Tuesday, April 29, 2025

Reminder: Republican joins Democrats to remove Christianity from New Education Standards

The shocking news from the Oklahoma Senate last week was that, after the failure of the Democrat-led Senate Joint Resolution (SJR19)—a resolution to overturn the work Ryan Walters and the State Board of Education have done to de-WOKE our standards—the resolution was re-submitted by Adam Pugh, the senator from Edmond, as SJR20. Pugh ran for office as a Republican and is a member of the Republican caucus. However, the resolution he filed last week (SJR20) is an exact duplicate of the Democrat resolution (SJR19), with the addition of a few erroneous “WHEREAS” statements.


Both the Democrat SJR19 and Adam Pugh’s SJR20 seek to eviscerate the work done by conservative academics to remove WOKE elements from our children’s standards by stating:

       

The Legislature hereby disapproves in whole the social studies and science matter standards approved by the State Board of Education on February 27, 2025.

Pugh is trying to convince the Senate that the three new members of the Board received their copies of the standards on Wednesday, February 26—less than eighteen hours before the meeting on Thursday, February 27 (see SJR20).


In reality, the documents were sent

to them at 8:40 PM on Monday,

February 24 as you may see here.


Pugh’s efforts to advance this leftist agenda are reprehensible. The standards the State Board adopted are pro-American, historically accurate, and were developed through a transparent, public process. Killing these standards would hand control back to the unions and leftist activists who have already done enough damage to our schools.


For more on these standards, see the official state documents here.


Pugh has linked arms with the Democrats and the teacher unions hoping they will pave the path for him to take Ryan Walter’s position as State Superintendent.


One look at the teacher union materials

tells the story as to why they are

against the standards:

The school administrators’ union, the OSSBA, has been lobbying for this resolution in the Senate. Meanwhile, the NEA’s affiliate in Oklahoma, the OEA, has been lobbying the House. And legislators are hearing plenty from the leftist media, but they need to hear from YOU.


The vast majority of Oklahoma voters want truthful, pro-America standards based on the history of Western Civilization and the true history of America’s founding—not leftist, revisionist garbage.


CALL TO ACTION:

I am asking that among the first items on today’s agenda, you call and email Republican Senators and Representatives.


Ask them to vote no on SJR20.

         

To stand with truth is to protect the pro-America standards passed two months ago.  Our citizenship mandates we speak against the woke agenda.


The Republican caucus meetings happen Monday morning.

Try to make your voice heard before they meet.


Call and email today and tomorrow morning!

VOTE NO on SJR20!


FIND OKLAHOMA'S SENATORS HERE

FIND OKLAHOMA'S REPRESENTATIVES HERE


SEND THIS EMAIL TO A FRIEND HERE

NATIONS ARE BUILT

THROUGH EDUCATION


More than forty years ago, Alexandr Solzhenitsyn stood in Buckingham Palace to receive the 1983 Templeton Prize.  He recalled that as a child more than fifty years earlier, sixteen years after the Russian people had been entrapped in the 1917 Soviet system of godless secularism & godless education, the older people would remind themselves that the cause of the cultural onslaught of Lenin’s Bolsheviks was that men had forgotten God.

Our legislative leadership has forgotten God.  Perhaps because those who should lead us all out of this cultural death are found instead cowering in our pulpits having themselves disconnected God from the public square.


The shepherds of the sheep have left their flock unprepared to face the towering challenges of cultural tsunamis that fill our week. By and large, God's people are without a well-considered and well-developed Biblical paradigm.  We are intellectually (theologically) unprepared. And so is our legislative leadership.


Drawing on the travesty of the French Revolution and its hatred of the church, it was Dostoevsky who warned us that “revolution must begin with atheism.”


And one more thing from Solzhenitsyn's Templeton Prize speech. Solzhenitsyn told British royalty that:


Evil makes its home in the individual human

heart before it enters a political system.


He went on to note that there seems to be no shame . . .


. . . to make daily concessions to an integral evil.  Western societies are losing more and more of their religious essence as they thoughtlessly yield up their younger generation to atheism.


