Speaker 1: Cool Media.
Speaker 2: I'm Michael Phillips. I wrote a history of racism in
Speaker 2: Dallas called White Metropolis, and have co authored an upcoming
Speaker 2: book on the history of eugenics in Texas called The
Speaker 2: Purifying Knife.
Speaker 3: And I'm Stephen Monticelli, an investigative reporter and columnist who
Speaker 3: covers extremism and far right movements for a variety of publications,
Speaker 3: including The Texas Observer and The Barbed Wire.
Speaker 2: School board meetings used to be boring. Board members typically
Speaker 2: spend hours discussing financial reports, land purchases, plumbing contracts, and
Speaker 2: other tedious topics. But beginning in twenty twenty, Christopher Ruffo,
Speaker 2: a former documentary filmmaker and fellow at the right wing
Speaker 2: Heritage Foundation, the group responsible for Project twenty twenty five,
Speaker 2: launched a campaign to convince Americans that public schools have
Speaker 2: become communists and doctrination centers. RUFO falsely claimed that public
Speaker 2: school teachres were brainwashing school children with something called critical
Speaker 2: race theory or CRT for short. Adherents of critical race
Speaker 2: theory argue that racism has become so intrinsically entwined in
Speaker 2: American politics, law, and culture that anti discrimination laws typically
Speaker 2: fail While CRT is studied in some graduate schools and
Speaker 2: law programs, it hasn't been taught at the grade school level,
Speaker 2: where the outrage has been directed.
Speaker 3: That's certainly not the case in Texas, which influences curriculums
Speaker 3: across the nation due to its large population and purchasing
Speaker 3: power of textbooks. But precision wasn't the point of Rufo's campaign. Rather,
Speaker 3: it was to refashion CRT into a sort of political cudgel,
Speaker 3: something that Rufo admitted to in a series of tweets
Speaker 3: in twenty twenty one. The goal is to have the
Speaker 3: public read something crazy in the newspaper and immediately think critical.
Speaker 4: Race theory, Rufo wrote.
Speaker 3: We have decotify the term and will recodify it to
Speaker 3: annex the entire range of cultural constructions that are unpopular
Speaker 3: with Americans.
Speaker 4: End quote.
Speaker 3: On Fox News, Newsmax and other right wing media outlets,
Speaker 3: Rufo convinced parents that instead of teaching kids reading, writing,
Speaker 3: and arithmetic, public school teachers were using CRT to brainwash
Speaker 3: white children into hating themselves and goading black children into
Speaker 3: hating white people. Radical teachers and professors, Rufo warned, had
Speaker 3: launched a sinister campaign to destroy the American way of life.
Speaker 5: In a foundational paper called Whiteness's Property, the critical race
Speaker 5: theorist Cheryl Harris has proposed suspending private property rights, seizing
Speaker 5: land and wealth from the rich and redistributing it along
Speaker 5: racial lines.
Speaker 2: Rufa's timing could not have been more perfect. The artificial
Speaker 2: CRT panic broke out during the COVID pandemic. Parents already
Speaker 2: felt frustration and fury about the hard ships of campus closings,
Speaker 2: remote learning, and mass mandates, now convinced that their children
Speaker 2: were being taught to scapegoat white people for all the
Speaker 2: country's problems. Parents across the country exploded in rage at
Speaker 2: local school boards. Reuters reported on one meaning that turned
Speaker 2: violent in Loudon County, Virginia.
Speaker 6: What had been planned as a typical school board meeting
Speaker 6: in Virginia's wealthy Louden County this week devolved into pandemonium,
Speaker 6: with hundreds of parents flooding an auditorium to accuse the
Speaker 6: school system of teaching their kids that racism in America
Speaker 6: is structural and systemic, something the school board denies as
Speaker 6: part of the curriculum. Things got so heated that the
Speaker 6: board members eventually walked out leaving the police to deal
Speaker 6: with the unruly crowd. Two people left in handcuffs. Louden
Speaker 6: County School Board has been roiled for months by accusations
Speaker 6: that it has embraced critical race theory, a school of
Speaker 6: thought that maintains that racism is ingrained in US law
Speaker 6: and institutions, and that legacies of slavery and segregation have
Speaker 6: created an uneven playing field for black Americans. The idea
Speaker 6: that CRT, as it's known, is infiltrating public schools has
Speaker 6: become a rallying cry for conservatives, who, like many in Louden,
Speaker 6: say it is being used to indoctrinate children that America
Speaker 6: is a racist country.
Speaker 7: Critical race theory is anti white, and it's not American.
Speaker 3: Those within a year for historical rhymes may find this
Speaker 3: outcry familiar. Resistance to racial integration and the Civil rights
Speaker 3: era movements drew similar accusations of being hostile to whites
Speaker 3: and being a product of anti American communism, and those
Speaker 3: with experienced teaching students might chuckle at the accusations of
Speaker 3: ideologically motivated brainwas an indoctrination. A common joke posted by
Speaker 3: teachers online is that quote, if we could indoctrinate students.
Speaker 3: Students would always read the syllabus, but that didn't stop
Speaker 3: panic over CRT expanding to include anti LGBTQ sentiment as well,
Speaker 3: with queer students and teachers who supported them being placed
Speaker 3: squarely in the crosshairs of a well funded national hate
Speaker 3: machine dedicated to ginning up fear among local parents. Here's
Speaker 3: a clip from one speech I personally witnessed at the
Speaker 3: school board meeting of my hometown school district, grape Vine Kullyville,
Speaker 3: from August twenty twenty two, and very simple truths.
Speaker 8: There's only two genders, and boys should go to boys rooms,
Speaker 8: girls should go to girls' restrooms. And guess what teachers
Speaker 8: should be forced to use Your freaking made up fantasy.
