Drastic Times

An article on the BBC News page reports that President Barack Obama's education speech, in which he urged American schoolchildren to work hard and not to give up, has stirred a partisan row.

In Today's (Tuesday, September 8) speech at a Virginia high school, Mr Obama told children their country's future depended on their educational achievement. But conservatives have complained he is trying to indoctrinate children to serve his political agenda.

A different article posted on OpEdNews, suggests that the latest Republican exercise in manufactured outrage may very well cost the party for decades. The GOP threw weeks of anger at the speech with accusations of indoctrination and socialism. Conservatives ignored the Department of Education's description of what the speech would be about, subjects such as staying in school, taking responsibility for one's own education and working hard in school. Instead they went about treating the speech like they have treated the stimulus and health care reform. They ignored the facts and invented their own specifically designed to maximize outrage.

Based on these accusations put out there by the Republican Party, parents kept children from school, school boards alternatively decided not to show the speech, or required parents to opt in, or opt out, etc. The lies caused some parents to have visible breakdowns on television, driven to anguish and concern by the fantastic claims of socialist indoctrination.

The Saint Petersburg Times (Florida) compiled a list of students comments, some bitingly sarcastic towards opponents of the speech. Said one 16 year-old:

"Obama's speech was just dripping with socialist values, especially when he told kids "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."

Oh, and the part about students setting goals for their education and asking for help when they worry they won't succeed? He is stealing the words right out of Karl Marx's mouth."

A 17 year-old stated:

"Yes conservatives, you can come out of your bunkers in Wyoming and send little Jimmy back to school because there are no socialist agenda fist-pounding moments and no brain-sucking Marxist remarks."

Another 17 year-old commented:

"The speech had no socialist agenda and only the best of intentions: getting students to realize that the circumstances of their life are no excuse for not trying in school. "

And an 18 year-old had this to say:

"Does brainwashing include telling students that, "every single one of you has something you're good at?" If it does, then every child in this world has been brainwashed by their parents and will continue to be for the rest of their lives."

What's really interesting about all of the propaganda, is that the Republicans knew what would be in the speech. Did they not foresee that their lies would be exposed? Did they honestly believe that millions of parents would keep their children home from this education encouragement speech? Are the Republicans against education for the fact that an uneducated population is easier to manipulate?

One of the most insightful remarks was this one, made by a 17 year-old student:
"Children and teenagers are very susceptible to simply believing whatever their parents believe politically."

Hopefully this deception by the Republicans will teach students that their parents' views are not necessarily correct, and to evaluate statements on their own. Regardless, this lack of credibility on the part of the Republicans will no doubt still be in the minds of these young people when they vote for the first time in 2012.

Two Paris suburbs have suffered traffic chaos over a feud between their two mayors.

According to a BBC News article, the conservative mayor of Levallois-Perret decided to make the busy route D909 one-way to reduce the amount of commuter traffic through his district. He took this step without consulting with the other communities through which the D909 passed.

The Socialist mayor of neighbouring Clichy-la-Garenne said this increased congestion in his area. So instead of discussing the problem with Levallois-Perret's mayor, or considering if it would be beneficial to make his section of the route one-way in the same direction, he chose to make his section one-way in the opposite direction.

With the contradictory road-signs in place, the unsurprising result was gridlock, prompting the deployment of municipal and national police to direct traffic away from the area.

Personally I'm glad to see that the French can be just as disagreeable with each other as they can be with foreigners.

In the words of Donald Rumsfeld, former US Secretary of Defense and one of the chief engineers of the Iraqi War, "If you can't solve a problem, enlarge it." This strategy worked equally well in the Parisian suburbs as it did in Iraq.

Four children have been sent home this week from Gainesville Schools for being in violation of the school district's dress code. All of the children involved had been wearing shirts with an anti-Muslim statement, according to an article in the Gainesville Sun.

On their front, the T-shirts had a verse from the Gospel of John: "Jesus answered I am the way and the truth and the life; no one goes to the Father except through me," and this statement, "I stand in trust with Dove Outreach Center." The message "Islam is of the Devil" is on the back of the shirt.

