My Son's Textbook "Screws" Ronald Reagan and John Paul II

The Lid ^ | 3/11/2010 | The Lid

[NYer]

From the text book:

For example Gorbachev at a session of the Russian Politburo in October 1986 tried to sell a groundbreaking disarmament plan to the legislature, including a 50 percent reduction in nuclear arsenals. Russia's weak economy could not keep up with Reagan's military expansion. If he didn't propose these cuts, Gorbachev told his colleagues

[W]e will be pulled into an arms race that is beyond our capabilities, and we will lose it because we are at the limit of our capabilities. … If the new round [of an arms race] begins, the pressures on our economy will be unbelievable.

Pope John Paul II provided a moral focus with his constant anti-communism sermons ; his visit to his native Poland in 1979 stimulated a religious and nationalist resurgence centered on the Solidarity movement that galvanized opposition. Reagan also imposed economic sanctions on Poland to protest the suppression of Solidarity. In response, Mikhail Suslov, the Kremlin's top ideologist, advised Soviet leaders not to intervene if Poland fell under the control of Solidarity, for fear it might lead to heavy economic sanctions, representing a further catastrophe for the Soviet economy. That "non-intervention" was the beginning of the slippery slope that lead to the easing of the communist oppression and the fall the Soviet Union.

But absolutely none of the above is in my Son's textbook. It is said that history is written by the victors, but in the case of Cold War history it is rewritten by the Progressives who want to indoctrinate our children to their inaccurate version of history.

(emphasis, mine)

Catholic Ping
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[colorado tanker]

"Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!"

[GenXteacher]

This is the textbook we use at my school. It isn’t as terrible as some others...and if your teacher is violently anti-communist (like myself) then it doesn’t come off too bad. I also show a video “Stalin: Man of Steel” when teaching about the Soviet Union so my students have some clue about the reality of it.

[afraidfortherepublic]

Fabulous video. No wonder some of my grandchildren are struggling with math. My son (an engineer and good at math) just removed his (very smart) son from Advanced Placement Math in HS because he was about to fail the course. The school (Overland Park, KS) fought my son on it — didn’t want to put my grandson in regular math, although he clearly wasn’t going to pass AP math. My son insisted because to have a failure on my grandson’s record would prevent him from receiving any college sports scholarship. My grandson is an accomplished baseball player, but not so good at AP math. Now I see why.

I’ve always thought that if (perish the thought) anything happened to any of my children that I could raise the grandchildren. Well, this video proves to me that I certainly couldn’t help them with their homework.

I suppose that my husband calculates like this in his head, but he is also an engineer and was on the “Math Team” in HS. This method of teaching is beyond us mere mortals.

[Ransomed]

“to defend bth the pedophilia that occured under his watch and his refusal to make those who were harmed whole.”

What decades did most of the cases happen? I thought it was the 50s-60s-70’s? I also thought the instances went down while he was Pope? Is that true? Why did they go down?

I would say his papacy will be looked back at as having a lack of discipline, and not just about the homosexualist priests, but in not confronting liberal bishops about their ways, which he himself admitted. And the homosexualist priest scandal is going to be looked back at as as being dwarfed by the scandal of bishops not treating abortion like what they say it is.

Freegards

[Melian]

Heck, at my high school in CA the students I talk to barely know who George Washington is. Get ready, people, these “students” will be voting in 3 years!

[SuziQ]

Bishops around the world make a huge mistake in protecting priest abusers, but most of the abuse took place BEFORE John Paul II became Pope, and it was a the result of lax attitudes about the Faith that became prevalent after Vatican II.

John Paul II was reluctant at first to act, because the accusations coming in were that priests were homosexuals. He remembered that accusation being used against people behind the Iron Curtain to discredit them, so he was getting that same vibe. Finally he did act, and sent out directives to keep homosexual men out of the priesthood. The American Bishops ignored it, until Benedict XVI came along, and put his foot down.

[Fitzy_888]

Is Tupac Shakur one of our founding father’s in the textbook?

[Moonman62]

[votemout]

Caption, the Meeting to Plan the Downfall of Communism

[Little Bill]

Suzi;

I am Protestant and I went to a Catholic Prep School, I hated it by the way, got a good education though.

This plague of pederasts went back before my time and I think that much of it was because the members of the Church were not critical of their leadership.

I remember the thing that shocked me most in my school was the servility of the kid to the religious, I had problems as you might expect.

I came from a place where everyone was not Catholic to a place where everyone was it was difficult.

[SuziQ]

Were you in school in the Northeast? We found, when we moved up here, that the attitude toward the clergy and religious was different from where we grew up in MS. I wasn't raised to believe that everything that came out of the priest or nun's mouth was infallible, because it wasn't. My parents questioned the priests when they thought something wasn't right, and for the most part, the priests didn't mind. We had a pastor or two who got pretentious, but that attitude didn't last long. ;o)

I was amazed, when we came up here, at what some folks believed 'The Church' taught. They'd learned from Sister Mary somebody, in grade school, something that was NOT part of Church teaching, but they were just SURE it was, because she said so. They never checked into it for themselves. I just never understood that attitude. Maybe it was growing up where Catholics were only 3% of the population. We had to know what we were about so we could explain it to folks who were not that receptive. ;o)

[dsc]

“self righteous bluster that you personally”

So, is this going to get personal, or is it possible to disagree without becoming disagreeable?

