JOHN LOCKE

Okay Folks. It's Sunday and time for Dikky's Sermons.

I came to Richfield, the home of the American Dream in the fourth grade. Everybody in Richfield was white and if there were any of the Hebrew Faith, I never heard about it. Restrictive covenants abounded and every body was made safe from diversity and reality.

The only overt racism I recall were mumblings that some Hispanics had moved into town and they all had head lice. That was the scuttle on the play ground.

Oh and Polish jokes. I just knew that Poles were good Catholics like me and I never understood the jokes.

I walked a total of three blocks to school if I recall. A small A-Frame Lutheran Church stood between my house and the school. I had to walk my brothers through the church parking lot and into the school parking lot.

Every Thursday Afternoon, lunch lasted an extra hour. A small portion of the students just 'stayed behind' while the majority marched over to the A-Frame to be inducted into God's Cause. I guess my church, which was five blocks away did not have a prayer program.  I had not thought about it, but it would seem that the Catholics and the secret Jews were the ones left behind.

I could not figure out why the rest of the kids could not just go to Catechism on Saturdays like me.

Now, prior to all this, in the first grade I was in some Minneapolis school and every Friday, we would all go to the corner and listen to this lady, this really sad lady, read from the Bible. I wrote about this before.

But every time that I remember, and I mean every Friday, this lady with tears in her eyes would tell me that the end of the world was coming and, as far as I could tell, there would be no need to prepare for class on Monday because the end was nigh.

I recall being real worried about it, but my short term memory was not any better than it is now; so within an hour after school I was riding my bike and having a jolly old time.  I do recall thinking long and hard about this lady though every time I viewed those movies where the big bomb went off and all the kids hid under their desks.

Now, Catechism was another hoot. I recall some parent would lead the class and a priest would come in to take questions for ten minutes. I had not seen Inherit the Wind, but I know I would disrupt things by asking the priest who Cain married since I could count and stuff like that. And I do recall vividly asking why Jesus would plead that this cup should pass by his lips. I could not comprehend the line because if Jesus was God, always had been God and always would be God, what in the hell was he afraid of?

The priest would then speak about faith and I would kind of fade away. All I could think of was: I do not get this.

But looking at the bigger picture, there were many silly things that 'they' tried to teach me in school. I learned about the INCIDENT AT THE TREE OF CHERRIES and I thought it was a bunch of crap. Who the fuck cares about cutting down cherry trees and why the fuck did he cut down the cherry tree in the first place? And what were the alternatives available to the Father of our Country when confronted by his dad? Would he have blamed the massacre on one of the slaves?

And if we really were the good guys, why in god's name were we the only ones to drop huge bombs that evaporated cities and sent children to hide under their desks?

I have discussed some of these matters in prior posts but it puts the subject at hand in better perspective for me.

TPMCafe sends me over to the NYT for a discussion of the battles going on at the Texas Board of Education. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/14/magazine/14texbooks-t.html?adxnnl=1&ref=magazine&adxnnlx=1266005956-KdwVDre8CY2eC7oZYYkaEw

This is a hell of a ride, but I came away with a better attitude I think after reading it.  The following points were of interest to me.

This sent me into hysterics:

Finally, the board considered an amendment to require students to evaluate the contributions of significant Americans. The names proposed included Thurgood Marshall, Billy Graham, Newt Gingrich, William F. Buckley Jr., Hillary Rodham Clinton and Edward Kennedy. All passed muster except Kennedy, who was voted down.

I mean the board figures out who you are going to study for twelve or thirteen years. I really want our progeny to know about how Graham kept us safe from the Hebrew menace. And every one knows how much more important Billy the Buckley was to our nation than some silly liberal who sat in the Senate of the United States of America for half a century.

The state's $22 billion education fund is among the largest educational endowments in the country. Texas uses some of that money to buy or distribute a staggering 48 million textbooks annually -- which rather strongly inclines educational publishers to tailor their products to fit the standards dictated by the Lone Star State.

Always follow the money folks. Always. And you can bet there are 'nonprofit' church based text book manufacturers out there, paying no taxes and amassing huge profits while funneling them to huge Protestant edifices after the hypocrites reap in their 'salaries'.

One strategy was to put candidates forward for state and local school-board elections -- Robertson's protégé, Ralph Reed, once said, "I would rather have a thousand school-board members than one president and no school-board members" -- and Texas was a beachhead. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/14/magazine/14texbooks-t.html?adxnnl=1&ref=magazine&adxnnlx=1266005956-KdwVDre8CY2eC7oZYYkaEw

See, besides the propaganda angle, WHERE'S THE FRICKIN MONEY?

