Thoughts in a Haystack

On my previous post, I gave an update about an interview by Allen Jones of KELO radio with South Dakota State Senator Jeff Monroe concerning the bill he had introduced, and then withdrew, that read, in its entirety:

No school board or school administrator may prohibit a teacher in public or nonpublic school from providing instruction on intelligent design or other related topics.

The money quote from Senator Monroe was:

I wanted students in high school and college both to … you know … to hear both sides of the story, whether its global warming or environmentalism or evolution versus creationism.

I was getting ready for work when I found the interview and only had time to note the above bit before rushing out the door. Tonight, after listening to the whole thing, I discovered there were other interesting bits:

And I think that our society has gotten to be real one sided in schools. Where the kids can't afford to go to a private school they should be able to have the both sides of the societal debate during school because we claim we want to get them ready for life and so that would be the way to go.

In other words, when kids can't afford to go to private religious schools, the state should step in and give them a religious education at taxpayer expense! Another "small government" Republican hard at work!

There were a lot of misconceptions out there about what the bill would do and there just no way to go against the misconceptions on the one side. On the other side, even though it was a good bill and even though the intentions were good and it had tons of support, I think the good that would have come from it would have been outweighed by the trouble that would have been caused with lawsuits with the state based on what's happened in other states and there are better ways to go about what I'd like to achieve for the teachers and for the students.

Can you say "Dover," boys and girls? ... Good!

For me, the main idea for the bill was to make it so a student would have a choice whether to believe they came from some animal or developed from monkeys or some other mammal or amphibians or repti ... whatever they just are told they evolved from. They should have another side of the story saying, no, you're special, you were made for a reason. But we don't get that side in the schools and I just wanted to have a balance.

Senator Monroe here displays his deep understanding of evolutionary theory. And, of course, it is the duty of government to instruct children on their purpose in life, even to those children, and their parents, who might disagree with Senator Monroe's beliefs in that regard!

Just another example of the Rev. Dr. Lenny Flank's law: "The ability of a creationist to shut his mouth about creationism's religious motive is inversely proportional to the legal necessity of their doing so."