This doesn’t help the rest of the kids so much. But the dumb and uninterested ones won’t retain much of whatever fairy tales they’re taught, and most of the smart ones will notice they’re being lied to and, after a period of overcompensation (aka college years), will develop a stronger intellectual immune system for it.

Are you purposely being obtuse or just accidentally? In order for the government to officially support or condemn a religion it would have to be drafted into law, which the amendment forbids. If such a directive isn’t a law there is no obligation to obey it, if it is a law then it makes an unconstitutional reference to religion. A legislator, or anyone else for that matter, is free to hold a different opinion but as far as the amendment is worded the intent is very clear.

You haven’t referenced another source regarding the Texas BOE meeting, if the blog is wrong then by all means do us a favor and give us a better source. But you can’t claim to know that the report is wrong because of bias, based on nothing but your own bias. Aside from your vague claims to some kind of insider knowledge, you haven’t added any real information to the discussion, just smug assertions. So yeah, you’re not a boogieman, just a nameless, sourceless, naysayer.

You are a legend in your own mind. 90% of your response details a response to an argument that exists only in your head. I’ve never held you out to be a “boogieman.” I simplymade one criticism regarding your preoccupation with the political orientation of the group, and pointed out that a position stands or falls on its own merits, not because the group or person that argues it subscribes to a disfavored or favored political ideology.

It’s not their criticisms that are the problem as much as the reporting. Is their any journalistic medium like to be more biased than a 501 blog? If you take at face value all blogs by Balko’s friend’s friends go right ahead, but I have standards. One of those standards involves knowing the history of 2nd Amendment debate in the Texas BOE and that this particular accounting of a couple minutes does no justice to the real, longstanding feud. But whatever, you saw a blog.

BTW, I’m not the boogieman you want me to be. I’ve criticized citing AEI here also because IMO their scholarly work is overshadowed by their devotion to an anti-environmentalism, anti-regulation agenda. I know from personal experience that their “scholars” are mostly post-docs who have not a clue about the complex industries they attempt to analyze. If AEI declared economic policy and TFN social, the country would be far better off. But that doesn’t mean they’re not political animals better suited for debating than reporting.

http://www.vonnegutweb.com/archives/arc_nice.html

OMG, I’m so nerdy.

Sheesh, Texas, get your fucking act together.

What’s your preoccupation with identifying the political orientation of the group in question? Who cares? Their criticisms of the Texas school board are either legitimate on their merits or not. Whether they are a “lefty” organization or just “not libertarian” is irrelevant to whether their particular stance on this issue is correct or not.

I think the most published of the major Protestant reformers is worth studying relative to the Enlightenment (maybe not HS though) and most definitely was an early contributor to the formation of representative, if not liberal, democracies.

And I really can’t believe you’re defending that amendment. How does “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;” equal “barring government from promoting or disfavoring any particular religion over all others.” It doesn’t. Connecticut. QED.

The board was specifically dealing with a section about the development of liberal democracy. The board removed references to the Enlightenment and Thomas Jefferson and inserted a reference to John Calvin, the man who believed submission to tyrants was equivalent to obedience to God. Calvin had nothing to do with the formation of liberal democracy, and to include him in place of the Enlightenment or Jefferson is a travesty. So it isn’t as complicated in context.

The ranting about the second amendment came up during a discussion covering the teaching of the first amendment. It wasn’t about gun control advocates wanting to diminish the second amendment, it was about the board needlessly inserting discussion of the second amendment in unrelated sections. Cynthia Dunbar even suggested removing the entire section dealing with the first amendment, unless discussion of the second was included in that section, ignoring the fact that the second was already covered elsewhere in the curriculum. The first amendment is usually covered separately because it concerns five different rights, each with a long history in court cases and civil struggles throughout US History. Throwing the second amendment in that section was a complete non sequitur. If they wanted to improve the coverage of the second amendment they should have dealt with section covering the other amendments.

They even voted to remove the section discussing freedom of religion in America, because people like Cynthia Dunbar think the founding fathers wanted to promote religion and that the amendment “isn’t historically accurate”. She thinks the people who wrote the constitution got it wrong, and she is getting her crazy opinions put into Texas public schools. Its not just about her either, the other republicans on the board agree with her and vote along the same lines, these people are ignorant of history and science and they appear to just be filling in the blanks of their knowledge with crackpot ideology.

The Jefferson question is complicated, but in a world history course, what’s wrong erring on the side of not repeating US history? Besides, as Enlightenment philosophers go, Smith and Franklin are at least as important as Jefferson. And understanding Aquinas and Calvin is actually pretty important to understanding Enlightenment philosophers.

The second part is beyond my comprehension. Gun control advocates don’t want the Second Amendment emphasized as much as the First . . . and you guys are on board.

“Board member Mavis Knight offers the following amendment: “examine the reasons the Founding Fathers protected religious freedom in America by barring government from promoting or disfavoring any particular religion over all others.” — They go on to hyperventilate over this failing. Established churches aside (Mass, etc.), I’ve never heard the First Amendment interpreted this strongly. If it’s true, wouldn’t every soldier be entitled to his own personal chaplain? What about Christmas holidays? I’m pretty sure this didn’t merit their histrionic conclusion.

What an embarassment.

Not only a twerp but a convicted murderer. Stabs his brother to death and gets 4 years? Damn.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B53W-7tk4Uw

You know how the NHL dealt with the problem? a list of every player who got a diving penalty in the last week was mailed to every single franchise and prominantly displayed in the locker rooms of each team.

Hilarious.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=124524672

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Burlington-VT/Uncommon-Grounds-Coffee-and-Tea/86906370072?v=wall&ref=ts#

The three year law school is a recent invention. It used to be that there were multiple paths to the practice of law, including paths that Abraham Lincoln and John Adams took – self-study coupled with a brief apprenticeship with a practicing lawyer to learn the ropes. There are many, many legal services, needed especially by the poor, that trained paralegals would be more than able to provide excellent representation for. I worked for legal services during law school, and paralegals with a little practical training could have easily represented our clients for anything in front of an administrative law judge – unemployment hearings, social security hearings, meetings with the IRS, dealing with agencies like the DMV, etc. A lot of them who had been doing this stuff for years would have been better advocates than I was at that point in my career.