history

"Poor George, he can't help it. He was born with a silver foot in his mouth."

Ann Richards of Texas at the 1988 Democratic Party Conventtion, which is playing now on C-Span. Her speech about George Bush sounds so similar to what this country faces again today.

Yesterday, C-Span went all the way back to the 40s and showed speeches including Harry Truman's in 1948.
Coming up is Barbara Jordan's keynote 1976.

The Bush-Dukakis race seems to have had so many similarities to the themes the Dems need to raise again in 2012. Dukakis was the real job creating governor of Massachusetts, and he was brought down in the dirty GOP campaign of 1988. Hope the Dems learned from that loss.

In the sleepy dual township of Carrboro and Chapel Hill, NC, we like to think that our thoughtful brand of progressive leadership provides an homogenous and caring exemplar of efficient local government. Events of the past few months have left me wondering if the reverse is true.

We are not homogenous. Not in our demographic or political make-up. Nor even in our alleged single brand of caring progressivism.

In Carrboro, all we imports (I am from England, by way of Rhode Island, Georgia, Texas and South Carolina) have become so taken with our over-enthusiastic efforts to engineer a social and artistic nirvana, that we quite forget to ask if we have the permission of the many thousands whose families have been living here for generations.

In our efforts to form a more perfect Union we look to the Constitution for guidance for how we might shape the form and function of Government; many who seek to interpret that document try to do so by following what they believe is The Original Intent Of The Founders.

It was about a week ago that we saw the ruling throwing out California’s Prop 8; that decision has now been appealed, and we will see, at some point in the future, how the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals handles the matter.

A couple of days later, I had a story up that walked through the ruling, describing the tactics used by the Prop 8 proponents, which, in the opinion of the Judge who looked at the evidence, were basically to try to scare Californians into thinking that gay people, once they’re able to get gay married, will somehow now be free to evangelize your kids and make them gay, too.

In the course of answering comments on the several sites where the story is up, I noticed that there were those who felt the Bible should be guiding our thinking here...that if it did, we would be better off than where we are today, with all those immoral gay people running around free to do all those immoral gay things.

This led me to an obvious question: are those who have been using the Bible as a sort of “divining rod” to figure out who is immoral and who is not...actually any good at it?

1895 8th Grade Exam Administered 115 years Ago TODAY! First question below the fold.

Here's a silver bullet solution to right wing (or left wing) propagandists trying to push political agenda's in high school curricula.

Let's find a way to opensource the stuff. All we need is one excellent online source of American History produced by the top experts in the field. It can include everything from history, including the messy stuff. Wherever there is controversy, cover both sides thoroughly and let students decide for themselves what to believe.

Why this works so well:

First, text books are expensive. Schools and taxpayers would save millions, if not tens of millions by finding all the material they need online. Less books for students to lug around or lose.

Second, less pollution/waste in terms of printing. Publishers may hate this but hey, our education system is more important than publisher profits.

It seems like everywhere you look these days, someone’s trying to spread...The Fear.

All around us...in every town...on every corner...a massive Army Of Fear is standing by, according to the Messengers, ready at a moment’s notice to obey the dictates of some unappointed Czar or another.

Just ask Glenn Beck: concentration camps for the white people, jackbooted stormtroopers ready to snatch the guns from your cold dead fingers...Socialist Government-Controlled Healthcare That Threatens Your Not Socialist Medicare...it’s all coming, my friends—and unless we organize, as a community, to return to the values of the Founding Fathers, The Government, meaning that awful Obama and Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid and George Soros and all the other Evil Community Organizers, will win.

There’s no government, we’re told, like no government.

You know who would find all of this fear of self-government just entirely bizarre?

The Founding Fathers.

In today’s conversation we’ll consider the fundamentals of American patriotism, we’ll ask one of those Founding Fathers how he saw the role of Government—and we’ll toss in a few words from Abraham Lincoln, just for good measure.

I am thrilled at the initial success of North Carolina citizens of all political inclinations in transforming the process of curriculum development in the state. But I am troubled. Why? Because the few people who persist in advocating, “let the DPI do its job” are liberals like me! It’s clear that their understanding of the issue boils down to sound bites, and stems from a knee-jerk reaction to a story brought to national attention by FOX media. Whose fault is it that Fox had a better read on the pulse of its constituents than the liberal media?

Liberal or Conservative, if you think that high school students should learn the facts of our history, please sign the online petition created by Dr. Holly Brewer and me.

http://www.petitionspot.com/petitions/nchistory/

The North Carolina Department of Public Instruction is in the process of overhauling the curriculum for North Carolina Public Schools. The DPI has asked for feedback on the proposed curriculum through February 15, 2010. I reviewed the proposed curriculum. There is a glaring problem with the proposed history instruction in North Carolina high schools. The proposed curriculum eliminates the teaching of United States history prior to 1877 in North Carolina public schools. A few pre-1877 concepts are covered in other parts of the curriculum, but the proposed curriculum would not teach children:

Who came to the Americas and why
The states were once colonies of England
We fought a war to free ourselves from an imperial crown
We had a lot of discussion of how people in a democracy best rule themselves, culminating in the Constitution.
Western Expansion
Death and Displacement of Native Americans
Wars of U.S. Territorial Expansion
Slavery
Civil War
Reconstruction