And, I’m guessing, math-based algebra…horse-based horse racing…dirt-based digging
The 2012 Republican Party of Texas platform, among a string of other head-scratching proposals, demands, and oppositions, relays the following:
Knowledge-Based Education – We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills…critical thinking skills and similar programs…
Naturally, such programs may enable students to notice the irony in a following statement in the same document:
Judeo-Christian Nation – As America is a nation under God founded on Judeo-Christian principles, we affirm the constitutional right of all individuals to worship in the religion of their choice [so long as it is Judeo-Christian in nature].
Bracketed content mine.
Or the irony in this statement:
Safeguarding Our Religious Liberties – ….We pledge our influence toward a return to the original intent of the First Amendment and toward dispelling the myth of separation of church and state [because the myth impedes upon our liberty to impose our religious beliefs on the state and thereby everyone else.]
Bracketed content mine.
The "original intent" of the First Amendment seems awfully hard to get at 225 years after the fact. If only there were some documentation as to that intent, something closer to 1787 that may add some context so we might understand that intent. Forgive me for the higher-order and critical thinking skills, a sin I struggle with daily, but there is this Treaty of Tripoli from 1797, presented by President John Adams, which states:
…the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion…
Knowledge-based Education – Seriously? They oppose knowledge-based education? They say this out loud? And get mad if someone calls them ignorant? Shouldn’t they be proud of ignorance-based education? Just think of the bliss of not knowing what an oxymoron is. Just think of how happy one is not to have facts get in the way of their opinions.