Dr. Wesley Scroggins, associate professor of business management at Missouri State University, and self-proclaimed book banner extraordinaire has declared that, “History and American Government textbooks primarily teach that the American form of government is a democracy. This is not true. The American form of government is a constitutional republic. The differences between the two forms of government are huge…A constitutional republican form of government is based on the rule of Law…”
Professor Bookbanner has also complained that the premises of democracy are atheistic and immoral, or inclined to assume a relativistic moral directive, “A democracy is based on an atheistic, humanistic worldview. Individual liberties (and everything else) are determined by the majority. It is majority rule. Underlying assumptions are that there is no absolute right and wrong. Morality is determined by the majority, it is relative. Man is free to do as the majority wishes. The desire of the majority determines right and wrong. It assumes man’s nature is good.”
Bookbanner, who is no doubt a devoted Glenn Beck worshipper, also proclaimed that, the “founding fathers” never had democracy in mind when they broke away from England,
“They feared and hated democracy. They possessed a Biblical worldview and knew that democracy could never sustain individual liberty for very long.”
Of course Bookbanner then produced a list of quotations from the “founding fathers”, all carefully cropped to support his very narrow view into the minds of some of the 19th-century’s brightest minds.
According to Bookbanner, Thomas Jefferson once said, “A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty‐one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty‐nine.”
Perhaps Dr. Scroggins should have verified Jefferson said it before quoting him? According to an article written by Washington Post Staff Writer, Monica Hesse in a 15 August 2007 article on Karl Rove, “Sorry, guys. The esteemed founder never said it. The folks at Monticello’s research library witheringly say that old saw has been dogging him for years.”
But Scroggins – as many conservative jihadists today – picks and chooses what he claims the Founding Fathers said to incite groups like the Republic School Board to ban books.
Jefferson of course would never have penned something that sounded do Federalist in nature, and wrote repeatedly of his belief that his new found country was indeed a democracy and that Americans were democrats, “We of the United States, you know, are constitutionally and conscientiously Democrats.”—April 24, 1816, Letter to M. Dupont de Nemours
Dr Bookbanner, after misquoting the Founders in such a way to claim they would have supported his supposition that they hated democracy, demanded that “It is the duty of the Republic School District to teach the truth about our form of government.”
He also charged the Republic School District with teaching the “myth” that “the separation of church and state is a constitutional principle.”
Bookbanner claimed, “To teach children that a nativity scene, or anything else, violates the First Amendment principle of the separation of church and state is nothing more than a lie. It is the moral duty of this school district to teach the truth of this issue: that the separation of church and state is a myth and is not found in the Constitution. It is impossible to violate something that does not exist.”
But wait, Bookbanner was also quite upset with the notion that teachers in Republic were teaching freedom of expression to their students, “The concept of freedom of expression was created in the 1940s by the liberal U.S. Supreme Court and has been used since to justify many perversions in our society in the name of an individual’s right of freedom of expression, including the evils of abortion, homosexuality, and pornography.”
Or to allow moronic college business professors to spread their misinformation to unsuspecting small town school boards in their attempts to have literature villified and banned. Scroggins is a small minded right-wing conservative jihadists wanting to enforce his own brand of Christian sharia law. He claims to love and revere the Founding Fathers but misquotes them in order to misinform the public; perhaps the Board of Regent at his university should begin sitting in on his classes to ensure what he teaches isn’t as equally incorrect?
The Liberty Tree 