Tinkering Texans Tamper With Texts To Teach Slanted Right-Wing Agenda To U.S. Kids

EDITORIAL

In an article I wrote two years ago, I expressed my concerns about worldwide religious and political fanatics trying to rewrite history and science books in order to model them after their own narrow agendas. Much of my expressed unease was scoffed at. Apparently those fears however are now coming to fruition in Texas as I speak.

Being one of the largest purchasers of kindergarten through 12th grade textbooks in the country, the Texas State Board of Education with its nearly five million students has a large influence on what is published in not only its own state, but nationwide as well. Where that becomes a problem for the rest of us, is when a lame-duck session of the BOE has now succeeded in twisting History, Science and Social Studies primers in order to conform to their right-wing notions, knowing full well that they’re about to be booted out of office and that the soon-to-be-published texts will be used for at least ten years down the road.

In a move toward the GOP’s political center, Dr. Don McLeroy, a dentist and leader of the board's far-right conservative faction, was voted out of office during Texas’ Republican primaries. Seeing the end of his considerable influence drawing to a close soon, he seems determined to turn socio-political studies in his state into a training ground for Southern Christian thinking with posible overtones of racism.

Maybe he and his seven ultra-conservative associates can explain the following questions:

Obviously Texans don’t know nearly a century and a half after the event, that the South lost the Civil War. Why else would a demand be introduced that defeated Confederate General Stonewall Jackson’s leadership skills be taught alongside and in contrast to President Abraham Lincoln’s?

Why would his committee push for an amendment to remove all mention of such men as Ross Perot and Ralph Nader, and then demand that in their place such people as Phyllis Schlafly, and influences such as The Contract with America, the Moral Majority, the right-wing Heritage Foundation and the National Rifle Association be taught in their place? Others at the meeting also insisted that even though their very first “convention” was held just recently, that the Tea Party’s influence on American History be included in the new schoolbooks?

In a move that seemed to try to eliminate or minimize any mention ot the civil rights movement’s influence on U.S. History, they proposed removing any references to the contributions of race in our national identity. On the second day of meetings it was proposed and rejected that the names of two Hispanic and one Black Medal of Honor winner be included in a World History book. Member Barbara Cargill tried to minimize their influence by declaring them historically insignificant. When several other members bristled at the notion, she used the typical “some of my best friends are negroes” argument by relating how a dear black friend of hers in Memphis suffered from the effects of segregation, but that now things were much better for her. African American member Mavis Knight of Dallas was quoted as saying, “I really regret that no member of this board who is not African American has not lived 64 years in this country as I have and with my education and experience to know how African-Americans are still treated today," Knight said. "Yes, we have come a long way, but we have not arrived."

Why would his committee turn away requests to include Hispanic heroes such as Juan Abamillo, Andres Nava and Jose Navarro (a signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence) who were some of the Tejanos who gallantly fought and died at the Alamo along side comrades such as Davey Crockett? Why are they considering proposals that lessons about American Indians be cut or diminished?

McLeroy’s allies are also pushing for the teaching of biblical “science” and emphasizing the weakness of Evolution as an “unproven” theory. One of the reasons that America's rankings in worldwide scientific knowledge and research has slipped so low is that in the last 10 years teachers nationwide have been told to instruct their students to believe their bibles rather than, or beside of scientific facts.

We must teach our children that our founding fathers were all devout Christians and that their faith formed our great nation as assigned by God.
In the same vein, McLeroy’s minions are pushing to teach children that the forefathers of the United States were just as determined as he apparently is to forge our nation into a Christian society, ignoring quotes from such founding fathers as:

Thomas Paine said, "Of all the systems of religion that ever were invented, there is no more derogatory to the Almighty, more unedifiying to man, more repugnant to reason, and more contradictory to itself than this thing called Christianity.”

Thomas Jefferson infamously said, "I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should 'make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' thus building a wall of separation between church and State."

George Washington: Near the end of George Washington’s term on November, 4, 1796, the Treaty of Tripoli was written under his supervision. In Article 11 we read: "As the Government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquillity, of Musselmen; and as the said States never have entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mehomitan nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries." In 1797 the Senate ratified the treaty with no public objections, despite it being published for all to read, and Washington’s successor John Adams signed it without reservation.

Of Washington’s thousands of collected letters the name of Jesus Christ is not mentioned even once. In fact, when it was proposed that reference to Christ be inserted into the preamble of the Constitution, the vast majority of the founding fathers voted against it because that would infer that our forefathers meant to exclude protections of “…the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mohammedan, the Hindoo and Infidel of every denomination."

