The Wierdest Things

About Neo-Republican Sensibilities

There are really wild things about the neo-republican sensibilities, aside from the obvious that strike one as alien or just ignorant.
For example, why is it a scandal that Mitt (who I am no fan of) speaks french, as opposed to the fact that he speaks it badly with a terrible brutish american accent? The republican fear of francophones is silly and ignorant. Note how in the Newt Superpack attack add it includes Mitt saying "Bonjour, je m'appelle Mitt Romney" and ends with some sort of A bientot french phrase as if to mock the frenchiness of it. It is not uncommon for Europeans to speak four and five languages- and that makes them smarter not dumber, more fluid in appreciating different cultures next door. What is wrong with speaking a few languages? Isn't that why we teach foreign languages in schools? The anti-french hit is just stupid. French was the diplomatic language of all the western world until about a century ago or less.
Then there is the aversion to all things public education with people championing the abolition of the Department of Education. A solid strong public education is what propels the country forward in advancement in all areas that make us globally competitive. There is a bizarre glorification of ignorance or lack of education. Then there are some who say that no one can do it better than the parents, so they are homeschooling. The teaching profession is a profession for a reason with credentialling criteria and advanced degrees by experts. All parents don't know everything and it is arrogant to think that they have the intellectual resources to inform their children of what citizens need to learn. It is almost a more elitist posture to take to suggest that as parents no one can teach your children better than you, regardless of how you got your education. There is an objective 'excellence' in education- and it isn't always found at the kitchen table. Public schools need attention, resources and the best teaching professionals and we should be a country that is devoted to improving public education for all. We should also give people choices of and access to good religious schools if they want their children getting religious education. But to champion home schooling as a higher virtue is an odd sensibility and arrogantly elitist of a different variety. Santorum is also not telling people that he enrolled his kids in a Cyber Magnate school in Pennsylvania while they lived in Virginia and got the county where he maintains a residence around Pittsburgh in Penn Hills to foot the bill, afterwhich the Penn Hills school district sued him for the roughly 100k back because he didn't really live there. So he is not opposed to Magnate schools, currently at least one or more kids is in a private school while he claims he homeschools all his kids. Maybe up to a certain age, prior to when they went Magnate and were in a private school. So the trashing of educational excellence outside the home plays to an ignorance that is stomach churning.
Reason and intellectualism are not incompatible with catholicism- but there is an ignorant strain of religiousity that is. When neo-republicans cater to that they insult the country, and their faith.

There is more, obviously, but that is so far the take from the walnut gallery.