by Ann Coulter
If the Democrats don’t want Republicans associating their good names with Michael Moore, perhaps they should stop associating with Michael Moore.
Or does revealing the Democrats’ association with Michael Moore violate some criminal law I’m unaware of? Perhaps liberals will claim Moore is a “covert” agent with the CIA—assuming a big, sweaty behemoth like Michael Moore could actually be concealed—and McClellan has outed him. Or does the fact that Murtha fought in Vietnam prohibit comment on anything he says? Does he have “absolute moral authority,” too?
How about simply repeating what Democrats say? Can we do that? At the end of 2005, the Republican National Committee ran a Web ad showing various Democrats sharing their insights about the war in Iraq, with a white flag waving between each video clip:
HOWARD DEAN, DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN: The idea that we’re going to win the war is an idea that, unfortunately, is just plain wrong.
[white flag waving]
SEN. BARBARA BOXER (D-CA): There’s no specific time frame, but I would say the withdrawal has to start now, right after the elections, December 15th.
[white flag waving]
SEN. JOHN KERRY (D-MA): There is no reason, Bob, that young American soldiers need to be going into the homes of Iraqis in the dead of night, terrorizing kids and children, you know, women …
At the end of the commercial, the camera panned back to show a soldier watching the clips and ends with the message “Our soldiers are watching and our enemies are too.”
What are they going to accuse us of now: taking their comments in context?
Guess who the Democrats sent out to attack the RNC ad? We’re almost at the end of the chapter, so you shouldn’t have to read ahead. Was it “NATO Paris office” Kennedy? Was it “Bad Back” Dean? (Dean avoided Vietnam by producing a note from his doctor and a fake limp at the army recruiting office—before repairing to Aspen for months of skiing.) No! None of these. It was one of the Democrats’ surprise military war heroes. Having already used up the war service of Cleland, Kerry, and Murtha, this time it was . . . Senator Daniel Inouye, World War II Medal of Honor winner!
Inouye denounced the RNC ad, saying, “As a veteran of World War II, I know what it’s like to fight a war and put your life on the line every day. I also know what it takes to win a war, and I know that politics and an attack machine like the president’s plays no part in it.” Remember: The alleged “attack machine” did nothing but show clips of Democrats talking about the war—and two of the Democrats weren’t veterans or widows, so even under the “Cleland rule” we’re allowed to criticize them!
The machismo of liberals about “real war” reached hysterical proportions in a Nicholas Kristof New York Times column decrying Bill O’Reilly’s Fox News stories about liberals’ war on Christmas by lecturing O’Reilly on “real war”:
“Look, I put up àChristmas tree,’ rather than àholiday tree,’ and I’m sure Mr. O’Reilly is right that political correctness leads to absurd contortions this time of year. But when you’ve seen what real war does, you don’t lightly use the word to describe disagreements about Christmas greetings. And does it really make sense to offer segments on political correctness and zero on genocide?” Kristof knows “real war” not because he’s fought, mind you, but because he’s covered wars as a scribbler. So no more chatter about liberals’ war on Christmas, Fox News! Perhaps Kristof should raise the importance of “real war” with his colleague Frank Rich, who had a column on the gay cowboy movie Brokeback Mountain, just above Kristof’s column that day. Is “real war” more important than a review of a movie about gay cowboys? Rich’s column was one of four articles in the Times that day on Brokeback Mountain, the tenth in the Times that week, and Rich’s tenth gay-themed column for the year—out of forty-seven columns in all.
Liberals shape the debate with loud chanting, monopolize your brain through the TV, and then pull cheap parlor tricks to prevent any opposing arguments from being heard. Her husband died! Her son died! His kid almost died, partly as a result of candidate Al’s own negligence! His wife works at the CIA! He’s a war hero! He covered a war in Darfur for the New York Times! Stop the hate! They yell in unison, frightening people with their ferocity, and then announce that disagreement will not be permitted.
