Education and its use by O'biwan's Operatives

[kiaer.ts]

The Administration's backtracking on this is too little too late. The problem is not the content of the message itself. The problem is the presumption that the president has any right at all to treat students as a captive audience. School is not a branch of the federal government. The president is not the educator in chief. Moderate republicans like Bill Sammon, as usual, are saying it's okay now that he has changed his message. Sorry, the problem is that he thinks he has the right to make the address in the first place.

But aren't teachers simply publicly paid staff whom the law empowers to lecture a captive audience a minimum number of hours a day?

Your point?

[jeffrey smith]

Your point?

I refer you to the edited version of that post, which went up while you were posting your response.

Edited September 4, 2009 by jeffrey smith

[anthony]

"I will make you an honorary OL citizen of America. "

Adam, I accept, with pride !

Tony

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

One part of the school indoctrination I have not seen mentioned is that there is currently a conscious effort to turn the Office of the Presidency into a personality cult.

This is more than ideological. This is personality cult crap. All dictators have been propped up by the creation of a personality cult around them.

There is a huge difference between saying, "I will support the President of the USA in his fulfillment of his duties," (or hers when that ultimately happens) and "I will serve President Obama."

Nazis did not chant, "Heil Fürher!"

They chanted, "Heil Hitler!"

Personality cults work. And they get uglier and uglier as power increases.

Michael

[Reidy]

Tracinski gives us a couple of related links:

http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/pcourrielche/2009/08/25/the-national-endowment-for-the-art-of-persuasion-patrick-courrielche/

http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/278561

Only it isn't working for Obama. It got him elected, and it's been falling apart ever since.

[Selene]

Yes Reidy - his numbers are crashing with no end in sight...

which makes the marxist that much more deadly.

Michael, the commentary is really sparse. Mark Steyn, who subbed for Rush two days this week, started to touch on the cult of personality - the great leader.

He mentioned that in all the dictatorial countries that he has traveled in, that had been liberated, all had these new bare spots on the walls where the "great leader"

was. Every classroom had them.

Wednesday 21 January 2009

Che Obama: the new cult of personality

Why does no one else find it creepy that Obama’s image now adorns everything from t-shirts to hats to train tickets?

Helen Searls

Standing on the National Mall in the cold, waiting for the inauguration ceremony to begin, it was hard to escape the feeling that something very new was afoot. Not only were we all about to witness a slice of history – the swearing in of the nation’s first black president. We were also about to witness the inauguration of the first truly iconic superstar into the office of US president.

It is hard to convey the scale on which Obama the icon has gripped the country and its capital in particular. The new president is not merely popular, nor is he even just a superstar politician. President Obama has become something else in the eyes of the nation and perhaps even the world. He is now an icon. And like all true icons, the man’s image is everywhere.

Shepard Fairey’s Obama image. The Obama cult started fairly modestly with the usual campaign buttons, yard signs and bumper stickers. But from early on, this was more than a traditional display of political support. The Obama image became a central feature of his own political campaign. The slogan ‘Yes we can’ and a pop art image of Obama captured more of a mood than an old-fashioned political campaign could. Gradually the now famous pop art image, created by a Los Angeles graffiti artist, Shepard Fairey, started to appear on t-shirts and on posters. It is doubtful that anyone ever thought to wear a t-shirt with George Bush’s image splashed across it, except to deride him. Now, wearing the image of the president is not only popular, it has become almost obligatory in some circles.

Obama’s image is not just appearing on t-shirts. There are Obama hats, Obama pencil cases, Obama hoodies, Obama screen savers, Obama jewellery, Obama coffee cups and Obama street murals. And Obamamania has gone mainstream. Today in DC we can buy metro tickets sporting Obama’s image. Numerous buildings are decorated with huge banners welcoming the new president. Even the National Portrait Galley has got in on the act, snapping up Shepard Fairey’s original collage for the gallery walls long before the new president’s official portrait will be commissioned.

An Obama t-shirt. Such is the strength of the cult surrounding Obama’s image that vendors at the inauguration were hard pushed to find new ways to commemorate the day. Many tried, of course. On my own walk into the city I saw Ben’s Chili Bowl on U Street, a local landmark, displaying a huge red, white and blue ice sculpture of the letters OBAMA. A church on 16th Street offered hot cocoa and a chance to be photographed with a life-sized Obama cut-out. On the Mall itself everything from Obama special inauguration bandanas to Obama dollar bills (with President Lincoln’s image replaced with President Obama’s) to my own personal favourite, Obama water, was on offer.

