I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how so many conservative evangelicals seem to exist in a closed-loop, one in which they close their minds to any outside sources that might contradict that narrative.
Case in point of this mindset is Don McLeroy, the Texas Board of Education member who led efforts to rewrite his state’s public school curriculum to create an idealized revisionist American history.
Last week, I wrote about an amendment McLeroy proposed using a fictional character created by painter Thomas Kinkade lend balance in history class to the teaching of the frequent realities of immigrant oppression.
My stance on reality-based education irritated one commenter, who informed me that Kinkade is a “positive” person, while I am clearly a “negative” person.
The new social studies curriculum, which guides the writing of public school textbooks, presents America in stark simplistic images that America is great and anything that contradicts that should be downplayed.
For his efforts, McLeroy will receive the Patriot Award of the Texas Eagle Forum, which is the Lone Star chapter of the national organization founded by Phyllis Schlafly, who is now required to be in Texas’ textbooks, along with the Moral Majority. McLeroy’s award will be presented at the Texas Eagle Forum Patriot Banquet held during the annual Texas GOP Convention. Schlafly will be the banquet’s keynote speaker.
And so the closed-loop continues.
