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California Moves To Block Texas' Textbook Changes
eldavojohn writes "Yesterday the Texas textbook controversy was reported internationally but the news today heats up the debate as California, a state on the other side of the political spectrum, introduces legislation that would block these textbook changes inside California. Democrat Senator Leland Yee (you may know him as a senator often tackling ESRB ratings on video games) introduced SB1451, which would require California's school board to review books for any of Texas' changes and block the material if any such are found. The bill's text alleges that said changes would be 'a sharp departure from widely accepted historical teachings' and 'a threat to the apolitical nature of public school governance and academic content standards in California.'"
If I were the POTUS I would offer them back to Mexico. Mind you if I were the Mexican president I'd turn the offer down.
The US did not acquire Texas from Mexico. Texas won its independence from Mexico and then joined the US many years later as an independent nation.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
To deny Christianity's role in the founding of America would be an outright lie. Likewise, to say that America is founded solely on the Christian religion would be untrue.
America was founded on the concepts of individual rights, self-governance, and the idea that man has certain rights that the government as no authority to interject themselves into. While, to my knowledge, all of the Founders themselves were monotheistic or Agnostic, it would be one hell of a stretch to say they shared a common religion.
Truth be told, a Christian of just about any sort would be at home in early America. Pagans and Athiests, less so, but they would probably be at little risk. Luciferians, Wiccans (who call themselves witches), etc? Ha!
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"It's an urban myth, especially in this digital age we live in, when content can be tailored and customized for individual states and school districts," said Jay Diskey, executive director of the schools division of the Association of American Publishers.
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Three companies are responsible for about 75 percent of the country's K-12 textbooks, Diskey estimated. Representatives for two of them--Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and McGraw-Hill--on Friday referred inquiries from The Associated Press to Diskey. The third, Pearson Education Inc., did not respond to a request for comment.
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For now, California's curriculum will not be subject to any modifications, Texas-influenced or otherwise. Last July, the Legislature suspended until 2013 the statewide adoption of new educational materials to give cash-strapped districts a break from buying new textbooks.
"Kill 'em all and let Root sort 'em out"
I love this one. Shows one of two things -- either the speaker is an idiot parroting others, or the speaker is trying to put one over us. A.D. 1776 = Anno Domini 1776 = The year of our lord 1776. The "lord" meant was indeed Jesus Christ, the one old Pope Gregory XIII (of Gregorian Calendar fame) would have recognized. It's just traditional formula.
Yes, Jefferson was go religious he re-wrote the new testament of the Bible taking all the "magic" out of it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jefferson_Bible
Gotta love the evil conservative hyperbole there.
No one is implying that all conservatives are evil. That's why it said this:
The alterations and fallacies made by these extremist conservatives are offensive to our communities and inaccurate of our nation's diverse history.
Frankly, if you've looked at the changes suggested, anyone in favor of these is an extremist. The best you could say is that they're not truly a conservative, as they're advocating wholesale revision to the point of making shit up. Here, TFA sums it up neatly:
The Texas recommendations... include adding language saying the country's Founding Fathers were guided by Christian principles and a new section on "the conservative resurgence of the 1980s and 1990s." That would include positive references to the Moral Majority, the National Rifle Association and the Contract with America, the congressional GOP manifesto from the 1990s.
The amendments to the state's curriculum standards also minimize Thomas Jefferson's role in world and U.S. history because he advocated the separation of church and state, and require that students learn about "the unintended consequences" of affirmative action and Title IX, the landmark federal law that bans gender discrimination in education programs and activities.
If you don't already see that for the steaming pile of bullshit it is, let me break it down for you:
the country's Founding Fathers were guided by Christian principles
"Lighthouses are more useful than churches." -- Ben Franklin.
Thomas Jefferson had some stronger words about the Christian faith in particular, but I couldn't find them offhand. No, these men were largely deists, making this an outright lie. The most charitable interpretation you could make is that they were guided by Christian principles, even if they weren't Christian, but that's obviously mistaken at best -- the Bible itself is clear about submitting to authority, that any Earthly authority (like, say, the British King) was placed there by God. No, they were guided largely by ideas floating around the world at the time, many dating back to the Greeks -- books like Plato's Republic, not the Holy Bible.
...a new section on "the conservative resurgence of the 1980s and 1990s." That would include positive references to the Moral Majority, the National Rifle Association and the Contract with America, the congressional GOP manifesto from the 1990s.
Hardly nonpartisan. I suppose you're going to tell me that the books are currently favorable to modern liberals? I'd say that this is pretty damning evidence of these being not just extremists, but conservative extremists.
The amendments to the state's curriculum standards also minimize Thomas Jefferson's role in world and U.S. history because he advocated the separation of church and state...
Can't have that, can we? It's only one of the pillars of the Great American Experiment, a prerequisite for religious freedom and expression. I very much doubt anyone writing this is a current member of the Church of England, are they? Then they owe their freedom to practice their current religion to Thomas Jefferson.
