Obama Punks the Rightwing

With the way some conservative bloggers were carrying on, you would have thought that Obama's speech to kids on their first day of class was an injunction to quit school and start cutting sugar cane for Fidel and the revolution. It is especially annoying that parents are pulling their kids out of school on that day lest their little one's eas burn with talk of socialism.

It is a perversion of education to permit your children to flee from words or ideas that might hurt their lila feeweeings. ;^) And, lacking such critical thinking life skills, such children become prime candidates for cults and bad behavorial choices, such as drugs and premarital pregnancy. Alas, my opinion is a minority opinion even in my family. I asked my two boys (one in middle school and the other in high school), if they would walk out of their social studies class if someone from the KKK was invited to give a rant. They both said yes-- the wrong answer in my opinion. Of course, in the case of Obama, it's 20 minutes of study hard, don't drop out, aim high platitudes. Big deal.

Here are the last two paragraphs of Obama's speech.

"Your families, your teachers, and I are doing everything we can to make sure you have the education you need to answer these questions. I’m working hard to fix up your classrooms and get you the books, equipment and computers you need to learn. But you’ve got to do your part too. So I expect you to get serious this year. I expect you to put your best effort into everything you do. I expect great things from each of you. So don’t let us down – don’t let your family or your country or yourself down. Make us all proud. I know you can do it.

"Thank you, God bless you, and God bless America."

Liberal indoctrination? I surely hope so. As far as forcing our children to listen as if they were passive sponges, scarcely. As I tell my kids, question everything, but raise your hand.

I think the White House has punked the right-wing. At one time, conservatives stood for something, including a tradition of free speech, rigorous thought and discourse, and the disciplined search for for what is the truth. Now you have sound bites and wedge issues, viral e-mails and FoxNation. It is now the conservatives, not the liberals, who are the rioters and the shouters and the gun-slingers. They are not the vital center, the silent majority of America. Once upon a time, you had Milton Friedman and Ayn Rand and William F. Buckley and Friedrick von Hayek. Now you have Coulter, Palin, Hannity and all the other know-nothings-- the very flower of the paleo-conservative moment. This episode should show beyond any doubt how intellectually bankrupt the conservative movement has become.