Maslow Effect Amok - Salem-News.Com

(CALGARY, Alberta) - It was only yesterday that I published my article explaining the Maslow Effect. Today, the New York Times has a story egregiously demonstrating it. Written by James C. McKinley, Jr., and Sam Dillon, it’s titled “Some Parents Oppose Obama School Speech” and can be found here (nytimes.com/2009/09/04/us/04school.html) for those who are interested.

The story is about some conservative parents in Houston (and around the nation), who are absolutely opposed to President Obama’s speech next Tuesday from a school in Virginia being streamed live on the White House website to classrooms nationwide where their children will be exposed to it. They see it as political propaganda.

The contents of the speech have not been made public, but it is expected to be the same kind of bipartisan speech the first President Bush made in 1991, exhorting students to study hard, stay in school and avoid drugs. What goes around, comes around. In the 1991 Bush speech, Democrats then in Congress accused him of using taxpayer money (it was $27,000 to pay for broadcast) for “paid political advertising”.

Brett Curtiss, an engineer from Pearland, Tex., says he will keep his three children home next Tuesday. “The thing that concerned me most about it was it seemed like a direct channel from the president of the United States into the classroom, to my child. I don’t want our schools turned over to some socialist movement.”

In Houston, Phyllis Griffin Epps who works for the city and has two children in public school, says, “It’s difficult for me to understand how listening to the president, the commander in chief, the chief citizen of this country, is damaging to the youth of today.”

To suggest that President Obama is heading some “socialist movement” is to draw a conclusion based on emotions, not facts. Mark Steyn, a Canadian conservative commentator on the Rush Limbaugh show two days ago, “accused Mr. Obama of trying to create a cult of personality, comparing him to Saddam Hussein and Kim Jong-il, the North Korean leader,” write McKinley and Dillon.

Jim Greer, the Republican Party chairman in Florida, said he “was appalled that taxpayer dollars are being used to spread President Obama’s socialist ideology.”

What has happened to America the free? It’s the Maslow Effect gone amok. George W. Bush used to end his speeches with “God bless America”. He should have said, God help America!

Daniel Johnson was born near the midpoint of the twentieth century in Calgary, Alberta. In his teens he knew he was going to be a writer, which explains why he was one of only a handful of boys in his high school typing class—a skill he knew was going to be necessary. He defines himself as a social reformer, not a left winger, the latter being an ideological label which, he says, is why he is not an ideologue, although a lot of his views could be described as left-wing. He understands that who he is, is largely defined by where he came from. The focus for Daniel’s writing came in 1972. After a trip to Europe he moved to Vancouver, British Columbia. Alberta, and Calgary in particular, was extremely conservative Bible Belt country, more like Houston than any other Canadian city (a direct influence of the oil industry). Two successive Premiers of the province, from 1935 to 1971, had been Baptist evangelicals with their own weekly Sunday radio program—Back to the Bible Hour, while in office. In Alberta everything was distorted by religion.

Although he had published a few pieces (unpaid) in the local daily, the Calgary Herald, it was not until 1975 that he could actually make a living from journalism when, from 1975 to 1981 he was reporter, photographer, then editor of the weekly Airdrie Echo. For more than ten years after that he worked with Peter C. Newman (1979-1993), Canada’s top business writer (notably a series of books, The Canadian Establishment). Through this period Daniel also did some national radio and TV broadcasting with the CBC. You can write to Daniel at: Salem-News@gravityshadow.com