Posted on 09/08/2009 9:05:32 AM PDT by k3nn3th
I can't take much more of the people who are completely losing it because Barack Obama wants to make a speech to school children. I just heard someone who sounds like she's hiding in the hills on the radio. She was clearly a bigot, and an especially stupid one at that.
Do the Democrats want to create a society of government-loving, dependent drones? No doubt.
Is Barack Obama a megalomaniac? Look it up and decide for yourself.
For goodness sake, what damage do you think one speech could do? Are your children's minds so empty that they can be warped so easily? What are you teaching them?
Instead of freaking out with "Oh my God he wants to talk to the children!!!," people could use the opportunity to teach kids some important lessons. Imagine simple messages like:
* Son/daughter, do you realize that in when I was a child, black people weren't allowed basic freedoms? Isn't it great to see how much our country has grown? This is what America really stands for. * Son/daughter Barack Obama got to be president because he worked hard. Look at him and understand that, even if you aren't rich or connected, you can achieve great things if you apply yourself. * Son/daughter do you see that Barack Obama's dad left and his mom had to take care of him alone? I know it's tough sometimes but we'll make it just like they made it. * Son/daughter Barack Obama's parents were different races but you can see in him that we're all the same. * Son/daughter, it's important for you to listen to people even if you don't agree with them. You should understand their arguments and be able to offer answers and alternatives.
Don't let a guy with no kids understand more than you do about how to talk to yours. Don't embarrass the conservative cause by freaking out over things that don't matter.
When Bush spoke to students, Democrats investigated, held hearings
and how about this?
My kids are both armed with letters stating that they can opt out of this speech. We will see what happens.
I guess you've missed all the stories about how the Department of Education drafted a bunch of lessons to go along with the speech about how students should ask themselves how they can help Obama's agenda.
Political stuff that doesn't belong in classrooms.
You really owe it to yourself to be fully cognizant of a story before blogging on it, let along bashing concerned conservatives - unless, of course, you're a Charles Johnson wannabee.
Why does any discussion equal “freaking out”?
It is not merely the opportunity to speak to students - but the entirety of the program surrounding the event. The “How can I help Obama” lesson plan, the letters, with associated grading and follow-up.
Or does only the end result count - no matter how much protest goes into ameliorating the intended result to make the end result acceptable?
Another fool missing the point!
Just quibbling on a few points:
Children now in school were born in the 90s. I was born in the 70s. While there was a good deal of racial tension in some areas, blacks were not being denied “basic rights” at that point—they were voting, marrying, working, and gosh, even drinking out of water fountains and riding the bus in the front seats.
And even in the worst days of segregation, many black people carved out very successful lives for themselves and their families, started businesses, started universities, traveled the world, advanced medicine and science. That’s what great about America—even in adversity, people of any color can progress.
Mr Obama got to be rich and powerful, but looking at his history, I can’t see it as a result of hard work and sacrifice. He ingratiated himself with the rich and powerful, and has been willing to toady for them to get where he is. That’s hardly something to admire.
I can think of many other families who sacrifice and endure tough things that I’d rather point to my child as worthy of admiration and emulation.
My kids are beyond thinking about what “color” a person might be. It just doesn’t matter. We’ve always taught that what’s inside a person’s soul is the most important thing. And I certainly hope that my insides are nothing at all the “same” as Mr Obama’s.
The one point on which I can agree is that yes, we need to hear opposing viewpoints so that we can understand and rebut things with which we disagree. That’s why my kids and I will be viewing the speech as an exercise in critical thinking.
WHY WE DON’T WANT HIM TALKING TO OUR KIDS
It’s fairly simple, really.
Tens of millions of American parents don’t trust him. The upset over this morning’s presidential address to schoolchildren isn’t about the partisan divide, it’s about the president’s arrogance.
After seven months of crammed-down-your-throat Obama agenda, half the country has had a bellyful. After seven months of being told that they don’t matter, half the country is returning the sentiment.
They don’t trust him with their children not because they’re paranoid, but because he’s not trustworthy. He has shown himself to be an enemy to their values and beliefs – to be hostile to their families and their country – and they are merely saying, “Stay the hell away from our kids.”
This isn’t about Republicans, this is about Barack Obama. Specifically, it is about a president who steamrolled and marginalized those who didn’t vote for him and who now is astounded that they won’t kiss his royal backside. He wants to be a rock star but nobody’s buying tickets.
Here’s the background.
The Department of Education sent out talking points for teachers, outlines of lesson plans intended to precede and follow a then-unannounced speech by the president to elementary school students. Troublesome in the wording was a suggested assignment that pupils be asked to write down a plan for how they could help President Obama.
That ticked people off.
But that was only part of it.
Because not only didn’t parents want their kids being drafted into the Obama army, they didn’t want this particular socialist politicizing the classroom.
When you’ve got a classroom being run by an NEA member and you’re piping in Barack Hussein Orwell, all of a sudden the home-school people don’t seem so kooky. All of a sudden it seems like an unnecessary lecture intended primarily to indoctrinate the impressionable into the cult of Big Brother.
Parents don’t so much mind the president talking to their children, but seven months have taught the country to expect propaganda, not talk.
Further, about half the country simply doesn’t trust his basic philosophy.
Like the notion that America’s children need a lecture on doing their homework from the head of the federal government.
