We heard from Vice President Joe Biden today. I was actually quite impressed with what he had to say. It wasn’t as partisan as I feared, but mainly because he drew a serious distinction (with only a couple of stumbles) between the “NEW” Republican Party (Tea Party driven bastardization of the Party of Lincoln) and the “OLD” Republican Party (I’m guessing Party of Eisenhower, Nixon, Reagan, and Bush41; no word on where Bob Dole fits into it, but since he’s old enough to have nominated Lincoln for President in 1860, I guess he gets to be a part of the “OLD” Republican Party). By the way, as a life-long Republican (see previous blog posts), I reject that part of the VP’s speech. The Tea Party really represents the last gasps of a party mechanism that spawned the hate-filled rhetoric of Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, and Glenn Beck, the party of those so angered by the election of Bill Clinton that they couldn’t see past the ends of their collective noses, the party that took a great man and a great American hero like John McCain and turned him into a puppet, dancing to their tune just to finally get the presidential nomination he deserved. It’s too bad he had to neuter himself to get it and cost himself an election in the process. The truly New Republican Party will be the party that finally throws off the idiot fascists and anarchists masquerading as conservatives and libertarians. True conservatives understand the value of smart taxation and true libertarians would reject intrusive and unnecessary policies like an opposition to gay marriage or controls on abortion. These guys miss the ball on all of those issues. The truly New Republican Party will be what’s left after the 2012 re-election of Barack Obama when the moderates and true believers throw off the Tea Party and take their Party back.
As for the Vice President, I really enjoyed much of what he had to say this morning. Then we started doing business. And did we do business. New Business Item after New Business Item were brought up, we held elections, and then we had more New Business Items (if you’ve only been to a TSTA House of Delegates, you ain’t seen nothin’ compared to NEA-RA). Most of them were good, some of them were kooky, a couple of them were … well, uncomfortable. But this is what happens when you get 9,000 public school employees with 9,000 disparate opinions together. Overall, we did it all with as truly democratic a process as you can imagine, with everyone’s vote and everyone’s voice being important.
Most importantly, it did bring home that the NEA is a family. We work in different places, we teach different kids, but we are all dedicated to the welfare of the children that represent the future of our society. I am reminded of a letter to the editor in the Waco Tribune-Herald a couple of months back where my words were twisted and my views discounted by a former Texas State Legislator (a member of the “NEW” Republican Party from the sound of his words), who claimed that members of the NEA didn’t give a damn about kids; we were only interested in furthering our political goals. My first reaction to reading what he had to say was anger. How dare he question the dedication of these people, who came here, either sent out of the tight resources of local or state organizations or paying their own way, to fight to represent kids. If you could show the Doc Andersons, the Marva Becks, the Robb Eisslers, the Sarah Palins, the Michelle Bachmans, or the Rick Perrys of the world the passion that these educators have, maybe they could see what it means to be a teacher, because that is what we all are, whether we drive a school bus or serve lunch or clean classrooms or file discipline paperwork or share our days with a classroom full of kids, we’re all teachers.
No, you’re right, they probably wouldn’t get it at all.
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