I do, however completely agree with one thing McLeroy said, "Our country is divided on how we see things and these things really come into sharp focus, especially with history and how you present it to your children." ...I just don't agree with his "version" of it.

Perhaps it would be best (in my humble opinion) to suggest strongly that, like the Bible, there be different and separate “versions” printed of the Texas texts… the Texas Version and the American Version. Hopefully someone will come to their senses on the new school board and stop to revise and undo the changes before that becomes necessary.

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Who Among Us Has The Right To Rewrite History?

Recent events in Iran concerning attempts to assert that the Nazi Holocaust was a hoax has awakened me to what might be the tiny seedlings of an educational and cultural crisis in our country. Intentional misinformation on everything from the moon landing in 1969, world ecology/global warming, basic world history, astronomy and AIDS are all beginning to take footholds in world Culture.

While the vast majority of Americans are intelligent enough to know better, more and more disinformation is being told to (and in some cases believed) as fact to an entire generation of Americans. In the age of the Internet this irresponsible disinformation is spreading like wildfire.

Politicians and religious leaders worldwide are beginning to take liberties with, and in some cases attempting to completely rewrite common knowledge. Once-solid scientific and historical facts are now being irresponsibly branded “theories”, or worse out-and-out lies.

This is nothing new, religion has opposed science for centuries.

As far back as the 1700s in American history, there are similar religious zealots who branded all science as evil and a contradiction to biblical teachings. Damage from lightning storms was a dangerous problem in colonial days. The tallest buildings in a town were the most vulnerable. Since the structures had very little metal, they’d usually explode when hit, causing fires that spread to other buildings threatening whole settlements.

What were the highest spires in those days? Church steeples. To curb the problem, Benjamin Franklin invented the lightning rod, a device that would channel the bolt of electricity harmlessly to the ground. Fanatical Christians began protesting and demanding they be removed from steeples because use of the strange devices was seen as mankind defying God’s will. In other words it was better to condemn something you don’t understand (Franklin’s electrical theory), even if it meant sacrificing your own house of worship. Some preachers even went so far as to blame Franklin for causing an earthquake with his evil invention in 1755!

Southern white children in the late 1800s never stopped referring to Negroes as “niggers” and were taught to think of them as inferior intellectually and nothing more than common farm animals and laws had to be passed in the early 1960s in order to protect the rights of black Americans to vote, work, and have good housing.

One of the most horrific examples of dangerous opinions being taught as fact is when Nazi children were taught by their parents to hate Jews. Jews are stingy, speak in strange tongues, they hoard money and never return anything to society. Hitler was merely performing God’s holy judgment upon them for the crime of crucifying Christ, and it was completely justified that they be rounded up and executed.

German children were also held to criteria of racial purity and all who didn’t meet it were judged inferior. Never mind that nearly none of the Nazi hierarchy matched their own descriptions of what the “master race should look like.

The AIDS epidemic in the U.S. in the early 1980s went almost completely unchecked because normally responsible and knowledgeable people told the public that it only struck homosexuals and the general straight population was safe. Most Americans believed people like Anita Bryant and Jerry Falwell, who taught that God had brought his judgment down on the sinning heathens.

These zealots branded anyone who contradicted their prejudices as un-Christian. Rather than speak out against these hate-mongers, scientists and medical scholars who knew better would let hundreds of thousands of people become needlessly infected because they believed they were immune. People like Falwell, Pat Robertson and their like had no conscience towards the resulting victims. The only way to get the disease is to have sex in a way that conflicts with God’s moral teachings. President Ronald Reagan also used the Religious Right's hate speech as an excuse to delay an initiative to get AIDS under control until it was far too late.

Falwell would go on to prove his intelligence when he attempted to declare and condemn several fictional children’s characters as dangerous. He proclaimed that Sponge Bob and Tinky Winky were promoting homosexuality or were gay themselves and part of a plot to influence young children’s minds towards perversion.

Currently there are people in power who would irresponsibly have you believe that history is not true as it was written. Fortunately the American public hasn’t been swayed by such outrageous claims, and most fall under the ridiculous heading of “President Kennedy wasn’t killed in 1963 and lived in a rest home for years afterward.”

The most telling examples are…

Man Has Never Landed on the Moon
On the surface of the moon at Tranquility Base is a carefully aimed reflector array about the size of a suitcase. Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin left this instrument there in 1969. The 3.5-meter Apache Point telescope bounces a precisely aimed laser off of that array to periodically measure the exact distance between the Earth and the Moon. There are three such reflectors currently on the lunar face, left by Apollo missions 11, 14 and 15. It is an easily verified fact that they are there and that Earthmen put them there.

