NEA: For education? Or for Communism?

The nation's largest teachers union, the National Education Association, attracted 9,000 delegates to its annual convention in Washington, D.C., over the July Fourth weekend. Delegates sported buttons with provocative slogans such as "Gay marriage causes global warming only because we are so hot," "Hate is not a family value," "The Christian right is neither" and "Gay rights are civil rights."

The delegates passed dozens of hard-hitting resolutions that now become the NEA's official policy. The resolutions authorize NEA members and employees to lobby for those goals in the halls of Congress and state capitols.

NEA resolutions cover the waterfront of all sorts of political issues that have nothing to do with improving education for schoolchildren, such as supporting statehood for the District of Columbia, a "single-payer health care plan" (i.e., government run), gun control, ratification of the International Criminal Court Treaty and taking steps "to change activities that contribute to global climate change."

The NEA fiercely opposes any competition for public schools, such as vouchers, tuition tax credits, parental option plans or public support of any kind to nonpublic schools. The NEA strongly opposes designating English as our official language even though such a designation is supported by more than 80% of Americans.

The NEA opposes home schooling unless children are taught by state-licensed teachers using a state-approved curriculum. The NEA wants to bar home-schooled students from participating in any extracurricular activities in public schools even though their parents pay school taxes, too.

The NEA wants additional (job-creating) services and programs — such as early childhood education — provided by public schools. NEA resolutions call for "programs in the public schools for children from birth through age 8" and for "mandatory kindergarten with compulsory attendance."

NEA resolutions include all the major feminist goals such as "the right to reproductive freedom" (i.e., abortion on demand), "comparable worth" (i.e., government control of wages according to feminist ideology), full funding for the feminist boondoggle called the Women's Educational Equity Act and censoring all masculine words such as husband and father. The NEA even urges its affiliates to work for ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment. The ERA was declared dead by the U.S. Supreme Court 26 years ago.

The influence of the gay lobby is pervasive in dozens of NEA resolutions adopted by 2008 convention delegates. Diversity is the code word used for pro-gay indoctrination in the classroom.

The NEA's diversity resolution makes clear this means teaching about "sexual orientation" and "gender identification." The NEA demands that "diversity-based curricula" be imposed on preschoolers.

NEA convention delegates were invited to an open hearing by the SOGI Committee. In case you don't know, SOGI stands for sexual orientation gender identification.

The NEA urges its members to offer "diverse role models" via the "hiring and promotion of diverse education employees in our public schools." The NEA puts "domestic partnerships, civil unions and marriage" on an equal footing.

The NEA wants every child, regardless of age, to have "direct and confidential access, without notification to parents, to comprehensive health education. That would include things such as learning how to use condoms for premarital sex, as well as social, and psychological programs and services."

The NEA wants public schools to take over the physical and mental care of students through school clinics that provide services, diagnosis, treatment, family-planning counseling and access to birth control methods. Family planning clinics are called on to "provide intensive counseling."

The NEA wants all sex-education courses, textbooks, curricula, instructional materials and activities to include indoctrination about sexual orientation and gender identification plus warnings about homophobia.

The NEA not only favors amnesty for illegal-immigrant students, but also in-state college tuition and financial aid to illegal-immigrant college students.

The NEA is strong for "multicultural education," which means "the process of incorporating the values" and influencing "behavior" toward the NEA's version of "the common good," such as "reducing homophobia."

Of course, the NEA supports "global education" to teach "interdependency in sharing the world's resources." It's also no surprise that it opposes any requirement that schools "schedule a moment of silence."

These platforms sound like they should coming from the ALCU or the DailyKos, not the organization that speaks for the nation's public school teachers. How can education attempt to be objective and unbiased when the NEA is spouting off garbarge like this?

Wake up Mac, Start Fighting not Sleeping!

Iraqi Prime Minister and political stooge Nouri al-Maliki has cut the legs out from under John McCain by basically endorsing Sen. Barack Obama's troop-withdrawal plan.

Just when McCain had Obama on the defensive over the Democrat's plan to surrender after we've won in Iraq, Maliki has made McCain look like General Ripper for opposing a timetable for withdrawal.

Unless McCain changes his approach, he's lost the use of this issue. He can't come out for staying in Iraq longer than the government we support wants.

The Republican needs to shift the debate to Iraq's future. Neither Obama's belaboring of his previous opposition to the war nor McCain's attacking the Democrat's opposition to the surge is relevant - both lines are history lessons best left in the classroom. What voters want to know is: What now?

McCain needs to hammer at one basic theme: that Obama's pullout plan will lead to a third Iraq war. The Democrat wants to keep substantial numbers of troops next door, to go back into Iraq if necessary. McCain should stress that a premature withdrawal will lead to a collapse - losing the hard-won stability in Iraq, opening the door to an Iranian takeover and al Qaeda revival, and potentially forcing a new US invasion.

Obama isn't a peace candidate, McCain can say - just an advocate of a deferred war. Just as the first President George Bush left the ingredients in place for a second war when he failed to depose Saddam Hussein in 1991, so Obama will fail to finish the job and invite yet another war if he abandons Iraq before our gains have been consolidated.

With Ralph Nader running on a strict antiwar platform, Obama is vulnerable on the left. If he seems to falter on a withdrawal from Iraq, or leave the door open to re-entry, McCain's attacks can drive liberals away from the Democrat.

It's literally true that if McCain is elected, there will be fewer US deaths in Iraq than there will be if Obama prevails. By pulling out only when it's safe to do so, McCain would finish the job and allow a peaceful transition to a stable democratic government. If we pull out too fast - and then have to go back in - the casualties will be many times those we now face.