Fanning the Flames of Culture War

 

The Republican Tea Party presidential primary is in flux.  Rick Santorum had previously been discounted by the politic pundits until he recently started winning among the voters.  Santorum is now the new GOP Tea Party frontrunner.  The most recent Gallup national tracking poll shows Santorum with a 6-point lead over former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney.

In his recent campaign speeches, Santorum is repeating his assertion that President Obama’s agenda is based on a "phony theology."  Santorum is claiming that the Obama administration is anti-church. He was quoted by the New York Times.

“It’s about some phony ideal, some phony theology. Oh, not a theology based on the Bible, a different theology,” he said. “But no less a theology.” 

In later comments to reporters, Mr. Santorum said while there are “a lot of different stripes” of Christianity, he believes that “if the president says he’s a Christian, he’s a Christian.” 

“I’m just saying he’s imposing his values on the church, and I think that’s wrong,” he said, adding that he did not believe Mr. Obama was less of a Christian for doing so. 

But the Obama campaign called the comments “the latest low in a Republican primary campaign that has been fueled by distortions, ugliness and searing pessimism and negativity.”

Assertions that Mr. Obama is not a Christian, or that he is not an American, were rampant in the 2008 campaign. 

Rick Santorum's words are carefully chosen. His ideas are deliberately framed. The effect is knowingly to fuel the flames of a culture war.

Santorum isn’t really advancing a theological argument. He’s fanning the flames of culture war, speaking in a code that is easily deciphered by those determined to paint Obama as something other than a real American, those who want to believe he is a crypto-Muslim, those for whom his birth certificate is less than valid proof of his citizenship.

Santorum has many more novel, unorthodox and narrow minded ideas. He also believes that large-scale public education is an outdated idea.  He believes that any form of contraception is “not okay.” And he has  stated that he didn’t want to “make black people’s lives better by giving them somebody else’s money.”

Of course in true hypocritical Santorum style, he later claimed that he didn't say the word 'black'.  He actually said the word 'blah'.  

Many Protestants may looking at Santorum in a different light once they understand culture war extends to them.  Back in 2008, here is what Santorum had to say about the state of Protestantism.

In a 2008 speech at Ave Maria University, Rick Santorum, a devout Catholic, warned about the dangers of “the NBA” and “rock concerts,” but also said that while Protestants founded America, mainline Protestantism is in such “shambles” that “it is gone from the world of Christianity as I see it”:

We all know that this country was founded on a Judeo-Christian ethic but the Judeo-Christian ethic was a Protestant Judeo-Christian ethic, sure the Catholics had some influence, but this was a Protestant country and the Protestant ethic, mainstream, mainline Protestantism, and of course we look at the shape of mainline Protestantism in this country and it is in shambles, it is gone from the world of Christianity as I see it. [...]
Whether its sensuality of vanity of the famous in America, they are peacocks on display and they have taken their poor behavior and made it fashionable. The corruption of culture, the corruption of manners, the corruption of decency is now on display whether it’s the NBA or whether it’s a rock concert or whether it’s on a movie set.

Listen here: 

 

Meanwhile, the rest of Santorum’s speech dwells on his now-typical hyper-puritanical warnings about “Satan,” and the dangers of “sensuality,” “rock concerts,” and “the NBA” that sound like they were plagiarized from Dana Carvey’s Church Lady skits on SNL.

To that I say, Rick Santorum is a turd.  Oh, I didn't say turd, I said Rick Santorum is a 'blah!'

The Santorum Plan is God's Plan

A group of evangelical and social conservative leaders recently voted to back the candidacy of Rick Santorum in the race for the GOP Presidential nomination. Is this support just a last attempt to stop front-runner Mitt Romney? Or is it an acknowledgment that Santorum's positions fit the beliefs of the more conservative element of the GOP? Santorum has unwaveringly opposed same-sex marriage, adoption by same-sex couples, abortion, partial-birth abortion, contraception, global warming and evolution. Here are Santorum's positions on these issues:

Same-Sex Marriage

"And if the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery. In every society, the definition of marriage has not ever to my knowledge included homosexuality. That’s not to pick on homosexuality. It’s not, you know, man on child, man on dog, or whatever the case may be. It is one thing."

Adoption by same-sex couples

"The state is not doing a service to the child and to society by not putting that child in a home where there is a mother and a father. This is common sense. This is nature. Even fathers in jail who had abandoned their kids were still better than no father at all to have in their children's lives."

