Social Studies and Xenophobia

We told you things would get worse. Sadly, we were right.

Peter Morrison is one of a number of right-wing extremists Texas State Board of Education members have placed on social studies curriculum committees. We have noted Morrison’s nativist and anti-government screeds in the past. Now he is using this month’s mass murder at Fort Hood as an excuse for a shocking, full-throated, xenophobic rant. From Tuesday’s installment of the “Peter Morrison Report” e-newsletter:

“The Fort Hood massacre was the predictable result of decades of massive immigration from third world countries, affirmative action, enforcement of political correctness and ‘celebration’ of diversity and multiculturalism. All of these policies would be bad enough on their own, but when combined they result in a prescription for disaster, on both a small and large scale.”

Morrison also bizarrely uses this horrible event to portray President Obama as a bigot:

“The Hasan massacre didn’t fit Obama’s and the media’s narrative – whites, heterosexuals, Americans, Republicans, Christians, US military = bad, while non-whites, homosexuals, foreigners, Democrats, Muslims = good.”

But it’s the narrow-minded intolerance and blanket smears that stand out most in Morrison’s rant:

“Americans that actually love their country are discriminated against, while people like Hasan are given all kinds of quotas and affirmative action.”

Morrison continues, increasingly sounding like the anti-Catholic extremists of the 1800s who violently opposed immigration by the Irish, Italians, Slavs and others who had different cultural traditions, didn’t speak English and worshiped in a church that many Protestants of the time condemned as evil and hostile to freedom and democracy. It’s as if he has no understanding at all of America’s history as a nation of immigrants. Morrison writes:

“We’re importing millions of third world peoples with no connections to us or our culture, and expecting them all to ignore their racial, religious and tribal loyalties and swear allegiance to a multicultural USA. We tell ourselves the absurd fairy tale that a nation made up of every ethnic and religious group under the sun, speaking all kinds of languages, with many of the groups hating us and/or each other, somehow will make us less divisive and ‘stronger.'”

This isn’t a reasoned argument about immigration reform. It’s a bizarre rant that appeals to base emotions and biases in the service of extremist politics.

What happened at Fort Hood was not just a tragedy. It was a horrible crime, and the blame for that crime falls on the shooter. But to use what happened at Fort Hood to promote a divisive, hateful political agenda is despicable.

Shockingly, Peter Morrison is helping determine what the next generation of Texas schoolchildren will learn in their social studies classrooms. Yet his own ignorance of America and our history is astounding. The State Board of Education should be ashamed that Morrison is serving on a curriculum writing team. If you agree, tell State Board of Education members by writing them here: [email protected].