Talking Points Memo gives a terrific account of the factual errors in a recent speech by Rep. Michele Bachmann about our nation's founding:
Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) had an interesting take this weekend on America's first European settlers, who she said "had different cultures, different backgrounds, different traditions."
"How unique in all of the world, that one nation that was the resting point from people groups all across the world," she said. "It didn't matter the color of their skin, it didn't matter their language, it didn't matter their economic status.""Once you got here, we were all the same. Isn't that remarkable?" she asked.
Speaking at an Iowans For Tax Relief event, Bachmann (R-MN) also noted how slavery was a "scourge" on American history, but added that "we also know that the very founders that wrote those documents worked tirelessly until slavery was no more in the United States."
"And," she continued, "I think it is high time that we recognize the contribution of our forebearers who worked tirelessly -- men like John Quincy Adams, who would not rest until slavery was extinguished in the country."
It's true -- Adams became a vocal opponent of slavery, especially during his time in the House of Representatives. But Adams was not one of the founders, nor did he live to see the Emancipation Proclamation signed in 1863 (he died in 1848).
Bachmann's story has more shameful errors than one can recount, but the most disturbing thing about her speech is that these errors appear deliberate, in service of a whitewashed, Tea Party vision of the American founding, where the Founders could do no wrong.
Bachmann makes no mention of the Founders like Thomas Jefferson and James Madison who owned and sold slaves throughout their lives. Nor does she bring up those stinging phrases from the Constitution such as "three-fifths of all other persons" that enshrined the institution of the slavery in our Nation's charter until it was amended after the Civil War. Rather, she, like her colleagues on the House floor recently, left these portions out, and she ended her story about John Quincy Adams (age 8 when his father, John Adams, signed the Declaration of Independence) with the admonition that "Instead of continuously going back and looking at the weaknesses and stains of America, let's look at the greatness of America . . ."
America is great and so were our Founders, but America's Founders were not perfect. By deifying the founding moment, Bachmann and the Tea Party ignore the great and enduring accomplishments of successive generations of Americans -- the Reconstruction Republicans (Amendments 13-15), the Progressives (Amendments 16 -17), the Women's Suffrage Movement (Amendment 19), the Civil Rights Movement (Amendment 24) -- who fought tirelessly to make our Constitution and this country the "more perfect union" we live in today.
The lightness of Michele Bachmann's historical account isn't unbearable because of its inaccuracies: it's unbearable because it misrepresents the arc of historical progress that makes America great.
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Now, following the 2010 census, we face another round of re-districting across the country. It is the process through which state legislators help representatives choose their voters. It is well documented that the "districts" they draw with the help of advanced technology that allows very precise identification of party voting patterns have nothing at all to do with the community of interest of the people within those boundaries. They are drawing "Republican" or "Democratic" districts that virtually assure the voters will have no real choice once the party leaders and financial backers have chosen who will run.
If real democracy were to flourish, districts would be drawn to encourage rather than frustrate real contests between the parties. That would require each party to put up a credible candidate and mount a campaign of ideas that might actually engage voters in some thought about which candidate and party might best represent them.
Of course, something like that will never happen until the power to draw congressional districts is put in the hands of some non-partisan body with clear guidelines for how the districts ought to be drawn.
Wow.
Is that really an educated person?
Obama was right in his speech last night. We really need to pay more attention to, and improve our schools and our education system.
Our labor class competes against the world, and the right advocates a policy of America standing on the sideline neutral in deference to the religion of the free-market. Their economic philosophy basically amounts to letting our god-given "awesomeness" (AKA American exceptionalism ) free on the market via more deregulation and "freedom" (freedom- from the rules designed to protect us) to trounce all competing labor whether state-subsidized, or enslaved in factories and basements abroad. That's their free market solution, and rather than question that oft-repeated mantra the MSM chooses to simply accept it as a viable ideological option to progressivism, without question, or even a reasonable demand for a clear cut example thereof. (one which doesn't date back to before we were the unified nation that we are today, if you don't mind)
New saying: "Those who don't learn history are destined to make it up as they go along."
She could be in the opposition to me on policy (which could vary much - I'm an Independent). She could be personally distasteful to me and I wouldn't want to know her. (So what? I don't want to spend Christmas with a congressperson.) I could deal with those sorts of things. I wouldn't necessarily think of her as a humiliation and a blight on the American political discourse.
But she is so horrifyingly inept and so entrenched in a sub-sub-sub group of Americans who would literally rewrite the entire history of this country (and do it for the sake another group who wouldn't spit on them if they were ablaze), would drag us back to places we escaped from- and in doing so she behaves with such mortifying language and fre@kish stupidy that I cringe at the sight of her.
She's a national disgrace. She's just......yuck. She's a true mortification. And when you look at her - look at the Republican party. They made her possible. The Democrats at least distanced themselves from an Alvin Green. The Republicans elected one.