Ex-Clintonista George Stephanopoulos did his very best to torpedo Michele Bachmann yesterday on his ‘news’ show. In the course of his extremely smarmy interview, he asked her about a quote of hers to the effect that the Founding Fathers worked tirelessly to end slavery, citing that Washington and Jefferson, among others, were slave owners.

While Bachmann countered by mentioning John Quincy Adams, who was his father’s secretary, the fact is that the Founding Fathers, or at least the majority of them did indeed work tirelessly to end slavery, and while they failed in the immediate sense, they succeeded in that they laid the groundwork for slavery’s demise 70 years later.

An excellent read on the matter is a brilliant book called Miracle in Philadelphia, by Catherine Drinker Bowen, which recounts the actual history and debates around the Constitutional Convention in 1787.

Slavery was a huge issue during that convention, and many of the Founding Fathers wanted it outlawed, but ran into an impasse after many hours of debate with the southern colonies whose agricultural productivity depended on it.

The Founders who wanted to set the stage for the abolition of slavery came up with a compromise involving the issue of apportionment.

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CNN’s Fareed Zakaria was on Charlie Rose recently and made the claim that America has become “antiquated” and the system our founding documents created is “dysfunctional.”

Zakaria begins by adopting the epic straw man of an arrogant American who thinks America is 100% perfect. Using the pronoun “we think” repeatedly he asserts:

Whenever we have a problem, we tend to think that our Constitution is the best ever created in the history of the world. The people who wrote the Constitution were demi-gods, it never needs to be changed. Our political system is the best in the world. The truth is we have a pretty complicated, antiquated system that’s grown pretty dysfunctional.

Wow, when you put it like that Mr. Zakaria, it’s a wonder we even made it out of the 19th century. Let’s go point by point.

First, the reason Americans revere the Constitution was that it, along with the Declaration of Independence, represented the first time people threw off the chains of a tyrannical government and truly put power in the hands of ordinary people. It was an intellectual revolution more than a physical one. From 1776 and 1789 on, numerous countries have taken our system and used it as a template for change in their countries. We have good reason to be proud. (more…)

Stephen Broden is a candidate running for Eddie Bernice Johnson’s (D – TX) 30^th District seat.  He’s conservative, a man of ideas, and he happens to be black.  The left, however, sees him as one thing and one thing only: an apostate.  I don’t want to bore you with my childish scribble, so I’ll let the videos speak for themselves.

Exhibit A) The Hit Job.

Jeez, here it looks like the crazy old bag is calling for an aggressive revolution! Lock him up and put him in the Alice Cooper straitjacket.  Which brings me to…

Exhibit B) The Full interview IN its proper CONTEXT.

Fast forward to 7:15 for his explanation of “revolution” and its appropriate context.

It doesn’t have to be violent at all.  It could happen at the ballot box when we change out our leadership.

Wait.  Here he seems completely reasonable.  He’s a shifty little bugger.  He even went out of his way to explain the “violence” issue here (when asked): (more…)

Wilder Publications, a small publishing company based in Redford Va., is offering on Amazon.com a rather unusual compendium of The Constitution, The Declaration of Independence, and the Articles of Confederation. The Wilder edition of our country’s founding documents comes complete with a prefatory warning label:

This book is a product of its time and does not reflect the same values as it would if it were written today. Parents might wish to discuss with their children how views on race, gender, sexuality, ethnicity and interpersonal relations have changed since this book was written before allowing them to read this classic work.”

The outcry— not only from the right—has been predictably vociferous. There’s even a Facebook page urging a boycott of Wilder Publications and also offering interesting information regarding its owner, Warren Lapine, including some of his favorite Facebook pages. Other displays of outrage against Wilder are numerous and easily located via a simple Google search.

With all due respect to them, however, Lapine’s detractors have it all wrong. Rather than revilement, we owe Wilder Publications a huge debt of gratitude for this useful and long overdue caveat lector. Wilder Publications has just invented a new genre of literature: safe history. (more…)

The Citizens United decision is a powerful rebuke to the forces that believe our Constitution is less a solid foundation of our democracy then a political pretzel to be bent and twisted into any form the politicians choose.  Sadly, far too many journalists and other people who really should know better blindly accept this bizarre vision of our founding documents.  They allow themselves to be seduced by the notion that the foundations of our democracy are actually barriers to “progress” that can simply wished away instead of firm principles that, if they are to be changed at all, can be amended only with the overwhelming and express consent of the governed.

The Left often argues that the Constitution is a “living” document, by which they really mean that the plain text is irrelevant and that over time the Constitution’s provisions inevitably morph into – surprise – something that just happens to correspond exactly to their precise policy preferences.  And so the “Living Constitution” grows, but less like a mighty oak than a patch of weeds.  Take the Commerce Clause, originally drafted to allow the federal government to control trade between the states but today a bloated behemoth that provides an excuse for every Congressional power grab that comes down the pike — including, if Nancy Pelosi is to be believed, “health care reform.” (more…)