Louisiana Voice

An editorial cartoon on Wednesday said that the Ringling Circus was boycotting Arizona, citing the “unfair competition from the vote audit circus” because it had “the best clowns.”

You can now add Louisiana to that list of boycotts by Ringling because there’s just no way their clowns can hold the line when pitted against certain of our legislators.

Take Reps. Valerie Hodges (R-Denham Springs), Ray Garofalo (R-Chalmette), Kathy Edmonston (R-Gonzales), and Mark Wright (R-Covington). Somebody please take them.

Okay, old joke but what the House Education Committee did on Wednesday was certainly no laughing matter, though all three should have been wearing big, oversized shoes, red noses and orange wigs. In fact, that goes for all eight committee members who voted to report Hodges’ House Bill 352 favorably.

Committee Chair Garofalo, as noted by committee member Rep. Ken Brass (D-Vacherie), somehow managed to spend the entirety of the testimony on the bill in another committee room but still managed to make it back in time to vote in favor of the bill – without benefit of hearing any of the testimony. Meanwhile, he left it to Wright, who had problems with committee procedure and the rules of order, to preside over the debate.

So, what’s the big deal about HB 352? The answer is self-proclaimed historian/author DAVID BARTON of Dallas, Texas, and his outfit called Wallbuilders. Wallbangers might be a better name for it.

Wallbuilders is a company that offers a line of textbooks that purport to teach American history and civics but with a decided flair for omitting the uglier aspects of our history like Native American genocide, SLAVERY and such messy details as our third President fathering children by a slave woman. In fact, one of its books, THE FOUNDING FATHERS AND SLAVERY, places the blame for slavery in this country on Great Britain, claiming that “…the Founders vigorously complained against the fact that Great Britain had forcefully imposed upon the Colonies the evil of slavery. For example, Thomas Jefferson heavily criticized that British policy.”

Good to know. The book goes on to say that “even the Virginia Founders were not responsible for slavery, but actually tried to dismantle the institution.” Perhaps that explains how Richmond became the Capital of the Confederacy.

It wouldn’t surprise me one bit if Wallbuilders’ updated history books put the onus on the Southern Poverty Law Center for the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capital.

Hodges, testifying on behalf of her bill, co-authored by Rep. Edmonston, assured committee members that because she served as a missionary in Mexico for a couple of decades, she knows “how it feels to be judged by the color of my skin.”

Seriously? How about in your own country, Rep. Hodges? Ever been judged by the color of your skin in the good ol’ US of A?

But I digress. Among other things, HB 352 mandates the teaching of:

• The “Founding Principles (capitalized, no less) of the United States of America” (somewhat subjective as those founding principles (capitalized) will presumably be what Wallbuilders deems them to be;
• Federalism and the Federalist Papers;
• American exceptionalism;
• Globalism and the United Nations;
• Immigration policy;
• Due process and equal justice under the law (something that most probably should be taught many of our political leaders who seem to believe they are a law unto themselves).

“Textbooks and instructional materials…shall accurately reflect the contributions and achievements of ordinary Americans and promote an understanding of the history and values of the people of the United States and Louisiana, including the free enterprise system, the benefits of capitalism, private property, constitutional liberties, the value of a constitutional republic and traditional standards of moral values,” the bill says.

It also says, “Political activism of one point of view over another has no place in formal education…” That’s rather strange coming from Hodges considering she once endorsed the concept of church-affiliated schools receiving state charters – until an Islamic school in New Orleans applied for one. She nearly popped a blood vessel over that, declaring she had not meant her endorsement of faith-based schools to extend quite that far.

Not said, but certainly understood, considering Barton’s presence and endorsement testimony at Wednesday’s hearing was that Wallbuilders stands to reap a windfall should HB 352 become law. Why else do you think Barton would make an appearance to push the bill other than to see the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE) forced to approve his books for grades one through 12?

Representatives from the Louisiana State Department of Education and BESE, by the way, were on hand to oppose the bill – to no avail.

And then there’s that bill by committee chair Garofalo that’s sort of hanging out there in limbo because he was sufficiently stupid as to piss off the legislative Black Caucus with his insensitive remark that his HB 564 would allow educators to teach “the good” about “slavery.”

Uh…and what good would that be, Garofalo? All those good ol’ blues and spiritual songs? Sewanee River? Old Man River?

Like Hodges, Garofalo lives in some kind of dream world. His bill would prohibit the teaching of so-called “divisive concepts” like the myth that the U.S. or the gret stet of Looziana is “fundamentally, institutionally or systemically racist or sexist.”

Really, Rep. Garofalo? And the fact that there is no systemic racism or sexism would explain why Blacks are much more likely to be pulled over by police and why women earn approximately 60 cents to ever dollar a male makes for performing the same job?

Perhaps the complete absence of sexism would explain why LSU finds itself in quite the legal pickle over its handling of sexual harassment complaints on campus. You think maybe?

No racism? Well, that surely explains all those private and charter schools popping up all over the state, now, doesn’t it? They certainly weren’t created so the poor and black kids could be dumped into low-performing public schools while all those middle- and upper-class kids trotted off to their private or charter schools, were they?

And all those dirt-poor Native American reservations just couldn’t be a symbol of systemic racism. Nor could the attacks on Islamic citizens, Asians, and the demands that Latinos “speak English.” (Would you ever suggest to a member of the Sicilian Mafia that he “speak English”?)

Don’t believe me? Well, read on to the bottom of page 4 of Garofalo’s bill: “…[A] charter school …and the school’s officers and employees shall be exempt from all statutory mandates or other statutory requirements that are applicable to public schools and to public school officers and employees…”

Well, that certainly clashes with that provision in Hodges’ HB352 that stipulates that there shall be “equal justice under the law.”