President Obama Speaks to the Nation's Youth: Why Many Parents are Disturbed

This coming Tuesday, President Barak Obama will stand before a televised audience, an audience not the American Voter. Not yet that is. On Tuesday, September 8th, the President will collectively address our nation’s children on what will serve for most, as their first day of school. His speech is expected to include such noble reminders as the importance of education and the virtues of working hard. In many respects, the idea of a Presidential Address to our children seems a reasonable means for educating our students in civic awareness. In fact, much of the anticipated content is in perfect keeping with many of our most basic Conservative principals. Why then the public outrage?

On his radio show last night, Mario Solis Marich encouraged anyone with an intelligent justification for the angry response to news of the President’s speech to please speak up. The answer is really quite simple. A growing number of Americans do not trust President Obama. The cult of personality that has grown to define this administration has left many Americans justifiably apprehensive about Barak Obama, the man. This paranoia is not restricted to the Right. On Progressive Talk Radio, talk show hosts such as Thom Hartmann have gone to great lengths to differentiate between Obama Policy and Obama celebrity. Since his inauguration in January, the president has acted upon a great many policy objectives he vowed just last year to actively campaign against.

His official policy decisions have run so contrary to “Candidate Obama’s” campaign promises that his ardent supporters have had to perform intellectual gymnastics in an effort to defend his administrative decisions. He has delivered countless speeches so inanely riddled with convenient ambiguities he has left even the most politically savvy scratching their heads in confusion. In doing so, he has exploited the American People’s trust. They can no longer boast confidence in an Obama Administration that means what it says and says what it means. It should come then as no surprise that some parents might be reticent about entrusting their children’s impressionable young minds to a leader who not only lacks integrity but seems at the same time dogged in his quest to revolution the United States. For all of his charm and inarguable charisma, President Obama has been praised neither for candor nor humility.

At the same time, do I fear that students will come home from school on the evening of the 8th pledging servitude to the great leader Barack Obama as Demi Moore, Ashton Kutcher and so many other persons of little consequence have already done? No, I give our children far more credit than that. But I do respect their parents’ right to decline participation in the event and so should the school boards. Very likely, President Obama will deliver an undisruptive speech as regards staying in school and pursuing dreams. All the same, his mind-boggling sense of political invincibility, despite his plummeting poll numbers has many wondering where he will ever draw the line on his political invasiveness. So as a growing number of uneasy parents pledge to keep their children home or take them fishing on the 8th, I challenge the Administration to rethink their pre-conceived notions about the sort of the “change” the American People were looking for back in November. We will always, in keeping with our nation’s first presidential precedent, pledge our allegiance to an ideology of freedom and individual liberty and never to a man with a crown.