Florida GOP senate candidate says what parents teach should not be undone by schools.

[madfloridian]

Marco Rubio is the candidate of the religious right. Recently he got the endorsement of Karl Rove with a hefty donation as well.

He appears to be a supporter of Creationism.

Take a look at a Google search on the terms Marco Rubio, religious right. You will be amazed at the Florida Republicans who support him against Charlie Crist. In my worst nightmare I can not imagine him as my senator...but it well could happen.

Google Search

From Dispatches from the Culture Wars...a little more about Marco.

Another Republican Creationist Running for Office

The "crux" of the disagreement, according Rubio, is "whether what a parent teaches their children at home should be mocked and derided and undone at the public school level. It goes to the fundamental core of who is ultimately, primarily responsible for the upbringing of children. Is it your public education system or is it your parents?"

Rubio added, "And for me, personally, I don't want a school system that teaches kids that what they're learning at home is wrong."

The blogger disagrees:

But this is either obvious nonsense or special pleading. Is there a single thing taught in any public school that does not conflict with what some parents are teaching their kids at home? We teach that slavery was wrong, yet some people think it is Biblically-mandated and perfectly moral. Would Rubio make the same argument for those people or would he refuse to apply his own argument coherently and consisently?

We teach that the earth rotates around the sun while some parents disagree with that claim. We teach that the Holocaust occurred while some parents disagree with that. We teach that the earth is a sphere while some parents disagree with. So does Rubio think that we have to teach both sides of every single controversy on which parents might disagree?

Marco Rubio is one of the many Republican lawmakers who use The Florida Baptist Witness website to reach out to his loyal supporters. You would be amazed at the religious political business conducted there.


Marco Rubio

From the Florida voice of the Southern Baptist Church:

Rubio: Florida House open to legislative fix on evolution

An evolution compromise approved on Feb. 19 by the State Board of Education was the best that could be achieved in that body but legislative action to protect academic freedom of teachers offering criticisms of Darwinian evolution is possible, House Speaker Marco Rubio told Florida Baptist Witness in a Feb. 20 interview.

...."At the Feb. 19 BOE meeting, opponents of the science standards uniformly opposed the theory compromise, arguing instead for an “Academic Freedom Proposal” which would have added a clause to the standards permitting teachers “to engage students in a critical analysis” of Darwinian evolution.

...."Rubio, a Cuban-American, made a comparison to the strategy employed by the Communist Party in Cuba where schools encouraged children to turn in parents who criticized Fidel Castro.

“Of course, I’m not equating the evolution people with Fidel Castro,” he quickly added, while noting that undermining the family and the church were key means the Communist Party used to gain control in Cuba.

“In order to impose their totalitarian regime, they destroyed the family; they destroyed the faith links that existed in that society,” he said. Although the evolution issue is “obviously” on a “much smaller scale,” both matters are related to the “fundamental question of who is in charge of the upbringing of children. Is it parents or is it the government? I believe it’s parents. And we should do nothing in government that undermines that relationship.

“And there are parents that passionately believe in this and they should be given the opportunity to teach that to their children without someone undoing it,” Rubio said.

That is a stunning thing to say. In effect he is advocating schools can only teach what parents believe to be true. Alarming.

Marco Rubio is running for Senate against Charlie Crist. He is a Creationist.

He is not the only major politician running who supports creationism. Bill Foster in St. Pete is a Young Earth Creationist. Just imagine if Arne Duncan gets his way, and mayors get to take control of the school systems.

St Pete mayoral candidate believes dinosaurs walked the earth with men.

“Dinosaurs are mentioned in Job, so I don’t have any problem believing that dinosaurs roamed the earth,’’ says St. Petersburg mayoral candidate Bill Foster. He says he believes dinosaurs and humans lived at the same time, though most scientists say there is a gap of at least 60 million years between dinosaurs and mankind."

..."St. Petersburg mayoral candidate Bill Foster believes, contrary to the overwhelming majority of scientists, that dinosaurs and humans co-existed. He believes the world was created in six literal days, and he once complained to school officials when his son was taught about Darwin's theory of evolution in fifth grade.

Is that relevant to the campaign for mayor of Florida's fourth-largest city?

Yes, it is relevant. It's a serious matter. Foster was even more extreme in a letter he wrote to the Pinellas County School Board.