When I consider the effort being made by Senator Adam Pugh to disapprove in whole the social studies and science matter standards approved by the State Board of Education on February 27, 2025, I am reminded of the departure of so many the present day political class from the standards of conservatism expressed by Edmund Burke, certainly one of the most, if not the most influential of all modern conservative thinkers.


For Burke, the political kernel of thought of highest significance is that man and the state are created by God for his own pleasure and that man’s purpose in the world is to render obedience to divine ordinance.


Burke knew that to limit politics and societal law to the secular realm of human reason ignored what mankind has known from the beginning of time: divine providence is the foundation of human welfare.


I think Rushdoony put it even better when he said:


Man tries to play God and fails to secure even a niche for himself in any pantheon.  The homemade heaven he tries to fashion resembles an old-fashioned hell.  He aspires to the role of deity and reverts to sub-humanity.


May God have mercy on Oklahoma and its pulpits, its legislature, and its school systems.  May he lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil.


~Jesus, Matthew 6:13

My comments last Thursday to the

Oklahoma State Board of Education:

Ten of us were allowed to speak for 60 seconds. I limited my comments to a little over 50 seconds as follows:


The purpose of this board is to help secure the future of the nation and the future of the state. We can do it only by educating future citizens.  And it is important for our citizens to know these things:


Why the Bible and Christianity were the foundation of Western Civilization


Why the Bible and Christianity were the foundation of the American Republic


Why our founders considered Christianity vital in the culture in order to keep that republic


Why men like Franklin and Jefferson stated so emphatically that God rules in the affairs of men and nations.


For those reasons, I commend you, Ryan, for the work you have done to restore the curriculum and to continue to restore it to show our future citizens American values and the values of Western Civilization. God bless.

The point is this: the Ryan Walters standards are vital to the development of the state and the nation. Without them, we are a ship of state with no rudder.

Spread the word in your churches.

God bless all of you, our state, and our nation!


SEND THIS EMAIL TO A FRIEND HERE

Monday, April 28, 2025

Republican joins Democrats to remove Christianity from New Education Standards

The shocking news from the Oklahoma Senate last week was that, after the failure of the Democrat-led Senate Joint Resolution (SJR19)—a resolution to overturn the work Ryan Walters and the State Board of Education have done to de-WOKE our standards—the resolution was re-submitted by Adam Pugh, the senator from Edmond, as SJR20. Pugh ran for office as a Republican and is a member of the Republican caucus. However, the resolution he filed last week (SJR20) is an exact duplicate of the Democrat resolution (SJR19), with the addition of a few erroneous “WHEREAS” statements.


Both the Democrat SJR19 and Adam Pugh’s SJR20 seek to eviscerate the work done by conservative academics to remove WOKE elements from our children’s standards by stating:

       

The Legislature hereby disapproves in whole the social studies and science matter standards approved by the State Board of Education on February 27, 2025.

Pugh is trying to convince the Senate that the three new members of the Board received their copies of the standards on Wednesday, February 26—less than eighteen hours before the meeting on Thursday, February 27 (see SJR20).


In reality, the documents were sent

to them at 8:40 PM on Monday,

February 24 as you may see here.


Pugh’s efforts to advance this leftist agenda are reprehensible. The standards the State Board adopted are pro-American, historically accurate, and were developed through a transparent, public process. Killing these standards would hand control back to the unions and leftist activists who have already done enough damage to our schools.


For more on these standards, see the official state documents here.


Pugh has linked arms with the Democrats and the teacher unions hoping they will pave the path for him to take Ryan Walter’s position as State Superintendent.


One look at the teacher union materials

tells the story as to why they are

against the standards:

The school administrators’ union, the OSSBA, has been lobbying for this resolution in the Senate. Meanwhile, the NEA’s affiliate in Oklahoma, the OEA, has been lobbying the House. And legislators are hearing plenty from the leftist media, but they need to hear from YOU.