What crackpot argument can’t be immunized by the Left’s invocation of infallibility based on personal experience? Today, a Democrat called for the institution of Communism in America, confiscation of all private property, forcible agricultural collectivization, imprisonment of intellectuals, and seizure of all handguns—moments before her entire family was wiped out in a tornado. Responses? Perhaps the Democrats could find an orphaned child whose parents were brutally hacksawed to death to put forth their tax plan. If these Democrat human shields have a point worth making, how about allowing it to be made by someone we’re allowed to respond to?
6
THE LIBERAL PRIESTHOOD:
SPARE THE ROD,
SPOIL THE TEACHER
The only group in society that must be spoken of in reverential terms at all times, no matter what, is public school teachers. Attack the Boy Scouts, boycott Mel Gibson, put Christ in a jar of urine—but don’t dare say anything bad about teachers. Unless you want it noted on your permanent record … We are simultaneously supposed to gasp in awe at teachers’ raw dedication and be forced to listen to their incessant caterwauling about how they don’t make enough money. Well, which is it? Are they dedicated to teaching or are they in it for the money? After all the carping about how little teachers are paid, if someone enters the teaching profession for the big bucks, aren’t they too stupid to be teaching our kids?
Public school teachers are the new priesthood while traditional religion is ridiculed and maligned. As portrayed in the national pulpit of Hollywood, leaders of God-based religions are invariably lying scum. Not since Alfred Hitchcock’s I Confess (1953) has Hollywood conceived of a priest or minister who was not a Nazi sympathizer, sexual predator, or some other breed of moral viper. Priests and ministers are smarmy, humorless hypocrites in movies like The People Vs. Larry Flynt (but the pornographer comes off favorably!), Judgment (child-molesting priest), and The Runner Stumbles (Dick Van Dyke as a hypo-critical priest who impregnates a nun). In Sister Act, Whoopi Goldberg is a Reno lounge singer on the lam who shakes up the stodgy convent with her fun, upbeat attitude. The late, briefly aired, and little-missed TV show The Book of Daniel was about a drug-addicted Episcopal priest, Daniel, who had an alcoholic wife, a drug-dealing daughter, one gay son, and another son who was having sex with the bishop’s daughter. Daniel’s lesbian secretary was having sex with his sister-in-law. In other words, it was a typical Hollywood family drama.
By contrast, the moment a teacher walks onto the screen, you know who the hero is going to be. Teachers are Robin Williams in Dead Poets Society, Michelle Pfeiffer in Dangerous Minds, Jon Voight in Conrack, Richard Dreyfuss in Mr. Holland’s Opus, Kevin Kline in The Emperor’s Club, Morgan Freeman in Lean on Me, and Julia Roberts in Mona Lisa Smile. Among the Teacher-as-Saint movies are: Goodbye, Mr. Chips (three versions); The Blackboard Jungle; Stand and Deliver; and on and on and on. There are only two possible plots in movies about teachers: either inspirational teachers bring their passion and dedication to inner-city schools or inspirational teachers bring their passion and dedication to bored suburban kids.
In real life, these taxpayer-supported parasites are inculcating students in the precepts of the Socialist Party of America—as understood by retarded people. In early 2006, Sean Allen, a student at Overland High School in Colorado, taped his tenth-grade “world geography” teacher Jay Bennish ranting incoherently about Bush for twenty minutes during class. After a brief detour during which Bennish condemned the capitalist system, he proceeded briskly to his main point … George W. Bush is like Hitler!
Anyone who uses this adolescent cliche should not be in the tenth grade, much less teaching it. But Bennish thought he was Socrates,
telling his students, “What I am trying to get you to do is think more in depth.” How about this: Al Gore is like Hitler! Nancy Pelosi is like Hitler! Kanye West is like Hitler! Jay Bennish is like Hitler! And that guy on the Subway sandwich shop TV commercials who lost all the weight—I’m thinking: Hitler! (Are you cogitating deep thoughts?)
Although surely smarter than Bennish, not all American teenagers are bright enough to withstand the constant propaganda from authority figures who are grading them. Part of Bennish’s Socratic dialogue that day included this exchange:
BENNISH: Who is probably the single most violent nation on planet Earth?! [sic]
UNIDENTIFIED STUDENT APPLE-POLISHER: We are!
