Sometimes this feels like the Facebook studio show, but I get so many good post ideas that I often have to come over here to flesh out an argument or verbalize more precisely a point that I try to make over there. This one is no exception: Obama is giving a speech to the schoolkids on Tuesday.

There is a full blown panic in many corners of the Right right now (hey now!) about “socialist indoctrination” and Nazis and  the like, and, given some of his wacko associations, especially Bill Ayers and Ayers’s switch from violence to education as the “true motor” of revolution, I think there is reason to be suspicious. Hitler analogies are overused in today’s age, but this is truly an accurate analogy – if you are worried about what you see as a quasi-fascist takeover of our government by left wing totalitarian people (and I personally am), then there is some reason and cause to compare this speech to actions by other left-wing totalitarian people:  Hitler, or the Soviets, or Mao, or whoever. There’s a reason that past tyrants went around the parents and directly to the youth – young minds are impressionable and it’s easier to just educate the kids than to reeducate the adults – and in principle, I can see the point that has some people so upset.

But I have to admit that even in spite of my disagreement with Obama’s policies and positions (anyone who has ever read this blog knows that I certainly not a fan), and the sympathy that I have for these people’s suspicion, my reaction is still closer to Ed’s right now than anyone else:

One pap-filled 20-minute speech about working hard and serving others is so lethal a threat to tender minds that they have to be yanked off the premises for the day to shield them from it?

I mean, he is everyone’s President and it seems kind of overwrought to say that he’s not allowed to tell kids to stay in school and do their homework and behave appropriately. If there was ever an opportunity for the bully pulpit of the presidency, surely that’s it, and especially for black students to whom he is a role model and an example of a black person who himself got to where he is today through education. As I said in the Facebook comment, I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt on this one.

But I think the other part of Ed’s post (and the one he linked to at LGF) is good too, and very intriguing:

If this turns out to be some hamfisted attempt by The One to pitch his agenda to kids — which would be politically insane given the outcry it would cause, a sneak preview of which may be found here — there’ll be ample time for outrageous outrage later.

Exactly. Is Obama that stupid? Maybe, but I doubt it. Given the outrage that we’ve seen, that speech is going to be scrubbed all the way down to the number of syllables in the word “school” and we’re not going to hear or see anything that could even remotely be considered to be partisan. That would be absolutely nuts from a political perspective and would give so much ammo to the other side that his term would be dead before he even walked off the stage.

So yeah, I do see their point, especially on principle, but let’s give the President the benefit of the doubt. If we thought the criticism and panic at Bush was unfair and disuniting, then it’s only fair to practice what we preach. Let him give the speech and then get outraged if we actually need to be.