NEW YORK, NY – MSNBC seems to be going out of its way to identify itself more as a far-left political identity than a news organization with its Lean Forward campaign. A new thirty-second promo for the campaign features Dr. Melissa Harris-Perry and her belief against the “private idea that kids belong to their parents or kids belong to their families,” and instead encourages a “collective notion” that kids “are our children”—that they belong to the community.
“We have to break through our kind of private idea that kids belong to their parents or kids belong to their families, and recognize that kids belong to whole communities,” said Harris-Perry, a professor of political science at Tulane University and host of the Melissa Harris-Perry show on Saturday and Sunday mornings on MSNBC.
“Once it’s everybody’s responsibility and not just the household’s, then we start making better investments,” Harris-Perry added. (See the video promo below, courtesy of Newsbusters [1].)
Lindsey Burke of the Heritage Foundation told CNSNews.com that Harris-Perry’s sentiments are misguided. “It’s almost unbelievable, the language they use in that piece,” said Burke. “To say to parents that your children don’t belong to you, effectively, that they belong to the community, is just really telling about how the left views preschool programs, in particular, and the role of government in preschool.”
“When the president’s budget comes out on Wednesday, we know it will have a big push for universal preschool in it,” she said. “You listen to the Obama administration’s rhetoric on preschool and they talk consistently about having ‘cradle to career’ education, that they want preschool programs starting with infants and toddlers, expanding programs like Head Start to include three-year olds and younger children. So we know that we’re going to see a big push over the next week by the administration to grow government intervention into the lives of the youngest American children.”
Burke’s expectations proved true when President Obama unveiled his plan to allocate billions of dollars to fund free preschool for all four-year-olds. The site Think Progress details the plan: [2]
President Obama proposed a vast expansion to early childhood education programs during his State of the Union address in February, saying he wanted to work “with states to make high-quality preschool available to every child in America.” The budget plan he released today follows up on that promise, allocating $75 billion in new funding over the next decade to partner with states and help expand access to low- and middle-income children who aren’t currently enrolled in preschool programs.
Obama’s plan would partner with states to help “provide all low- and moderate-income four-year-old children with high-quality preschool, while also incentivizing States to expand these programs to reach additional children from middle-class families and establish full-day kindergarten policies.” Overall, the budget spends $90 billion on the Preschool for All initiative and an expansion in home visiting for children. The programs are financed through a $0.94 increase in cigarette and tobacco taxes.
As in all things where the federal government gets involved, a host of rules and regulations are bound to accompany those billions. Don’t be surprised if four-year-old preschool attendance is mandatory somewhere in that not-too-distant future. With the idea of marriage being directly connected to child rearing in disfavor, Professor Harris-Perry’s vision of what Hillary Clinton called The Village cannot be far away.