Oklahoma State Rep. Dan Fisher presumably has an array of tough issues to tackle for his state from unemployment to the environment to crime. However, Fisher has decided to take on the ignoble task of banning Advanced Placement history classes in the state because he objects to the inclusion of negative aspects of American history and the omission of material embracing “American exceptionalism.” As an academic, I have previously criticized politicians (here and here and here and here) intervening in our school system to impose their own values or priorities on educators. This however ranks as one of the worst such intrusions that we have seen.
Oklahoma has been one of the states rejecting the Common Core curriculum for K-12 programs. There are valid arguments for states in insisting on control of such curricula as a general matter even if one disagrees with the merits of objections to the common core. However, this is beyond the pale. AP classes are a mainstay of our educational system and allow students to get truly advanced studies in given subjects. I have argued for years that we need to ramp up such courses on civics and history. It is therefore particularly distressing to read Fisher’s bill. It is not only would deprive these students of advanced courses but it would place Oklahoma students at a serious disadvantage in college applications which put great weight on such courses.
Fisher’s primary objection is that the AP history courses, in his view, emphasize the wrongs about America. However, these courses allow students to study not just the triumphs but the mistakes of history so history does not repeat itself. We are not a great nation because we did not commit errors and even crimes in our past. We are a great nation because we overcome such history, recognized our failings, and become a better nation despite such failings. The Trail of Tears, Alien and Sedition Acts, Japanese internment camps, Red Scare and other dark chapters reveal both our succumbing to fears and our transcending them. Part of AP curricula is to train students to read history in a critical and objective way. Converting our history into some Disney tale will teach students little about our country or themselves.
The “exceptionalism” of this country is precisely that we are not perfect but strive to be better.
FDR was a socialist. Sorry
Yep, that’s why Norway is going to annex the Norwegian speaking part of Finland in the spring. Then it’s on to the invasion of Sweden by fall.
Today the arctic circle, tomorrow the world!
FDR admired Hitler and his accomplishments as a socialist ruler, until the whole taking over of other countries thingie started.
But I don’t agree with either one of you Paul C Schulte and Olly
I think that the National Socialism is Fascism pure and Simple. I think you twist that word around so you can make Crony Capitalism pretty but its not pretty. FDR wanted some of that Pretty Pretty and he got it anyway. He is a disgusting human. Now, was a Socialist. I even knew that as a Child with all of his little organizations like the TVA and his specie picking up.
Like I have said in several threads today and have been ignored as ignorant I guess, lol Democratic Socialism was a decent party before National Socialism came and wiped it out. It was a Center Left Movement. Not all People on the Left are automatic baby killers and atheists. I find these to be red herrings anyway to point away from the true problems of taking away individual liberties.
Yes Pete, I saw that article on all the Duchy’s and Constitutional Monarchy’s and I bet the Finns are pissed being they never had a Monarchy.
Paul C. Schulte wrote: “FDR admired Hitler and his accomplishments as a socialist ruler, until the whole taking over of other countries thingie started.”
People forget that Hitler was Time Magazine man of the year in 1938.
Davidm2575
I don’t know how you were brought up and I am assuming you are ectremely educated, but in my family, Hitler was always Anathema. We did not care that he was on the Front Page of Time. He was a Fascist and we all knew what that was. I was not alive then but my parents and Grandparents were,
“Why does everyone pretend like Socialism comes from one poisonous root?”
happypappies,
Answer your own question, since everyone would include you, Can you have socialism, treat everyone equally under the law and not infringe the natural rights of the citizens?
DBQ,
I had followed your post way up thread by asking where the Federal government gets its authority to establish the Department of Education. We, as a nation, have gotten into the habit of debating issues just like this thread after avoiding the more serious discussion of separation of powers and federalism.
We wouldn’t debate whether the feds should be allowed to rummage through our sock drawer and completely ignore the fact they entered our house without a warrant. So before we discuss the merits of centralized education planning, let’s answer the question on its constitutionality.
Some great female comments this afternoon! And, no drama on any of the threads this afternoon.
Aww gosh shucky darn Nick Blush Blush
Thanks 😉 😉
I wish we could go back to the time when adults could throw a BBQ or a cocktail party and vigorously talk politics, and people would confine themselves (mostly) to mature behavior. People actually talked about ideas, and had differences of opinions, and nobody howled and threw any shoes, or worse. Groups of friends included different political beliefs, and politics was not a taboo subject.
Guess I didn’t read all of your comment Karen. People don’t care about Politics but to screech pretty much and they really don’t care to educate themselves.
The Democratic Party just seems very different than the day when two of my own Grandparents belonged to it.
