Well, actually…
At The Corner, Jonah Goldberg links to this story, which says that a teacher is being sued for this:
Chad Farnan, a 16-year-old sophomore, says the teacher, James Corbett, told his students that “Jesus glasses” obscure the truth and suggested that Christians are more likely than other people to commit rape and murder.
Farnan recorded his teacher telling students in class: “What country has the highest murder rate? The South! What part of the country has the highest rape rate? The South! What part of the country has the highest rate of church attendance? The South!”
Nevermind that one possible reason Christians in the U.S. are more likely to do anything is because they are 77% of the population, and that no public school teacher should ever be allowed to say any of that shit anyway, at least until they can also say shit about Islam without being fired.
What I really want to say is that although I am profoundly hesitant to correct Jonah Goldberg on anything EVER, I must today, because he comments on that quote thusly:
…it’s interesting to ponder what the bureaucracy would have done to this guy if he’d employed a similar argument against blacks or Mexicans.
Actually, the argument itself kinda is against blacks (if not Mexicans), no matter how the asshat teacher meant it.
I’m just saying, is all.
“The South” is dominated by blacks; therefore, any reference to crime rates in the South inherently implicates black people more than anyone else.
So the teacher is not only a moron, he’s also a raaaacist. At least according to the Modern HopeChange definition (anything remotely critical about any person who is not white).
If I was slightly more motivated, I’d actually be willing to look up the numbers on rape and murder and see if that teacher was even close on that. In the end, though, there was one thing my parents told me that was drilled into my head from an early age, and that was this:
Don’t feed the trolls.
Here’s hoping that teacher gets what he deserves - a straight shot to the unemployment line.
April 3rd, 2008 at 10:32 amGermans? Florida?
April 3rd, 2008 at 10:35 amUmm, just a question. When the chart says that the largest ancestry group in Kentucky is “American” what does that mean?
Not Irish, German, or English (or French presumably), but American.
Color me confused.
April 3rd, 2008 at 10:35 amHere’s hoping that teacher gets what he deserves - a straight shot to the unemployment line.
Depends on the school district’s position on tenure. We had a few rancid teachers at my high school and short of them mowing down a hall full of students with an Uzi, they could not be fired.
April 3rd, 2008 at 10:37 amEvery time I come across stories like this one, I wonder why I chose to change my career at my advanced age to become a teacher. The gummint schools are a cesspool of PC/liberal/non-education. I have this [stupid?] idea that I might be an agent of change, but the more I think about it, the more I am convinced I should use my experience in a private/parochial school setting.
“Teachers” such as this assclown are hired by like-minded poltroons who went through the same indoctrination, by the same phuque wits who voted for McGovern/Carter/Mondale/Dukakis/Clinton/Kerry. These people are not born liberal, they’re brainwashed via academia/entertainment/media.
April 3rd, 2008 at 10:46 amMy husband and I chose to educate our children at home once they finished middle school.
Best decision we’ve ever made.
April 3rd, 2008 at 11:06 amCorbett’s statements are certainly offensive, and I’m sure they’re completely baseless, too. But for me, the real issue is this: Why is Corbett wasting classroom time expressing these irrelevant opinions? The taxpayers pay him to teach European history, not to rant about whatever random topic happens to be on his mind. SHUT UP AND TEACH!
April 3rd, 2008 at 11:11 amDearRachel,
To answer Locomotive Breath, I would speculate that the largest Florida ancestry is German because so many Northerners move there in retirement.
I would also speculate that Kentucky and West Virginia are American because they interbred so much they cannot be reasonably called anything else. bwahaha. (eck-shully the teeny little note says that “American” is a mishmosh of multiple Europeans).
I will finally guess that this chart, prepared by the US Census Bureau, is based on responses to the latest national Census where people get the option of picking a box for their enthicity. Since “African-American” is almost certainly the only choice for blacks, it will get over represented statistically. Hence the chart falsely portrays that nine states were colonized by Africa.