Speaker 9: Pronouns find like hall hold the line against the LGBT
Speaker 9: mafia and their dang pedo fans hate winning. You know what,
Speaker 9: keep the wing they you keep the monkey cocks.
Speaker 10: How's that work?
Speaker 11: It?
Speaker 10: The keep wrings so much, We'll keep come.
Speaker 8: You know what, We're.
Speaker 5: Gonna keeck come so hard.
Speaker 9: The only thing these bullcards have to figure out is
Speaker 9: whiler tell their face back one thighs. Wow, it's all.
Speaker 3: As absurd as all this may seem there was something
Speaker 3: to this national phenomenon that was rooted in reality. As
Speaker 3: of twenty twenty, the United States had become more culturally diverse,
Speaker 3: racially integrated, and accepting of LGBTQ people than ever before,
Speaker 3: and our education systems have increasingly reflected that reality. There's
Speaker 3: also a deep irony to this reaction. Prior to the
Speaker 3: advances of the Civil Rights era and beyond, schools in
Speaker 3: the United States have often been the centers of ideologically
Speaker 3: motivated education, but not the fantasy Bolshevik propaganda that outrages
Speaker 3: the right. In fact, it's usually been the opposite. For
Speaker 3: most of its history, American public schools have effectively advanced
Speaker 3: white supremacy, female subordination, and submission to capitalism. In this episode,
Speaker 3: we're going to look at what has actually been taught
Speaker 3: in American schools over the years, with a particular focus
Speaker 3: in Texas, and how what you learn about American history
Speaker 3: depends on where you live and how Christian supremacists are
Speaker 3: successfully inserting their theology into school curriculums in much of
Speaker 3: the country, with Texas playing a leading role.
Speaker 2: Textbooks before the nineteen fifties and nineteen sixties Civil Rights
Speaker 2: era were explicitly and astonishingly white supremacists. Schoolbooks in the South,
Speaker 2: for instance, portrayed Confederates as gallant gentlemen fighting for a
Speaker 2: noble loss cause. This influenced popular culture, as we see
Speaker 2: in films like Gone with the Wind. Meanwhile, school kids
Speaker 2: were taught that abolitionists who wanted to end slavery before
Speaker 2: the Civil War were terrorists who needlessly plunged the country
Speaker 2: into civil war, and this too steeped into the public
Speaker 2: imagination of movies like NFA Trail starring Van Heflin.
Speaker 12: The time is coming when the rest of us are
Speaker 12: going to wipe you, and you're kind off the face
Speaker 12: of the earth.
Speaker 2: According to the myths promoted first in schools then echoed
Speaker 2: in mass entertainment, slavery would have gone away eventually if
Speaker 2: only white slave owning Southerners had been left alone to
Speaker 2: figure it out themselves. Screenplaywriters have often echoed what they
Speaker 2: heard in the classroom is we see In this scene
Speaker 2: from the nineteen forty film Santa Fe Trail. Here Raymond
Speaker 2: Massey plays John Brown, a white abolitionist who tried to
Speaker 2: start a slave rebellion Harper's Ferry Virginia in eighteen fifty nine.
Speaker 2: Massey portrays him as a thoroughly crazed maniac, while Aero
Speaker 2: Flynn depicts future Confederate General J. E. B. Stewart as
Speaker 2: sweetly rational.
Speaker 12: Half of the people in America believe in your theory,
Speaker 12: A lot of them, even Condonia methods that'll guarantee you
Speaker 12: a public trial.
Speaker 13: I'm not on trial, but the nation itself?
Speaker 12: Are you too stupid and blinded by.
Speaker 14: A uniform to see what I see?
Speaker 12: A dark and evil curse laying all over this land?
Speaker 15: A kind will sin against God can only be wiped
Speaker 15: out in blood?
Speaker 12: But why in blood? The people of Virginia are considered
Speaker 12: a resolution to abolic slavery for a long time. They
Speaker 12: sense that the tomorrow wrong, and the rest of the
Speaker 12: South will follow Virginia's example. All I ask is time.
Speaker 3: From the eighteen eighties until the nineteen sixties, school books
Speaker 3: depicted the country's only brief experiment with multiracial democracy at
Speaker 3: the time, the Reconstruction period from eighteen sixty five to
Speaker 3: eighteen seventy seven, as a time of rampant corruption. These
Speaker 3: books often described emancipated African Americans as ignorant lazy and
Speaker 3: expecting government handouts, while their white allies were portrayed as crooks.
Speaker 2: American school children furthermore learned from their teacher that so
Speaker 2: called radical democracy was not a good idea, and sometimes
Speaker 2: dictatorship was the better option. The nineteen twenty four textbook
Speaker 2: Are World Today and Yesterday, a History of Modern Civilization,
Speaker 2: published two years after Mussolini's fascist government took over Italy,
Speaker 2: had nothing but praise for that nation's new dictator. The
Speaker 2: authors told the impressionable high school students the following about
Speaker 2: the world's first fascist leader.
Speaker 16: Mussolini has chosen a ministry made up of capable men
Speaker 16: and has straightened up the badly demoralized finances of the country.
Speaker 16: He and his followers are accused of suppressing liberty and
Speaker 16: downing the communists by violence. Nevertheless, he has done much
Speaker 16: to do away with strikes and to re establish conditions
Speaker 16: as they were before the economic demoralization of World War
Speaker 16: One set in again.
Speaker 3: School books reinforced an American culture in the nineteen twenties
Speaker 3: that responded to the horror of World War One, labor unrest,
Speaker 3: and the impact of immigration by becoming not only more
Speaker 3: intolerant but also more anti democratic.
