Some really disturbing news out of Colorado was picked up by Michelle Malkin today. Jay Bennish is a world geography teacher for Overland High School in Denver. At least, he is right now. He's on administrative leave while the school board investigates. Sean Allen recorded his diatribe against Bush, America, and capitalism.

Brad, a former student, says of Bennish, "...he didn't even  use the standard American history textbook because he said that it was corrupt. It was created by rich American businessmen who didn't want to teach the real American history..." because they were interested in still having slaves and oppressing women. Bennish encouraged students to phrase things in a certain way (leading questions, such as "white imperialists oppressed women in the early 1900's, explain why this was so") on their final exam in that class, which the student refused to answer in the way specified.

Additionally, Brad mentions that Bennish said in class that he is the son of a wealthy automotive executive and that, while he hates his father for being who he is, Bennish still spends his weekends partying in Vail with people who shared his views. Bennish said he is ashamed that he's a white male. He also went into detail on several inappropriate occasions about his personal experiences.

How in the world has a teacher like this managed to survive in the government school system? Maybe I don't want to hear the answer to that. How many more are attempting to poison minds with far left, socialist, anti-American thinking within the walls of our government-funded schools?

This is yet another reason why we homeschool our children. Yet there are people, even here in Colorado, who believe that if it's not Public School, it's wrong. Why would I want to make my kid a Bush-bashing, anti-American socialist? Why would I want him to hate his gender or race? Why would I want to subject my child to lurid details of a teacher’s sordid past?

My friend Greg concludes,

This is the result of the left's concerted and deliberate efforts to infiltrate and take over the cultural institutions in the past 40 years or so. They realized you don't need the numbers-just get your people placed in the most strategic areas of cultural influence and let them do their thing. The results will be all out of proportion to the numbers. Today there are thousands of these Goebbels-like bigots in education, the arts, politics, the media, and religious institutions. Homegrown enemies who hate this country as rabidly as any foreign terrorist.

It's hard to doubt his comments with guys like Bennish.

Here is my version of the transcript:

[garbled] the elected president of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, two years ago [garbled] and we’re now trying to take [garbled] other parts of the world. Why do we have troops in Columbia fighting in their civil war for over 30 years? Most Americans don’t even know this. Over 30 years, America’s had soldiers fighting in Columbia in a civil war. Why we fumigating cocoa crops in Bolivia and Peru if we’re not trying to control other parts of the world? Who buys cocaine? Not Peruvians, not Bolivans, who wanted to buy cocaine?

[student] Right here.

Americans! All right? Why are we destroying the farmer’s lives, when they’re the ones that consume that good? Can you imagine?

What is the world’s number one cause of death by a drug? What drug is responsible for the most deaths in the world?

[student] Cocaine?

No.

[another student] Cigarettes?

Cigarettes! Who is the world’s largest producer of cigarettes and tobacco? The United States. What part of our country grows all of our tobacco? Any of the states in particular?

[indistinct answers]

Mostly what’s called North Carolina. All right? That’s where all the cigarette capitals are. Durham, North Carolina, that’s where a lot of them are located from [sic]. Now if we’ve got the right to fly into Bolivia and Peru, and drop chemical weapons on top of farmers fields because we’re afraid they might be growing cocoa, and that can be turned into cocaine, and then sold to us. Well then don’t the Peruvians and the Iranians and the Chinese have the right to invade America and drop chemical weapons over North Carolina to destroy the tobacco plants that are killing millions and millions of people in their countries every year and costing them billions of dollars in health care costs?  

[female student coughs—possible smoker]

Make sure you get these definitions down. Capitalism, if you don’t understand the economic system of capitalism, you don’t understand the world in which we live. “Economic system in which all or most of the means of production, etc., are owned privately and operated in a somewhat competitive environment for the purpose of producing profit.” Of course you could shorten these definitions down. All right, make sure you get the gist of it.

Do you see that how that when--you know--when you’re looking at this definition, where in this definition does it say anything about how capitalism is an economic system that will provide everybody in the world with the basic needs that they need? Is that part of this system? Do you see how this economic system is at odds with humanity, at odds with caring and compassion? It’s at odds with human rights. Any time you have a system that’s designed to procure profit—when profit is the bottom motive—money…that means money is going to become more important, potentially than what?