Pogo – your post about the 1930’s Nazi Platform is chillingly familiar to modern American politics. Gathering power in the Executive Branch, no more freedom of the press, going after the jobs of those who don’t toe the party line.
If we do not learn from history we are doomed to repeat it.
DBQ – great post. The government does not know what’s “good” for us. Look at the Food Pyramid which was just recently proven completely wrong. And now they’re mandating only 2% or less milk be served to children, contemporaneously with studies that show that fat free milk has oxidized cholesterol and was historically used to fatten hogs.
Happy – I agree with you that people arrive at socialism from different angles. Some of it is “nanny state” cradle to grave socialism, some of it is industrialized socialism. It all sounds so wonderful – being cared for without having to do anything. And the experiments all end the same way.
One of the uncomfortable aspects of WWII is that for many of the lead up years, we were in denial about what was happening. It was another Socialist movement, and much of what they were talking about was taking place here. Eugenics was practiced here in the states, where the deaf, handicapped, and even kids who stayed out too late would be sterilized. The Holocaust was an example of one of “unintended” consequences and how ideas can come to terrible conclusions. It’s hard to believe nowadays that anyone was forcibly sterilized here in the US, but that was what was done in the day.
Powerful centralized government, which also controlled major industry, eugenics, and wounded pride after losing WWI was fertile ground for “strange fruit.”
What I find interesting, as an observer to meltdowns around the Web, is that the Left calls the Right Fascist Nazis, but the Left seems to be copying the Fascists in gathering power to the Executive Branch, turning the IRS against its own citizens, etc.
Not good.
Karen
I don’t know what to say to get through your rose glasses and reserve cause I like you so much and you are sweet.
There are no good old days. Perhaps those were good for you. They were awful for the people in East Germany. And the history we are not supposed to talk about. Crony Capitalism with Hitler
WARSAW, Poland (August 19,19999:43 a.m. EDT http://www.nandotimes.com)-FordMotorCo.is
listed along with nearly 500 other companies that had links to the Auschwitz death camp,
which supplied Nazi Germany with slave laborers during World War II, officials said
Thursday.
The list, based on newly released Nazi documents from Russia, doesn’t give information on
the exact link each company had to the notorious death camp, where some 1.1 million
people died.
The list includes both companies that used slave labor and those that inquired about using workers from Auschwitz, said Auschwitz museum historians compiling the list.
Apart from Ford’s German subsidiary, German industrial giants such as Krupp, Siemens, IG
Farben and M.A.N. also are named.
Ford has acknowledged slave labor was used at its Cqlogne, Germany plant during the war, but says it had lost control of its German operations,.during World War II. / \ “There’s no question that the.Nazis assigned forced labor to the Cologne plant,” said Ford spokesman Jim Vella. “It was out of our control. … (But) we don’t have anything in our research that pertains to workers from Auschwitz.1I
Barbara Jarosz, the head of Auschwitz museum archives, said she had no details about Ford’s link to Auschwitz. Jarosz said archivists are still reviewing the documents to establish names of slave laborers, which will provide evidence for compensation claims.
Auschwitz museum historians are compiling the list based on newly released Nazi documents received from Russia, where part of the camp archive has been kept since 1945. ‘
The newly available documents include construction plans, orders for raw materials or services, invoices and reports from work on the death camp that the Nazis started building· in 1940. They also include lists of workers. including camp inmates, used by some companies, Jarosz said.
8/19/99http://www.nando.net/noframes/story/0.21 07,83662-132227 -923299-0,00.html
I can’t sit and say that Capitalism that is Crony to this is not evil incarnate
6997222-articles-august-1999-2
One thing I am confused about and I am sure I will be judged by admitting it.
Why does everyone pretend like Socialism comes from one poisonous root? And, if you feel it does, I would like it described to me anyway. It is amazing to me how no one answers questions like this. There are no stupid questions you know?
National Socialism and Democratic Socialism were nothing alike. Perhaps one might right off the fact of my naivete which is common, and ignore the question, which is also common, but why not indulge someone who hasa been snowed in for 8 days and humor them.
Does this happen because we have to cover up our misdeeds in the past with Nazi Germany when our Captains of Industry sold them engines for their trucks? I am confused. Does this fall under the History we should and should not teach our Children.
Perhaps if we just told them “why” without glossing it over, a child does not judge like an adult you know, they would be forgiving. It is us, after all that teaches our children how to hate. That is something you will never change my mind on unless you get a holographic quantum computer up and show me the wave theory that proves it. – Wait – I get it whoever read this. As far as smart types that probably thought I couldn’t figure out how to read the Biocomputer reading the DNA with the 7 rules of thermodynamics
Okay, I changed my mind. you can know what people are going to be like by their nature.
happypappies wrote: “Why does everyone pretend like Socialism comes from one poisonous root? And, if you feel it does, I would like it described to me anyway.”
