When dealing with a large group of influential conservatives who believe FDR created the Great Depression, Theodore Roosevelt was a socialist, and Joe McCarthy was a hero, what's there to talk about?

George Orwell?

"what's there to talk about?"

Richard III was the good guy?

Just a minute, Bert, don't you be dissin' Riccardians. We don't advocate killing princes in the Tower of London or seizing power illegally, we just question whether the winners who wrote the history in that case had any more motivation to tell the truth than the Republicans in Texas do now. I was a proud member of the Richard the Third Society in my college days, some (cough) many years ago, and eventually gave it up as a rather silly and inconsequential debate. But a colleague later responded to my self-deprecating remarks about it by saying "It's the only debate there is. Which sources can you trust and which can't you?" If Texas does manage to impose its Neanderthal textbook standards on the publishing industry, I hope a few teachers in other states take the opportunity to assign a few alternative readings and teach their students the principles of critical thinking.

steve: for many political actors in 2010, there isn't even agreement on the basics.

tell me about it..

remember michelle bachman's version of the hoot-smalley act..

I'm trying to remember if any other large and powerful nations have ever worked to rewrite history in order to make people easier to rule. Wasn't there another one? And what ever happened to it?

the McCarthy thing is weird. claims that he was vindicated by findings of communists in American politics assume that people did not object to him for reasons other than blowing the existence of communists or even Soviet sympathisers out of proportion.

The incredibly important point you are making in this post was developed 20 years ago in this book:

Cultural literacy: what every American needs to know
By Eric Donald Hirsch,

I remember being impressed by this book when it came out. Today's republicans make it incredibly more important.

Chrenson remarked:

"I'm trying to remember if any other large and powerful nations have ever worked to rewrite history in order to make people easier to rule. Wasn't there another one? And what ever happened to it?"

Japan; Post WW II. The efforts to whitewash their textbooks regarding the second world war are legendary.

There's no point in arguing. Either these people are defeated, or they will eliminate constitutional democracy, and sooner or later, blunder into total war.

The Tudors reigned for 118 years, so, they had a great deal of time to write their own version of history. As the RepuGs only led, er, reigned over this country for eight years, it takes a tremendous amount of hubris and gall to think they can re-write their own.

when a senior adviser to then-President George W. Bush dismissed those who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.... That's not the way the world really works anymore. We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality."

***********************************************

Yep, and that adviser was Bruce Bartlett then communications diretor for Bush. And, yep, he now works for CBS NEWS......."WE'RE AN EMPIRE NOW, AND WHEN WE ACT, WE CREATE OUR OWN REALITY" ...

sums up the whole fucking deal ....

This is not an intellectual debate. I am incredibly angry at this rewriting of history. The GOP is not trying to take America back to what it was but what they want it to be. However, they will still teach the 3 branches of government, majority rules, etc etc that THEY all learned in school. They will destroy this country and all we stand for, warts and all, with their lies.

It is becoming plainly obvious our fellow citizens who would subscribe to such revision have nothing to fear but America itself! -Kevo

n wen da chinees rite n speek n-glash beter then oui due, n kno hour hystry beter, watt due oui due than?
n ho bout texass meth? u kno 2+2=3.

3 = The Father, The Son, and The Holy Ghost.

The winners write history.
While watching the Nuremberg trials, Churchill said to a friend, that here was a perfect example of how important it is to win. Because if the Axis won, Churchill said, "We'd be the ones sitting there on trial now."
We have to keep them from winning. Of course, the stupider our people become, the harder it will be to keep them from winning. And, that's the point, ain't it?

fun with nihilism...the right wingers want to control everything so much they are willing to turn it all to shit. and when they do, no one else will want it. win = fail.

Isn't "rejecting reality" basically a definition of insanity? And they're trying to tell the rest of us that we're crazy and they're right; we've got history backwards (no, Hitler was a left-winger!) and they've got it straight ...

