When I was growing up, my mom warned me each fall about Halloween candy with a hidden razor blade. As a parent, the thing I'll be most scared about this fall is the prospect of Tea Partiers coming to my child's school dressed up like James Madison to "teach" the U.S. Constitution.
It is undoubtedly the case that all our kids could use a good civics lesson, but these modern day Madisons are peddling snake oil, not real history. Mother Jones reported yesterday that, during Constitution Week in September this year, the so-called "Tea Party Patriots" are planning to pressure school boards across America to allow them into our schools to teach our children about the Constitution using materials from the National Center for Constitutional Studies, an organization founded by a genuinely scary individual named W. Cleon Skousen, a far-right conspiracy theorist with links to the John Birch Society who passed away in 2006.
As reported in both The New York Times and Mother Jones, NCCS materials and seminars -- at times led by instructors who dress up in period costume -- teach the views of Skousen, who concluded that "most federal regulatory agencies are unconstitutional, including the Environmental Protection Agency and the Federal Communications Commission," and who also called "for the repeal of the 16th and 17th Amendments, which he view[ed] as an affront to states' rights." Skousen also apparently wanted to repeal Social Security for the same reason.
According to Jeffrey Rosen, a George Washington University law professor who attended a NCCS seminar and reported on it for the Times, participants at the seminar he attended were instructed to memorize Skousen's 28 principles of liberty, derived from his book, The Five Thousand Year Leap. These principles form a truly odd list, juxtaposing inspiring quotes from founding-era documents such as the Declaration ("all men are created equal") and innocuous descriptions of our government structure ("the government shall be divided into three branches -- legislative, executive, and judicial"), with claims clearly rooted in the Bible, not the Constitution ("All Things Were Created by God, Therefore upon Him all Mankind are Equally Dependent, and to Him"), and some of the most ideologically-charged and disputed claims about the views of the framers imaginable ("The Highest Level of Prosperity Occurs when there is a Free-market Economy and a Minimum of Government Regulations.")
At the same time the Tea Party Patriots are peddling theocratic and free market ideology masquerading as constitutional history, we also have Tea Party politicians like Rep. Michele Bachmann not knowing what state the battles of Lexington and Concord were fought in. The Tea Party has clearly disqualified itself from being included in any serious discussions of our Constitution's text and history.
Still, let me issue a challenge to the Tea Party Patriots and NCCS: Before you get to go into any school in this country and teach a child about the Constitution, find one credible historian willing to support Mr. Skouson's account of the ideology of the Founding Fathers. Find a tenured professor on the history faculty on one of any of the 50 highest-rated universities in the United States who will vouch for the accuracy of Mr. Skouson's Principles of Liberty as a reflection of the ideology of our Founding Fathers, and then we'll talk.
It's past time the Tea Party learned that to qualify to teach anyone -- much less America's school children -- about the Constitution, they will need to do more than dress up like James Madison in a tri-cornered hat. Meanwhile, America's school boards must flatly reject the Tea Party Patriots' attempts to muscle their bad history into our children's classrooms, and Americans across the ideological spectrum should help.
For more information, follow the Constitutional Accountability Center Series, "Strange Brew: The Constitution According to the Tea Party" http://theusconstitution.org/blog.history/?cat=55
Follow Doug Kendall on Twitter: www.twitter.com/myconstitution
The amendment reversed a 5-4, 1895 Supreme Court decision, Pollock v Farmers Loan and Trust, that had prohibited income taxes on rents and other income derived from real property and interest on municipal bonds. It allowed Congress to again impose a taxes on incomes from all sources. In 1916, three years after the amendment, the Supreme Court declared unanimouslÂy, in Stanton v. Baltic Mining Co., that Pollack was wrongly decided and the 16th Amendment was only necessary to correct the court's mistake. Chief Justice White wrote "the provisions of the 16th Amendment conferred no new power of taxation, but simply prohibited the previous complete and plenary power of income taxation possessed by Congress from the beginning from being taken out of the category of indirect taxation to which it inherently belonged, and being placed in the category of direct taxation subject to apportionmÂÂent by a consideratÂÂion of the sources from which the income was derived,-tÂÂhat is, by testing the tax not by what it was, a tax on income, but by a mistaken theory deduced from the origin or source of the income taxed." This opinion of the court that the original Constitution permits taxes "on incomes, from whatever source derived" is dicta and not binding precedent, but it makes it very unlikely any court today would return to the Pollack reasoning. Repealing the 16th Amendment would do nothing.
Don't forget that these are the same people who sought advice concerning the meaning of the constitution from actors dressed in period costume in Williamsburg, Virginia ...
What a ridiculous thing to even consider.
This modern day klukers need to confin their ideology to private schools or to those home schooled kids.
I want ONLY qualified teachers lecturing my kids. Guest appearances should be thoroughly vetted to keep the sneaky, underhanded, unpatriotic, zealots and fundies OUT....
But, not in schools.
Stick to the cirriculum.
Kids don't need a bunch of wild-eyed religious zealots who hate our country and our President preaching to them.
They can go inside any public school, fine, but they had better give advance warning so I can make sure my child is not there. I refuse to allow him to be unwillingly beset with those amounts of lies and inaccuracies.
I would be so beyong livid if they showed up spewing their crap to my child without my knowledge so I could protect him from them. They would not like what I would do to them very much.
"...Tea Party Patriots are peddling theocratic...", "The Tea Party has clearly disqualified itself...", "It's past time the Tea Party learned..."
Your prevarication through generalization is the only peddling here.
Using your contorted logic, Obama's 57 state United States disqualifies all liberals from teaching history. Your boring MSNBC style insults to millions of honest citizens seeking a constitutional based government simply reflects a jaundiced mind, void of original or independent thinking.
After all, a student need only read about the IMF leader and his recent actions in NYC to get a great bellwether on typical acts within the upper strata of socialist power brokers, that is if the student is encouraged to read/ see truth.
Funny how people get upset over the most inconsequential things, like teaching about the constitution. When all around us are clearly visible examples of what power, greed, and control issues do to people.
One should ask ones self, when they see actions like that IMF character just pulled if that's the ideology they have chosen because they want better for their kids. That question us, are my kids going to be safer following after people like that? History shows us that in the case of most socialistic power struggles and governance, that answer is NO.
Are all tea partiers bad the answer to that is the same as the answer to are all socialist's bad, the answer is no.
First the ridiculous statement about teachers, then completely divert completely off topic by mentioning the IMF chief.
There are no socialists here. Perhaps if you had any independent thinking skills you realize that.
The last four presidents have all worked hand in hand with the globalist/ bankers, as well as their all being part of the same elite global governance club, the CFR.
Obama just bombed Libya without even pretending to get congressional approval, let alone a proper declaration of war. Obama voted to retroactively grant the telecommunications companies immunity from prosecution for illegally spying on U.S. citizens for the government. Obama openly supports government-sanctioned torture and assassination.
Clearly our government has become exactly the monster the Constitution was intended to prevent.
No one tells me where to live, shop, or go to church now. Why would that change?
We ended the war in Vietnam and Federal government spending went....UP.
We ended the cold war and Federal spending went...UP.
We ended the first gulf war and federal spending went....UP.
We spent all the money for the bailouts and Federal spending went...UP.
We spent most of the Stimulus money qnd Federal spending went...You guessed it....UP.
It is time we tried DOWN.