“I am addressing the pedophilia specifically and there was still a lot of it.”

It’s easy to say “a lot,” but what constitutes a lot? Some percentage of the total? Some raw number? A number that is larger than seen in society at large?

“You can go on about the gays in the priesthood all you want, but that is outside of the topic I am bringing to the fore and I won’t really brook your attempt to change the topic of debate.”

The fact is that somewhere between 80% and 99% of the abuse of lay people was homosexual sodomy. What is your purpose in refusing to examine that?

“my primary source has been and continues to be people who were abused as children.”

What is your sample size? Did they report these things to you as counselor of some sort? How did it happen that so many people who were abused as children have chosen to discuss that excruciatingly painful topic with you?

“That does not, however excuse the church”

No, but it does serve to provide some perspective on claims that Catholic clergy are immensely more prone to this dastardly behavior than teachers or protestant clergy.

“You did not address at all the continued failure of the church to provide actual help for those that were harmed.”

You can, of course, insist that whatever has been done is inadequate, but the fact is that “continued failure” is far from the truth.

“absent a thourough and contrite effort to make amends to those harmed, the church absolutely will be judged in the public square.”

Inasmuch as the actions taken to date seem to have escaped your notice entirely, I wonder if any effort could possibly be adequate to placate you.

“While this concept is evidently foreign to your way of thinking”

Weren’t you complaining about assumptions just above? You do a great disservice when you presume that Catholics are less troubled by these things than you are.

We often see people make exaggerated claims, then allege that attempts to bring these exaggerations in line with fact are efforts to “whitewash” or “deny.”

The fact that some very evil things happened is not a license for unlimited accusation. As bad as these things were, a person still has an obligation to check his facts and hold his accusations to those the facts support.

“What goes around comes around, or, to put it another way - You reap what you sew”

That remark sounds like you think it just to browbeat people who had nothing to do with these events, who in many cases were not even born at the time. Do you think you have the right to punish people for transgressions that they neither committed nor condoned?

“It’s harvest time.”

And you’re the reaper? By whom were you appointed to punish the innocent?

[Servant of the Cross]

Well stated. I frankly did not care to respond. The anti-Catholicism oozed from every word.

[Servant of the Cross]

awesome picture!

[Servant of the Cross]

Great points SuziQ.

Funny thing, I thought this thread was about Government school history textbooks before being hi-jacked. The anti-Catholicism/Pope John Paul II twisting (no different than re-written Government history books?) demanded a response though. Thanks for adding to that.

[Pan_Yan]

Here's a thread about my son's 5th grade textbook, which explained that we live in a democracy and owe loyalty to the government.

[NYer]

Not only did he and his successors refuse to stop it when approached by victims, to this day the church refuses to do all it can to make things right.

No Catholic will ever defend the indefensible. Most of the sex abuse that took place dates back to the 50's and earlier, long before JPI. I would ask you, however, what is being done in non-Catholic communities to stop predatory sex abuse of children? This is not limited to the Catholic Church.

Sex Abuse of Children by Protestant Clergy.

The Catholic Church here, through its bishops in the USCCB, have implemented a program to prevent future occurrences. This includes all members of the community who come in contact with children, from janitors in the schools to volunteers who teach children at the parish level. We all are subjected to fingerprinting and a police background check. We are also required to attend classes on how to identify sexual predators and what actions to take. This is possible because of the centralized nature of the Catholic Church. It is also the reason why the media have been able to focus a laser beam on us. This is not possible in the non-Catholic denominations where there is no one to take responsibility.

Report: Protestant Church Insurers Handle 260 Sex Abuse Cases a Year

Worse still, is the sex abuse of children in the education system.

WHEN BOYS ARE MOLESTED BY TEACHERS AND OTHERS IN POSITIONS OF AUTHORITY

And then there are the camp counselors, Big Brothers of America and the list goes on and on. There is plenty of guilt to go around.

[AnAmericanMother]

Me neither. Thanks for a good response.

I will say (as somebody who's practiced law for 30 years) that immoderate public accusations of any sort that come long after the fact, overstate both the alleged misconduct and the alleged injury, and demonize the proposed defendant, are almost always suspect.

Folks that go quietly to a defendant (whether on their own or with an honest lawyer) and say calmly, "we need to make this right," are respected, listened to, and made as whole as possible. I know this because I have personally sat on both sides of that table.

Folks that trumpet their alleged wrongs to the world, exaggerating them, running to the press, and calling the opposing party everything but a child of God, have another agenda. Think the repulsive John Edwards and his demonizing of doctors for his personal profit. And think about what sort of person HE turned out to be.

[AnAmericanMother]

I agree with the difference between the institutions of the Church (as opposed to the Church herself) in the North and the South.

Maybe it's all the cussed inde-G.D.-pendent Scotch-Irish around here, but "because Sister Mary Attila said so" doesn't cut it! And I think having to explain and defend on a regular basis has a lot to do with that.

We investigated the Church up and down and inside out before converting (I'm not only Scotch-Irish, I'm a naturally suspicious courthouse rat of a lawyer). I found nothing to dissuade us from conversion -- in fact the Church has its act together substantially more than our former locus -- the Episcopal Church (hey, what can I say, I was 6th-generation Anglican. It was a bad habit). The only reason you don't read all sorts of scandal about that outfit is because the media knows that TEC is on its side and will not report any of it.