Thursday, July 21, 2005

The Travails of a Conservative Schoolteacher

I am a conservative. No, I am not saying this like I am standing up at an A.A. meeting; I say it proudly and with enthusiasm. What makes my life interesting is the fact that I am a schoolteacher. Schoolteachers are not exactly known for being paragons of conservatism. My buddy, George Mimmen, over at MimmenBlog is also a conservative schoolteacher and faces the same situations I do. Whenever I interact with my fellow schoolteachers, and I start hearing their usual uninformed drivel about those nasty "right wingers", I just sigh and keep my mouth closed most of the time. Arguing with a Kool Aid drinking leftist is pretty much like slamming your cranium into a brick wall, except I think the wall has more rational thought. I am kind of nervous as I start my new school year, because of my neighbor in the classroom next door. This teacher is an hispanic gentleman who has a vivid red poster of Ernesto "Che" Guevara hanging on the wall of his classroom. Isn't that just flippin' special. Golly, should I put up a poster of Heinrich Himmler in my classroom? Himmler was to Hitler what "Che" was to Castro; they were the men who carried out the dirty work. To find out more about what kind of guy Che Guevara was, read this article by Humberto Fontova. In the article, Fontova talks about Guevara's Stalinist ways, and his cowardly tenure as the man in charge at the infamous La Cabana prison outside Havana. Guevara was nothing more than a thug who killed - sometimes personally - men much braver than himself. For a schoolteacher to prominently and proudly display the grungy mug of a man who was a murdering communist (is that redundant?), is the worst sort of political indoctrination of a young captive audience who doesn't know any better.

Good day to you, Sir.

No comments: