Some thoughts on the President's Remarks

He's Just Greeted the Students...

And now he is telling us a bit about his own childhood:

"When I was young, my family lived in Indonesia for a few years, and my mother didn’t have the money to send me where all the American kids went to school. So she decided to teach me extra lessons herself, Monday through Friday – at 4:30 in the morning.

Now I wasn’t too happy about getting up that early. A lot of times, I’d fall asleep right there at the kitchen table. But whenever I’d complain, my mother would just give me one of those looks and say, "This is no picnic for me either, buster."

Wow, our President seems to have been HOMESCHOOLED!! [1.] Also, wouldn't he have some empathty for DC Opportunity Scholarships, [2.] given his own upbringing?

"Every single one of you has something you’re good at. Every single one of you has something to offer. And you have a responsibility to yourself to discover what that is. That’s the opportunity an education can provide.

Maybe you could be a good writer – maybe even good enough to write a book or articles in a newspaper – but you might not know it until you write a paper for your English class. Maybe you could be an innovator or an inventor – maybe even good enough to come up with the next iPhone or a new medicine or vaccine – but you might not know it until you do a project for your science class. Maybe you could be a mayor or a Senator or a Supreme Court Justice, but you might not know that until you join student government or the debate team.

And no matter what you want to do with your life – I guarantee that you’ll need an education to do it. You want to be a doctor, or a teacher, or a police officer? You want to be a nurse or an architect, a lawyer or a member of our military? You’re going to need a good education for every single one of those careers. You can’t drop out of school and just drop into a good job. You’ve got to work for it and train for it and learn for it."

Maybe you'll bring a great idea to market. Free markets enable free people to partake of the best ideas created by their brightest members. Government can procure creative services but government by its nature does not create of itself.

Markets REWARD the discipline you've shown in preparing yourself.

"You’ll need the creativity and ingenuity you develop in all your classes to build new companies that will create new jobs and boost our economy." -- especially when you consider the added government regulation you will face, energy taxes you will pay and the amount of time you will spend on compliance. Oh, you'll have to compete with the rest of the world.

"The story of America isn’t about people who quit when things got tough. It’s about people who kept going, who tried harder, who loved their country too much to do anything less than their best." -- that's why Mommy and Daddy are going to Washington on Saturday. [3.] They believe in the greatness of America. They're not quitters! They're as wooden-headed as their immigrant forefathers and foremothers. They love their country too much to allow it to be reduced to a Europeanized neutered shadow of what they grew up in.

"I expect you to put your best effort into everything you do. I expect great things from each of you. So don’t let us down – don’t let your family or your country or yourself down. Make us all proud. I know you can do it.

Thank you, God bless you, and God bless America." -- America, bless G-d! We've received many blessings as a people. Let us freely celebrate our heritage of Faith and look to it as we face the challenges of the 21st Century.

All in all, it's a pretty good speech.

Update: More Thoughts:

I would add: "You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity by legislating the wealthy out of prosperity. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that my dear friend, is the beginning of the end of any nation. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it.”—Adrian Rogers, (1931-2005) ht/Shenandoah Tea Party

Update: Reason for Concern [click to read]. ht/Blue Collar Republican