Long live Mao! Long live the Cultural Revolution!
The Texas Board of Education has decided to re-write history--less FDR, more Ronald Reagan; less Abraham Lincoln, more Jefferson Davis, and no Cesar Chavez or Margaret Sanger at all.
Above all else, they strove mightily to make sure that Texas students know that all the great figures of history were white evangelical Christians.
They made sure that little Texans will understand that Republicans helped pass civil rights bills in the early 60's--“Republicans need a little credit for that". To ensure the children don't get too excited about civil rights, however, remind them that the Black Panthers were part of it too.
Joseph McCarthy, they should know, wasn't all wrong, and Milton Friedman, Phyllis Schlafley, and the National Rifle Association have always been right.
Ah, but what to do about Thomas Jefferson? True, that hippie is considered one of the Founding Fathers of our country, but our children should know that he was the black sheep of that heaven-blessed evangelical family. Good heavens, he's the one who did the devil's work and coined the phrase "separation of church and state."
Take Jefferson out of the list of influential Enlightenment figures and replace him with Thomas Acquinas and John Calvin instead. (They may not have known that Acquinas lived 400 years before the Enlightenment, and John Calvin gave religious fascism a whirl in 16th century Geneva. Besides, they were both French.)
The Board was good enough to take out the word "enlightenment" before identifying which thinkers they thought embodied it, unwittingly revealing their true agenda, which is to remove the influence of the Enlightenment from public discourse. Life was so much better when the church ran things.
In case you were wondering, no Mexican-Americans died at the Alamo. Said Don McElroy, chair of the Board, "Somebody has got to stand up to the experts."
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