I am a lot more curious about that lone English state out west. Whassup with that? The Germans back the English into another corner??
Yr Obdnt Svnt,
April 3rd, 2008 at 11:11 ammike
I know you were just making a joke here, but “interbred” does not mean “inbred” — in fact, it means the opposite.
And, if you really were trying to suggest that inbreeding is rampant in Kentucky and West Virginia, do you have any factual basis for that vicious stereotype? I’ve been a Southerner all my life, and I’m rather tired of hearing that particular foul slander against the residents of various Southern states. It may sound like a hilarious joke to you, but to my ears it’s just bigotry.
April 3rd, 2008 at 11:20 amWhat COUNTRY has the highest murder rate? Bojemoi. And they let him teach history.
For countries, I’m pretty sure Colombia and South Africa lead the parade, but Russia gives them a run for the money.
April 3rd, 2008 at 11:21 amI think the majority of people in the Appalacian states labelled “American” on that map are of Scots-Irish descent. Those areas were settled during the second or third wave of immigrants from the U.K. if my memory is working right.
April 3rd, 2008 at 11:23 amYeah, its always those intolerant bigots in the South causing problems. That black guy that was sodomized by a plunger and that other black guy that was shot 45 times for having his wallet in his hand, that happened in the deep South: New York City. Yep, the intolerant South where there are more black elected officials than the rest of the country combined.
Give me a break. I don’t think it was as much anti-Christian (although it was a part of it) as anti-South. Still the guys a jackass and deserves scorn, if not joblessness.
April 3rd, 2008 at 11:24 amLifelong Kentuckian here. My children are part: English, German, Irish, French, Italian and Finnish. In other words - American
April 3rd, 2008 at 11:33 amIt’s all the retired Jews. Like Jerry Seinfeld’s parents.
April 3rd, 2008 at 11:41 amFire him.
He is obviously incompetent. He could not provide an understandable context for his discussion, and came across as someone who is nothing more than a classist, racist, and whatever-ist that defines folks who think all of us in the South are murderous, ignorant and christian.
____________________________________________________
I’m a Kentuckian as well and I’ve Welsh, Irish, Swedish, Norman-French, Finnish and a dash of Sioux iin the ol’ DNA files.
So..All-’murican.
April 3rd, 2008 at 11:47 amFollowing the lead of Foxtrotian Chuck Foxtrot, I’m going to answer every single question on the next Census, from ancestry to political party to number of toilets with, “Car-boner.”
President Obama will then dispatch his minions, in Hopes of Changing me.
April 3rd, 2008 at 11:48 amWarning: The following is a rant. Please don’t take any of it personally; I’m just venting about a subject that bugs me.
What does “American ancestry” mean? Well, I can’t say what the people reporting it on the census meant, but I can tell you what I mean when I say the same thing.
I am an American. I was born in this country and have lived all my life here. My parents are Americans. My grandparents were all Americans. If we continue tracing my ancestry back farther than that, we can certainly find people who came here from other countries, but so what? Who cares where my ancestors were born? That has nothing to do with me.
Nationality is not inherited. If one of my ancestors came here from Ireland, what does that say about me? Absolutely nothing, because I am not my ancestors. I am not a citizen of Ireland. I am not a part of its culture. I am not Irish.
And if I were to actually trace my ancestry, I have no doubt that it would prove to be a mishmash of people from many different countries. I am a mongrel, just like most people living in the USA. I have no clearly identifiable European ancestry, and that’s just fine with me.
Why on Earth does anyone care about that stuff? What possible relevance does it have to anything? Why do Americans feel the need to identify themselves with some European country where they weren’t born, haven’t lived in, and very possibly have never even visited?
I am an American. That is the only nationality I have, and the only one I need.
April 3rd, 2008 at 11:53 amPat Berry,
April 3rd, 2008 at 12:06 pmThank You. That has aggravated me for a long time.
