From today’s TFN News Clips:
“The proposed changes have attracted national attention because they challenge the powerful ideology of the left and highlight the great political divide of our country. The left’s principles are diametrically opposed to our founding principles. The left believes in big, not limited, government; they empower the state, not the individual; they focus on differences, not unity. This divide was clearly exposed on March 23, 2010, as the left celebrated health reform that Vice President Biden said ‘charts a fundamentally different course for the country’ — an unmistakable rejection of Jefferson’s original course.”
— Texas State Board of Education member Don McLeroy, R-College Station, writing in a USA Today op-ed about the revision of social studies curriculum standards and demonstrating how the board is following through on his long-stated desire to politicize education in Texas public schools.
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an unmistakable rejection of Jefferson’s original course.”
Okay, now that’s just idiocy.
SSSSSSPPPPPPPPEEEEEEWWWWW!!!!!!!!
Sorry, I was drinking coffee when I read that.
It’s the same lunacy we’ve come to expect from Don McLeroy.
What does he mean by “limited government”? A government so limited that it cannot defend the rights of workers? A government so limited that it is unable to enforce regulations, thus leaving us a country of Corporate Feudalism (which we basically already are)? A government so limited that it cannot collect taxes to fund public services? A government so limited that it cannot uphold the Constitution?
How am I, the individual, “empowered” by a government so limited that it cannot provide me the above?
And how is health care reform a “rejection of Jefferson’s original course”? What did Jefferson write about health care?
And, excuse me, but isn’t McLeroy among those who want Jefferson removed as a founding father?
What is it about the phrase in the Constitution – “promote the general Welfare” – that little Lord McLeroy doesn’t understand? It is right up front so he should not be overwhelmed by having to read too much. In this context, welfare means health and happiness of all our citizens not the “Welfare” that was eliminated in the Clinton administration.
By the way, James Madison was the principle author of the US Constitution. I was assigned to the USS James Madison when I was in the Navy. I rode her down the ways and put the ship into commission. The ship’s motto was “Father of the Constitution”. We were sworn to defend the nation and the Constitution against enemies, foreign and domestic. I guess you can figure out whom I consider domestic enemies of the nation and Constitution.
I guess you can figure out whom I consider domestic enemies of the nation and Constitution.
Um, bunk-mates who don’t kiss on the first date? I keed!
Seriously, you’d think that with his blatant theocratic vision that McLeroy has been spouting for so long, the legislature can no longer pretend that they were unaware of how drastic the curricula has been altered. So the parents who don’t want their kids lobotomized by rightwing BS need to lean on their representatives just as much as any of the SB members for allowing this to continue in the face of all the evidence.
And there’s the rub, innit? The far-right representatives have to now play dumb because that’s how they’ve painted themselves into this corner.
Trog, I think this B.S. is happening and getting through under the radar. I think a lot of parents (maybe most parents) are unaware of what is going on. They are too busy trying to keep their jobs, make a living, and holding their family’s head above water in this economy. Or else they approve of what is going on, Texas being a heavily Protestant and conservative state.
The problem is that Focus on the Family, Fox Noise, SBOE, et. al can craft a compelling if fictional narrative about the assault on “the family”, on Judeo-Christian values, on our “Constitutional Rights” (this and some other things going on, is partly a knee-jerk “pay-back” for the “left’s” demonization of the Cheney-Bush admin), etc.
Folks forget that “the assault on the family” began with the Industrial Revolution, WWI, when people were moving off the farms in droves, farmers didn’t need 12 kids to help with the farm, and industrial equipment started to replace workers. The Depression and WWII didn’t help, and then the suppression of women in the “nuclear family” ’50’s and the backlash against that in the ’60’s continued the momentum.
The downsizing and outsourcing of the corporate feudal lords and their heirs such as Mitt Romney have destroyed jobs, (creating more insecurity among males and the resulting gunworship and misogyny). Now the phenomenon has moved out from the inner-cities to the suburbs and rural America, which is awash in meth addiction and crime, and we find ourselves in our current predicament.
So this whole “culture war” and “family values” issue is a BIG DIVERSION from the reality of the situation.
If one has read Daniel Yergin’s “The Prize”, or seen the excellent Frontline doc. series , one would know that the seeds of “Islamic fundamentalism” were sown by the Western Oil Corporations who used the CIA to depose a democratically elected leader in Iran and install the Shah, etc., and that it basically represents a religiously palatable surrogate for Marxism in the Islamic world.
I could go on and on.
What would help is if we could clone about a thousand Bill Moyers to overwhelm the Bullshit Machine.
The least we can do is start putting people like Bill O’Reilly and Rupert Murdoch on trial for the murders they incite.
McLeroy is a gnat.
You’re right, but that is exactly what these cowards are counting on. And I include the deranged far-right in the state legislature in this. I mean, how do you convey how important this is, when it’s been practically shouted from the rooftops, in every paper, on TV.
Maybe the noise machines are doing their jobs, and the parents don’t have the wherewithal to sit down and dissect the contrasting information they’re receiving. I dunno what to do in that case. Wait for things to get so bad that they can’t ignore it any more, I guess.
David, what you wrote is a bull’s-eye. It’s just that conservatives and conservative families in TX and the U.S. don’t see it that way. Never mind that it would be in their OWN best interest if they did, they refuse to do so. They are totally brainwashed by the Wrong, er Right. Consider the fact that ALL the megachurches of TX are conservative: John Hagee’s Cornerstone Church (right here in San Antonio), and Joel Osteen’s Lakewood Church in Houston, for example. These church buildings are the size of JFK airport – because they have such large memberships.
I’m from Detroit and, while the “free market fascists” will blame all the city’s troubles on “socialism,” it is mostly THEY who ruined the city. They outsourced manufacturing overseas and thus destroyed domestic manufacturing. In the 50’s and 60’s, a high school grad could get a job in a factory and live a middle class life on his/her wages. That’s all gone now. In the meantime, there are no decent grocery stores in Detroit, leaving Detroiters only party stores in which to get their groceries – party stores which only sell junk food, thus making the city residents fat & unhealthy. This is all part of the Grand Plan to get them to die off before they retire; therefore, they won’t be around to collect any retirement benefits.
Due to public ignorance and denial, they’ve also been successful masquerading as having “family values” when, in fact, they are anything but. The country which shows the best “family values” would be France, a country conservatives love most to hate. Conservative “family values” extend only to the nanosecond a baby is born. Once out of the vagina, they couldn’t care less about the child’s welfare. In fact, they want to end public education and public health for that child. While attacking Darwin’s Theory of Evolution, they totally embrace Social Darwinism, (survival of the fittest i.e. richest and healthiest).
I feel sick.
In my discussions with an evangelical/engineer/creationist relative, I’ve mentioned the hypocrisy of their social darwinism a couple times.
However, even that’s astigmatic, because it ain’t the economically fittest that survives, it’s the one operating the rigged roulette table that wins.
Yes, but it’s the most economically fit who operate the rigged roulette table. It’s the Golden Rule: “them’s that’s got the gold make the rules.”