The conservative Christian bloc wanted to require science teachers to cover the "strengths and weaknesses" of the theory of evolution, language they used in the past as a tool to weaken the rationale for teaching evolution. The battle made headlines across the country; ultimately, the seven Christian conservatives were unable to pull another vote their way on that specific point, but the finished document nonetheless allows inroads to creationism. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/14/magazine/14texbooks-t.html?pagewanted=3&ref=magazine&adxnnlx=1266005956-KdwVDre8CY2eC7oZYYkaEw

This is disturbing. How in the fuck are they going to prepare students for college to enter fields like geology, chemistry, biology, medicine, physics, astronomy and the like if the kids think the earth is six thousand years old. Oh they will tell you the creative design (which I thought was a continuing series on Bravo) is not fundamentalism and micro evolution is a 'for sure'; it is just macro evolution which is evilution....Bullshit.

In his reply(to nutso Baptists), Jefferson said it was not the place of the president to involve himself in religion, and he expressed his belief that the First Amendment's clauses -- that the government must not establish a state religion (the so-called establishment clause) but also that it must ensure the free exercise of religion (what became known as the free-exercise clause) -- meant, as far as he was concerned, that there was "a wall of separation between Church & State."

This wall has been the point of contention in this country since I was a boy and it will continue to be. I understand that. But here is where I think there is room for discussion with these nutwads:          

"In American history, religion is all over the place, and wherever it appears, you should tell the story and do it appropriately," says Martin Marty, emeritus professor at the University of Chicago, past president of the American Academy of Religion and the American Society of Church History and perhaps the unofficial dean of American religious historians. "The goal should be natural inclusion. You couldn't tell the story of the Pilgrims or the Puritans or the Dutch in New York without religion." Though conservatives would argue otherwise, James Kracht said the absence of religion is not part of a secularist agenda: "I don't think religion has been purposely taken out of U.S. history, but I do think textbook companies have been cautious in discussing religious beliefs and possibly getting in trouble with some groups  http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/14/magazine/14texbooks-                                          

 

I don't care what the late great Madalyn Murray O'Hair thought. You cannot ignore religion when you teach history. To paraphrase Mark Twain:

The Baptists hate the Presbyterians, the Presbyterians hate the Congregationalists, all the Protestants hate the Catholics and everybody hates the Jews.

These real walls of consciousness have had quite an effect upon this nation over the last four hundred years. I have witnessed stunning changes in the propaganda of the religious over the last sixty years.  Most of the time, Robertson has really muted his hatred--absolute hatred--for the Pope. And his hatred--absolute hatred--for the Jewish Faith. I mean this is stunning to me.

Times have changed. Bishop Sheen represented a liberal view from the Roman Catholic Church in this country. He would be a staunch conservative today, of course.

http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/blogs/dikkday48yahoocom/2009/04/05-week/

I think the issue of abortion somehow brought all of Christianity together. A truce was called. And I do not think that is such a bad thing. Ancient hatreds have kind of faded. I know it would be better for my party to have all these hypocrites fighting and killing each other....but from a humane standpoint, this development is of import.

And these divisions have to be taught in our schools. After all, why was Al Smith not elected as President of the United States? Why were people shocked when John F. Kennedy was nominated by the Democrats in 1960?

And the immigrants from Europe came here fleeing Popes and kings who acted like popes.

And there were movements in the person of the No-Nothings that cannot be understood unless a good examination is made of the religious and racist components of those movements.

Now do not get me wrong. I understand who the enemy is. I mean some really fascist capitalist mongering evil people are the foundation of this Education Movement.

In 1933, Jerry Falwell was born in Lynchburg, the son of a sometime bootlegger. In 1971 -- in an era of pot smoking and war protests -- the Rev. Jerry Falwell inaugurated Liberty University on one of the city's seven hills. It was to be a training ground for Christians and a bulwark against moral relativism. In 2004, three years before his death, Falwell completed another dream by founding the Liberty University School of Law, whose objective, in the words of the university's current chancellor, Jerry Falwell Jr., is "to transform legislatures, courts, commerce and civil government at all levels." http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/14/magazine/14texbooks-t.html?pagewanted=7&ref=magazine&adxnnlx=1266005956-KdwVDre8CY2eC7oZYYkaEw

Falwell's legacy thrives, Robertson and others have personally gained hundreds of millions of dollars taking the lead from the Elmer Gantrys who started all this How To Make Real Money On Christ crap.

