Levi and the Calvinists
By Ron Beasley
I was surprised that more wasn't made of the fact that young Levi Johnson dropped out of high school because he found himself in a fartherly way. While few if any noticed here Muhammad Cohen of the Asia Times did.
But Johnston's most startling revelation in his interview was that he's dropped out of high school to work as an apprentice electrician in Alaska's North Slope oil fields due to his impending fatherhood. Back in school, Johnston was reportedly a big man on campus, star of the school hockey team. Now he's playing out the great American loser cliche embodied by Al Bundy in the TV series Married ... with Children, , a dead-ender doomed to a life of drudgery and bitterness by an accidental high school pregnancy. By all accounts, Johnston seemed marked for better things.
The Christian right can talk all about the blessing of life, but teenage pregnancy is really a cruel curse, and Johnston won't be the only victim here. Unless her mother wins the vice presidency, it's a good bet that Bristol Palin won't be going back to high school either. In the days before Christian morality held sway in the Wasilla school district and decreed abstinence-only sex education in high schools, Sarah Palin managed to avoid having her first baby until after she'd attended five colleges in six years and gestated a diploma.
Levi Johnson and Bristol Palin's inability to control their hormons may result in a "blessed event" but will condem them to a life that is much less than it could have been.
A high school graduate typically earns 50% more than a dropout. You would think that the Palins and the Johnstons would have the good sense to insist that a teenage mistake - this pregnancy was, ahem, unplanned, and the blessing of birth aside, last time I checked, the Bible calls what Levi and Bristol did a sin - doesn't ruin their futures.
This is the Calvanism of the Religious Right at work. Faith is more important than education, you must pay for your youthful failures for the rest of your life. And what was McCain's reaction?
In last week's debate, instead of talking about Joe the Plumber, whom he'd never met, McCain might've addressed someone he does know, Levi the Dropout. Without criticizing the accidental parents in waiting or their families, McCain could have at least made the humanizing point that the US's educational needs must be modernized to be ready for a host of 21st century situations, whether technological or personal, so that everyone can keep learning. Instead he trotted out the traditional right-wing appeal for school vouchers.
Right-wingers like the idea for its politics, not its educational outcomes. Giving public money to private schools is a blow against government services, government employees and labor unions, and a boon for religious groups that run many private schools.
If it's a return to the 16th century you want then you should vote for the Palin McCain ticket.
Thank God someone is thinking along the same lines as myself. I can't believe both sets of parents are allowing Levi to dropout.
My prediction is Sara does NOT win, the wedding will be called off. Levi knows he is too young to be saddled with a wife and kid.
And if Sara does become Vice-President??? Levi will still call off the wedding, and leave the state of Alaska. LOL
Posted by: boitoi | November 04, 2008 at 12:10 AM