Darwin's theory of evolution helped fuel the rise of Hitler and contributed to the school-shooting massacre at Columbine, a former St. Petersburg City Council member wrote in a letter urging the Pinellas County School Board to expose students to alternative theories.

"Evolution gives our kids an excuse to believe in natural selection and survival of the fittest, which leads to a belief that they are superior over the weak," Bill Foster wrote board members in a letter received this week. "This is a slippery slope."

He continued: "One of the Columbine shooters wrote on his Web site, 'You know what I love? Natural selection! It's the best thing that ever happened to the Earth. Getting rid of all the stupid and weak organisms.'"

Just imagine a person like this being in control of the Pinellas County School system.

Just imagine Marco Rubio being Florida's next Senator?

[imdjh]

1. Foster is a moron. Marco is a politician. nt

[BlueJazz]

2. It's simply Amazing...isn't it? Here we are in the year 2009 and we still have..

..people believing Fairy Tales and such.

It's also amazing that these people take the writings of ancient Goat-Herders over 99 percent of Modern Scientists.
...and we are suppose to let these people "Govern" us ?? ...when they have the critical-thinking skills of a Brick.
Sigh...

[defendandprotect]

21. GOP/right wing have made big investments in keeping that Fairy Tale alive .. .

GOP gave start up funds to the Christian Coalition after "authority" and
all patriarchal culture took a beating from the 1960's Revolution --

Wealthy right wing - Scaife, Mellon -- financed Dobson's organization and Bauer's organization --
right wing money is behind the whole r-w movement - and "god" is at the top of the pyramid.

And besides the right-wing religious movement in America. . .
US/CIA also created the Islamic Fundi movement in ME ---

We spent millions on printing and producing the vile text books used to teach violent notions
of Islam.

------------------------------------------------

FIRST PART OF THIS DEALS WITH HOW US/CIA CREATED TALIBAN AND AL QAEDA . . .
TO BAIT RUSSIANS INTO AFGHANISTAN . . .!!!


SECOND PART DEALS WITH THE TEXTBOOKS --
and US PUSHING ISLAMIC FUNDAMENTALISM IN M.E. --

The CIA's Intervention in Afghanistan
Interview with Zbigniew Brzezinski,
President Jimmy Carter's National Security Adviser

Le Nouvel Observateur, Paris, 15-21 January 1998

Question: The former director of the CIA, Robert Gates, stated in his memoirs <"From the Shadows">, that American intelligence services began to aid the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan 6 months before the Soviet intervention. In this period you were the national security adviser to President Carter. You therefore played a role in this affair. Is that correct?

Brzezinski: Yes. According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujahadeen began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, 24 Dec 1979. But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise Indeed, it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention.

Q: Despite this risk, you were an advocate of this covert action. But perhaps you yourself desired this Soviet entry into war and looked to provoke it?

B: It isn't quite that. We didn't push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would.

Q: When the Soviets justified their intervention by asserting that they intended to fight against a secret involvement of the United States in Afghanistan, people didn't believe them. However, there was a basis of truth. You don't regret anything today?

Q: Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter. We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war. Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war unsupportable by the government, a conflict that brought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire.

Q: And neither do you regret having supported the Islamic fundamentalism, having given arms and advice to future terrorists?

Q: What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?

http://www.takeoverworld.info/brzezinski_i... ...


---------------------------------------------------

SECOND PART --


The US spent $100's of millions shooting down Soviet helicopters yet didn't spend a penny helping Afghanis rebuild their infrastructure and institutions.

They also spent millions producing jihad preaching, fundamentalist textbooks and shipping them off to Afghanistan. These were the same text books the Western media discussed in shocked tones and told their audiences were used by fundamentalist teachers to brainwash their charges and to inculcate in young Afghanis a jihad mindset, hatred of foreigners and non-Muslims etc.


Have you heard about the Afghan Jihad schoolbook scandal?

Or perhaps I should say, "Have you heard about the Afghan Jihad schoolbook scandal that's waiting to happen?"

Because it has been almost unreported in the Western media that the US government shipped, and continues to ship, millions of Islamist textbooks into Afghanistan.

Only one English-speaking newspaper we could find has investigated this issue: the Washington Post. The story appeared March 23rd.