...and require that students learn about "the unintended consequences" of affirmative action and Title IX, the landmark federal law that bans gender discrimination in education programs and activities.
Are they really suggesting that banning gender discrimination was a bad idea? If you needed an example of why Yee said, "some Texas politicians may want to set their educational standards back 50 years," this is it.
I have to imagine that most conservatives would be ashamed to be associated with drivel like this. In light of that, I think the sentence you quoted is entirely true and warranted, as written:
The alterations and fallacies made by these extremist conservatives are offensive to our communities and inaccurate of our nation's diverse history.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
The silly thing is, you are both correct, to a point
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Mexico, if I recall my history classes correctly, offered the area that is now Texas to fairly generous settlement terms to any and all takers, provided they could meet some basic requirements needed for Mexican citizenship at that time. It was later, when they decided to actually enforce those requirements, that several inhabitants of Texas, mostly immigrants from non-Spanish speaking countries, (such as the U.S.) rebelled, and subsequently declared an independent republic. Soon thereafter, the governing parties of this new republic petitioned to join the U.S., but the U.S. Congress balked at the idea, partly on the basis of a reluctance to assume Texas' war debt with Mexico, and partly to avoid unneccessarily antagonizing their neighbors/ international peers. Eventually, and with considerable reluctance, Congress had a change of heart on the matter, partly due to public sentiment, partly due to questions regarding domestic policy (disposition of slavery, transport logistics to regions further West, there are certainly other reasons) and Texas was brought into the Union.
The concept of Texas secession later became of increasing importance around the time of the Civil War, and a token permission had been allowed for that provided that if such occurred, the state of Texas would do so not as a single bloc, but as at least 5 seperate entities, supposedly as a consequence for their participation in the Civil War? I may not be remembering that right, though. In any case, it is now, to the best of my knowledge NOT allowed due to a relatively recent legal decision, but as IANAL, someone may wish to further verify (or correct) my recollection.
With all due respect, you have an extremely simplistic view of history and you're using that as the basis of a diatribe.
Some of the founders were Christians; there is no doubt of that. Many of them were not. Most of them were theists; it takes a special kind of arrogance that only Christians seems to hold to equate theism with Christianity. Jefferson is generally considered a Deist, as was Franklin and Thomas Paine, probably the most influential of our founders aside from Jefferson. A handful more (perhaps Jefferson here as well) were considered Unitarians. The reality is that it is hard to tell, not only because of the passage of time but because of how people--quite on the topic actually--all want to claim great people. It's much the same as both parties claiming that Thomas Jefferson would belong with them if he were alive today. It's hard to separate the truth from the fiction. Suffice it to say that there were many different religious leanings among our founding fathers.
However, it is also undeniable that whatever their personal beliefs, most wanted to keep them away from government. They put it in the first damn amendment, without which the Constitution would not have passed. When one claims a "Christian backing," even insofar as many of them were personally Christians, it paints a different picture than history seems to support.
It is also worth noting two things: One, that people wrangle over the very definition of Christian such that it may include everybody under the sun or not--usually those pushing Christianity as the great truth, I suppose. To me the definition is simple; it's what separates the major religions of the planet: Was Jesus Christ the son of God and God himself? It is called Christianity after all. Under that definition you can throw aside the Deists and the vast majority of Unitarians (those who believe he was a supernatural power is a gray area to me) out from under the umbrella. And the second thing to note is the claim of many Christians that, essentially, everything good comes from them. Many Christians even claim that morality comes from Christianity, as if it never existed for the first several thousand years of human history or those of us (myself included) who do not believe are barbarians answerable to no one. I mention this because many people claim the country was founded on a "Christian morality" despite the idea that so many of the most influential founders were not, themselves, Christian.
So no, even acknowledging that many of the founders were Christians and most were theists, I don't think it is "anti-truth" to say the country was not founded on a Christian base. It was founded primarily on the belief in reason and free thought, on the backs of Jefferson and Paine who were probably among history's biggest advocates of both. Jefferson, for example, is famously quoted as entreating us* to "question with boldness even the existence of a God." Regardless of his personal conclusions, it's pretty clear he valued thought above them. (As a personal aside, I find religion--not belief--to be the antithesis of that, which I could pull another Jefferson quote about but I'm sure you know it.)
* "Us" through the lens of history. I think the quote actually comes from a letter written to his nephew, but I cannot recall for certain.
To pretend the Founders were not Christians is anti-truth and makes you no better than the Texan book-writers.
That's a straw man argument.
This issue is not whether or not some or all of the Founding Fathers were Christians. The issue is the claim that the United States was founded according to Christian biblical precepts and thus its laws should reflect these beliefs. This claim is an outright history denying lie perpetrated by Christian Nationalists. This lie is easily revealed by reading what our Founding Fathers had to say about religion and government.
Some examples:
Benjamin Franklin: "When a religion is good, I conceive it will support itself; and when it does not support itself, and God does not take care to support it so that its professors are obliged to call for help of the civil power, ‘tis a sign, I apprehend, of its being a bad one."
