Keep in mind, you Fundamentalists, the Constitution was designed to tell us what is legal and illegal not what is right and wrong. The Constitution does not delineate morality.
Also, the only mention it makes vis-a-vis God/Religion is prohibitory - it tells us what those things can't do in terms of our society. Thus Glenn Beck's belief that Liberals want to "separate us from our Constitution and God" is in fact combining two things as if they are always in tandem, like peanut butter and jelly and salt and pepper. They are not. They are not mutually exclusive but to suggest that they naturally go together is to be guilty of what is referred to in Logical Fallacies as an illegal use of the "And Operator" - commonly known as the "Complex Question".
Beck believes that certain shithead progressives forsook the "faithful Christian Founders" and forced the country to adopt a slew of unconstitutional measures that triggered our long decline into Obama-era totalitarianism. If the Founding Fathers and framers of the Constitution were, in fact, Christians, I might be less inclined to choke on Beck's stupidity.
In fact there's a lot of strange mingling of biblical phrases and preachy sermon language when these Tea Partiers get together. Sarah Palin says that our country has entered into a season of "constitutional repentance". It seems to me that their frame of reference is essential Christian Fundamentalism. Like those folks, they seek a Sacred Text that is faultless and changeless and which represents a Golden Age. Like any Fundamentalist, they see in their good book, only what they want to see: confirmation of their preexisting beliefs. Like other fundamentalists, they don't sweat the details and they ignore all the ambiguities. And of course, in the long tradition of Christian Fundamentalists, they demonize and scathe those who disagree with their doctrine.
If these people were at all conversant in the way the Constitution works, there might be some room to negotiate with them. But, like all Fundamentalists - Christian, Muslim, Jewish - they see things only their way and ignore whatever exists that contradicts their purity of thought.
Thus we can have someone like Tea Partier Sharon Angle can assert that "Separation of church and state is an unconstitutional doctrine." Of course it's clearly stated in the Constitution that the opposite is true, but that doesn't matter.
Ms. Angle also tells us that "Government isn't what our Founding Fathers put into the Constitution." Which seems a bit odd when the Sacred Document itself establishes the power "to lay and collect taxes" in a Federal Government, and to "provide for the common defense and the general welfare" of the people. I don't know what Constitution Ms. Angle is reading. Perhaps she has a special one.
Nevertheless, the Tea Party movement has been extremely clear about one thing: the Constitution should be followed exactly, and it should always regulate our nation. Except when it doesn't work out the way they want it to. Then they begin to customize.
Ron Paul: America should stop automatically granting citizenship to "native born children of illegal immigrants". Which would violate the 14th Amendment.
Also by Paul: he would like to prevent federal contractors from lobbying Congress - a likely violation of their First Amendment right to redress.
Sarah Palin, when asked about Roe vs. Wade, was quoted as saying that the Constitution does, in fact, guarantee "an inherent right to privacy" but then she suggested that such a thing would be better handled at the state level - which clearly violates Amendment 14.
The Tea Party are Constitutional purists, all right. Like the Christian and Muslim Fundamentalists they oppose any change or modernized viewing of their Sacred Texts as being sacreligious. They decry modern additions to the Constitution as "progressive" and thus evil - as if the Constitution itself did not enshrine the very concept of the Amendment process because the Founding Fathers knew that time goes on and things change. But then they go about and begin lobbying for their own self serving amendments that do, in fact, violate the Constitution. Michell Bachhmann has suggested more than forty additions to the Constitution, including:
1. an amendment to ban flag burning, which violates the First Amendment.
2. a balanced budget amendment
3. a parents' rights amendment
4. a supermajority to raise the taxes amendment
5. an antiabortion amendment
6. an anti gay marriage amendment
etc. etc. etc. Most of these attempt to legitimize her own personal morality instead of understanding that the Constitution is a legal document that was meant only to create a Governmental Philosophy and Legal Document to frame what shall be "legal" vs. what shall be "illegal".
They need to go back to school or drop the idea that they're in any way riding on the coat tails of our Founding Fathers. They are not.
1 comment:
HUZZAH!
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