Apparently, even the little children are not safe from the nefarious plans of President Barak Hussein Obama. That at least seemed to be the message that was being widely broadcast by the ever-vigilant “Obama is a tool of the devil” constituency over the Labor Day weekend.
The president was scheduled to deliver a video address to all public schoolchildren on September 7 and some conservatives flew into a tizzy, sure that he would be indoctrinating our innocent children into the evils of socialism, government-run healthcare, radical environmentalism, and Lord-knows-what-else.
So some schools opted not to show the speech to their students, some parent kept their children home from school rather than have them be subjected to it, and some kids whose schools wouldn’t show the speech stayed home so they could watch it.
That was an awful lot of hand-wringing over an 18 minute pep talk whose message (yes I did read it) can be boiled down into the following statement: Work hard in school if you want to get a good job and make a contribution the future of your country.
I’m nearly certain that if Rush Limbaugh or Newt Gingrich had read basically the same speech to our children there would not have been a peep in protest from the right wing. But I’m sure that in that case the liberals would have protested the same speech just as vehemently as the conservatives did in the run up to the president’s address.
What I can’t understand is why everything has to be so very personal. It seems like every day I get a new hate-o-gram directed at President Obama in my email Inbox. He’s not really an American. He’s a closet Muslim and has secret plans to convert America into an Islamic state. He’s raising a secret, private army (to do what I’m not sure, but it has to be bad.)
The people who send me these emails usually include a short personal message that conveys a sense of barely concealed glee at their newest discovery of the unimpeachable truth of Obama’s evil nature. “See, I told you he was out to ruin this country!” they exult. I always wonder what exactly I’m supposed to do with this information. I think I am supposed to buy a gun, or build a bomb shelter. Or both.
Let me state plainly that I did not vote for President Obama, I don’t approve of most of the things he is doing as president, and I hope that he is out of office after one term. But my lack of support for him stems from the fact that he and I have a basic difference of opinion regarding the proper role of the federal government in terms of its size and scope. I have nothing against him because of his race, his (real or imagined religion) religious preferences, or his personality. If he were to wake up tomorrow determined to embrace the ideals of low taxes and limited government, I wouldn’t have a problem supporting him without reservation.
But I certainly don’t believe he is Evil Incarnate, and I don’t believe it is wise or effective for those of us who oppose his policies to always assume that every move he makes was orchestrated by Lucifer himself. There was nothing wrong with the speech Obama gave to (some of our) nation’s schoolchildren this week, and if he influenced any of them to buckle down and take their studies more seriously this year I say good for him.
Maybe someone needs to give the adults in this country a speech about not assuming the worst about people before they get all their facts straight and how it is possible to disagree with someone without being disagreeable.
It shouldn’t be me, though. Too many people already think that I’m an idiot.
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