Sid Salter: This is another needless controversy
Seems the Louisiana House has just passed a measure that I fear may cross the Mississippi into our state much like the armadillo and with about the same worth. The Pelican State’s House voted 70-23 to pass House Bill 1035, a bill to require their state’s fourth- through sixth-grade students to recite a portion of the Declaration of Independence at the beginning of school every day.
The passage: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”
Supporters argued the passage emphasized equality and freedom. Opponents, particularly African-American lawmakers, pointed out that women and blacks were neither equal nor free at the time the Declaration of Independence was penned….
…Here’s hoping that, unlike the mighty armadillo, the “Declaration of Independence” recitation legislation doesn’t make it across the Mississippi River from our neighbors to the west. Here’s hoping that legislation gets flattened like the majority of highway-crossing armadillos. Leave it in Louisiana.
Clarion Ledger
6/8/16
Magnolia Tribune
