The Light of the World

We all know, of course, that faith schools promote truth, tolerance, independence of mind and a generally civilised outlook on life. We know this because the Vicar of Downing Street has said so, and because those brave warriors of truth, Rowan Williams and John Sentamu, agree with him. Daveybloke the Cuddly Conservative probably does not quite believe exactly the same, because Daveybloke probably does not quite believe anything very much except that he ought to be Prime Minister with an overall majority in the House of Commons. Daveybloke's chum Michael Gove believes that patriotism should be taught instead of history, which might lead to some squabbles in Cabinet if Daveybloke's ambassador to Belize and Minister for Wogs, Frogs and Huns, Willem den Haag, should decide that solidity and slavishness are two sides of the same delightfully non-Euro Atlanticist coin.

For it appears that certain followers of Jesus, that eloquent advocate of the profit motive and the right to bear arms, are attempting to take control of schools in Texas and expunge from their children's education the notorious liberal bias which has made the Lone Star State such a byword for nigger-loving crypto-Marxist peacenikkery the world over. Among other things, they hope to sideline the secularist Thomas Jefferson in favour of some pious Confederates, to rehabilitate Joseph McCarthy and, rather oddly, to adopt a mealy-mouthed and politically correct attitude towards the slave trade. Slavery, of course, is implicitly condoned by Jesus throughout his raving and boasting in the Gospels, and is expressly endorsed by whatever proto-Texan penned the Epistle to the Ephesians in the name of the Tarsus Inquisitor. It is therefore difficult to see why the good folk of Texas have decided to refer to the American slave trade as the "Atlantic triangular trade", almost as though they did not wish the left side of their mouth to know what the right side was saying.