U.S. is regressing to the Dark Ages

Vernos Branco, Las Vegas

Friday, Aug. 23, 2013 | 2:03 a.m.

Some think the American Renaissance was about architecture and the arts. I believe it began with the Founding Fathers establishing a democratic republic denying their European roots of church-controlled states and monarchies.

Even in the early days of our nation’s growth, we had scientists researching and developing a foundation based on fact and not fiction.

Ben Franklin experimented with electricity, and Thomas Jefferson, a student of agriculture, brought various types of rice and grasses to the Americas.

Americans made huge advances in medicine, archaeology, evolution, agriculture, disease, automobiles, flight, rocketry, astronomy, and other fields such as literature, the arts and music.

A few had to legally battle against the prevailing ignorance of a society, such as in the case of the Scopes Monkey Trial, where a state had passed laws denying the teaching of evolution in schools.

After the European Renaissance, the Europeans continued to move forward and grow in their attitude toward social values and the sciences.

As other countries pass us by in education, it seems the United States is regressing — regressing to a time when science and facts were discarded for myths and misinformation passed to us not by educators but by the religious right. It was called the Dark Ages.