Friday, September 25, 2009

Showing Respect to the Office of President is Worshipping His Name.

There is a video on You Tube titled “(No background music} School kids taught to praise Obama.” The tape shows a class of students, about thirty or so, singing this little catchy ditty. According to the notes with the video, it was filed at the B. Bernice Young Elementary School in Burlington, NJ and uploaded on June 19, 2009.

Here are the lyrics to that song:
Mm, mmm, mm!
Barack Hussein Obama

He said that all must lend a hand
To make this country strong again
Mmm, mmm, mm!
Barack Hussein Obama

He said we must be fair today
Equal work means equal pay
Mmm, mmm, mm!
Barack Hussein Obama

He said that we must take a stand
To make sure everyone gets a chance
Mmm, mmm, mm!
Barack Hussein Obama

He said red, yellow, black or white
All are equal in his sight
Mmm, mmm, mm!
Barack Hussein Obama

Yes!
Mmm, mmm, mm
Barack Hussein Obama

I have stated before on my blog and elsewhere that any person that is elected to the Presidency of the United States is worthy of respect, even if you are opposed to many of the policies or political views of that person. In my own case, I won’t ever represent President Obama as a monkey or a witch-doctor, as some of the 9/12 protesters did. I do not use inflammatory names when referring to Mr. Obama. But I have no problem with disagreeing with him on any policy he presents that grows government or limits personal freedom. Further, I have no problemexpressing those views on my blog and in personal conversations.

Prior to the 1970s, it was not uncommon at all for photographic portraits of the current U.S. President to hang in classrooms all across America. But during my public school education journey from 1966 to 1979 I do not ever remember singing a song about the man that held that office. We had our ditties about George Washington and Abe Lincoln back when those President’s birthdays were actually celebrated on the anniversary of their births. But a living currently serving President? Nope.

I find the lyrics in this song to be bordering on cult of personality worship:
“He said red, yellow, black or white All are equal in his sight.” This is almost demigod worship in its tone, much like the song “Jesus loves the little children”. This is a message to children that President Obama loves you no matter who or what you are. It is nearly cultlike. It is not the job of the President of the United States to love us. It is his job to protect us from all enemies foreign and domestic and to ever support and defend the Constitution of the United States.

“He said that we must take a stand To make sure everyone gets a chance.”
Who can argue with this sentiment? The problem here is that our children are being taught that there is blatant inequality in our culture, which I concede there is still some. However, the reality is that not everybody makes the most of the opportunities that life and our culture provides them. If opportunity for "minorities" was truly as bad as the progressives would have you believe, then why do Haitians fleeing abject poverty in their own country bypass Cuba, the Turks and Caicos, Jamaica and the Bahaamas, which are all far closer in order to emigrate to the United States? Why do hundreds of thousands of Mexicans flee to the U.S. in the face of the chance of capture, punishment or deportment? Opportunity! That's why!

But instead, for the sake of creating "nurturing" environments where our children are not subject to the "threat" of failure we are instead creating a whole generation of kids who do not know how to learn from their mistakes and overcome adversity using innovation, dedication and persistence. This school environment is emulated nowhere in the real world of employment. If you fail and give up, or repeatedly make the same mistakes you will be written up, demoted or terminated. But I digress...

I have no problem in teachers encouraging an attitude of respect for our President, but I am vehemently opposed to teaching our kids politics unless you will teach them by presenting both viewpoints equally or worse, adulation for a man who has yet to prove if he deserves the respect of the office that the People of the United States have already entrusted to him.

No comments: