Surprisingly, my low-key posting on President Obama’s upcoming speech was quoted at Blogs.com’s “Obama School Speech Gets F for Scandalousness” entry. Here’s the relevant part:

“[I] hope that my children will choose to watch the President and critically analyze his speech,” says Around the Corner. “I’ll be sure to do that with them…if only conservatives would do the same in as balanced a way as they can, too, we might begin to find common ground on issues rather than dividing ourselves.”

Reading that section again, I can see I’ve made a few assumptions:

• Conservatives aren’t balanced about their discussions around the table with their own children.
• Progressives are balanced in their discussions about the President with their children.

Of course, that reveals my bias, which is as follows and based on my experiences with the conservatives I interact with:

• Bias: Conservatives can’t have a normal conversation about many topics anymore, especially the President’s talk on education, without flipping out about worldviews, socialism, etc. For them, the world is out to get you and fear is their byword to control their people. When I think conservative, I think about Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, Karl Rove, and others who, no matter how well they speak their perception of reality, always seem to distort it for other means. Regrettably, these remarks find their into the conversations of regular folks who are…well…parroting what is being said. The Education discussion this past week was a clear reminder of this.
• Bias: Progressives are usually more even-handed because they believe in reflective dialogue. In truth, I have to express frustration at the viewpoints of some “progressives” who deserve the title of radical liberal for their resistance to certain programs.

Of course, these are stereotypes that don’t survive the test of real life. In the final analysis, I’d like to take the middle of the road, the sane moderate approach that eschews the extremes conservatives and liberals have so eagerly embraced…ah well, no one’s perfect.

If I get a second chance at writing the quote that ended up on Blogs.com, it would be to say it this way:

I’ll work with my children to introduce them to as balanced, critical perspective on President Obama’s Education talk as possible. If all parents–regardless of their ideological perspective and party affiliation, if any–could sit down and encourage a balanced critical, conversation on the topics raised by President Obama, then we all might begin to find common ground on issues rather than dividing ourselves.

Of course, I might not have had the last word in that Blogs.com blog entry. . .but in learning conversations, it’s not the last word that is most valuable, is it?

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