Barack Obama Quotes
In America, we started the public school system very early in the century, and as a consequence we had more skilled workers than any nation on Earth, which meant that we were more productive than any nation on Earth.
Obama, Barack. "Remarks by the President in a Town Hall on the Economy." Binghamton University, Binghamton, NY, 23 Aug. 2013.
Oliver was a right wing, racist, fanatic and extremist. His quotations are interesting because he often said in public what many right wing extremists only said in private. Paranoia and conspiracy theories were common with the extremists, then as now. In this case, they actually believed that Communists had infiltrated and taken over the 30,000 different school districts in the United States.
Alabama. Mississippi and the other states of the South have from the inception of the nation had a much poorer educational system (often no system at all). Even when Jim Crow discrimination was rampant in the South, the white schools were very poor and the Black schools terrible. At the end of the 20th century after integration, there were more serious attempts to improve education in the South and progress is being made to reach parity with the rest of the country. However, there is still in many Southern school boards hostility to science and other aspects of modern education and Southern states tend to censor school texts and library books this weakening the educational system. But progress is being made.
Ironically, as important as education was to the early Americans, the words “education” and “school” never appeared in the Constitution nor is education even alluded to.
This plank if ever actually implemented would clearly destroy the American educational system. Extreme radical ideas such as this are not typical of Libertarian Party positions before or afterwards. The quotation illustrates that there are people in America who would end public education if they could. The quotation also illustrates how a small cadre of people can capture control of a political party and create a platform that is their own personal views which may be different from most of the party members or the historical position that the party has taken. In 1980 the Libertarian Party Vice Presidential Candidate was David Koch, one half of the billionaire conservative Koch brothers. Their money financed the Libertarian Party in that year and David Koch’s views then prevailed in the party platform. Historically, the Koch brothers moved from a minor third party to the Republican party at the beginning of the 21st century when their money was able to help drive the party very far to the right from the traditions of Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt.
Barack Hussein Obama II is an American politician and attorney who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, Obama was the first African-American president of the United States. He previously served as a U.S. senator from Illinois from 2005 to 2008 and as an Illinois state senator from 1997 to 2004.