See, the federal government isn’t in charge of my children’s education – I am. And American children don’t need the president to tell them that education is important – that’s what parents are for.
Every child in every classroom has a parent or guardian who can talk to them about doing their homework and paying attention in school. Every student in every classroom has a teacher or two who can talk to them about working hard and setting goals.
For crying out loud, even Bill Cosby is telling children about the importance of education.
We don’t need the jug-eared Marxist-in-Chief to think that the nanny government has to get in the act. And, no offense intended, but there are a bunch of us who think that “community organizer” is not exactly the role model we want our children following. For a certain portion of America, squealing for a bigger cut of other people’s tax money isn’t particularly noble and it’s not what we want our kids to grow up to do.
Further, we prefer that people who used illegal drugs not hold themselves out as teachers of the young. We are not impressed by the irony that the guy in charge of the military would be barred – by virtue of his teen-aged drug use – from enlisting in the military.
But the bottom line isn’t politics or philosophy – it’s the way he’s treated us. He has treated half the electorate like dirt and has done nothing, through the first eighth of his term, to make friends or earn himself the benefit of the doubt.
Typically, when someone wins an election, he sets out to reassure and woo the folks who didn’t vote for him. Typically, basic decency makes a politician want to show he’s serving all the people.
The Obama Administration and the Democrats who control Congress have had no such disposition. It has been an arrogance unmatched for decades as divergent views have been dismissed and mocked. Half the country feels that the president and the Congress are condescendingly dismissive of them.
He has had seven months to extend an olive branch. He has chosen not to. He has chosen instead to attack people and philosophies different from his. He has chosen to play fast and loose with American tradition and principle. He has practiced scorched-earth politics against the people whose taxes support his grand dreams. He has dismissed anyone who doesn’t agree with him.
And tens of millions of Americans don’t want a person like that talking to their children.
And I’m one of them.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2334480/posts
They were sent to a room to sew a big Star of David on the back on their shirt. You should have armed them with more than a letter...
Quislingism
You are right. It’s the orwellian thing, the antlike society thing, the groupthink thing. When Bush 1 spoke to a class in DC, it was on the news later — not “piped-in” live to a captive audience. And STILL, he was pilloried and investigated for it, by the Left.
This thing today was an attempt to hijack the lives of the entire country for an opportune moment — to get into every household via their children, under the watchful eye of baraq’s lieutenants, the minions of the NEA, perhaps 80% of the teacher corps, willing accomplices of the socialist engineers in the White House.
An unintended consequence which we’ll no doubt hear about later today: class sessions are not all created equal. Many bells for ending class will go off right in the middle of his speech. It’s hard to keep kids in their seats after that bell rings. Should be chaos from coast-to-coast.
Would you ping me with the result?....could be interesting.
Okay. I guess you are the author of this “schoolhouse silliness” thread, and put a stick in for your blog here on Free Republic. The powers that be don’t appreciate that kind of thing.
But all that aside, you do not understand the issue, or you understand it completely and agree with this concept of the President addressing kids in this fashion.
Just curious, how do you feel about the (now) edited exercises that urged kids to write letters about how they could help the President? Do you think that is appropriate?
I was on another thread, and someone made the justifiable command for Obama to “keep away from my kids”.
The problem is, he (by that I mean the government) doesn’t own our kids in the same way the government doesn’t own my house. I own my house, but if I don’t pay my property taxes (government mandate) then I lose my house. The government has behavior it mandates, and then has mechanisms to adhere you to compliance. It is not a far stretch to say that this kind of thing could be government mandated (if you regard the school district as government, then it IS mandated) and if you don’t raise your kids the way the government sees fit, then there could be consequences. In this case, the kid will get penalized somehow because they didn’t watch this statist propaganda.
Then, if we buckle under to this with all of its content (whether that content is good, bad or indifferent) the door is open to whatever the government says must be watched. Once you concede that the government can force your children to be subjected to something as innocuous as “volunteer more”, “do your homework”, “stay in school” and “eat your vegetables”, then the door is open to whatever the statists in power think is appropriate.
And with people like Bill Ayers and others like him who have the ear of Obama, we know damn well that what they think is appropriate will end up in these things. “Social Justice”, “Global Warming” and so on.
Once that camel’s nose is in the tent, then does anyone doubt that there are no limitations on what they will do to radicalize young children? It is, after all, the stated goal of Bill Ayers, who has helped to shape Obama into what he is today.
So...do you agree with Bill Ayers (and by extension Barack Obama) on how to indoctrinate children and radicalize them at a young age?
All things matter. I do not want this mans voice even heard by my children. Kids all over the school since last year have been saying how great Obama is. Where do they hear that crap from? Sorry. Politicians of all stripes don’t need to be talking to my kids period.
Exactly. The problem is not so much with the speech but the lesson plan that had kids write how they would "Help the President".
That part has been taken out (supposedly), but there were other things in the lesson plan.
On the Radio, they were denigrating parents that withheld their kids from Obama's speech. This will make the parents even angrier.
Go Left Mr. O. Go Left Progressives/Liberals. Hard Left, Uncontrollable left until America has to repent.
Well, we called the school and they said to write a note explaining that they will not be attending. Plus, my son cannot sew.
I’ll let you know how things went.
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