These RW nuts have a lot in common with totalitarian and authoritarian types as they spent a lot of time putting make believe in their "history" books, too.

But then again what does one expect from a group that spends much of its life in denial?

I know irony is beyond these people, but isn't it funny that they are embracing the socially-constructed, subjective view of history that they pilloried all those long-haired hippie professors for espousing in the 1960s?

David Sirota recently related that he received a tone of angry e-mails and threats for claiming that George W. Bush lost the popular vote in 2000. Which is not only an indisputable fact - well, a fact at least - but one easy to grasp and retain. It was, as they say, in all the papers - even the ones Murdoch published.

Let us wait and see, what other States procure their
History Textbooks from the State of Texas. As long as the State of Texas exists as an isolated sphere of complete and total stupidity, that's still a major problem but an isolated one. But if other states buy into this bullshit, that will be when the
shit hits the fan.

When yoy've been proven wrong about every single major issue for over 100 years, you have to create your own history.

Shakespeare re-wrote a fair amount of history for dramatic effect... and to prove the adage that history is written by the winners.

These folks are setting out to prove him wrong, too. Shakespeare=degenerate!

Reagan won the cold war, you betcha.

I think people are ignoring the obvious big picture here - there isn't about the right wing ego - this is about raising up a generation of young people who's reality and base of reference of what is "truth" will be the right wing version. This is part and parcel with the Republican idea of building a permanent majority even if they have to change around history to do it. The reason they don't like Jefferson? Because he was a deist.

There was a broadcast on NPR's "On Point" recently where they interviewed the former chairman (McLeroy) of the Texas School Board.

His view was essentially that people elect the board, so the board reflects what the people want to be taught. The point that really struck me was when he was asked "why not leave it up to the teachers and history professors", the response was that they didn't want experts dictating the curriculum, they want the regular folks to do that.

I don't understand this conservative scorn for "experts", and their love of the wisdom of the "common man". They're not interested in debate.

I used to wonder what society would be like as both the knowledge base and the population continued to grow. So, now I'm beginning to see. On the one hand, there is too much information out there for people to absorb--and on the other, the population is large enough that the delusional slow-learners on the right can find others like them. They can run a political party.

So the next question is what does their version of history look like? And the answer is that they see a persistent conspiracy perpetuated by communists, socialists, anarchists, progressives, liberals, etc, the goal of which is to steal wealth of hard-working true Americans.

Of course, it isn't just history that they want to rewrite. The Bible, too, that sacred, inerrant text, needs to be retranslated. Jesus didn't preach "love thy neighbor, " "turn the other cheek," "render unto Caesar that which is Caesars" or "sooner shall the camel slip through the eye of the needle than the rich man get into heaven." Those passages were clearly mistranslated by liberals as part of this sinister plot. No, Christ actually preached "it is mine, it is all mine, I don't have to share."

My disdain for the Texas school board and Joe McCarthy could not be greater, but I'm beginning to get the sense that there is a problem from the other side from the children of Howard Zinn. Obviously bloggers are not academic historians (well, a few of them are) but increasingly I find posts that use a few generalizations to paint a very inaccurate picture of some of those few things I actually know about.

Texas, the great capitol of Jezusland!

That's right folks, let's give them their Souther paradise on Earth!

Simon And Garfunkel said it best:

"When I think back on all the crap I've learned in high school
It's a wonder I can think at all
Though my lack of education hasn't hurt me much
I can read the writings on the walls"

Aside from the philosophical issue that a discontinunity in knowledge affects understanding of facts in other areas of life

The kooky Republicans often wonder why kids think school is a waste of time. Well, I'll tell you. Kids know when they have been lied to, and generally tune it out.

What's worse about this, is guys and girls who do go on to college and not know American history will have manifest problems in college when they interact with professors and kids who know real history. And if they are struggling in history, they will be strugging in other classes because of the confusion between what they learned in the past which should be the foundation for a better understanding of the world when one grows up.

If they believe what they are taught, they will look like idiots compared to their better informed classmates.

