Thursday, May 7, 2009
People tell me I’m far too hard on Texas. They say I just don’t understand the soul and character of the state and the strikingly independent nature of the people who call Texas home.
Perhaps so. Which brings me to staunch creationist and Texas State Board of Education member Barbara Cargill, who, during a recent hearing on science standards for Texas school children, threw science out the window and said the age of the Universe was up for vote.
Ms. Cargill suggests the established science of astronomy should be replaced by the standards of Biblical creationism and this is what should be the taught in Texas public schools. So, as Texas marches backward to the 4th century, I suppose it’s true: I don’t understand the state or the people who run it.
This is how the flat-world crowd works nowadays.
First, they get elected to school boards, then they carefully and reasonable work from the inside to dismantle accepted scientific ideas and principles and replace them with Young Earth dogma.
I noticed Ms. Cargill seemed perfectly reasonable and she isn’t someone you would keep your kids away from at a mall. She probably reads best sellers and health magazines but below the phony reasonableness is a lunatic like Sarah Palin.
I also noticed Ms. Cargill’s motion passed by a four to one margin. These people are whack jobs.
I thought Texas was going to secede from the US?
Well, why the delay? Get on with it: go: leave, no one is begging you to remain part of the Union.
In fact, I would argue that Texas in 2009 has much more in common with such radical theocracies as Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan than they have with mainstream US views.
Who said you were too hard on Texas? Fuck ’em.
Unfortunately, this is unique to Texas. Across the country, school districts have been infiltrated by creationists masquerading as educated scholars. These individuals represent a huge, grass-roots effort to infiltrate local school boards and state boards of education and change school curriculum that de-emphasizes science, replacing it with Young Earth theory and ID. Here in Colorado, we recently had a battle royale over teaching creationism equally with evolution. Luckily, science won out but the need to push back is always there.
If there is one group I can’t stand its religious rightwingnuts. I see them as being one of the worst things in and for America, both politically and morally. And now we can see…educationally. Gawd! Let them succeed already!
Secede, Texas. Be gone already.
I have no use for this state or the people who reside there. You’ve got your boy George Bush back home now in Dallas. You can rejoin the Mothership.
If Texas has a soul, it must push back. Hard.