[Student: People?]

Safety…human lives…etc.

Why are we invading Iraq? How do we know that the invasion of Iraq for weapons of mass destruction—even if weapons had been found—how would you have known—how could you prove that that was not the real reason for us to go there? There are dozens upon dozens of countries that have weapons of mass destruction. Iraq is [sic] one of dozens. There are plenty of countries that are controlled by dictators, where people have no freedom, where they have weapons of mass destruction and they could be potentially threatening to America. We’re not invading any of those countries.

I’ll give you guys another moment or two to get some things down. You know, I-I agree with Joey: try to condense these a little bit. You know, I took these straight out of the dictionary.

Anyone in here watch any of Mr. Bush’s speech here last night?

[Student: about two seconds of it…] [other indistinct voices]

I’m gonna talk a little bit about some of the things he had to say, and then we’ll move through some other sections of this.

[Student: Sean, did you enjoy it last night?]

I want to make sure we finish though [crosstalk] in twenty minutes.

One of the things I’ll bring up now is this—since some of you are still writing—is, you know, Condoleeza Rice said this the other day, and George Bush reiterated it last night. And the implication was that the solution to the violence in the Middle East is democratization, and the implication through his language was that democracies don’t go to war—democracies aren’t violent—democracies won’t want weapons of mass destruction. This is b—called blind, naïve faith in democracy. Who is probably the single most violent nation on planet Earth?

[Student: We are.]

The United States of America, and we’re a democracy, quote-unquote. Who has the most weapons of mass destruction in the world? The United States. Who is continuing to develop new weapons of mass destruction as we speak? The United States. So why does Mr. Bush state that other countries, other democracies won’t want to be like us? Why does he think they just want to be at peace with each other? What makes him think that when the Palestinians get their own state that they won’t want to preemptively invade Israel to eliminate a potential threat to their security, just like we supposedly did in Iraq? Do you see the dangerous precedent that we’ve set by illegally invading another country and violating their sovereignty in the name of protecting us against a potential—future, sorry--attack? [subdued: I got spit on you a little bit.] [Indistinct crosstalk] [sounds of maps unrolling] Why doesn’t Mexico invade Guatemala? Maybe they’re scared of being attacked. Why doesn’t North Korea invade South Korea? They might be afraid of being attacked. Or maybe Iran, and North Korea, and [sounds of maps unrolling]  Saudi Arabia…and—what else did he add to the list last night?—and Zimbabwe, maybe they’re all going to team up and try to invade us because they’re afraid we might invade them? I mean, where does this cycle of violence end? You know? This whole “do as I say, not as I do” thing doesn’t work. What’s im—so important about President Bush’s speech last night? It doesn’t matter. If it was President Clinton still, it would be just as important. It’s not just a speech to America. It’s a speech to who?

[students: the world]

The whole world. It’s very obvious, if you listen to his language, if you listen [sic] to his body language, and if you paid attention to what he was saying, he wasn’t always just talking to us. He’s talking to the whole planet. Threatening the whole planet. He started off his speech talking about how America should be the country that dominates the world. That we have been blessed, essentially, by God to have the most civilized, the most advanced—best system, and that it’s our duty as Americans to use the military to go out into the world and make the world like us. Sounds a lot like the things that Adolf Hitler used to say. “We’re the only ones who are right. Everyone else is backwards, and it’s our job to conquer the world and make sure they live just like we want them to.” Now I’m not saying Bush and Hitler are exactly the same. Obviously, they’re not. Okay? But there are some eerie similarities to the tones that they use…very, very ethno-centric. All right? We’re right; you’re all wrong.

I just keep waiting—I mean, at some point in time, I think America and Mexico might go to war again. You know? Any time Mexico plays the USA in—in a soccer match, what can be heard chanting all game long? [indistinct answer] Pretty close, pretty close…Now do all Mexicans dislike the United States? No. Do all Americans dislike Mexico? No. But there’s a lot of resentment, not just in Mexico but across the whole world towards America right now.

We told—Condoleeza Rice said that now that Hamas got elected to lead the Palestinians, a day after—announce their desire to eliminate Israel, and then Condoleeza Rice also went on to say that you can’t be for peace and support armed struggle at the same time, you can’t do that. “You’re either for peace or you’re for war. You can’t be for both.” What is the problem with her saying this? That’s the same thing we say. That is exactly the same thing that this current administration says. “We’re going to make the world safe by invading and killing and making war.” So if we can be for peace…and war, why can’t the Palestinians be for peace and for war?