An adult who chooses to believe fantasy over reality is, by definition, insane.

People who have other voices telling them of an alternate reality are called psychotics. They can do harm to themselves or others. This country now has a number of voices, premier among them Fox news, creating an alternative reality that is being believed and acted upon by more and more people. But there is a real world out there, global climate change will not stop because Hannity says it doesn't exist, cutting taxes to zero does not increase government income to infinity, a government smart enough to create an infrastructure where sick people can actually see doctors is not evil.
To a psychotic the voice telling them to jump over the cliff seems reasonable. To our misled, the man behind the desk in the suit on television is telling the truth, to our misled it is unreasonable paranoia to think the generation of "newscasters" following Cronkite and Brinkley are serial liars with selfish intentions and cruel disregard.
The strange thing about the Freudian projector is that a lot of basically honest people project their own honesty upon the lying, fear inducing voices talking to them and they begin to act in a reality in which their actions seem reasonable, but are not in a more sane world.

I was taught that the first English speaking settlers landed at Plymouth Rock. When in fact it was Jamestown. Virginia. A southern state. History books were rewritten after the Civil war as we couldn't have this county have roots in the South. Now this is only one state. So far. But I can see my state, Georgia, saying,"We really dont need to go through this whole pick a history book thing when there is a perfectly good, brand new history book thats coming on the market in Texas".

I agree with one of the previous commenters: this *does* sound like it's straight out of '1984.' It's interesting that right-wing radicals are so shrill about Marxists and fascists (i.e., anyone who doesn't agree with them) taking over, but so eager to adopt the worst characteristics of repressive totalitarian regimes. Let's see, so far they've endorsed torture of enemies of the state, secret prisons, widespread surveillance without any judicial oversight (this was fine with them under Bush II), unlimited power for the executive branch (as long as one of their own is president), and now the scrubbing of history books of any information they don't agree with, along with systematic distortion of any information that's allowed to remain. If these folks are "freedom fighters," I guess it's in the same sense that the National Socialists, Bolsheviks, and Maoists were freedom fighters. After all, those guys thought they were saving their respective countries, too.

The "Iron Law of Emulation" is what Daniel Patrick Moynihan called the tendency of all movements and institutions to mirror their antagonists. Thus in re-writing history to fit the truths of its rigid ideology and changing the language to make black appear as white does the Radical Right come to resemble the Stalinists who were once its mortal enemy.

While liberal progressives a wringing their hands about the right-wing's lack of civility, decorum, and intellectual honesty; right-wingers are stocking guns and ammo, and engaging in a no-hold-barred effort to normalize assault, murder, racism, and terrorism, so long as liberals, Democrats, minorities or the government are the targets.

They understand a fundamental lesson of history. Ulimately, dead and/or opressed people don't write history books.

Dare I mention Lysenkoism? This kind of magical thinking led to what? How many million dead of starvation? So, if we rewrite history and science at will, why can't we move into economics and mathematics? The loss of a shared epistemology is one of the tragedies of our age.

Great site. A lot of useful information here. I’m sending it to some friends!

Can we just go back to 49 states, and let Texas go off on their own ??

Someone above has confused me with Dan Bartlett (no relation).

I'm trying to remember if any other large and powerful nations have ever worked to rewrite history in order to make people easier to rule. Wasn't there another one? And what ever happened to it?

Nazi Germany. It didn't work out to well, though I'm not sure most Texans would concede that point.

"The winners write history."

But folks who rewrite history and reinterpret reality to serve the needs of the moment never remain winners for that long. Making policies based on the way you think the world should be instead of the way it is, inevitably results in disaster.

Mike

I was taught that the first English speaking settlers landed at Plymouth Rock. When in fact it was Jamestown. Virginia. A southern state. History books were rewritten after the Civil war as we couldn't have this county have roots in the South.

How--interesting.