The vast majority of Oklahoma voters want truthful, pro-America standards based on the history of Western Civilization and the true history of America’s founding—not leftist, revisionist garbage.


CALL TO ACTION:

I am asking that among the first items on today’s agenda, you call and email Republican Senators and Representatives.


Ask them to vote no on SJR20.

         

To stand with truth is to protect the pro-America standards passed two months ago.  Our citizenship mandates we speak against the woke agenda.


The Republican caucus meetings happen Monday morning.

Try to make your voice heard before they meet.


Call and email today and tomorrow morning!

VOTE NO on SJR20!


FIND OKLAHOMA'S SENATORS HERE

FIND OKLAHOMA'S REPRESENTATIVES HERE


SEND THIS EMAIL TO A FRIEND HERE

NATIONS ARE BUILT

THROUGH EDUCATION


More than forty years ago, Alexandr Solzhenitsyn stood in Buckingham Palace to receive the 1983 Templeton Prize.  He recalled that as a child more than fifty years earlier, sixteen years after the Russian people had been entrapped in the 1917 Soviet system of godless secularism & godless education, the older people would remind themselves that the cause of the cultural onslaught of Lenin’s Bolsheviks was that men had forgotten God.

Our legislative leadership has forgotten God.  Perhaps because those who should lead us all out of this cultural death are found instead cowering in our pulpits having themselves disconnected God from the public square.


The shepherds of the sheep have left their flock unprepared to face the towering challenges of cultural tsunamis that fill our week. By and large, God's people are without a well-considered and well-developed Biblical paradigm.  We are intellectually (theologically) unprepared. And so is our legislative leadership.


Drawing on the travesty of the French Revolution and its hatred of the church, it was Dostoevsky who warned us that “revolution must begin with atheism.”


And one more thing from Solzhenitsyn's Templeton Prize speech. Solzhenitsyn told British royalty that:


Evil makes its home in the individual human

heart before it enters a political system.


He went on to note that there seems to be no shame . . .


. . . to make daily concessions to an integral evil.  Western societies are losing more and more of their religious essence as they thoughtlessly yield up their younger generation to atheism.


When I consider the effort being made by Senator Adam Pugh to disapprove in whole the social studies and science matter standards approved by the State Board of Education on February 27, 2025, I am reminded of the departure of so many the present day political class from the standards of conservatism expressed by Edmund Burke, certainly one of the most, if not the most influential of all modern conservative thinkers.


For Burke, the political kernel of thought of highest significance is that man and the state are created by God for his own pleasure and that man’s purpose in the world is to render obedience to divine ordinance.


Burke knew that to limit politics and societal law to the secular realm of human reason ignored what mankind has known from the beginning of time: divine providence is the foundation of human welfare.


I think Rushdoony put it even better when he said:


Man tries to play God and fails to secure even a niche for himself in any pantheon.  The homemade heaven he tries to fashion resembles an old-fashioned hell.  He aspires to the role of deity and reverts to sub-humanity.


May God have mercy on Oklahoma and its pulpits, its legislature, and its school systems.  May he lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil.


~Jesus, Matthew 6:13

My comments last Thursday to the

Oklahoma State Board of Education:

Ten of us were allowed to speak for 60 seconds. I limited my comments to a little over 50 seconds as follows:


The purpose of this board is to help secure the future of the nation and the future of the state. We can do it only by educating future citizens.  And it is important for our citizens to know these things:


Why the Bible and Christianity were the foundation of Western Civilization


Why the Bible and Christianity were the foundation of the American Republic


Why our founders considered Christianity vital in the culture in order to keep that republic


Why men like Franklin and Jefferson stated so emphatically that God rules in the affairs of men and nations.


For those reasons, I commend you, Ryan, for the work you have done to restore the curriculum and to continue to restore it to show our future citizens American values and the values of Western Civilization. God bless.

The point is this: the Ryan Walters standards are vital to the development of the state and the nation. Without them, we are a ship of state with no rudder.

Spread the word in your churches.

God bless all of you, our state, and our nation!


SEND THIS EMAIL TO A FRIEND HERE

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