Arment: Texas revises its future
May 17, 2010
You have to love Texas. If any group of people could care less about how unpopular their decisions are, it’s Texans. It’s especially fun to read the backlash that is now coming from Europe regarding Texas’s decision to rewrite its history.
Yes, between talking about ash shutting down plane flights and how poorly the Euro is — because it turns out global economics is complicated, who would have thought — people across the pond seem more than a little startled at how one of the states in our nation is doing whatever it pleases.
The particular article I’m talking about is from guardian.co.uk entitled “Texas schools board rewrites U.S. history with lessons promoting God and guns”. I’m not about to summarize it, but it does a very apt job of making it seem like Texas is being willfully ignorant. I would beg to differ. I think that Texas is just doing what everybody else in our country is doing.
Many politicians in this country tread on the constitution every day. Admittedly, sometimes it is hard not to do. There are many tough real world decisions that put good men in positions where they have to follow their gut, and it leads them to infringe something just enough to get the results they want.
It’s important to keep in mind that the old, archaic piece of parchment that they infringe on is the only thing that gives them any kind of real power. What a paradox; how can politicians disregard some parts the constitution while keeping a finger firmly fixed on the parts that outline how they have authority?
We, as a nation, are made of paradoxes. We talk about life and liberty, and then wage war in other countries for reasons the average person can’t even articulate. Obama ran on the peace platform. Did he say there would be further operations in Afghanistan? Yes, he did. I don’t recall him outlining in his speeches what is going on now.
John T. Bennett, at Marine Corps Times, said Marine Corps General James Cartwright has said that we can expect to keep fighting the good fight in Afghanistan for the next “5 to 10 years.” Five to 10 years? I’ll be 33 if the war in Afghanistan goes on for the next 10 years. Only in America does the peace platform include a decade of war.
So if Texas wants to rewrite its history, that’s pretty much par for the course at this point in the game. I’m not really sure where people in this country get off screaming “what about the integrity of the teachers?” Integrity is a sharp sword, to be sure, but one that you have to be strong enough to lift before you can swing it.
Form this mental picture in your head:
America, sitting on the sofa, shoveling chips into its gaping face, watching some garbage reality TV, while out the window the environment dies and business foreclose. America flips through the channels and lands on a news caster talking about Texas and what it’s doing; for a second America stops inhaling potatoes chips and screams, “Where’s the integrity?” and then promptly continues flipping channels.
I’m not saying what Texas is doing is completely ignorant, I’m just saying I understand it. Shortly after the honorable Mr. Obama’s election to the presidency, it is rumored that Lil Wayne said, “We president now.” What Texas is doing right now is its way of saying, “We history now.”
Orwell said it long ago, “He who controls the past controls the future, and he who controls the present controls the past.” Texas is trying to promote what it believes, to pass on a heritage to its children. Writing its willful ignorance into the curriculum is the smartest thing it could do.