Thursday, March 09, 2006

Teacher Censored

A teacher in Denver, Colorado was put on unpaid leave today because of a lecture he gave concerning President Bush's State of the Union Address. In the lecture concerning the address, the teacher said that on the recording, some of Bush's speech "sounds a lot like the things that Adolf Hitler used to say. We're the only ones who are right, everyone else is backwards and our job is to conquer the world and make sure that they all live just like we want them to."

This reminded me of when I told my students that the Boston Tea Party was a terrorist act and I had parents calling in demanding that my boss reprimand me.

I just wanted to throw that out there. Bush may not be Hitler, but his Presidency is laced with crap I would only have expected from crappy 80's political fiction. Our Government is spying on citizens. (I actually have a resident whose father was put in prison because he said "Allah" too often on the phone. His uncle was shipped back to Syria.) Our Government is involved in an unprovoked war. Our Government has denied that Terrorists fall under the Geneva Conventions and therefore it is legal to torture them. All in all, I don't think Bush is equivalent to Hitler, but we should be reminded of where a destructive regime like that of the Nazi's began. We must learn from history. The minute society starts thinking it's okay to fire history teachers because they told the class that the President's speech sounded a bit like propaganda... I don't know... it's just a scary road to go down.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Josh,

I'm sorry that you have the opinion that removing a evil despot from power is not a worthwhile endeavor.

Joshua said...

Um... I'm confused. What about my previous post led you to believe that I don't think it would be a worthy endeavor?