Jim DeMint’s History Lesson

[DonViejo]

Why is the Heritage Foundation president confused about American history? It’s not stupidity, it’s Christian fundamentalism.

By Jamelle Bouie

If you pay attention to Tea Party politics at all, you’ve probably heard the phrase “constitutional conservative.” It’s supposed to invoke a certain fealty to the principles of the Founding Fathers: “As a constitutional conservative,” said Rep. Michele Bachmann in 2011, announcing her presidential run, “I believe in the Founding Fathers’ vision of a limited government that trusts in and perceives the unlimited potential of you, the American people.”

It’s tempting to treat the phrase as mere rhetoric, but—as Ed Kilgore explained in the New Republic at the time—that’s far from the case. “[Constitutional conservatism] commonly connotes an allegiance to a set of fixed—eternally fixed, for the more religiously inclined—ideas of how government should operate in every field,” he wrote. “Constitutional conservatives think of America as a sort of ruined paradise, bestowed a perfect form of government by its wise Founders but gradually imperiled by the looting impulses of voters and politicians.”

This isn’t ideology as much as it’s theology, transferred to politics. In particular, it’s the “premillennialism” of fundamentalist Protestantism, which holds Eden as the pinnacle of human existence, and sees the present (and the future) as a hopeless corruption to be abandoned with the return of Christ and the rapture of the faithful.

Let’s ignore its merits as a theological approach; as an approach to history and politics, it’s an impossible sell. In 18th-century America, women were second-class citizens, natives were driven from their land, and blacks were enslaved as a matter of course. And the founders, as self-interested elites, codified this in the Constitution with limited voting rights, disregard for Native Americans, protection for the slave trade, and a compromise that made slavery a political boon for slave-owners.

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http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2014/04/jim_demint_american_abolitionism_and_constitutional_conservatives_why_the.html?

[randys1]

1. Leader of a what? THINK TANK

MY GOD, this man is a complete moron and he leads the most influential RIGHT wing think on the planet

See what I mean when I say our country is broken...duh