Political Provocateur

Apparently a North Carolina 4th grader wasn’t too impressed with President Obama’s speech today. Well that’s a relief. Good to know that the speech didn’t totally brainwash The Children, right?

Via Reason:

On September 8th, 2009, I watched President Obama give his speech. Some kids got a note from their parents and got to do fun stuff instead. I was very jealous. I listened to him talk about school and how it was the first day of school (although it wasn’t) and other boring stuff for FIFTEEN MINUTES! To a kid that’s a looong time in school.

During the speech, my friend and her friend were talking, and my teacher said they were being very disrespectful to the president, the leader of our armed forces (blah, blah, blah and some other stuff).

Later, in the library, a kid in my class said that he was very happy that Obama beat McCain. I asked him why. He said (and this is the funny part) that he would bring back slavery and raise taxes! I said how do you know that? He said, “Because I watched the news” and I said “You don’t watch the news if you think that!” and it was basically back and forth from there. But when he said he said HE knew more than MY MOM, it was a fight worthy of a war. I was so mad I broke my pencil and later, my crayon.

To be honest, I didn’t really get all the hype about the president giving a speech to school children. No, it’s not technically part of his job description, but presidents in the past have given these kinds of speeches. So what’s the big deal, right?

Sort of…  But it’s not the concept of Obama giving the speech that irks me and most of my fellow libertarians. It’s the collective and communal undertones that were very, very present. Call me a zealous invdividualist, but you don’t have to channel your inner Ayn Rand to see that these statements are a little much:

The future of America depends on you. What you’re learning in school today will determine whether we as a nation can meet our greatest challenges in the future.

We need every single one of you to develop your talents and your skills and your intellect so you can help us old folks 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.

So today, I want to ask all of you, what’s your contribution going to be? …What will a President who comes here in 20 or 50 or 100 years say about what all of you did for this country?

The story of America [is] about people…who loved their country too much to do anything less than their best….

Anyway, I’m not going to make a big fuss about it. Creepy collectivist rhetoric from Obama isn’t necessarily surprising. And even though this speech will be nothing but a distant memory in approximately 11.2 hours, I will leave with this final note: Obama needs to stop playing the role of a Guidance Counselor in Chief. He needs to leave that to the that people are well, supposed to be doing that. Besides, the last thing kids need is to have a politician as a role model.