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Excerpt from The American Pageant (courtesy The Truth About Guns)

We’ve already revealed the Second Amendment “re-write” contained in United States History: Preparing for the Advanced Placement ExaminationThe Texas school district deploying theAP History text crib notes assured TTAG teachers are telling students the real deal: the right to keep and bear arms protected by the U.S. Constitution is an individual right. Seems that authors John J. Newman and John M. Schmalbach aren’t the only ones who failed American history (and us). A member of TTAG’s Armed Intelligentsia sent in the above image from The American Pageant—A History of the Republic Advanced Placement Edition. The offending text re: the Second Amendment reads, “A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms (i.e. for military purposes) shall not be infringed.” Our reader had this to say about that . . .

This is from a high school textbook in NJ. From a private Catholic school. I marked the relevant parts.

What this is doing is dangerous. It makes kids think the right to bear arms is not an individual right. That it is only for collective purposes (such as the military). This is ridiculous.

Unless you’re an academic who feels free to ignore the U.S. Supreme Court to spread anti-gun agitprop. Or you’re simply too lazy to think about what you’re writing. Just sayin’ . . .

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82 COMMENTS

  1. And remember folks our education system is just fine it’s toolin along just like the Titanic nope nothin wrong here just clear skies and calm seas

      • It’s not just school books. If you take a look at the DOD report regarding the projected sources/profiles of potential domestic “terrorism” it’s like they want to outlaw being American. When does the undermining of our political foundations become seditious?

    • It always felt like babysitting that pandered to the lowest common denominator to me.

      A place where teachers have to tow the party/union line and are afraid to speak out for fear of reprisal. AKA loosing their job and never teaching again or a lawsuit by some fool parent who can’t accept that maybe their precious little baby is a disruptive little shit bag future looser.

      don’t get me started on all this PC and zero tolerance bs. If there really was zero tolerance in these schools they should be throwing these books out for the affront to truth and knowledge they represent.

  2. Unfortunately right or wrong.
    Of course its wrong.
    Kids have no clue of what is what as taught in schools today for the most part.
    School is taught by the same kool aid drinking jerks who voted for O in the first place.
    Do we really expect any different??

  3. Grab a bunch of them, start playing Der Koniggratzer in the background, and burn them. Or, get 60,000 peasants and burn them all.

    Funny thing is a lot of conservative/libertarian people I know advocate sending kids to private schools since they’re “better” and more “conservative.” Riiiiight.

    • At least with the private schools you can attempt to choose one that is more in tune with your political/religious bent. With the public schools you KNOW you are getting liberal teachers beholden to a liberal teacher’s union and other than moving to a different neighborhood you most often have no choice but to send your kids to the school someone else has determined serves your district.

      It may not solve ALL the problems of public schools, but why not vouchers?

      • Vouchers? The ability to force schools to compete for students? Giving parents choice in what their children are taught? That sounds dangerously close to capitalism, comrade.

  4. If the authors would take the time to read the writings of the 7 men who wrote The Bill of Rights, they’d find that it has been reaffirmed repeatedly that the intent was for everybody to have the right to bear arms. These 7 represented the 13 colonies and saw no need for a large central government with a huge military.

  5. The right of the military to keep and bear arms just flat doesn’t make any sense. Why would the Framers even write something so stupid?

    • Precisely. Why would they have felt the need to grant themselves permission to arm a military force when no ruling body has ever needed to in history and -forgive me for stating the obvious- a military force is supposed to be armed by definition? The Constitution and its Amendments are not a list of freedoms for the people; they are a list of restrictions on the government in order to preserve the people’s God-given* freedoms. They damn sure aren’t there to grant special freedoms to the government itself.

      * I use “God-given” not to start a religious debate, only as a way to say that our rights were not granted by any man and therefore it’s impossible to argue that any man has the power to rescind them.

      • +1

        The idea that the authors of the Bill of RIGHTS would find it necessary to state that we have a right to carry a weapon when in the military is completely RIDICULOUS. Anyone who believes that is an idiot, incapable of basic thinking.

