President Obama's Speech To Our Children

My first-grade son went to school on Tuesday wearing a regular pair of shorts, a Boston Red Sox shirt (atta boy!), his Sketchers, and a MarioKart backpack. He came home that afternoon in red overalls, this shirt, work boots, and a napsack that kind of looked like this. All he could talk about was revolution and the People (capital P) and something called "marks." Needless to say, his mother and I were very concerned, even outraged, but we weren't sure what was going on.

Then we saw this:



And we read this. And listened to this.

It soon became clear to us that Pres. Obama's speech to our youth was nothing more than Communist Propaganda. We immediately created a petition for our son's teacher, principal, and district superintendent to be fired. We will not allow the President of the United States to speak to our children! We will not allow a sense of patriotism to invade our schools and infect the hearts and minds of our nation's school children! No President is going to instill in my son a love for education and service to America! Fight!

Here are a few of the more overt and outrageous portions of President Obama's speech:

But at the end of the day, we can have the most dedicated teachers, the most supportive parents, the best schools in the world -- and none of it will make a difference, none of it will matter unless all of you fulfill your responsibilities, unless you show up to those schools, unless you pay attention to those teachers, unless you listen to your parents and grandparents and other adults and put in the hard work it takes to succeed. That's what I want to focus on today: the responsibility each of you has for your education.

Now please pick your jaws up off your keyboard. The steady indoctrination of personal responsibility that is a hallmark of communist thought pervades this speech. I imagine it is at this point that all of the backpacks were removed from the little hooks at the back of the room and replaced with new, soviet-style, napsacks.

Maybe you could be a great writer -- maybe even good enough to write a book or articles in a newspaper -- but you might not know it until you write that English paper -- that English class paper that's assigned to you. Maybe you could be an innovator or an inventor -- maybe even good enough to come up with the next iPhone or the new medicine or vaccine -- but you might not know it until you do your project for your science class. Maybe you could be a mayor or a senator or a Supreme Court justice -- but you might not know that until you join student government or the debate team.

Inspiring the youth to explore their potential is a typical socialist ploy meant to destroy their wills. In America we go to underperforming public schools, become crushed by health care costs, and lose our retirements and hope for a better future to greedy corporations. Don't mess my kid up with your fluffy dream talk.

But at the end of the day, the circumstances of your life -- what you look like, where you come from, how much money you have, what you've got going on at home -- none of that is an excuse for neglecting your homework or having a bad attitude in school. That's no excuse for talking back to your teacher, or cutting class, or dropping out of school. There is no excuse for not trying.

What you look like? Where you come from? What is he, racist?

The story of America isn't about people who quit when things got tough. It's about people who kept going, who tried harder, who loved their country too much to do anything less than their best.

What would President Obama know about the story of America? He wasn't even born in America. Plus, he's a Muslim.

So today, I want to ask all of 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 20 or 50 or 100 years say about what all of you did for this country?

Hopefully that future President will say that the contribution my son made was to resist the Obama propaganda machine. I can't believe that they showed this in my son's school. I'm literally sick to my stomach.

So, anyway, today we dressed our son in an American flag with a bald eagle backpack and told him to show that school what patriotism is really all about and refuse to listen to anything the President says, no matter how benign or universally acceptable.

Patriotism v. Nationalism

While a boisterous minority of Americans prepared for and engaged in the Tax Day Tea Party That In No Way Should Be Equated With Or Positively Compared To The Actual Boston Tea Party, according to a recent Gallup poll nearly two-thirds of Americans think the taxes they paid this year are fair. There are more Americans (48%) that think their taxes are about right than Americans that think their taxes are too high (46%). This represents the most positive feelings that Americans have about their taxes since 1956.

Pres. Obama's approval and favorability ratings are holding steady around 60% nationwide. A majority of Americans feel the economy is on the right track. Even in Utah, land of the religious conservative, the latest data (discussed here) show that a majority of Utahns approve of the job Pres. Obama is doing.

So how do we square these generally very positive feelings about the president and taxes with the Tax Day Tea Party That In No Way Should Be Equated With Or Positively Compared To The Actual Boston Tea Party, where so many protesters toted incendiary and offensive posters? (Go ahead and Google Image search Tax Day Tea Pary, or go here. Note: I understand they are the small minority of the protesters, who were in turn a small minority of conservatives, who are in turn a minority of Americans. Disturbing nonetheless).

I think what we are seeing is how thin the line is between patriotism and nationalism. I came across a nice summary of the difference:

The love of country—patriotism—is a very different sentiment from nationalism. A fine book by Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, beautifully distinguishes between nationalist and patriotic sentiments. Nationalism is an aggrandizing, tribalistic sentiment that defines one’s own group as opposed to alien groups, which are seen as potential rivals or enemies to be overcome or excluded. Patriotism, by contrast, implies love of country without necessarily implying hostility to anybody else. American patriotism is built of shared knowledge, attitudes, loyalties, and values, including the values of nonexclusion, toleration, and respect for other religions and cultures. Americans have proved that it is possible to feel patriotic about a cosmopolitan, diverse country, which is loved more for its vital diversity than for its racial or ethnic purity.

More Americans are patriotic than nationalistic, no question. I suppose you get more nationalists on the right, whereas the complaint about the extreme left is that they are internationalists who want to give up American sovereignty. But with all the rhetoric lately about Pres. Obama being a socialist, communist, fascist (the irony), tyrant, anti-American, mixed with the over-the-top language by Glenn Beck and Texas governor Rick Perry about sucession from the Union, I think it is important to step back every once in a while and contemplate the difference between nationalism and patriotism.

In American patriotism we embrace diversity, the political process, peaceful dissent, democracy, the good we see in each other, and ways we can improve. The nationalists embrace homogeny, power, and exclusion. Peaceful tax day protests, or any other peaceful protest, is patriotic. Mean-spiritedness and fear-mongering (from both sides, things were regularly said about Pres. Bush that were not patriotic) have no place. Criticizing our leaders is patriotic, vitriol is not.

We are absolutely not in danger of becoming socialist, communist, lead by a dictator, or any of the other silly things we are hearing from the extreme right. Americans employed the democratic process and elected a government that most closely aligned with the views of the majority. In time, as is always the case, conservatives will find a voice that appeals to the majority and come back into power. We are constantly searching for an equilibrium and never finding it, which is perfectly healthy. But seriously, enough with the sensationalism (synomym: nationalism).