Speaker 15: All the while, Mussolini's propaganda machine churned out images of
Speaker 15: a thriving country and a via leader Iluch stripped down
Speaker 15: for the camera bok side by side with the peasants
Speaker 15: and wrestled wild animals. Never mind that this one had
Speaker 15: no teeth. Nonetheless, it was working. Mussolini attracted fans worldwide,
Speaker 15: including Thomas Edison, Sigmund Freud, and Mohandas Gandhi. Here he
Speaker 15: speaks to his many supporters among Italian Americans, I.
Speaker 17: Tell it the Italians of America, who I want to
Speaker 17: make America greed.
Speaker 2: Another textbook, published in nineteen thirty five, The Record of America,
Speaker 2: told stins that the so called Founding fathers like Alexander
Speaker 2: Hamilton were not big believers in democracy, an attitude the
Speaker 2: authors seemed to endorse. As the Record of America put it.
Speaker 16: The Founders had little faith in the ability of people
Speaker 16: as a whole to maintain self control and wisdom in government.
Speaker 16: They had no confidence in the man without property. A
Speaker 16: man who had failed to accumulate property would be regarded
Speaker 16: as shiftless, lazy, or incompetent, and not deserving a voice
Speaker 16: in the government of others. The Constitution was written to
Speaker 16: retain power in the hands of those who release radical
Speaker 16: and to set obstacles in the way of radical mob action.
Speaker 3: After the nineteen fifties and nineteen sixties civil rights movements,
Speaker 3: history textbooks for the first time covered the horrors of slavery,
Speaker 3: the heroism of African American abolitionists like Surgeon or truth
Speaker 3: in Frederick Douglas, and the evils of the Ku Klux
Speaker 3: Klan with clarity. But the backlash was swift, particularly after
Speaker 3: the election of the first African American president, Barack Obama
Speaker 3: and the rise of the hyper conservative Tea Party.
Speaker 4: In response, in twenty ten.
Speaker 3: Tea Party supporters took control of the Texas State school Board,
Speaker 3: which has control over Texas school book curriculums. They felt
Speaker 3: that this reckoning with America's racist past undermined patriotism and
Speaker 3: demanded a rewrite of school lesson plans.
Speaker 2: In twenty fifteen, Ronnie Dean Baron got a text from
Speaker 2: her son Kobe, who was glancing at a ninth grade geography
Speaker 2: textbook published by McGraw hill signed him by his high
Speaker 2: school in Perilyn, Texas, near Houston. He sent her a
Speaker 2: video highlighting a map in its shocking caption. Soon Burn
Speaker 2: posted her son's video online. That video, as KPRC reported,
Speaker 2: spread outrage across the nation.
Speaker 17: A video post on Ronnie Dean Buren's face book page.
Speaker 3: So I'm going to show you the book and then
Speaker 3: there's just an interesting.
Speaker 17: Section, went viral. Her video has been viewed more than
Speaker 17: one point eight million times and has forty eight thousand shares.
Speaker 17: To get to the topic of conversation, you literally have
Speaker 17: to turn through the pages of her son's geography textbook.
Speaker 1: The immigration in the United States can be divided in
Speaker 1: four district periods.
Speaker 17: Kobe, who's in the ninth grade at Perlin High School,
Speaker 17: was studying immigration when he read this in his textbook,
Speaker 17: a comment that referenced African slaves as workers.
Speaker 1: As if we worked our way up in America, as
Speaker 1: if we came here by choice for a better life.
Speaker 3: The offensive caption read, in full quote, the Atlantic slave
Speaker 3: trade between the fifteen hundreds and the eighteen hundreds brought
Speaker 3: millions of workers from Africa to the southern United States
Speaker 3: to work.
Speaker 4: On agricultural plantations.
Speaker 3: The publisher of the book, simply titled World Geography later
Speaker 3: apologized for the euphemism, noting that it did not adequately
Speaker 3: convey that Africans were both forced into migration and to
Speaker 3: labor against their will as slaves. The company said it
Speaker 3: would revise the digital version of the text and future
Speaker 3: print versions, but it was unclear at the time when
Speaker 3: the new edition would be in students' hands.
Speaker 2: The caption wasnt an accident. McGraw hill had given the
Speaker 2: Stay of Texas what it wanted, rather than anything like
Speaker 2: critical race theory. The State Board of Education twenty ten
Speaker 2: adopted changes in Texas curriculum standards for public schools, known
Speaker 2: as Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills that imposed a whitewash
Speaker 2: of American slavery, raised doubts about human caused climate change,
Speaker 2: and imposed other right wing content to be sold in
Speaker 2: Texas school textbooks had to meet the board's standards.
Speaker 3: Texas State Board of Education members are elected from districts
Speaker 3: that tilt the body towards rural parts of the state
Speaker 3: and serve four year terms, while the governor appoints the
Speaker 3: chair of the board. Since the beginning of the twenty
Speaker 3: first century, the board has been dominated by Christian right activists.
Speaker 3: As a twenty thirteen PBS report.
Speaker 7: Deaths Don McElroy has three jobs and he loves them all.
Speaker 1: Good morning got to mclary's office.
Speaker 7: Job number one dentist, job number two Sunday school teacher,
Speaker 7: and job number three member of the Texas State Board
Speaker 7: of Education, a seat he's held for the last twelve years.
Speaker 7: But it's that third job which has put this dentist
Speaker 7: and Sunday school teacher from Brian, Texas into a national
Speaker 7: debate over what kids are taught in school. Critics have
Speaker 7: accused McLeroy of injecting his religious conservative beliefs into the curriculum.
Speaker 7: About every ten years, the board revises the textbook standards
Speaker 7: for different subjects. Any books bought by the state must
Speaker 7: conform to these guidelines. The last big battle was over
Speaker 7: the science standards. This year he's tackling social studies.
Speaker 2: The demands Texas makes of textbook publishers matter, as PBS
Speaker 2: reported a decade ago.