I am an AMERICAN.
That’s enough for me.
mehuete
I am a lot more curious about that lone English state out west. Whassup with that? The Germans back the English into another corner??
“That would be the Mormons. Mormons is the correct answer on that one”
April 3rd, 2008 at 12:19 pmFelons are mostly liberals. That alone indicates that the teacher’s claims regards Christians are full of shit.
April 3rd, 2008 at 12:23 pmI did look the statistics up, and you know which state in the southern region had the overwhelming highest rates of violent crime? The universally democrat led (up till now) Louisiana, 2 to 1 on average. Oddly enough, the overwhelmingly democrat District of Columbia had violent crime rates 3 times higher than Louisiana.
Seems more like high crime is a result of liberal democrat policies to me.
April 3rd, 2008 at 12:28 pmI wouldn’t get too worked up over the map. It’s a pretty picture, but it really doesn’t reveal much.
It doesn’t define “ancestry” but I’d bet a lot that you can check as many ‘groups’ in the list as are applicable. So, one person gets counted multiple times.
For example, there are a lot more people in the Southwest that have a Mexican blood relative (including George W. Bush!) than there are Mexicans, so it comes as no surprise to me that “Mexican” is the largest ancestry in those states.
Hell, I’m the whitiest white man, but I’d have to check the “African-American” box (along with German, English and Scottish) because I know for a fact that I have black ancestry.
I’m guessing Utah is purple because Missouri/Illinois/wherever it was from which the Mormons emigrated was “English” at the time of the migration.
Finally, most probably means “largest group”, not “majority”.
April 3rd, 2008 at 12:30 pmDearRachel,
Please allow me the use of your blog to respond directly to another Commenter. thankew.
Pat Berry:
I actually meant “interbred.” I meant that the intermarriage between the English, French, Welsh, Scottish and Irish sub-groups within the states had eliminated any distinguishing characteristics and created a homogenous gene pool. Thus a breeding “inter” the European ethnicities instead of “inbred” which would have been within a sub-group.
It was also intended as a joke, because of the well-known (but widely discounted) belief you reference. As a Southerner myself, I think I can make jokes about Southerners.
mike
April 3rd, 2008 at 12:33 pmIIRC, there was kind of a movement at the time for people to state “American” on the last census as a rejection of identity politics.
For the 2000 census I entered “American” as the ethnicity of my whole family.
April 3rd, 2008 at 12:40 pmIt just goes to show that anti-Christian bias is alive and well in our school system. I hope I can afford to home school when we have kids.
April 3rd, 2008 at 12:40 pmHoo boy. Seems like that teacher needs to have a can of whupass opened on him. And they actually let people like that teach?? Jebus Christos.
For the record, I have a slight inkling about my ancestry, mainly from my father talking about his Sioux and Cherokee great-great-umpteen-great grandparents, but other than that, my ancestors could be from Mars for all I care. I’m American by birth, Southern by the grace of God. And I like it that way.
April 3rd, 2008 at 12:41 pmUmm, OK. I’m wondering what facts he’s basing this statement on? Being a history teacher you would be able to presume he was aware of the murderous Communist regimes who are generally Atheist (Communist Russia from the times of Lenin, Stalin, Khrushchev; the many more millions killed in China since Mao took over). I think this demonstrates that Mr. Corbett is wearing some other sort of “glasses”
April 3rd, 2008 at 12:42 pmLiberals love to bash the South. Everything they hate comes from there; the KKK, country music, NASCAR, fundamentalist Christianity, NASA and the space program. They don’t see how liberals in education have shamed racism out generations of Southern children since the 1960’s. Thanks to this shame, the ranks of the KKK have been depeleted in the South, while the lack of this shaming in other parts of the country has helped aid other racist groups to rise in other parts of the country like the West Coast states.