        Obviously, the authors of this textbook are promoting an anti-guns agenda, and anyone reading this BS should say, “What? That can’t be correct.”

      • Look at it like this – when the Bill of Rights was being written, we as a British colony were in the process of overthrowing our local government (Crown appointees) and fighting against what was technically our own army/navy. Does it make any sense at all to enshrine as a fundamental founding principle the right to join said army/navy? NO.

        This simple fact seems to elude the “enlightened” class.

  6. I think it’s time for the NRA to earn their $$$ by filing some sort of MASSIVE lawsuit against these morons. Too bad the media would only turn such a lawsuit into a circus while failing to mention the offensive actions that brought it about.

    • I was expecting them to say something really stupid, because they are very libtarded. The only thing he got wrong is how we fought the militia, when we were the militia fighting the most powerful army in the world.

      • Penn and Teller are typically aligned with ‘libertarians’ – not so much liberal, nor conservative. I’d go so far as to translate their context of “militia” is as an armed force; that the colonists did fight one *and* required to have one for themselves.

  7. Looks like the 2nd Amendment is the only amendment that has a footnote to it? (I guess I missed the version of the U.S. Constitution with all the footnotes and other fine print.) What’s the footnote to the text say?

  8. You know there is a simple fix for this: large open carry demonstrations in front of schools. I am totally serious. Let the children see first hand that it is an individual right for citizens to own and possess arms not necessarily in conjunction with military service.

    Note: the federal gun free school zone act of the mid 1990s criminalizes citizens who are armed within 1000 feet of schools unless they have a license from their state of residence and they are in their state of residence. This would mean that only people with concealed handgun carry licenses could demonstrate in their state of residence without risk of federal prosecution.

  9. All they would have had to do is change the i.e. (“id est,” that is- restating or defining what has been said) to e.g. (“exempli gratia”, “a free example” for example) and it would be true but misleading. I am suprised they did not do that…gives more wiggle room to deflect criticism.

    But yet, why have any text inserted right in the text. That is what marginal notes are for.

    Looking at it more carefully…I don’t think they know what i.e. means. The 5th amendment text in that book. I think they think i.e. means for example. When it doesn’t. So maybe this is just partially a poor grasp of the English language on their part.

    FWIW, we used this same textbook in US History AP when I was in HS, but it did not have this insertion there. Perhaps they are trying to undo Heller?

      • Which means we are seeing the products of a failed education system writing defective materials for the failed education system. My brain hurts…

  10. Now that I think about it, when I was in high school back in 08, we spent zero time talking about the 2nd ammendment in Gov’t class. Yay public schools!

  11. Folks, if you can’t put your kids in private schools of known good quality (I might not be able to, they’re mighty expensive), then it’s your responsibility as parents to teach your own children the truth wherever you identify a mistake, distortion, or outright lie by the school system.

    Raising children is probably the most important thing most of us will ever do, and I count myself included when I say that. If we don’t do it right, everyone suffers. I’m doing what I can to prepare, I have six bookcases at home packed pretty full, mostly history and science, and I just hope I can explain it all well enough when my son starts asking questions. Even if I can’t, to just get them to ask the right questions and show them how to learn the truth is a valuable thing.

  12. We used the first one when I was in school. Want to hear the ironic part? At the end of the year, my friend and I shot mine to pieces.

  13. Staunch 2A advocates are the Marxists’ new incarnation of the European Jews of the 1930s.
    Remember Alinsky’s 13th tactic for dealing with reactionaries; Pick the target, Freeze it, Personalize it, and Polarize it. That is precisely what this current administration and its minions are attempting to achieve with their rhetoric, Common Core Curriculum, and push for “Common Sense” firearms laws.
    I suspect we Armed Intelligentsia are all on somebody’s carefully archived list by now. If the forces of tyranny currently in power are successful in the next general election I will not be surprised to end my days “disappeared” or in a “re-education camp” provided by some contemporary version of the Ministry of Truth.
    However, the authorities may find that other, younger, members, are more difficult to deal with – particularly if they are organized, trained, well prepared, and possess an indomitable willingness to save the Republic.

