The Board removed Thomas Jefferson from the Texas curriculum's world history
standards on Enlightenment thinking, “replacing him with
religious right icon John Calvin.”
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AUSTIN, Texas – A far-right faction of the Texas State Board of Education succeeded Friday in injecting conservative ideals into social studies, history and economics lessons that will be taught to millions of students for the next decade.  Teachers in Texas will be required to cover the Judeo-Christian influences of the nation’s Founding Fathers, but not highlight the philosophical rationale for the separation of church and state. Curriculum standards also will describe the U.S. government as a “constitutional republic,” rather than “democratic,” and students will be required to study the decline in value of the U.S. dollar, including the abandonment of the gold standard.  Ultraconservatives wielded their power over hundreds of subjects this week, introducing and rejecting amendments on everything from the civil rights movement to global politics. Hostilities flared and prompted a walkout Thursday by one of the board’s most prominent Democrats, Mary Helen Berlanga of Corpus Christi, who accused her colleagues of “whitewashing” curriculum standards.

Free Iran:  If Thomas Jefferson, one of America’s leading Founding Fathers and the author of the Declaration of Independence, isn’t safe from religious conservatives here in the US, then what are we to do in the Islamic world?  It is astonishing that we still have to defend the Age of Enlightenment or evolution (85 years after the Scopes trial) in America.  Is religious bigotry and intolerance hardwired into human beings?  Can we not escape it?  If it weren’t for America’s deeply rooted democratic institutions, what would these folks do if they ever took power? How right was Jefferson when he said that “The Price of Liberty is Eternal Vigilance.”