The poisonous root of socialism is the concept of equality, that we are all equal. From this concept stems the idea that fairness is for everybody to have the same income and same standard of living. While on the surface it sounds like a good idea that we all could agree with, in practice it is unworkable because it is contrary to human nature. People all have different talents and different abilities. The desire for those talents is not equal either, and the needs of society for what neighbors can provide for each other changes over time. This leads to the need sometimes for people to reposition themselves to labor in a way that meets a need rather than what they would like to be doing in life. Ultimately, socialism leads to the need to force their ideal of equality upon everybody, which leads to lost freedom and some minorities losing big time. Some socialists have tried to use the ideal of fascism to bring socialism about, while others have sought to do it through the democratic process and big government. Basically they have the government redistribute wealth through hefty regulations whereby they have lots of free giveaways to the people. As the people want more free stuff, they vote democratic socialists into office. Of course, the motivation for all these votes is personal greed, but they cloak it in the garb of caring for and taking care of everyone in society. It is a deception that does not actually help the individuals become stronger and better people. It makes people lazy and unproductive, leading to economic collapse. In the short term it looks nice and going in the right direction, but in the long term it is destructive. All forms of socialism are unsustainable except for those forms which focus upon the individual and his freedom to contribute voluntarily to the good of society as a whole.
Davidm2575
All men are created equal – yes, I suppose that one of the perversions of Socialism could be and is that everyone should have and equal income, which is childish.
Now, when I grew up, what “All men are created equal” meant was equal opportunity, Which is what I hope we have going on here in the USA.
I still remember the Horatio Alger Meme from Civics in the 9th grade that I found fascinating and still do. I wonder if they still hold it up Ragged Dick is a fourteen-year-old bootblack – he smokes, drinks occasionally, and sleeps on the streets – but he is anxious “to turn over a new leaf, and try to grow up “‘spectable””. He won’t steal under any circumstances, and many gentlemen who are impressed with this virtue (and his determination to succeed) offer their aid. Mr. Greyson, for example, invites him to church and Mr. Whitney gives him five dollars for performing a service. Dick uses the money to open a bank account and to rent his first apartment. He fattens his bank account by practicing frugality and is tutored by his roommate Fosdick in the three R’s. When Dick rescues a drowning child, the grateful father rewards him with a new suit and a job in his mercantile firm. With this final event, Richard is “cut off from the old vagabond life which he hoped never to resume”, and henceforth will call himself Richard Hunter, Esq.
I am sure you remember that. lol. I am not an advocate of Socialism in the form of government programs to tax the rich to feed the poor. But I do think everyone needs a start in life and we can give them a chance. A few months. But that’s it. And if there are starving children, research that please.
But the problem is that everyone keeps ignoring imo is that Hitler’s Government was not Left wing. Not any more than The Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea is a Democracy.
To say that every single moderate Socialistic Government is a Totalitarian Regime is not true. I am sure I will get attacked for this statement. I don’t consider Canada, and Australia Totalitarian. I am sorry.
David-I read all your post again and I realize you are repeating yourself
I agree with you about the Nanny State and think our Welfare System needs to be overhauled – that being said – I don’t think Socialists turn into Fascists. I think Opportunists watch the Regimes where there was oppression to step in and and become the leaders by Oppression as they consider the “peasants” a lower class.
In the late 19th century many conservative nationalists were philosophical idealists who accused liberals and socialists of materialism and thereby portrayed their own politics as more spiritual. Other 19th-century thinkers propagated some protofascist ideas while rejecting others. Nietzsche rhapsodized about the heroic vitality of elite souls who were uninhibited by Christian ethics or liberal humanitarianism, but he was appalled by völkisch nationalism and anti-Semitism. Similarly, Sorel preached violence as an antidote for decadence—an idea that Mussolini admired—but his economic thought was too socialistic for most fascists.
Racial Darwinists glorified the survival of the fittest,and scolded humanitarians for attempting to protect the racially unfit, and rejected the idea of social equality.
happypappies – I am linking the source document of the 25 things the National Socialists demanded as a party.
