Exposing the SubText of Obama's Speech to Kids

My younger daughter’s school did not send any information last Friday about the President’s broadcast. Which meant one of two things: the school did not think it was important to inform parents about a major interruption in the instruction day with a broadcast that had nothing to do with math, reading, writing, science, etc and have students listen to the broadcasted speech and participate in other related activities without the parents knowledge, or my daughter’s individual school paying attention to the controversy it had created they decided not go through the bother of getting permission slips from parents or thinking up alternate activities for the children that were not to be made to sit in on the broadcast and decided not to broadcast the speech. I do not believe it could have been the latter, because I know that other schools in the county like my older daughter’s school decided to air the broadcast and send permission slips on Friday, and it is hard for me to think that there is a principal courageous enough to take a stance and stand alone against the collective of the county!

Things worked out in my favor: my older daughter came down sick and would have to stay back from school anyway (if she had attended school I had told her I would not sign for her to be able to watch the broadcast). As far as my younger daughter was concerned, I was saved (conveniently!) by the alarm not going off at 5 a.m. and I did not have to make a phone call to the school to find out about the broadcast.

So as part of my protest to the President’s speech broadcast, both my girls stayed home and enjoyed a four day weekend! (I do not think they missed much in terms of academic instruction at school!)

I started to watch the speech with my older daughter who a couple of minutes into watching said it was too boring and could I please turn it off! Out of curiosity I continued to watch the speech in another room broadcast on MSNBC and listened after the completion, for a few brief minutes as the host of the show and her guests drooled over the fact that it was “Obama at his best” and there was nothing political in the speech.

As I wrote in my earlier post today, I was not concerned that my kids would get “indoctrinated” by watching the broadcast. But having read the speech last night, I was curious to see the actual delivery of the collectivist drivel from the President. And drivel it was, but I will extensively quote from the entire section on the subject from the post of another writer that I enjoyed reading earlier and makes that point succinctly.

Edward Cline, best selling author of the historic Sparrowhawk series, has written an excellent post dissecting the content of the President’s speech earlier today to school children in grades K-12 across the country at The Rule Of Reason, and brilliantly exposing it for what it really was.

[start quote]
"Obama’s broadcast speech to the nation’s schools complements that totalitarian purpose. The text of it, if Obama sticks to the script, is, on the surface, a yawner. Many a student will feel a desire to nod off. The speech can be faulted only for its patronizing banality. But, as one blogger noted: “It’s not the speech, it’s the subtext.” And subtext there is, very subtly woven throughout Obama’s innocuous blandishments to study hard and to mind what adults say. The subtext declares: I own you. Or, rather, we, the state, own you. This point was made last week in the “I Pledge” video as a prefatory note to America’s school children.
Of course, many newspaper columnists are wondering why the speech is being attacked and called propagandistic. They don’t understand what the hue and cry is about. After all, didn’t Ronald Reagan and George Bush address school children? But, the subtext is invisible to them, or they see nothing wrong with it. Here are
instances of the subtext, and one major gaffe.

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. (Paragraph 13.)

I can think of numerous mayors, Senators and Supreme Court Justices -- including a
few Presidents -- who didn’t know about the Constitution, or who dismissed it as being as antiquated as a Babylonian law tablet, but that never stopped them from
becoming what they are. That’s the gaffe. But, on to the subtext.

What you’re learning in school today will determine whether we as a nation can meet our greatest challenges in the future. (Paragraph 15.)

Which challenges? Fill in the blanks, children. It’s a multiple choice question. But tick to the choices we give you. My friend Professor Bill Ayers has drawn up a list, in consultation with my many czars and advisors. But never forget that we are a nation, and we must all pull together to meet those challenges.
We need every single one of you to develop your talents, skills and intellect so you can help solve our most difficult problems. If you don’t do that -- if you quit on school -- you’re not just quitting on yourself, you’re quitting on your country. (Paragraph 17.)
Which difficult problems? Again, fill in the blanks, and choose from Professor Ayers’ list. If you quit on us, it means that you see a conflict between our goals and yours. That would be a selfish thing to do. Fulfillment can be found in selfless service to your country.
And even when you’re struggling, even when you’re discouraged, and you feel like other people have given up on you - don’t ever give up on yourself. Because when you give up on yourself, you give up on your country. (Paragraph 38.)
If you give up on yourself, you become useless to your country and a needless charge to society. Then we must and will determine your future as a servant of the state. If you don’t want us to tell you what to do and when and why, then do as we say.
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? (Paragraph 41.)
We expect you to make selfless contributions to the country, regardless of what careers you choose to follow. How would you be able to live with yourself, knowing that you did everything for yourself, and not for your country? You are but a cell of society, and society expects your best, and for you to give back to it. Remember what a great president once said: “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.” That is all I am asking of you, too. Contradicting the
subtext is this statement:
Where you are right now doesn’t have to determine where you’ll wind up. No one’s written our destiny for you. Here in America, you write your own destiny. You make your own future. Paragraph 24.)
Come again? Or must the future I make for myself first be vetted by the state? That’s what brighter students might ask of the President. He would have no answer for them, and might ask whoever on his staff wrote that statement what the hell he meant by it.
If the adults won’t listen, go after the kids. Can you think of a better way to inculcate the character of totalitarian servitude and obeisance in children than this speech? Of making seductive enlistment in the Obama Youth or Ayers’ New Pioneers? Of having children believe from the start of their lives that the government has a right to
control ever single basis of their lives, and that this is a moral norm?
If you wanted better proof of how Obama, his cadre in the White House, his appointees, and the Democrats in Congress want to own Americans “in all cases whatsoever,” read a transcript of Obama’s speech, and watch the video. Judge for yourself. His speech is an invitation to children to become moral monsters.
For years I have kept a page from The New York Times. It features a teen-aged Bill Clinton shaking hands with JFK. It is a symbol, not so much of a generational link, but of a philosophical link, of the passing on of the political torch of statism and collectivism. Now we have Barack Obama reaching out to shake hands with another generation.
This has got to stop. And if Americans have any kind of duty to their country, that is what they must stop. For their own sakes, and for the sake of their children. "[end quote]