Because I grew up in Massachusetts, and was taught that the first English-speaking settlement was at Roanoke, VA, and the first successful one was Jamestown, VA. "Those that don't work, don't eat" and all that.

Plimouth was given pride of place in many ways, but we'd have been marked down if we made the mistake of identifying it as the first English-speaking settlement.

(What did tend to get lost, at least until middle school, was the fact that the English-speaking settlements weren't actually the first European settlements in the New World.)

Hitler and his Nazis worked overtime to revise history. Are the Fascist republicans any different? They not only want to revise history, they have adopted the "Big Lie" propaganda from Hitler and Goebbels and repeat it over and over from the very top to the very bottom. These "Things" do not wish to build America, they want to tear it down. They will walk through the ashes crowing "It is all ours now." The Fascist republicans are treasonous traitors to our Constitution, our Bill of Rights, and the American Dream.

"I'm trying to remember if any other large and powerful nations have ever worked to rewrite history in order to make people easier to rule. Wasn't there another one? And what ever happened to it?"
chrenson on April 3, 2010 at 12:17 PM

I notice two commenters appear to have taken this comment literally, and treated the question as an actual interrogative (or at least pretending to do so, as a hook to hang their replies on).
Me, I took the comment to be ironic, and the question to be a rhetorical one - but then again, I'm awfully slow on the uptake, so I could be wrong.
Either way, though, isn't it curious that the replies involved WWII (& pre-War) Germany, and post-War Japan -- but nobody's yet brought up the erstwhile Soviet Union or the current People's Republic of China, which were the ones I thought of first? (At least nobody's mentioned Israel yet, so thank God for small favors -- or thank all WaMo commenters for having the brains/decency not to go for that one.)
(chrenson, if you check back here, I wonder if you could share which "one" you had in mind, since there are a number of fine candidates?)
Consider that one of the favorite tropes of the reichwingers, past and present, is that American liberals underestimate the evil of Communism, and the threats it poses to "our American way of life," and to the freedom and prosperity of both the US and the entire world.
I'll cop to being as much a DFH as almost anyone else in these threads, and those on other lefty sites -- but when I see things like this, I wonder if maybe there isn't a tiny little germ, or seed crystal, of truth underlying the winger calumnies?
And whether there is or isn't, why give them any ammo at all (even if it's just one comment in one thread of one blog) that could be taken to support their lies?
Just sayin'...

[ps -- to the two posters involved, I apologize if it seems I'm attacking or challenging what you wrote. Your responses are obviously both completely correct and entirely appropriate. Criticizing what you said is not my intent; I'm more concerned about what *isn't* being said.]

All the religions are allowed an alternate understanding of the universe which is more or less orthogonal to to the actual reality.

Why not give the Republicans the same privilege?

"The winners write history." c u n d gulag @ 12:48 PM.
And losers re-write history.
Germany after WWI, Japan after WWII, Southern secessionists after the Civil War. It's arguable that there WOULDN'T have been a WWII if so many Germans hadn't been convinced that they really hadn't "lost" the first one. Japan, because of its refusal to face what it did between 1920 and 1945, still has difficulty dealing with its Asian neighbors.
And we are living with the results of rewriting or, worse yet, ignoring the history leading up to the War of Southern Treason, the war itself and its' aftermath. Because of Southern Representatives' intransigence on other matters, the House refused to accept petitions concerning slavery. Southern representatives could prevent the House from operating, so the other Representatives gave in. This was in the 1840s. For decades prior to the War of Southern Treason, the Post Office was instructed NOT to forward anti-slavery pamphlets to addresses in the South. The equivalent today would be censorship of the internet and cable television not unlike what China is doing.
When the slavocracy found it was out-numbered politically, it decided to take its cards and go home; ie, secede. Sound familiar?

"...they didn't want experts dictating the curriculum." Hari @ 1:50 PM.
That is the dark side of populism. The idea that the "average" person is the ideal never seems to take into account the fact that "average" is setting the bar awfully low.
But it makes it easier for advertisers and such...

