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

[Wyatt Earp]

No, the Greens are far-left and the Christian Patriots are far-fight.

That doesn't move the Republicans or Democrats farther right, it just plants them in the middle of the spectrum.

Re:1984

[Hadlock]

I think you're confusing the Republican Party with their constituents. For the most part their constituents don't really care or understand about the Republican platform, but the Republican Party is willing to bend to some of their whims to get their vote.

Re:In case there is any confusion...

[snowgirl]

Yet again, verbosity is mistaken for "Informative". (I should know.)

No it doesn't clear anything up but your misinterpretation of the Treaty. If you actually read all of the wikipedia information you would have seen this too.

("According to Frank Lambert, Professor of History at Purdue University, the assurances in Article 11 were "intended to allay the fears of the Muslim state by insisting that religion would not govern how the treaty was interpreted and enforced. John Adams and the Senate made clear that the pact was between two sovereign states, not between two religious powers.)

This pretty much explicitly states exactly the opposite of your assertion: that the US is a secular state, not a Christian state.

BTW, the Christian Bible instructs via Jesus's own words that Christians are to submit to secular governments. Secular governments rule this world, not the one that Christians should be concerned with.

If you actually were taught your history correctly all our founding fathers were religious men. Some deeply religious (Samuel Adams for one.) But they believed all religions should be allowed to be practiced without persecution. (Constitution of the US 1st Amendment.) Since history is not your strong suit let me help you with this. The pilgrims came over here because of religious persecution from the Church of England. When the founding fathers wrote all of our laws they made sure this could not happen again, as well as, made sure we would not be ruled over again.

The first laws passed by the pilgrims were to outlaw religions other than their own. Or at least to refuse voting rights to people believing other faiths.

Our country is based on the people voting for who they believe will do what they want to be accomplished. We don't work for the government they work for us.

You are correct in that we are a Republic. However, there are a few ways to interpret ones position as a representative. One of those is, "I was elected to exercise my own personal will and ideology", and the other is "I was elected to exercise personal restraint, and represent my voters faithfully." Neither is wrong.

For the record, the chairman of the board of concern in this article was strongly of the prior opinion, rather than the secondary. The voters felt his personal will and ideology varied sufficiently from what they wanted to have happen, that they voted him out.

But most of America has forgotten all of the above and are no longer being taught it in school. Instead they say how they were all slave owners (Again not true), and they were all agnostics.

Not agnostics, well, ok, a deist is an theistic agnostic, so, never mind. I don't recall it pointing out that we were all slave owners, in fact, it's pretty explicitly stated that there were slave-states and non-slave states. But slavery was still considered to be "decriminalized".

In fact the original Declaration of Independence stated the following. "Life, Liberty, and Property" but it was changed to "the Pursuit of Happiness" because they didn't want the southern slave owners to argue that the slaves were property.

Happiness at that time actually had two meanings. One of them was equivalent to "Fortune", and "Luck". (c.f. with German: "glücklich" (happy) from "Gluck" (luck)) Fortune also meaning Property.

"Pitiful" also used to mean something that evoked the emotion of pity. As in "this poem is quite pitiful."

In fact, I believe it was John Adams that said (roughly) if we do not fight this battle now (In regards to slavery) we will fight it again in 100 yrs.
Funny enough he was right and we fought the civil war under Lincoln (He was an evil republican by the way. lol)

The "evil republican" party was established initially by anti-slavery activists. They supported business generally, hard money (i.e., the go

Quoting Heinlein

[Pontiac]

When any government, or any church for that matter, undertakes to say to its subjects, 'This you may not read, this you may not see, this you are forbidden to know,' the end result is tyranny and oppression, no matter how holy the motives. Mighty little force is needed to control a man whose mind has been hoodwinked; contrariwise, no amount of force can control a free man, a man whose mind is free. No, not the rack, not fission bombs, not anything--you can't conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him.
Robert Heinlein