http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/06/santorum-blames-liberal-plot-for-students-bad-history-scores-video.php
Another day, another entry for Rick Santorum's list of liberal conspiracies.
This time Santorum is arguing that the reason so few U.S. students perform well in U.S. history is because of "a conscious effort on the part of the left who has a huge influence on our curriculum, to desensitize America to what American values are so they're more pliable to the new values that they would like to impose on America."
Santorum was speaking to the Story County GOP Central Committee in Iowa, and referenced a report that found that only 13% of high school seniors nationally are proficient in history. Only 22% of fourth-grade students and 18% of eighth-graders were proficient.
"How can we be a free people?" Santorum asked. "How can we be a people that fight for America if we don't know who America is or what we're all about?"
He remains a hoot. History isn't an opportunity to cherry-pick American history for the service of some American political agenda. Witch hunts, Indian "removal", slavery, the KKK, labor-management violence, organized crime, some interventions in Latin America, hysterical responses to 'security risks' with the risks (anarchism, Japanese-Americans, Communists, and Islam) usually proving slighter than the destruction of liberty, male supremacy, and political corruption of all times, are causes for shame. The best in American history has been how we dealt with real dangers.
As a liberal I find America much less special than it used to be -- largely because other countries have caught up with us, To be sure, that is in part our achievement. It's a good thing that instead of setting up puppets in Germany, Italy, and Japan who would then help us bleed those countries for American corporate gain we set up stable political systems capable of independence -- and economic achievements not always to the benefit of American corporations. It is a good thing that our model of political pluralism became a reality elsewhere. That is a testament to our virtues and not to our fall.
It's democracy -- and not some specific religious view, and not the powerful corporations and special-interest groups -- that has made America good. People can differ on many issues of theology, but in general people are obliged to look for what is good for people not always themselves. Example: the Civil Rights struggle succeeded because white people decided that subjection of black people was not only wrong for blacks but also of no value to themselves.
Rick Santorum fails to recognize the role of liberalism in deciding what is good and right -- and creating progress. Abolition of slavery, emancipation of children from child labor, bans on fraudulently-marketed nostrums, gender equity, workers' rights, anti-fascism, the rights of the handicapped, civil rights for minorities, and now gay rights have all begun as parts of a liberal agenda of the time.
