FROM THE EDITOR: Libertarian Republican was fortunate to have the opportunity to interview Dan Quinn, Communications Director, Texas Freedom Network on the recent Textbook controversy concerning the Texas Board of Education. We appreciate Mr. Quinn taking the time to answer these important questions that greatly affect liberals, conservatives and libertarians.

LIBERTARIAN REPUBLICAN: Mr. Quinn, Texas Board of Education members are disputing your assertion that Jefferson was removed from history textbooks. Gail Lowe and Cynthia Duncan have said in national interveiws that what actually happened is that discussion of TJ was moved from the Enlightenment period to the American Revolution. Do you care to dispute that fact?

DAN QUINN: We haven't asserted that the board removed Jefferson from history books. From our live-blogging of the meeting on March 11:

TFNInsider.org

9:27 – The board is taking up remaining amendments on the high school world history course

9:30 – Board member Cynthia Dunbar wants to change a standard having students study the impact of Enlightenment ideas on political revolutions from 1750 to the present. She wants to drop the reference to Enlightenment ideas (replacing with “the writings of”) and to Thomas Jefferson. She adds Thomas Aquinas and others. Jefferson ’s ideas, she argues, were based on other political philosophers listed in the standards. We don’t buy her argument at all. Board member Bob Craig of Lubbock points out that the curriculum writers clearly wanted to students to study Enlightenment ideas and Jefferson . Could Dunbar’s problem be that Jefferson was a Deist? The board approves the amendment, taking Thomas Jefferson OUT of the world history standards

9:40 – We’re just picking ourselves up off the floor. The board’s far-right faction has spent months now proclaiming the importance of emphasizing America ’s exceptionalism in social studies classrooms. But today they voted to remove one of the greatest of America ’s Founders, Thomas Jefferson, from a standard about the influence of great political philosophers on political revolutions from 1750 to today

9:45 – Here’s the amendment Dunbar changed: “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.” Here’s Dunbar ’s replacement standard, which passed: “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.” Not only does Dunbar ’s amendment completely change the thrust of the standard. It also appalling drops one of the most influential political philosophers in American history — Thomas Jefferson.

From our March 12 press release:

TFN.org

"Even as board members continued to demand that students learn about "American exceptionalism," the board stripped Thomas Jefferson from a world history standard about the influence of Enlightenment thinkers on political revolutions from the 1700s to today. In Jefferson 's place, the board's religious conservatives succeeded in inserting Thomas Aquinas and John Calvin. They also removed the reference to "Enlightenment ideas" in the standard, requiring that students should simply learn about the influence of the "writings" of various thinkers (including Calvin and Aquinas)."

We repeated that paragraph in a March 13 blog post summarizing the worst changes the board made:

TFNinsider.org

And if you check our other blog entries, you will note that we have been careful to explain that Jefferson was deleted from that world history standard, not from the "history books."

LIBERTARIAN REPUBLICAN: Mr. Quinn, as you probably know, Thomas Jefferson is a great hero to libertarians. Initially, we libertarians were quite concerned that conservatives were reported to have removed him from history textbooks. In fact, many of us were outraged. But after learning the truth of the matter, our outrage turned to liberal bloggers who initially mis-reported the story. Could you clarify for us the origination of reports that Jefferson had been removed from history textbooks? Did TPM and other liberal bloggers just miscontrue the facts, or were they purposely trying to split libertarians from conservatives by spinning the news?

DAN QUINN: If others have misreported what happened, you'll have to talk with them. But keep in mind that other bloggers were not at the meeting and in many cases were relying on possibly imprecise reports from elsewhere -- much as conservative bloggers were reacting to false reports last year that Christmas had been taken out of social studies textbooks in Texas . Sadly, some people are permitting Lowe and Dunbar to distract them with a red herring. This isn't a contest about how many times Jefferson is listed in the standards, whether those references are in American history or elsewhere. The question is why board members don’t want students to learn that Jefferson, who argued (among other things) that a "wall of separation between church and state" as essential to freedom, was an influential Enlightenment thinker who inspired people around the world struggling for freedom. Moreover, why did the board change the thrust of the standard altogether by removing even the reference to the Enlightenment and replacing Jefferson with Thomas Aquinas, John Calvin and William Blackstone? We have been monitoring this board for 15 years, and the answers to those questions are certainly no mystery to us. This board is controlled by a faction that is hostile to the separation of church and state. In fact, during the same meeting they rejected a proposed standard that would have required students to “examine the reasons the Founding Fathers protected religious freedom in America by barring government from promoting or disfavoring any particular religion over all others.” The board knew that removing other references to Jefferson would be politically impossible. But removing him from a standard about the influence of his ideas on people struggling for freedom around the world, they thought, would be easier. Moreover, it doesn't surprise us in the least that this board would want to water down the influence of Enlightenment thinking on political revolutions from the 1700s to the present. Enlightenment philosophies run counter to their own worldview.

LIBERTARIAN REPUBLICAN: As you're probably aware, a great many libertarians are Darwinists, even Social Darwinists, and are not comfortable with some of the more extreme elements of the Religious Right. We are concerned that some religious conservatives might seek to give parity to Darwinism with theories based on a Creationist view. However, given the misreporting of the Jefferson story, and the misinformation put out by liberal groups based mainly in Austin , how should libertarians trust such reports in the future?

DAN QUINN: As in all things in life, choose your sources carefully, and be particularly wary of politicians spinning wildly in an attempt to justify the indefensible. I note that you mention Talking Points Memo specifically. This is what TPM reported:

TPMMuckracker.talkingpointsmemo.com

“According to TFN: ‘the board stripped Thomas Jefferson from a world history standard about the influence of Enlightenment thinkers on political revolutions from the 1700s to today. In Jefferson 's place, the board's religious conservatives succeeded in inserting Thomas Aquinas and John Calvin. They also removed the reference to 'Enlightenment ideas' in the standard, requiring that students should simply learn about the influence of the 'writings' of various thinkers (including Calvin and Aquinas).”

You didn’t mention Huffington Post, but they reported essentially the same thing, linking back to our blog:

HuffingtonPost.com

Part of the problem here is that Lowe, Dunbar and their supporters want everyone to believe that the bulk of the reporting on what they did has been inaccurate. In fact, much of it hasn’t been. But it serves them to suggest that the reporting has been inaccurate because then bloggers will challenge their critics for supposedly being untruthful. On this point, I highly recommend the following piece:

http://www.texastribune.org

In short, trusting what you hear from these state board members is perilous.

Regarding science, this board did, in fact, insert creationist/"intelligent design" arguments into our science standards last year in an attempt to challenge the validity of evolutionary theory. One such argument has students study whether the fossil record supports evolutionary theory. The other has students study the complexity of the cell to decide whether natural selection could account for changes in the development and diversity of life. Both are textbook creationist/"intelligent design" arguments ("gaps in the fossil record," "irreducible complexity").

LIBERTARIAN REPUBLICAN: Thank you very much for your time Mr. Quinn.