Required Reading

Roger Ebert has an excellent blog post discussing the recent controversy on Texas school books. (Strange; when I saw him on "At The Movies," I thought he was kind of a pompous ass, and now he seems to be one of the better thinkers of our time!) My favorite quote:

Does it make me a liberal if I believe Jefferson has been more central to American history than Calvin? That Lincoln was our greatest president, and Davis not our President at all? That the Theory of Evolution towers with majesty above those who, in some cases, believe the earth may be 10,000 years old, and that men walked the earth with dinosaurs? No, it doesn't make me a liberal. It makes me an educated, rational being.

His solution:

I have a simple proposal. More enlightened states should refuse to play along. Their State Boards could require generally-accepted educational standards, and vote against purchasing the corrupted Texas texts. This would have the result of limiting the influence of the Texas religious right over the rest of the country. And it would allow publishers to cling to a certain degree of self-respect.

Unfortunately, I don't think it will work out quite that way.