Abortion

"I believe that any doctor that performs an abortion, I would advocate that any doctor that performs an abortion, should be criminally charged for doing so."

And on debating the partial-birth abortion ban in 1996, Santorum said: “Mr. President, I just need to restate, we have quoted physician after physician, obstetrician after obstetrician, pro-life, pro-choice, people who have performed abortions—this is not Rick Santorum or James Inhofe or Mike DeWine or Bob Smith—these are physicians, obstetricians, who are saying that this procedure is never, never, never medically necessary to save the health or life of the mother. Never. Never.”

Even though Santorum has previously testified that there are no circumstances where abortion is necessary to protect the life of the mother, his wife Karen had a second trimester abortion in October 1996. The Santorums were told that if she did not induce her labor, she and the baby would more than likely die. The decision was made to induce labor, and abort the fetus. However, the Rick and Karen don't call it an abortion. Rather, they refer to it as a "medically induced miscarriage."

Partial-birth abortion

"This isn’t taught in any medical school. It isn’t done in any hospital. It isn’t done by any obstetrician. This is a rogue procedure for the convenience and economic benefit of abortionists and abortion clinics. Of course, it is not medically necessary. It is not even medically recognized."

Contraception

Many of the Christian faith have said, well, that’s okay, contraception is okay. It’s not okay. It’s a license to do things in a sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be.

Global Warming

"I believe the earth gets warmer, and I also believe the earth gets cooler, and I think history points out that it does that and that the idea that man through the production of CO2, which is a trace gas in the atmosphere and the man-made part of that trace gas is itself a trace gas, is somehow responsible for climate change is, I think, just patently absurd when you consider all of the other factors, El Niño, La Niña, sunspots, you know, moisture in the air."

Evolution

"What we should be teaching are the problems and holes and I think there are legitimate problems and holes in the theory of evolution. And what we need to do is to present those fairly from a scientific point of view. And we should lay out areas in which the evidence supports evolution and the areas in the evidence that does not."

Santorum's position against evolution has made him the 'King of creationism.' Santorum believes that what he believes, should be taught to all those who do believe or don't believe, what he believes. That is because Santorum believes that this is God's plan. Rick Santorum wants to replace the teaching of real science with creationism.

Since January 1st, three state legislatures in Missouri, Indiana, and New Hampshire have all introduced bills that would force schools to teach creationism as an accepted science even if students, parents, and teachers are not Christians. Such bills infringe upon religious freedom as protected by the United States Constitution. Since 2004, 12 states have tried to pass creationism bills. Only one, in Louisiana, has become law. You may be wondering, where did all of these bills come from?

It turns out, all creationism bills introduced since 2004 are inspired by an amendment drafted and proposed by then Senator and current Republican Presidential candidate Rick Santorum in 2001. Santorum offered the amendment to be included in the No Child Left Behind Act. The amendment, which failed, promoted the teaching of intelligent design and questioned the academic standing of evolution in US public schools. Santorum didn’t craft the language of the bill by himself, however. He had help from Phillip E. Johnson of the Center for Science and Culture which is run by a conservative think tank known as Discovery Institute. Johnson is the founding adviser of the Center and is considered the founder of the intelligent design movement. He is also known as a member of the group for the Scientific Reappraisal of the HIV-AIDS Hypothesis, a prominent AIDS denialist group and has written that HIV does not cause AIDS, which explains why many religious extremists make such claims.

The amendment would have allowed schools and teachers to dispute evolution which the scientific community regards as the only credible, and thoroughly tested, scientific explanation for the development and diversification of all life on Earth. But people like Santorum, Johnson and other religious extremists want to replace the teaching of real science with creationism, a Biblical theory that is classified as pseudo-science by an overwhelming majority of scientists. There is no evidence supporting creationism, whereas plenty of evidence exists to support evolution.

So the next time you read a headline about a new creationism bill being introduced in a state, you’ll know exactly where the bill came from and who is responsible for trying to force religion upon our children.

Given his positions on social issues, Bruce Epperly ponders whether Santorum is the "Jesus candidate."
At least his wife, Karen, thinks so.

For me it’s not just another political race. It’s about going on to the battlefield and defending God’s truth in the World.

Oh Lord!

The State of Indiana is pursuing several bills which deal the issue of abortion, unions and education. Indiana now has some of the strictest anti-abortions laws in the country.

