Boortz: “Teachers Unions More Dangerous Than Nuclear-Armed Terrorists”

By: SilentPatriot on Wednesday, February 21st, 2007 at 12:04 PM - PST

On Hannity and Colmes last night, Neal Boortz told an agreeable Sean Hannity that teachers unions are more dangerous to America than terrorists armed with nuclear weapons because a nuke could only wipe out 100,000 people but public schools are "destroying a generation."

“Look, Al Qaeda, they could bring in a nuke into this country and kill 100,000 people with a well-placed nuke somewhere. Ok. We would recover from that. It would be a terrible tragedy, but the teachers unions in this country can destroy a generation.”

Imagine for a second if a "liberal" (read: non-reality-denying) guest had said this to Hannity instead:

“Look, Al Qaeda, they could bring in a nuke into this country and kill 100,000 people with a well-placed nuke somewhere. Ok. We would recover from that. It would be a terrible tragedy, but President Bush's war in Iraq is, according to the NIE, radicalizing a whole new generation of Islamists that will hate America for at least 40 years.”

Although entirely and demonstrably factual, Hannity would have lost it. For more, see MediaMatters who has over 35 entries on Boortz and his right-wingnuttery

video: http://www.crooksandliars.com/2007/02/2 ... errorists/

lulz.

forgive my ignorance, but what's their beef with teachers unions?

Apparently they are teaching children secular values. As opposed to a crackpot like him teaching them?

Teachers Unions are also highly political and tend to generate a lot of coverage and sway the votes of a lot of people for whatever cause they are into at the moment. Interestingly enough, it seems that their lowest priorities are improving teacher pay or curriculum. They are huge political forces in the U.S., which I suspect is the real issue these fellows have with them, rather than their general inability to deal with educational issues.

Just to be clear, I don't fault them for being political - hell, its much easier and takes much less outside assistance to rail on Arnold Schwarzenegger, for instance, than improve upon drop out rates or college acceptance rates.

i teach high school math in philadelphia.

i can say, without doubt, that the union here does as much to discourage teacher competence and reward mediocrity (and at times, incompetence) as is possible.

they are one of the many, many problems that plague the public schools in this, and every, district.

Teachers unions are far from perfect, but my god that is a retarded thing to say.

The bolded part really bugged me here. How on earth can anyone know for sure how many "radical Islamists that hate America" there will be 40 years from now?

the factual part could be that it is what the NIE says.

Maybe, but then I'd direct the same question to the NIE instead.

oh if i could only find this...

the school board of Dallas indepenant school district used to get so violent I would remember seeing the fights on the news regularly haha.

sorta relates to a fucked up teachers union. but ya wtf trying to get people to think and shit, thats just ungodly.

Well, the NIE is just an estimate. I doubt it said this was the case beyond all doubt. I agree the wording is poor, but I think the basic point is Bush's own Administration thinks this is the case.

Cool, that's all I'm noticing--just a minor distortion on C&L's part (then again, this is C&L we're talking about).

Fuck teachers! They want summers off AND a paycheck?

teachers unions worse than terrorists?

i love how people of the baby boomer age group conviniently forget all the weirdo educational experiementation they did in the 70's: open classrooms, self-directed learning, grade inflation for self esteem purposes.

these experiments were followed shortly by the intense tax cuts of the 80's...if anything has destroyed public schools it is that misguided, self absorbed one-two punch.

Parents: A Menace to Society

Boortz wouldn't give a shit about secular values that's Hannity's bag.

I haven't read the book yet but I'd imagine Boortz has more of a problem with socialist leaning tendencies being taught lobbied for that kind of thing.

this came off his website.

AND AM I LOVING THIS FIGHT?

When we were editing this book, and when I was recording the audio version, there was much discussion as to which portion of the book was going to cause the biggest puddin' storm with the bedwetters out there. Our first indication is that it will be the comments I made about teacher's unions.

Oh .. the humanity!

That footstool Olbermann has already made me the "worst" person in the world for my comments. I was hoping for "worsest." And you should see the emails, many of them from teachers. One government school teacher is going to spend his (her?) spare time at the local Barnes & Noble standing next to the display of my books and telling everybody that picks one up what an evil, disgusting, vile person I really am.

One email from a supporter told of his brother who has been a teacher for 25 years. He asked his brother who he was going to vote for in the 2004 presidential election. "Whoever the union tells me to vote for." Nice.

Another government school teacher wrote to say that he is SICK of teacher unions. He gets emails from his union saying that "we need to stop school choice because it kills children," and "firing teachers is against the Ten Commandments." Uh huh. This listener finished with "I'm a public school teacher and agree that the teacher unions have only taken educating our children BACKWARD.' So let them have it Neal. Somebody's Got to Say It. I'm buying your book, you better believe it, TODAY."

Then, of course, there are the emails that slam me for saying that teachers are terrorists. I've never said that. One emails said that I was a "conturd" and a "Republicscum" and that I needed to get used to a Democrat majority and a Democrat for president in 2008. Another emailer said that "It is your hatred and the way you speak about our country that is the biggest danger to our country. You will look at this email as another spike in your ratings, but your soul is being damaged daily."

Oh well .. you get the idea. But I'm not backing off. As I said in the book, the teacher's unions present a greater long-term threat to this country than do Islamic fascists. The fastest way to improve the sorry quality of government education in this country would be to immediately disband the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers. Any concerns they press about the children are just paying lip-service. They are there to protect the jobs of their government employee members -- and to pursue their liberal agenda in Washington. Nothing else. The madder I make them, the better I like it. The American people need to know how dangerous these unions are to their children and to the future of this country.

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Teachers Unions are shit and counterproductive, Boortz just goes about saying it in an inflammatory way which draws in listeners and keeps him well paid.

I want my children to have the best education they can get within my means. That being said, there isnt a chance in hell I would even consider sending them to a public school. I would rather border on bankruptcy to pay for tuition to a private school, if I had to.

Why's that? There are plenty of public schools that are top notch. Private school is dramatically overrated imo. Sort of like an ultra-expensive private university education. Return on investment just doesn't justify it.

Or, just be a responsible parent who sits with his/her kid every night and goes over their work with them. Hell, go ahead and teach them some new things along the way. I was always ahead of my classmates in school because my parents made sure I understood what was going on and made me realize an education was important.

Of course, these days I know that's a lot to ask.

Agreed. Maybe I'm biased because I went to public school the whole way through and turned out OK but I just don't get why parents are willing to spend that much money on something that hasn't been shown to be significantly more beneficial, especially when parental involvement is factored in. Hell, save the money for college tuition if nothing else.