No wonder we are in trouble

Wednesday, February 27, 2008

The more I think about a recent situation my brother encountered the more irritated I become. He was helping his daughter with her Social Studies homework (she's in second grade) when he came across this sentence in her textbook: "The Founders formed the government of the United States as a democracy."

Excuse me?

I know this may come as a surprise to many of you, especially considering how much our politicians run around talking about "our democracy," but the United States government is not, and was never intended to be a democracy. In fact, the Founders were quite clear in their disdain of the entire idea of democracy.

Don't believe me? Do a google search for United States Constitution. Once you find a copy, go up to Edit on the tool bar at the top of the screen and go to "Find on this page." Run a search for the word "democracy." I'm going to steal from my brother because I can't write it any better: "In fact, you will not find the word democracy anywhere in the Constitution or in the Declaration of Independence, and if you look further, you will not find any president prior to the 20th century speaking of democracies in positives terms. The word democracy does not appear in an inaugural address or a state of the union address prior to the 20th century."

Does anyone find it interesting that, according to her textbook, our Founders created a democracy and, yet, not a single President mentioned it in an inaugural address for over 100 years?

So, we have a textbook that is being used to teach elementary school children that is factually incorrect. Not a typo. Not some accidental error. Not something that is debatable. Intentional, deliberate false information. As if that isn't scary enough, that book was probably written by a PhD that is teaching at a university somewhere (teaching college kids the same misinformation), it was reviewed and approved by a team of editors by the publisher, it was reviewed and approved by someone at the state board of education, it was reviewed and approved by someone at the local board of education and, finally, it ends up in the hands of a second-grader and is taught as the truth. How many "educated" "professionals" reviewed and approved this book with a lie of this magnitude? Is it any wonder why, in spite of the billions of dollars we spend on education each year, we see no overall improvement in test scores or why US kids coming out of school are getting their butts kicked by kids from around the world educated with a fraction of the resources?

Oh, and if you are in the mood to know another lie that has been forced onto the American public, do a little digging into the "right" to vote. Guess what? There isn't one. Say what? Nowhere in the U.S. Constitution or Bill of Rights does it state that there is an explicit right to vote. There are Amendments that state that you can't be denied a vote because of race, color, or previous condition of servitude (15th Amendment), you can't be denied the right to vote because of your sex (19th Amendment), you can't be denied the right to vote because of failure to pay taxes (24th Amendment) and you can't be denied the right to vote based on your age if you are at least 18 (26th Amendment), but there is nothing that says you have an undeniable right to vote. Why not? Because the folks that wrote the damn thing were smarter than the morons in Washington today and they knew better.

Grrrrrr...enough history for one day. I'm too pissed off over the textbook.