It has been obvious for quite a while that the Republicans thrive in a world where their revisionist history is allowed to be parroted unquestioned. Here is the next step in their ongoing War on Reality.
"My biggest concern is that important information is being omitted, which creates a negative light on our Founding Fathers," said Tea Party activist Brian Rieck.
Right! Let's just conveniently ignore that some of the founders owned slaves and denied people who weren't white or male the right to vote. Let's ignore the three-fifths compromise. Let's come up with a completely unrealistic representation of the founders and tell our kids they were infallible. Let's omit important information and create a false positive light on the founders! BRILLIANT IDEA!
I mean, I guess it's good that we know that this is the Tea Party endgame - to scrub the history books of anything that might make kids question the founding fathers. Now we know our kids will learn that God personally delivered the ten commandments to Moses Reagan. At least this is not in any way driven by racism...
"Slavery is of course portrayed in the textbooks nowadays I'm sure as a totally negative thing. Had there not been slavery in the South, the economy would've fallen," Rieck said.
Oh. Nevermind. They ARE just a bunch of mouthbreathing racist assholes.
For Christ's sake. The purpose of learning history is to learn from our mistakes, not to massage the egos of the racists in this country who viewed the freeing of the slaves as an assault on property rights. Are we going to remove Manifest Destiny, the Japanese Internment, and the Indian genocides as well? Will Tennessee textbooks start calling the Civil War the "War of Northern Aggression"?
I can't read up on this and not think of George Orwell's 1984. I recently re-read it and was a little bit unsettled. The teabaggers who can read look at it as an instruction manual.
And the best analogy I've read regarding this story?
That's like the Neo-Nazi parties wanting textbooks to be rewritten to say how much concentration camps benefited the Zyklon B manufacturing sector.
EDIT (1/30, 10:37 am)Whoa, the rec list. Second time ever. Thanks to all. Glad to see I'm not the only one infuriated by crap like this.