Public schools are a wonderful topic of discussion and it always gets folks riled up and ready to fight. I remember discussing things like district administrative consolidation while on WKY, and you could actually hear heads explode. This blog post will be no different. As you know, I'm a proud United States Navy veteran and veteran's issues are near and dear to my heart. I'm not going to pull any punches, so put on a cup. You've been warned.
Veteran's Day 2014 is upon us and many of our public schools are open for business. It's wrong - particularly at a time when some of the kids in school right now have parents in forward deployed units. In other words, our schools show a great deal of love for Martin Luther King Day, but Veteran's Day is, well, not that important because after all - there's Memorial Day, right?
Wrong.
[Note: Note: If you dare think this is about race, stop now. Your IQ will only continue it's rapid decline on matters of political importance as the facts continue to present themselves and you'll make everyone else dumber by your presence.]
Martin Luther King was a civil rights pioneer who was killed for his beliefs. Our country is arguably a much better place because he was here - MLK is an American icon, to be sure. He was taken from us far too early by a racist pile of human excrement, yet, without our veterans, without men and women willing to stand a post and put their lives on the line, Martin Luther King would have not even been a blip on the radar. None of us would be, come to think of it. Our civil rights would not exist as we understand them today. As a matter of fact, when you consider the sheer numbers of men and women in this country who were willing to put their asses on the line to defend civil rights, to defend the Constitution against "enemies both foreign and domestic," it's staggering (see illustration). We have many of our kids out of school for ONE civil rights leader, but no such holiday for the hundreds of thousands who have served to protect your rights. Does that sound right to you?
At the risk of seeming like a complete ass, one must consider the truth about MLK that no one wants to really discuss - and these are directly from Snopes.com.
King was under FBI surveillance for several years (until he died) due to his ties with communist organizations throughout the country. King accepted money from the organizations to fund his movements. In return, King had to appoint communist leaders to run certain districts of his SCLC (Southern Christian Leadership Conference), who then could project their communist ideas to larger audiences. A federal judge in the 60's ruled that the FBI files on King links to communism to remain top-secret until 2027. Senator Jesse Helms appealed to the Supreme Court in 1983 to release the files, so the correct bill in the Senate to create the Martin Luther King Federal Holiday could be abolished. He was denied.
Okay, maybe that doesn't do it for you much. Maybe you consider Snopes to be a propaganda wing of the GOP. The ties to communist money may not be that big of a deal in light of some of the nightmare money being passed around in politics right now. But it is important to note that we have a bloody national holiday for this cat. But wait! There's more - again, from Snopes.com.
Martin Luther King Day. A day when this country will come to a screeching halt so we can have parades and memorials to honor this man, a man that most of the world views as a saint for his role in the civil rights movement. No other public holiday in the United States honors a single individual. Of all the great leaders in our Nation's history-none of them have their own holiday. All of our great war heroes share Memorial Day. All of our great presidents share President's Day.
These points are indisputable. King was who he was and he did great work for the civil rights movement in this country, but does he warrant a holiday over our veterans? I argue in the negative. If we're going to have a holiday for this man, we need all our kids out of school for our veterans because our veterans deserve it. As a policy, members of the Armed Services are not communists or socialists. Period. This isn't a liberal vs conservative issue. This isn't a race issue. This is an example of how we are teaching the next generation of Americans what is important to the elitists in this country, and not what it truly represents.
Veteran's Day is a federal holiday. Banks are closed, the courtrooms are closed, the post office is quiet, and federal workers are getting a deserved break. But for many of our public school systems, it's just "another day," and that sends a horrific message. It tells our children that while we remember the war dead on Memorial Day, other holidays such as President's Day, Martin Luther King Day and of course, Labor Day are sufficient - our veterans are to be considered an after thought or a campaign slogan punch line. Spring Break is allowed, as is Fall and Winter Break, but it is because of the veteran that these holidays can even be discussed, let alone celebrated. Our schools teach our children that it's okay to take time off from school to have an abortion, but it's not okay to take Veteran's Day off.
I'm sorry, but I think it's bullshit.
From now on, let's keep our kids out of school on Veteran's Day and send a message to the pansies that run our school systems that veterans matter and if they don't like it, they can kiss our red, white and blue asses - our Navy, Marine Corps, Coast Guard, Army and Air Force asses.