[student 1 (possibly Sean Allen—who taped the class session)] Is that—Isn’t there a difference of, of having Hamas be like “We want to attack Israelis because they’re Israelis,” and having us say “We want to attack people who are known terrorists,”? Isn’t there a difference between saying “We’re going to attack innocents” and “We’re going to attack people who are not innocent”?

I think that’s a good point. But you have to remember, who is doing the defining of a terrorist? And what is a terrorist?

[student 1] Well, when people attack us on our own soil and, um, are actually attempting to take American lives and want to take American lives, whereas Israelis in this situation don’t—aren’t—aren’t saying “We want to blow up Palestine.”

How did Israel and the modern Israeli state even come into existence in the first place?

[student 1] We gave it to them.

Sort of. Why? After the Israeli-Zionist movement conducted what? Terrorist acts. They assassinated the British Prime Minister in Palestine. They blew up buildings. They stole military equipment…assassinated hundreds of people…car bombings, you name it. That’s how the modern state of Israel was made, was through violence and terrorism. Eventually, we did allow them to have the land. Why? Not because we really care, but because we wanted a strategic ally. We saw a way to us [sic] to get a foot into the Middle East. If we create a modern nation of Israel, then—and we make them dependent on us for military aid and financial aid, well then, we can control a part of the Middle East. We will have a country in the Middle East that will be indebted to us.

[student 1] But is it just to say that it is okay to attack Israel, um—If it’s—if it’s okay to attack known terrorists, is it okay to attack Israel?

In the view of the Palestinians, who are the real terrorists? The Israelis, who fired missiles that they purchased from the United States government into Palestinian neighborhoods of refugees and maybe kill a terrorist, but also kill innocent women and children. And when we shoot a missile into Pakistan to quote-unquote kill a known terrorist, and we just killed 75 people that have nothing to do with Al Qaeda, as far as they’re concerned, we’re the terrorists who’ve attacked them on their soil with the intention of killing their innocent people.

[student 1] But we didn’t have the intention of killing innocent people, we had the intention of kill a known Al Qaeda terrorist.

Do you know that?

[other student] Well that’s what we say.

[student 1] So you’re saying that the U.S. has intentions to kill innocent people?

I don’t know. I don’t know the answer to that question.

[student 1] But what gain to we get from killing innocent people in the Middle East? What gain does that—What gain does that pose to us?

Let me ask you this. During the 1980’s, Iran and Iraq--[indistinct noises] During the 1980’s Iran and Iraq were involved in an eight year-long war. The United States sold missiles, tanks, guns, planes to which side?

[several students] Iraq.

Both. The answer is both. Why would we send armaments to two sides that are fighting each other? That seems to be self-defeating. No one wants one side to win, [crosstalk] Not always! Sometimes, you just want there to be…conflict. The British—this was one of the grand strategies of the British imperial system was to play local animosities off each other. To prevent them is to divide and conquer. Do we really want the Middle East to unite as one cohesive cultural and political body?

[several students] No.

No! Because then they could what?

[Indistinct answers]

Threaten our supremacy. We want to keep the world divided. Now, do we really want to kill innocent people? I don’t know. I don’t know the answer to that. I do know that there are some Americans who do. People who have to work in the CIA, people who have to think like that, those kinds of dirty minds, dirty tricks, that’s how the intelligence world works. Sometimes you do want to kill people just for the sake of killing them. All right? I mean, listen, between the years 1960 and 1962, the United States through their CIA conducted over 7,000 terrorist-sabotage attacks against the small island nation of Cuba. Over 7,000 terrorist attacks were waged against just one little country called Cuba in a two year period, intentionally—[indistinct] let me rephrase that—intentionally blowing up medical supplies, intentionally burning down crops that feed their country, thereby creating starvation. All right? Intentionally trying to make that system collapse. And we’re willing to expend however many thousands of people die because we just want to get rid of Castro. And the [indistinct] is, there are some policy planners who are willing to let people die in order to achieve their objectives. 

