Across the country legislation is moving forward that will protect teachers and students who want the freedom to discuss both the strengths and weaknesses of modern evolutionary theory.
[…]To help combat the dogmatism that presently pervades evolution-education, Discovery Institute supports legislation that protects academic freedom for teachers who would dare to challenge Darwin in the classroom. There are presently academic freedom bills in Oklahoma, Tennessee, New Mexico, Kentucky, and Missouri.
As is expected, misinformation is already being spread about the bills. Yesterday I was informed that Oklahoma evolutionists are continuing to spread the myth that Louisiana’s Academic Freedom Law was declared unconstitutional. The truth is that the law hasn’t even been challenged in court. As I discuss here, ACLU Executive Director Marjorie Esman reportedly acknowledged that “if the Act is utilized as written, it should be fine; though she is not sure it will be handled that way.”
ClimateProgress is putting out the false claim that the legislation “forces teachers to question evolution.” That’s false. An academic freedom bill does not require teachers to teach anything differently. Topics like evolution will still be taught as a matter of required state law. All students will still need to learn and will be tested upon all aspects of state science standards. The bill still mandates that teachers follow the curriculum and teach the pro-evolution evidence. But it also gives teachers academic freedom to teach about credible scientific viewpoints that challenge the neo-Darwinian “consensus”–if they choose to do so.
And of course, we’re also hearing the standard false claim that the bills allow the teaching of creationism or religion. Despite the talking points of critics, academic freedom bills would not authorize or protect the teaching of creationism or any other religious viewpoint. According to a number of federal court rulings, creationism is a religious viewpoint that is illegal to advocate in public schools. Consistent with these rulings, most academic freedom bills contain language that expressly excludes the teaching of religion and only protects the teaching of scientific information.
I’m sure that if I looked at those bills that they are being sponsored by Republicans. Academic freedom – the freedom to question authority about evidence – is very important to conservatives.
First pillar: Effective and efficient conservative government.
He quoted Thomas Jefferson: “Most bad government results from too much government”), which is why next week Congress will cut 100 billion dollars of spending off of the federal budget.
Making people more dependent on the government has to end, so hard decisions must be made. “We cannot continue on with the policies of behavior modification through excessive taxation and over burdensome regulation…and that’s why we’re going to be cutting from the EPA.” (wild cheering)
If health care is so great, then someone explain to me why over 200 Democrat political groups are going to the President and asking for waivers.” Here was a great quote: “I say this to the President: The good things in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act: closing the doughnut hole, making sure that we take care of people with the preexisting conditions, keeping our young kids on our insurance, I can probably fit that in five to ten pages. It’s the other two thousand four hundred ninety pages with eleven new taxes, a hundred fifty nine new government agencies and beauracracies, and sixteen thousand new IRS agents, that the United States of America does not want!” (standing ovation)
He mentioned the financial meltdown in 2008 and blamed it (rightfully so) on government interference with the private sector.
He talked about reforming the individual tax code, cutting the corporate business tax rate from 35% down to 20%, eliminating capital gains taxes and dividends taxes, capping federal spending at 18-20%, developing a balanced budget amendment, and eliminating “redundant, failed, and duplicitious federal government programs and agencies.”
Second pillar: Peace through vigilance, through resolve, through strength.
He mentioned the famous Edmund Burke quote, one of my personal favorites: “All that is required for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.”
He quoted Sun Tzu: “To know your enemy, and to know yourself, and to know the terrain or the environment, in countless battles, you will always be victorious.”
And then he made the most important statement of the night: “Peace begins with courageous leaders who are willing to identify and define our enemy, and their objectives, because political correctness has no place in our national security strategy.” (the crowd screamed and another standing ovation ensued)
He said he was appalled that the Fort Hood shooting was treated like workplace violence.
He said “A new America, a secure America, means that we can ill afford to have a twenty-first century Sir Neville Chamberlain moment.”
He said “And yes, yes I do have a problem with granting American Constitutional rights to terrorists while we attempt to and have imprisoned our own warriors for killing terrorists.” (another standing ovation – there were so many during this speech)
Here’s another money quote: “The dawn of a new America means this: Secure our borders and enforce our laws. Recognize the emerging threats on the Korean peninsula. Recognize the threats that are coming out of South and Central America. And confront the radical Islamic non-state, non-uniformed belligerents who transit freely across borders, killing and promoting a seventh century ideology that is anathema to the values of America and to Western civilization.”
He said that we must never forget that Israel is our greatest ally in the Middle East, and vowed that “I shall never let Israel down.”
Third and most important pillar: Never abandon our values.
“We must honor our language and realize that it is the most important, most basic and common bond which makes us an American.”
He said we shouldn’t allow multiculturalism to “grow on steroids” and make American culture subservient.
He said he doesn’t support late term abortion or abortion as birth control because he doesn’t believe that having a baby is punishment (reference to an Obamateurism).
He said “We must hold sacred the privilege of the institution of marriage as a bond between a man and a woman.”