ABORTION
Highlights of the Indiana abortion policies that are in effect include:

• Women must be informed that human physical life begins at fertilization.
• Indiana will opt-out of abortion coverage in any state health exchange required under the new federal health law passed by Congress in 2010.
• Pain-capable children beginning at 20-weeks gestational age will enjoy enhanced protections.
• All abortions on girls under the age of 14 must be reported to child protective services within three days of the abortion in order to facilitate prompt investigation into child sexual abuse.
• Women must be informed that abortion may increase the risk of infertility, infection, or hemorrhaging.
• Doctors who do abortions in Indiana must have local hospital admitting privileges, provide medical licensing numbers, and provide emergency contact information to women having abortions.
• Women considering abortion must be informed about Indiana’s safe haven law that allows for mothers who decide to carry their children to term but are unable to care for their children to leave them with safe haven providers such as local police without criminal repercussions.

Ken Falk, an ACLU attorney representing Planned Parenthood, said the new anti-abortion law, which cuts public funding for Planned Parenthood, makes Indiana the first state to deny Medicaid funds for general health services such as breast exams and pap smears.

UNIONS
Indiana has right-to-work legislation which is presently before Indiana's House of Representatives. If it passes the House, where Republicans hold a 60-40 majority, it will go to the Senate, where Senate Republicans outnumber Democrats 37-13.

If the right-to-work proposal is approved, Indiana would be the first state in the industrial heartland of the United States to adopt such a law. It is in force in 22 other states, mostly in the South and West.

Indiana is home to numerous manufacturing plants for the auto industry that produce vehicles or components, including non-union and union-represented facilities.

Under the proposal, employees at unionized private workplaces would not be required to pay union dues. Supporters say the move would attract jobs to Indiana. Critics call it union busting.

EDUCATION

Legislators in Indiana have proposed a bill which would allow the reciting of the Lord's Prayer at the beginning of the school day.

Three Republican state senators in Indiana have a plan to fix public education in the state: Have someone recite the Lord’s Prayer at the beginning of every school day.

Really. It’s Senate Bill No. 25 (PDF):

In order that each student recognize the importance of spiritual development in establishing character and becoming a good citizen, the governing body of a school corporation or the equivalent authority of a charter school may require the recitation of the Lord’s Prayer at the beginning of each school day. The prayer may be recited by a teacher, a student, or the class of students.

In case you’re unfamiliar with what they’re talking about, this is the kind of Christian prayer the senators believe schools need:

Our Father, which art in heaven,
Hallowed be thy Name.
Thy Kingdom come.
Thy will be done in earth,
As it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our trespasses,
As we forgive them that trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation,
But deliver us from evil.
For thine is the kingdom,
The power, and the glory,
For ever and ever.
Amen.

That’s Matthew 6:9-13.

The Lord's prayer? Really, who's Lord are we talking about. Is this legislation referring to the Lord of the Christians? What about the Lord of the Jews? Maybe the Lord of the Muslims? Do Buddhists or Hindu's have a Lord? Could it be the Lord of the Flies? Or possibly the Lord of the Rings?

Facts, Fiction and Intellect

In her New York Times' column, Maureen Dowd comments on the intellectual acumen of some Republican Tea Party members and candidates for President. Dowd finds a correlation with what is happening in Republican politics today with the message from the movie, “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.” THE MESSAGE

Jimmy Stewart is the young attorney who comes West to Shinbone and ends up as a U.S. senator after gaining fame for killing the sadistic outlaw Liberty Valance, played by Lee Marvin. John Wayne is the rancher, a fast-draw Cyrano who hides behind a building and actually shoots Marvin because he knows Stewart is hopeless in a duel. He does it even though they’re in love with the same waitress, who chooses the lawyer because he teaches her to read.

A lifetime later, on the verge of becoming a vice presidential candidate, Stewart confesses the truth to a Shinbone newspaperman, who refuses to print it. “When the legend becomes fact,” the editor says, “print the legend.”

RICK PERRY

Perry conceded that he “struggled” with college, and told the 13,000 young people in Lynchburg that in high school, he had graduated “in the top 10 of my graduating class — of 13.”

Our education system is going to hell. Average SAT scores are falling, and America is slipping down the list of nations for college completion. And Rick Perry stands up with a smirk to talk to students about how you can get C’s, D’s and F’s and still run for president.

Perry told the students, “God uses broken people to reach a broken world.” What does that even mean?

MICHELE BACHMANN

Another “Don’t Know Much About History” Tea Party heroine, Michele Bachmann, seems rather proud of not knowing anything, simply repeating nutty, inflammatory medical claims that somebody in the crowd tells her.