Speaker 7: According to publishing insiders, textbooks are often tailored to fit
Speaker 7: Texas's standards. Because Texas is the largest buyer of textbooks.
Speaker 7: That means the choices made here could determine books that
Speaker 7: other states will buy, and that's led to a school
Speaker 7: fight that has the entire country looking on.
Speaker 2: This is how Kobe Burn ended up with the World
Speaker 2: Geography textbook that used the word workers to describe chattel slaves.
Speaker 2: Kathy Miller of the anti censorship group Texas Freedom Network said, quote,
Speaker 2: it's no accident that this happened in Texas. We have
Speaker 2: a textbook adoption process that's so politicized and so flawed
Speaker 2: that's become almost a punchline for comedians. Those serious about
Speaker 2: education aren't laughing. However, in twenty eighteen, the state board
Speaker 2: removed Hillary Clinton, the first woman to be presidential nominee
Speaker 2: of a major political party, from the list of major
Speaker 2: historic figures Texas students must learn about, a decision later
Speaker 2: reversed after embarrassing news coverage. In twenty ten, that board
Speaker 2: mandated that textbooks depict the Civil War as primarily a
Speaker 2: struggle over states' rights and not slavery, a choice that
Speaker 2: was later modified in twenty eighteen to return slavery as
Speaker 2: the primary cause, but still maintained that quote states rights
Speaker 2: and sexualism were key contributing factors. Approved books still tell
Speaker 2: students that segregated black schools and the Jim Crow Eric
Speaker 2: quote had similar buildings, buses, and teachers as white schools,
Speaker 2: maintaining a hint of these separate but equal logics that
Speaker 2: upheld segregation. One textbook included cartoon in which a space
Speaker 2: alien lands on Earth and asks if he's eligible for
Speaker 2: affirmative action programs. Texas standards also misled students into thinking
Speaker 2: there was controversy about whether human activity has led to
Speaker 2: climate change and to quote consider all sides of scientist
Speaker 2: evidence regarding evolution, even though the scientific consensus in favor
Speaker 2: of fossil fuels trinking climate change and also the scientific
Speaker 2: consensus regarding evolution is nearly unanimous. Students can get dramatically
Speaker 2: different versions of American history based on which state they
Speaker 2: attend schools. A New York Times comparison textbooks used at
Speaker 2: California Texas show that both versions of the same history
Speaker 2: textbook include an annotated Bill of rights in reference to
Speaker 2: the Second Amendment. However, the California textbook notes that several
Speaker 2: federal court rulings have allowed regulation of gun sales and ownership.
Speaker 2: The Texas version of the same book replaces US commentary
Speaker 2: with a quote blank white space. As The New York Times.
Speaker 3: Reported, Texas and California textbooks both introduced students to African
Speaker 3: American authors during the Harlem Renaissance, but only Texas students
Speaker 3: are told that quote. Some dismissed the quality of the
Speaker 3: literature produced by the Harlem Renaissance.
Speaker 2: As The New York Times reported. The California version of
Speaker 2: the history textbook addressed the issue of white flight, the
Speaker 2: phenomena whereby parents moved from cities when schools became integrated
Speaker 2: and moved to overwhelmingly Anglo suburbs. The California textbooks said this.
Speaker 16: Some people wished to escape the crime and the congestion
Speaker 16: of the city. Movement of some white people from cities
Speaker 16: to suburbs was driven by a desire to get away
Speaker 16: from more culturally diverse neighborhoods. Others believed the suburbs offered
Speaker 16: better and more affordable living.
Speaker 2: The Texas version of the same textbook deleted the sentence
Speaker 2: referring to racism as a motive for white flight, but
Speaker 2: left the reference to a fear of crime, reframing what
Speaker 2: students learned about why suburbs grew so rapidly after World
Speaker 2: War Two. The Texas State Board also specifically asked one
Speaker 2: textbook publisher demphasized how many clergies signed the Declaration of
Speaker 2: Independence and to underscore the supposed importance of religion to
Speaker 2: the founders. These particular demands were the result of intense
Speaker 2: lobbying by Texas Christian nationalist David Barton.
Speaker 3: Barton, a seventy year old lifelong resident of Aledo, Texas,
Speaker 3: which is a small town just southwest of Fort Worth,
Speaker 3: has become a major influence on the Republican Party and
Speaker 3: its attitudes towards education, not just in the Lone Star State,
Speaker 3: but across the nation. While reporting on the Conservative Political
Speaker 3: Action Conference for Rolling Stone, I recall being given a
Speaker 3: copy of one of Barton's books. He calls himself a historian,
Speaker 3: although his only credential is a bachelor's degree in religious
Speaker 3: education from Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, Oklahoma. A one
Speaker 3: time science and math teacher at a Christian academy in
Speaker 3: his hometown, Barton plunged into politics in nineteen eighty eight
Speaker 3: as a Republican activist with a penchant for homophobia. He
Speaker 3: declared that homosexuality is as evil as any deed Adolf
Speaker 3: Hitler committed and said that the lack of cure for
Speaker 3: AIDS was God's punishment for a wicked community. Quote, your
Speaker 3: sexual choice is not a God given right, he said
Speaker 3: on one occasion.
Speaker 2: In nineteen eighty eight, Barton founded Wall Builders, a nonprofit.
Speaker 2: The organization says dedicated to quote educating the nation concerning
Speaker 2: the godly founding of the nation. Barton believes that Americans
Speaker 2: have been deceived about the true meaning of the First
Speaker 2: Amendment to the United States Constitution, which declares, quote, Congress
Speaker 2: shall make no law respecting the establishment of a religion.
