Posted on 04/01/2017 7:26:14 PM PDT by EinNYC
Is President Trump a fascist?
I think that's a bit of a stretch, myself. But I've also heard some compelling arguments linking Trump's attacks on immigrants and judges to the rhetoric used by fascists, including Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini.
I also think that our schoolchildren should hear these arguments, so they can judge the matter for themselves. And that's what makes me different from many people around the country, who simply don't trust our teachers enough to let them debate Donald Trump in their classrooms.
Consider Saratoga Springs, New York, where a teacher recently conducted a lesson in his 10th-grade history class comparing Trump to fascists. The lesson featured a cartoon depicting Trump as "Mussolini with hair" and also a list of the "early warnings signs of fascism," including "obsession with national security" and "rampant sexism."
That caught the attention of two mothers in "Conservative Chicks," a local political group, who went on Fox and Friends last month to condemn the lesson. Then the whole episode went crazy viral on right-wing websites, which tagged it as yet another example of liberal teachers pressing their anti-Trump agenda on young minds.
Significantly, though, none of the critics offered any evidence that the teacher in question had actually done that. Instead, the teacher's own question — is Trump a fascist? — was taken as a sign of indoctrination, in and of itself.
"To equate our president with the most abhorrent men in history past is not right," one angry parent told the Saratoga Springs school board, at a boisterous meeting last Thursday. "It's not good, and most of all, it's not true."
But as school officials confirmed, the teacher did not "equate" Trump with fascists; rather, he inquired whether Trump is a fascist. To the conservative spin machine, of course, that's one and the same. Why would you even ask the question, unless you're trying to sway kids against the President?
To be sure, some teachers have sought to do precisely that. Last February, for example, Staten Island middle school teacher Adria Zawatsky gave out a fill-in-the-blank homework exercise to help students learn new vocabulary words. "President Trump speaks in a very superior and _____ manner insulting many people," one question said. "He needs to be more _____ so that the American people respect and admire him."
The correct answers were "haughty" and "humble." But there was nothing humble about Zawatsky, who haughtily defended the question when a parent denounced it.
"I do not believe I was expressing a political view at all on my vocabulary sheet," Zawatsky told the parent. "My reference to President Trump was about his personality traits rather than his ability as a president."
Please. For as long as we have elected presidents, we have debated their personalities. When it comes to politics, the personal is political.
And it's all over the airwaves, as Zawatsky also noted in her email to the complaining parent. "The media is nonstop on very similar references," she wrote. "This is considered freedom of speech and I feel I have the same right as they do."
Actually, she doesn't. Part of being a professional is limiting your own speech, in accord with the best interests of the people in your charge. A good physician doesn't discuss her patient's health problems on a crowded bus; a good lawyer won't divulge her client's strategy to the opposing counsel.
And a good teacher won't flame about politics like our rough-and-tumble national media, where talking heads shout past each other in a 24-hour circus of ridicule and invective. Our teachers need to model a different — and better — kind of civic exchange: informed, tolerant, and mutually respectful.
That doesn't mean they have to remain completely neutral, as some school critics have argued. Teachers are political beings, too, and there may be circumstances where it's appropriate for them to reveal an opinion. But they also have to make it clear that their students aren't required to agree with them. Otherwise, they're not educators anymore; they're propagandists.
And every time a teacher propagandizes her students, she makes it harder for other teachers to educate them. As we saw in Saratoga Springs, many citizens simply don't trust teachers to know the difference between instruction and indoctrination. By asking whether President Trump was a fascist, one citizen told the school board, its teacher had expressed "total disrespect for the highest office in this country."
No, he didn't. He instead reflected the highest values of our democracy, which requires citizens who possess the knowledge and skill to debate complicated questions. Teachers are the public servants who are charged with cultivating an informed public. The question is whether the rest of us will let them do it.
I have personally seen posters in classrooms expressing admiration for Odungo, Che Guevara, Nelson Mandela, various radical black causes, etc. I am not prepared to accept that their presence in a classroom of naive and vulnerable minds is not indoctrination.
It is obvious that the uber liberal NYC Bored of Ed condones students being indoctrinated as dumbocrat voters by these practices, and I see other cities doing the same. Unless students have alternative news sources and the initiative to look them up (which I doubt the vast majority of them do), we will see true democracy fade away, replaced by the ready-to-consume "facts" the media we know to be total liars offers.
Hitler was a socialist, like Bernie. Mussolini was a socialist, fascism was his rebranding of it.
Obama was a not-so-closet communist but teachers should be free to ask that question.