John Adams: "It will never be pretended that any persons employed in that service had interviews with the gods, or were in any degree under the influence of Heaven, more than those at work upon ships or houses, or laboring in merchandise or agriculture; it will forever be acknowledged that these governments were contrived merely by the use of reason and the senses."
James Maddison: "Because Religion be exempt from the authority of the Society at large, still less can it be subject to that of the Legislative Body. The latter are but the creatures and vicegerents of the former. Their jurisdiction is both derivative and limited: it is limited with regard to the co-ordinate departments, more necessarily is it limited with regard to the constituents. The preservation of a free Government requires not merely, that the metes and bounds which separate each department of power be invariably maintained; but more especially that neither of them be suffered to overleap the great Barrier which defends the rights of the people. The Rulers who are guilty of such an encroachment, exceed the commission from which they derive their authority, and are Tyrants. The People who submit to it are governed by laws made neither by themselves nor by an authority derived from them, and are slaves."
Do some research and you'll find more of the same. Thomas Jefferson had a lot to say about the subject as well.
Here is another way to look back. In 1797 the Treaty of Tripoli was signed and unanimously ratified by the Senate. It contains the words "As the government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian Religion..." and you would think that a "Christian Nation" would be upset by this clear statement. The complete text of this treaty and the news of its signing was published in several newspapers of the day and yet there is no evidence of any public outcry or backlash.
This nonsense about America being a Christian nation is revisionist history perpetrated by Christian Nationalists in an attempt to subvert the constitution and the clearly articulated intentions of the Founders of the United States. Of course, don't take my word for it, do some research of your own.
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The Spanish/Mexican upper class enslaved native population of their conquered territory. But to be fair - the French and English in Canada and the US also took Native American slaves, as did many Native American tribes. That's the problem with history, if you care to look at all of it, there is always something that taken out of context can be used to support or demean someone's opinion. History, like science should be viewed critically not politically, if you wish to learn. Those who scrub the data are seeking to obtain an advantage over you to restrict your liberty for their own gain.
Again, there is no such thing as 'devolution,' as evolution does not have a direction, it can't go backward. You also can't disable selection. All you can do is change the selection criteria. You should really stop listening to Social Darwinists, who have bent the theory of evolution into a twisted funhouse mirror version of the real theory, just to excuse their own sick and selfish ideals.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
What information he had and what was going on at the time.
And what we now know was going on in the Japanese dictatorship at the time, which completely contradicts the notion that Japan was ready to surrender. They were not. Not even after the first bomb. After the second bomb, leadership was divided on the issue of surrender. What pushed Hirohito over the edge, was Stalin's threat of invasion from the north being added to the US threat of invasion.
State it like it's fact, and it is, I guess. But there is room for argument.
The Japanese leadership, which was in flux, especially with the ousting of Tojo and the "Control Faction," had been discussing surrender long before the dropping of the bombs. The invasion of Okinawa really sealed the fate of the country. True the propaganda talked about arming every last citizen with a pitchfork to fight off the invasion, but that was just that, propaganda. Tokyo was already firebombed into oblivion. B-29s were flying overhead without any resistance. The war was over, and the Japanese leaders knew it.
What was happening behind the scenes was pretty chaotic. There was at least one and probably more coups planned and staged as various military officers tried to take power. Sure there were some fanatics who wanted to fight to the last man, but they were luckily few by that point. The seppuku blades had gotten a lot of use.
Surrender did not happen in one shot. Diplomats from different sides were already talking in various foreign embassies. These sorts of prenegotiations usually happen through third party diplomats that both sides see as neutral. The sticking point as usual in WWII was the unconditional part of the surrender that the allies insisted on.
Russia was sitting on the border of Manchuria refusing to move. Stalin and Churchill in particular enjoyed making life difficult for each other. Relations were already breaking down between the US/British and USSR halves of the allies. Churchill in particular was already talking about Stalin as the real enemy now that Hitler was gone and Germany defeated. Roosevelt was more trusting of Stalin, but at this point he was dead, and Truman had taken office. Truman did not trust Stalin, and when he looked at the post war world, realized that Stalin was the biggest threat to America and Europe, not Japan. Russian tanks had rolled into many Eastern European capitals with a heavy hand.
Truman had 3 atomic bombs (I know, we say 2, but we probably lost the third to a japanese submarine on its secret delivery to Iwo Jima), and wanted to use them. Yes, they would help push Japan to have a propaganda excuse to finally sign the surrender, but more importantly, they made a big statement to Stalin. As to allowing the emperor to live. That seems to go against the unconditional part of the surrender. The reason was that the US wanted Japan built back up as quickly as possible as a buffer against Stalin (just like his eastern european "allies"), and it helped keep the stability in post war Japan.
So did we drop the bombs to end the war with Japan, or to start a cold war with the USSR? The answer is yes to both. And anyone who argues exclusively one side or the other is dramatically oversimplifying the situation.
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