The writing assignment was to develop a position, for or against, on "Buy Nothing Day". Included in the instructions was an article by Adbusters (if you know that organization you can anticipate the bent of the article) entitled "The Evolution of Buy Nothing Day". The article states,
"Mental environmentalists, media activists and tree huggers joined forces and [BND] blossomed."More importantly, the following ridiculous quote was included in the article:
"Could the hatred that fueled 9/11 have anything to do with the staggering inequalities between the world's rich and poor? Was over-consumption one of the root causes of terror?"Paraphrasing my daughter's position on the subject: BND is an infringement on individual liberty, anti-capitalist, potentially damaging to the economy and supposed "over-consumption" cannot be blamed for radical terrorist acts.
If your blood is now getting close to the boiling point, you may want to take a break, it gets worse. After turning in the assignment, the paper was returned with the normal corrections of grammar, style, etc., what you should expect of a competent English teacher. Unfortunately, she went on to criticize/argue with the positions taken. It is this editorial control that inspired me to begin blogging about such issues. For example, the teacher's response to the argument regarding the damaging effects to the economy of such campaigns was as follows:
"Is this an either/or argument? Is it defensible? Does our entire economy really depend on one day's profits? Reconsider."So typically leftist. The important point to remember about the left, is that there is never enough. It doesn't stop with one wacko organization with a web site telling us to suspend buying for a day. The leftist/progressive/statist movement in this country is patient and perfectly happy with small, incremental encroachments on individual liberty as long as they continue to move in their approved direction. Case in point, the anti-smoking movement in this country. Was it enough just to have smoking and non-smoking sections in public places? Of course not. Some cities are instituting city-wide bans of a legal product. I don't smoke cigarettes and never have but will defend the right of smokers to do so. So do you think [BND] is enough or is it just another incremental step designed to hurt the economies of developed nations?
My daughter also correctly argued that the "staggering inequalities between the world's rich and poor" or "over-consumption" could not be blamed for radical Islam's barbaric terrorist acts. Citing our experience with the Barbary Pirates in the early 1800's, my daughter correctly pointed out President Jefferson's sending in the marines ("the shores of Tripoli" in the Marines Hymn comes from this) to disrupt and stop the Barbary Pirates, radical Muslims from the Barbary States, from seizing U.S. ships, kidnapping U.S. sailors and demanding tribute from the U.S. for the right to pass safely. In 1785 John Adams and Thomas Jefferson went to London to negotiate with Tripoli's envoy. When they inquired "concerning the ground of the pretensions to make war upon nations who had done them no injury" to Ambassador Sidi Haji Abdrahaman, he replied it was written in their Qu'ran, that:
"all nations which had not acknowledged the Prophet were sinners, whom it was the right and duty of the faithful to plunder and enslave; and that every Muslim who was slain in this warfare was sure to go to paradise."He said, also, that
"the man who was the first to board a vessel had one slave over and above his share, and that when they sprang to the deck of an enemy's ship, every sailor held a dagger in each hand and a third in his mouth; which usually struck such terror into the foe that they cried out for quarter at once."For any leftist still reading, presidents prior to and including Jefferson did actually pay the tribute but in classic "if you give a mouse a cookie" fashion, it was not enough. The tribute continued to rise and kidnappings for ransom continued. Jefferson had to act and sent in a small contingent of the first U.S. Marines under the command of Lt. Stephen Decatur to sneak in to the bay at Tripoli, board the captured USS Philadelphia and destroy it to prevent it from being used by the enemy.
The reason I spend so much time on this point is the following comment by the teacher:
"Muslims AND Americans 1801 and 2011 (or 2001) are significantly different. Two hundred years does make some difference & the U.S. in 1801 differed significantly from the U.S. in 2001. Ask your history teacher."
Really? How, exactly, are Muslim fanatics different now than then? Bomb technology is much more developed now? It's easier to get Americans to give up their own rights and freedoms now than it was then with the willing accomplices in the worldwide social activist media? I'm still not seeing the difference here and maybe she should actually study history just a bit before writing comments like the one above on a students paper. The level of ignorance of history and lack of understanding of the radical Islamic world view is stunning but predictable.
I know I'm asking too much for a teacher to be more than a mouthpiece for the activist left. It's no small coincidence that this particular teacher is also an officer in the local NEA. Shocking! But I also know that I have stood on the sidelines far too long on issues such as this in the schools. I encourage all of us to educate ourselves regarding the bilge fed to our kids on a daily basis by people they've been taught to respect and teach our kids the facts.
My apologies to any teacher who is actually an independent thinker and understands their role in helping kids learn HOW to think and not WHAT to think. One last note: my daughter just showed me a picture of posters (picture below) going up all around her school. This cause de jour this time: "No Meat Monday's". More on that later.