Program of the German Workers’ Party (1920)
On January 5, 1919, locksmith Anton Drexler and sports journalist Karl Harrer founded the German Workers’ Party [Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or DAP] in Munich. Harrer served as Reich party chairman and Drexler as chair of the Munich regional group. The administrative activities of the DAP were supposed to repose in an executive committee. In his role as an informant for the “Information Department” of the Bavarian Reichswehr Group Commando No. 4, Hitler visited a DAP meeting on September 12, 1919. He then joined the party’s executive committee in the second half of the month. At first, Hitler promoted the party and was active as a speaker. Together with Drexler, who took over as chairman after Harrer left the DAP on January 5, 1920, Hitler drafted the party program. Its economic-political sections, particularly the formulation “breaking the interest slavery” [Brechung der Zinsknechtschaft], can be traced back to the engineer Gottfried Feder. There also are significant similarities with the 1918 draft program “for the foundation of a German socialist party” by engineer Alfred Brunner. On the whole, the twenty-five points demonstrate the NSDAP’s melding of nationalist and socialist ideas into a völkisch rhetoric intended to appeal to masses of Germans.
http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/sub_document.cfm?document_id=3910
You will have to a next page click to get all 25 socialist demands of Hitler.
I’m reposting a comment I made on this subject early on in this thread before we went out of town for the night. Quite sure it has been lost in the pile of irrelevant comments and drama from certain quarters.
I feel very strongly that the States have the right to determine the appropriate curriculum according to the desires of the people IN their State and that the federal government does not possess the power to control a national education program. The Federal Government is wildly overstepping its authority in this and many other issues. They must be curbed and this is what I am hoping will result with Professor Turley’s participation in the House of Representatives lawuit.
Repost———>
“Since this is a LAW blog and this is a Constitutional issue we might consider those aspects of this, instead of squabbling between ourselves and hurling personal insults .
I believe in the 10th amendment as being one of the most important in the Bill of Rights and is one that the States are going to need to use more and more to keep the Federal Government in check.
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people To the states OR to the people
The Tenth Amendment (Amendment X) to the United States Constitution, which is part of the Bill of Rights, was ratified on December 15, 1791.[1] It expresses the principle of federalism, which undergirds the entire plan of the original Constitution, by stating that the federal government possesses only those powers delegated to it by the states or the people. In drafting this amendment, its framers had two purposes in mind: first, as a necessary rule of construction; and second, as a reaffirmation of the nature of the federal system.
There is NO where in the Constitution the power of the Federal Government to micromanage the education system. No power to even mandate a national education system or any power to DEMAND that the States comply with a Federal Education System. Those powers reside in the STATES or to THE PEOPLE.
Each State is within their rights to create, manage and maintain a system that THEY and the people in the individual State agree with. As a private citizen one of THE PEOPLE, we should also have the right to disagree with the State’s curriculum and either choose alternate schools from the State’s system, (charter schools, private schools) or go to a home schooling program.
If you don’t like the laws in Oklahoma or any other State, you have the right to try to change those or move to another State more to your liking. This is the beauty of the Federal System. Each State, while being part of the whole, is also a unique and separate entity.”
DBQ, that was a nice exposition of the Tenth Amendment and its application to education. The same arguments can be made regarding the institution of marriage. The problem is that pesky Fourteenth Amendment and the way the high court has used it to craft any law they desire. The court has lost respect for the other branches of government, so we have lost our system of checks and balances that the framers of our government had envisioned. We are no longer a nation under law. The Fourteenth and Sixteenth Amendments have given the federal authorities all the power they need to become tyrants over the States and the people. Congress could fix this, but they won’t, because it would mean personal political suicide. Two-thirds of the States could convene to fix this, but they have not because they have become too dependent upon the federal money that is funneled to them.
Olly, Isaac is a good new example from my perspective, anyway. I disagree w/ him on much, we have butted heads, but he is rational and of good humor. And, he has SUBSTANCE to offer, not just all drama all the time.
I would love to teach a History Class with Pogo Hears a Who
Darn auto correct. “Unifiable” was supposed to be “infireable.”
although, some people have a tendency to get off the issue, I think, in most cases, we agree that history must and should state cause and effect as well as compare and contrast in order to teach the full spectrum of American History, Plus, important people, events, and documents need to be included in AP History books, something Common Core has conveniently left out.
Common Core is already in need of reform–like the Affordable Care Act.
So, State Rep, Dan Fisher is not completely wrong in his argument.
Annie wrote: “LOL, I knew it wouldn’t take long for you to express admiration for Hitler’s policies.”
LOL. And I knew it would not take you long to illustrate Godwin’s Law.
Poor Nick. Always on the outside…….watching……watching.
Somebody please stop this lawmaker from interfering in the curriculum of our schools, leave them to the experts. They are no body to decide, what is positive and what is not.
Karen, Stop making those substantive, informed, common sense comments.
Yes indeed, the redefinition of fascism to socialism is new and it has been done by the right, not the left.