SARAH PALIN

Sarah Palin, who got outraged at a “gotcha” question about what newspapers and magazines she read, is the mother of stupid conservatism.

THE STUPID PARTY

The Republicans are now the “How great is it to be stupid?” party. In perpetrating the idea that there’s no intellectual requirement for the office of the presidency, the right wing of the party offers a Farrelly Brothers “Dumb and Dumber” primary in which evolution is avant-garde.

THE LINEUP

So we’re choosing between the over intellectualized professor and blockheads boasting about their vacuity?

Texas Textbook Two-Step

Only Jon Stewart can put a true perspective on this highly controversial issue. WATCH:

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Don't Mess With Textbooks
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There has been a huge media blitz regarding the Texas Board of Education and its revision of its social studies curriculum. This issue has attracted attention mainly because of how changes in Texas textbooks may affect textbooks used in other states.

Since Texas certifies texts centrally rather than by individual school districts, publishers have a strong incentive to alter their books to conform to its standards so as to reach the huge Texas market. Where was Lee Harvey Oswald, after all, when he shot John F. Kennedy? In the Texas School Book Depository--a tall Dallas building filled with textbooks.

The issue revolves around the make-up of the board and the reasons for these changes.

During the past three days, “the board’s far-right faction wielded their power to shape lessons on the civil rights movement, the U.S. free enterprise system and hundreds of other topics”:

– To avoid exposing students to “transvestites, transsexuals and who knows what else,” the Board struck the curriculum’s reference to “sex and gender as social constructs.”

– The Board removed Thomas Jefferson from the Texas curriculum, “replacing him with religious right icon John Calvin.”

– The Board refused to require that “students learn that the Constitution prevents the U.S. government from promoting one religion over all others.”

– The Board struck the word “democratic” from the description of the U.S. government, instead terming it a “constitutional republic.”

Is this a conservative revision of American history?

More interesting is what the new standards tell us about conservatives' overall vision of American history and society and how they hope to instill that vision in the young. The standards run from kindergarten through high school, and certain themes obsessively recur. Judging from the updated social studies curriculum, conservatives want students to come away from a Texas education with a favorable impression of: women who adhere to traditional gender roles, the Confederacy, some parts of the Constitution, capitalism, the military and religion. They do not think students should learn about women who demanded greater equality; other parts of the Constitution; slavery, Reconstruction and the unequal treatment of nonwhites generally; environmentalists; labor unions; federal economic regulation; or foreigners.

Here are a few examples. The board has removed mention of the Declaration of the Seneca Falls Convention, the letters of John and Abigail Adams and suffrage advocate Carrie Chapman Catt. As examples of "good citizenship" for third graders, it deleted Harriet Tubman and included Clara Barton, founder of the Red Cross, and Helen Keller (the board seems to have slipped up here--Keller was a committed socialist). The role of religion--but not the separation of church and state--receives emphasis throughout. For example, religious revivals are now listed as one of the twelve major "events and eras" from colonial days to 1877.

Given this conservative slant one would think Fox News would be supportive of these changes. Think Progress notes that, "One of the right’s most often used scaremongering tactics is to warn of “liberal indoctrination” and to claim progressives are using schools to push their own agenda." But just the opposite has occurred.

Fox News has been fanning the flames of this conspiracy theory in recent weeks with paranoid reporting about the Texas State Board of Education’s deliberations over how to alter its social studies curriculum. In a series of reports it is calling the “Texas Textbook Wars,” Fox has openly speculated that founding fathers such as George Washington are going to be removed from textbooks, Independence Day will be deleted, Christmas will be removed, and that the Texas Board of Education has reccomended starting the teaching of history at 1877.

ThinkProgress has compiled a montage of some of Fox’s outlandish and inaccurate claims. Watch it:

It is time that history is based on facts and not on the interpretation of the highest bidder.

Breaking Down the Separation of Church and State.

Montage by Carin Goldberg
Original Image: “‘Declaration of Independence,” by John Trumbull/The Bridgeman Art Library

Russell Shorto's article in The New York Times, How Christian Were the Founders?, is an eye-opening analysis of how the Christian religion is being infused into the educational system in Texas. In January, the Texas State Board of Education met to propose changes to the new social-studies curriculum guidelines. These Texas guidelines in educational curriculum will have an impact on students across the country, from kindergarten to 12th grade, for the next 10 years.

