Reader’s beef of the week

November 23, 2014 • 10:07 am

There is only one beef this week, as none of the moderated/new comments were particularly memorable. This one comes from our old friend (?) Don McLeroy, the Texas dentist who rose (?) to the position of chairman of the Texas State Board of Education, serving as a board member from 1998-2011.

More than anyone else in Texas, McLeroy did his best to damage science education in the state. As a devout Christian and equally devout creationist, he engaged the Texas School board in a long series of battles against textbooks that portrayed evolution—as well as “revisionist” (i.e. non-Republican) views of American history. McLeroy ultimately failed, and was voted off the board, but for many of us he exemplified the retrograde scientific and political views conservatives want to force on schoolchildren.

Here’s a quote from an article in Washington Monthly on McLeroy and his fellow revisionists:

“The secular humanists may argue that we are a secular nation,” McLeroy said, jabbing his finger in the air for emphasis. “But we are a Christian nation founded on Christian principles. The way I evaluate history textbooks is first I see how they cover Christianity and Israel. Then I see how they treat Ronald Reagan—he needs to get credit for saving the world from communism and for the good economy over the last twenty years because he lowered taxes.”

Ronald Reagan saved the world from Communism! I wonder what they think about that in China and North Korea?

Anyway, McLeroy, now retired, still tries to promulgate his views on sites like mine, where his comments are moderated (i.e., displayed in posts like this). He tried to append his latest comment to my post “The Republican punishment of Obama begins“, and here it is, divided up so I could make a few remarks (McLeroy’s comment is in italics). The last line is a duplicate of mine, except he’s substituted “Democrats” for “Republicans.”  As you might expect, McLeroy is a Republican:

Our president has just defied the separation of powers doctrine with an executive order on granting amnesty to millions. The House Republicans are simply attempting to preserve that doctrine–to the benefit of all!

Here we have the typical Republican excuse for keeping minorities down: preserving the Constitution. That’s, and “states’ rights,” were the classic reason for opposing civil rights in the sixties.

Our founding fathers had a clear biblical understanding of the nature of man. They not only understood that man was great—having been created in the image of God, they also knew that man was bad—having a fallen nature. Having this in mind, they designed our Constitution accordingly.

Isn’t it strange that if the founding fathers supposedly based the Constitution on God, they don’t mention a deity in the document? McLeroy is full of it.

Clearly understanding the reality of sin, our founders made it difficult to govern—that is, they made it difficult for tyranny to succeed; they adopted the separation of powers doctrine with its numerous checks and balances.

Yep, that’s clearly all based on sin. . .

Actually, it is not surprising that when the president and many other modern men–who deny the thinking behind our Constitution–get thwarted in their dreams, they wrongly conclude our government is dysfunctional and feel justified in acting unilaterally.

Thankfully, however, this doctrine has not completely been neutered. When Congress over-reached and passed the unpopular healthcare bill, the control over the House of Representatives switched parties less than one year later. Our Constitution worked flawlessly!”

What a blight on our land some Democrats are.

Well, if the government is “functional,” a majority of the American public don’t see it that way. What McLeroy means by “flawlessly” is this: “the Democrats didn’t get all the legislation they wanted.”  Does McLeroy favor a Democratic president in 2016 to keep a Republican congress in check, so it’s “hard to govern”?

I shudder to think what would happen to this country if McLeroy really got what he wanted: a Republican President and Congress. We’d have endless wars, a Supreme Court that would be even more conservative than the one we have now, abortions made illegal, school prayers approved, executions accelerated, the rich taxed less, and a diminution of social equality. We’d have a plutocracy.

When the Republicans controlled the Texas School Board by a large majority, they damn near wrecked it, and made Texas the laughingstock of educators and scientists. That’s what the good dentist wants for our country as a whole.

 

38 thoughts on “Reader’s beef of the week”

    3. I would say kleptocracy is a better fit. Always has been from the start of this nation, special interest subverting govt. to their personal benefit.

    3. Ben, give the man a break. On August 2, he left on a weekend trip. As soon as he’s back, he’ll answer. That, or he’s just another liar for Jesus. Now for the Bayesian calculation…it’s looking like a near 100% chance that it is in fact the latter of the two choices.

        1. Wannabe Mayor: McLeroy

          There is no shortage of qualified candidates for the bottom of that particular barrel.

  5. The mentality displayed by McLeroy represents nothing less than a clear and present danger to the well-being of the nation. The obliviousness that characters like McLeroy exhibit is a constant source of astonishment to me. The true “blight on this land” is the turning away from rationality and the drive to establish a theocracy by McLeroy and his ilk.

  6. I wonder why he visits this site anyway? It seems very unlikely he will agree with anything that Jerry ever writes. Maybe it’s for the wildlife photos and a daily doss of Hili. Perhaps he shares Jerry’s taste in music.

    George

    1. He’s probably getting some pointers for his new website: “Plaque? I Don’t Believe In No Stinkin’ Plaque – Standing Up to the Dental Experts”.

