History Question of the Day
Which of these writers influenced the political philosophy and origins of the founding documents of the United States of America: President Thomas Jefferson, John Calvin, and/or Saint Thomas Aquinas?
Easy, right? The answer is President Thomas Jefferson. You know, Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence, and one of the many founders who threw off the religious tyranny of then-England and safeguarded the separation of church and state in our government.
John Calvin founded a theocracy, with morality police to enforce his religion's moral code under the threat of punishment, including the death penalty. In one of his most despicable acts, Calvin ordered the death (by slow burning) of his longtime pen-pal and humanist theologian
Michael Servetus after assuring Serveus that he'd be safe in Geneva. Why did Calvin kill him? Because Servetus had issues with Calvin's version of church and state. The theocracy of Calvin is what our nation's revolutionaries and founders fought against, so that we could have freedom of choice and speech concerning religion/no religion.
St. Thomas Aquinas stressed the importance of both divine revelation and human reason, but reason was trumped by revelation. The channels for revelation include scripture and the Catholic Church's tradition (not Protestant, not Jewish, not Muslim, not anyone else). Aquinas' pre-scientific-revolution teachings on
natural law theory have governed Catholic moral theology and political policy since. How the Catholic Church sees god in nature is how everyone else must also understand god's will for the universe. This medieval teaching has resulted in countless anti-scientific and anti-rational Catholic teachings. If you don't believe an apostate gay like me, then just ask Galileo. The anti-rational and church-imposed teachings upon science and reason are what our nation's revolutionaries and founders fought against, so that we could have freedom of choice and speech concerning religion/no religion.
Efforts by Hispanic board members to include more Latino figures as role models for the state’s large Hispanic population were consistently defeated, prompting one member, Mary Helen Berlanga, to storm out of a meeting late Thursday night, saying, “They can just pretend this is a white America and Hispanics don’t exist. They are going overboard, they are not experts, they are not historians. They are rewriting history, not only of Texas but of the United States and the world.”
The conservative members maintain that they are trying to correct what they see as a liberal bias among the teachers who proposed the curriculum. To that end, they made dozens of minor changes aimed at calling into question, among other things, concepts like the separation of church and state and the secular nature of the American Revolution. “I reject the notion by the left of a constitutional separation of church and state,” said David Bradley, a conservative from Beaumont who works in real estate. “I have $1,000 for the charity of your choice if you can find it in the Constitution.”
I guess for Bradley,
Article 6 of the Constitution doesn't count, not to mention the First Amendment, and countless other affirmations of the separation between church and state in further Amendments.
They also replaced the word “capitalism” throughout their texts with the “free-enterprise system.” “Let’s face it, capitalism does have a negative connotation,” said one conservative member, Terri Leo. “You know, ‘capitalist pig!’”
Even the course on world history did not escape the board’s scalpel. Cynthia Dunbar, a lawyer from Richmond who is a strict constitutionalist and thinks the nation was founded on Christian beliefs, managed to cut Thomas Jefferson from a list of figures whose writings inspired revolutions in the late 18th century and 19th century, replacing him with St. Thomas Aquinas, John Calvin and William Blackstone. (Jefferson is not well liked among conservatives on the board because he coined the term “separation between church and state.”)
Also in the changes: Sen. Joe McCarthy's fall from power is redacted in tragic light, saying he was correct about Commie infiltrators and justified in his actions in his witch hunt hearings; the civil rights movement is taught stressing the "unintended consequences" of the movement; and many, many more Christian nips and tucks.
Texas is a huge exporter of textbooks to other states, so don't be surprised when these books end up on your child's desk in Illinois, Washington, or California.
Don't think that it's just Texas changing Jefferson's history. Never once in the
White House's online biography of Jefferson is his fervent support and defense of the separation of church and state mentioned. Never once is it noted that
Jefferson was for religious freedom, yes, but also for freedom from religion. In fact, the White House misrepresents Jefferson's history with a quote from a "private letter" stating: "I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man." This is how the Jefferson bio begins, with a quote stated out of the context of his life as a deist, which in those pre-Darwinian days was someone who did not believe in a personal god as people today do.
Jefferson was not a religious man, and some argue that he was according to today's religious vocabulary, an atheist. Of course, there will be no presentation of these arguments in the history books, thanks to the Republican, conservative Christian dominated Texas school board.
Postscript:
Click here to sign a letter to Texan publishers telling them not to rewrite history.
