Suffer the Children

I'm sure the woman that wrote this article would be apalled to find our children talking about what an idiot John Kerry was. However, I don't call it indoctrinating my children, I call it teaching them. One of the things that we try to teach is that everyone can contribute. Not that the Democrats are EVIL and Republicans are good (or, for this lady, vice-versa). Rather, that lots of people from all sides of the political spectrum honestly feel they're right and you need to listen to them and accept or dismiss their arguments on the facts, not emotions or labels. It's harder to position yourself this way because you actually have to think about things rather than accept a stance that's patently knee jerk, like this from the article:

They have learned to blame George Bush and the Republican Party for everything from the war in Iraq to global warming to the vilification of their favorite television shows.

Statements like this result from turning off the brain and cranking up the emotion. We constantly teach our kids that people don't think and use stuff like this as the example. That said, language matters and our constant references to Kerry as an idiot filtered right down to the kids.