Vermont Cynic

Issue date: 4/4/06 Section: Opinion

On Thursday, March 2nd, about 150 students at Overland High School in Aurora, Colorado walked out of class in protest against the suspension of teacher Jay Bennish, who may have violated school policy by failing to provide balanced viewpoints in a political discussion during one of his classes. The lecture, which led to Mr. Bennish's suspension, was secretly recorded by student Sean Allen, who believed his teacher was presenting information with a liberal bias. Mr. Bennish has since appeared in national television interviews, in which he appears articulate and less threatening than many conservative commentators have portrayed him.

But we shouldn't be fooled. It is time Americans recognize the people who are polluting the minds of their sons and daughters with a flawed liberal ideology, which constantly and closely approaches anti-Americanism. It is time that Americans pay closer attention to what their children are being taught in school by teachers with a liberal bias. Let Mr. Bennish be the example.

Mr. Bennish's "lesson" on world geography (the class's title) included an assertion that President George W. Bush's most recent State of the Union address sounded "a lot like the things Adolf Hitler used to say," and that the President used similar tones to Hitler. Does Mr. Bennish think that 52 percent of Americans are Nazis or just ignorant for not knowing they were voting for one?

Whatever he thinks, his comparison of President Bush to one of the greatest murders in history does not reflect a reasonable consideration of any of the president's policies. But reason is not a dominant theme within Mr. Bennish's liberal ideology. The dominant theme is anything and everything counter to what President Bush and conservatives think and do to improve our country. It is a message of negativism which has not only lost liberal candidates elections in the past six years, but also their standing as legitimate political alternatives, and rightly so.

After comparing him to the Nazi Fuhrer, Mr. Bennish denounced President Bush for having "blind, naive faith in democracy" for thinking that a democratic Iraq would bring more peace to the Middle East. He implied that the President's policy was based on a mistaken assumption that democracies are less likely to go to war. What Mr. Bennish failed to teach his class is that rather than being based on blindness or naivety, President Bush's policy is predicated upon the fact no two democratic countries have ever fought a war with each other, and that historically they are less likely to engage in any conflict. And while this far from guarantees that democracy can and will succeed in Iraq or other Islamic countries, it certainly would have contributed to the education of the students present. But many liberal teachers like Mr. Bennish are clearly uninterested in educating students, just in presenting their extreme political ideas in place of balanced and thoughtful discussion.

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