Sean Reiser

I can tell you my first "political memory", it was January 21, 1981, I was 11 years old. When was came to school that day TV sets were in the classroom. By mid day we were watching Ronald Reagan's Inauguration. I remember the Pomp and Circumstance around the event. As it was a Catholic school we prayed for the President, and for the Hostages released from Iran that day. Where President Reagan wasn't addressing the students directly, I do feel I learned a lot that day. I also learned a lot about the meaning of the Presidency some from Reagan's speech, some from the teacher afterwards.

To be honest, I suspect my belief that the government is not the solution to problems may have come directly from that speech. Now, I don't believe in everything Reagan represented but that one thing stays with me to this day. It occurs to me that from the people I've stayed in touch with there's a pretty even split between conservatives and liberals but the majority of them are politically active or at least aware. I think any interest I have in politics today can be traced back to that day and I suspect that other people in that class would feel the same.

So, I have to ask a question, in the last 28 years how did we get from a point where people would believe that a President addressing the youth of the nation might be the worst thing to happen to humanity? As I read tweets and blog entries there is a lot of "OMG! Obama is coming for the children. Lock them in the cellar for their own good!" out there and quite frankly it scares me. I didn't come out of the Reagan Inauguration an Alex P Keaton ultra-conservative clone, and I don't believe that children will come out of the school that day as full fledged socialists. I would like to believe that they will come out of school more politically aware as I and my classmates did.