, I’m not at all surprised that these same grownups have now turned a “back to school speech” by President Obama (scheduled for later today) into an Orwellian ploy to brainwash their kids: supposedly, to make them adopt his socialist ideology and worship his cult of personality.  

Actually, to listen to some of their protestations, you’d think Obama was some notorious pedophile scheming to lecture their children on the pleasures of sodomy.

Meanwhile, these parents seem blissfully ignorant of the fact that shielding their kids from differing (and invariably more informed) points of view will only retard their intellectual development.

But it’s an indication of the woeful state of politics in America today that Obama has reacted to these fulminating idiots as if their inane, if not insane, protests make sense. Specifically, the White House released the president’s speech a day early (i.e., yesterday) so that parents can decide whether it’s appropriate for their children to hear.

Not surprisingly, it emphasizes the very principles of hard work, personal responsibility and civic duty that many of those objecting to the speech purportedly espouse.  Obama even instructs schoolchildren to wash their hands to help the nation combat the looming epidemic of swine flu.

We need every single one of you to develop your talents, skills and intellect so you can help solve our most difficult problems. If you don’t do that – if you quit on school – you’re not just quitting on yourself, you’re quitting on your country….

(From President Obama’s speech to schoolchildren)

Let me hasten to concede, however, that perverting public discourse in this manner is nothing new. In fact, it smacks of patented hypocrisy that liberals are now condemning conservatives for raising partisan objections even though they did the same when President George H. W. Bush scheduled a similar speech in 1991.

Nevertheless, to make it a settled precedent that any president must seek parental approval before he can address schoolchildren is plainly untenable and unsustainable. 

Therefore, instead of following pied pipers (like radio talking head Rush Limbaugh) in stoking partisan rage against any presidential initiative – no matter how salutary, it behooves mainstream leaders from both sides of the political divide to confront and marginalize them.

Of course, this is not to say that I think the president should be a role model – like parents (not celebrities) should be, or a moral leader – like pastors, priests, rabbis and imams should be. 

But frankly, schoolchildren should be taught to listen to the president even when he says things that cause their parents to go berserk.   And this should be the case if only to instill in them a sense of civic pride and due respect for the president – no matter who he or she is.  After all, the person who holds this office is the only animate symbol of national unity.

In any event, if this belligerent and factional trend continues, the US president will become nothing more than a boogeyman for political opportunists. 

Not to mention that it could lead to there being little difference between Republicans and Democrats in America and Sunnis and Shiites in Iraq.

NOTE:  You can read the full text here