Last weekend, Rick Santorum criticized the president for calling on all Americans to attend at least one year at a college or trade school. He called the President a “snob” and said that Obama wants to refashion America’s citizens in his image.
Let’s put aside the fact that in my opinion, we’d all be better off in the President’s image than Santorum’s — after all, which one of them is a Nobel Prize-winning world leader? And let’s not dwell on the fact that Santorum is a total hypocrite, since he himself has multiple degrees.
Let’s also put aside the idea that if the U.S. is really a nation of “haves and soon-to-haves,” as the Republicans love to say, then how the hell can you become a “soon-to-have” without a college education?
The take-away from this whole incident, for me, was that I remembered all over again why I became a Democrat in the first place.
Like many people, I registered as an Independent when I first turned 18. And I eventually became a Democrat so I could vote in the primaries. But what really clinched it forever and ever amen?
In the early 1990s (yes it was that late that I came to the Party) there was a movement to make voter registration more available, putting forms in places like the Department of Motor Vehicles, so people could easily register when they went to renew their driving license or their vehicle registration. It was called the Motor Voter Bill – Bill Clinton signed the bill and it became a law.
But who was against this bill? Who was for it? I think you can guess the answers.
I remember thinking that I was for the party that wanted more people to vote. The one that had nothing to fear from more people being enfranchised.
This is the same thing. Forget that every American should be in favor of the country’s citizens being educated. But what would the Republicans have to fear if the citizenry knew how to think and read? Hmm. They give the excuse that college campuses are full of liberal professors bent on converting young people to their Communist, atheist agendas. They are the ones always talking about the “marketplace of ideas” … if their ideas were so solid, why would they care if a million lefty professors were unleashed to peddle their horrible philosophies on young adults?
Besides, I don’t remember Obama telling anyone which school they could go to – they could go to Oral Roberts University or a seminary if they wished — just that that they should commit to going and learning something.
So all this has renewed my feelings about the parties. I’ll stick with the one that’s not afraid to have as many educated people as possible.