Written by David Starr   

The GOP never ceases to hit new lows.

The Texas Republican Party has actually been opposing critical thinking in classrooms. This is so "fixed beliefs" won't be challenged, those beliefs being Christian doctrine.

An Indiana Republican State Senator by the name of Jeff Raatz is trying to pass a bill that would allow creationism in the class room as a "competing theory" under the guise of promoting "critical thinking." Creationism is not even a theory but a grand distortion of proven scientific theory.

In Oklahoma, Tea Partier Dan Fisher led a vote in the Oklahoma legislative committee to ban Advanced Placement history courses. AP is designed to help students develop a higher level of thinking, including critical thinking.

Is the GOP a new flat earth society? By the way the Christian right has been influencing it, the answer is yes. Sure, there is the greed (Koch brothers), and the ultra-nationalism (neoconservatives), but the Christian right is taking the GOP to new lows, driving it down a Medieval path.

Take some of the content of the Texas Republican Party's goals, this from author Danny Weil in his article published in Truthout (07/07/2012):

"Abstinence-only sex education, trying juveniles as adults, emphasis on faith-based drug rehab, opposition to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, and no-questions-asked support for Israel because 'Our policy is based on God's biblical promise to bless those who bless Israel and curse those who curse Israel...'"

While critical thinking is discarded, an emphasis on exceptionalism is added on. This is nothing more than an attempt to indoctrinate students to consciously or unconsciously support empire. It is a return to Manifest Destiny doctrine, whereby U.S. leaders (and profiteering corporate elites) give themselves the "god-given right" to "civilize" other peoples, although not put in such overt terms as was the case over 100 years ago.

The GOP's agenda is an embarrassment to the United States, as other nations look on and wonder. GOP policies have created such an atmosphere of ignorance, and arrogance, its supporters are willing to stab themselves in the back, i.e., sacrifice their own class interests. Labor has been targeted to fall even more under the dominion of capital. GOP policies threaten to drag the U.S. back to a Gilded Age past, when there wasn't strong union representation and environmental protections.

Asserting that the U.S. is a Christian nation, GOPers contradict, or violate, the principles of the U.S. founders, where there was an understanding that church/state power is dangerous and regressive; as was shown by the European colonial powers.

Can the GOP hit even newer lows? It probably can. We're talking about a bottomless pit here.

David Starr writes on various issues, both national and international.