On 13 March, I blogged about the re-writing of American history by religious hacks. Wayne Besen, the Executive Director and founder of Truth Wins Out, in his weekly column has nailed the Christian supremacists who, after deviously taking control of Texas’ State Board of Education, took it upon themselves to re-write American history to suit their personal theocratic ambitions.
Writes Besen:
Last week, the Texas Board of Education voted 10-5, along party lines, to replace history textbooks with right wing political propaganda. The vote followed a separate, contentious scrum over whether creationism should be taught in science courses.
Here’s just about everything you need to know about the radical religious reich’s never-ending crusade to equate the Book of Genesis with actual science.
Just how extreme is the Board’s historical revisionism?
For example, Ronald Reagan, Richard Nixon, the Eagle Forum’s Phyllis Schlafly and the National Rifle Association have replaced Thomas Jefferson. This is in a despicable effort to marginalize the man who coined the phrase, “separation of church and state”, while elevating America as a right wing “Christian Nation.” (Thomas Edison and Albert Einstein were also eliminated to make room for these conservatives)
Newt Gingrich’s flash-in-the-pan Contract with America and Rev. Jerry Falwell’s short-lived Moral Majority are elevated as historically important, while the supposed religious roots of the American Revolution will be now be studied.
The christianists bleat on and on about their myth a so-called “Christian nation” and the wisdom of oour founding fathers, but as Besen notes:
It seems to me that our founders were quite eloquent and certainly able to convey their desire to be a fundamentalist nation, if that is what they had intended. But, our country is not called “God Land.” Jesus’ name is not in the United States Constitution.
Case closed.
These simple facts are clearly eating up these zealots inside and driving them to distraction. They just do not want to accept that their totalitarian and exclusionary vision of America is a radical and dangerous departure from the ideas of religious freedom embraced by our Founding Fathers.
Amen. Now read the rest at Truth Wins Out.