(In a way, Southerners bear the sins of their forefathers similar to how modern Germans bear the sins of their Nazi ancestors, only the old wounds have pretty much scarred over for us whereas the memory of Nazi fascism is understandably still fresh for many. But even so, the outright hatred many liberals have for ‘the South’ -like all of us are some monolithic block who think, act, and vote the same (NOT)- has caused a sort of Southern pride, which is why you still have people waving the Stars and Bars around even if they aren’t racists.)
But back to the South-bashers, they purposely do not see the faults of other regions of the country. Bash the South for its ignorant rednecks, but forget the ignorance found in some neighborhoods of NYC, Boston, and other New England metropolises. Crack jokes about cowboys and hillbillys, I’ll gladly point out the fruits and nuts populating Califnornia, its bad apple politicians, and the whine country of San Fransisco and Berkley. Point out how cultured Chicago is to East Bumblefuck, and I’ll gladly point out how the gang culture of Chicago compared to BFE.
And liberals love to bash all forms of Christianity unless it’s liberation theology or racist African-American pastors. If your form of Christianity doesn’t agree with them or aid them, liberals will hate you. I used to bash Christians plenty when I was younger, but I got tired of hearing others do it after a while because they failed to consider the good sides of Christianity. I like cathedrals. How many atheists build cathedrals? I think some of the Christian-inspired art is beautiful. How does an atheists lack of belief inspire them in their art? (actually, I’d say the anti-Christian sentiment has inspired some artists to their craft more than their atheism; think of ‘Piss Christ’ and other pieces)
Some people have no tolerance for the diversity of opinion unless it’s their own. If it someone/something is opposite of them, they’ll fail to consider its good and only look at its ills. You want to talk about being a religious minority, try being a Wiccan who’ll defend a Christian’s right to believe in the powers of the dead guy on a stick.
April 3rd, 2008 at 12:45 pmWhat country has the highest murder rate? Urban Areas! What part of the country has the highest rape rate? Urban Areas! What part of the country has the highest rate of church attendance? Rural Areas!
Oh wait, that doesn’t quite work…
April 3rd, 2008 at 12:53 pmOn 9/11 my son came home from school and told me that it happened because the US gives money to the Jews. Who told you that, son? My math teacher.
I started home schooling the next week.
April 3rd, 2008 at 12:53 pmBad Penny,
April 3rd, 2008 at 12:57 pmHopefully when you heard that you made a call to the school’s principal, and a few of the local synagouges.
Yes, I made quite a pest of myself.
April 3rd, 2008 at 1:08 pmThe dude was an idiot….and Most likely an Atheist.
April 3rd, 2008 at 1:10 pmOK, so you were saying the same thing I was when I referred to myself as a mongrel. Sorry I jumped to conclusions.
Then I hope that, as a fellow Southerner, you can understand why that particular joke makes me angry. I am accustomed to hearing it from non-Southerners who are not really joking. They believe that it’s true.
April 3rd, 2008 at 1:10 pmNice reasoning, Rakil Lukisez, showing how correlation does not imply causation and that Y looks like it is caused by X, but X is caused by Z.
No doubt most libs couldn’t spot or explain the logical error if you slapped ‘em in the face with it.
April 3rd, 2008 at 1:15 pmI’ve got ancestry from just about everywhere but Asia–at least no Asian that I know of. In tracing lineage I came to the conclusion that in at least two out of four branches (starting with grandparents) there was a whole lotta fornicatin’ and miscegenatin’ going on back then, and not all that much educatin’.
But me? I’m an American.
April 3rd, 2008 at 1:16 pmKrauts, krauts, krauts - we are everywhere! I recall that German nearly became our national language in that anti-British sentiment was so strong, and the percent of the young American population with very direct German ancestry so high.
April 3rd, 2008 at 1:27 pmI’m an atheist. So is the owner of this blog. All “atheist” means is “non-religious”. Despite what some people (including some atheists) seem to think, being atheist does not mean that you have to be an obnoxious anti-religious jackass. Those are just the atheists you hear about, because they make the most noise and attract the most attention.
