"Calls to boycott Obama's speech to kids offer a disturbing lesson in paranoia 

Posted by: "Rick Kisséll"

Sat Sep 5, 2009 1:48 pm (PDT)

While it long ago crossed the borders of reason and civility, the
hysteria over healthcare reform is -- at some level -- understandable,
because wellness and infirmity are really just stand-ins for those most
terrifying of issues, life and death.

But there is no similar
way to rationalize the bizarre controversy now raging over President
Obama's plan to deliver a brief televised address on Tuesday to the
nation's grammar school children.

According to Secretary of
Education Arne Duncan, Obama will "challenge students to work hard, set
educational goals and take responsibility for their learning. He will
also call for a shared responsibility and commitment on the part of
students, parents and educators to ensure that every child in every
school receives the best education possible so they can compete in the
global economy for good jobs and live rewarding and productive lives as
American citizens."

Sounds innocuous. Who, after all, could be against good study habits,
personal responsibility and productive lives? As it turns out, quite a
number of people who seem to believe that Obama intends to induct their
children into -- well, it's not quite clear what they're afraid of. The
Web and talk radio are abuzz with various attempts to organize a
boycott of Tuesday's speech. One group is urging parents to demand that
their children be excused from watching the president and be sent
instead to the school library to read the Founding Fathers. (The
theory, one supposes, is that a good dose of the Federalist Papers will
inoculate the young against Obama's attempts to subvert the republic
through good grades.)

On Wednesday, Fox News devoted a
substantial portion of one of its prime-time newscasts to a discussion
of whether Obama is, in fact, trying to seduce schoolchildren to some
darkly obscure personal agenda. The sole guest, a spokesman for the
libertarian Cato Institute, reported that "we've gotten a lot of calls
from people asking, 'How do I keep my child from being indoctrinated? '
"

On Thursday, Jim Greer, chairman of the Florida Republican
Party, accused the president of attempting to "indoctrinate America's
children to his socialist agenda." According to Greer, "the idea that
schoolchildren across our nation will be forced to watch the president
justify his plans for government-run healthcare, banks and automobile
companies, increasing taxes on those who create jobs, and racking up
more debt than any other president, is not only infuriating but goes
against the beliefs of the majority of Americans, while bypassing
American parents through an invasive abuse of power."

Anxiety
over the speech seems particularly high in Texas, where many districts
are offering parents involved in the boycott movement the option of
taking their children out of class. (Whoever thought we'd see Texas
treat advocacy of personal responsibility like sex education?)

The
irony wasn't lost on everybody in the state. Puzzled Texas education
officials told the Houston Chronicle that students often watch
presidential speeches broadcast during school hours and that, in 1989,
President George H.W. Bush specifically spoke to students about drug
abuse. "It's hard to imagine anything more ridiculous than attacking
the president of the United States for talking to students about the
importance of getting a good education and being a good citizen," said
Kathy Miller, president of a statewide school monitoring group. "I wish
our elected leaders were responsible enough to denounce this kind of
wild-eyed paranoia. But the problem is too many of them are actually
feeding this kind of nonsense -- like when the governor flirts with
secessionists and state Board of Education members say the president
sympathizes with terrorists."

Miller has identified precisely
the process at work in the healthcare hysteria and, increasingly,
elsewhere where the GOP thinks it can shove the Obama administration
into a ditch. Republican officials such as the Florida state chairman
are playing a dangerous game with an unhinged segment of public opinion
that regards Obama not as an elected official with whom they disagree,
but as an illegitimate usurper of the presidency.

That
paranoid fantasy is what's really behind the "birther" movement and the
allegations that the president is -- take your pick -- a secret Marxist
or a secret Muslim.

It's the kind of fanciful anxiety that
produces comments like this, posted on a conservative website this
week: "Barack Obama and his left-wing Chicago machine regime are
putting into place laws and institutions which will insure that there
will never again be free elections in America."

These are the people who are stockpiling ammunition and keeping their children at home next Tuesday.