The President's Speech To The Nations School Kids

Here's an excerpt uncovered by Tommy Tomlinson, columnist for the Charlotte Observer:

We've been working to take an economy that was in bad shape and get it moving and growing again; take our national defense and make it first-rate again after a long period of decline; and to restore reason, respect and reality to our foreign policy. And I think it's fair to say that we've made a good deal of progress.

Tomlinson comments:

Those of you who were worried about what he would say: You were right all along. It is nothing but politics.

And:

You were also right about him trying to indoctrinate the children of America into his cult of personality. Listen to this: “We want to make your future better, because tomorrow belongs to you. And since you're the leaders of tomorrow, I wanted to talk to all of you as a friend about the things you'll have to do to ensure a prosperous nation and a peaceful world.”

So in conclusion, it's clear that President Obama – wait a second. This isn't President Obama.

It was President Ronald Reagan, back in 1986.

You can read the whole speech here.

And two years later there's another speech - again to a group of Junior High School Students. It was right after the '88 election where Reagan praises the American Democratic system:

Now, last week the United States did something so exceptional that people around the world marveled at it. Last week the American people freely elected our government. Some ballots were cast by people who were rich and famous, and others were cast by most ordinary people, but each person had the same, one vote. These ballots were cast in secret, and they were counted in the open, not the other way around. And when the votes were totaled, those holding or seeking the highest positions in the land all surrendered to the will of the people. Soon, power will be peacefully transferred from those leaving office to those taking office. And, yes, we do this every election year, and that's what so much of the world marvels at. What we in America take for granted is something that's rare in history and all too remarkable on this globe, the Earth.

Which is all well and good until the Gipper cuts right:

From the beginning, the American vision was that our country would be the cradle of freedom for all mankind. Two hundred and thirteen years ago, in Philadelphia, James Allen wrote in this diary that: ``If we fail, liberty no longer continues an inhabitant of this globe.'' But our Founding Fathers didn't fail. And now it's our duty to bring the values of the American Revolution to all the peoples of the world, and this is happening. Today, to a degree never before seen in human history, one nation, the United States, has become the model to be followed and imitated by the rest of the world.

But America's world leadership goes well beyond the tide toward democracy. We also find that more countries than ever before are following America's revolutionary economic message of free enterprise, low taxes, and open world trade. These days, whenever I see foreign leaders, they tell me about their plans for reducing taxes and other economic reforms that they're using, copying what we have done here in our country. I wonder if they realize that this vision of economic freedom -- the freedom to work, to create and produce, to own and use property without the interference of the state -- was central to the American Revolution when the American colonists rebelled against a whole web of economic restrictions, taxes, and barriers to free trade. The message at the Boston Tea Party -- have you studied yet in history about the Boston Tea Party, where, because of a tax, they went down and dumped the tea in the harbor? Well, that was America's original tax revolt. And it was the fruits of our labor -- belonged to us, and not to the state. And that truth is fundamental to both liberty and prosperity.

Of course he means his party's message of "free enterprise, low taxes and open world trade" Not America's. And of course he was, to paraphrase Jim Greer, head of God's Own Party in Florida, looking to indoctrinate "American's youngest children before they have a chance to decide for themselves."

Such political indoctrination unnoticed and unmentioned by the birther/tenther/"Obama, that untrustworthy Communist Negro, wants to kill your Grandma" crowd.

I wonder why.