Republicans In Oklahoma Seek To Replace History Classes With GOP Speeches, Ten Commandments

[su_right_ad]While liberal activists pursue top-down goals, like championing progressive challengers against sitting Democratic U.S. senators or focusing too heavily on presidential campaigns, the GOP has been systematically infiltrating politics from the school board level on up. It’s nowhere near as sexy to focus on state and local elections, but it’s often more successful in the long run, enabling Republicans to, in many ways, have greater and more micro-targeted influence at the grassroots level.

The results, however insidious, are self-evident. Back in 2010, for example, the Texas Board of Education, controlled by conservatives, successfully changed the state’s public education social studies curriculum to be more “balanced” — in that case, “balanced” meant putting “a conservative stamp on history and economics textbooks, stressing the superiority of American capitalism, questioning the Founding Fathers’ commitment to a purely secular government and presenting Republican political philosophies in a more positive light,” according to The New York Times.

In other districts, conservatives are pushing a U.S. government textbook published by McGraw-Hill that somehow emphasizes the alleged influence of Moses on the Founding Fathers — a “biblical idea of covenant” that “influenced the formation of colonial governments and contributed to our constitutional structure.”

By doing so, the GOP is indoctrinating kids from their formative years on up. Smart, in a very creepy way. Liberal activists on the other hand are barely paying attention to anything beyond crowd-pleaser issues like drone strikes and NSA spying, and if they ever dig into state matters, it’s often too-little-too-late.

But perhaps there’s a chance for some strategic redemption in Oklahoma of all places where liberal activists could successfully block a bill introduced by state Rep. Dan Fisher (R), House Bill 1380, that would completely eliminate… CONTINUE READING [su_center_ad]

D.B. Hirsch

D.B. Hirsch is a political activist, news junkie, and retired ad copy writer and spin doctor. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.