I know the title is kind of off-putting but I will make my point and you'll see why it's appropriate. I am growing continuously tired of the stories about small children being abused and killed. These kids are killed and abused by people they trust and love. Mothers, fathers, and step versions of them as well as close family friends and aunts, uncles and cousins have all been to blame for these heinous crimes. What's been bothering me is the story of Ethan Stacy. There really isn't anything about the story that is unusual for a crime like this. The problem I have is that when I heard the circumstances with his father in another state and the court forcing him to send his son here to visit his mother it made me sick. I immediately put myself in the father's shoes and wondered what I would do in that situation. How would you react to that? How would your world change with that phone call? I can't even imagine. I have said before that if anyone did anything to one of my kids I couldn't be held responsible for what I end up doing to that person. My kids are too precious to me to let something like that stand. I don't know what I'd do because I don't plan on these things happening. I just know that at least in my mind and hopefully in the minds of some of my readers justice would be served. I have the same feelings about kidnappers, child abusers, anyone who commits crimes against children. They should be removed from society and probably never returned. Now I'm not talking about 19 or 20 year olds having sex with a 16 year old or anything like that. That should fall under a different category. Yes they are all crimes against children but the crimes I'm talking about have zero consent. a 16 year old can say yes to sex with a 19 or 20 year old but a 4 year old can't say yes or no to their step mom that wants to abuse them in anyway. The people I want to see removed are the ones who kidnap small children, rape them, abuse them, kill them, and bury their bodies with little to no remorse. People who loose control with a baby that's crying and decides the only way to get them to be quiet is to throw them against a wall. You see what I'm saying. These are all physical abuses. There are also mental abuses that are just as damaging to a child. How about a child who is told everyday that he isn't wanted, that he was a mistake? How is that going to affect them the rest of their life? I want them removed from society and possibly the world. I'll be the one to pull the trigger if I have to. These are crimes against the most innocent of society. It's not right in any circumstance.
Now everyone can agree that this is a terrible offense and the title applies without question. The second part of my post will take some explaining. The Texas Board of Education is voting on changes to textbooks, specifically history books. Well, let's look at some of the changes they are making. They would like to minimize the role that Thomas Jefferson played in founding the country. Because he considered himself a deist and wanted the seperation of church and state. They would also like to say that the founding fathers created this country using Christian principles. Here is a quote from their proposal,"References to Ralph Nader and Ross Perot are proposed to be removed, while Stonewall Jackson, the Confederate general, is to be listed as a role model for effective leadership, and the ideas in Jefferson Davis’s inaugural address are to be laid side by side with Abraham Lincoln’s speeches." That's kind of frightening to me. They would also like to change the definition of our form of government from Democratic to Constitutional Republic. They want to remove the establishment clause that was used to outlaw school-sponsored prayer and affirm separation of church and state in the U.S. They wanted to remove any mention of a 1949 study that said you can't legally segregate schools for Mexican-American students. We can see why Texas wanted that gone because the practice was very popular in Texas for decades. But does that apply to the rest of the country?
Now why is this a problem? Why should we care about how Texas educates their children? Texas is the second largest textbook buyer in the country. The books they produce are frequently bought by other states including ours. So I can't just sit around and let them do this to our children's education. Some of their proposals aren't bad. But the way they want to eliminate parts of our country's history because it doesn't fit perfectly with their own brand of religious beliefs is just wrong. It's our history. You can't just erase that. My kids need to have their founding fathers intact so that they can see the diversity of the men who helped craft the Constitution. You can't change history. It happened. It's not like we're making great new strides in history like we do with science and math and law. This is history. Don't water down education we want for our kids more than it already is. This is history but more than that it's our history. We should be proud of it, not ashamed. We should own it, live up to it, as patriots of our country and it's diversity. That's why it was created, not because of religious persecution but because of persecution of all people whatever their beliefs. Leave it alone. Shame on the Texas School Board. This is akin to mental deprivation. I would even say it could be a form of abuse. Brainwashing.
