Pro-life teachers angered by march

Washington Times ^ | 4/19/04 | George Archibald

[kattracks]

Thousands of pro-life teachers and school staff required to belong to the National Education Association across the country are offended by the union's co-sponsorship of a pro-choice march in Washington this Sunday.

The NEA headquarters on 16th Street NW near the White House will act as a hospitality center for the March for Freedom of Choice while the union's nearby state affiliates in New Jersey and elsewhere are organizing buses to bring demonstrators for the event.

[nickcarraway]

BUMP

[nickcarraway]

BUMP

[taxesareforever]

An "interdenominational" prayer breakfast on the Mall to precede the march is "a direct challenge to the religious right and its claims to speak for communities of faith," the organization said in a statement.

I wonder to whom their prayers will be directed. Definitely not to the God of love who loves the little children. Maybe it is Eros to whom they will be addressing their prayers.

[Tredge]

This is a good thread. "Every organization — association, political party and church — has significant numbers of members who do not agree with every policy item," NEA spokesman Michael Pons said. "That is the greatness of an open, democratic organization such as ours."

That is a red herring. It is the most popular one the left uses when an organization they run exceeds its brief. Another:

"Dissent is not unamerican."

In neither case are they wrong. Organizations experience dissatisfaction with their membership, and dissent is not unamerican.

Do you still have a sour taste in your mouth, even after these logical and true statements to explain the problem? I've been thinking there is a switch inside each human being's head that is tripped when a person hears horsesh**. It's the iron-clad horsesh** detector and we all have one. It goes off when some intellectual zigs when people expect a zag. We'll take the zig but the detector follows the zag. So we'll follow what they're saying but in the back of our minds is the sensation that we've just been duped.

1) "Every organization experiences disagreement." That has nothing to do with the reason behind the complaint. It does not explain anything away. It does not excuse politicizing the NEA. It does not excuse any of the myriad other political programs the NEA has undertaken since it was founded. And it does not have anything to do with the reason people have a problem with what the NEA has just done. My horsesh** detector started shaking when I got to "That is the greatness of an open, democratic organization such as ours." Consider it old experience, but people who would do what the NEA leaders did in the original article, and then paraphrase American founders... it burns out capillaries in my brain.

2) "Dissent is not unamerican." Dissent is not the point of the reaction against the act, it's the material of that dissent. To stand up on a corner and shout your beliefs - that is not unamerican, but that is also just a person on a corner shouting their beliefs. We don't know what he/she thinks from the example, but on the face of it there isn't anything wrong with that action. When people excoriate them for the content of their speech they say, "I'm dissenting, I have the right." They have the right, but they take it a step further and try to tell people they have the right to be correct. They have the idea that dissent is agreement and will coerce it with bad logic. The rest think of us think that is horsesh**, but maybe we don't know exactly why it's horsesh**.

I watched John Kerry on the Dick Cavett show recently as he debated John O'Neill about American armed forces in Vietnam. Kerry was eloquent and composed, much more than he is now while campaigning. He also used one red herring after another, while John O'Neill was direct (but perhaps a little beligerent). I admit being impressed with Kerry, probably because I've watched him closely during the campaign and saw how bad he's done. I thought if he could recover the composure he had during his anti-Vietnam days he would make some real headway. He would lose in the end of course, but at least it would be a little sporting.

(Footnote: I am not a lawyer. I'm just a conservative living in San Francisco. I do not agree that conservatives should leave here because the place doesn't agree with the way we think. Consider me a one-man sleeper cell).

[Cincinatus' Wife]

*** Mrs. Bruns, a board member of Teachers Saving Children, called the NEA's support for the pro-choice march "senseless."

"If the NEA is truly for 'choice,' we hope our union will be consistent and extend its hospitality and support to teachers who choose to participate in
the annual Jan. 22 March for Life in Washington," she said.

The NEA does not sponsor the March for Life and it does not offer the pro-life march corporate support.***


Bump!

[livius]

Surely you understand that freedom of speech, association and all the rest apply only to the left.

Anybody else is an un-American fascist and has no rights.

[Huber]

Is it possible to get a petition drive going among Christian schoolteacherts to ask the NEA to sponsor the March for Life?

[Cincinatus' Wife]

That would be nice. I wonder how many there are and if they're willing to buck the public education mafia.

[Skooz]

Maybe it is Eros to whom they will be addressing their prayers.

My guess is Molech, but you could be right.

Nauseating.

[Aquinasfan]

The march is being organized by the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, the American Civil Liberties Union, National Organization for Women, NARAL Pro-Choice America and other liberal and feminist groups.

And the NEA. This reads like the list of non-profits from hell.

[Aquinasfan]

Maybe it is Eros to whom they will be addressing their prayers.

My money's on "Gaia."

[GodBlessRonaldReagan]

I haven't costed out the water

Not only is the NEA in favor of killing babies, it's killing the English language too.

[Elsie]

Thousands of pro-life teachers and school staff required ? to belong to the National Education Association across the country are offended by the union's co-sponsorship of a pro-choice march in Washington this Sunday.

Required???

Just say

NO!!!

[BibChr]

"We're supposed to be for children, and they say it's OK to eliminate our very clientele. That's hard to understand."

BUMP

[Skooz]

My wife has been a teacher for 13 years, about half of that time in public schools. In some schools, the pressure to join the NEA is tremendous. Most of the teachers are little more than wind-up droids who spout whatever the NEA tells them to think and they despise anyone who would dare not tow the NEA line.

One particularly venomous automaton who found out that my wife had joined an alternative, Christian teachers union, spit out that no teacher should be allowed to work anywhere unless they join the the NEA.

[Il Duce]

Abortion "is a political issue and not an educational issue," said NEA member Connie Bancroft, a middle-school teacher for handicapped children in Mahoning County, Ohio, who opposes NEA's sponsorship of the march. Miss Bancroft is executive director of Teachers Saving Children, a national group of 3,300 pro-life educators

So was anyone else amused by this? Funniest thing I've read today--and even though it's only 10 o'clock, it might be hard to top.

[Skooz]

Maybe you could point out the humor for the rest of the class.

[Dataman]

The 1984 double-speak shoud be obvious to all:

The NEA is against education,
Pro Choice stands against choice, and
Unions are fractured.

[freemama]

In my state, if you choose not to join the NEA you still have to pay what they call fair share dues. They say it is for contract negotiation. It is the same amount of money as union dues. But if you join the union, you get union legal converage, and in these days of students and parents throwing around the threat of a law suit so quickly, thats quite valuable. Union teachers also have the option of submitting for refund of the portion of their dues used for PAC activities.