Finally, the board considered an amendment to require students to evaluate the contributions of significant Americans. The names proposed included Thurgood Marshall, Billy Graham, Newt Gingrich, William F. Buckley Jr., Hillary Rodham Clinton and Edward Kennedy. All passed muster except Kennedy, who was voted down.

This is how history is made — or rather, how the hue and cry of the present and near past gets lodged into the long-term cultural memory or else is allowed to quietly fade into an inaudible whisper.[...]
But while ignoring Kennedy and upgrading Gingrich are significant moves, something more fundamental is on the agenda. The one thing that underlies the entire program of the nation’s Christian conservative activists is, naturally, religion. But it isn’t merely the case that their Christian orientation shapes their opinions on gay marriage, abortion and government spending. More elementally, they hold that the United States was founded by devout Christians and according to biblical precepts. This belief provides what they consider not only a theological but also, ultimately, a judicial grounding to their positions on social questions. When they proclaim that the United States is a “Christian nation,” they are not referring to the percentage of the population that ticks a certain box in a survey or census but to the country’s roots and the intent of the founders.

It's the money, stupid!

The state’s $22 billion education fund is among the largest educational endowments in the country. Texas uses some of that money to buy or distribute a staggering 48 million textbooks annually — which rather strongly inclines educational publishers to tailor their products to fit the standards dictated by the Lone Star State.

How do guidelines for curriculum in Texas schools impact the educational guidelines in other states?

Texas was one of the first states to adopt statewide curriculum guidelines, back in 1998, and the guidelines it came up with (which are referred to as TEKS — pronounced “teaks” — for Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills) were clear, broad and inclusive enough that many other states used them as a model in devising their own. And while technology is changing things, textbooks — printed or online —are still the backbone of education.

The cultural impact on education.

The cultural roots of the Texas showdown may be said to date to the late 1980s, when, in the wake of his failed presidential effort, the Rev. Pat Robertson founded the Christian Coalition partly on the logic that conservative Christians should focus their energies at the grass-roots level. One strategy was to put candidates forward for state and local school-board elections — Robertson’s protégé, Ralph Reed, once said, “I would rather have a thousand school-board members than one president and no school-board members” — and Texas was a beachhead. Since the election of two Christian conservatives in 2006, there are now seven on the Texas state board who are quite open about the fact that they vote in concert to advance a Christian agenda. “They do vote as a bloc,” Pat Hardy, a board member who considers herself a conservative Republican but who stands apart from the Christian faction, told me. “They work consciously to pull one more vote in with them on an issue so they’ll have a majority.”

The reshaping of history is based on a biblical concept.

The Christian “truth” about America’s founding has long been taught in Christian schools, but not beyond. Recently, however — perhaps out of ire at what they see as an aggressive, secular, liberal agenda in Washington and perhaps also because they sense an opening in the battle, a sudden weakness in the lines of the secularists — some activists decided that the time was right to try to reshape the history that children in public schools study. Succeeding at this would help them toward their ultimate goal of reshaping American society. As Cynthia Dunbar, another Christian activist on the Texas board, put it, “The philosophy of the classroom in one generation will be the philosophy of the government in the next.”

The plan to bring 'Jesus into American history.'

The Christian bloc’s notion this year to bring Christianity into the coverage of American history is not, from their perspective, revisionism but rather an uncovering of truths that have been suppressed. “I don’t know that what we’re doing is redefining the role of religion in America,” says Gail Lowe, who became chairwoman of the board after McLeroy was ousted and who is one of the seven conservative Christians. “Many of us recognize that Judeo-Christian principles were the basis of our country and that many of our founding documents had a basis in Scripture. As we try to promote a better understanding of the Constitution, federalism, the separation of the branches of government, the basic rights guaranteed in the Bill of Rights, I think it will become evident to students that the founders had a religious motivation.” [...]

Christian activists argue that American-history textbooks basically ignore religion — to the point that they distort history outright — and mainline religious historians tend to agree with them on this. [...]

[T]he goal: using courts and public schools to fuse Christianity into the nation’s founding. It may be unlikely that it will be attained any time soon, in which case the seeding of Texas’ history-textbook guidelines with “Christian nation” concepts may be mostly symbolic. But symbols can accumulate weight over time, and the Christian activists are in it for the long haul. Some observers say that over time their effort could have far-reaching consequences. “The more you can associate Christianity with the founding, the more you can sway the future Supreme Court,” Martin Marty says. “That is what Pat Robertson was about years ago. Establish the founders as Christians, and you have it made.”

