RoR: Forum

Is this still going on? I read an article that was a little unclear. Are they pulling the plug or "changing direction"?

Post 1

Friday, September 4, 2009 - 5:00pm

The mere fact that he is addressing children directly, while they are in school, is what is objectionable. The content and the lesson plan are irrelevant. The president is quite free to say what he likes during a prime-time news conference. This going through the school is based on the collectivist premise that kids belong to the state. This is a way to bypass parents and go to kids who are not of the age of consent.

Obama's daytime sermon to children is far worse than an establishment of religion - which it is. It is child abuse. It is statutory rape.

This is the worst thing Obama has done so far.

Post 2

Friday, September 4, 2009 - 5:35pm

I read a nasty little article today:

Friday's Washington Post notes that when George H.W. Bush � that's Poppy to you � gave a nationally televised school speech on the same dull topics in 1991, Democrats in Congress groused, too, though there was no mention of parent protests or boycotts.

Post 3

Friday, September 4, 2009 - 8:08pm

Teresa,
From your link:

"I don't want our schools turned over to some socialist movement."

Yeah, like that didn't happen about three generations ago.

Post 4

Friday, September 4, 2009 - 8:47pm

When I went to school it was just as public or socialist then as it is now. We had eight periods a day, one of which was lunch. There was sex-ed in high school and in sixth grade the girls got a special talking to, from which you could opt out. But in order to watch TV broadcasts and off-air movies, including Zeferelli's Romeo and Juliet you had to have a signed permission slip. There was no class or school period called "messages from the commander in chief." Our daily curriculum was not interrupted at the whim of any politician.

To conflate as "socialism" the fact that schools are government funded through local boards with the notion that the commander in chief has a right to address the students directly in the form of a sermon is facetious in the utmost and just plays into the hands of the statists. I realize some people are being ironic. But we can't refuse to fight this increment now because they didn't fight that increment then.

Post 5

Saturday, September 5, 2009 - 1:57pm

This wouldn't be significantly different than the socialist indoctrination public schoolkids get in government schools on any other days -- or in a lot of private schools, for that matter.

I plan to talk with those of my kids who are subjected to this crap, give them my perspective (at least one of them has the speech being given on yet another paid teacher's non-classroom day that the teacher's union has "negotiated" with the state.)

Post 6

Saturday, September 5, 2009 - 2:49pm

Oh, please. You see no difference in kind between a party politician (who has no knowledge to convey, and no educational credentials) interrupting a child's educational day and a child reading from a text which might be written by a Marxist but which at least you can yourself read for content when he brings it home at night? Why not allow Billy Graham to address them then, since they do say "Under God" in the pledge? No biggie. Why not have Bill Clinton talk to them about sex? Why not have some random raincoat-wearing pervert of the street address them? Surely the raincoat wearing pervert is as relevant to their real life experience as the president.

"Yeah, I'm not worried about the statutory rape of my children planned for next Tuesday, I plan to have a trauma counseling sitdown session with them afterwards."

Sometimes actions are more effective than words.

Keep your children home on tuesday.

Post 7

Monday, September 7, 2009 - 6:55pm

from Dr. Helen - commenting on the speech to be given [as onlined] -
.................
I was just reading over Obama's speech to be given to students tomorrow and started thinking about this passage:

So today, I want to ask you, what�s your contribution going to be? What problems are you going to solve? What discoveries will you make? What will a president who comes here in twenty or fifty or one hundred years say about what all of you did for this country?

This speech made me think back to a much quoted passage of Kennedy's inaugural address,"Ask not what your country can do for you--ask what you can do for your country." My question is "Why?"

I would rather think that the words of Milton Friedman from his book Capitalism and Freedom make more sense:

"The paternalistic 'what your country can do for you' implies that government is the patron, the citizen the ward, a view that is at odds with the free man's belief in his own responsibility for his own destiny. The organismic, 'what you can do for your country' implies that government is the master or the deity, the citizen, the servant or the votary. To the free man, the country is the collection of individuals who compose it, not something over and above them. He is proud of a common heritage and loyal to common traditions. But he regards government as a means, an instrumentality, neither a grantor of favors, and gifts, nor a master or god to be blindly worshipped and served.

Government should be about helping us to protect our freedoms, not making us into wards who are to protect and serve our government. Obama's remarks don't make note of this. Maybe there is more to life than what future presidents think of us.

posted by Helen at 3:33 PM

[this is the speech]
http://www.whitehouse.gov/MediaResources/PreparedSchoolRemarks/

and another interesting commenting by Ann
Althouse -

http://althouse.blogspot.com/2009/09/obamas-speech-to-kids-is-nearly-10x-as.html
(Edited by robert malcom on 9/07, 8:37pm)

Post 8

Thursday, September 24, 2009 - 3:41pm

You know, I thought that Ted's comments here were a little over the top, but today I read this.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/09/24/elementary-school-students-reportedly-taught-songs-praising-president-obama/

Replacing "Jesus" with BO was a particularly chilling.

I find myself in a pretty new situation. Not sure what to do when I'm apparently not paranoid ENOUGH.

Post 9

Thursday, September 24, 2009 - 4:51pm

Thursday, September 24, 2009 - 6:25pm

Yeah, Ryan, I really identified with your statement: "Not sure what to do when I'm apparently not paranoid ENOUGH."

I've never been in the position before of feeling like I needed to say, "Look, I'm not someone who buys into conspiracy theories, but..."

Post 11

Thursday, September 24, 2009 - 9:30pm