Sometimes two separate news stories, if put side by side, create a unique perspective from which they can be viewed. An excellent example of this interesting juxtaposition is the case of 1) the various stories, including last Monday’s Record Journal column by Bill Collins, about military recruiters having access to high school records and 2) the national story concerning Aurora CO high school teacher Jay Bennish.

The thrust of most of the comments regarding military recruiters is that our children are too young and impressionable to evaluate the overtures from military recruiters. I get the impression that these parents liken these men and women representing our armed forces to the 18th century press gangs conscripting sailors for the HMS Bounty. Today’s eighteen year old has apparently been so sheltered and his or her education so inadequate that a discussion with a member of the world’s most professional armed forces is a dangerous undertaking.

Yet those same parents would have no problem whatsoever having their child subjected to the full throated, spittle-projecting, hate-America rantings of a high school teacher named Jay Bennish. If you haven’t heard of this guy, go here http://pro-reason.info/index.php/2006/04/01/bennish-transcript/ to get a transcript of the lecture he gave to one of his classes the day after President Bush gave his State of the Union address. This “teacher” is so consumed with self-hatred and self-loathing that it manifests itself in his political beliefs, beliefs that he feels are appropriate to inflict on his sixteen and seventeen year old students.

So let’s be consistent. People like Jay Bennish are everywhere in our school system, and America’s teenage students are forced to sit and listen to – and regurgitate if they want a good grade – a steady stream of hate-America propaganda dressed up as education. And their “academic freedom” to peddle this stuff is protected. If that be the case, then what is the problem with allowing the United States military a minute portion of that same access to our students? The Jay Bennishes of the world have access to these kids eight hours a day, 180 days a year. Wouldn’t it be appropriate for these same kids to receive at least some of another point of view?

Or let’s look at it another way. The school system makes students’ records available to any college that wants them, don’t they? That seems perfectly okay. But allowing these records to be seen by members of the most professional, most upright, most honorable military force ever assembled is putting our little angels in danger? Just how much basic common sense and pride in the greatness of this country have we lost that our sons and daughters need to be sheltered from the very people who ensure our freedom to listen to the likes of a Jay Bennish?