Speaker 2: The Founders, Barton claims, only meant that Congress should pick
Speaker 2: a particular Protestant denomination as the national faith. Barton also
Speaker 2: argues that Thomas Jefferson meant that the wall of separation
Speaker 2: between church and state should operate only in one direction,
Speaker 2: that the government should not interfere with a religion, but
Speaker 2: that Christians should dominate the government. As Barton said in
Speaker 2: an interview.
Speaker 11: So we've got to get away from being scared to
Speaker 11: say we're a Christian nation. What we've got to do
Speaker 11: is to find it the right way, define it the
Speaker 11: historical way. We can't let the left steal three hundred
Speaker 11: years of heritage. We can't let them wipe out three
Speaker 11: hundred core cases, wipe out what dozens of presents and
Speaker 11: governors have said, simply because they don't like the term,
Speaker 11: we are.
Speaker 4: A Christian nation.
Speaker 11: We have been a Christian nation, and that doesn't mean
Speaker 11: anything they think it does. We're not theocratic, we're not coercive.
Speaker 11: We believe in free choice. We don't believe in any
Speaker 11: of the others. And that's what we've got to get
Speaker 11: back to doing. We don't need to be ashamed at
Speaker 11: all that we're Christians and that we believe we have
Speaker 11: a Christian nation.
Speaker 3: The story is much more complicated than Barton says, and
Speaker 3: he gets the most important details wrong. Most of the
Speaker 3: generation that led the Revolution and wrote the Constitution agreed
Speaker 3: with Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence,
Speaker 3: that when church and state mix, both are harmed. Jefferson
Speaker 3: successfully established separation of church and state in his home
Speaker 3: state of Virginia in seventeen eighty six when it adopted
Speaker 3: the Statute of Religious Freedom he authored. The first Amendment,
Speaker 3: adopted in seventeen eighty nine, also banned Congress from quote
Speaker 3: establishing a religion, and most states embraced, to varying degrees,
Speaker 3: the doctrine of church state separation.
Speaker 2: There were some states that objected to this notion. The
Speaker 2: state governments of Connecticut and Massachusetts, for instance, initially interpreted
Speaker 2: the First Amendment as meaning only Congress could not establish religion,
Speaker 2: but states could. Citizens of those two states paid taxes
Speaker 2: that supported the Congregationalist Church, respectively, until eighteen eighteen. In
Speaker 2: eighteen thirty three, for decades, some states had so called
Speaker 2: quote Jew laws that prohibited non Christians from holding office
Speaker 2: or had similar bands on Catholics. Such laws were the exception, however,
Speaker 2: and fell by the wayside by the end of the
Speaker 2: nineteenth century. The Fourteenth Amendment, adopted in eighteen sixty eight,
Speaker 2: placed the same limits on state power that were placed
Speaker 2: on the federal government regarding the establishment of religion, a
Speaker 2: limitation upheld in the nineteen forty seven Supreme Court case.
Speaker 2: Ever since versus Board of Education.
Speaker 3: Artin has campaigned to overwrite that history with his own
Speaker 3: alternative narrative. Towards that end, he's collected approximately one hundred
Speaker 3: thousand primary documents written before eighteen twelve. Based on that
Speaker 3: selection of material, he argues that American leaders like Washington, Jefferson, Adams,
Speaker 3: and their peers wanted only Christians to lead the nation.
Speaker 3: And that American law should be based on the Bible.
Speaker 2: Barton believes that not just the Bible, but also the
Speaker 2: original United States Constitution, which includes provisions protecting slavery such
Speaker 2: as the Three Fifths Compromise, were directly inspired by God.
Speaker 2: He asserts, again with no evidence and without defining terms,
Speaker 2: that fifty two of the fifty five signers of the
Speaker 2: Declaration of Independence were, in his words, quote orthodized or
Speaker 2: evangelical Christians. In reality, the early leaders of America didn't
Speaker 2: speak with one mind regarding religion. Many were deists who
Speaker 2: saw God not as a deity invested in the daily
Speaker 2: lives of humans, but as a dispassionate clockmaker who put
Speaker 2: the gears the universe together, wound it up, and let
Speaker 2: it run on its own. Their God didn't intervene in
Speaker 2: history or perform miracle healings at spiritual revivals. When Ben
Speaker 2: Franklin proposed opening the first session the seventeen eighty seven
Speaker 2: Constitutional Convention with a prayer, the proposal was voted down,
Speaker 2: with only four approving Franklin's motion, and a gathering that
Speaker 2: as many as fifty five attended on any given day.
Speaker 3: In their letters, many of the founding fathers scoffed at
Speaker 3: the accuracy of the Bible and the reliability of its
Speaker 3: myriad translations. As John Adams said of the Bible.
Speaker 14: In an age when fraud, forgery, and perjury were considered
Speaker 14: as lawful means of propagating truth by philosophers, legislators, and theologians,
Speaker 14: what may not be suspected.
Speaker 3: Benjamin Franklin told his friend Ezra Styles that Jesus was
Speaker 3: a wise philosopher, but that he had personal doubts that
Speaker 3: Christ was the son of God. Franklin questioned whether the
Speaker 3: depiction of Christ's life or even his teachings as describing
Speaker 3: the Gospels, could be trusted.
Speaker 14: As to Jesus of Nazareth, I think the system of
Speaker 14: morals and his religion as he left them to us
Speaker 14: the best the world ever saw, or is likely to see.
Speaker 14: But I apprehend it has received various corrupting changes, and
Speaker 14: I have doubt with most of the present dissenters in
Speaker 14: England as to his divinity, though it is a question
Speaker 14: I do not dogmatize upon, having never studied it.
Speaker 3: And Thomas Jefferson, who Barton insists, believe that the American
Speaker 3: government should be based on Christian values, was even more
Speaker 3: blunt about a central Christian belief regarding Jesus and his
Speaker 3: virgin birth.
