Mike Tidmus

Don McLeroy: The Creationist in Charge of Education in Texas
(video: Atheist Media blog at YouTube)

Religious fundamentalists are rewriting American History in the state of Texas. Among decisions not emphasized in the video above: The third President of the United States and the principal author of the United States Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson is out. A 13th Century Roman Catholic theologian, Thomas Aquinas, and John Calvin, the 16th Century protestant theologian are in.

According to David Knowles, writing at AOL News:

Widely regarded as one of the most important of all the founding fathers of the United States, Thomas Jefferson received a demotion of sorts Friday thanks to the Texas Board of Education.

The board voted to enact new teaching standards for history and social studies that will alter which material gets included in school textbooks. It decided to drop Jefferson from a world history section devoted to great political thinkers.

According to Texas Freedom Network, a group that opposes many of the changes put in place by the Board of Education, the original curriculum asked students to “explain the impact of Enlightenment ideas from John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, Voltaire, Charles de Montesquieu, Jean Jacques Rousseau and Thomas Jefferson on political revolutions from 1750 to the present.”

That emphasis did not sit well with board member Cynthia Dunbar, who, during Friday’s meeting, explained the rationale for changing it. “The Enlightenment was not the only philosophy on which these revolutions were based,” Dunbar said.

The new standard, passed at the meeting in a 10-5 vote, now reads, “Explain the impact of the writings of John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, Voltaire, Charles de Montesquieu, Jean Jacques Rousseau, Thomas Aquinas, John Calvin and Sir William Blackstone.”

By dropping mention of revolution, and substituting figures such as Aquinas and Calvin for Jefferson, Texas Freedom Network argues, the board had chosen to embrace religious teachings over those of Jefferson, the man who coined the phrase “separation between church and state.”

And so the dumbing-down of American education continues unabated, accelerated by blatant historical revisionism by the extremist American Taliban. Their appalling ignorance is exceeded only by their arrogance, because these tea-bagging, birth-certificate-chasing, self-deluding patriots have also seen fit to write themselves — the radical religious reich — into America’s history as the good guys.

Texas, do the rest of the country a favor and secede.