Obama's critics on the speech to students

With commentary on Obama's speech starting to pop up in various news sources, so to are the wacky statements made by some of the critics. For example, from this CNN piece:

"The president's speeches tend to be [about] what's wrong with the country and what can we do to fix it," said Bill Hogsett, a parent from Dallas, Texas.


"I believe this is the greatest country on Earth, and I try to teach that to my children. ... I don't want them hearing that there's a fundamental flaw with the country and the kids need to go forward to fix it."

Yes, that's right - apparently acknowledging problems and trying to fix them is very bad.  Even worse if you expect the next generation to deal with those problems! Oh, the horror!

So are these acknowledgments somehow unpatriotic? Would recognizing a "fundamental flaw" invalidate a belief that this "is the greatest country on Earth"?  Heck no. Our founding fathers recognized that no country - even this one - is not immune from having flaws.  That's why we have the ability to amend our constitution - so that those flaws can be corrected.

In any case, I hope you read Obama's speech - it's arguably the best speech made by a president specifically to students and will hopefully have some impact on the students that were fortunate enough to have heard it.