However a growing (though small) percentage of people actually believe today, that the moon landings were faked on a movie set in “Area 51”. Religious zealots preach that God never meant man to leave his Earth, if he had it would’ve been foretold in the Bible. The moon landings brought back scientific proof that many theological theories of how the Earth and universe were formed and their presumed ages were wrong. The only way to discount the heretical science facts learned from such moon trips would be to assert that the lunar journeys had been faked and by doing so therefore their resulting science would justifiably be discarded in favor of biblical teachings.

Inconsistencies are pointed to as proof, such as some photos not having stars in the background. Of course that is ignoring the fact that any group intelligent enough to falsify and fund such an event, would be smart enough to remember to paint stars in the photos, The quite literally glaring fact is late-sixties photo techniques would necessitate the film exposure be dictated by the bright unhindered sunlight reflected off the astronaut’s white spacesuits, the white landing vehicle and even the brilliant lunar surface itself. The fast shutter speed would logically prevent any comparatively dim stars from showing up on the film at all.

They claim that the American flag wouldn’t be fluttering in the breeze on the moon. It wouldn’t be fluttering in the breeze of an enclosed movie studio either. Crumple up a piece of paper and set it down on the table in front of you, then watch it move on its own. Anything folded has stored energy, even a folded flag in space. The flexible aluminum pole being adjusted caused movement. In the frictionless vacuum of space; there would be nothing to stop it from repeatedly moving back and forth once it started, like a tool lost in a space walk that is still orbiting thousands of miles an hour to this day.

How could photographic shadows be coming from different directions? Sunlight glare reflecting off the white orbiter and even their space suits comes immediately to mind.

Of the dozen men who walked on the moon several are still alive, yet none has ever confided in anyone that it was faked—a secret that should be impossible to keep. These men also brought back 841 pounds of rock from the surface with properties that are impossible to duplicate on earth.

Evolution Is Only A Theory
As reported by the Washington Post, President Bush has been quoted as saying that Intelligent Design should be taught in public schools and that evolution should be taught as only a theory.

He’s not alone.

In 1925 courtroom, a self-righteous man laughed sarcastically and asserted that you only have to look at an ape to see that man couldn’t possibly have come from one. If you were able to go back in time and present that same man with a photo of a stem cell he would laugh equally as loud and hard in your face. It would be impossible for such a thing to ever turn into a human being or any part of one. He’d righteously declare you a evil lying heretic for saying such a thing. However if that same man were to come with you forward in time to today, he’d hypocritically be calling the killing of that very same cell the murder of a human life.

History and science prove that even today man is evolving. Compare yourself to your great-great grandfather, and you’d find that you live longer; you are taller, stronger and healthier. The process of interjecting genes into your family history may even find that you’re of a different race as your own forefathers. That’s evolution. When weaknesses are bred out of a species so it can better adapt to its changing environment—that’s evolution. Even though it’s an undeniable fact, it is currently being taught in some places as just a theory in public schools across the United States resulting in several lawsuits.

Moses, John the Baptist, King James and George Washington would probably die within days if they were brought forward in time, because man has evolved in order to tolerate diseases such as measles and small pox that killed even our forbearers. As recently as seventy years ago it was possible for thousands of people to die in a flu epidemic. Our cherished forefathers wouldn’t have the ability to tolerate the amount of hydrocarbons and pollutants in our atmosphere that our bodies have built up a resistance to.

Just as any species of animal adapts to its environment through evolution, so have we. Polar bears through natural selection of mates are white to blend in defensively to their surroundings, just as black bears did. Reptiles that lose their water habitats through changing seasons adapt by being able to live out of the water as well as in.

The very same people that can readily accept radically different breeds of dogs in all shapes colors and sizes can’t accept that Man, chimpanzees and gorillas all come from the same species. It would be easier to believe that a man was swallowed by a whale and lived to tell about it, or a woman was turned into a pillar of salt.

Strict adherence to religion means that anything not spelled out in the bible or whichever text is worshiped is wrong. That means flatly ignoring the advanced age that such biblical people as Noah (602 by some accounts) were said to live to, in order to claim that mankind is exactly the same animal as God created him starting with Adam and Eve.

It is asserted that astronomers are wrong in teaching that stars can be millions of light years away, because the religious texts written thousands of years ago say that the universe is only mere thousands of years old. Religious leaders are beginning to assert the ridiculous as fact. Nothing existed before God created the universe mere thousands of years ago. It is more acceptable to say that trillions of eons passed of empty nothing, until the almighty decided one day to create the universe and everything in it about ten thousand years ago.