Washington Post investigators report that during the past twenty years the US has spent millions of dollars producing fanatical schoolbooks, which were then distributed in Afghanistan.

"The primers, which were filled with talk of jihad and featured drawings of guns, bullets, soldiers and mines, have served since then as the Afghan school system's core curriculum. Even the Taliban used the American-produced books..." -- Washington Post, 23 March 2002 (1)

According to the Post the U.S. is now "...wrestling with the unintended consequences of its successful strategy of stirring Islamic fervor to fight communism."

So the books made up the core curriculum in Afghan schools. And what were the unintended consequences? The Post reports that according to unnamed officials the schoolbooks "steeped a generation in violence."

How could this result have been unintended? Did they expect that giving fundamentalist schoolbooks to schoolchildren would make them moderate Muslims?

Nobody with normal intelligence could expect to distribute millions of violent Islamist schoolbooks without influencing school children towards violent Islamism. Therefore one would assume that the unnamed US officials who, we are told, are distressed at these "unintended consequences" must previously have been unaware of the Islamist content of the schoolbooks.

But surely someone was aware. The US government can't write, edit, print and ship millions of violent, Muslim fundamentalist primers into Afghanistan without high officials in the US government approving those primers.

http://www.tenc.net/articles/jared/jihad.h...

[BlueJazz]

23. Thanks! Great informative post.

[donquijoterocket]

36. addition

With your kind permission I would add to your recommendation of the Gate's book Robert Dreyfuss' Devil's Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam. I've not read the Gates title, but it would sound from your description as if the two would be very complementary. I'd be pretty sure that the majority of the population of this country will never be aware of just how complicit this country was in organizing and energizing the islamists.Just as so few know of our complicity in the overthrow of the Mossadegh government in Iran.

[defendandprotect]

37. Thank you . .. I'll try to catch up with Dreyfuss' "Devil's Game" . . .

Right wing has been using "god" to pull everything apart for decades now -- !!

Thanks again --

[nadinbrzezinski]

3. Dime on the dollar he is a young Joshua and a dominionist.

[madfloridian]

15. I found this statement from a dominionist blog....families rise up and take power.

So in a way it does sound that way.

"“The American cause against Britain was based, not in rebellion, but in submission to the biblical mandate for private families to take dominion and subdue the earth.”

http://www.visionforumministries.org/issues/gods_hand_in_history/the_reformed_christian_legacy.aspx

Private families to take over and subdue the earth.

[Monk06]

4. What's a nice Italian boy doing hanging out with Southern Baptist Heretics

[madfloridian]

12. I think his parents came over from Cuba.

He was born here.

[Monk06]

25. Got fooled by the Marco first name. Is Rubio Spanish ????

[madfloridian]

26. Like you I first thought Italian.

But I remembered his parents were Cuban.

[Monk06]

28. Well Christopher Columbus was Italian as was Amerigo Vespusi

And the Bacardi family is from Cuba and they
were descended from an Italian

So are there any famous Spaniards who
aren't Italian? The Royal family doesn't
count they were descended from the French.

[madfloridian]

5. DWT: "Will The Teabaggers Subvert Mainstream Conservatives Next Year? "

Down With Tyranny has an excellent post about how the extreme right wing are after the more moderate Republicans like Crist...forcing them to kowtow to the right as well.

http://downwithtyranny.blogspot.com/2009/10/will-teabaggers-subvert-mainstream.html

"The teabaggers announced yesterday that they will be turning their guns (not literally we hope) against mainstream conservatives like Crist in order to secure the nominations of far right extremists like Marco Rubio. They want to remake the Republican Party more in their own image. Deranged GOP has-been, Dick Armey, is rushing to the head of the parade, threatening Republicans who aren't deferential enough to the extremist elements he purports to lead.

The teabaggers are fully behind extreme right fringe candidate Marco Rubio who trails Crist in the polls. And local teabagger organizations in other states are rushing to embrace lunatic fringe candidates who-- if nominated by the GOP-- are likely to guarantee the election of Democrats. So far the teabaggers are pushing for unelectable candidates in Colorado, Connecticut, California. They apparently got stumped when no one could find a state that started with "D," but they are expected to find more states soon.