The pervasive nature of President Obama’s image is something new and quite different in American presidential politics. When President George W Bush came to office you could maybe get a mug, a commemorative coin or a button, but even his most ardent supporters did not adorn themselves with his image. True, some did sport Stetsons, but that was about the extent of the personality cult around the previous occupant of the White House.

In contrast, today our new president’s image is everywhere and yet no one seems to find this strange or creepy. During the Cold War, American politicians used to vilify communist countries for the cult of personality that surrounded their leaders. But Maoist China and Stalin’s Russia have nothing on Obama’s America when it comes to the cult now surrounding the new US president.

A New York Obama mural. It could be argued that one explanation for Obamamania is simply that people want to take with them a little bit of history. Coming just 40 years after Martin Luther King’s ‘I have a dream’ speech on the same mall, many elderly Americans shed tears of joy, disbelief and triumph as the first black president took the presidential oath. This was a moving occasion and it is not surprising that many want a memento or a souvenir of the moment that most thought could never happen.

But the cult around Obama the person goes way beyond souvenir hunting. Normally if you buy a souvenir you put it on a shelf somewhere and move on. This is something different. The image of Obama is not merely something to collect. It is something to wear and show off. It marks or labels those who wear it and as such it is a symbol, not just an image. Moreover, as a symbol it means something different than President Obama the real-life politician.

President Obama the politician has political goals and aspirations just like other politicians. In contrast, the Iconic Obama is not tied to or associated with any real or specific goals. To imagine that all the people wearing the t-shirts and putting up Obama posters are fervent supporters of Obama’s programme or policies misses the point of what has happened here.

An Obama earring. That face now represents a sense of hope and faith about the future. It is a hope that many share and want to identify with. And when businesses or individuals display Obama’s image they are expressing their faith and identification with such a sentiment. It is not hope for a very specific goal, but that does not diminish its appeal. People want to be part of the Obama nation. It is a nation built on sentiment - more akin to the Red Sox Nation than any real political entity.

Or maybe a better analogy is the poster child of the sixties, Che Guevara, whose simple image was again just a face decoupled from a political message, used to decorate the bedrooms of the youth of America and Europe. Few who owned the poster knew very much about Che Guevara the politician, but having it on your wall signalled that you were somehow progressive and radical. Today, though, progress and radicalism have been replaced by hope and faith. And it is not simply teenagers who want to identify with this message.

Helen Searls is executive producer at Feature Story News in Washington, DC.

[Selene]

Well here is the default sanitized speech and for the first time, unlike his legislative pledges which have never been adhered to, is posted on line:

Prepared Remarks of President Barack Obama

Back to School Event

Arlington, Virginia

September 8, 2009

The President: Hello everyone – how’s everybody doing today? I’m here with students at Wakefield High School in Arlington, Virginia. And we’ve got students tuning in from all across America, kindergarten through twelfth grade. I’m glad you all could join us today. I know that for many of you, today is the first day of school. And for those of you in kindergarten, or starting middle or high school, it’s your first day in a new school, so it’s understandable if you’re a little nervous. I imagine there are some seniors out there who are feeling pretty good right now, with just one more year to go. And no matter what grade you’re in, some of you are probably wishing it were still summer, and you could’ve stayed in bed just a little longer this morning. I know that feeling. When I was young, my family lived in Indonesia for a few years, and my mother didn’t have the money to send me where all the American kids went to school. So she decided to teach me extra lessons herself, Monday through Friday – at 4:30 in the morning. [Now this is new]

Now I wasn’t too happy about getting up that early. A lot of times, I’d fall asleep right there at the kitchen table. But whenever I’d complain, my mother would just give me one of those looks and say, "This is no picnic for me either, buster." [which under another section of another law working its way through Congress would trigger a team invading your house] *

