Arch-creationist dentist Don McLeroy is limping and quacking his way off the Texas Board of Education, but there’s still plenty of crazy left behind. Cynthia Dunbar recently appeared on a far right-wing radio show to preach her revisionist history, her dislike of atheists and Christians who aren’t part of her sect, and plead for more god in the schools. Texas Freedom Network provides a synopsis; listen to the actual show at the peril of your sanity.
Speaking last week on a far-right talk show, The American View, (read more about the show here) Dunbar — a Richmond Republican representing a state board district that stretches from west of Houston to Austin — attacked public education and even the religious faith of people who don’t agree with her. She also repeated her infamous attack on President Obama as a terrorist sympathizer. And as the state board prepares to take a final vote next month on social studies curriculum standards for public schools, Dunbar suggested that supporters of separation of church and state don’t understand the Constitution and that the drafters of the First Amendment had no concerns “whatsoever” for the nonreligious.
I caught a bit of the beginning, when the announcer/interview is shouting out his vision of THE American View — there is only one — and was amused at one thing. He’s harping on the usual quasi-religious veneration of the Founding Fathers, when he makes it clear that he’s not talking about those Founding Fathers, the ones tainted by that Enlightenment nonsense, but the original founders, the ones who settled on this continent in the 17th century, and who put God, God, God, God, and God in everything. Merely being 230 years behind the times is insufficient for these guys — they want to roll the calendar back at least 400 years.
Right, forget that silly Constitution, it’s the Mayflower Compact that counts.
Well, who can say if Dunbar’s any less crazy than Don? As symbols go, though, sending the positively ignorant McLeroy packing is well worth it.
And if Dunbar is as noxious as he is, maybe she’ll be whining about how she was expelled in a couple years. Let’s hope there’s enough sense in Texas not to tolerate the most egregious loons…
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/mxaa3p
Ah the ones who put God in everything…who needed help from the local heathens because they hardly even knew how to shit right in the wilderness. The ones who brought in a moral panic that resulted in dozens of death and blighting its city to this day. So much so that it is now the colloquial persecution by which all others are allegorically refereed to. The ones who waged a war of genocide violating their legal treaties with the natives? The ones who created a society so oppressive and miserable that it’s still refereed to as the epitome of moral self righteous assholeness.
Yeah, let’s follow THEIR example.
Copying and pasting this from the last time I was reminded of this (during the Great Cracker Caper, a couple of years ago)…
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A while back, when I was researching early Colonial American attitudes towards religion and religious freedom, I found an interesting source: The Massachusetts Body of Liberties. Which does indeed prescribe certain rights and liberties to all.
But it has an… interesting section under “Capital Laws”:
And that’s before the laws that declare murder to be a capital crime. The original also has footnotes that cite the relevant biblical verses that the laws derive from.
Well, at least by invoking the Pilgrims’ views on religion, he isn’t pretending that the constitution is compatible with their brutal theocratic visions.
Fortunately, Dunbar is not running for re-election and her hand-picked would-be successor, Brian Russell, was defeated in the primaries.
Nice to know he literally wants to kill all of us
Ah yes. More in the continuing saga of the Stupidization of America.
For instance…
…or…
But interspersed among these, there are things like…
Now that right there is hilarious. Whether they gave two shits about the non religious or not, that doesn’t change the intention of it. Keeping the government out of the religion “business” and keeping religion out of the government’s “business”.
The Puritans are famous for the high point of American theocracy, hanging 25 witches at Salem.
They also hung a few heretics, Unitarians and Quakers. Rhode Island was founded by people trying to get away from the religious kooks.
It isn’t too surprising that the modern day fundie death cultists would think superstitious, homicidal morons are a good role model.
There is something fundamentally wrong with this country when a person who doesn’t understand even the most basic things about the Constitution is in charge of deciding what will be taught in public schools.
You don’t even need to get as far as the specifically crazy things Dunbar believes; all you need is this:
state board that oversees public education in one of the largest states in the nation… and she attacks public education! She could be “right” about everything else, and that alone would be reason enough to want her off the SBoE.
There actually might be something to ponder here, in the sense that there have been successive waves of religious piety among the descendants of Europeans in America. The original colonists (Dunbar’s ur-founders): very pious. The signers of the declaration of independance: not so much.
Then there was the Great Awakening of the 1830s, which caused another upswing of religiosity. There were at least two other troughs with one peak in between them before the present era of ostentatious Jesus craziness. The great thing is not to let them rewrite history.
Let’s reinstitute slavery and the witch trials, and stop celebrating christmas, Puritan style.
D’Oh! HTML @12. Everything after “[emphasis added]” should’ve been outside the quote.
“There is something fundamentally wrong with this country when a person who doesn’t understand even the most basic things about the Constitution is in charge of deciding what will be taught in public schools.”
We let the inmates run the asylum around these parts
I once saw a fundamentalist panel of David Barton, Richard Land, Peter Marshall, and a couple other theocrats who had a rip roaring chuckle at the “egomanical, self-promoting, drama queen” Roger Williams for leaving Puritan paradise. Oh, it’s a long hilarious story, I tell you.
