Quote:
Originally Posted by nguirado
Do liberals usually say that conservatives also want the best for society?
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I don't know about most liberals, but I freely acknowledge that most conservatives want what they believe is best for society. (A few of them want what's best for *them*, while knowing that it's bad for lots of other people, but that attitude isn't limited to conservatives.)
I think most of them are badly mistaken about what's "best for society," mostly based on huge blind spots about what most of society is like, away from their particular communities. (Hint:
$120k/year is not 'poor' by any rational standard.) I think that growing up in relatively wealthy, mostly-White, mostly-Christian, straight-seeming communities allows them to believe that almost everyone (1) shares their values and (2) had the same advantages and opportunities they did. When challenges to those are raised, they are prone to claiming the challenges are individual, isolated anecdotes, not large trends.
I think the problem with the Texas schoolbooks splits into two parts:
1) Texas residents who don't agree with the selection are being forced out of the selection process;
2) The education industry's desire to use the same books nationwide discourages diversity that would better serve individual states or smaller regions.
The details of the TX controversy aren't directly relevant to those points--which also apply to California's schoolbook selection. (Which, however, don't tend to raise national drama, in part because they're
not pushing religion. I could take the ID stuff a lot more seriously if Buddhist or Hindu creation theory were ever part of it.)
Claiming there's "too much Islam and Christianity is being insulted" in the new books shows a religious bias on the part of the protesters. Is anyone complaining that "there's too much Judaism and Buddhism is being sidelined and misrepresented?" These are history books; they were not created to push a religious agenda. Nor is any child in Texas likely to turn away from Christianity as a result of a few derogatory phrases in a textbook. (And if they would, I question the strength of their faith, not the accuracy of the book.) This is not about "these books need to be unbiased;" it's about "nothing must come across as insulting to Christianity, no matter how accurate it is."