He said we had to reclaim our “Judeo-Christian faith heritage.” He quoted John Adams: “We have no government armed with power, capable of contending with human passions, unbridled by morality and religion. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”
He said “This is not about a separation of church and state. It is about making sure that we do not separate faith from the individual. You must never forget that the American motto is In God We Trust.” (standing ovation)
His next statement almost got a standing ovation from me: “We welcome the beliefs of others in America, but our coexistence must be based on a simple premise: when tolerance becomes a one-way street, it leads to cultural suicide. And American cultural values shall never be subjugated to any other as long as I have air in my lungs.”
His closing thoughts started with a quote from George Washington: “We are either a united people or we are not. If the former, let us in all matters of general concern act as a nation which has national objects to promote and a national character to support. If we are not, let us no longer act a farce by pretending to it.” He quoted Abraham Lincoln: “America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.” He discussed how he grew up in the Atlanta area and went into the military, and then ran for political office as a public service to all Americans. He said “This is what Abraham Lincoln said. ‘Be sure you put your feet in the right place. Then stand firm.’ So as you depart here today from this great hall, from this great gathering of conservatives, this is the commission that I send you out with: Stand firm, for this is the dawn of a new America. God bless you all, God bless America, steadfast and loyal. Thank you.”
And here’s Herman Cain’s speech:
Cain is probably running in 2012 and West will go in 2016 or 2020.
In the quest to instill healthy eating habits, schools in Ontario have banned bottled water, but not decaffeinated soft drinks. Fries are out, but pizza is in, as long as it has whole-wheat crust, low-fat cheese and no pepperoni. In Alberta, Dunstable School south of Slave Lake instituted a “Character Education and Virtues Program” that involved rewarding students who did good deeds by putting their names on a wall, giving them a free pizza lunch and a chance to win money for a bike. But the program was also used to monitor the number of good deeds each student performed and then investigate those who didn’t do enough.
A New Brunswick school was met with outrage when it tried to impart moral values to its Grade 4 students by asking them to decide in 10 minutes or less who they would save if the Earth was about to explode: an Acadian francophone, a Chinese person, a black African, an English person or an Aboriginal person. The problem came when a parent, whose daughter was adopted from Ethiopia and was the only visible minority in the class, felt the project promoted stereotypes, prompting the province’s education minister to condemn the assignment.
Such morality-based assignments are part of a growing emphasis on cross-curriculum teaching, which encourages teachers to find lessons that draw links between a variety of academic subjects, said Doretta Wilson, executive director of the Society for Quality Education.
The organization conducted a study to look for errors and “unsubstantiated dogmatic statements” in Canadian science curriculum. It found a Manitoba science manual that urged teachers to promote the message that historic Aboriginal cultures “exemplified the qualities of good stewardship in their interactions with the environment,” and a New Brunswick Grade 5 science class policy that promoted the belief that sauna whirlpools and other alternatives to conventional medicine “prevent or cure illnesses.” In Quebec, it found a physics curriculum that advocated that science could be used to help advance Quebec nationalism because “a society can express its cultural identity only in conjunction with some form of scientific and technological autonomy.”
Increasingly, value-based teachings have come in the guise of environmental activism, which school have been promoting with varying degrees of commitment and sometimes conflicting messages.
As part of the Toronto District School Board’s climate change action plan, an elementary school had every student write a letter to the Prime Minister to crack down on idling vehicles and held a contest to find the student who could design the best “eco-ticket” to be slapped on the windshield of an offending car.
Meanwhile in natural gas and oil sands communities in northern Alberta, B.C. and Saskatchewan, the petroleum industry has banded together to create its own environmental awareness program for elementary schools. As part of the program, students don a chef’s hat and have a “fossil fuel bake” and then put on a “petroleum play.” The program donates $5,000 to the school to help create an outdoor education project.
Global warming alarmism is nothing but socialism – i.e. – government-controlled redistribution of wealth. So what we have here is the taxpayer-funded indoctrination of children so that the children will believe in government control of the free market (production and consumption).
I find it very annoying that Christians often want to provide these public schools with more and more money. I often have discussions with Christians who are in favor of public schools and single-payer health care who nevertheless want to get married and have families. Do they not realize where the money for all of these government programs comes from? The money comes from families and from the companies who employ parents. So the very people who support social programs, poverty programs, environmental programs, education programs, etc. are the ones who are working to undermine civil society by transferring wealth from families and the businesses who hire parents to government.
What I find the most perturbing is how Christians bash businesses and capitalism and then complain that men won’t marry. What sort of man wants to pay half his income to secular-leftists so that his children can be indoctrinated by public schools? (And you can’t opt out of paying for them) When Christians talk about “taxing the rich” so that government can “help the poor” and “protect the environment”, then they should NOT expect that there will be any money left over for marriages and child-raising. If you think it’s a good idea for parents to pay government to teach the children their worldview and values, then why are parents and families needed? People should just work and have babies, and then the government should take their money and decide what children will believe, right?
