Freedom of Speech.....just not in academia

My 19 year old son is taking a political science class at the local community college. To say that he is a conservative Republican would be an understatement. He is very set in his ways, very conservative, very REPUBLICAN!!!
His professor is a very Liberal Democrat, who accused him of being a Republican because his parents were....she doesn't know our son very well, because if we were NOT a Republican, our son would discuss and argue every point until we submitted, THAT is how strongly he feels about being conservative. He is far more conservative than his father or I every thought of being.
What upsets me the most is that his professor is teaching the class, during an election season, using her influence as an instructor to manipulate the students into voting for her candidate of choice. Now her influence does little to sway my son, however she did comment that IF the students cast their vote for McCain it would" prove that they were indeed Racist". And, she went on to say that this election will prove whether or not our country is a "Racist" country .
Her argument is so naive and actually quite scary. Are we electing a president based on RACE? One could say that it is time for a WOMAN to be in the White house. AND, that if we don't elect McCain/Palin we are sexist.
Is this what it has come down to? Whether we like what a person looks like, what ethnic group, what sex they are ,is that going to determine if we vote for them? Do we vote because of what celebrity or public figure endorses them? Do we vote because someone influences us to vote a certain way?
Whether or not you are on the left or on the right, you should be very concerned about the influence that people have over our freedom to vote. We are constantly being shown ads on TV, the Internet, the movies, music, celebrity award shows, television shows, magazines....ads that try to sway us one way or another to vote a certain way. These ads are paid for by the candidates or their supporters. However, in academia it is I who is paying for my child to learn how to think for himself, I am NOT paying to have him influenced by an instructor who is using her college class and her position to influence our youth to vote a certain way. What she should be doing in a Political Science class is encouraging the students to VOTE not tell them who to vote for.
And I know what all you liberals are thinking...."if the instructor was a Republican, I wouldn't have this issue". Although tempted to say you are correct, I would have to say it is not right regardless of her party affiliation. Instructors, teachers etc. need to teach the subject matter keeping their bias in check, encourage discussion even if it is in opposition to their own and encourage our youth to explore the issues and discuss with many different people to get various opinions before deciding what is best for them....
And then my friends they would see that voting McCain and Palin is the best option!....Hey this is MY blog and I can try to influence you all I want...

Politics, Religion, Family and Dancing amongst Landmines

I grew up in a family that voted democrat and prayed in the Protestant church. Perhaps I was adopted and no one ever told me, but that wouldn't account for the fact that I bear resemblance to both of my parents. As my life unfolded and I married, I developed my own belief system. I have strayed far from the left and sit quite comfortable in the middle right; until the chair I sit upon is placed at the dinner table of my family. A meal that involves politics is never healthy. My mother once accused my husband of brainwashing me because my views are quite different from theirs, I'm sure it was in jest or perhaps she attributed it to a right-winged conspiracy. We have learned that there are certain views that we will never agree upon and so we avoid them like landmines. How is it that of four children, I am the only one who is RIGHT? I mean that term both literally and figuratively…which by that very statement just alienated me more from my entire family. And so we stick to topics that are not political…..hmm….I am sure there is at least one….well, there is always religion right?

After 24 years of being married to a Catholic, I have finally become one myself. For me it was a personal choice, the RIGHT choice. I had attended Mass with my husband, as any good Catholic does; at very least on Christmas and Easter, also known as CrEasters, and averaged 10 masses per year. Being a Protestant attending the Catholic Church felt to me as if I was invited to Sunday dinner, but I wasn’t allowed to eat like everyone else. That left me unfulfilled and resentful of the Catholic faith. I was the anti-Catholic. I mocked the stand up and sit down and the fact that they don't use a BIBLE, but rather a small book with the passages from the BIBLE. I attended Mass because it didn’t matter to me where I prayed as long as I prayed. God would see how much I was devoted to my husband and his need to attend Mass. So I would marvel at the rituals that I didn’t understand and was forbidden to partake in. Finally the feeling of not belonging nagged at me so I studied the religion and attended the adult education for almost a year. I realized that all this time I was a Catholic, because I believed as they believed. I finally made it official in the eyes of the Church… Again, the only one of my siblings to convert, and quite possibly one of only a few people in America, who actually ran to the Catholic Faith instead of from it. But, if people, including Catholics knew more about their faith and worried less about the unfortunate way that events within the church were handled, they would realize the beauty of the Faith. But now that I have converted, religion has become a landmine as well.

So politically and religiously my belief system is on the opposite side of the scale of my family. And so we have learned to dance around issues that may offend the other. I remember the year that my Dad was so mad at me for sending him a George W. Bush Father’s day card, so mad in-fact that he didn’t come to the phone to speak to me for two weeks. It was just a funny card to me, but to him it was a landmine.

Funny how people who grew up together, raised you can be so idiologically different than you. So now when we speak amongst our family, we keep the conversation to family happenings and light news. If one of us should lay a landmine of politics or religion, the other can choose to detonate it, or dance around it.