Newspeak is closely based on English but has a greatly reduced and simplified vocabulary and grammar. This suits the totalitarian regime of the Party, whose aim is to make any alternative thinking---"thoughtcrime"---or "crimethink" in the newest edition of Newspeak—impossible by removing any words or possible constructs which describe the ideas of freedom, rebellion and so on.
"It's a beautiful thing, the destruction of words."
From 1984
***
Goodbye Thomas Jefferson.
Texas authorities don't care that much about you anymore, and they do not want America's students to know that much about you either.
It's their way or the highway for these thought police on the Texas Board of Education.
They want History Viewed their way.
But History Books should be Well-Rounded.
History Books should include the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.
History Books should be Conservative with their Exclusions, but Liberal in their Inclusions.
(Evolution and Science can co-exist with all other ISMS.)
Orthodoxy and Dogma should not be the Ink that records and writes History, and its Font should not be from Biased Ideology whether it sits on the Texas Board of Education---
Or the Tribunal of the Holy Office of the Inquisition.
History texts should contain more Facts, but
Fewer Opinions.
It is Dangerous and Wrong to exclude Persons, Ideas, and Events for the sake of any Political Ideology or Agenda, whether these Agendas come from the Texas Board of Education, the Politburo, or Iran's Mullah Regime.
We might dislike Persons and Events from the Past,
but should history books exclude these Persons and Events just because of our antipathy?
The Texas Board of Education is doing a disservice to Truth and Fairness.
The Texas Board of Education is going against Freedom of Thought when it imposes a skewed view of History, or hand-picks Language to fit its own Political Points of View.
You can Ban or Burn Books---
You can Omit and Ignore Facts, Persons, and Ideas---
Infamous and Famous---
BUT YOU CANNOT REMOVE THEM FROM HISTORY.
You can only Temporarily remove them from Consciousness.
Thank goodness Mind Control has not been Perfected YET.
***
Widely regarded as one of the most important of all the founding fathers of the United States, Thomas Jefferson received a demotion of sorts Friday thanks to the Texas Board of Education.
The board voted to enact new teaching standards for history and social studies that will alter which material gets included in school textbooks. It decided to drop Jefferson from a world history section devoted to great political thinkers.
According to Texas Freedom Network, a group that opposes many of the changes put in place by the Board of Education, the original curriculum asked students to
" explain the impact of Enlightenment ideas from John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, Voltaire, Charles de Montesquieu, Jean Jacques Rousseau and Thomas Jefferson on political revolutions from 1750 to the present."
The Texas Board of Education is dropping President Thomas Jefferson from a world history section devoted to great political thinkers.
That emphasis did not sit well with board member Cynthia Dunbar, who, during Friday's meeting, explained the rationale for changing it.
" The Enlightenment was not the only philosophy on which these revolutions were based," Dunbar said.
The new standard, passed at the meeting in a 10-5 vote, now reads,
" Explain the impact of the writings of John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, Voltaire, Charles de Montesquieu, Jean Jacques Rousseau, Thomas Aquinas, John Calvin and Sir William Blackstone."
By dropping mention of revolution, and substituting figures such as Aquinas and Calvin for Jefferson, Texas Freedom Network argues, the board had chosen to embrace religious teachings over those of Jefferson, the man who coined the phrase " separation between church and state."
According to USA Today, the board also voted to strike the word
" democratic" from references to the U.S. form of government, replacing it with the term
" constitutional republic."
Texas textbooks will contain references to " laws of nature" and
" nature's God" in passages that discuss major political ideas.
The board decided to use the words " free enterprise" when describing the U.S. economic system rather than words such as " capitalism",
" capitalist" and " free market", which it deemed to have a negative connotation.
Serving 4.7 million students, Texas accounts for a large percentage of the textbook market, and the new standards may influence what is taught in the rest of the country.
IT'S THE OIL STUPID!
