Charley Morasch is a wingnut. Here are some answers to ques­tions from the Kansas City Star:

What would you like to accom­plish if elect­ed/re-elect­ed to the school board?

• Pro­vide a stim­u­lus to improve social stud­ies cur­ricu­lum to include the words and ideas of the found­ing fathers, and the legal foun­da­tions of our nation, which have been cen­sured to reflect polit­i­cal­ly cor­rect non­sense. I want to see our dis­trict face the bru­tal facts of real­i­ty, that cen­sur­ing his­to­ry, cen­sur­ing the words and ideas and even our found­ing prin­ci­ples is some­thing we will not allow to con­tin­ue in Amer­i­can pub­lic schools.

This is ahis­tor­i­cal tripe. He is repeat­ing Chris­t­ian Recon­struc­tion­ist dog­ma. The Recon­struc­tion­ist are a move­ment aimed at, well, recon­struct­ing Amer­i­ca into a “Chris­t­ian nation.” As part of that effort, they’ve roped in dis­hon­est hacks like David Bar­ton to rewrite his­to­ry, turn­ing deists like Jef­fer­son and Wash­ing­ton into evan­gel­i­cal Chris­tians, and the Con­sti­tu­tion into a the­o­log­i­cal text. 

As anoth­er shout-out to that crowd, Morasch says that the last book he read was A His­to­ry of the Amer­i­can Peo­ple by Paul John­son. Review­ing that book and Ann Coul­ter’s defense of Nixon in High Crimes and Mis­de­meanors: The Case Against Bill Clin­ton, His­to­ry News Net­work edi­tor Rick Shenkman writes:

Bad as Coul­ter’s his­to­ry is, Paul John­son’s is even worse. In his recent best sell­er, A His­to­ry of the Amer­i­can Peo­ple, John­son recy­cles the tired, two wrongs make a right claim that Nixon was no more guilty of an impeach­able crime than FDR, JFK or LBJ, each of whom also autho­rized ille­gal wire­taps and bugs. This is the same argu­ment Nixon apol­o­gists made twen­ty-five years ago; it is no more con­vinc­ing today than it was then. But by selec­tive­ly focus­ing on wire­taps and bugs John­son is able to avoid the incon­ve­nience of con­fronting the long list of Nixon’s oth­er offenses.

John­son appar­ent­ly has nev­er met a felo­nious Repub­li­can he did­n’t imme­di­ate­ly embrace. …

Paul John­son is now known to be care­less with facts. His His­to­ry of the Amer­i­can Peo­ple, accord­ing to the New York Times, is replete with errors. In an inter­view for the paper’s mag­a­zine John­son acknowl­edged the errors and said he’d cor­rect them as soon as his crit­ics point­ed them out. He left the writer of the piece under the impres­sion that it was the crit­ics’ respon­si­bil­i­ty, not his, to vet the book.

John­son tries to present the Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion as a rev­o­lu­tion for reli­gion, con­trast­ed with the athe­is­tic French Rev­o­lu­tion. The Amer­i­can Con­sti­tu­tion is as athe­is­tic as some­thing can be, though. It nev­er men­tions God, indeed the Founders explic­it­ly reject­ed impre­ca­tions to the divine, it grants reli­gious free­dom and for­bids reli­gious tests for pub­lic office. This was not a reli­gious revolt, but an unam­bigu­ous­ly sec­u­lar one – focus­ing on eco­nom­ics and civ­il liberties.

Morasch rejects that idea, claim­ing at the Con­ser­v­a­tive Union Reform Effort that “The cor­ner­stone genius of our Con­sti­tu­tion is the three-way divi­sion of gov­ern­men­tal pow­er and a ‘checks and bal­ances’ sys­tem. The divi­sion came straight out of Jew­ish his­to­ry and Isa­iah 33:22… ‘The Lord is our judge, the Lord is our law­giv­er, the Lord is our King.’ ” Morasch states clear­ly that his essay was “an appeal for all pub­lic and pri­vate insti­tu­tions of learn­ing in this nation, to avail” his bizarre view of his­to­ry “to our nation’s great­est asset… our children.”

The Star asked Morasch point-blank:

Should intel­li­gent design be taught in the pub­lic schools? If so, in what con­text or class?

I am not sure if I would sup­port an I.D. course or not, I might if I saw one that looked good. I haven’t reviewed any yet. I cer­tain­ly sup­port open dis­cus­sion in the class­room of the evi­dence for and against evo­lu­tion or cre­ation. I do not believe that the prob­lems with macro evo­lu­tion (ex. lack of tran­si­tion skele­tons and the com­plex­i­ty of DNA which negates Darwin’s spon­ta­neous gen­er­a­tion of life) are allowed to be freely dis­cussed in the class­room. This is not our moral or sci­en­tif­ic her­itage. We should fol­low the evi­dence wher­ev­er it takes us, and then encour­age the open exchange of ideas con­cern­ing the evi­dence. I fear that there is such com­plete polar­iza­tion on this issue that both sides have tak­en a dog­mat­ic defense of their posi­tion, so that any objec­tive view of the evi­dence is not even per­mit­ted in the class­rooms, often under the threat of a fed­er­al judge enforc­ing what some might see as cen­sor­ship. Our class­rooms and teach­ers need the free­dom to fol­low the evi­dence. Cur­rent­ly, they do not have that freedom.

Of course they do. They do not, how­ev­er, have the free­dom to present Morasch’s lies, nor to use a sci­ence class to dis­cuss “our moral … heritage.” 

Our moral or sci­en­tif­ic her­itage would or should include lying to chil­dren about fos­sils or DNA. Tran­si­tion­al fos­sils do exist, as do expla­na­tions for the ori­gins of DNA. We should teach chil­dren what we do know, not treat gaps in our knowl­edge as some­thing chil­dren should mem­o­rize and treat as per­ma­nent features. 

Heck, Dar­win nev­er real­ly dealt with “the spon­ta­neous gen­er­a­tion of life,” his work deals with the ori­gin of species, a process which nei­ther he nor mod­ern biol­o­gists regard as spontaneous. 

Morasch also oppos­es allow­ing class­es to use books by Nobel Prize-win­ner Toni Mor­ri­son and oth­er award win­ning nov­els which hap­pen to con­tain sex scenes, say­ing they nev­er should have been approved for schools, except that “in the spir­it of pro­gres­sive sec­u­lar­ism, these books have been select­ed for their tit­il­la­tion value.”