Creation Scientists actually refute carbon-dating techniques as fraudulent methods by anti-Christians in order to date items older than the age the Bible claims the universe is. Fossils of dinosaurs and ape-like cavemen were created by god and planted where we could find them to test our faith, but according to many preachers they never really existed.

The Nazi Holocaust Never Happened
Tens of thousands of allied soldiers witnessed with their own eyes the horrors of the Nazi death camps. After the Axis’ fall, the German people were forced to parade past piles of naked emaciated corpses stacked like cord wood waiting to be burned or buried in mass graves. Thousands more saw the heaps and piles in storerooms of the confiscated belongings, gold teeth, even hair shaved from their heads to make pillow stuffing in warehouse after warehouse.


Millions have seen and visited the remnants of the death camps. Humankind’s guilt at the horrors visited on the Jews and others is the justification for the creation of the nation of Israel. Nowadays those likeminded of the Nazis need another justification for killing off the remaining inhabitants of the Jewish faith in the Middle East.

In order to accomplish their goals however, history itself must be blatantly denied in order to justify exterminating the rest of the Jewish faith and all of its followers. It would also mean claiming that any records of the war crimes committed on them were falsified. An easy task now that the actual witnesses to the horrors have mostly died off and can’t refute claims that they were misled.

Despite there actually being more undeniable evidence of what happened to the Jews in Nazi death camps than there is of any single event written in the bible or Islamic texts, many middle eastern leaders loudly preach that it didn’t happen. By denying the justification for modern-day Israel ever being created, you destroy their right to exist in the region and indeed as a race or at all.

It would be a simple task to find some carefully selected “specialists” to claim that sixty years after the fact, no remnants of cyanide can be found in the open and weathered cremation ovens. That being the case, they couldn’t possibly be used as death chambers. They point to the torn-down gas chambers and claim that they couldn’t have been sealed enough to gas their victims without leakage of fresh air in, or poison gas out. They claim that since there were no autopsies done on the Jewish, Gypsy or Homosexual bodies, it can’t be conclusively proven that they were murdered.

In the face of the fact that the death camps did actually physically exist, it is now being claimed in the Middle East that the Jews all died of sickness and starvation; not murder. It is being broadcast today in the 21st century that in the 1940s it was possible to convincingly fake thousands of photos of hundreds of thousands of bodies and that hundreds of thousands of ordinary people were persuaded to lie in order to justify setting up a Jewish homeland on a sacred piece of the Islamic world

Zionists all deserve to be killed and their presence erased forever from Allah’s holy territory. The tragedy is that these false teachings are reaching children in the United States and increasingly being accepted as fact worldwide.

Tell a lie long enough and it becomes truth.

If Science and History are only theories that fly in the face of God’s spokesmen’s teachings, is it any wonder that the United States is falling behind in medical and scientific research? All because new discoveries in those fields are branded as acts against God’s will?

It is my opinion that if we don’t take control back, that sooner or later our country is going to be swept in reverse to the strict morals and stagnation of the Victorian Age. Women will once again be servants to their husbands. A sort of Christian Taliban would be established. Death due to disease and natural disaster will be declared an act of God’s will and not opposed or acted upon by modern methods for fear of divine retribution.

While countries such as North and South Korea, China and India are currently making great strides in medicine, stem cell research, computer and electronic technology, the U.S. is being held back by religious fundamentalists who scream their outrage and wave their bibles at anything they can’t use “God” to control. College students are heading to India and China to get hands-on experience and jobs in advanced electronics because none of it is manufactured here in America any more!

Bold attempts have even been made at rewriting the history in the United States to the point of making the Constitution and Declaration of Independence religious texts instead of political ones. Some even claim that God sent George Washington down to save our country from the wicked.

Recently more and more politicians and priests are asserting that our school children should be taught not to believe scientific and historical texts because they are only theories and not Bible-proven facts.

Dare I say God help us all if we don’t find a way to reverse this trend?

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© 2006 by Jet in Columbus

Have I become a bigot regarding "Fundamentalists"

Just like the word "Liberal," the word "Fundamentalist" seems to have taken on a new meaning.

Why is that?
Fundamentalist gangs in Afghanistan are beating women on the street just for showing any part of their hair or even an ankle.
Does this sound reasonable?