Hey, google got’s it:
http://www.baptistpress.org/printerfriendly.asp?ID=17524
Interesting thought; what the these original founding fathers think about women being involved in politics?
While I don’t believe he’s correct, the crazy announcer essentially admits that Christians with brains are a vanishing breed.
Also, something these people need to understand: God and gods have always been the monster that lurks in the shadows of the things that we don’t know. In the 1600s, those shadows were nearly all-encompassing. We were standing with a match in the middle of a vast and dark cellar. However, the room is quickly being illuminated, and the shadows pushed back, into the corners, and we have yet to find any trace of the monster in the shadows. We have no more need for god. Just because people a few hundred years ago needed god to answer questions doesn’t make them at all relevant today. Let it die, ffs.
The Austin Chronicle put it nicely:
Dumdum is in Texas (almost goes without saying). If you ignore the Amerindians (and there is no reason to ignore them!), then wouldn’t the “founding fathers” be the Spanish-Mexicans (primarily)? You know, those people I rather suspect Dumdum doesn’t want around the place…
Raven (@10) and Foggg (@17):
The tale of Roger Williams and the founding of Rhode Island is recounted as part of Sarah Vowell’s The Wordy Shipmates. I highly recommend it, and if you like audiobooks (and are as charmed by Vowell’s quirky nerd-girl voice as I am) I especially recommend her recording of it.
Well, for that matter, the founding father of these lands was Christopher Columbus, a Catholic… or, even before that, we can worship the viking gods, who are said to have come before Columbus… and, what the heck! the real founding fathers were the aboriginal peoples! Gosh! What a moron!!!!!!!
Oh, should have waited for the craziness to end before commenting.
She mentions Obama plotting a terrorist attack. On the constitution.
I repeat: A terrorist attack. On the constitution. What does she think he’s gonna do, tear off a corner in hopes that the constitution will grant him tyrannical powers?
Or maybe she just picked three things out of her words-that-fundies-get-worked-up-about hat. “Hmm… Constitution, Obama, terrorist attack. Genius!”
OR!! Maybe it’s Republican Mad Libs!
Lunacy never ends.
The image that popped into my head when I read that was of a Christian scurrying off with a brain in her mouth to eat in seclusion, much like a pet dog who just stole the family’s dinner roast.
And yet I don’t think I’ve ever visualised such an apt metaphor for the Religious Right.
Scared of terrism?
Ain’t we all? What a silly fucktard!
although they’re so “respect muslims or they’ll give out death threats!”
That’s Dumbar, not Dunbar – she never did learn to spell her name correctly.
I’m glad to see some people remember everything that a great hero like Cotton Mather did for your fine country. Truly, he was a man we should emulate.
Having listened to the interview, it seems clear that Dunbar is an extremely intelligent woman who is very committed to her ideology. If there are hundreds more like her, and Liberty U, etc. are pumping out more annually, your country has rough going ahead indeed.
“I once saw a fundamentalist panel of David Barton, Richard Land, Peter Marshall, and a couple other theocrats who had a rip roaring chuckle at the “egomanical, self-promoting, drama queen” Roger Williams for leaving Puritan paradise. Oh, it’s a long hilarious story, I tell you. ”
I read that as ROBIN Williams at first and was deeply confused. You have to admit that the description fits both of them.
Didn’t listen to the interview. My stomach and sensibilities are rugged but NOT that rugged.
Her written materials to my eye don’t show any intelligence whatsoever. More like a crazy woman who either is out of contact with reality or deliberately lying. Crazy or evil….or both?
A few hundred kooks in a country of 300 million is no big deal. Unfortunately the USA leads the world in many areas. We have the largest lunatic fringes in the industrial world. Take that you foreigners!!!
All societies have baggage that are just being dragged along for the ride. So far we have been able to drag the fundie xians along. It is not inconceivable that someday they may actually drag us down instead like the Moslem fundies have done to their societies.
Enjoy the shadenfreude or spectacle while you can. If the USA goes down, we will take a lot of the rest of the world with us. What do you think the fundie xian morons will do with half the world’s nuclear weapons? The Apocalypse is 2,000 years overdo and there is no point in praying for it when you can just make one yourself.
Since these people are SOOOO interested in having balance between alternate views in the school science curriculum, they will certainly embrace my proposed law to require teaching of evolution in Sunday Schools and Catechism classes.
NO?
Your eye is malfunctioning. Evolution does not favor organisms with poorly functioning capacity to assess the skill, speed and strength of competitors.
Crazy? As much as it may comfort you to think thusly, I see no evidence that Dunbar has diagnosable mental problems. Lying? No, it’s well understood that we are all prone to imperfectly making sense of reality, and adopting — honestly — a corresponding ideology. As to declarations of evil, well, that’s a big topic, but again, a distraction from whether Ms. Dunbar is an effective agent of change for her ideology.
Agreed.