Steve, I think that with Rush and O'Reilly in particular, we've seen so many outright lies from Republicans, that sure, this seems very much in line with it.

And as a liberal I very much disagree with their new interpretation.

But liberals have been interpreting history, too. Perhaps when they introduced the PC textbooks, they were simply correcting past flaws --- that's certainly what I believe. But I also know that liberals have a habit of worshipping JFK, who did far less than his successor and who was willing to cause WWIII, along with engaging in a Hugh Hefner-style lifestyle at times, while belittling his successor. And this seems to be tied to the fact that JFK brought professors who later wrote history books about his fabled Camelot into his Administration - professors who LBJ humiliated.

So while I'm disheartened at Texas's changes - especially if they indicate who is coming out the winner in America, right now, and who the loser - I'm inclined to see the authors of these changes as less liars, than interpreters. Just misguided interpreters.

I'm hoping that advances in the publishing industry/software industry will keep other more liberal states from following the Texas lead.

Thank you for continuing to talk about this issue. I hope that if the country heaps enough scorn on Texas for this madness, they might be shamed into abandoning it.

There are still many sane peeps here in this state, but we can't turn the tide by ourselves.

There's a certain amount of dudgeon here that seems to fit the times, but not necessarily the issues involved - there are different ways of looking at the same things. I'm not suggesting an "anything goes" approach to history, or that, say, they're right about Joe McCarthy (though I'm surprised that people are surprised to discover that there's a certain kind of conservative who will defend, even lionize McCarthy). They're wrong about McCarthy, and other things as well. But still, there's more than one way to look at the American story, and more than one way to tell it. The reason I think some conservatives - who, it should be pointed out, rarely succeed in the long run, and are not necessarily representative of the whole - are wrong on these historical rewrites is that they are convinced that their rewrite will not be challenged, or have to share space with other versions. The one thing it seems to me a liberal wants in education is to get kids to think and to explore - I don't want to tell you Joe McCarthy was a terrible man... I want you to investigate McCarthy and tell me what you find. I learned a few things about history in 8th grade; I learned more and explored more in high school, and even more when I went to college (Hamilton, by the way... which makes me see red when people dismiss our namesake). I'm more concerned about an "alternative" to these conservatives that insists on similar, close minded attempts to tell history only one way; what we want to teach kids most is to think, and to think for themselves. That's the problem with the Texas dictates - not that they tell a poor, sometimes inaccurate history... but that they attempt to shut out inquiry into other ways of seeing. The hard part, I think, for many to accept is that when you teach kids to think... you never know where it might lead. And that,as Americans, is the kind of dangerous freedom we have to live with.

Bernard Gilroy: I know irony is beyond these people, but isn't it funny that they are embracing the socially-constructed, subjective view of history that they pilloried all those long-haired hippie professors for espousing in the 1960s?

We are all Marcusians now, I guess.

smartalek, good point.

The USSR seemed the obvious reference that chrenson was making; so obvious that there was no need to comment on it- but then I'm an old New lefter raised on Homage to Catalonia and Darkness at Noon.

Stormskies said:

Yep, and that adviser was Bruce Bartlett then communications diretor for Bush. And, yep, he now works for CBS NEWS......."WE'RE AN EMPIRE NOW, AND WHEN WE ACT, WE CREATE OUR OWN REALITY" ...

Interestingly enough - and I have this on the words of the man himself, who I have come to know in recent months - he has learned his lesson of the past 8 years and would not say that today if he had it to do over again. Nice to know that there is at least one of these guys with the intelligence to learn from prior stupidity and the moral courage to say so. He has most recently said that "I now understand what a German conservative must have felt like, realizing that everything he had thought was true was in fact not." One hopes that Mr. Bartlett has learned this a bit earlier (in terms of being able to do something about it) than that good German conservative would have.

Watching the right wing attempt this, I am reminded of the scene in "Rollerball" (the original) where the James Caan character finally gets to visit the computer that holds all of human history - and nothing is there now that doesn't serve the interests of the corporations that run the world.

