Words Fail

I’ve been following the protests in Colorado over efforts to make that state’s AP History course “more patriotic.” A part of the backstory has just emerged, and it is absolutely appalling.

One of the members of Colorado’s state Board of Education arguing for “more patriotism” in the curriculum cited the “fact” that the United States voluntarily ended slavery proved “American execptionalism” and argued that this perspective should be taught to students.

Here is her Facebook post complaining that the AP U.S. History curriculum downplays America’s “noble history.”

As an example, I note our slavery history. Yes, we practiced slavery. But we also ended it voluntarily, at great sacrifice, while the practice continues in many countries still today! Shouldn’t our students be provided that viewpoint? This is part of the argument that America is exceptional. Does our APUSH Framework support or denigrate that position?

And this–this!–from a woman who sits on the Colorado Board of Education.

Words fail.

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Stop the World I Want to Get Off…Political Edition

If at first you don’t secede…..

Apparently, according to a report from CBS, folks in Northern Colorado are so unhappy with the elitist pinko liberals in Denver, that they are seriously .talking about seceding. They propose to create a 51st state, and are inviting like-minded folk in Nebraska and maybe Kansas to join them.

Readers of this blog know that I frequently pontificate about the dangers of an “us-versus-them” worldview, but it’s increasingly obvious that Americans come in (at least) two very different flavors: oh-my-god terrified and reality-based. The OMG terrified folks wake up each morning to a world that is increasingly multicultural, increasingly technological, increasingly complex, and they want off. This wasn’t what they bargained for, they don’t want to understand it, they don’t like it, and they definitely don’t like the people who seem to accept, deal with and even welcome the scary changes.

They want out.

These are the people most disoriented by the presence of a black guy in the White House….not necessarily because they’re racists (although many are), but because Obama is a symbol of a “new world order,” a symbol of the immensity and rapidity of the hated change. These are the people who were most vicious about Nancy Pelosi when she was Speaker–a woman running the House? Unnatural! These are the people who find “illegals” from south of the border immensely more threatening than those from Canada because they’re brown and speak a different language.

While the rest of us are just trying to cope with a changing world–trying to figure out how to live together on a planet getting smaller every day (and not incidentally, trying to figure out how to save that planet for our children and grandchildren), they are frantically looking for a way back to a simpler past and a world they can understand.

It’s not going to happen. And that makes them crazy.

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