Why is it that the words "Jewish", "Muslim", "Christian", and "Islamic" seem to always precede the word "Fundamentalist," and a description of an act of extreme hatred or prejudice follows it? Fundamentalism is the reason that in the middle-east right now, children are being taught from birth that their only reason for existing is to kill Jews, and in order to get into heaven, they must suicidally blow themselves up, taking as many souls with them as they can!

Remember when Afghan Fundamentalists dynamited giant Buddhist statues, all centuries-old and irreplaceable monuments to a culture, just because they didn't agree with their religion?

Could we be heading towards having Christian Fundamentalist groups cruising the streets and fining public buildings for not having Christmas decorations up or crucifixes over their door? Could a bill hit Congress banning the word "holiday," replacing it with "Christian" or "Christmas"? Happy holidays! As if pretty lights, Santa Claus, and chopped-down pine trees have anything to do with the birth of Christ or why we still revere him over 2000 years later.

Could a bill be heading to Congress this minute to destroy any faces on Mt. Rushmore that even vaguely represented the Democratic Party's point of view because the Congress is Republican? Don't laugh; and before you think I'm just being paranoid, there are bills that have been introduced repeatedly encouraging replacing Democrats on our currency with Ronald Reagan on the $10 bill and/or the dime. Even our national airport was renamed after him. Will a huge battle result in Congress, after the Democrats take it back, over whether to have Reagan's name taken back off the building again?

Could someone actually take Kennedy's name off of the airport? Don't laugh-don't scoff; Cape Canaveral the city in Florica with all the launch pads, used to be known as Cape Kennedy, but the name was changed because of a twist in the opposite political direction!

Is it me?

I'm beginning to feel as if, oh I don't know, that if someone feels powerless in their life, if they have no respect, or no one loves them, then all they'd have to do is evoke the name of God, or wave the Bible around, memorize the Constitution or the Torah enough to quote it, and convince a few people that they just might speak for God, George Washington, Allah, or Mohamed, or better yet, that he's speaking through them, and suddenly they feel power because everyone else gets the "what if" syndrome. What if he actually is speaking for God, and even if he isn't, would St. Peter judge me at the gates for not believing him?

When you use God, suddenly people fear you, as if cursing you is cursing God. The fundamentalists have somehow also made the words "Christian", "Flag," and "American" to mean the same thing. It's like their new "holy trinity," as though you can't believe in one unless you believe in all three; and if you don't, they might convincingly brand you a heathen, a traitor, or worse: a Liberal. The opposite is true too; if you see a Flag bumper sticker, or the whole back window of a pick up truck taken up with a flag graphic, do you say, "There goes a Democrat?" No, the republicans have taken ownership of our national banner!

When did this happen?
Why did this happen?

People like the late Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson raise untold, untaxed millions and billions a year. They say it's to help the hungry little children in some far-flung country, but when you see their lavish homes, the huge university campuses that they command, and the elaborate church grounds with dozens of ornate buildings, you know without a doubt where the money came from for that, don't you?

And yet everyone keeps sending it!

You're also buying politicians whose only qualifications are that they're up for sale! But by giving it to the Falwells of this world, you're giving them the power, not you. No one in Congress knows what anyone stands for any more, because they stand for whoever contributed the most to their campaign, their sponsors, instead of their own or our views! Members of Congress don't represent their constituents any more; they represent their financial sponsors!

I miss a time when being on the "Left" or being on the "Right" was respected as an opinion, as a party affiliation, from people who respected a different point of view as much as their own.

Why are the days gone, and I remember them well, when a President got elected and suddenly the rancor disappeared; everyone shook hands and we all stood behind him united as a country because "we the people" elected him. Now, we're all bad losers. If we didn't vote for him, we immediately plan to do our damnedest to bring him down or discredit him. We're so divided now, no longer "indivisible, with liberty and justice for all" any more. Just look at the popular election vote results for 2000 and 2004 for proof of how much this country is divided, with liberty and justice now being the possession only of those who can afford to buy it.

Any more, when I see the word "Fundamentalist," an article follows on war, oppression, hatred, or judgment. It has happened in each generation, and will happen again. Our culture today is being fed by the self-righteous fundamentalist community whereby someone has to be hated in the name of "morality" in order to make people agree with their radical ideas. To be one, means they are right and everyone else is wrong.

Is this the only way to unite a nation; to find someone to hate as a collective group, so we can claim something in common?

Why?

Did voting this or that way keep us out of war?
Did voting this or that way prevent 9/11?
Did voting this or that way make our economy go from great news to great deficits?

I'll leave you to your own conclusions...

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© 2006 by Jet in Columbus