So I know some of you are still adjusting to being back at school. But I’m here today because I have something important to discuss with you. I’m here because I want to talk with you about your education and what’s expected of all of you in this new school year. Now I’ve given a lot of speeches about education. And I’ve talked a lot about responsibility. I’ve talked about your teachers’ responsibility for inspiring you, and pushing you to learn. I’ve talked about your parents’ responsibility for making sure you stay on track, and get your homework done, and don’t spend every waking hour in front of the TV or with that Xbox. I’ve talked a lot about your government’s responsibility for setting high standards, supporting teachers and principals, and turning around schools that aren’t working where students aren’t getting the opportunities they deserve. But at the end of the day, we can have the most dedicated teachers, the most supportive parents, and the best schools in the world – and none of it will matter unless all of you fulfill your responsibilities. Unless you show up to those schools; pay attention to those teachers; listen to your parents, grandparents and other adults; and put in the hard work it takes to succeed. And that’s what I want to focus on today: the responsibility each of you has for your education. I want to start with the responsibility you have to yourself. <<finally something useful

Every single one of you has something you’re good at. Every single one of you has something to offer. And you have a responsibility to yourself to discover what that is. That’s the opportunity an education can provide. Maybe you could be a good writer – maybe even good enough to write a book or articles in a newspaper – but you might not know it until you write a paper for your English class. Maybe you could be an innovator or an inventor – maybe even good enough to come up with the next i Phone or a new medicine or vaccine – but you might not know it until you do a 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. And no matter what you want to do with your life – I guarantee that you’ll need an education to do it. You want to be a doctor, or a teacher, or a police officer? You want to be a nurse or an architect, a lawyer or a member of our military? You’re going to need a good education for every single one of those careers. You can’t drop out of school and just drop into a good job. You’ve got to work for it and train for it and learn for it. And this isn’t just important for your own life and your own future. What you make of your education will decide nothing less than the future of this country. What you’re learning in school today will determine whether we as a nation can meet our greatest challenges in the future. You’ll need the knowledge and problem-solving skills you learn in science and math to cure diseases like cancer and AIDS, and to develop new energy technologies and protect our environment. You’ll need the insights and critical thinking skills you gain in history and social studies to fight poverty and homelessness, crime and discrimination, and make our nation more fair and more free. You’ll need the creativity and ingenuity you develop in all your classes to build new companies that will create new jobs and boost our economy. 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. Now I know it’s not always easy to do well in school. I know a lot of you have challenges in your lives right now that can make it hard to focus on your schoolwork. I get it. I know what that’s like. My father left my family when I was two years old, and I was raised by a single mother who struggled at times to pay the bills and wasn’t always able to give us things the other kids had. There were times when I missed having a father in my life. There were times when I was lonely and felt like I didn’t fit in. So I wasn’t always as focused as I should have been. I did some things I’m not proud of, and got in more trouble than I should have. And my life could have easily taken a turn for the worse. But I was fortunate. I got a lot of second chances and had the opportunity to go to college, and law school, and follow my dreams. My wife, our First Lady Michelle Obama, has a similar story. Neither of her parents had gone to college, and they didn’t have much. But they worked hard, and she worked hard, so that she could go to the best schools in this country. Some of you might not have those advantages. Maybe you don’t have adults in your life who give you the support that you need. Maybe someone in your family has lost their job, and there’s not enough money to go around. Maybe you live in a neighborhood where you don’t feel safe, or have friends who are pressuring you to do things you know aren’t right. 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 – that’s no excuse for neglecting your homework or having a bad attitude. That’s no excuse for talking back to your teacher, or cutting class, or dropping out of school. That’s no excuse for not trying. <<<excellent Where you are right now doesn’t have to determine where you’ll end up. No one’s written your destiny for you. Here in America, you write your own destiny. You make your own future. That’s what young people like you are doing every day, all across America. Young people like Jazmin Perez, from Roma, Texas. Jazmin didn’t speak English when she first started school. Hardly anyone in her hometown went to college, and neither of her parents had gone either. But she worked hard, earned good grades, got a scholarship to Brown University, and is now in graduate school, studying public health, on her way to being Dr. Jazmin Perez. I’m thinking about Andoni Schultz, from Los Altos, California, who’s fought brain cancer since he was three. He’s endured all sorts of treatments and surgeries, one of which affected his memory, so it took him much longer – hundreds of extra hours – to do his schoolwork. But he never fell behind, and he’s headed to college this