    • I’m only 2 months from my 37 birthday. I figure that by the time the next revolution comes I’ll be a crippled old man, forced to sit on the sidelines and watch. Make no mistake, a second revolution is what it would take to clear out the bureaucrats, statists and other blackguards from the government. However I fear those who will be young enough to carry off the affair will have no interest in doing so, the skills to do it with, or an understanding of why it needs done.

      • Just past my 37th, and I share the same fear. Remember, it takes 3 generations of brainwashing to destroy the general population’s perception of any fundamental knowledge. Keep a very close eye on curriculum.

  14. [Paraphrased from a few statements made in a ‘down-home’ discussion way back in the early ‘90’s.]
    ‘Well, if I could say only one thing about the Second Amendment to the Constitution U.S., I’d say it was a statement of common knowledge at the time and a warning for future generations about that well regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free State; a declaration of a right of all Freemen older than the first colonial settlement; a prohibition on those few and limited powers granted to the fedgov and writ as law stating that said right shall not so much as even be ‘infringed’; and a clear reminder on what they couldn’t do — with the idea in mind to keep them from causing an unnecessary repetition of history over a matter it took a whole damn War to settle.’
    ( comment followed: )‘Sounds like about five things said about the IIA, maybe more.
    ‘Yeah I know, but sometimes saying only one thing at a time isn’t enough to get the point across.’ ‘Specially to those so dumbed down by the school system more of ‘em than you’d believe couldn’t even spell Constitutional Republic on a bet, let alone have even the slightest clue what it means.’

  15. This American Pagent distortion has been going on for some time. I still have my copy from HS in the 90s (8th edition, published 1987). Sure enough, the 2nd Amendment is followed by: “i.e., for military purposes” in bold, blue text! There’s also a helpful footnote that reads: “The courts, with “militia” in mind, have consistently held that the “right” to bear arms is a limited one.”

  16. I reviewed this book on Amazon under “Blue.” I slammed it. Wikipedia is a better source than this p.o.s. I gave it a 1 Star and provided a couple of references. However, it has 10 5 star ratings and 3 4-Star ratings. There were 7 ratings combined for 1-Star to 3-Star. That is scary.

  17. Yeah, now that others are mentioning it, I’m pretty sure I had an American Pageant textbook as well, in the early 90s. I no longer have it, and I don’t remember exactly what was taught, but I do remember at least two of my history teachers being into guns (one actually built and sold his own black powder rifles). A third history teacher is now staunchly, blindly liberal and anti-2A (I recently unfriended him on Facebook after about 10 years due to his incessant parroting of the Narrative and calls for gun control in the Zimmerman case). I don’t have any specific recollections of his politics back then.

  18. My niece’s all attend private schools and they’ve all become good little socialists. They believe guns are bad and they’re afraid to even touch a gun. I don’t know where I went wrong, but they’re all growing up to be good little sheep who’ll depend on our socialist leaders to save them. This country is screwed and our future leaders have no chance of saving the once mighty U.S.

    • The biggest consumer of textbooks is Texas, and their taste in texts drives the market.

      “Liberal windbags” don’t place intelligent design and Darwin on an equal footing, so you know.

      I’d suggest you research your target a little more carefully, rather than going with the Microsoft-like “Ready, FIRE! Aim?”

      It just so happens that this particular abomination has been around since at least the Reagan Administration.

      Damned sister-humping, book-eating contards.

  19. Until the McDonald v. Chicago case in 2010, the Second Amendment was a collective right at the state level. Prior to Heller in 2008, it was a collective right per US v. Miller.

    If that edition of the book was published prior to the McDonald case (or arguably Heller, depending upon how you look at it), then it was accurate at the time. Today, it wouldn’t be.

    Textbooks are only updated every so often, and schools don’t always replace them every time that a new edition is published, as the books are expensive. I seriously doubt that anyone is trying to deliberately corrupt your gun-toting high schoolers; it’s not as if the AP US History test is fixated on one specific constitutional amendment.

