Obama, an Empty Chair, and Empty Education

RantRave.com ^ | Sept. 5, 2012 | Bruce Deitrick Price

[BruceDeitrickPrice]

For several days after Clint Eastwood amazed and amused the Republican National Convention by addressing an invisible President Obama, the reviews were mixed and contentious.

Even Republicans were nervous that Eastwood had gone too far. Meanwhile, liberals had no doubt that Eastwood’s senile disrespect would destroy, or at least upstage, Romney’s candidacy.

On Sunday, everything changed. President Obama announced that Eastwood was one of his favorite actors. I think this was a gesture of surrender. The more that Democrats talked about how misguided Eastwood was, the more people wanted to look at the video for themselves. Couldn’t have that.

Here’s the part that liberals didn’t want people to know. No matter what you think of Eastwood’s improv, he was dropping bombs all the way: “When someone can’t do the job, you have to let them go.”

Apparently the killer was that Eastwood had made laughing at the president permissible. The media try to suppress any criticism. Obama and his loyalists constantly play the race card. But here was a highly respected tough-guy icon doing a comedy routine at Obama’s expense. Empty chair. Empty suit. Empty presidency. That’s what people were thinking.

My major concern is public education; and I want to suggest that it is exactly like Obama. There is this vast liberal edifice, based on so-called progressive (i.e. Socialist) doctrines, endorsed and supported by thousands of self-appointed experts, protected by the media, sent down to us from the gods. We are supposed to worship.

Meanwhile, everything gets worse. The economy, in the case of Obama’s domain. All the statistics about public schools, in the case of our Education Establishment’s domain.

Just think of all those professors up at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education as the invisible experts sitting in an empty chair.

What’s needed now is a lot more laughter. If so-called experts cannot teach millions of children to read, these phonies SHOULD be laughed at. If so-called experts cannot teach millions of children to do basic arithmetic, these phonies SHOULD be ridiculed.

Basically, we need Clint Eastwood to have a little chat with Education. Ideally such a chat would include tough-guy lines such as “Get off my lawn” and “Do you feel lucky, punk? Well, do ya?”

At that moment, Education is drilled by a .457 Magnum or scurries off to attend another conference about the 21st-century school. Blah-blah-blah.

Personally, I suggest everyone take a cue from President Obama’s favorite political thinker, Saul Alinsky. This left-wing agitator preached that you should demonize your opponents and make fun of them. This is exactly the right thing to do in the case of Education. The people in charge of it richly deserve to be made fun of. They are incompetent, or their brains are warped by extreme political views, or they are only in it for the money. One way or another, they do a crummy job.

Now take the Education Establishment. Please.

So, in the case of public schools, we don’t have to be Waiting for Superman. Instead, every community needs the spirit of Clint Eastwood to ride into town and scare off the bad guys. With them and their failed theories out of the way, it’s a safe bet that public schools will be more successful.

. .

[Invictus]

Many years ago, when DISCIPLINE was removed from the schools, I quit teaching, and sought work elsewhere. After that when GOD was removed, I was glad for that decision. There is nowhere but down for the schools today, until DISCIPLINE and GOD are returned to the schools.

[Ohioan]

Trust In Government Or Education? Why We Dare Not Trust.

[loveliberty2]

Great post!!!

Teachers' unions protect the employment rights of teachers.

Teachers' unions do not protect improving the learning performance of children.

To your point, then, teachers' unions represent an "empty chair" in defending and protecting the future of America, and the results are and have been evident for decades now.

Exposure and ridicule of the absurdity of teachers' unions as a means of improving education in America may be a useful tool, as you suggest.

[diverteach]

“...a .457 Magnum “

Oh really!!!???

[Ohioan]

You are right in many ways. Certainly the NEA, the major Teachers' Union, is no friend to education, nor to truth. It has been a force for promoting a Socialist America, and an eventual surrender of America to some form of World Government. As a Leftist organization, it is inherently against recognizing the first principle of effective education, which is to address the realities governing the performance of the individual child. Collectivist/Egalitarian Theories are the absolute antithesis to recognizing the particular attributes of each individual.

A good teacher knows that "one size does not fit all"; that big government solutions stifle the necessary innovations in every class-room, necessary to do the best for the children in that classroom; that building gigantic educational bureaucracies, Federal, State & local, squander money, while making it virtually impossible for the good teacher to properly address the individual child's needs & aptitudes. But, of course, all of that is obvious to anyone who really wants to accomplish anything worthwhile--as directly opposed to those wishing to appear to be "doing something."

William Flax

[Twinkie]

Eastwood accomplished exactly what he intended to accomplish with his no-holds barred speech. He has even been quoted as saying that Barack Obama is the worse fraud that has ever been perpetrated on the American people. Bless him for giving a rip about people hurting in this Obamanation.

[loveliberty2]

Thank you! Had most parents taken the time to examine the published annual "Legislative Agenda" of the NEA, beginning several decades ago now, those parents would have seen the "progressive" agenda at work. That agenda, of course, has been neither about improving the education of children nor about developing their understanding of themselves as Creator-endowed individuals with obligations and duties as citizens of America.

Any of us who were in the public schools pre-1950 learned our lessons from books which included writings from sources far different than those utilized today, including many from America's Founders and/or from religious sources. Even lower-grade "reading" books contained character development stories and poems.

All of that has been edited out by mindless robots in cubicles in textbook publishing companies where editing is for removing words, phrases and sentences which do not conform to a "progressive" agenda.

The collection of political, bureaucratic, academic, and union powers assembled to "change" and "control" education is massive.

Under the current Administration it simply gains more power for the collectivist/redistributionist cause.

Good teachers do not need to submit to unions and government the dues which will be used to enslave future generations.

[BruceDeitrickPrice]

RE: Eastwood. Only a day after I wrote this piece, when there was still some confusion and argument, Eastwood gave an interview to his local paper in California. I think that everyone will enjoy reading it.

http://www.pineconearchive.com/120907-1.html

By appearing old and vulnerable, he drew liberal pundits into making fun of him for almost a week. Then it turns out that Dirty Harry still lives.

[marron]

357, 457, whatever it takes. :)

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks BruceDeitrickPrice.

[Ohioan]

Under the current Administration it simply gains more power for the collectivist/redistributionist cause.

The promotion of a domestic Egalitarian/Collectivist monolith, is certainly part of the NEA objective, in the massive "dumbing down" which you articulate. But do not overlook the facet that seeks to undermine the ability of Americans to resist the efforts to trap us all into some form of world government. Much of the "editing" out of our traditional culture, that you describe, has been to such a purpose. (See, for further development of the point, Surrender By Subterfuge.

William Flax