fall. And then there’s Shantell Steve, from my hometown of Chicago, Illinois. Even when bouncing from foster home to foster home in the toughest neighborhoods, she managed to get a job at a local health center; start a program to keep young people out of gangs; and she’s on track to graduate high school with honors and go on to college. Jazmin, Andoni and Shantell aren’t any different from any of you. They faced challenges in their lives just like you do. But they refused to give up. They chose to take responsibility for their education and set goals for themselves. And I expect all of you to do the same. That’s why today, I’m calling on each of you to set your own goals for your education – and to do everything you can to meet them. Your goal can be something as simple as doing all your homework, paying attention in class, or spending time each day reading a book. Maybe you’ll decide to get involved in an extracurricular activity, or volunteer in your community. Maybe you’ll decide to stand up for kids who are being teased or bullied because of who they are or how they look, because you believe, like I do, that all kids deserve a safe environment to study and learn. Maybe you’ll decide to take better care of yourself so you can be more ready to learn. And along those lines, I hope you’ll all wash your hands a lot, and stay home from school when you don’t feel well, so we can keep people from getting the flu this fall and winter. Whatever you resolve to do, I want you to commit to it. I want you to really work at it. I know that sometimes, you get the sense from TV that you can be rich and successful without any hard work -- that your ticket to success is through rapping or basketball or being a reality TV star, when chances are, you’re not going to be any of those things. But the truth is, being successful is hard. You won’t love every subject you study. You won’t click with every teacher. Not every homework assignment will seem completely relevant to your life right this minute. And you won’t necessarily succeed at everything the first time you try. That’s OK. Some of the most successful people in the world are the ones who’ve had the most failures. JK Rowling’s first Harry Potter book was rejected twelve times before it was finally published. Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team, and he lost hundreds of games and missed thousands of shots during his career. But he once said, "I have failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed." These people succeeded because they understand that you can’t let your failures define you – you have to let them teach you. You have to let them show you what to do differently next time. If you get in trouble, that doesn’t mean you’re a troublemaker, it means you need to try harder to behave. If you get a bad grade, that doesn’t mean you’re stupid, it just means you need to spend more time studying. No one’s born being good at things, you become good at things through hard work. You’re not a varsity athlete the first time you play a new sport. You don’t hit every note the first time you sing a song. You’ve got to practice. It’s the same with your schoolwork. You might have to do a math problem a few times before you get it right, or read something a few times before you understand it, or do a few drafts of a paper before it’s good enough to hand in. Don’t be afraid to ask questions. Don’t be afraid to ask for help when you need it. I do that every day. Asking for help isn’t a sign of weakness, it’s a sign of strength. It shows you have the courage to admit when you don’t know something, and to learn something new. So find an adult you trust – a parent, grandparent or teacher; a coach or counselor – and ask them to help you stay on track to meet your goals. <<<excellent 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. 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. It’s the story of students who sat where you sit 250 years ago, and went on to wage a revolution and found this nation. Students who sat where you sit 75 years ago who overcame a Depression and won a world war; who fought for civil rights and put a man on the moon. Students who sat where you sit 20 years ago who founded Google, Twitter and Facebook and changed the way we communicate with each other. 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? Your families, your teachers, and I are doing everything we can to make sure you have the education you need to answer these questions. I’m working hard to fix up your classrooms and get you the books, equipment and computers you need to learn. But you’ve got to do your part too. So I expect you to get serious this year. I expect you to put your best effort into everything you do. I expect great things from each of you. So don’t let us down – don’t let your family or your country or yourself down. Make us all proud. I know you can do it. Thank you, God bless you, and God bless America.----------------------------------------------------------------------------

All in all. good speech. Unfortunately, his audience will be zoned out and texting or chewing on their pen caps by the tenth or eleventh paragraph.

Adam

* The plan for a state-based Home Invasion Force positioned to assault the American family appears in Title IX (Miscellaneous Provisions), Section 1904 of the bill on page 838. It goes under the guise of federal grants to states for “quality home visitation programs for families with young children and families expecting children.” In other words, this is a plan for an assault on the American family by state and federal bureaucrats of unprecedented magnitude, incentivized by the federal government and carried out by state social-services agencies and child protective services agents. The scheme is to provide federal matching grants to states to conduct home visits. The grants will amount to $750 million during the first five years, accelerating from $50 million in year one to $250 million a year in year five.

