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Saturday, March 13, 2010

Republic of Wingnuttia

NYT:
[T]he Texas Board of Education on Friday approved a social studies curriculum that will put a conservative stamp on history and economics textbooks, stressing the superiority of American capitalism, questioning the Founding Fathers’ commitment to a purely secular government and presenting Republican political philosophies in a more positive light. The vote was 10 to 5 along party lines, with all the Republicans on the board voting for it… In recent years, board members have been locked in an ideological battle between a bloc of conservatives who question Darwin’s theory of evolution and believe the Founding Fathers were guided by Christian principles, and a handful of Democrats and moderate Republicans who have fought to preserve the teaching of Darwinism and the separation of church and state…. “We are adding balance,” said Dr. Don McLeroy, the leader of the conservative faction on the board, after the vote.

Needless to say, by balancing the teaching of truths with the teaching of the pet falsehoods of Movement Conservatism, Texas education becomes little more than the systematic unbalancing of the minds of the future American citizens unlucky enough to reside there. And all the rest of us will remain to the end of our days unlucky enough to live in an America forever encumbered with these unbalanced Texans, weighting down every effort at civilization with the anvil of their bigoted bullying broken brains.

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