Posted on 12/10/2004 10:42:09 AM PST by Mr. Silverback
In the aftermath of the recent election, certain disappointed voters have voiced fear of an impending “theocracy”—a takeover of government by “fundamentalists” and “extreme right-wing Christians.” That fear, of course, is wholly unfounded, but news from Cupertino, California, raises the opposite concern.
Steven Williams teaches fifth grade at Stevens Creek School in this Silicon Valley city. Part of the curriculum is American history, but Williams has been prohibited by the school’s principal, Patricia Vidmar, from using any historic materials mentioning God. That includes the Declaration of Independence which refers to “Nature’s God,” “Creator,” “Divine Providence,” and “Supreme Judge of the World.”
Mr. Williams has sued the school, claiming religious discrimination and violation of free-speech rights. News reports indicate he is a Christian.
One lawyer familiar with the case stated, “the district has chosen to censor men such as George Washington and documents like the Declaration of Independence. [Its] actions conflict with American beliefs and are completely unconstitutional.”
According to various news sources, the principal started her crackdown on Williams last May by requiring him to submit all lesson plans and handouts for her approval. He claims she systematically rejected any statements by American founders that mentioned God or religion. Included in the ban, according to Williams, “are excerpts from the Declaration of Independence, George Washington’s journal, John Adams’s diary, Samuel Adams’s ‘The Rights of the Colonists,’ and William Penn’s ‘The Frame of Government of Pennsylvania.’”
Williams’s attorney, Terry Thompson, notes that “Williams wants to teach his students the true history of our country. . . . He hands out a lot of material, and perhaps 5 to 10 percent refers to God and Christianity because that’s what the founders wrote.” The suit asserts that Principal Vidmar did not subject any other teacher to pre-screening of lessons.
So far the district has neither denied nor confirmed the allegations, but it hardly seems likely that Williams would make all this up. For decades crusaders for secularization, aided by sympathetic courts, have worked diligently to remove all traces of religion from America’s public schools, even engaging in revisionism—rewriting history books.
Secularists view the public school as their exclusive domain where no child should be exposed to a religious idea. Such a view is just censorship of Christians. There’s nothing neutral about these acts of discrimination. They prescribe secularism as official doctrine.
And frankly, it makes me mad. When I went into the Marine Corps, I was ready to give my life for a country that, in the words of the Declaration, believes that “all men are created equal” and “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.” Words that for millions of Americans through the centuries have been worth dying for are certainly worth teaching to our young people.
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One of Vidmar's excuses for her opinions is that she wouldn't want to offend the Chinese, who are more and more Buddhist or atheist (i.e., they're Communists, brought up under Mao), as opposed to older waves of refugee Christian Chinese.
In other words, she is saying that teaching the reality of U.S. history, which is its heritage as a place founded by Christian Protestants, is offensive to people who asked to come here and live in our country. And, a lot of them agree with that.
Just so everyone understands who is pushing this. It's not just home grown leftists.
OK fine. They can go back to the loving care of Chinese communism if they don't like this country. Real Americans sure don't want them.
A lot of us here feel that way...
Strangely, they take offense to that too...
Whatever happened to the notion of guests are polite when in another's house, and act so as to not offend the host ? These people sound more like parasites-they don't care if they consume the host.
And here is the irony. Cupertino exists because of Christianity. The area was first settled by Spaniards following on the heels of the De Anza Expedition. Christianity brought civilization to California. Of note, to those who will accuse me of "aplogizing for the genocide of Native Americans" - the tribes who lived in this area prior to the arrival of the Spaniards were more primitive than many of the tribes first encountered by Europeans during African expeditions. They ate ground up acorns and whatever fish they could catch, they lived in mud and grass huts, if housed at all, and barely wore any clothes. No agriculture and no pastoralism whatever. So in this neck of the woods I live in, Christianity = civilization!
The Secular Taliban strikes again.
Our Nation has a rich and significant Christian heritage that is singularly responsible for all of the blessings that makeup American democracy, a democracy envied the world over.
Faithful Christians are imbued with enormous good will and forebearance while opportunistic, hate-filled secularists rampage over the country trivializing our beliefs at every opportunity.
Secularists' survival depends on the good will of Christians.
Too bad.
On a side note, I heard part of the interview of Mr. Williams by Sean Hannity, and although Williams seems like a good person he did strike me as a little strange. He speaks in halting sentences with a lot of pauses and seems to have trouble expressing his thoughts. This dispute could be somewhat personal in nature between Williams and the school principle.
school principle should have been written: school principal.
Answering that part could take awhile. But for the raw numbers, here's a link: Cupertino 2000 Census
In 2000 the actual ratio was 50.1% Caucasian, 44.1% Asian with the largest contingent being Chinese in the "Asian" category (tab down the page). But that was 4 years ago, and the influx continues, so those numbers are old news. It's probably dead on 50/50 now.
