Posted on 04/04/2009 8:06:26 PM PDT by rabscuttle385
During the past couple of weeks, the Washington media and political establishment have focused on such matters of crucial and lasting importance as President Barack Obama’s possible “overexposure,” whether he showed suitable affect by chuckling during a TV interview in a time of severe economic difficulty, and just when he became angry about the bonuses received by American International Group executives.
To be fair, the focus on trivialities is bipartisan. We have also been treated to several days of discussion about whether conservatives Laura Ingraham and Ann Coulter or moderate Meghan McCain have the appropriate body shapes for Republican women.
Meanwhile, outside the Beltway, America’s demography is steadily and quietly changing in a way that will fundamentally reshape the country for decades to come. A new generation, the millennial generation (born between 1982 and 2003), is coming of age to make over or realign U.S. politics. The approximately 95 million millennials compose the largest American generation in history. There are now about 17 million more millennials alive than there are baby boomers (born between 1946 and 1964), previously the largest generation, and 27 million more millennials than members of generation X (born between 1965 and 1981), the relatively small generation between the boomers and the millennials.
While about 4.5 million millennials have reached voting age every year since 2000, the generation didn’t enter the electorate in large enough numbers to make a real difference until 2008. And make a difference it did. Millennials were decisive in securing the Democratic presidential nomination for Obama. In November, millennials supported Obama over John McCain by a greater-than-2-to-1 ratio, accounting for 80 percent of Obama’s popular vote margin and turning what would have been a squeaker into a decisive victory.
Attitudes that may very well shift as America's "millennials" get stuck with the bill for the mistakes of previous generations and discover that all they have left to pay the bill with is worthless "change."
ping!
I know I'm sounding like a broken record....but....it is going to take blood-shed to stop this leftist train to utopia.
Elections have been reduced to a circus act.
I don't know if it will get to that point, but yes, it will take a major calamity and major suffering to stop America's slide into the Socialist hell.
“Elections have been reduced to a circus act.”
I have the distinct impression that was exactly Soros, via the Soros-backed SOS of MN, was trying to say to us with the Franken senatorial candidacy and now, potential win.
Those of us who did NOT vote for the commie traitors should not have to pay for it.
Xer Ping
Ping list for the discussion of the politics and social (and sometimes nostalgic) aspects that directly effects Generation Reagan / Generation-X (Those born from 1965-1981) including all the spending previous generations are doing that Gen-X and Y will end up paying for.
Freep mail me to be added or dropped. See my home page for details and previous articles.
With the young and uneducated along with the illegals, and now with Obama running the census, it’s hard to imagine that conservatives or even RINOs will ever be in a position of authority again.
And you can thank whoever is responsible for granting military draft deferments to those who became teachers during the Vietnam War. Teaching became a haven for lefties, and they indoctrinated the children of boomers at both the K-12 and college level.
While about 4.5 million millennials have reached voting age every year since 2000, the generation didn’t enter the electorate in large enough numbers to make a real difference until 2008. And make a difference it did. Millennials were decisive in securing the Democratic presidential nomination for Obama. In November, millennials supported Obama over John McCain by a greater-than-2-to-1 ratio, accounting for 80 percent of Obama’s popular vote margin and turning what would have been a squeaker into a decisive victory.
Won't these idiots be surprized when the Obama machine targets them for the coming holocaust.
“And you can thank whoever is responsible for granting military draft deferments to those who became teachers during the Vietnam War. Teaching became a haven for lefties, and they indoctrinated the children of boomers at both the K-12 and college level.”
The NEA gained control of education and there was never a great increase in the number of male teachers.
By 1996 male elementary teachers had dropped to 9.1% from 12.2% although they had reached 17.7% in 1981.
At the secondary level in 1961 males were 56.8% by 1996 they were down to 41.1% and by 2001 males were at the record low of 35% at the secondary level.
“By 1996 male elementary teachers had dropped to 9.1% from 12.2% although they had reached 17.7% in 1981.”
hat should read 9.1% in 1996 from 12.2% in 1961 but having reached 17.7% from 1961 to 1981.
