Conservative panties are bunching in conservative cracks—that's all the action conservative cracks get—and this time it's over Advanced Placement U.S. History courses, which take teach-don't-white-wash and build-on-what-advanced-placement-students-have-already-learned approaches to US history. So slavery is in there. The internment of the Japanese during WWII is in there. What isn't in there? Propaganda—or the kind of materials that will “promote citizenship, patriotism, essentials and benefits of the free-market system," says the conservative Jefferson County, Colorado, school board. From the Guardian:

Part of the hue and cry from folks at places like the National Review—where America is the strongest nation on Earth yet always one public library book away from total collapse—stems from the AP US History lesson plans apparently failing to mention founding-father types enough. The College Board issued a letter defending the curriculum, explaining that the course offers a college-level curriculum meant to provide context of historical movements and forces by expanding on students’ existing knowledge.

Basically, according to the College Board, students taking advance placement US history courses already know about Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin, and George Washington. (Pop Quiz! One of the the three founding-father types named above freed his slaves before his death and became an abolitionist. Was it the man who wrote the words "All men are created equal"? The man who said “Liberty, when it begins to take root, is a plant of rapid growth"? Or the man who wrote "Fart Proudly"?)

Ben Carson, who will play the same exonerating role in 2016 that Herman Cain played in 2012 ("Hey, our policies and supporters can't be racist! Didn't you see us flirting with that black guy during the primaries?"), went on Fox News last night to warn the terrified white people that high school students who take the College Board's AP history classes will run off to Syria and join ISIS. HuffPo:

When speaking at the Center for Security Policy's National Security Action Summit this week, Ben Carson, an author and retired neurosurgeon who provides commentary on Fox News, implied that the College Board's new course framework has an anti-American bias. Over the past few months, conservatives have rallied against the course's new framework, saying it shines an overly harsh light on American history and leaves out information about important historical figures. In August, the Republican National Committee adopted a resolution calling for a push against the course, claiming it "deliberately distorts and/or edits out important historical events." Carson, who has said he will likely run for president in 2016, apparently agrees with the RNC resolution.

"There's only two paragraphs in there about George Washington ... little or nothing about Martin Luther King, a whole section on slavery and how evil we are, a whole section on Japanese internment camps and how we slaughtered millions of Japanese with our bombs," Carson said at the event. "I think most people when they finish that course, they'd be ready to go sign up for ISIS..."

I'm not sure how you teach about Martin Luther King Jr.—another historical figure that any student taking an advanced placement history course already knows about—without teaching about the evils of slavery, Jim Crow, segregation, Bull Conner, and George Wallace, or without asking anyone to read King's "Letter From Birmingham Jail." ("We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people.") But Ben Carson seems to think you can teach about Martin Luther King Jr. without mentioning evil.

The word "evil" appears six times in King's "Letter From Birmingham Jail." Sometime might want to send Carson a copy.

It was Ben Franklin, author of "Fart Proudly," who freed his slaves before his death and became an abolitionist, not the guy who wrote the words "All men are created equal" and was a towering, monstrous hypocrite. George Washington freed his slaves after his death—sorta.