[anonrobt]

Well here is the default sanitized speech and for the first time, unlike his legislative pledges which have never been adhered to, is posted on line:

Prepared Remarks of President Barack Obama

Back to School Event

Arlington, Virginia

September 8, 2009

The President: Hello everyone – how’s everybody doing today? I’m here with students at Wakefield High School in Arlington, Virginia. And we’ve got students tuning in from all across America, kindergarten through twelfth grade. I’m glad you all could join us today. I know that for many of you, today is the first day of school. And for those of you in kindergarten, or starting middle or high school, it’s your first day in a new school, so it’s understandable if you’re a little nervous. I imagine there are some seniors out there who are feeling pretty good right now, with just one more year to go. And no matter what grade you’re in, some of you are probably wishing it were still summer, and you could’ve stayed in bed just a little longer this morning. I know that feeling. When I was young, my family lived in Indonesia for a few years, and my mother didn’t have the money to send me where all the American kids went to school. So she decided to teach me extra lessons herself, Monday through Friday – at 4:30 in the morning. [Now this is new]

Now I wasn’t too happy about getting up that early. A lot of times, I’d fall asleep right there at the kitchen table. But whenever I’d complain, my mother would just give me one of those looks and say, "This is no picnic for me either, buster." [which under another section of another law working its way through Congress would trigger a team invading your house] *

So I know some of you are still adjusting to being back at school. But I’m here today because I have something important to discuss with you. I’m here because I want to talk with you about your education and what’s expected of all of you in this new school year. Now I’ve given a lot of speeches about education. And I’ve talked a lot about responsibility. I’ve talked about your teachers’ responsibility for inspiring you, and pushing you to learn. I’ve talked about your parents’ responsibility for making sure you stay on track, and get your homework done, and don’t spend every waking hour in front of the TV or with that Xbox. I’ve talked a lot about your government’s responsibility for setting high standards, supporting teachers and principals, and turning around schools that aren’t working where students aren’t getting the opportunities they deserve. But at the end of the day, we can have the most dedicated teachers, the most supportive parents, and the best schools in the world – and none of it will matter unless all of you fulfill your responsibilities. Unless you show up to those schools; pay attention to those teachers; listen to your parents, grandparents and other adults; and put in the hard work it takes to succeed. And that’s what I want to focus on today: the responsibility each of you has for your education. I want to start with the responsibility you have to yourself. <<finally something useful