And yes, Lenin, Stalin, Krushchev and Mao were all atheists, but that’s not why they were also mass-murdering scumbag dictators. Religion doesn’t automatically turn people into bloodthirsty monsters, and neither does lack of religion.
Absolutely. I find those things as disgusting as you do. And I like cathedrals too. I also love traditional religious music. I sang in a church choir for many years, and dropped out only because my theatre activities didn’t leave me enough time to continue.
April 3rd, 2008 at 1:35 pmMe???
Why, I’m part of an oppressed nationality.
Yep, been oppressed and occupied for nigh on 140 years. Where? Oh, right heah on this continent.
What nationality? Why, ma’am, I am a Confederate-American. What? You’ve never heard of such a thing? Well, that goes to show y’all on how oppressed we really are…..
AMERICAN by birth, Southern by the Grace of God.
April 3rd, 2008 at 1:43 pmI’m Tarheel born, and Tarheel bred: and when I die, I’ll be a Tarheel dead.
I’m not a native of North Carolina, but I’ve lived here for over 20 years, and I have no intention of ever leaving. And my son was born in Raleigh and is now a student at N.C. State.
April 3rd, 2008 at 1:49 pmJust a sing out from the land of Ward Churchill here.
Liberals believe that stuff. Principals are liberals. School boards are liberals. Teachers are liberals. They hate America and capitalism and they really hate Christianity.
This teacher won’t be fired. He’ll be suspended for a month and come back to a hero’s welcome, and the student will be harassed and there will be a new “no recording” statute so students can’t record their teachers any more.
That’s what happened in Colorado when a Geography teacher went on a rant and got recorded doing it. The teacher got on Good Morning, America. The student had to leave school because he was being harassed by the other liberal fascist students.
Cesspools, people. Public schools are cesspools.
April 3rd, 2008 at 2:00 pmWhat country has the most beer halls? Germany!
What country has the most Nazis? Germany!
Therefore, beer halls must cause Nazism.
I’m a genius!
April 3rd, 2008 at 2:15 pmAll humans will eventually die. That is a fact
From the moment you are born you are on your way to your death.
Therefore the only time you are living is when you are still on your way to being born. IE a fetus.
Is that logic any different from the one that this idiot teacher is using?
April 3rd, 2008 at 2:15 pmThe meaning of Atheism varies widely.
Fer chrissakes.
Because many, many atheists assert that there is no God, I never call myself an atheist. I prefer the term Skeptic.
If ‘believing’ means ‘accepting on faith,’ then my beliefs are an empty set, because I don’t accept anything on faith. The term Skeptic leaves open the possibility of God thundering ‘Yo, Carbo’ someday if He wants to.
I’ve never heard our blogstress assert there is no God, either.
April 3rd, 2008 at 2:16 pmAre you sure he said “Jews” and not “Israel”? Not that I agree with that viewpoint or anything, but it would make his statement at least a little less offensive.
April 3rd, 2008 at 2:23 pmCarbo,
The discussion about atheism I’ve always read is that you believe there is no God. If this is the belief you hold, whether you are a missionary for that belief or not, you are atheist.
If, however, you recognize there is no sound evidence (as in, holds up to scientific proof) for the existence of God (or god, or gods, or what have you), but won’t rule out the possibility, I believe the term is agnostic.
Atheism requires belief in a conclusion not supported by the facts, just as theism does. Faith in the truth of something with out scientifically sound proof. This faith is important to Christians, and is often denied by atheists. I do admit though, there are a lot of Christians who claim things as proof of the existence of God that will not stand up to scientific scrutiny (as a Christian myself, I believe faith is the point, proof turns belief to knowledge, but I make no claims to speak on anyone else’s behalf).
The true skeptic, the honest scientist who doesn’t belief any religion because of the lack of proof, will never be more than agnostic, because he will also recognize that it is impossible to prove a negative.
