Kevin Drum, now of Washington Monthly, blogged about the "HARMLESS" RELIGIOUS RIGHT". This was my comment, buried in his comments, but which I think needs wider publication in the Progressive community of America. We progressives are in real trouble, first in Texas but now in all of America. This is why.
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Kevin, I had forgotten your earlier blog on the Texas Republican Party Platform. And I live here in Texas!
These Texas Republicans are NOT modern, educated people! Except that these people are primarily Protestant rather than Catholic, they would understand Spain's Philip II completely - down to and including the Inquisition and expelling the Jews. These are also the people who placed George Bush in office, first as Governor of Texas and now as President of the US.
Philip II's religious bigotry and the Inquisition destroyed what until then had been the finest University system in Europe, the system that was in many ways responsible for the creation of the Spanish and Portuguese Empires.
In Texas, the effort to install Creation Science and Intelligent Design and to replace public education with state-financed but private religious schools or home schooling has already resulted in a reduction of the education of the students. The Republican effort to install conservative professors in the Colleges and Universities merely because of their ideology will have similar effects.
In Texas the refusal to increase taxes and instead increase university tuitions 25% and 30% per year (already started here this year) will limit who can even attend. If your family isn't already wealthy, then college is getting more and more difficult to attend.
Removal of preferences for minorities is in many ways the equivalent of expelling the Jews in Spain. The minorities are the people who question the orthodoxy presented by the establishment. Look at how Bush and Cheney react to such questioning if you want to know why they don't want minorities in the universities or working in government!
Texas has been in real trouble since the Republicans replaced the Democrats as the party in control. From here they have spread to the Federal government, and the problems are becoming even clearer. Texas, and now America in general, is attempting to regress to the ideological and educational level of Spain in the sixteenth century - the _really_ scary part is that the social conservatives and their lackies, the libertarians and small-government people, are succeeding!
November 2004 is the pivotal election. This one determines the soul of America! Texas was lost years ago, as demonstrated by Bush, Cheney and DeLay. Florida and the conservative-packed Supreme Court in 2000 placed all of America in the balance!
IF Kerry wins in November, then Progressives need to focus on the source of the infection - Texas! There needs to be a _national_ effort to recapture the Progressive/Populist soul of Texas, because the Regressives currently have it so tightly that it cannot be recovered from within the State. Conservative Texas is an infection which has spread to the nation. It must be cut out and destroyed!
Stop the conservatives now! Don't let the infection spread further! They have dragged us into a war we shouldn't be fighting while drastically weakening America world-wide. Like Philip II they have taken a nation at the height of its world-wide power and placed it onto a trajectory to impotence. How much more damage will you let them do to America?
Remember - in twenty years or so, Texas will pass California as the most populous state in the nation. Look at Bush, Cheney and DeLay. Is this what you want America to become? Because it is almost there NOW!