Every single one of you has something you’re good at. Every single one of you has something to offer. And you have a responsibility to yourself to discover what that is. That’s the opportunity an education can provide. Maybe you could be a good writer – maybe even good enough to write a book or articles in a newspaper – but you might not know it until you write a paper for your English class. Maybe you could be an innovator or an inventor – maybe even good enough to come up with the next i Phone or a new medicine or vaccine – but you might not know it until you do a 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. And no matter what you want to do with your life – I guarantee that you’ll need an education to do it. You want to be a doctor, or a teacher, or a police officer? You want to be a nurse or an architect, a lawyer or a member of our military? You’re going to need a good education for every single one of those careers. You can’t drop out of school and just drop into a good job. You’ve got to work for it and train for it and learn for it. And this isn’t just important for your own life and your own future. What you make of your education will decide nothing less than the future of this country. What you’re learning in school today will determine whether we as a nation can meet our greatest challenges in the future. You’ll need the knowledge and problem-solving skills you learn in science and math to cure diseases like cancer and AIDS, and to develop new energy technologies and protect our environment. You’ll need the insights and critical thinking skills you gain in history and social studies to fight poverty and homelessness, crime and discrimination, and make our nation more fair and more free. You’ll need the creativity and ingenuity you develop in all your classes to build new companies that will create new jobs and boost our economy. 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. Now I know it’s not always easy to do well in school. I know a lot of you have challenges in your lives right now that can make it hard to focus on your schoolwork. I get it. I know what that’s like. My father left my family when I was two years old, and I was raised by a single mother who struggled at times to pay the bills and wasn’t always able to give us things the other kids had. There were times when I missed having a father in my life. There were times when I was lonely and felt like I didn’t fit in. So I wasn’t always as focused as I should have been. I did some things I’m not proud of, and got in more trouble than I should have. And my life could have easily taken a turn for the worse. But I was fortunate. I got a lot of second chances and had the opportunity to go to college, and law school, and follow my dreams. My wife, our First Lady Michelle Obama, has a similar story. Neither of her parents had gone to college, and they didn’t have much. But they worked hard, and she worked hard, so that she could go to the best schools in this country. Some of you might not have those advantages. Maybe you don’t have adults in your life who give you the support that you need. Maybe someone in your family has lost their job, and there’s not enough money to go around. Maybe you live in a neighborhood where you don’t feel safe, or have friends who are pressuring you to do things you know aren’t right. 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 – that’s no excuse for neglecting your homework or having a bad attitude. That’s no excuse for talking back to your teacher, or cutting class, or dropping out of school. That’s no excuse for not trying. <<<excellent Where you are right now doesn’t have to determine where you’ll end up. No one’s written your destiny for you. Here in America, you write your own destiny. You make your own future. That’s what young people like you are doing every day, all across America. Young people like Jazmin Perez, from Roma, Texas. Jazmin didn’t speak English when she first started school. Hardly anyone in her hometown went to college, and neither of her parents had gone either. But she worked hard, earned good grades, got a scholarship to Brown University, and is now in graduate school, studying public health, on her way to being Dr. Jazmin Perez. I’m thinking about Andoni Schultz, from Los Altos, California, who’s fought brain cancer since he was three. He’s endured all sorts of treatments and surgeries, one of which affected his memory, so it took him much longer – hundreds of extra hours – to do his schoolwork. But he never fell behind, and he’s headed to college this fall. And then there’s Shantell Steve, from my hometown of Chicago, Illinois. Even when bouncing from foster home to foster home in the toughest neighborhoods, she managed to get a job at a local health center; start a program to keep young people out of gangs; and she’s on track to graduate high school with honors and go on to college. Jazmin, Andoni and Shantell aren’t any different from any of you. They faced challenges in their lives just like you do. But they refused to give up. They chose to take responsibility for their education and set goals for themselves. And I expect all of you to do the same. That’s why today, I’m calling on each of you to set your own goals for your education – and to do everything you can to meet them. Your goal can be something as simple as doing all your homework, paying attention in class, or spending time each day reading a book. Maybe you’ll decide to get involved in an extracurricular activity, or volunteer in your community. Maybe you’ll decide to stand up for kids who are being teased or bullied because of who they are or how they look, because you believe, like I do, that all kids deserve a safe environment to study and learn. Maybe you’ll decide to take better care of yourself so you can be more ready to learn. And along those lines, I hope you’ll all wash your hands a lot, and stay home from school when you don’t feel well, so we can keep people from getting the flu this fall and winter. Whatever you resolve to do, I want you to commit to it. I want you to really work at it. I know that sometimes, you get the sense from TV that you can be rich and successful without any hard work -- that your ticket to success is through rapping or basketball or being a reality TV star, when chances are, you’re not going to be any of those things. But the truth is, being successful is hard. You won’t love every subject you study. You won’t click with every teacher. Not every homework assignment will seem completely relevant to your life right this minute. And you won’t necessarily succeed at everything the first time you try. That’s OK. Some of the most successful people in the world are the ones who’ve had the most failures. JK Rowling’s first Harry Potter book was rejected twelve times before it was finally published. Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team, and he lost hundreds of games and missed thousands of shots during his career. But he once said, "I have failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed." These people succeeded because they understand that you can’t let your failures define you – you have to let them teach you. You have to let them show you what to do differently next time. If you get in trouble, that doesn’t mean you’re a troublemaker, it means you need to try harder to behave. If you get a bad grade, that doesn’t mean you’re stupid, it just means you need to spend more time studying. No one’s born being good at things, you become good at things through hard work. You’re not a varsity athlete the first time you play a new sport. You don’t hit every note the first time you sing a song. You’ve got to practice. It’s the same with your schoolwork. You might have to do a math problem a few times before you get it right, or read something a few times before you understand it, or do a few drafts of a paper before it’s good enough to hand in. Don’t be afraid to ask questions. Don’t be afraid to ask for help when you need it. I do that every day. Asking for help isn’t a sign of weakness, it’s a sign of strength. It shows you have the courage to admit when you don’t know something, and to learn something new. So find an adult you trust – a parent, grandparent or teacher; a coach or counselor – and ask them to help you stay on track to meet your goals. <<<excellent 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. 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. It’s the story of students who sat where you sit 250 years ago, and went on to wage a revolution and found this nation. Students who sat where you sit 75 years ago who overcame a Depression and won a world war; who fought for civil rights and put a man on the moon. Students who sat where you sit 20 years ago who founded Google, Twitter and Facebook and changed the way we communicate with each other. 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? Your families, your teachers, and I are doing everything we can to make sure you have the education you need to answer these questions. I’m working hard to fix up your classrooms and get you the books, equipment and computers you need to learn. But you’ve got to do your part too. So I expect you to get serious this year. I expect you to put your best effort into everything you do. I expect great things from each of you. So don’t let us down – don’t let your family or your country or yourself down. Make us all proud. I know you can do it. Thank you, God bless you, and God bless America.----------------------------------------------------------------------------