One of the children involved, a 15 year old girl from Gainesville High School, said the decision to wear the shirt had been hers, and not her parents. She said the "devil" statement was aimed at Islam's beliefs and not its followers. She said, "The people are fine. The people are people. They can be saved like anyone else."

It's interesting what this girl had hoped that the believers of Islam could be saved from. Could they be saved from the hatred that her church was trying to spread? A more important question would be whether children who are members of the Dove Outreach Center could be saved from the narrow-minded teachings of their own church.

Although the child was trying to protect her parents in saying the decision was her own, her father showed that he was by no means above ignorant statements of his own, saying that society has grown "so tolerant of being tolerant" that free speech is eroding. In selectively protecting those parts of the Constitution that benefited him at the moment, this student's father apparently forgot that America not only has freedom of speech, but freedom of religion as well.

Some of the blame for the ignorance of the Dove Outreach Center's congregation must be placed with the church's Senior Pastor, Dr. Terry Jones, who said, to him, spreading the church's message was "even more important than education itself." When interviewed about an anti-Muslim sign in front of his church, Dr. Jones said, "The purpose of the sign is to expose Islam for what it is. It is a violent and oppressive religion that is trying to masquerade itself as a religion of peace."

It's my opinion that all organized religions are oppressive. While Islam may have had its share of violence and hypocrisy, Christianity is far from innocent itself. In fact, messages of hatred such as those of the Dove Outreach Center and the Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kansas, may place Christianity on the top of the hypocritical list.

Fortunately, the general population of Gainesville does not agree with the Dove Outreach Center's message of hatred, and according to an examiner.com article, they came out in droves to protest the sign.
People of all faiths and backgrounds came out with their own signs such as, "Who Would Jesus Hate?" "Love Thy Neighbor," and "God is Great. Love not Hate." The protesters have pledged to stay there until the sign comes down.

Pastor Eve MacMaster, of the Emmanuel Mennonite Church, said of the crowd of protesters, "I am blessed by these good people. They're great. Secularist, Muslim, Jewish, Christian whatever. This confirms my belief that this is a pretty good place to live."

According to an article posted in Live Science, the debate over President Obama's health care plan has more to do with illogical thought processes than reality. The article (which can be read in its entirety here), claims that people often work backward from firm conclusions to find supporting facts, rather than letting evidence play any part in their views.

Steve Hoffman, a professor of sociology at the University of Buffalo, claims that people get very attached to their beliefs, forming emotional attachments that get wrapped up in personal identities and senses of morality, irrespective of the facts of the matter. He believes that in an attempt to keep our sense of personal and social identity, we tend to use a backward type of reasoning in order to justify our beliefs. Hoffman goes on to say that just about everybody is vulnerable to the phenomenon of holding onto our beliefs even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

Despite Hoffman's claim that anyone can be effected, his idea is based on a study of nearly 50 participants, who were all Republican and reported believing in the link between the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks and Saddam Hussein. Although given mounting evidence that no link existed, all but one participant held on to the belief. According to Hoffman, "For these voters, the sheer fact that we were engaged in war led to a post-hoc search for a justification for that war. People were basically making up justifications for the fact that we were at war."

Although I find this study interesting, I find it equally interesting that a study had to be done to learn what was already evident. Over 6 years after the war started, despite overwhelming evidence that it was unjustified, a large percentage of the population continues to support it with reasoning that rational people simply cannot understand. What's sad is that, assuming that this study is true, a large portion of the masses will continue to believe that universal health care means takeover and dependency on the government. Despite the evidence otherwise, any attempt to sway their opinion will be futile.

The article also says that past research by Dolores Albarracin, a psychology professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, has shown that people who are less confident in their beliefs are more reluctant to consider opposing perspectives. Therefore, these people avoid counter evidence all together. In another article (which can be read here), Albarracin says, "Close-minded people are very certain and dogmatic in their views, and generally believe that there is a single correct point of view." The article goes on to say that these people are more reluctant to look at different viewpoints regarding political, religious or ethical values.

As with Hoffman's study, Albarracin's study of close-minded people is interesting but was quite unnecessary. A five minute conversation with most Christians would bring anyone to the same conclusion.