OKLAHOMA CITY, OKLAHOMA — Republican lawmakers in the state of Oklahoma made the national news circuit in 2015 thanks to their ever-cantankerous relationship with education, and the process by which children in the state are given theirs. The newest hubbub was stirred up when members of the GOP in Oklahoma’s state legislative body decided that AP (Advanced Placement) U.S. History courses are too similar to Common Core curriculum — which they also repealed last year — and have decided to strip it from their state’s schools’ course offerings.
The Republicans’ beef with AP U.S. History? That it’s just too truthful about the country’s history, or Dan Fisher — the bill’s author put it — it teaches what is “bad about America.” Education advocates are furious at Oklahoma Republicans for playing politics with the education of adolescents in their state, saying that history is history, and there is no bias whatsoever when it comes to recorded, historical fact. Republicans in Oklahoma, however have decided to double-down on their anti-U.S. History rhetoric and according sources close to the party’s leadership in the sate they are preparing an amendment to Fisher’s bill that would ban all U.S. History from the State of Oklahoma — not just in the classroom either.
It’s being called the “Historical Roofie Amendment” and as Republican State Rep. Tom Thompaulsen told our reporter it’s an amendment to “completely erase the entirety of American history from the minds of people who live in Oklahoma.” Thompaulsen says the bill is very similar in spirit to one also introduced by Republicans in the state earlier that year that would have Oklahoma stop issuing marriage licenses to anyone, so as to avoid having to issue gay marriage licenses if the Supreme Court decides marriage is a Constitutional right later this year.
“We’re taking our ball and going home, basically,” said Thompaulsen. “If we can’t cherry pick the version of marriage we want to make us feel less icky about butt sex, no one gets to get married,” he explained. “The same is true then for U.S. History,” the Republican explained, “if we can’t have our own, personalized version of history to teach our kids, no one in the state of Oklahoma gets to have history, period.”
How would the law work? “Simple,” Thompaulsen told us, “if you’re caught talking about anything prior to today’s date, you’re thrown in jail. With mandatory minimum sentencing, you’re looking at least two years of prison time.” Thompaulsen said the prison sentence will “discourage those with a sinister, liberal agenda of unbiased analysis of historical fact” from “opening their big, fat, libtard pie-holes up.”
Thompaulsen is quick to point out that Republicans have taken some exceptions into account. “You cannot talk about history in the state anymore, but of course we wanted there to be common sense exceptions,” Rep. Thompaulsen said, “and that’s why we have our Reagan Exception. You can talk about the great Ronald Reagan any time you want, and you can say whatever you want about him.” Thompaulsen says, “If you want to give him sole credit for the end of the Cold War instead of the collapse of the Soviet Union happening because of all kinds of economic and internal pressures within the collection of nations that once made it up, wonderful! If you want to say he both discovered and cured AIDS despite having ignored it as a largely ‘gay’ disease, go for it! We encourage that!”
Why are people in his party so worried about kids learning an objective truth about the world they live in? “Because it doesn’t do any good to blame America for things it did wrong in the past. That’s in the past, forget about it,” said Thompaulsen. But about the idea of learning from our mistakes, and being doomed to repeat it if we don’t learn from our history? Thompaulsen calls that “liberal hogwash” and says that “American exceptionalism is so great that we don’t need to be beholden to old axioms and tidbits of wisdom” because “we create our own, uniquely American wisdom” like “it makes more sense to not have universal health care so that our schools turn into massive disease incubators, getting our children — and thereby us adults — extremely sick unnecessarily, resulting in loss of school time and work time.”
“The bottom line is a really simple one,” Thompaulsen told us as he was getting ready to go to a fundraiser for the American Foundation of Nescience, “Republicans know that the only thing that can come of learning the unbiased, unfiltered truth about America is that more liberal, blame-America-first type people will be made. And being an American patriot means knowing that nothing is ever America’s fault…even when it’s America’s fault. That’s why it’s pointless an downright un-American to learn American History in 2017.”
Follow James on Twitter @JamboSchlarmbo.
