To the Editor:

Barack Obama is the duly elected President of the United States. His speaking to the children of this nation about the importance of education in their lives and the life of this country is appropriate. Other presidents have done it without controversy. (Remember George Bush was reading in front of a class on 9/11.) It is a laudable endeavor not a fascist plot. It is also far more constructive than much of the stuff children are permitted to watch everyday.

Let’s not be naïve about what is going on. There are people orchestrating resistance to everything this president is trying to do as a matter of course. The object is to have the administration fail no matter the cost to the ordinary citizen. 
 
And make no mistake, that cost would be very high for all of us. We may now be the only country in the world where a leader is denounced and distrusted for advocating respect for education. And if we continue on our present course of “just say no to this guy  in the White House”  we may remain the only industrialized country that does not provide affordable universal health care for its citizens,  that fails to develop green technology, and  that remains in denial about the growing threat of global warming. I predict the same nasty innuendos and disruptive tactics will be used on any attempt to reform our energy policy.

Part of the nation’s population has become so blindly partisan that constructive problem solving is becoming extremely difficult if not impossible. Too many are letting angry slogans that don’t even make sense shape their thinking. A man at a town hall meeting shouts down a woman in a wheel chair claiming he has rights and didn’t come to hear her problems. Women in wheel chairs don’t have rights? What’s with the people on Medicare and Medicaid who shout out against “government run medicine” without any sense of irony? How does shouting down opposing viewpoints and effectively ending discussion represent respect for anyone’s rights?

Where are the adults calling for reasoned discourse and an honest effort at major problem solving?   If people who know better don’t speak out against this stuff, then we are on the slippery slope to bad. Responsible Americans in Washington and across the land, of all political persuasions, have got to stand up against the extremists and bullies who are trying to overrun the democratic process and frighten everyone about everything.

If we don’t display less heat, more light, and some maturity, we will never get ourselves into the twenty-first century.

Kathleen Amoia