Meet the Crusader Behind Texas' Textbook Whitewash

The plan in Texas to rewrite history textbooks to fit a right-wing agenda could pass this week. The Guardian spoke with the evangelical Christian lawyer behind the push, Cynthia Dunbar, who has plenty of interesting ways of looking at history.

Dunbar was elected to the state board of education for her evangelical Christian credentials, but no real surprise there because we already know that Texas has a large number of crazies in positions of power. A proponent of home and Christian private schooling, Dunbar says that sending kids to public schools is like "throwing them in to the enemy's flames." But because of the sheer number of the state's textbook purchases, the changes suggested by Dunbar could eventually reach most of the states in America.

In an interview with The Guardian, Dunbar says:

In Texas we have certain statutory obligations to promote patriotism and to promote the free enterprise system. There seems to have been a move away from a patriotic ideology. There seems to be a denial that this was a nation founded under God. We had to go back and make some corrections."

What kind of corrections? Some pretty big ones!

• Remember that thing called the slave trade? Well, it turns out what you learned was all wrong, because it wasn't some evil buying and selling of human beings, it was simply "Atlantic triangular trade."
  
• The Civil Rights Movement created "unrealistic expectations of equal outcomes" for minorities in America. And Martin Luther King, Jr? Pretty much a Black Panther.
  
• Thomas Jefferson? He was an insignificant, God-hating heathen who made sure that church and state remained separate.
  
• Senator Joe McCarthy was right to go after the Godless commies in Hollywood and Washington. He will be vindicated.
  
• The right to bear arms is essential to democracy and kids really need to learn this in school.
  
• Sir Isaac Newton didn't know shit. We have military technology to thank for America's successes in science. So please, take the time to write Lockheed Martin and let them know that you appreciate everything they do for America.
  
• Along with military technology, America can only flourish economically through "minimal government intrusion and taxation."
  
• Capitalism was once a great word, but has been dragged through the mud by liberals. We now call it "free enterprise."
  
• The Israel-Palestine conflict? Blame the whole thing on a bunch of dang fundamentalist Muslims.
  
• Moses had a greater influence on the US Constitution than Thomas Jefferson did.
  

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http://gawker.com/5540483/meet-the-crusader-behind-texas-textbook-whitewash

Poor New Mexico caught between a rock and a hard place!

No one asks you to explain
The textbook by your side, Cyndi baby....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xuNYEUYtD8c

How dare this uneducated, rabid right-winger attempt to speak for me and many other Texans.

I simply cannot believe that the rest of the country will buy these textbooks regardless of the influence of the large market in Texas.

This Dunbar lady is nuttier than a fruitcake. I have no doubt that she would light the first match at a good old fashioned book burning.

Melvin Nolan Freeman Gabler (January 5, 1915 - December 19, 2004) and his wife, Norma Elizabeth Rhodes Gabler (June 16, 1923 - July 22, 2007) were campaigners against public school textbooks which they regarded as "anti-family" or "anti-Christian".

The couple began their work in 1961 at their kitchen table in Hawkins, a small town in Wood County in northeastern Texas, after they claimed to have uncovered numerous errors in a son's history text. They established the nonprofit organization, Educational Research Analysts, a conservative Christian interest group based in Longview, the seat of Gregg County in east Texas.

Educational Research Analysts claims to uncover factual errors and examples of secular humanism, or the censorship of conservative political or social views in textbooks. Neal Frey, who worked with the Gablers since 1972 and now runs the organization, said that the Gablers' network of national supporters was invaluable to the cause. The organization has had national impact because Texas is second to California in population and is one of twenty-two states with a textbook-approval process which influences decisions made by other smaller states.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mel_and_Norma_Gabler

The 'corrections' you listed can't possibly be real!