A few years back, a friend was telling me about trying to explain the word "chauvinism" to her young children. They were on vacation in Texas at the time. The next day, she pointed out an area which turned out to be over the border in Mexico. A local overheard her. "No, ma'am," he corrected and pointed to the proper side of the dividing line, "This is Texas. God's Country."
My friend turned to her kids and said, "That is chauvinism."
Little did she know that the Texan meant it literally.
Last week, Governor Rick Perry (R-TX) appointed creationist Gail Lowe to head the state's Board of Education. Subsequent recommendations to remove such bothersome things as facts from K-12 curriculum, while adding religious doctrine, means the old joke, "Bored of Education," has staged a comeback.
Mind you, I understand why religion is important to people. It serves a deep place in the heart, in the home, in houses of worship, in how we live our lives. Where it serves no place, of course, is in public education. It's like adding soap into clam chowder. It might keep your hands clean, but makes a really bad soup.
(Side note: Separating church and state in America allows religion to prosper far more than when there are state-run restrictions. That's the sort of thing you learn in school. Well, okay, at least in a school that hasn't replaced history and science with catechism.)
The thing is, if a demagogue wants to make a case against the separation of church and state, we should at least get fire and brimstone for having to listen. But these conservative reviewers on the panel aren't even trying. There's little more sad than a lazy zealot.
I mean, honestly.
It's bad enough that you're starting with the very head of the Board of Education wanting religious creationism taught as science on an equal footing. You know it can only go downhill from there.
But fanatics still shouldn't be making your own points for you. "The foundational principles of our country are very biblical," said board member Don McElroy. "That needs to come out in the textbooks."
Except...well, see, this isn't true. (Nor is "foundational" a word.) The founding principles of our country are not only NOT very biblical, they're not biblical at all. In fact, they're the very opposite of biblical. You see, they largely come from John Locke.
John Locke was an English philosopher in the 1600s - a period known as The Enlightenment, specifically because philosophers starkly contrasted their views with religion. How much did Locke's social contract theories influence America? He wrote that every man had the right to defend his "life, health, liberty, or possessions." (Sound familiar?) He wrote that men were "free and equal," also later used by Thomas Jefferson. He argued against the divine right of kings, 100 years before our Founding Fathers did. He was one of the first to promote the radical notion of separation of powers in government. And he advocated that revolution is often an obligation. "The people are absolved from obedience when illegal attempts are made upon their liberties," he wrote, adding that rulers can "be opposed when they grow exorbitant in the use of their power."
That's where the "foundational principles" of our country come from. But you'd only get that if you...gee, I don't know, perhaps read history books. And got your history from, say, history. And didn't cut facts out of your curriculum (along with cutting out Thurgood Marshall and Caesar Chavez), rather than rely on the Bible.
But that's what happens when you have a board of review where conservatives have appointed members like Rev. Peter Marshall, who according to the Wall Street Journal, "preaches that Watergate, the Vietnam War and Hurricane Katrina were God's judgments on the nation's sexual immorality." And appointed David Barton, founder of a group that pushes for Christian heritage.
It should come as no surprise, therefore, that the Texas education board wants to create a faith-based public education system. On the positive side for students, eliminating facts should make passing tests so much easier.
If Rev. Marshall believes that "We're in an all-out moral and spiritual civil war for the soul of America," let him wage his battle from the pulpit. But just because he's lousy at his job is no reason to punish unsuspecting Texas children, hoping to actually learn things. On they other hand, if the religious-right panelists believe that the public education system in Texas should "clearly present Christianity as an overall force for good -- and a key reason for American exceptionalism," maybe they'll at least take the blame for the economic depression.
Honestly, this isn't public education. This is Sunday School, five days a week.
Governor Rick Perry keeps threatening to lead Texas into seceding from the union. For goodness sake, go already. There's the door. Build your own army, mint your own money, start your own mail service, develop your own Social Security and Medicare systems. And while you're building your wall along the Mexican border to keep aliens out, don't be surprised if America decides to build one along the Texas border to make sure you all stay in your own country. God's country.
My only question is what's taken you so long? If only you would have seceded a decade ago, America could have been spared that foreigner, George W. Bush.