Can't remember the exacts, but I believe the city council is now exactly split. There have been some ethnic catfights between the white and asian contingents, mainly over cultural things.
RE: That is extremely expensive real estate in Cupertino and I don't see how immigrant families could afford those houses.
These are not immigrants of the poor nearly starving type. They come here already equipped with vast sums of money. They are typical "overseas Chinese" and they actually have an extremely arrogant, almonst colonial, attitude. The phenominon has been present in Asia for hundreds of years, especially in SE Asia. But here in the states this is relatively new. In fact, it is newer than new. The initial wave Chinese speaking immigrants into Cupertino and many other parts of the Bay Area in recent times (mind you, there were others much earlier, back in the 1800s) came from Hong Kong starting during late 70s, due to the impending handover to the Communists. These folks were actually good folks - they were fully bilingual in English and had certain cultural characteristics that were British. The second wave came from Taiwan, again, largely good folks. Then the law of unintended consequences kicked in. Due to the growing mass of Chinese oriented businesses, when the third wave, people directly from Communist Red China, started to arrive, they found a comfortable place to form a non assimilating enclave. Herein lies the root of the issue. Ah, the wonders of the "great thaw" with Communist Red China. Who is getting the raw end of the deal?
RE: The initial wave Chinese speaking immigrants into Cupertino and many other parts of the Bay Area in recent times (mind you, there were others much earlier, back in the 1800s) came from Hong Kong starting during late 70s, due to the impending handover to the Communists. These folks were actually good folks - they were fully bilingual in English and had certain cultural characteristics that were British.
Oh, I forgot to mention, many (most?) of them are Christians. More than most in HK, they feared that the godless Communists were not going to keep their word about keeping HK distinct. They were not comfortable being part of a Communist nation-state. And they were right. For them in particular, what is happening now (both in Cupertino and back in HK) must be sickening.
Lot of wealthy Chinese here on the west coast.
Well, not that other religions don't build civilizations, but to a certain extent what you've said here is true anywhere.
Charles Darwin once settled an op-ed page debate about the validity of missionaries by writing in and saying that a shipwrecked sailor who sighted a church steeple would know beyond doubt that the natives were friendly and would welcome him as a brother.
The reason Leftists don't want little kids to read the Declaration of Independance is because of people on the right talking about morals? Sorry, but blaming religious Conservatives for the Left's fascist reaction to Christianity is like blaming Blacks for the Klan.
If a principal has a problem with a guy and pretends to fire him over the Declaration, it would seem to me that he's an even bigger weasel than a guy who just doesn't want the Declaration in the school.
The scariest part about this (made clear on Brit Hume's show on Fox) is that the Principal and school board got into this because some parents complained about their kids being told that God is mentioned in these founding documents. Who gets a burr under their saddle because their kid read the Declaration? Yeesh!
I lived in the SF Bay Area for a few years back in the 80's. There are a lot of extreme left-wing people living in the high income areas of the Bay Area. I worked for a defense contractor in the Silicon Valley, which was more of a bastion of conservatives so I didn't have too much contact with the lefties. But I remember a job interview at Apple Computer in Cupertino where a couple of people expressed some disdain for defense contractors and their employees. That's an unusual thing to do in a job interview so you can tell how far left they were. (I had bad hay fever that day and it was a terrible interview. I left the Bay Area for a better job but partly because my allergies to something growing there were getting worse.)
But you've hit the core of the issue here: these are really far out left-wing, atheist, anti-Christian rebels who are complaining about references to God in our major historical documents. That state has changed so much from when I grew up there in the 60's and 70's. When you go to the good shopping malls in San Diego now, it seems like half the people are minorities. I don't have any problem with law-abiding minorites, but that state has sure changed. The traffic is just insufferable in many areas. I spent a few weeks in Phoenix, AZ last month and some people were complaining about the traffic in Phoenix. I just laughed...it's really easy to get around in Phoenix. They should try driving from downtown LA to Orange Country on Friday afternoon.
I'm not saying we shouldn't have morals and values. But to keep talking about them will only lead to more of this nonsense from the left. As I said earlier, the only way to beat them is with ideology and the Constitution. Right now the left sets the agenda as it always does. Turn the tide. Show up at your school board and demand that the Declaration be taught. Object to history books that have one paragraph on Lincoln and three pages extolling Clinton. Demand that Islam not be tught to your children. If you wait for the Republican party to do this for you, you'll die waiting.
I don't even have a dog in this fight. I've got no kids. I've just payed my whole life for other people's kids to be educated. I'm an old man who's going to die soon, But it just bothers me to see all this effort go into what has proven to be a totally ineffectual arguement.
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