Texas Schools Board Rewriting US History

suraj.sun picked up a Guardian (UK) piece on the Texas school board and their quest to remake US education in a pro-American, Christian, free enterprise mode. We've been keeping an eye on this story for some time, as it will have an impact far beyond Texas. From the Guardian: "The board is to vote on a sweeping purge of alleged liberal bias in Texas school textbooks in favor of what Dunbar says really matters: a belief in America as a nation chosen by God as a beacon to the world, and free enterprise as the cornerstone of liberty and democracy. ... Those corrections have prompted a blizzard of accusations of rewriting history and indoctrinating children by promoting right-wing views on religion, economics, and guns while diminishing the science of evolution, the civil rights movement, and the horrors of slavery. ... Several changes include sidelining Thomas Jefferson, who favored separation of church and state, while introducing a new focus on the 'significant contributions' of pro-slavery Confederate leaders during the Civil War. ... Study of Sir Isaac Newton is dropped in favor of examining scientific advances through military technology."

Comments

Re:1984

[roman_mir]

I am in Germany at this very moment, Baden-Baden, outside of the window everything is seemingly fine, then again, this is not a normal German city, 5000 millionaires live here (I am not yet in that category unfortunately.)

Germany most certainly does NOT have 90% tax, it has sales tax, called VAT, there are vehicle and other taxes, there is a DUAL health care system, not a single payer system, you can chose to be with private insurance and health providers. There is though government paid for education system but there are also private schools. There is no push to 'level inequalities', in fact the opposite, many people want to live better than the rest, that is a much more powerful motivator than what you are proposing.

Housing, food and job as rights? :))) Again, not EVEN in USSR where I was born was there a right to a MEANINGFUL job. Give me a break, who is supposed to give you anything meaningful? Sure, they forced you to work for the meaningless useless money in ridiculously low quantities, imagine what that looked like.

USSR 'collectively owned' farms. Government actually owned factories. But the 'collectively owned' farms is a euphemism for the dictatorial nature of the political structure. My Great-Grandfathers family was put into a train car (18 kids, himself and his wife) and they were moved away from their land, in the car his wife and 5 kids died. Only 3 survived past the WWII. Collectively owned means you have to take it away from someone who built it and then run it into the ground. Germany does not operate this way, where the hell do you get your information from?

You would dismantle the military industry, I guess USA has the hugest one ever, but it is not about dismantling it, it is about stopping the idea that US is an empire and needs to dominate the world. Not a year without wars, excursions, invasions, 'liberations' since WWII.

But Germany has an army and a Navy and an Airforce.

Anyway, your ideas have been tried, though not successfully. Good luck with that.

Re:1984

[roman_mir]

I just thought about it for another minute, I do NOT wish you luck with that. Too many people have suffered for ideas like yours and died in the process of someone trying to set it up to be that way. I wish anyone trying to implement that to die and rot in hell forever, and I am an atheist.

Government giving me a 'meaningful job'. Fuck the Government, fuck anyone who wants to define what is meaningful to me and 'give me a meaningful job'.

Give up your responsibilities in life and give up your freedoms, if you think you have a right to a job, to health-care, to housing, you have to define what it means for it to be a right. For it to be a right it means someone has to GIVE it to you. You are not a King, nobody owns your ass anything. You are born alive, be happy nobody killed you already and didn't eat you for breakfast.

Re:1984

[roman_mir]

And right to a meaningful job? Simple.
First, it is understood that people will have the right to be educated according to their desires and up to their abilities.
Then, it is understood that they will be employed according to their level of education.
Now the simple part. Don't fire them when economy is down. Ta-dah!

- wow, amazing, did you come up with it yourself?

Who, WHO is supposed to tell you what is it that you are supposed to do in life, what your abilities are, what your education should be except for yourself?

Who is supposed to GIVE you a JOB?

Economy is not about you having a right to something, it is about you doing something that is needed by somebody else, so that you can exchange your time for theirs productively.

What is a 'meaningful' job anyway? I can understand a hobby maybe meaningful and for some people hobbies become jobs, great stuff, what are you going to do with the majority of people who do not want to work? That's the reality of it. I lived in the USSR, majority of people totally do not want to work especially if the outcome from work is the same whether you are working or just BSing around.

You can't be fired on basis of what? Who is going to maintain your standard of living if you are sitting there doing nothing in an economy that does not need you to be there?

You are against economy restructuring itself, that's the way to KILL economy, not to grow it. If you Kill economy then there will be no jobs and surely there will be no 'meaningful' jobs.

Also certainly, there can be a publicly owned company, that is what IPO does: you buy stock and own it, quelle novelle idee, n'est pas?

But to do what Proletariat did, to take away from the producers and then give it to the workers and expect the company to last, go ahead, see if your economy survives for too long.