Morons.
Just as the Far Left plays into the worst conservative stereotypes about them with demands like abortion right up to birth and open borders, the Far Right parodies itself with Constitution-defying laws like Louisiana’s requiring the Ten Commendments to be displayed in public school classrooms. Now Oklahoma says, “Hold my beer!”with the State Superintendent of Public Instruction, Ryan Walters announcing in a memo today that every Oklahoma school must teach students the Bible the 2024-2025 school year. “The Bible is an indispensable historical and cultural touchstone,” Walters said in a press release unveiling the mandate. “Without basic knowledge of it, Oklahoma students are unable to properly contextualize the foundation of our nation which is why Oklahoma educational standards provide for its instruction. This is not merely an educational directive but a crucial step in ensuring our students grasp the core values and historical context of our country.”
There is no chance, none, zip, nada, that this obviously religiously motivated law will stand up to judicial scrutiny. This is pure grandstanding.
“The Bible is an indispensable historical and cultural touchstone,” Walters said in a press release unveiling the mandate. “Without basic knowledge of it, Oklahoma students are unable to properly contextualize the foundation of our nation which is why Oklahoma educational standards provide for its instruction. This is not merely an educational directive but a crucial step in ensuring our students grasp the core values and historical context of our country.”
Right. It would be nice if there were a way to include the Bible in basic history and cultural public school instruction, but there isn’t, and that, my friends, is that. Reckless indoctrination measures like this just feed the Left’s narrative that conservatives want a theocracy, or at least the closest thing to it they can get away with.
Kids can learn about the Bible in Sunday school, from their parents, or from Cecil B. DeMille. The Oklahoma edict is just embarrassing.
(Loved Gordon McRae.)
Ethics Alarms 
Amazing.
When I was in first grade so many years ago, we’d start the day with the pledge of allegiance and something from the Bible – a psalm or something, in a public school in Massachusetts. I don’t remember the specifics. But it was in a lily-white Republican suburb of Boston (none of those exist these days) and clearly, modern mores – and dare I say ethics – render such an approach improper these days. I don’t disagree with the more modern read.
There’s a shocking amount of “hold my beer” in politics today, which has essentially become a zero-sum game instead of the sometimes-painfully slow system of deliberation and compromise the Founders envisioned.
That system produced generations of horribleness, notably on issues of race and human rights, but IMO that was still better than the knee-jerk fuck-you-no-FUCK-YOU! approach we see today.
Personally, I blame our current primary system, which seems calibrated to produce the most extreme candidates (who get a plurality mad, and then get advanced) more than I blame the media, though God knows they carry plenty of blame. I yearn for a return to the smoke-filled rooms, oddly enough.
Undemocratic, those smoke-filled rooms? Damned right. We must never forget that this nation was never conceived as a democracy. It was conceived as an improvement on that idea. And I’ll take a few hundred drunken nicotine addicts from the Several States over a handful of uber-wealthy CEOs and their lapdogs in the news media any day.
Ironically enough, that’s more democratic.
Other than asking if that Bible will have 66, 73, or 81 books, I could see the use of a short course that talks about what is generally in the Bible and how the Bible was assembled. I mean, it should be meaningful to everyone to know that God handed it down to Paul and Silas to preach from in pure King James English…