BENNISH: The United States of America!
After Bennish was placed on a short, paid administrative leave, about 150 students—who can’t place Spain on a map—”walked out” of the school to protest his suspension.
The new clergy not only teach children clever repartee such as Bush is like Hitler!, but they use their positions as taxpayer-supported wards of the state to demote the old religion, treating prayer, Bibles, and Christmas songs like hate crimes. At the Cori Street Elementary School in State College, Pennsylvania, children were led in a chant of “celebrate Kwanzaa” while Christmas carols were stripped of all religious content. At Pattison Elementary School in Katy, Texas, Christmas songs were banned, but students were threatened with grade reductions for refusing to sing songs celebrating other religious faiths. A school district in California prohibits teachers from mentioning Christmas or wearing Christmas jewelry. A New Jersey teacher was forced by an ACLU suit to abandon plans to take children to see the Broadway version of A Christmas Carol. In Panama City, Florida, the school principal changed the name of a Bible study group from “Fellowship of Christian Students” to “Fellowship of Concerned Students” and for good measure prohibited the club from advertising. A school administrator in Dallas, Texas, was reprimanded for using her e-mail to forward copies of President Bush’s National Day of Prayer Proclamation, though the school district had no problem with employees using e-mail to send jokes, chain e-mails, and secular messages of encouragement.’
The worst scandal to hit the real churches in twenty years is the priest child-molestation scandal—which, by the way, pales in comparison to the teacher child-molestation problem. If only the depraved priests had had teachers’ unions defending them, they’d still be running amok. All we’d ever hear about is how priests are hardworking, underpaid, and laboring under ghastly parishioner-priest ratios. The hero in every third Hollywood film would be a priest, and letters to the editor pages would be bristling with indignant letters complaining about how poorly priests are paid. Bumper stickers would suddenly appear, saying, “Someday, we’ll have enough money for the Lord’s House and the Air Force will hold bake sales to pay for its bombers.” Most important, every school-age child in America would be required to attend Catholic Church for six hours a day—all subsidized by the taxpayer.
I’m sure there are a lot of wonderful, caring public school teachers out there. But there are also a lot of wonderful, caring Catholic priests. That doesn’t stop people from noticing when there’s a rash of bad ones. We’d all die without energy companies, but no liberal lips quiver when Enron comes under attack. Why are “educators” in government schools the only people on Earth who must universally be spoken of in hushed tones of religious worship? As it happens, public schools rival Enron when it comes to financial scandals and have more sex scandals per year than Catholic priests—thirty times more. But don’t mention it or you’ll be accused of hating teachers.
At least the public schools perform such a great service! According to David Salisbury, director of the Center for Educational Freedom at the CATO Institute, “Throughout the twentieth century, the scores of preschool age children on IQ and kindergarten readiness tests have climbed steadily upward… . It’s not until they move up through grade school and on to high school that their performance declines.”
The international comparisons are breathtaking. American students excel on international tests in fourth grade, the earliest grade for which international comparisons are available. In fourth grade—after the public schools have had only a few years to do their damage—American students far outperform other countries in reading, math, and science. Fourth-graders score in the 92nd percentile in science, the 70th percentile in reading, and the 58th percentile in math. They beat 26 of 35 countries in reading literacy, including Germany, France, and Italy. The main educational difference between American children and Western European children at that age is that most American children have not been subjected to preschool, whereas almost all European children have.
But as American children spend more time in school, their scores decline. By the eighth grade, Americans are merely average in international tests. By the twelfth grade—having received all the benefits of an American education—they are near the bottom. Math scores plummet from the 58th percentile in fourth grade to the 14th percentile in twelfth grade.
