It just gets worser and worser.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9vJ5XTFBFU]
So the countless civil rights workers who put their lives on the line and women who marched and lobbied for voting and equal rights — all of those generations of Americans who demanded that our country live up to its promise of justice and equality for all — have “the majority” to thank for finally granting them the rights they should have always had?
Look, Don McLeroy is a very nice man, and he is not a bigot. But he’s not a historian either. Yet he and too many of his equally clueless colleagues on the State Board of Education think they are. And they are putting their bizarre and politically distorted beliefs about history ahead of the expertise of true historians in deciding what millions of Texas children will learn in their public school classrooms.
This will get worse, unfortunately. It always does with this board.
Now I know what boiling blood feels like.
Wow, we really need to send that piece of trash home.
The actions of a few underrepresented, repressed individuals causes change to happen. A minority, whether that is the Suffragettes or the Civil Rights Movements involving African-Americans and indigenous people, changed consciousness and, eventually law, by their self-originating desire for liberation.
They earned it; we earn it. We earn it on a daily basis by working hard to ensure that gains are not rolled back. McLeroy and others who believe they have secured the rights for these groups have been pressured from voices of dissent to change course. It would have never occurred to McLeroy and his forebears in power to have initiated those changes. The pressure always comes from the outside by people exercising their constitutional rights. The people necessarily pressure those with legislative power to change law. For obvious reasons that need to further explanation.
(Did anybody else hear this? 00:39 he starts to say “White…” then abruptly changes course. Plantation mentality continues.)
” Don McLeroy is a very nice man, and he is not a bigot.” – TFN
TFN was just being politically nice to McLeroy. McLeroy is not a nice man and he is a bigot.
Else he would not be so against multiculturalism, allows the english curriculum the flexibility to teach Hispanics kids English in a manner that works, or be so arrogant as to imply publically that the the majority as a matter of fairness granted minorities rights that had been denied for generations.
Mr. McLeroy, the majority that was against minority rights lost support until it was the minority and then the minorities got their rights. A lot of people including children were beaten, tourchered, killed, lynched, etc. to get their rights. Even rights so basic as voting.
I will refer to Mr. McLeroy as Mr. from now on.
The word “Doctor” in the original Medieval Latin means teacher.
And a teacher he is most certianly not.
It is obvious to me that Don McLeroy needs a lesson in poetry and another lesson in American history, and I am about to give him both. If you other folks would please come along for the ride, I can promise you will not regret it.
Don. William Ross Wallace was an American poet who published a now famous poem in 1865. The title of the poem was “The Hand That Rocks the Cradle Is the Hand that Rules the World.” Here is the full text of his poem:
Blessings on the hand of women!
Angels guard its strength and grace,
In the palace, cottage, hovel,
Oh, no matter where the place;
Would that never storms assailed it,
Rainbows ever gently curled;
For the hand that rocks the cradle
Is the hand that rules the world.
Infancy’s the tender fountain,
Power may with beauty flow,
Mother’s first to guide the streamlets,
From them souls unresting grow—
Grow on for the good or evil, Woman, how divine your mission
Here upon our natal sod!
Keep, oh, keep the young heart open
Always to the breath of God!
All true trophies of the ages
Are from mother-love impearled;
For the hand that rocks the cradle
Is the hand that rules the world.
Blessings on the hand of women!
Fathers, sons, and daughters cry,
And the sacred song is mingled
With the worship in the sky—
Mingles where no tempest darkens,
Rainbows evermore are hurled;
For the hand that rocks the cradle
Is the hand that rules the world.
Sunshine streamed or evil hurled;
For the hand that rocks the cradle
Is the hand that rules the world.
Women in the United States did not have the right to vote until passage of the 19th Amendment to the constitution, which occurred in 1920. The story of how it passed is fascinating and poorly known. Now Don, if you please, read the following short Wikipedia article, and you will see precisely how the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_T._Burn
Sure – – – men passed {legislation allowing] women the right to vote — and Great Britain, out of the sensitive goodness of its heart, gave their American colonies freedom to govern themselves, and Great Britain also created the Union of South Africa so that indigenous people in Africa could enjoy freedom.
Actually — literally — the men passed (the constitutional ammendment) that gave women the right to vote. Who else was was in a postition at that point with any legislative authority to pass anything? This does not address the question of who brought what pressures to bear to cause this vote to happen.
Charles, I’m afraid your beautiful poem and the informative piece will be totally lost on Mr. McLeroy. He is incapable of understanding.
McLeroy is clueless. Our school district is now allowing students who have failed a class to take upper division courses. It doesn’t matter if the kid flunked the requirement classes but he/she is “socially promoted”. Eventually they are “graduated” and move on and someday become Chairman (former) of the SBOE. This man is pathetic.
Cytocop:
I hold out minimal hope that some small ray of light might one day penetrate his coconut.
It takes a special kind of moron to believe his every opinion is a fact. McLeroy is very, very, very special.
Did you see the look on Ms. Pennington’s (sp?) face as McLoon was trying, and failing to articulate his “thoughts?” And to cap it off, Mr. Sensitivity brought up women’s rights to a roomful of … women!
Sounds like he’s championing Noblesse oblige. We should be patient that the noblemen will bestow their blessings upon us when the time is right. Guess he never read Letter from a Birmingham Jail.
I’m with Lauri. Guess next he will require us all to recognize and thank our betters.
I think we should all contribute to a fund so we can buy Mr. McLeroy a ticket to Birmingham so he can go to the Civil Rights Institute. That visit might be enough to bring a ray of light into his coconut, Charles. I found it very enlightening, myself.
Let him stand by a recreation of Dr. King’s jail cell and listen to “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” being read. If that doesn’t bring him to a sense of what we as a society owe to the pioneers who dared stand up . . . and get shot down . . . to change us for the better, nothing on earth will.
I concede that it’s indeed possible that nothing on earth could enlighten this man. Charles, you and I need to entreat a Higher Power to assist in the effort.
“The rights of the oppressed are never granted by their oppressors, but won by the oppressed.” The oppressors in America are still trying to deny rights to those who have already won some sort of freedom and representation. Without their continued vigilance, they would be forced back into the very bonds of subservience they had before. I am breathtakingly appalled by the insensitivity and simple lack of comprehension on so many levels of Mr. McLeroy.
What an embarrassment. It is difficult to tell if the reason my face is burning is boiling blood or shame. Simply unbelievable.
Have you ever been there? What was that experience like?