  8. Maybe he is a closet atheist and that makes him visit the site. If so he he one fine actor.

    Sadly I lived in Texas for some time and ran across many others like this.

  9. I think you are being to charitable to a Republican President and Congress. Consider a defaulted federal government and a budget stripped of social spending. Government pensions gone Social Security cuts. Prayer would be the only thing left in public education.

  11. So, if we dig around, we’ll find that McLeroy argued strongly against the illegal use of torture and unconstitutional warrantless wiretapping under the previous president? Surely someone concerned with presidential overreach would have felt compelled to speak out against such egregious affronts to the rule of law.

    There are a few Republicans who have credibility here, arguing as they did against all forms of expansive presidential action in both the previous president and this one. The rest are lying hypocrites, pretending to a virtue they never had.

  12. The Texas School Board is still working its mischief.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/23/us/texas-approves-disputed-history-texts-for-schools.html?module=Search&mabReward=relbias%3Aw%2C{%221%22%3A%22RI%3A9%22}&_r=0

    I heard an interview on Bob Edwards with James McPherson, who pointed out that the Constitution was approved 2 1/2 centuries after the founding of the theocratic Massachusetts Bay Colony. McElroy apparently doesn’t think anything happened during that time.

  13. You can look beyond the text of the Constitution to the writings of the founding Fathers to find the sources of the Constitution, the writings of John Locke, Montesquieu, Britain’s 1689 Bill of Rights, etc.

    McElroy draws a lot of attention to the doctrine formally known as “separation of powers” originates in ancient Greece and had its first modern expression in the writings of Montesquieu, a French Enlightenment thinker.

    It is true that Protestant Reformer John Calvin also advocated separation of powers, but the Founding Fathers seem to have paid far more attention to its secular advocates.

    The Christian reasons for separation of powers that McElroy defends were given modern expression by theologian Reinhold Neibuhr but RN was well aware(!!) that this was not(!!) the Founding Fathers defense of the principle, and RN was a severe critic of fundamentalist Christianity. Not to mention that he inspired a short-lived faculty discussion group at Harvard called “Atheists for Niebuhr”, basically a collection of atheists who thought RN was a good ethical thinker but did not share his religious beliefs.

    Barack Obama has given far fewer executive orders than either Clinton or Bush, and arguable Bush did far more damage to the Constitution with the Patriot Act, etc. than any executive orders by Obama. This is just a clear case of the pot calling the kettle black.

    1. PS Reagan deserves some credit for stimulating a stagnant economy on a short-term basis, but as a result of his deficits, there was a recession during his successor George Bush. America made a spectacular recovery under Clinton due to !*Clinton’s*! policies, not due to anything Ronald Reagan did.

  14. McLeroy’s religiously-inspired opinions are a plaque on the enamel of US education, a cavity in the Texas school board.

  15. Our president has just defied the separation of powers doctrine with an executive order on granting amnesty to millions.

    As many many pundits and even the conservative Federalist society have admitted, Obama’s immigration actions are both legal and bascially similar to what Reagan, Bush, and many other presidents have done. (Reagan actually went further: he gave a general amnesty to every illegal who had entered the country before 1982).

    When Congress over-reached and passed the unpopular healthcare bill, the control over the House of Representatives switched parties less than one year later.

    Correlation without much causation. The ACA was passed in March 2010. Yes its true, in the November 2010 midterm election the GOP picked up a whole bunch of seats. Then in the 2012 Presidential year they lost seats. Then in the 2014 midterm election they gained seats again.

    Seems like the pretty standard “the party without the Presidency gains in the midterm” pattern to me.

    1. “Reagan actually went further: he gave a general amnesty to every illegal who had entered the country before 1982.”

      It seems that that’s being reasonably nice and generous, eh?

      When that happened, I thought to myself to-the-effect, naively, “OK, this is good. In appreciation for this generosity, surely anyone in the future contemplating entering the U.S. will “get in line” and follow proper procedure for lawfully entering/immigrating to the U.S.”

      It may be (short of totally militarizing U.S. borders) that the U.S. cannot prevent folks from entering the U.S. Be that as it may, does the U.S. not have the reasonable and appropriate right (duty?) to control its borders?

      1. It every bit as reasonable and appropriate for the US to control its borders with a massive wall and military patrols as it was for East Germany to do so.

        b&

        1. My vague recollection is that you basically advocate an open U.S. border, with no monitoring/surveillance. Is that correct? My memory can certainly be faulty. If that is not so, what specifically is your position on the matter?

          1. We should have inspection stations at border crossings that include basic identity checks for individuals and whatever safety / tax / contamination / whatever stuff Customs requires of goods. There should be no visa requirements for people.

            Participation in the civic process, especially including voting, should continue to be restricted to citizens.

            b&

  16. One question, Mr McLeroy: If, according to the Republican interpretation of the US Constitution, the founding fathers understood that man was bad—having a fallen nature, and that the Constitution was drafted accordingly, why do Republican organisations insist that the Constitution demands that so many guns be put into the hands of the bad?

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