Texas Does It Again!

         Remember when Texas' Board of Education decided to engage in revisionist history?  They said there was no such thing as a separation of church and state, teach that Germans and Italians were put on concentration camps also along with Japanese(which is actually true but doesn't really quell charges of racism, it just bolsters them), how McCarthyism was right, change "capitalism" to "free-enterprise system", and got rid of Jefferson in groups of thinkers that inspired revolutions and replaced him with Thomas Aquinas, John Calvin, and William Blackstone.  They are at it again with evolution.

        Rick Perry, the dumbed down version of George Bush, appointed Barbara Cargill to chairwoman of the board.  She recently said that of the 11 members on the board, only 6 are "true" conservative Christians, and there are 11 Republicans on the board.  She does not believe evolution occurred, and thinks textbooks should point out the problems with the theory.  As a budding philosopher, I have no problem with pointing out flaws in something.  However, evolution is the best and most current explanation of the variety of life on earth.  My problem is more with the anti-intellectualism that has infiltrated many in the Republican party.

     All liberals have had this problem.  The conservative says something that is factually false, and you point to a reliable source that refutes them, and then they deny the source is reliable.  For example, waterboarding was considered torture for many years in the United States, at least since World War 2.  And then conservatives claim that what George W. Bush did was NOT a war crime when all the evidence is to the contrary.  Or the theory of evolution.  Or being gay is a choice.  Conservatives do not have to embrace this absurdity.  Not all conservatives do, but many in the Republican party are like this, enough to force the elected officials to often give lip-service to these positions, and sometimes push for them.  Another example is the Bush tax cuts.  Some conservatives claim that revenues increase with tax cuts, but no reliable fact-checking organization has ever found this to be true, AND Ronald Reagan himself raised taxes during his Presidency, seeing that the revenue was needed to keep the debt from exploding more than it already was.

      Prominent conservatives in the Republican party need to speak out against this anti-intellectual, history revising, bigoted outspoken wing of their party and say enough is enough.  We will no longer court your vote. And the media should ask directed questions about why they don't think evolution is a viable theory (used in the SCIENTIFIC SENSE OF THE WORD and not everyday lingo) and why they believe discriminating against homosexuals even with all the scientific evidence against them is the right thing to do.