Ben Carson
Fox News commentator and
likely 2016 presidential also-ran Ben Carson is joining the chorus of far-right howling against the College Board's new Advanced Placement U.S. History framework. Carson is even one-upping the conservative members of the Jefferson County, Colorado, school board who've
threatened to substitute a curriculum that stresses respect for authority and capitalism. Carson, though, is
taking the rhetoric up a notch:
"There's only two paragraphs in there about George Washington ... little or nothing about Martin Luther King, a whole section on slavery and how evil we are, a whole section on Japanese internment camps and how we slaughtered millions of Japanese with our bombs," Carson said at the event.
He continued, "I think most people when they finish that course, they'd be ready to go sign up for ISIS ... We have got to stop this silliness crucifying ourselves."
AP History and ISIS in the same rant—that is some skilled intertwining of conservative boogeymen. Obviously none of this makes any sense whatsoever. Is the course supposed to teach about Martin Luther King Jr. without teaching about segregation? Because if it teaches about segregation, isn't that similar to teaching about slavery and internment camps?
The turn to ISIS, though, is particularly revealing. The implicit suggestion is that if teens learn that the United States ever did anything bad in its entire history, they will turn against the nation today. Apparently Carson doesn't believe it's possible to learn from history and do better ... which might explain something about his party's politics.
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