"First, I show that ideological conservatism is everywhere and always the conscious and reflective defense of established institutions and ways of life. In the United States this has meant a[n often times unwitting] defense of racism and white supremacy. The first conscious conservative movement in America emerged in the South partly as a reaction to the movement to abolish slavery, and the modern conservative movement in America is rooted partly in opposition to the Civil Rights Movement.
Second, the substantive ideals of American conservatism--limited government, states' rights, individualism [taken to the extreme], property rights [over human rights], and the prioritizing of liberty over equality--when applied consistently inevitably result in racism.
Third, I show that the [ascent] of the conservative movement to national power with the election of Ronald Reagan was partly based on the Republican Party's "Southern Strategy" of exploiting racist and white supremacist sentiments in the electorate beginning with the election of 1964."
Not every conservative is a racist. Far from it: I believe a large majority of those who call themselves conservatives in this country recoil in horror every time some Afro-American or Hispanic is murdered by a white in the name of white supremacy. But they cannot see that it is their belief system as it is structured that is, as Professor Smith states above, "always the conscious and reflective defense of established institutions and ways of life. In the United States this has meant a[n often times unwitting] defense of racism and white supremacy." [Words in brackets added by author in order to clarify his own position on the subject.]
Sugar-coating the Truth Leads to a Sickness in Our Nation's Soul
"A fair and honest narrative of the bad is a voucher for the truth of the good." --Thomas Jefferson to Matthew Carr, 1813. The Complete Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Memorial Edition; volume 13, p. 264; 1904.
There is so much more of our nation's history that could not be taught if the reactionaries on the Jefferson County School Board get their way: no mention of our mistreatment of Native Americans, and the fact that our government has broken virtually every treaty they have ever signed with a Native American tribe, except the one that put them in a virtual concentration camp called a reservation with the choice of becoming ersatz white men or rotting away; the full history of slavery and the ongoing abuse and exploitation of Afro-Americans and other non-white minorities--as well as poor whites--that continues to this very day; investigative journalism from the Muckrakers of the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth Century, to Watergate and Iran-Contra, and finally WikiLeaks and Edward Snowden; America's greatest period of almost universal public disregard for the law, the Volstead Act and Prohibition, the consequences of which we are still living with today, including our nation's "War on Drugs;" American imperialism and its consequences, from the era of "manifest destiny," to the Spanish-American War and the annexation of Hawaii, to our corporations virtual subjugation of Latin America, to the expansion of that imperialism to a global level after the Second World War, an undertaking that ultimately led to Vietnam, the War on Drugs, and the War on Terror.
David Model, a professor of political science at Seneca College in Toronto, wrote an article for OpEdNews.com published on 23 May 2014, titled "Perils of Technology: Dehumanization and Extinction," what the long-term outcome of the Jefferson County School Board's proposed action will be:
"Another problem in the education system is the vocationalization of the curriculum and the corporatization of decision-making. Curricula will increasingly reflect the agenda of large corporations. By eliminating those areas of study that seem on the surface to be subversive or radical or dissent in the extreme, it might superficially appear that the students are being offered an objective and neutral curriculum. But one person's neutrality is another's bias. For example, Mitch Daniels, Governor of Indiana and then President of Purdue University, sought to ban Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States from schools and libraries although his heavy-handed efforts became the Midas touch. Education suffers as the range and scope of ideas to which the students are exposed becomes narrower and narrower."
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