Greg Laden's Blog

Sorry, Texans, but as long as you keep doing this, the rest of the world is going to keep making jokes that are not so funny about you. Please get your acts together and fix this, OK?

Enjoy this commentary by David Newman in the Austin American Statesman:

Power has attracted some strange and disturbing minds to the State Board of Education. Its chairman, Don McElroy, believes the Earth we all share is younger than the light we see coming from the nearest galaxy. God is, I guess, playing tricks, suggesting that the humility with which science views the heavens can't hold a candle to the obeisance we should show to archaic strips of parchment.

Now the board's Cynthia Dunbar has suggested that President-elect Barack Obama is a terrorist sympathizer. Dunbar thinks that within six months of his election, there will be "a planned effort by those with whom Obama truly sympathizes to take down the America that is threat to tyranny." I wonder, sometimes, what it is in American history that most inclines us towards tyranny. Is it tiny groups of "infiltrators," or arrogant majorities for whom "difference" equals "danger"?

Ironically, the Bible curriculum Dunbar endorses for all Texas public schoolchildren might provide the most compelling answer.

The State Board of Education has mandated that public schools teach a Bible course. According to a recent Associated Press report, four board members actively endorse a particular course, a product of the National Council for Bible Curriculum in Public Schools. As those members see it, the council's curriculum "has been implemented successfully in numerous school districts within the state of Texas."