ComradeAnon said:

But I can see my state, Georgia, saying,"We really dont need to go through this whole pick a history book thing when there is a perfectly good, brand new history book thats coming on the market in Texas".

No, Georgia will want to rewrite the history books so it isn't the state originally founded as a dumping ground for transported felons (which it was, which explains a lot about the politics of that swamp).

(At least nobody's mentioned Israel yet, so thank God for small favors -- or thank all WaMo commenters for having the brains/decency not to go for that one.)

I'll bite on that one. The chronicles of Pharoah Rameses II - commonly thought of as "the Pharoah of the Exodus" contain no mention whatsoever of any of the events told in Exodus, nor mention of any historical personage as Moses in any form whatsoever. These chronicles do however contain many references to other historical events which are also confirmed in other chronicles, such as those of the Hittites - which contain references to every verifiable historic event in the middle east during the time of the Hittite Empire, and which contain no references whatsoever to any kingdom with Jerusalem as its capital, with any kings known as David or Solomon.

When one is speaking of "history," the so-called Old Testament is the last place one goes to find any. The entire Book of Genesis was plagiarized from Chaldean creation myths during the period of the "Babylonian captivity," when the religious leaders of the tribe that one day would call itself the Jews found they needed some written documentation of their previously-oral religion, so that it might go on after the "captivity."

Just to demonstrate that the above doesn't come from any so-called "Anti-Semitism" - the all-purpose shoo-fly for use against anyone who questions that Israel Uber Alles is the moral compass of the planet - the Roman records contain no information that would confirm anything in the New Testament.

Anyone who thinks that "Christmas" is anything other than the misappropriation of the old pagan Mid-Winter festival all tribes have, or that "Easter" is anything but the misappropriation of ancient pagan spring fertility festivals where the "god" is killed and then resurrected in the form of the new life of spring agriculture, probably also believes in the Tooth Fairy.

The "Bible", far from being an historical account of anything, is the greatest work of fiction in all of human history. And those who try to create political realities on the bases of this collection of lies have done nothing but create misery on all sides for the past 2,000 years.

I've read the article and I agree that bias should be abandoned for accuracy on both sides. Trouble is, the American left has for so long used the public schools and textbooks as tools of social engineering that some on the right are now pushing back, perhaps a little too hard. I mean sure, for his time Theodore Roosevelt was liberal. But he wasn't a mealy mouthed, hand wringing, panty-waste, appease our enemies, abandon our friends, apologize for America, pussy ass, Dennis Kucinich kind of liberal. He was a big game hunting, charge up San Juan hill, big stick diplomacy, get shot in the chest and still finish your speach, America will do as she pleases and if you don't like it you can go f@ck yourself kind of liberal. In other words he was the kind of liberal I can respect and he is in fact one of my personal heroes. His reforms came at a time when child labor and horrendous working conditions were rampant and they were sorely needed. I wish I could have met him; he was a true American Badass. Hell, Teddy would have probably happily tortured a couple of terrorists himself. I love that guy. :)

As for FDR being blamed for causing the depression, I've never heard a conservative make that accusation. I've heard some say that some of his programs prolonged the depression, and maybe they did, I don't know. But, I have to wonder if even though it could have been shorter, might it have not been deeper if he hadn't done what he did.

I know that for years liberals have done whatever they could to change the way America is presented in textbooks.

http://townhall.com/columnists/PhyllisSchlafly/2010/03/16/texas_kicks_out_liberal_bias_from_textbooks?page=full&comments=true

And now that the shoe is on the other foot, they want to cry foul. I don't like political bias in textbooks either. But, then again, some kinds of bias are better than others.