Just like where Obama may not be a mooselimb yet all those teachers had the freedom to ask and asked the student the question ?
oh wait....
Did these same teachers demand to ask their pupil victims if Obama was an Islamist?
Let’s just play the game...
If a teacher said Obama was a socialist or his birth certificate was fake this reporter would have taken the exact same stance?
They need to stop elevating Hitler to the top of their exalted meme list.
Hitler was a piker. A murderer to be sure but, he ain’t Jack Spit compared to Mao.
In fact, I bet when Hitler and Mao met in Hell Mao told him Hitler he wasn’t all that....by comparison...
For eight years I loathed the miserable excuse for a president that we were stuck with, but I kept my opinions to myself - except for social media. I said nothing in the workplace one way or the other.
I expect “teachers” (term used in the loosest fashion) to do the same - or GTFO of the classroom.
“Let’s just play the game...
If a teacher said Obama was a socialist or his birth certificate was fake this reporter would have taken the exact same stance?”
________________________________________________________
I’m a teacher and I work with other Leftist teachers who flip out when people question/condemn Obama or leftist-politics. It is a ridiculous double standard.
Yes, I get so tired of hearing ignorant people label Hitler as a fascist. Mussolini was a fascist though. While they share similarities there are also differences. Both are offshoots of communism as that is where they both took what they liked of communism and added their own variations to it.
It’s funny aint it.
The thumb-suckers playing this game don’t even know what fascism is.
Did this same teacher ever ask this same question about President Obama while he was in office?
There's your difference.
What a joke. The RATS always start with a false premise, set the debate and control the argument as a result, forcing and expecting you to answer a false premise, a lie, “Trump may not be a fascist.” That is all you need to know. How about “the writer is a liar and a communist.” Answer that line. Never give in to their accusations, just flip it back and force them to answer and substantiate their lies.
Remember! Nearly every teacher in this nation was trained by godless Marxists in Marxist-run colleges and universities. This is true for both private and government schools from Pre-K through to university level graduate school.
Scary!
While ( obviously) not all teachers are Marxists their training will leak through into the classroom, curriculum, textbooks, and school policies.
In my opinion, this is freedom's MOST serious threat. We will not lose freedom due to military attack. No. No. Instead, freedom will be lost in the voting booth.
Sadly, I see little concern and even less action on the part of conservatives.
You’re correct.
My earliest political memory that occurred at school was in 1952’s Presidential Race between General Eisenhower and Adlai Stevenson.
While standing in line, I was singing the little ditty I had memorized from some older kids on my block:
“Whistle while you work, ‘cause Stevenson’s a jerk,
Eisenhower has the power, so whistle while you work.”
A girl in line, (Bonnie Jean Brown) turned around to tell me that Stevenson was not a jerk, that her parents were voting for him.
I told her that anyone not voting for General Eisenhower was a Communist.
Our Kindergarten teacher stepped-in to stop the fight and asked me how I knew about Communists. I replied, “they’re democrats.”
I maintain, I was right then and I’m still right today.
Yeah indoctrination.
My 1968 Webster, Second College Edition dictionary says,
Fascism - "a system of government by rigid one-party dictatorship, forcible suppression of opposition, private economic enterprise under centralized government control, ..."
Sure looks like these liberals and leftist teachers are the fascists pushing for the country to go there, not Trump.
Just imagine a Conservative Teacher (there are still some out there I’ve been told) asking their Students if Obama is a Fascist.
How about mentioning that then Illinois State Senator Obama Voted against a Bill that would require Life Saving Measures to save a Child (not a Fetus BTW) who survived an Abortion.
You know, just a question and a point of historical reference. I’m sure the Liberals wouldn’t have a problem.
Many definitions of Fascism involve collaboration among govt, big busi ess and finance, efucational institutions and organizations and even worker unions. All of which work at the behest of a central powerful govt to control people’s lives in a manner desired nt the govt. Using that definition a tea her could well ask, is Obama a fascist. Think how that would have gone over.
Is Hillary Clinton a witch?
I think that our schoolchildren should hear these arguments, so they can judge the matter for themselves.
Is Barack Obama an America-hating, Communist-sympathizing, Muslim supremacist?
I think that our schoolchildren should hear these arguments, so they can judge the matter for themselves.
Is Jonathan Zimmerman a leftist troll and a crypto-pedophile pretending to be an enlightened observer commenting on topics of public interest?
I think that our schoolchildren should hear these arguments, so they can judge the matter for themselves.
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