All in all. good speech. Unfortunately, his audience will be zoned out and texting or chewing on their pen caps by the tenth or eleventh paragraph.

Adam

* The plan for a state-based Home Invasion Force positioned to assault the American family appears in Title IX (Miscellaneous Provisions), Section 1904 of the bill on page 838. It goes under the guise of federal grants to states for “quality home visitation programs for families with young children and families expecting children.” In other words, this is a plan for an assault on the American family by state and federal bureaucrats of unprecedented magnitude, incentivized by the federal government and carried out by state social-services agencies and child protective services agents. The scheme is to provide federal matching grants to states to conduct home visits. The grants will amount to $750 million during the first five years, accelerating from $50 million in year one to $250 million a year in year five.

assuming this is what he actually does say, would bet is a far cry from what originally intended saying...

[Selene]

Yep- a way far cry which means he is a skilled marxist who will change his lie on a dime and wait for another opportunity to advance the global collar that he wants on your and my necks.

He will have to kill me first and since I am an expert marksman, I intend to take a significant amount of government thugs with me.

Adam

[Philip Coates]

Leave aside for a moment other political, governmental issues. This is a good use of the "bully pulpit". This is a **truly wonderful speech** about education and motivation, about responsibility and discipline and what it takes to be successful. It is full of good advice, which I will quote in some of my educational efforts. It's just what kids need to hear from an authority figure.

Extremism in the pursuit of educational rigor is no vice and moderation in the pursuit of excellence is no virtue.

(And, no, while they make a big show of blase, for many of them it will sink it or give them a frame of reference. And, yes, the most important figure on earth IS someone they will listen to, except the ones who are beyond reach, whose window has closed.)

Sometimes, some of the most fervently left wing people are better people than the wishy-washy moderates. They are fully committed for idealistic reasons. That makes it easier sometimes to change them than the straddlers or those who simply don't care. So many Oists say "I was a fervent socialists until I turned [such and such an age]" or "until I read X".

My first impression or sense of Obama (I haven't studied him closely enough to be sure, haven't read either of his books, assuming they were not ghost-written, and assuming this speech is his own words) - is that he is taking us down a disastrous path toward totalitarianism, ultimately. But he is an "idealist" and doesn't realize it. Or thinks he's doing what he needs to do to deal with crises, sort of like Diocletian who saved Rome for another two centuries but ultimately ensured its collapse by concentrating all power and decision making in his hands and 'knocking heads'.

Edited September 8, 2009 by Philip Coates

[BaalChatzaf]

Sometimes, some of the most fervently left wing people are better people than the wishy-washy moderates. They are fully committed for idealistic reasons. That makes it easier sometimes to change them than the straddlers or those who simply don't care. So many Oists say "I was a fervent socialists until I turned [such and such an age]" or "until I read X".

It was either Georges Clemenceau or Winston Churchill who said: If a young man is not a socialist by the time he is twenty, he has no heart. If he is still a socialist by the time he is forty, he has no brains.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Edited September 8, 2009 by BaalChatzaf

[Reidy]

Was the Searls piece in #31 only 8 months ago? How time does fly.

For what it's worth, King's "I have a dream" speech was in the summer of '63, not "just 40 years" before Obama's inauguration. King had been dead for nearly a year by then.

I recently saw a magazine cover (The Advocate) with "NOPE" substituted for "HOPE" in the famous Fairey poster. Can't wait for somebody to make the next, obvious substitution.

[rhartford]

Well here is the default sanitized speech . . .