Mike Spencer,
While I've appreciated TR's trust busting for a long time, just finished "The Imperial Cruise: A Secret History of Empire and War" by James Bradley which called him out as an ugly racist (like many at the time) whose actions in 1903/4 helped to set up the Japanese Emperor "as a god" bit and who also greenlighted Japanese conquests in Asia that directly led to their actions in WWII. I view history, especially that of recent times, as more a conversation than a compendium but denying verifiable truths (such as Reagan raising taxes 6/8 years or GW changing annual budget surpluses to annual deficits) is despicable. If we cannot agree on facts we have nothing to discuss whatsoever. Nothing.

The winners write history.

Now there's another cliché we can add to the already heavily clichéd Texan version of events.

Good grief, these GOPers are nothing at all if they're not all about "revealed texts," now are they? Methinks their "FAUX"-niness streak is showing again....

The concensus of American historians was that the departing George W. was ranked in the bottom five of all Presidents. Texas will now be able to disregard inconvenient facts like that.

Text books are intended to indoctrinate. They are never more than tools used by the lazy to impart conventional wisdom. For a couple of generations now liberals have written American history text books. Their liberal biases no doubt shine through.

Paul Simon is right. When I look back at all the crap I learned in high school, I am surprised I can think at all. Indoctrination is indoctrination, it isn't education. To all the people either applauding or appalled by the actions of the Texas school board replacing one set of biases with another isn't an advance.

American education needs to be fundamentally changed. We need to teach our kids how to think independently. We need to teach them how to think critically. We need to teach tem how to do original research from original sources. Sadly we don't. We never had.

If you experienced one teacher who taught creativity before college, count yourself lucky. In my case I was exposed to a high school science teacher who taught the scientific method. He has been retired and gone for many decades. He taught me how to think. He taught me to question everything. That is the kind of person who should be teaching our kids. Not the drones who attended teachers college and learned how to impart the official doctrine. Think of all the possibilities, if we were a nation of thinkers.

George Will this week helped me finally understand another piece of right wing historical revisionism -- this tendency you see in so many Southern neo-Confederate secessionists to invoke the Constitution when making their case for the destruction of the Union they say no longer represents their values.

In making the case that political parties ought to be able to protect their "identities" by keeping independents and other non-party members out of their primaries, Will enlisted support from the Supreme Court, which he said had established a right NOT to associate in the First Amendment's freedom of assembly clause.

Turns out this piece of historical revisionism, which has been used by white supremacists ever since to justify their Constitutional right to discriminate against their fellow Americans, comes to us from Barry Goldwater via then-right wing lawyer/speechwriter William Rehnquist, when the Republicans 1964 presidential candidate justified his vote against the Civil Rights Act of that year by declaring that the freedom TO associate implies a corresponding right NOT to associate.

And that is how Southern reactionaries have been able to hide behind the Constitution as they transform this charter of national union into one that authorizes its dissolution instead.

"I've heard some say that some of his programs prolonged the depression, and maybe they did, I don't know. But, I have to wonder if even though it could have been shorter, might it have not been deeper if he hadn't done what he did."

And you, and those saying that kind of crap, would know the truth if they read some decent books on the subject or just did some basic research using the Internet. FDR's administration saved this country's economy, and capitalism along with it, from imploding. Look at what happened to the Weimar Republic under similar circumstances. Here's an excellent blog post that discusses this topic:

http://fabiusmaximus.wordpress.com/2010/02/10/weimar/

Woe, woe for England! not a whit for me;
For I, too fond, might have prevented this

It wouldn't be Sunday, if there wasn't an all-caps Steve Benen headline.

The right wing's obsession with historical revisionism is just one more indication that the conservative movement isn't really engaged in politics at all but cultural identification in which the re-writing of history is a logical extension of the movement's need for a defining national narrative to compete with pluralist story of a "melting pot" nation whose motto is E Pluribus Unum, "from the many, one."

Most of the focus on the Tea Party movement has been on its "anti-government" character. But that disguises its truly malevolent nature, since anti-government can also mean anti-high taxes, anti-deficit spending and anti-bureaucracy -- all of which are perfectly legitimate concerns.