Now do I think President Bush says “I’d like to go kill some innocent Palestinians.” I don’t think he thinks like that, but I also know that he’s not the only one making decisions. And I also know that after September 11th, President Bush got on TV and he said, “You will feel our wrath. You will feel the full force of the United States military. There will be paybacks.” He said it again last night. He said “We’ve killed a lot of top-ranking Al Qaeda members, and if you aren’t killed yet, [theatrical force] your day will come!” All right? That kind of language to me is very obvious. And when you go trying to kill one particular type of person, you know that you’re going to kill other people too. And let me ask you this—

[same student] [Indistinct] Nowhere in that—he’s—he stated that he’s trying to kill innocents—

I understand that. Hold on. You need to understand something. That when Al Qaeda attacked America on September 11th, in their view, they’re thinking they’re not attacking innocent people. Okay? The CIA has an office in the World Trade Center. The Pentagon is a military target. The White House was a military target. Congress is a military target. The World Trade Center is the economic center of our entire economy. The FBI, who tracks down terrorists and so on and so forth around the world has offices in the World Trade Center. Some of the companies that work in the World Trade Center are these huge multinational corporations that are directly involved in the military-industrial complex in supporting corrupt dictatorships in the Middle East. And so in the minds of Al Qaeda, they’re not attacking innocent people. They’re attacking legitimate targets, people who have blood on their hands as far as they’re concerned. We portray them as innocent because they’re our friends and neighbors, family, loved ones…I mean I—one of my best friends from—from high school, elementary school, and birth lives in lower Manhattan. You know? He was right there. He was four blocks away from it. So this is—you know, anytime this comes close to home, you begin to see things differently.

Now, in no way am I implying, I don’t know—you’ve got to figure this stuff out for yourself, but I want you to think about these things, you know? Think about this, right here. Here’s the real homeland security [gesturing], fighting terrorism since 1492! All right? I mean, to many Native Americans, that flag is no different than the Nazi flag or the Confederate flag. It represents the people that came and stole their land, lied, brought disease, rape, pillage, destruction, etc. So, it all depends upon various people’s perspectives. And of course we’re going to see ourselves as being in the right, at least the majority of us, because that’s us.

[student 1] But we—but, but we were the ones that were attacked first. On September 11, 2001, we’re the ones that were attacked.

How do w—

[student 1] We were not attacking—we were not attacking anybody until that point. Then we said, “Okay we’re going to go into Afghanistan,” and then we said, “Okay, the Iraqi government has ties with Al Qaeda. We’re going to go into Iraq…” We were the ones that were attacked.

[other student] That—that’s not true…

In actuality, if you remember back in my first day, the September 11th attacks were, according to bin Laden, a direct response to our—number 1—support of the nation of Israel, which they consider to be a terrorist regime that does not have the right to control the land that the Palestinians lived on for over 1,500 years. And they also did it because of what George—Clinton did, Bill Clinton—George Clinton, they had a little Parliament documentary on PBS last night, I was watching it for a little bit—uh, Bill Clinton, when he launched the missile attacks into Afghanistan and Sudan, and killed thousands of innocent Africans and Afghanistans—Afghanis that had nothing to do with Al Qaeda or anything, in fact in Sudan, we blew up the country’s largest pharmaceutical plant which was producing medicines. All right? Um, you know, that’s as far as—in their eyes, that was retaliation for those attacks. And so this whole idea of who attacked who first, how far back in time do you want to go? I mean, this is the whole thing with the Arab-Israeli conflict. Well, who was there first? Well if you believe the Bible, you say God gave the land of Canaan to the Israelites. But who was in that land when they got there?

[student 1] Palestinians—

Canaanites, who some archeologists would argue are the ancient descendants [sic] of the Palestinians. You know? And so then it’s like—and then, other archeologists say actually the Hebrews didn’t really come from Egypt. They actually were just a group of Canaanites who decided they didn’t like the other Canaanites, and then developed this theory afterwards to justify how they killed all their neighbors and took over the land. All right? And so this becomes very, very muddled. And you know, I’m not in any way implying that you should agree with me. I don’t even know if I’m necessarily taking a position. What I’m trying to get you to do is to think—right?—about these issues more in depth—you know?—and to not just take things from the surface. I’m glad you asked all your questions because they are all legitimate questions and hopefully that allows other people to think about some of those things too.

 

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