The Texas School Book Massacre!

Last week, the Texas Board of Education, with a seven vote margin, ratified a series of controversial new, right-wing fundamentalist christian textbook standards. Standards that would not only change History and Science, but could pollute the minds of young students nationwide.


Since Texas purchases the same books for the entire state (unlike most school districts, which make the decision locally) Texans, therefore have the largest schoolbook market in the country. Which tends to have a great influence on how textbooks are written and produced across the United States.

Among other things, these new Texas standards would force students to study the Creationist Philosophy of Pro-Life, Christian Fundamentalists, like Phyllis Schafly, but would delete the Enlightened Thinking of founding fathers like Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin.

That's right. Thomas Jefferson (author of the Declaration of Independence) Would Be Out! But Phyllis Schafly and Conservative Christian Philosophers like Thomas Aquinas Would Be In! -Well That Sounds Fair and Balanced.

Students would further be indoctrinated with the thinking of the Tea Party Movement, the National Rifle Association, the Contract with America people, the Christian Heritage Foundation, the Moral Majority, and the widely discredited economic theories of the Libertarian, German-Austrian Economist Frederic von Hayek. All of this without benefit of any dissenting or opposing points of view.

Now, perhaps it doesn't bother you that we would be raising a generation of morons. School kids that believe in the inerrancy of Bible Fairy Tales. That the Earth is the Center of the Universe and our Sun revolves around us. That man walked with the dinosaurs because the world is only 5,000 years old.

Maybe you don't care that this could lead to the birth of a New Christian Theocracy where there would be No Freedom of Religion or Thought. No Bill of Rights, Constitution or Declaration of Independence, just the in-errant philosophy of Bible texts to guide us.

But I suspect, if you really think about it, you do care. And if you do, then it's time - To Mess With Texas!


Just Thinking

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