Is the Koch Brothers' Curriculum Coming to Your Child's School?

>The Koch brothers are trying to rewrite history.

Caitlin MacNeal over at TPM is reporting that the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction has "encouraged" state high school teachers to start teaching a curriculum that was drafted by a Koch brothers-funded group.

The Koch brothers-funded conservative takeover of public education in North Carolina started back in 2011, when that state's legislature passed a law requiring public schools to offer a history course based on the United States' "Founding Principles."

That law was based on "model legislation" written by everyone's favorite corporate lobbying juggernaut, ALEC.

After North Carolina passed that law, the state hired the Bill of Rights Institute to draft the curriculum for the classes.

The Bill of Rights Institute has received numerous grants and donations from Charles Koch himself, and from a variety of Koch-funded groups and organizations.

That's why the curriculum being taught to North Carolina students is filled with the Koch brothers' libertarian beliefs and ideologies, and a whole lot of misinformation on US history.

A great deal of the curriculum focuses on the libertarian love affair with "limited government."

As MacNeal writes, "Throughout the curriculum, students are asked to tie lessons back to the concept of limited government, which the state's 2011 bill calls for."

While that may be the Koch brothers' spin on the the founders' intentions, that's simply not the truth and not historically accurate.

In his Report on Manufactures from December 5th, 1791, Alexander Hamilton explained why the founders included the General Welfare clause in the Constitution.

He explained that the founders included it in the Constitution so that the government could do anything that the people thought was appropriate and beneficial.

Hamilton wrote that, "No objection ought to arise to this construction from a supposition that it would imply a power to do whatever else should appear to Congress conducive to the General Welfare."

The Constitution limits the powers of our government, but in very specific ways.

For example, the government can't take your life, liberty or property without proper cause.

But there's nothing in the Constitution that says the government can't introduce programs like Medicare, Obamacare,or Social Security, despite what the Koch brothers might try to tell our schoolchildren.