Problems with the Texas process include censorship based on prejudice and religion.

What is wrong with the Texas process, according to many observers, is illustrated by the fate of Bill Martin Jr. The board has the power to accept, reject or rewrite the TEKS, and over the past few years, in language arts, science and now social studies, the members have done all of the above. Yet few of these elected overseers are trained in the fields they are reviewing. “In general, the board members don’t know anything at all about content,” Tom Barber, the textbook executive, says. Kathy Miller, the watchdog, who has been monitoring the board for 15 years, says, referring to Don McLeroy and another board member: “It is the most crazy-making thing to sit there and watch a dentist and an insurance salesman rewrite curriculum standards in science and history. Last year, Don McLeroy believed he was smarter than the National Academy of Sciences, and he now believes he’s smarter than professors of American history.” In this case, one board member sent an e-mail message with a reference to “Ethical Marxism,” by Bill Martin, to another board member, who suggested that anyone who wrote a book with such a title did not belong in the TEKS. As it turned out, Bill Martin and Bill Martin Jr. are two different people. But by that time, the author of “Brown Bear, Brown Bear” was out. “That’s a perfect example of these people’s lack of knowledge,” Miller says. “They’re coming forward with hundreds of amendments at the last minute. Don McLeroy had a four-inch stack of amendments, and they all just voted on them, whether or not they actually knew the content. What we witnessed in January was a textbook example of how not to develop textbook standards.”

Before the January board meeting, one of the social-studies curriculum writers, Judy Brodigan, told me that she was very pleased with the guidelines her team produced. After the meeting, with its 10-hour marathon of amendments by board members, she spoke very differently. “I think they took a very, very good document and weakened it,” she said. “The teachers take their work seriously. I do believe there are board members on the ultraright who have an agenda. They want to make our standards very conservative and fit their viewpoint. Our job is not to take a viewpoint. It’s to present sides fairly. I thought we had done that.”

To give an illustration simultaneously of the power of ideology and Texas’ influence, Barber told me that when he led the social-studies division at Prentice Hall, one conservative member of the board told him that the 12th-grade book, “Magruder’s American Government,” would not be approved because it repeatedly referred to the U.S. Constitution as a “living” document. “That book is probably the most famous textbook in American history,” Barber says. “It’s been around since World War I, is updated every year and it had invented the term ‘living Constitution,’ which has been there since the 1950s. But the social conservatives didn’t like its sense of flexibility. They insisted at the last minute that the wording change to ‘enduring.’ ” Prentice Hall agreed to the change, and ever since the book — which Barber estimates controlled 60 or 65 percent of the market nationally — calls it the “enduring Constitution.”

What is so remarkable is that this emphasis on a Christian foundation may be a barometer of a growing trend.

Read the complete article here.

Education, Education, Education

Globe-trotting humanitarian Greg Mortenson co-author of the best-selling memoir Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace … One School at a Time, keeps a reminder pasted to his bathroom mirror back home in Bozeman, Mont.: "When your heart speaks, take good notes."

Greg Mortenson's Peacebuilding Efforts

Greg Mortenson has been promoting peace by building schools and purging ignorance in Pakistan and Afghanistan for more than a decade.

"If you fight terrorism, that's based in fear. But if you promote peace, that's based in hope," Mortenson said. "And the real enemy I think is ignorance. It's ignorance that breeds hatred."

It all started accidentally. In 1993 on his way down from a harrowing and unsuccessful climb of the world's second tallest mountain, K2 in northern Pakistan, an exhausted and dehydrated Mortenson stumbled into the village of Korphe. The people of the village helped him get well. While recovering he noticed the children had nowhere to learn.

"When I saw those 84 children sitting in the dirt and they asked for help to build a school I made a promise that day that I would help them," Mortenson explained.

Mortenson returned to the United States and began to try to raise money for the project. He composed letters on a borrowed electric typewriter and sent them to 580 celebrities asking for help. He got one $100 check.

~snip~

Mortenson said he had found his calling. He started a nonprofit group called the Central Asia Institute and has since built 78 schools for 33,000 Pakistani and Afghan children. That is an amazing accomplishment in a region where the literacy rate is as low as 20 percent. The road has been anything but smooth. He had a fatwa leveled against him by a Muslim leader who didn't trust him. He was kidnapped. And when he began to focus on educating girls, the Taliban did all they could to stop him. But persevered.

Read the article here.