    • The note in the text, “i.e., for military purposes” was still incorrect, and nonsensical as others here have pointed out, before the McDonald and Heller decisions.

      • In the absence of any evidence tending to show that possession or use of a “shotgun having a barrel of less than eighteen inches in length” at this time has some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia, we cannot say that the Second Amendment guarantees the right to keep and bear such an instrument. Certainly it is not within judicial notice that this weapon is any part of the ordinary military equipment, or that its use could contribute to the common defense.

        -US v. Miller

        • That was then. McDonald and Heller are now. Although neither of those cases dealt with the type of weapons protected by 2A, and Heller certainly opened the door to [unreasonable] “reasonable restrictions,” both cases enshrined the right to keep and bear arms as an individual right, independent of any militia.

          The idea of the militia clause as a qualifier upon which the right to keep and bear arms is predicated is dead. It was prefatory. The militia ship has sailed—and sunk. Thank God.

          Not to mention those of us who see the right to keep and bear arms as a natural and civil right, protected from any government regulation—regardless of the Supreme Court’s views on the subject. In the sense that “shall not be infringed” means shall not be infringed.

        • “Although neither of those cases dealt with the type of weapons protected by 2A…”

          Scalia’s opinion accepted the sawed-off shotgun exclusion in Miller. But I digress…

          “both cases enshrined the right to keep and bear arms as an individual right, independent of any militia.”

          That’s true. And if it’s an older edition of the book, then it was correct at the time that it was published.

          Without knowing how old the book is, it’s hard to critique the book, other than to say that it was accurate until a few years ago. As I noted, school districts aren’t necessarily rushing out to buy the latest edition of (expensive) textbooks, particularly for subjects such as history that don’t change very much.

          And having taken AP US history myself, I can tell you that this is a tiny, tiny part of the curriculum. They have to cover about five centuries worth of history in less than a school year.

        • Actually, it still would have been inaccurate even if it was older. The 1939 ruling suggested that people had a right to keep and bear arms that had military purpose. Of course, the sawed off shotgun argument was incorrect because police and military use things such as the Serbu Super Shorty based on Rem 870 or Mossber 500 receivers and have an 8 inch barrel. Of course the fall under the NFA rule of AOW.

        • “The 1939 ruling suggested that people had a right to keep and bear arms that had military purpose.”

          Miller included a test as to whether the weapon “could contribute to the common defense.” You can debate the nuances of what that means exactly, but it sounds as if the court was saying that it would be something that you could bring with you if you were called into service or for training (since a “well regulated militia” needs training.) The book would have been correct.

    • Explain how anyone could think that every right on the Bill of Rights was individual but only the 2nd was collective? No matter what the supreme court rules. Though they clearly recognized it is about an individual right.

      • “Explain how anyone could think that every right on the Bill of Rights was individual but only the 2nd was collective?”

        Go read Miller, and you’ll know.

        The reality is that what you believe to be self-evident has only been recognized as such by the Supreme Court for the last 3-5 years, depending upon when you start counting.

        And while it’s convenient to skip the stuff in the Constitution that you find to be distasteful, Article 3 created the judiciary and the courts have the ultimate authority to interpret the law. Unless you are one of the nine members of the Supreme Court, your interpretations don’t really count.

        • Thankfully we are given the power to overthrow the government. What stops the judges from having incorrect interpretations of all the amendments? Our guns.

    • Dear Mr Simpleton.

      Until the McDonald v. Chicago case in 2010, the Second Amendment was a collective right at the state level. Prior to Heller in 2008, it was a collective right per US v. Miller.

      NO. The right to self defense, and to own the means do so, is a NATURAL RIGHT, That any extremist court, or other organization or individual, may chose to ignore this reality does not make their (your) relevant. Only marks them as illegitimate. The Constitution (2nd Amendment) is a written record of what truth has, and must, always exist.