The real danger in movements like the Tea Party is that it is "anti-political." Notice how Tea Party followers attack Republicans and Democrats equally, since both are implicated in their minds with the traditional and stable two-party democracy that has governed the country since before the Civil War.

But politics implies compromise, in fact politics is defined by compromise. Otherwise we are talking war. And compromise implies a respect for those who differ from you, and are unlike you.

The Tea Party does not accept the legitimacy of those who differ from it, and so they reject both politics and democracy, despite all their talk of freedom, liberty and individual rights. Their's is still the White Christian Republic, or something very much like it, in which people just like them are the only ones who rule.

And the Tea Party's enablers on FOX and talk radio have convinced them that liberal criticism of them for rejecting politics and compromise and those unlike them means that we are the ones who refuse to tolerate dissent, that we are the ones who have no respect for those who differ from us, that we are intolerant for failing to tolerate their intolerance.

This is a self-reinforcing and self-justifying dementia that is very difficult to break through and reach, and we should have no delusions about hard it will be to reach people who are lost in this mass hysteria.

our nations history, politics and media have been usurped by the hateful mob calling themselves '
'progressives'. It is this mob pushed for unscrutinized election of commie king hussein who things that America has 57 states, who is actually hating the country he rules and who because of his associations with commies, islamists and reverse racists as well as thieves, thugs, terrorists and maffiosies rightly belongs to prison and not to the white house

Hi Gaby, I think you should get a new doctor, those medications that he gave you for your psychotic bouts are not working.

Smartalek, et al:

Yeah, I was thinking USSR when I wrote that bit way up comment stream. But now that I look at it and all the thoughtful chatter here, it could really be anyone, including the US. But, I guess I was also thinking about the Bible and the attempts by its many writers to record verbal histories and explain the mysteries of the physical world simultaneously. Kind of like it's one of the first school textbooks ever written. No doubt the history it relates is quite suspect.

As a child of the Cold War, I remember one the most important things we were taught in school about those wicked commies was that rewrote their own history, and skewed their news horribly in order to keep their people oppressed. I don't think there is a reader here who would disagree that what's happening in Texas is the Free Market Corporatists taking advantage of the power they've gained through building a political party designed to make the rich and powerful even more so. Meanwhile, the media is more skewed to the same end.

Projection, pure and simple. And yet, the right wingers have no use for mirrors.

I highly recommend Tony Horowitz's book, A Voyage Long and Strange, which looks at a lot of founding myths, including those around Plymouth Rock and Jamestown, Columbus, Ponce de Leon, etc.

That said, I wouldn't fear kids getting brainwashed too much by rightwing education. Back in the day, Florida required high school juniors to take a 9-week class called Communism vs. Capitalism that was absolute McCarthyite bullshite. We'd sit in class and make absolute fun of everything asserted in the textbook. It didn't achieve its aim of brainwashing precious minds, just caused us to develop more contempt for the Florida legislature.

Maybe that's the ultimate aim -- to foster disrespect for a government that would lie to you so blatantly.

The problem with the argument that "they don't want experts in charge" is that they've forgotten the definition of expert - someone who is proficient with the matter at hand. To suggest you don't want an expert is to say you want decisions taken by someone who ISN'T proficient.

Ask them if they want the janitor running the company they work for - if not, why not? The CEO is an expert manager, why not have the janitor do it instead?

The whole thing is an ad hominem to allow them to maintaintain their "I'm always right" position, and naysay anyone who could be in a position to show otherwise.

And the aregument that the liberals have done the same in the past is a share the blame strategy - it's not true either. Both sides have done their share of "that would offend ..." or "won't you think of the children" censoring. But none of it has been as blatently partisan as the work of the texas board recently.

Ted Frier - the tea partiers don't attack both the repubs and dems equally - strangely they were completely silent during Bush's presidency. Almost all teabaggers are "born again" republicans, trying to wash away the blame of 2000-2008, all the while still trying to enact all the same policies they tried.