Assuming your data is correct, you'd still have to break down the numbers and factor in post-WWII teacher retirements and Vietnam era retirements. We're talking 1964-1968 here; note the 1981 number showing a rise.
Also, I was in college at the time. Fellow male students were openly and agressively seeing degrees and positions which would allow them to escape military service, for the sole purpose of escaping that service. Note also that the changes in NUMBERS of male teachers can't reflect the changes in where these teachers, during any given year, stood on the political sprectrum.
It seems to me that you are the one that needs to do the work to prove your claim, if anything the percentage of male teachers overall in schools and universities seems to have declined during the years that men should have been taking over teaching according to you.
Something that seems indisputable is that the draft didn’t have any great effect on American education whereas the NEA did.
Instead of responding to that, you come back with, "Something that seems indisputable is that the draft didn’t have any great effect on American education..." ; a ridiculous assertion. An analysis of the "political leanings" data would likely show that what is closer to "indisputable" is that the draft had a great effect on American education.
BTW - I don't need to prove anything to you or anyone else. I lived it. I knew men who chose that path and still occasionally meet someone who admits to having done so. I would guess that you have too, whatever your age. If not, just ask some retired male teachers in their late 50's or early 60's, especially around Democratic Party events.
I did live it, I did not approve of the draft and was a draft resister.
One very important mistake you are making is to think that males that became teachers, or were not drafted, or had college deferments were liberal. I didn’t have a a college deferment and had to fight harder than most to beat the draft, once I got my permanent deferment I enlisted in the army. I was a conservative before and after beating the draft.
It is easy now for people to connect not being drafted with liberalism but I never saw it, Newt Gingrich, Dick Cheney, Rush Limbaugh, Michael Medved, Phil Graham, Bill O’Reilly, Michael Savage, Michael Reagan, Bill Bennett, David Limbaugh, Gary Bauer, Pat Buchannon, Dick Armey, Dennis Hastert, Jeb Bush, the list goes on and on and on, of males that just wanted to follow their own lives and careers, and personal choices.
Right now and for a number of years we can barely get anyone to serve in the military, right or left no matter what their political leanings or pedigree, during the draft and the Vietnam war we were a more patriotic generation but it still meant that you didn’t have to be liberal to be a male teacher in fact, a lot of those conservatives on that short list above did become teachers and college professors.
My contention is that there is no secret to what moved education left it was the nationalizing and unionizing of school teachers and schools under the NEA.
1912: NEA endorses Women’s Suffrage
1919: NEA members in New Jersey lead the way to the nation’s first state pension; by 1945, every state had a pension plan in effect
1941: NEA successfully lobbied Congress for special funding for public schools near military bases
1945: NEA lobbied for the G.I. Bill of Rights to help returning soldiers continue their education
1958: NEA helps gain passage of the National Defense Education Act
1964: NEA lobbies to pass the Civil Rights Act
1968: NEA leads an effort to establish the Bilingual Education Act
1974: NEA backs a case heard before the U.S. Supreme Court that proposes to make unlawful the firing of pregnant teachers or forced maternity leave
1984: NEA fights for and wins passage of a federal retirement equity law that provides the means to end sex discrimination against women in retirement funds
2000s: NEA has lobbied for changes to the ESEA/No Child Left Behind Law
“One very important mistake you are making is to think that males that became teachers, or were not drafted, or had college deferments were liberal.”
What I meant there was that a man going into teaching during the Vietnam War did not have to be liberal by any stretch of the imagination, and they sure didn’t have to be some kind of flaming liberal leader or dedicated leftist, for one thing many of them were going into teaching no matter what and as I posted above many of them are our conservative leaders now and they were also teachers and professors.
Draft avoidance was not a purity test for liberalism, it can be used as a criticism of mushy patriotism or conservatism but it should be applied to all men that do not serve which is a vast majority of them for the last, very many years.
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