My guess is the great majority of teachers would welcome a system where innovation is embraced, where their hard work and their students' achievement are applauded and rewarded.
Remember that our Spanish conquerors, for their own benefit, deliberately created an oppressed underclass whose collective psyche became rooted in passivity and underachievement.
When I say that Latinos share conservative values, when Ronald Reagan said that, we mean the love of family, the love of country, a commitment to personal responsibility, to hard work.
I've been a Republican all my life because I embrace the conservative values of hard work, personal freedom, less government and fewer taxes. But I also believe in compassion, inclusion, and helping those who want to help themselves.
I believe that we are missing a great opportunity. We as Republicans are not really emphasizing what brings us together, and that's conservative values: love of the country. Love of family. Personal responsibility. Hard work. Optimism. Those are the things that we should be communicating to Latinos, and we're doing that very poorly.
Anger does not solve problems - anger only makes things worse. I go by the old saying, 'Don't make important decisions when you're angry.'
Mexico is so close to us. No matter how long we stay here, we identify as Americans first, but we also have a place for our mother country. That is very visible in San Antonio.
I've been a Republican since age 13, when we got our first television set, and I saw the Republican National Convention on television. And President Eisenhower was talking about personal responsibility, about opening the door for opportunity and that people could really take care of themselves without a lot of government intrusions.
Immigrants have always come into the country with low levels of education. Whether it's the Irish or Italian or Polish, here is the land of opportunity. It's where people come in at the bottom and build themselves up. To try to bring in people who have already made it is un-American.
