"A Double Standard, To Say The Least..."

I took the time to read the speech given yesterday at noon by President Obama broadcast to the school children of America. I gave it an "A." It was well prepared and well presented. Based on the innocuous theme of the speech, I could have written and delivered that same speech with the same equally anticipated results. In other words, had the White House and the Department of Education restricted themselves initially to merely occupy the bully pulpit of the presidency for the admirable purpose of inspiring our nation's primary and secondary students to strive to obtain the best for themselves from our free educational system, the hubbub that preceded the speech could have been avoided. Where they ran afoul of public opinion was their thinly veiled attempt to utilize the speech as a means to ingratiate the impressionable minds of our youngsters into becoming cheerleaders for President Obama in particular and not the office of the presidency in general.

In other less contentious times, it would be laudable that the Department of Education would wish to assist our nation's school teacher's by offering a themed lesson plan in conjunction with the President's speech in order to make the experience truly a "teachable moment." However, these are contentious times and the mood of the public is one of vocalized distrust and wariness of the executive and congressional branches of our government. When we adults are being bombarded by ceaseless attempts to overly regulate our lives by our government leaders with little if any viable counter intuitive input on our part, we remain on our collective guard to filter very closely every utterance emanating from Washington with a heaping table spoon of salt. The last thing a skeptical public wants to occur is to have the elected leader of these institutions the opportunity to spoon feed our children with unfiltered biased and self-serving propaganda. Perhaps the pro-offered lesson plan would have been benign in content. But even if one chooses to grade on a curve, with the President's and Congress's approval ratings dropping precipitously below fifty percent, on any one's scale these are failing marks. Therefore, is it no wonder that the parent's of America's school children were literally up in arms to permit President Obama to have unfettered access to the minds of our children?

I applaud the President for making the valid and much needed point that each child has a personal responsibility for the degree of learning each derives form their educational experience, emphasizing that success shall only come if the child exercises a determination to become self-reliant and actualized in setting realistic and obtainable goals for their lives. I couldn't agree more. Sad and telling, however, is the fact that the same standard is not equally applied to how our Federal government views our nation's population as a whole; choosing to legislate allocations of trillions of dollars in tax money to be underwritten by the productive members of our nation who do support such self-reliant standards in order to provide a fee ride to those individuals who do not. To say the least, there is a disconnect between what the President embraced in his school house speech yesterday and what he no doubt will likely advocate in his national health care speech before a joint session of Congress this evening.

Wouldn't it be nice if, like the many school districts that granted an excused absence to students who chose to opt out of viewing the President's school house speech yesterday, we too could obtain an excused absence to opt out of the President's speech tonight? The difference is that if we don't pay close attention to what the President says tonight and what Congress may legislate in the days to come, we could all end up in the dog house. Be, therefore, vigilant, dear hearts. The future of our country depends on it.