      • OK, I get it — you’re not a constitutional scholar. No need to brag about it.

        Everything I’ve said is factual. Facts may annoy some people, but your animosity doesn’t change them from being facts.

  20. I think they don’t realize that their amended amendment actually gives even more support to the individual right to own military weaponry. Of course, the militia clause already does that…

  21. Oh, this is nothing. There is more crap that they are throwing around in schools than just this. Look up “common core standards” and then be scared.

    Many schools no long “allow” pledge of allegiance. Former Senator Lieberman has been part of effort and still continues to be part of an effort to ban books “he does not like” and as Senator tried to pass several censorship bills that would effectively give Government control of what could be printed and while unconstitutional believed the Government had the right because the 1st amendment does not protect censorship by the Government in his view. Some of the information he wanted to ban included the federalist papers and certain founding fathers he did not like.

    The “Liberals” believe they control the media, they control the schools by fiat because Teachers Unions and the Department of Education (which should be abolished IMHO), control the districting and thus will shape opinion so it will be easier to pass the laws they want.

    If you are a parent or know of young child you wish to grow up to think independently and by learning the truth, be ever so vigilant because these people will try to indoctrinate and not teach.

    While there are good teachers, and there are some members of this forum who are teachers, the good and bad are split 50/50. Yeah, take a look at those books your kids are given and read through them and do a double check and then challenge the teachers and administrators.

    Vigilance of all our rights is required to be checked daily because far too many in the position of power and in the courts see fit to make themselves king and take them away one day at a time.

  22. I need have no fear for the children in my family for they all grow up with guns. However If I discovered this in a text book I’d have to edit it to read correctly that the 2a was established with the intent that the citizenry be armed for their own defense, and to ensure their ability to throw off tyranny from their own government. Let them discover that and discuss.

  23. The Liberal/Left’s prime directive has been to take over the education system in this country to promote positive images of socialism and to laud communist ideals. Goal: subvert America’s youth and erode our shared American cultural identity.

    We should remain knowledgeable of what’s being taught because these kids will be making decisions in American society that will affect everyone.

  24. If the Second Amendment applies only to the military, how can one explain the Ft. Hood and the Navy Base disasters? A disarmed military?

  25. In texas we were taught that everyone needed guns in case the government ever needed us to form up again. Not exactly an individual right, but at least it was understood that being in an active militia was not a prerequisite. This phrasing seems to imply that gun ownership should only be allowed at the time of duress.

  26. Hold up for a second. This is the book that Denton Texas school district said is their primary textbook that the other book supplemented.

    Copied from the TTAG article about the other text book.
    “The main history book that is utilized in the Advanced Placement U.S. History class for juniors in Denton ISD is titled: American Pageant. This is a history book that has had a strong reputation for historical facts for many years. The American Pageant, the official textbook, gives the exact Bill of Rights.”

  27. So its for military purposes, but I can’t buy a new military rifle, like a Nice M4A1 or even an M16A4. Hell apparently I shouldn’t even be allowed to own a military ‘style’ rifle

  28. Seriously, what do we expect? These texts are written by liberal windbag academics from the comfort of their offices on the campuses of liberal leaning universities.
    It’s up to us to review the texts and bring these subversive attacks to the attention of the authorities.

    • The biggest consumer of textbooks is Texas, and their taste in texts drives the market.

      “Liberal windbags” don’t place intelligent design and Darwin on an equal footing, so you know.

      I’d suggest you research your target a little more carefully, rather than going with the Microsoft-like “Ready, FIRE! Aim?”

      Damned sister-humping, book-eating contards.

  29. Well, I’ve seen the first interpreted to mean the freedom to be any kind of Chistian you wish, but not [jewish, Moslem, Asatru, Buddhist, Shinto, Wiccan] or any other fill-in-the-blank infidel, but never in a Gods damned textbook.

    Have they no shame?!?

  30. Stare decisis , that which has been handed down …….. legal precedent except when liberal judges belch out twisted distortions of the settled law to fit their imaginations or leftist philosophies .
    Dennis.

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