Speaker 14: Jefferson wrote, Jesus was a man of illegitimate birth, of
Speaker 14: a benevolent heart and an enthusiastic mind, who set out
Speaker 14: without pretensions of divinity, ended in believing them, and was
Speaker 14: punished capitally for sedition by being gibbeted according to the
Speaker 14: Roman law.
Speaker 2: Barton's books and speeches are filled with misquotes and statements
Speaker 2: attributed to historical figures that no credible scholars have been
Speaker 2: able to find. He cherry picks evidence to Bolster's claims
Speaker 2: about the founder's religious beliefs. Bartin, for instance, made up
Speaker 2: a story that Jefferson started the practice of holding church
Speaker 2: services in the US capital. More reputable scholars argue that
Speaker 2: while there's evidence that Jefferson attended one service held at
Speaker 2: the Capitol building, there's no evidence that he approved them officially.
Speaker 2: What's more, Jefferson was far from an orthodox Christian or
Speaker 2: the sort of Christian that dominates conservativism today. He edited
Speaker 2: and published The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth,
Speaker 2: commonly referred to as the Jeffersonian Bible. Which is a
Speaker 2: condensed version of Jesus's teachings from the Bible that excludes
Speaker 2: all miracles by Jesus and most mentions of the supernatural,
Speaker 2: the resurrection, the raising of the dead, and so on.
Speaker 2: These sort of facts are the subject of Barton's twenty
Speaker 2: twenty two New York Times bestseller, ironically titled The Jefferson Lies,
Speaker 2: Exposing the Myths You Always believed about Thomas Jefferson.
Speaker 3: For instance, Barton depicted Jefferson as defining the United States
Speaker 3: as a Christian nation. Here's the real Jefferson in his
Speaker 3: seventeen eighty five book Notes on the State of Virginia.
Speaker 14: The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only
Speaker 14: as are injurious to others. But it does mean no
Speaker 14: injury for my neighbor to say that there are twenty
Speaker 14: gods or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor
Speaker 14: breaks my leg.
Speaker 3: Barton's book on Jefferson went too far for even some
Speaker 3: of Barton's fellow Christian Conservatives. The History News Network website
Speaker 3: derided the book as quote the least credible history book
Speaker 3: in print. Ten Christian conservative scholars so harshly criticized Barton's
Speaker 3: book that his publisher withdrew it from circulation because it
Speaker 3: had quote lost confidence in the book's details. Yet, in
Speaker 3: spite of the questions regarding its truthfulness, another evangelical publishing
Speaker 3: company eventually released a new version.
Speaker 2: In spite of his flexible relationship with the truth, Barton
Speaker 2: is a major player in Republican Party politics. On a podcast,
Speaker 2: Barton claimed that Republican US House Speaker Mike Johnson consulted
Speaker 2: with him about staffing at the Capitol. Johnson made his
Speaker 2: speech at a wall building event, telling the audience that
Speaker 2: the Theocratic evangelists had quote a profound influence on me,
Speaker 2: my work, my life, and everything I do.
Speaker 3: Because of Barton's influence, the state of Texas recently okayed
Speaker 3: public schools teaching Bible stories to kindergarten children. Former Arkansas
Speaker 3: governor and Republican presidential candidate and Trump's choice to be
Speaker 3: ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, owns the company that designed
Speaker 3: those lesson plans.
Speaker 2: Huckabee has long produced so called history videos for school
Speaker 2: children that promote Christian nationalism and the idea of the
Speaker 2: United States has a unique relationship with God, such as
Speaker 2: a series aimed at older children called One Nation Under God,
Speaker 2: which portrays a revolutionary war soldier and George Washington suggesting
Speaker 2: God was on their side.
Speaker 7: We will bring the plagues upon our British oppressors, just
Speaker 7: as Moses did in ancient Egypt.
Speaker 18: And we will win the same preto. We fight for
Speaker 18: the idea that we can make something right here. God's
Speaker 18: spirit compels us forward, and the times of fighters upon us.
Speaker 3: This video series may not be shown to kindergarteners in Texas,
Speaker 3: but the lessons in the Huckabee Design curriculum clearly favor
Speaker 3: a Christian worldview at the expense of other religions. The
Speaker 3: scripture field lessons are not required by state law, but
Speaker 3: the state will reward school districts with extra tax dollars
Speaker 3: per student for teaching Huckaby's product. This is an attractive
Speaker 3: offer to the many school districts in Texas that are
Speaker 3: currently filing deficit budgets and struggling to raise revenue.
Speaker 2: Meanwhile, Barton's political and cultural influence has grown exponentially over
Speaker 2: the last decade. One of his political action committees played
Speaker 2: a major role in getting Ted Cruz elected to the
Speaker 2: United States Senate. He has close allies with Texas Lieutenant
Speaker 2: Governor Dan Patrick, who wields power typically held by governors
Speaker 2: and other states. Patrick said this at a twenty twenty
Speaker 2: two Conservative Political Action convention in Dallas about who he
Speaker 2: thinks wrote the US Constitution.
Speaker 19: We were a nation founded upon not the words of
Speaker 19: our founders, but.
Speaker 4: The words of God.
Speaker 19: Because he wrote the Constitution, he empowered them. We were
Speaker 19: a Christian state, and we've been blessed because of that
Speaker 19: for so many years.
Speaker 3: In twenty ten, the Texas State School Board for the
Speaker 3: first time required that textbook publishers portray a particular biblical
Speaker 3: figure as an honorary founding father. This supposed founder was
Speaker 3: famously portrayed in the nineteen fifty six box office smash
Speaker 3: by Charlton Heston, who later served as a five term
Speaker 3: president of the National Rifle Association.
Speaker 18: Woo unto the you're Israel, you have sinned a great
Speaker 18: sin in the sight of God.