But swords sometimes cut both ways. I was most intrigued by this visiting Texas Professor to Christ U in Falwell country:

I had come to sit in on a guest lecture by Cynthia Dunbar, an assistant law professor who commutes to Lynchburg once a week from her home in Richmond, Tex., where she is a practicing lawyer as well as a member of the Texas board of education. Her presence in both worlds -- public schools and the courts -- suggests the connection between them that Christian activists would like to deepen. The First Amendment class for third-year law students that I watched Dunbar lead neatly merged the two components of the school's program: "lawyering skills" and "the integration of a Christian worldview."

In developing a line of legal reasoning that the future lawyers in her class might use, she wove her way to two Supreme Court cases in the 1960s, in both of which the court ruled that prayer in public schools was unconstitutional. A student questioned the relevance of the 1777 event to the court rulings, because in 1777 the country did not yet have a Constitution. "And what did we have at that time?" Dunbar asked. Answer: "The Declaration of Independence." She then discussed a legal practice called "incorporation by reference." "When you have in one legal document reference to another, it pulls them together, so that they can't be viewed as separate and distinct," she said. "So you cannot read the Constitution distinct from the Declaration." And the Declaration famously refers to a Creator and grounds itself in "the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God." Therefore, she said, the religiosity of the founders is not only established and rooted in a foundational document but linked to the Constitution. From there she moved to "judicial construction and how you should go forward with that," i.e., how these soon-to-be lawyers might work to overturn rulings like that against prayer in schools by using the founding documents. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/14/magazine/14texbooks-t.html?pagewanted=7&ref=magazine&adxnnlx=1266005956-KdwVDre8CY2eC7oZYYkaEw

I could talk with this lady. I could not, cannot speak with Robertson or Heggie or any of these nuts ABOUT ANYTHING. I think Bono could because he could sit down with Helms or Bush and get legislation passed.  I could not. These people turn me into Christopher Hitchens as soon as I see their smirks on MSM. But I could talk with this lady.

The religious movements in this country were responsible for sanctifying slavery as well as abolishing it.  Promoting racism and easing the pain of racism. Supporting the corporate oligarchy and raising arms against it.

When religious zealots begin by referring to the Declaration of Independence as one of the foundations for our Constituion and our laws...I embrace the reference. Garry Wills wrote a book entitled:

Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words That Remade America written by Garry Wills and published by Simon & Schuster in 1992, won the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction[1] and the 1992 National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism.[2]

The book uses Lincoln's notably short speech at Gettysburg to examine his rhetoric overall. In particular, Wills compares Lincoln's speech to Edward Everett's delivered on the same day, focusing on the influences of the Greek revival in the United States and 19th century transcendentalist thought. Wills also argues that Lincoln's speech draws from his interpretation of the Constitution; Lincoln considered the Declaration of Independence the first founding document, and therefore looked to its emphasis on equality (changing Locke's phrase "Life, Liberty, and Property" to "Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness") in issuing the Emancipation Proclamation.

I read this book years ago when it came out and Wiki's summary does it justice.  I did a long discussion of this months and months ago.These are Southern 'Intellectuals' who are embracing the philosophy of Abraham Lincoln.

I mean their forefathers would not even celebrate Lincoln's Birthday for Chrissakes. Lincoln was the devil incarnate. And yet his entire Gettysburg Address grasped this inclusion theory.

http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/blogs/dikkday48yahoocom/2009/05/17-week/

I sometimes (sometimes? Hell most of the time) just want to scream at these religious zealots.

But the religious zealots have discarded the racial card and the religious discrimination card. I mean they understand the importance of Political Correctness and this has an effect on the teaching of our young-uns.

Oh they still  wish to kill all Muslims and they still love to make fun of Buddhists and such. But to see the religious right latch onto the single most important phrase in all our nation's history is remarkable:

...endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

I would be more than happy to sit down and attempt to reason with Dunbar. There has to be some point where we can sit and quietly discuss a subject or two.

I was going to wrap it up here, but then I remembered the purpose of this blog.

MOST OF THE KIDS ARE NOT GOING TO LISTEN TO THE TEACHERS IN THEIR PUBLIC SCHOOLS ANYWAY.  Most of them will continue to think about sex and fast food and pornographic game machines and space movies and the E channel and their twitters  and such.