Thread: Is this indoctrination?

This is embarrassing...to say the least. We'll see how it plays out.

Saw this subject raised on the Daily Show.

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/we...with-textbooks

Brilliant, as always.

One positive development I came across in a NYTimes article on this subject is that the Texas board's influence on other states is not what it once was. Current technology makes it much easier for publishers to tailor textbook content to individual states, so that while Texas still establishes the default curriculum, other states are not necessarily stuck with it.

And yes, the board is making an overt effort at ideologically indoctrinating other people's children. In all likelihood, few if any of those board members have kids in Texas public schools--private schools and especially Christian schools are much more prevalent in the South than other parts of the country, so those board members' kids were almost certainly being indoctrinated with this tripe and worse already. This is purely an abuse of office to spread their conservative agenda.

That agenda goes beyond conservative. Most conservatives see Thomas Jefferson as a hero, but they minsconstrue his separation of church and state beliefs. They quote his "endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights" wording from the Declaration of Independence and interpret it to mean that the U.S. was meant to be a nation where the government imposes Christianity, which is waaaaaaay off from what Jefferson really stood for.

Religion and conservatism go hand in hand,
in every age, in every land.

Specifically, fundamentalists with skewed, absurdly literalist, xenophobic takes on their own religions adhere to conservative movements wherever said movements are found.

A lot of left wing activist preachers are liberals, like Farrakhan, Wright, and Pfleger. Hindu and Buddhist gurus are usually liberal, and so are a lot of cult leaders who are worshipped, like Charles Manson. His followers were as left wing fanatic as it gets, and they believed Manson was Jesus and worshipped him maniacally. Conservatives in the United States generally praise the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. Those are what they claim they are conserving. They just have warped views on what those documents mean.

Originally Posted by Universal Mhttp://www.dreamviews.com/community/newreply.php?do=newreply&p=1395550ind

A lot of left wing activist preachers are liberals, like Farrakhan, Wright, and Pfleger. Conservatives in the United States generally praise the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. Those are what they claim they are conserving. They just have warped views on what those documents mean.

Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam are about as left wing and liberal as Pat Robertson. In any case, the presence of religious people on the left hardly negates the near-universal affinity between fundamentalism and conservatism in human cultures. Fundamentalism and nationalism are the two legs conservatism stands on, the Texas school board and the movement they represent being a case in point.