Oh, Arizona. After the ‘Show me your papers’ mess a couple of years ago, and the Governor Jan Brewer tales of headless bodies in the desert that turned out to be a lie, you kinda settled down a bit. Don’t get me wrong, you’re still the equivalent of an old man in Hagar slacks sitting on his front porch yelling at the neighborhood kids to get off his lawn, but you’ve settled down some for a moment.
But now we have busses filled with migrant children and Sean Hannity with guns and self-loathing homosexual Sheriff Paul Babeu acting the fool, and Adam Kwasman, Arizona political loon — see post below — and, well, you’ve come roaring back up to the top of the charts … the Crazy Charts … with this:
Out there in Mesa, Arizona, the Heritage Academy requires that its students read “The 5,000 Year Leap” and “The Making of America,” by Cleon Skousen; both books claim that America was founded as a Christian nation, and not a secular nation as it has been since the beginning.
So, they require their students to learn a lie because most folks know, know, that our Constitution makes no reference to God or even the Baby Jesus; it says not a word about Christianity. What it does say, however, is anyone and everyone is allowed to practice whatever belief they choose; religious, non-religious, makes no difference.
But students at Heritage Academy don’t learn that; they are being indoctrinated into a teabagging, conservative spewing, lie living sect that puts Christianity — all other faiths and non-believers be damned — at the forefront of politics. And yet that’s not all they learn at Heritage Academy.
Skousen’s book, “The Making of America” claim s slavery was “beneficial” to African Americans and that Southern racism was caused by the ‘intrusion’ of northern abolitionists and advocates of equality for the freed slaves.
Slavery good, y’all; even for the slaves! The book also includes an essay by Fred Albert Shannon that claims white children were jealous of the ‘freedom’ that black slave children enjoyed: “If [black children] ran naked it was generally from choice, and when the white boys had to put on shoes and go away to school they were likely to envy the freedom of their colored playmates.” Those poor white children had to go to school and become educated while the black children got to run naked and play … then work in the fields, work in the plantation houses, sleep ten to twenty a room, with barely a blanket upon which to rest. Oh, and let’s not forget that slaves were also beaten and tortured for learning even the simplest things, like reading and writing. I wonder if the white children were jealous of the beatings, too.
Arizona; where a charter school is teaching its students that slavery was good for black people; that we are a Christian nation, with laws given to us by the Almighty herself; that there is no Separation of Church and State in the Constitution. And if you think this one school — though there are no doubt others — is an anomaly, and doesn’t reflect any current, large-scale viewpoint in the country, you might wanna rethink.
Think about Arizona Republican Jim Brown who, in a post on Facebook, said this: “I want folks to think about something. I want folks to think about how slavery really works. Back in the day of slavery, slaves were kept in slavery by denying them education and opportunity while providing them with their basic needs. Not by beating them and starving them. (Although there were isolated cases if course) Basically slave owners took pretty good care of their slaves and livestock and this kept business rolling along.” Slavery was good for slaves because they were taken care of like animals.
Think about Jon Hubbard, a Republican member of the Arkansas House of Representatives, who wrote in a book that slavery was "a blessing" for African-Americans: “… the institution of slavery that the black race has long believed to be an abomination upon its people may actually have been a blessing in disguise. The blacks who could endure those conditions and circumstances would someday be rewarded with citizenship in the greatest nation ever established upon the face of the Earth.” Live long enough, suffer the abuse and beatings and torture and maybe, maybe, you can become a citizen; if you don’t die first.
Think about Nevada GOP state representative Jim Wheeler who said he would do whatever his constituents wanted, damn the consequences. Then Chuck Muth, the leader of a conservative group called Citizens Outreach asked Wheeler what if his constituents wanted to bring back slavery, and Wheeler responded: “Hey, if it’s what the citizens want, right Jim?”
Think about the racist Arizona conservatives who once refused to honor Martin Luther King Day.
That’s Arizona; that’s the future of Arizona, and other parts of this country, because of so-called schools like the Heritage Academy that teach outright lies and conservative-only lessons; schools that actually teach only parts of the Constitution and outright deny that other parts of that document even exist.
Heritage Academy is taking all kinds of criticism over their curriculum, but they say they will not change what they teach and how they teach it. And there’s not a lot that can be done about it, save understanding what their curriculum teaches and either removing your children from that school or simply avoid attending it in the future.
Charter schools receive public funding but operate independently, so it’s easier to teach students things that aren’t part of the standard state or federally approved curriculum, so why aren’t we pulling public funding from these schools like they’ve done in the United Kingdom? Why not pull funding from any charter school that teaches that slavery is good and that God made America?
Surely even the people of Arizona know a lie when they see one? | 
