Across the country, Republicans in state and local governments are pushing hard to destroy environmental protections, destroy women’s rights, prevent gays from having rights, destroy unions, destroy child labor laws, etc. etc. etc.

There’s a parade of right wing atavism going on, the likes of which I’ve never seen. And as part of this massive attempt to roll back all the progress of the last 200 years, Republicans in dozens of states are also working hard to get creationism into public schools. In the past decade the right wing religious fanatics who promote this nonsense tried to hide their true agenda, disguising their creationism as “intelligent design” or “academic freedom.” But in the era of the Tea Party, they’ve completely stopped pretending.

Today’s case in point: Brunswick County, North Carolina, where the county commissioners are pushing to have Biblical creationism taught right alongside evolution, as an equally valid scientific theory: Commissioners push for creationism as curriculum.

Behold the stunning ignorance of the right wing.

Brunswick County Commissioners Chairman Bill Sue and commissioner Scott Phillips think creationism needs to be a part of Brunswick County Schools curriculum, taught right alongside the theory of evolution.

“Darwin started out it was a theory, and by the time he got to the sixth chapter, it was fact,” Sue said Monday at a meeting between county commissioners and school officials. “Every theory that has ever been the basis of evolution has been disproven.”

“And I know I’m not gonna convince you here, but I’m tired of my taxpayers’ dollars going to pay the price to teach our kids a lie in the schools,” he said. “And when you have a teacher who is in a position of authority standing before a class of fifth-, sixth-graders telling them they come from a monkey, it has a traumatic influence and effect on them. And I’m ready to go wherever we need to go to change that lie that’s being taught.”

Phillips asked school officials, “What can we do to get creation taught in our schools along with the theory of evolution?” …

Phillips said evolution and creationism need to be taught in public schools, as children who do not belong to a church community are not being exposed to both. …

Sue said he understood [Superintendent Edward] Pruden could not allow creationism to be taught as a science, but he was going to “find somebody that can take it somewhere, because [evolution] is a lie.”