Friday, January 11, 2008

The Americans are doomed.


Thanks to their righttard, wingnut, born again, evangelical overlords ...

A little background first ... the Florida State Board of Education proposed new science standards that would make the teaching of evolution “more in-depth mandatory”. Public meetings are being held so that people can express their support or opposition to the proposal. This is just a sampling of what the evolution opponents have to say (emphasis added):

… Oscar Howard Jr. rises from his chair and approaches the microphone.

Howard, 60, tells the audience he's superintendent of Taylor County school district, a small county about 50 miles south of Tallahassee. He drove nine hours to attend the hearing.

"We're in opposition to teaching evolution as a fact. Evolution continues to be a theory," says Howard, dressed in a suit and tie with a button that says 'Children First.'

Last month Taylor County School Board unanimously approved a resolution saying the district is opposed to teaching evolution as a fact.

He's heard from hundreds of parents who promise to pull their children out of the school system and put them in private schools, if the state approves the changes regarding evolution.

"It's not a religious thing," Howard says. A lifelong churchgoer, Howard says he's never had conflict between his belief in God and what's taught in schools.

Until now.

"That's why I'm here tonight," he says. "I don't have anything against the folks (at the hearing opposing him), but they can't prove a darn thing they're saying."

He worries what would happen if the board approves the measure.

"If they approve it, then we'll have to teach it," Howard says in a passionate southern drawl. "Would we agree, no. But would we teach it, yes, we'd have to."

Sweet tap dancing Jesus, how do you even begin to deal with people this catastrophically stupid?

5 comments:

Ti-Guy said...

Ah, northern Florida.

That guy said...

Oh, hell, that's nothing. Think about this, in the United States, Jonah Goldberg is a public intellectual.

Doomed isn't the half of it.

David Webb said...

Lulu, I think the way to deal with it is to thank these folks for the input (bless their hearts), and to kindly ask them to put their children into private schools. Allow the dumbing-down to take its natural, evolutionary, course. I welcome their desire to opt out of progress and science.

But I am cruel that way.

LuLu said...

Me, too!

And if "bless their hearts" isn't the ultimate back-handed slap, I don't know what is ...

Red Tory said...

LuLu — You really should have visited the Brownback Blog when he was still in the race to get the full force of what a lot of these folks are about. I mean there were big-time loony, non-heliocentric wingnuts running the place. It was both hilarious and downright scary! This old coot with his concerns about evolution being just a "theory" is relatively harmless by comparison.