A lot of people have commented on this moronic twit who used his classroom pulpit not just to bash the Bush administration but to vent what seems to be a deep and genuine hatred for America:
He said that in Bush's State of the Union speech, the president was, in effect, "threatening the whole planet."
"Sounds a lot like the things that Adolf Hitler used to say — we're the only ones who are right, everyone else is backwards," Bennish said.
He told students he was "not saying that Bush and Hitler are exactly the same."
"But," he said, "there's some eerie similarities to the tones that they use."
He talked extensively about U.S. foreign policy and capitalism. At one point, he questioned Bush's stated belief that democracy is the solution to bloodshed in the Middle East.
"Who is probably the single most violent nation on planet Earth?" Bennish asked. "The United States of America, and we're a democracy — quote, unquote."
But a point I haven't seen made is how such people cleverly create false parallels that can make their tirades sound almost reasonable. Even if you believe Bush threatened the whole planet in his State of the Union (not true, just read it, which Bennish apparently did not), even if you think the United States is trying to project its power around the globe, you probably understand there is a slight difference between Hitler's Germany and today's America. The Third Reich was intent on conquering the world with a master race of people. America hopes to transform it with a superior idea -- that rights inhere in the individual rather than the group and that democratic institutions are necessary to protect those rights. By focusing on "errie similarities in tone," the Bennishes attempt, too often successfully, to blur the difference.
I also think those who fault Bennish for "not providing both points of view" are understimating his dereliction. Granted, a good educator will try to make the classroom experience a search for the truth rather than a flat declaration of it. But sometimes the path to truth is so clear that those who veer from it lose all claim to be our guides in its pursuit. Bennish has no more right to stay in the classroom than a science teacher who insists on teaching that the Earth is flat and the center of the universe. Revoke his license and never let him teach in a public classroom again.