Speaker 12: You are not worthy to receive these ten commandments.
Speaker 2: In Texas, regardless of a lack of evidence, textbook publisher
Speaker 2: are required to tell students that Moses, the prophet depicted
Speaker 2: in Judeo Christian scripture as well as the Qur'an, as
Speaker 2: leading the Hebrews out of slavery was a major influence
Speaker 2: on the authors of the Constitution. Furthermore, under Barton's influence,
Speaker 2: the state of Louisiana enacted a law in June twenty
Speaker 2: twenty four which requires every public school classroom in the
Speaker 2: state to prominently display a version of the Ten Commandments
Speaker 2: from the Book of Exodus, derived from Protestant translations of
Speaker 2: the Bible. This past November, a federal court issued an
Speaker 2: injuction barring enforcement of the law.
Speaker 3: With Barton's encouragement, Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick fought to get
Speaker 3: a similar bill passed in Texas that would have required
Speaker 3: every classroom to feature a display of the Ten Commandments
Speaker 3: at least sixteen inches wide and twenty inches tall, and,
Speaker 3: as the law put it, quote in a size and
Speaker 3: typeface that is legible to a person with average vision
Speaker 3: from anywhere in the classroom. The bill passed the state
Speaker 3: Senate with unanimous Republican support, but died when it didn't
Speaker 3: come before the Texas House in time for a legislative deadline.
Speaker 3: As KVUE in Austin reported, Patrick has vowed to continue
Speaker 3: his crusade in the coming months.
Speaker 20: Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick resurrecting a bill to force
Speaker 20: public schools to display the Ten Commandments in every classroom.
Speaker 20: That bill was originally proposed during last year's legislative session,
Speaker 20: but missed a key deadline and died in the House.
Speaker 20: Louisiana just passed a similar law this week, the Lieutenant
Speaker 20: governor posting on x saying quote, Texas would have and
Speaker 20: should have been the first state in the nation to
Speaker 20: put the Ten Commandments back in our schools end quote.
Speaker 20: The Lieutenant Governor says he will pass the bill during
Speaker 20: the next legislative session.
Speaker 3: Under the Ten Commandments bill, moral codes from other major
Speaker 3: world religions such as Hinduism and Buddhism would not be
Speaker 3: posted in classrooms, presenting a clear case of a state
Speaker 3: government violating the First Amendment. Princeton Histori and Kevin Cruz
Speaker 3: explained by such laws like those signed by Louisiana or
Speaker 3: Governor Jeff Landry ignore the United States Constitution.
Speaker 13: There are three references to religion and the Constitution. All
Speaker 13: three are ones that keep religion at arm's length away
Speaker 13: from the state. There is no religious tests required for
Speaker 13: office forms. A remarkable revolutionary act at the time, the
Speaker 13: First amendment says there will be no national religion established
Speaker 13: by the national government. Says that we will not interfere
Speaker 13: with your private right to worship or not worship as
Speaker 13: you see fit. Right, that is what the Constitution says.
Speaker 13: And so Landry says he wanted to put this up
Speaker 13: because Moses was the first lawgiver.
Speaker 12: He's not.
Speaker 13: The Code of Hamerabi predates Moses by four centuries or something.
Speaker 13: But also, if you want to look at the real
Speaker 13: law of the land, put the Constitution up on those walls.
Speaker 13: Let students read what the real law of this country
Speaker 13: has to say about the proper role of religion in politics.
Speaker 2: The history of posting Ten Commandments signs or plaques are
Speaker 2: building such monuments in public spaces over the last seventy
Speaker 2: years has an origin that might shock many right wing
Speaker 2: cultural warriors who associate Hollywood with godless liberalism. As Cruise
Speaker 2: points out in this book One Nation Under God, How
Speaker 2: Corporate America invented Christian America. The three hour, forty minute
Speaker 2: epic movie The Ten Commandments was a monster hit and
Speaker 2: wild audiences with its twenty five thousand member cast and
Speaker 2: advanced special effects when it was released in nineteen fifty six,
Speaker 2: The movie grossed more than eighty five million dollars. The
Speaker 2: film's politically conservative subtext was unmistakable. The director Cecil B.
Speaker 2: De Mel hated the New Deal and testified to the
Speaker 2: House un American Activities Committee that communists exercised malign influence
Speaker 2: over unions, including those in Hollywood, that drove up the
Speaker 2: cost of filmmaking.
Speaker 3: The film can be read as a metaphor about the
Speaker 3: Cold War, with the oppressive Egyptians representing the Soviet Union
Speaker 3: and the freedom loving Hebrews standing in for the United States.
Speaker 3: At the beginning of the movie, Demill appears and calls
Speaker 3: the movie quote the story of the Birth of Freedom,
Speaker 3: the story of Moses. The movie also captures the racism
Speaker 3: and ironically, the anti semitism of a country that had
Speaker 3: not yet emerged from McCarthyism. The historian Alan Nadell tells
Speaker 3: a revealing story of two cast members in The Ten Commandments.
Speaker 3: According to the story, during the film's production, Charlton Heston's
Speaker 3: wife became pregnant. Demill then told Heston that if his
Speaker 3: wife gave birth to a boy, the child would be
Speaker 3: cast as the baby Moses.
Speaker 4: When Heston's wife gave.
Speaker 14: Birth to a son.
Speaker 3: Demill sent her a telegram saying congratulations, He's got the part.