Most stunningly, in fourth grade Americans are in the 92nd percentile in science literacy—bested only by students in South Korea and Japan. Eight years later, American twelfth-graders’ science scores have fallen to the 29th percentile. (For those of you who learned math in the U.S. public schools, going from 92nd to the 29th means it went down.) The only countries American twelfth-graders beat in science were Lithuania, Cyprus, and South Africa. If the U.S. Olympic gymnastics team could beat only Lithuania, Cyprus, and South Africa, there would be congressional investigations.
Question: Is student achievement inversely proportional to time spent in U.S. public schools, or is there a correlation between poor student achievement and time spent in U.S. public schools?
Discuss.
So that’s how schools are doing at their primary mission. But liberals scream bloody murder and accuse you of attacking teachers whenever anyone mentions any problems with the public schools, no matter how meekly (unless “problems” means only “not paying teachers enough”).
Through their girly guilt-mongering, Democrats have turned public school teachers (or as I call them, “disinformational facilitators”) into religious icons. It’s a good gig, especially if you don’t even have to teach. At private schools, 80 percent of the personnel are teachers. By contrast, at public schools only about 50 percent of the personnel are actual teachers—most of the rest are cogs in the endless layers of machinery of the “education” bureaucracy.’ This would be like having 26 full-time coaches for a 26-man baseball team.
It’s very important for the Democrats to control the public schools. John Dewey, the founder of public education in America, said, “You can’t make Socialists out of individualists—children who know how to think for themselves spoil the harmony of the collective society which is coming, where everyone is interdependent.” You also can’t make socialists out of people who can read, which is probably why Democrats think the public schools have nearly achieved Aristotelian perfection. For Lenin it was “Give me your four-year-olds, and in a generation I will build a Socialist state.” For Hitler it was “Let me control the textbooks and I will control the state.” For the Democrats it’s “Let us control the schools and in a generation no one will able to read.”
Unfazed by international comparisons showing that American children fall behind with each additional year of school, Democrats want to get our students started falling behind even sooner. In his acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention, John Kerry proposed “investing” in Head Start, Early Start, Smart Start, Jump Start, Kick Start—and got a standing ovation. He mentioned the military and you could hear crickets in the convention hall. Al Gore’s 2000 Democratic platform included federal preschool for every child in America. Sandra Feldman of the American Federation of Teachers says America “can’t afford not to” adopt a preschool program like the French—whom our fourth-graders crush in international comparisons, by the way. Remember how fac
tories in the old Soviet Union stayed open year after year even though half the products they turned out were defective? U.S. public schools have become like that, which is why Democrats feel so much at home in the education business.
Democrats like to say, “Sure, Republicans are all for fetuses, but once the child is born, do they care?” Their yardstick for caring is: Where do you stand on creating jobs for public school teachers? The rule used to be that you could be anti-abortion provided you supported creating more welfare bureaucrats. Los Angeles Times columnist Robert Scheer began a 1995 column with “Love the fetus, damn the child,” and then went on a jeremiad against “prolife”—his quotes—senators Bob Dole and Phil Gramm for putting together a welfare reform bill that “will make abortion a compelling choice for poor women.” Scheer referred to this monstrosity as “Dole’s bill.” Once “Dole’s bill” turned out to be a smashing success, it was renamed “Clinton’s welfare reform bill” or, for short, “President Clinton’s crowning achievement.”
So now the new rule is, in order to be the “right kind” of prolifer, you don’t have to support massive increases in spending on welfare programs; you have to support massive increases in spending on public school teachers. When he was running for president in 2004, Al Sharpton said, Republicans “love the fetus and they cut the funds from the baby.
I don’t understand this jaded love for children where you cut daycare, cut childcare, cut anything—Head Start—but yet you want to protect the fetus coming into the world.” For liberals, a human life begins at the precise moment the person starts filling out his first application for a government job.
Howard Dean says Democrats should not turn their backs on “prolife people”—but only if they are “the right kind of prolife per-son,” by which he means supportive of every possible teachers’ union giveaway. Whenever the Democrats talk about increasing spending on “the children,” what they mean is sending more dollars to useless government bureaucrats, even if they never encounter a child on the job. Until no one in America earns more than a kindergarten teacher, the nation does not value human life.