Your families, your teachers, and I are doing everything we can to make sure you have the education you need to answer these questions. I’m working hard to fix up your classrooms and get you the books, equipment and computers you need to learn. . . .

The above is not the job of the government of a free country, not to mention the personal responsibility of the chief executive of that government. The consequence, if not the intent, is to cause students to wonder why he is not taking enough from the citizens to provide the schools with what they need.

[Philip Coates]

> ["I’m working hard to fix up your classrooms and get you the books, equipment and computers you need"] is not the job of the government of a free country, not to mention the personal responsibility of the chief executive of that government. [Robert H]

I hope you (and many others I've seen over the years) are not making the common Oist/libertarian/conservative mistake of blanking on, discarding, or disregarding everything else said in an **excellent text** because the writer in one sentence that I can see shows that he is distant from a proper politics or philosophy. In my life, I've learned a great deal from people - even found something to admire, or found texts useful - from people who were not Oists, not advocates of LFC, might even have been very far from me in terms of being religious fundamentalists, semi-socialist and the like.

Edited September 8, 2009 by Philip Coates

[studiodekadent]

Obama is by no means the first President to employ personality cultism in education. Although yes, he is dangerously breaching the conceptual seperation between 'the man' and 'the office.' However, both 'the left' and 'the right' of US politics have been responsible in creating a cult of the presidency.

[anonrobt]

Obama is by no means the first President to employ personality cultism in education. Although yes, he is dangerously breaching the conceptual seperation between 'the man' and 'the office.' However, both 'the left' and 'the right' of US politics have been responsible in creating a cult of the presidency.

True - it was, after all, Nixon who spawned 'the Imperial presidency'...

[others had affected it - but he gave it 'the touch'...]

Edited September 16, 2009 by anonrobt

[Reidy]

Correction: liberals during the Nixon era coined the phrase "imperial presidency" when they had an imperial president they didn't like. What it denotes goes back at least as far as Wilson; see Goldberg's book. I remember that when the phrase first got abroad in the early 70s, National Review ran a 4-page foldout titled "We Knew Them When," quoting every liberal anyone had heard of in the previous 40 years (including, as memory serves, Schlesinger, author of The Imperial Presidency as memory serves) calling for a more powerful executive.

[Selene]

Correction: liberals during the Nixon era coined the phrase "imperial presidency" when they had an imperial president they didn't like. What it denotes goes back at least as far as Wilson; see Goldberg's book. I remember that when the phrase first got abroad in the early 70s, National Review ran a 4-page foldout titled "We Knew Them When," quoting every liberal anyone had heard of in the previous 40 years (including, as memory serves, Schlesinger, author of The Imperial Presidency as memory serves) calling for a more powerful executive.

My, I haven't had this conversation since the 70's ...lol.

Schlesinger's Imperial Presidency was 1973.

What do you folks think of this quote that I ran across while poking and searching this concept just now...

"In the 1790s, Washington moved to undercut the Black Revolution in Haiti, offering our first 'foreign aid' program, some $726,000, when that was real money, to keep the Creoles in power, a policy continued by another slave owner, Jefferson, and, another supposed libertarian icon as well. Jefferson's inept management of his own personal finances, not his writings and blather, serve as a perfect example of the spend, spend, spend mentality urged by our present leader! [Feb. 08]

George Washington's 'no entangling alliances' thus meant, not non-interventionism, but rather unilateral intervention, in Haiti and elsewhere, a clear harbinger of what would occur in 1898 and after, right up to our interventionist present.

As we have evolved into the World's great Counter-Revolutionary Imperial Power, myths of our own Revolution continue!"

I thought that was an intriguing last line.

Adam

Post Script:

Do these comparable "imperial" acts qualify?

The Sedition Act of 1798 was selectively enforced by the Adams administration against newspaper writers who supported Thomas Jefferson, his challenger in the 1800 election.

During the first Red Scare following World War I, President Woodrow Wilson suppressed free speech, deported immigrants on the basis of their political beliefs, and ordered massive unconstitutional raids. His policies were so draconian that they inspired protesters to form the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in 1920.

Seems like the age old struggle:

DOOR NUMBER 1: decentralization to each and every individual

versus

DOOR NUMBER 2: centralization to one and only one individual;

Edited September 16, 2009 by Selene