Speaker 2: Meanwhile, an adult actor, Woody Strode, appeared in the film
Speaker 2: in two markedly different roles. A former NFL star who
Speaker 2: broke the thirteen year informal NFL ban on African American
Speaker 2: players when he signed with the Los Angeles Rams in
Speaker 2: nineteen forty six, stro played both in an Ethiopian king
Speaker 2: and the enslaved attendant of Moses's adopted Egyptian mother. Demill
Speaker 2: thought that the audiences could tell whether swaddled white baby
Speaker 2: was a boy or a girl, but apparently assumed they
Speaker 2: wouldn't notice a black actor playing both a king and
Speaker 2: a slave because of the racist belief that all black
Speaker 2: people look alike. Meanwhile, a movie set in ancient Egypt
Speaker 2: and the Sinai Peninsula featured an almost entirely light skinned cast.
Speaker 2: Even though Demill's mother was Jewish, the only Jewish actor
Speaker 2: to play a major role was Edward G. Robinson, who
Speaker 2: earlier became famous playing gangsters, and who won de Mill's favor,
Speaker 2: perhaps because he was a friendly witness before the House
Speaker 2: on American Activities Committee during the Communist Witch hunts. Thus,
Speaker 2: the one prominent Jewish face in The Ten Commandments was
Speaker 2: cast as a bad guy, a Hebrew named Nathan who
Speaker 2: continually tries to undermine Moses and convince the escaped slaves
Speaker 2: to return to their Egyptian masters.
Speaker 18: You take too much upon yourself.
Speaker 9: We will not live by your commandments.
Speaker 18: We're free.
Speaker 14: There is no freedom without the law.
Speaker 18: Who's law most yours?
Speaker 9: Did you call those tablits to become a prince over us?
Speaker 3: As Cruz documents? When the Ten Commandments film was initially released,
Speaker 3: the mill came up with an ingenious marketing strategy. He
Speaker 3: teamed up with a conservative anti communist organization, the Fraternal
Speaker 3: Order of the Eagles, to establish Ten Commandment monuments across
Speaker 3: the country. Around the time that Southern States erected new
Speaker 3: Confederate monuments to protest desegregation. Ten Commandment monuments appeared at
Speaker 3: the county courthouse in Evansville, Indiana, the Milwaukee City Hall,
Speaker 3: and near the US Canadian border in North Dakota. Nearly
Speaker 3: one hundred and fifty such monuments were erected across the country.
Speaker 3: Momentum stalled during the Civil Rights era to the extent
Speaker 3: that in Alabama, State Justice Roy Moore ord ridicule when
Speaker 3: he placed, without authorization, a self funded five two hundred
Speaker 3: and eighty pound monument in the rotunda of a judicial
Speaker 3: building housing State Supreme Court in two thousand and one.
Speaker 3: The monument was ordered removed two years later, but once
Speaker 3: fringe figures like More have moved closer to the American
Speaker 3: political mainstream because of the influence of people like Barton,
Speaker 3: Lieutenant Governor Patrick and their allies.
Speaker 2: The contemporary of session with festooning public spaces with religious
Speaker 2: artifacts has as much to do with malevolent nostalgia as
Speaker 2: with religious zeal Men like anti crt crusader Christopher Rufo,
Speaker 2: along with Barton and Patrick, want to return to the
Speaker 2: world that made The Ten Commandments film, a world in
Speaker 2: which white people are centered, the accomplishments of dark skinned
Speaker 2: people are erased or expropriated, and where America stands as
Speaker 2: an untainted beacon of freedom in spite of its history
Speaker 2: of enslavement, imperialism, and genocide. And now once again, advocates
Speaker 2: of historical amnesia have a friend in the White House.
Speaker 10: The time has come to reclaim our once great educational
Speaker 10: institutions from the radical left, and we will do that
Speaker 10: our secret weapon will be the college accreditation system. It's
Speaker 10: called accreditation for a reason. The accreditors are supposed to
Speaker 10: ensure that schools are not ripping off students and taxpayers,
Speaker 10: but they have failed totally. When I return to the
Speaker 10: White House, I will fire the radical left accreditors that
Speaker 10: have allowed our colleges to become dominated by Marxist maniacs
Speaker 10: and lunatics.
Speaker 3: On January twenty ninth of this year, Trump issued an
Speaker 3: executive order mandating the withdrawal of federal dollars from any
Speaker 3: public school that allegedly imprints quote anti American, subversive, harmful,
Speaker 3: and false ideologies on our nation's children. This can include
Speaker 3: teaching them about transgender identity, proing services to trans students,
Speaker 3: or educating students about America's long, bloody promotion of white supremacy, homophobia,
Speaker 3: or transphobia. The order also requires public schools to provide
Speaker 3: quote unquote patriotic education. Those like Trump, Barton, and others
Speaker 3: who have clamored the loudest about schools as centers of
Speaker 3: indoctrination are now imposing their own form of propaganda, returning
Speaker 3: history classes from kindergarten to graduate schools to the days
Speaker 3: of the nineteen twenties and the nineteen thirties, when textbook
Speaker 3: writers praised fascist dictators for keeping unions in their place,
Speaker 3: and those willing to die to end slavery were painted
Speaker 3: as the bad guys.
Speaker 2: In the Civil Rights era, black and brown parents boycotted
Speaker 2: public schools that discriminated to undermine their funding, created their
Speaker 2: own freedom schools that provided lessons in black and brown history,
Speaker 2: and marched against the old Jim Crow laws. Parents who
Speaker 2: want their children receive an honest accounting of the nation's
Speaker 2: past will do well to learn from these predecessors and
Speaker 2: to disrupt the meetings of right wing school boards as
Speaker 2: loudly and enthusiastically as the parents who were conned into
Speaker 2: a frenzy about the phantom dangers of CRT. This is
Speaker 2: Michael Phillips.
Speaker 4: And this is Stephen Monicelli.
Speaker 3: Thanks to Betsy Freoff for reading passages from textbooks, and
Speaker 3: to Dan Glass for reading quotes from the founding fathers.
Speaker 3: Of course, thanks to you for listening.
Speaker 1: It could happen. Here is a production of cool Zone Media.
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