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Tennessee Tea Party to Children: What Slaves?
Showing a marked aversity for anything remotely resembling the truth, Tennessee Tea Party leaders have issued "demands" to state legislators that schools stop teaching - through "neglect and outright ill-will" - all that bad stuff about our fine Founding Fathers like the "made-up criticism" that maybe they owned slaves or killed Indians or did other icky things, and that, “No portrayal of minority experience in the history which actually occurred shall obscure the experience or contributions of the Founding Fathers, or the majority of citizens.” This, after Texas approved 100 revisions to textbooks for its almost five million kids that would rename slave trade "Atlantic triangular trade," explore the "unintended consequences" of affirmative action," emphasize the role of the Christian Chuch in the nation's founding, call for studying iconic conservatives like Phyllis Schlafly and The Moral Majority, and otherwise twist "history" to their liking.
"We seek to compel the teaching (of) the truth regarding the history of our nation and the nature of its government.”
20 Comments so far
Show AllSo this is what the descendants of the illegal "immigrants"- genocidal slavers look like and it looks like they may have found their messiah in the overtly racist Professor of Revisionist History running for President. This has echoes of what was done to the children of the First Nations through the same racist "educational" system of "killing the Indian". A storm is coming...
why, oh why, did the South lose the Civil War?
They seriously NEED to be another country.
As long as we're rewriting history, why can't we pencil in THAT change?
A century later, I'm not sure they did lose anymore...
Wage slavery beat chattel slavery. That's the nub of it, I think.
Didn't you know? They did not lose the "Civil" War, the Confederacy lost "The War of Northern Aggression". That is what someone from Alabama told me. Or, as it is ironically stated on a "Civil" war uniform display in the St. Augustine Pirate and Treasure Museum, the "Second War for Independence".
When I become President of the United States, I'll make it mandatory that all history classes use Howard Zinn's "A People's History of the United States: 1492 to Present" as their textbook.
dvoconnor:
.......I'm voting for you, baby!
Oh no you can't do that...it requires people to think...bad idea and worse..it asks the reader to see things from someone else's point of view leading to subversive 'feelings' like empathy, compassion, weaknesses all! There is I think a Young People's History of the US' by the way! Ought to be on the banned books list!
I'll vote for you!
"The seventh and eight graders who entered my New York City classroom in the 1950s knew their slavery lessons cold. "Slaves didn't really mind it," said one, "because it wasn't so bad." "If they didn't like it, they would have revolted," said another. "Slavery was really like a kind of social security, " said a third. No one seemed to disagree with these views that they had been taught in elementary school." [ William Loren Katz, Breaking the Chains: Slavery and Slave Resistance page xii, Atheneum, New York, 1990] An this was in New York City after World War II.
Tennessee Tea Baggers = Ku Klux Klan. The KKK was founded in Pulaski, TN.
The comments that followed the source article in the Memphis Commercial Appeal were overwhelmingly critical of this silliness.
A more representative display of the Memphis community occurred last November when a local Tea Party group invited members of Occupy Memphis to meet with them to talk about the goals of the Occupy movement. A scheduled half hour meeting turned into a civil, two hour dialog typified by the comment:
"It sounds to me that y'all ought to be joining us," said Jerry Rains, a 64-year-old computer programmer and tea party member. "You have a lot of the same goals we have, which is to take our country back."
I strongly recommend the full story:
http://news.yahoo.com/occupy-memphis-tea-party-members-meet-084306417.html
Among the many intelligent comments that follow this story:
"Uh oh... a career politician's worst nightmare. People of differing opinions finding common ground."
Elsewhere, Occupy Nashville hosted Young Republicans to participate in a similar event... and served cookies.
Something's definitely happening here and it doesn't involve revisionist history served up by a splinter group.
Good news. I hope OWS doesn't give up its central message, which is campaign finance reform. (didn't know they had a central message? Considering who owns our media, I'm not surprised). While the Tea Party has some serious grass-roots support, its run by the Koch Brothers, and whoever else has the $$$ to run it. Hence, though it preaches independence, it is led by the nose by oil billionaires. Ever read 'Animal Farm'? The Tea Party reminds me of those horses.
I read Animal Farm. But since then I read The Starfish and The Spider. Check the Wikipedia article on that book for some interesting insights on the OWS dynamic and how docile horses can become mustangs.
In Nazi Germany it was called propaganda or brainwashing. In the southern US it is called education. Never mind that we committed genocide on the native Americans to get their lands, then worked those lands with Africans who were conscripted to become property of the inbred, ignorant plantation owners of the day. Look at the South today ...nothing has really changed.
I'm not surprised at all. When I lived in Kentucky, Tn's neighbor, I learned that one had to have a master's degree to teach any level K-12. BUT they allowed home schooling which required zero educated, zero math or reading ability, non-existent parental smarts. And about one third of the kids were home schooled. On top of that some 300,000 women were not allowed to vote because their husbands refused them registration. And this was this century...this one.
I do hope plenty of you are witnessing the attempts to banish child labor laws. They could so easily say, 'well, if you want the manufacturing to come home from China or Honduras, you have to let us have cheap labor, your kids, as they can't afford our private schools anyway.' Then there will be a banishment of contraception so you ladies can spew out a bunch of laborers...any of this sounding familiar...? Then comes the plague.
Tea Party = Old, White, and Stupid
"No slavery in the USA!" Hey these people just have to get out more often. The British sovereign got it started bringing the slaves over here from Africa to the 13 colonies North and South. Then the USA kept contrary to Thomas Jefferson's wishes. Yes, the original draft attacked slavery and the German Hannover dynasty on the British throne for the monarch's part in it as waging a "war against nature itself," referring sardonically to the "Christian King of Britain."
Let's see... Free ride over here, guaranteed job for life with housing, meals, and clothing provided, plus encouragement to make as many babies as you can. an don't have to go to no school or get any edjewcatin..... l didnt kno bout youall but sounds like the "Liebrel" ajenda ta me.
I don't know whether or not to be outraged by what you said, or fall about laughing at one of the most funnily f'ed up descriptions of slavery that I've ever read.