We Can't Protect Our Misleaders, Incompetent As They Are, And Expect to Prevail--Or Survive

In putting the welfare of her friend, Randi Weingarten, ahead of everything else, Diane Ravitch has triggered a firestorm of criticism against her friend by many teachers who have, in the past, set on the sideline watching, as Randi and her posse of lawyers have handed over mile after mile of public school territory to the invading corporate horde of insatiable profiteers and Washington extortionists.

Here are Ravitch’s latest remarks in the comments section of her blog post, “Why I Defend Randi:”

When you fight among yourselves–a bad habit among progressives–you lose. Watch “The Life of Brian,” a Monty Python film, to see the point made clearly, when the various opposition groups fight among themselves. We can’t shoot our leaders, flawed as they are, and expect to prevail. 

Does this sound like a patronizing parent chastising bickering children, or am I being overly sensitive here?  If you don’t stop criticizing your mom for running the car into the ditch and ripping the wheels off, how are we ever going to get to grandma’s house?

"We can’t shoot our leaders, flawed as they are, and expect to prevail."  Really, Diane, is that the best you can do?  What if the Italians had used that same logic with Mussolini, or the Romanians with Ceaușescu's regime, or more appropriately, if the English people had accepted the assessment of the Nazi threat by their leader, Neville Chamberlain? Who might have prevailed then?

If I may borrow your phraseology, I would suggest we all consider this possibility:

We can’t protect our misleaders, incompetent and corrupt as they are, and expect to prevail--or survive.