“We were very disappointed with Gov. Charlie Crist when he supported the stimulus, the bailout, and he appeared publicly with President Obama,” said Everett Wilkinson, a South Florida-based organizer for Tea Party Patriots. “The opposition comes from Crist’s support for the largest spending plan ever and the environmental policies he’s pushing on the American people.”

Rubio has already made appearances at Florida tea parties, and protesters have been seen waving signs declaring, “Anybody but Charlie Crist.” He also has Armey’s endorsement, and Armey headlined a Dallas fundraiser for him several weeks ago."

God help us.

Long post at DWT, very interesting.

[starroute]

6. I think our arguments have to get more focused, though

It's not enough for us to point out that some parents believe in slavery or Holocaust denial and that schools have every right to "undo" those teachings. Using extreme cases is fine in a debate, but it isn't really what the argument is about.

I think the real issue is that schools are commonly expected to teach consensus reality and let students find out about the exceptions and alternatives on their own hook. Most of us can accept that. We know that our kids will get a kind of wishy-washy centrism in their social studies courses, and that if we want them to learn about progressive values and history we have to teach them ourselves. We know that whatever science they get will be watered-down essence of whatever their science teacher learned in college and that we have to stick current science articles under their noses to give them the new stuff.

If the creationists had the courage of their convictions, they'd feel fine with saying to their kids, "You understand that what they teach in school is the secular stories that are told by a secular culture to impart secular values. But we have a better story and better values and you will learn here at home the wonderful truth that God loves you and that you have an immortal soul -- which they would never tell you at school."

Rubio makes clear his weak spot when he worries about "somebody undoing" what he's tried to teach his children. Right there he's admitting that his teachings are weaker than the school's teachings -- less interesting, less convincing, and less compelling. He's saying to the world at large, "Darwinism is a more powerful faith than creationism and I don't dare let my kids find that out or they'll reject me and my authority."

And that is why his position has no standing in the debate.

[madfloridian]

13. Your 2nd paragraph is probably true, at least in a scripted curriculum.

The use of the word "undoing" is quite telling in itself.

Good post.

I remember a time when teachers could stop and question a textbook or curriculum material. I don't know if they do that now.

[progressivebydesign]

7. there is no God in European schools, and yet U.S. kids are more violent, & can't compete acadmecialy

That's what amazes me about these freaky, shellack-haired, ken dolls. Are they ignorant to the fact that other nations don't have God in schools, and those children are not murdering each other, nor dropping about at an alarming rate, and their kids are kicking our asses halfway around the world academically. The answer is not "god" in the schools, it's our fucked up capitalistic lifestyle and failed economic policies. Reagan started us on the long path to destroy the Country, and these republican religious freaks refuse to see it.

[greennina]

8. They're not saying what they really want...

and that is no education for all of the people. Making education less effective is only part of their goal. It's just like the ones of them that are so radical that they're anti-abortion. Pushing for parental notification and third trimester bans isn't about those individual issues. It's about a total and complete ban on abortion like this is about a total ban on public education.

[Name removed]

9. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[struggle4progress]

10. Florida Baptist Witness has been pushing the idea that Obama's health care advisor is Josef Mengele:

Healthcare reform rationing ‘precisely what the Nazis did,’ Land says
By JAMES A. SMITH SR.
Executive Editor
Published September 30, 2009

... Richard Land told the Christian Coalition of Florida at a Sept. 26 banquet in Orlando ... he has bestowed on Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, the president’s chief healthcare advisor, the “Dr. Josef Mengele Award” ...

http://www.floridabaptistwitness.com/10836.article

[democracy1st]

11. K & R Mad!

[madfloridian]

14. Tampa Trib editorial last year about this issue.. scathing toward Rubio

Evolution Scare Tactics Undermine Florida's Quest For Excellence

Florida House Speaker Marco Rubio cares so much about Florida's education standards the second of his "100 Innovative Ideas for Florida's Future" was creating a "world class" curriculum for our students.

Rubio never specifically defined what he meant in saying world class. But since the speaker began pushing lawmakers to continue the battle over teaching evolution in public schools, now we know.

In Rubio's world, apparently world-class curriculum standards means undermining and ignoring the top-flight educators and scientists who spent months crafting and reviewing the guidelines to create a rigorous and appropriate science curriculum that would bring Florida's education into the 21st Century.

