Does The President Deserve To Speak To Schoolkids?

So, after getting their hands slapped for what appeared to be an attempt to politicize the classroom, Democrats have gone on the offensive, portraying those who protested President Obama's speech to our schoolchildren in exactly the same way that they did the Town Hall protestors over President Obama's socialized Health Care plan: as radical right wingers unhinged from reality. That would resonate if it was true, but it clearly is not.

Consider first the presumption of Obama's apologists about the speech itself. Why does any representative of the Federal government, much less the President, feel they have the right to lecture schoolchildren on anything? What part of "Independent School District" do they not understand? If you're a fan of centralized government (most Democrats), it fits right in with your worldview, but if you're a fan of limited government and wary of the further entrenchment of centralized government (most Republicans), it's downright offensive.

Democrats have made a big deal about the fact the George HW Bush and Ronald Reagan also addressed the nation's schoolchildren, but the comparison is false:

- Did Bush or Reagan have access to Channel One, ubiquitous cable/satellite TV, the Internet and similar technologies that would ensure that their speeches made into every classroom in America? They did not, so it's dishonest of the Democrats to equate the impact of Obama's speech with theirs.

- Did the Bush or Reagan White Houses dictate to and stage-manage the event with the Department of Education, and literally force it on so-called "Independent School Districts"? They did not.

- Who benefits from a presidential address to our schoolchildren? In the present case, it's clearly the Federal education bureaucracy that now controls our Education system, the Democrat Party that supports it, and our current President. As proponents of small federal government, no similar benefit could have accrued to Bush, Reagan, or the Republicans.

- The speech has been portrayed as innocuous, yet that is ridiculous in light of revelations that the Educrats intended to follow up the speech with a hard-core indoctrination of students with a "lesson plan" including questions like "how can you help the President achieve his goals?". What further evidence do we need of the political nature of this speech than the existence of this lesson plan? Regardless of the content, it's the kind of creepy indoctrination practiced by the likes of Hugo Chavez and sundry other tinpot dictators and the Cult of Personality parlor tricks they employ, right up to and including Chavez's "Hello Mr. President" television show.

- Why this speech at this time? And isn't it amazing that there had been no mention of it until the last couple of weeks? This is the umpteenth time the Obama Administration has gone off on a tangent, and these episodes have a suspicious tendency to coincide with attempts to distract attention from the failure of the Stimulus Package, their failure to right the economy, their awful predictions regarding the state of the economy, or their woefully misguided efforts to transform the Health Care system.

- Who is politicizing what? Democrats have repeatedly portrayed Republicans as the ones politicizing issues by their protests, whether it is about Health Care or The Speech, yet the Republican Party is a political basket case, incapable of affecting the outcome with their votes in any way. The only avenue available to them is through Protest, yet Congressional Republicans have been almost universally silent. Only Pundits and the stray Floridian is protesting the Speech. It's strange that Democrats would deny this tiny minority their due, much less use it to suggest a monolithic protest by the Republican Party.

- What moral right does President Obama, of all people, have to make such a speech? Consider the sheer disconnect between this President's words and his deeds, so different from those of his predecessors, including George W. Bush. For one example, he claimed openness in government was his number one priority, yet his first initiative was to ram $1.2 Trillion in extra spending through Congress without so much as an opportunity for Congress to read it. What informed citizen would not be offended by such an affront to Democracy? And should that not affect his credibility when he proposes to address our children?

- Finally, why should we take the Obama Administration at their word that the speech that was released to the public is the one he originally intended to give? The speech he gave was jarringly inconsistent with the Stalinist lesson plan that was to accompany it, yet still came across as a commercial for the Democrat Party. I'm not going out on much of a limb in speculating that the original speech was much more politicized, but we'll never know otherwise. With a compliant Media accepting the ex post facto claims of the Democrats about the intent and content of the speech, you could more productively flog a dead horse to produce the truth.

Which brings us to the handful of Republican stalwarts like Laura Bush and Newt Gingrich who have defended President Obama in this debate. What combination of Stockholm Syndrome (Bush) and Beltway Ennui (Gingrich) could cause them to support such a terrible precedent? I would ask these folks to address the questions above as readily as I would any Democrat. Their answers would be interesting to hear.