Based on what you’ve said, and what I understand, I believe you are agnostic.
April 3rd, 2008 at 2:49 pmChris_RC,
Agnostic is a lot closer to me than atheism, definitionally. I just prefer Skeptic because some dictionaries define agnostic optionally as “belief that God is unknowable.” As stated, I have NO beliefs of any kind.
Many Christians do not accept my conviction that I do not hold any beliefs whatsoever. Most of them trot out “Everybody’s gotta believe in something.”
No. They. Fucking. Don’t.
(Indignant emphasis meant for members of my family, not for you Chris.)
Rachel should put a glossary on this blog–that’s what I believe.
April 3rd, 2008 at 3:15 pmRachl Lukis iz no atheeist; she beleevez n Dog.
April 3rd, 2008 at 3:22 pmI can see why it looks as if I was implying just that. My point (which I should have clarified earlier) is that too many people like to say that more wars have been fought and blood shed over religion than any other cause. I’m just saying that lack of religion could have the same erroneous “logic” applied to it.
April 3rd, 2008 at 3:31 pmNew Mexico has the highest incidence of rape per capita in the United States. That’s a fact. Do I want to examine the demographics to find the reason? Not on your life. One of the problems with political correctness is that it truncates any debate aimed at finding an objective truth. Will I be silent for fear of being called a racist? You betcha. I’m not going to lose my job over a stray internet comment.
The school district where I teach suffers from the so-called achievement gap amongst our Hispanic students. It’s a statistical fact that no one denies. To correct the problem we have to identify the cause, yes? Well, no actually. Instead we do the politically correct shuffle and tapdance lest someone get offended. And throw more taxpayer’s money at the problem. Denial is not a river in Egypt; it flows right through New Mexico.
April 3rd, 2008 at 4:14 pmErr, Rachel?
“The South” is not dominated by blacks.
U.S. Census Bureau data for 2006.
W B O
Alabama 71.2 26.3 2.5
Arkansas 81.8 15.7 2.5
Florida 80.2 15.8 4.0
Georgia 65.8 29.9 4.3
Kentucky 90.2 7.5 2.3
Louisiana 65.4 31.7 2.9
Maryland 63.6 29.5 6.9
Mississippi 60.9 37.1 2.0
N. Carolina 74.0 21.7 4.3
S. Carolina 68.5 29.0 2.5
Tennesee 80.4 16.9 2.7
Texas 82.7 11.9 5.4
Virginia 73.3 19.9 6.8
W. Virginia 81.8 15.9 2.5
Any conclusion that could be drawn using the map you cited would be erroneous.
I’m just saying, is all.
April 3rd, 2008 at 4:50 pmI don’t have a link for it, but I’ve read that a sizeable percentage of the U.S. population in WWI thought we should go in on the side of Germany, if we had to get involved at all. It was not necessarily a foregone conclusion that we would take the side of Britain and France. (But not in WWII, of course.)
April 3rd, 2008 at 8:08 pmmightysamurai, your closer to something than you might guess.
Please see here:
Beer Hall Putsch (Wikipedia)
Where did Adolf H. attempt his first coup to empower himself? In a beer hall, of course.
April 4th, 2008 at 2:33 amI know I’m late to the party, but I’ll just add this one little thing:
I have heard before that the crime rate is higher in the south, but I believe I can explain it if it is so. Several years back, we were blessed to experience the full heat of humid southern summers without air conditioning.
The only way we could get to sleep at night was to take a cold shower, jump into bed without drying off and lay there under the fan hoping to go to sleep before the hot set back in. I’m telling you, 100+ degrees with 90% humidity will make your eyeballs sweat.
All that hot makes hot tempers. My fuse was so short, it was a good thing I was newly married and still crazy mad in love, or I’d have just been crazy. Maybe someone will test my thesis that the murder and assault rate actually is higher in the summer than the winter, even in the south.
April 6th, 2008 at 10:16 pm