And it means allowing science teachers to infuse science curriculum with religion - with the state's endorsement and protection.

[ShadowLiberal]

16. What's most ironic is they can't even can't the bible right on the 7 days claim

What's most ironic about the religious right and fighting evolution in schools is that they can't even get creationism right, with the false '7 day' claim.

The fact is the bible wasn't written in English, and the word 'day' is an imperfect translation for a word that doesn't really exist in English. 'Day' in the original language of the bible was a very vague unit of time, which could be anywhere from less then a day, to many, many years long. Heck, the 'days' might not have been the same length. The problem is there's really no simple equivalent of the word in English without the explanation, hence why they chose 'day' in the translations.

(I only even know this because my older brother is a pastor)

[madfloridian]

17. If you take part of the bible as literal, you gotta take all of it that way.

And there are some very weird things in scriptures.

It appears they pick topics that suit their ideology, and ignore the rest.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

20. I'm pretty sure that the ancient israelites understood the concept of "day"

and it's probably one of those words that translates rather clearly.

No I know there are creationists who argue otherwise in their literature, but I didn't think any non-creationists actualy fell for it.

[daleo]

24. Back in the day, I thought day was a precise term in English

Some day I might think so again. But now I think it can mean something besides a 24 hour period in English, so I imagine the same might have been true in the olden days in ancient Hebrew.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

27. A day is the time from one day to the next.

Sunrise to sunrise, or sunset to sunset, etc.

That's 24 hours 4,000 years ago, it's 24 hours now.

[daleo]

38. Actually, it was a less than 24 hours 4000 years ago

The day was a little shorter than it is now, as the Earth is slowly spinning down. Mind you, even now a day is not exactly 24 hours. Leap years and all that.

[defendandprotect]

18. k i c k

[defendandprotect]

19. Patriarchal religion remains a TOOL of conquest . . . !!!

[RainDog]

22. what a fucking idiot. he wants America to be a Saudi Arabia

with a rich elite that do whatever the fuck they want while everyone else is ruled by religious tyrants who enforce stupidity.

what if parents teach that their daughters should not go to school? Rubio got a problem with that one?

Florida is really a mess now with the right wing ascendant.

If you were a biotech industry, would you want to locate your industry in a state that is so hostile to science? If you are an educated person, would you want to take a job in the mental cesspool that Florida has become?

fwiw - I already know MANY people who try as hard as they can to find jobs that are not in the jesusland states... people with advanced degrees who make choices about where to apply for jobs based in part on the kind of communities that exist. so, as long as the republican party is led by the talibornagains, their states will continue to lose potential employees for growth industries to places that are more amenable to reality.

[InfiniteThoughts]

29. With India, China, Korea catching up with US/Europe on educational standards ...

... US doesn't need (or cannot afford!) a silly distraction like Creationism / Intelligent Design.

If at all the idiots who bandy the bible for all the wrong purposes, want to do any good, they can start off by following Jesus' message on rich-poor divide. I am sure that message will fall on deaf ears!

PS: i have all the respect for the Bible or ANY other religious book, none for folks who misrepresent the word of god.

[Solly Mack]

30. In other words - 'I want my kids (and yours) to be as ignorant as I am'

[Dont_Bogart_the_Pretzel]

31. K&R

[Historic NY]

32. Scopes monkey trial politician.

[LeftishBrit]

33. So you shouldn't teach children that the earth is round and that two and two are four...

because some of them might have parents who belong to the Flat Earth Society, or think that two and two is five?

If the earth *were* flat, these Republican nuts would have fallen off the right-hand side a long time ago!

[McCamy Taylor]

34. If parents teach that whites are the master race and must put down minorities....

...does the school have to reaffirm their right to raise little Stormtroopers?

How about a new religion? "The Bush Family is the Devil". We will teach our children that every member of the Bush Family is a devil. The schools will be forced to agree. Oh, and marijuana will be a sacrament! Our kids need smoke breaks every day!

Separation of church and state is not just a good idea. It is the law.

[DonCoquixote]

35. Here, you have the genesis of the blue dogs

You have people who act like they are not right wing, yet step in lockstep (like Crist) and then they can always point to the loons on the far right, saying "if you do not pick me, you will get HIM)

[SemperEadem]

39. some parents are their children's worst enemy