‘Tis the season for commencement ceremonies and the left’s last chance at indoctrinating the young impressionable minds of the newly graduated — as if they didn’t have enough time in four years of courses taught by uber-liberal professors.
“The Obama speech was a nasty, sniping, petty tirade.” — Wendy Long
Over the weekend, Rutgers University heard from President Obama, who grew up in international privilege and comfort and went to private school in Hawaii before dashing off to Harvard.
Meanwhile, Hillsdale College heard from Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, who was born in a shanty in Jim Crow Georgia — the “proximate descendant of slaves,” as Hillsdale President Larry Arnn introduced him, describing Thomas as “the greatest public servant I know.”
As you might imagine, they gave two very different speeches.
Thomas encouraged the graduates to remain steadfast in their values and principles while focusing on the responsibilities and duties of citizens.
“Today, of course, there is much more focus on our rights as citizens and what we are owed,” Justice Thomas said. “At the risk of understating what is necessary to preserve liberty and our form of government, I think more and more that it depends on good citizens, [not] discarding their daily duties and their daily obligations.”
[lz_third_party includes=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0UQX9x_yi24″]
He also warned against the politically correct culture that our world has adopted, and imparted some sage advice to the graduates. “Do not hide your faith and your beliefs under a bushel basket, especially in this world that seems to have gone mad with political correctness,” Thomas said.
It was a refreshing message in a world that has become rampant with politically correct crusades and entitlement.
He wasn’t angry or exclusionary. He urged the young people to open their minds to those who are different from them. “Reach out to that shy person who is not so popular,” he said. “Stand up for others who are being treated unfairly in small things and large. Listen to a friend who is having a difficult time … Treat others as you would want to be treated if you were in their shoes.”
But Obama painted a different picture for the graduates at Rutgers. Instead of offering advice for the recent graduates, he focused his speech on the GOP’s presumptive nominee — without specifically naming him.
“Class of 2016, let me be as clear as I can be: In politics and in life, ignorance is not a virtue,” Obama said. “Facts, evidence, reason, logic, an understanding of science — these are good things. These are qualities you want in people making policy … That might seem obvious … We have traditionally valued those things, but if you’re listening to today’s political debate, you might wonder where this strain of anti-intellectualism came from.”
[lz_third_party includes=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQzFZpA4L38″]
Then, true to Obama’s egotistical fashion, he praised himself for his work in office. “Twenty million more Americans now know the financial security of health insurance. We’re less dependent on foreign oil. We’ve doubled the production of clean energy. We’ve cut the high school dropout rate. We’ve cut the deficit by two-thirds. Marriage equality is the law of the land.”
“The Obama speech was a nasty, sniping, petty tirade,” Wendy Long, the Republican and Conservative Party nominee for the United States Senate in New York, told LifeZette. “Ironically, it contained no discernible learning, reason or substance, yet Obama criticized his political opponents as ‘anti-intellectual.'”
Obama played the cool hipster, Long noted, tossing the graduates such nuggets as: “When you hear someone longing for the old days, take it with a grain of salt,” and, “It’s not cool not to know what you’re talking about.”
Yet Thomas, by contrast, “gave the graduates a gift of life’s most important lessons in how to be a good citizen and how to form the fabric of a civil and prosperous nation,” said Long. “He told about his days of backbreaking work on his grandfather’s farm, where he learned ‘if you don’t work, you don’t eat.’ He asked the students what they would think of redistributing the grades of the hardworking, conscientious students to those who partied all the time and performed poorly in school would be a good way to make them ‘equal.'”
Justice Thomas “gave the graduates a gift of life’s most important lessons in how to be a good citizen and how to form the fabric of a civil, prosperous nation,” said Long.
Thomas also described how his grandparents, who suffered under Jim Crow and were themselves grandchildren of slaves, “revered the ideals of our great nation,” as did their whole generation (the “good old days” that Obama mocked). “Thomas said his grandparents were in their daily lives ‘model citizens’ of the nation they loved despite its imperfections,” noted Long, “despite it not living up to its ideals — because its principles are perfect.”
Each year, the Young America’s Foundation publishes its Commencement Speaker Survey, which shows how politically biased the commencement speakers are. The 2016 survey found that liberal speakers outnumbered conservative speakers nearly 4 to 1.
Overall, 53 percent of the speakers are liberal, 14 percent are conservative, and 29 percent with an “unclear ideology.”
At the top 10 schools — nine speakers are liberal.
Join the Discussion
Comments are currently closed.