This is alarming – I agree with something the Young Turks (formerly of Air America) said.
Doug Stephan played a clip of their show on today’s Talk Radio Countdown.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEyKoZ5wK4o
“We don’t need to rewrite the Constitution of the United States of America – we need to reread the Constitution and enforce the Constitution [Crowd cheers]. We don’t need to rewrite, we need to reread…. and I know there are some people who aren’t going to that, so for the benefit of those who are not going to read the Constitution, and don’t want us to know about the Constitution, there is a little section in there that talks about Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness – you know, those ideals that your parents believed in – when you get to the part about Life Liberty and the pursuit of happiness, don’t stop right there – keep reading. That’s when it says that “when any form of government becomes destructive of those ideals, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it” – we’ve got some altering and abolishing to do.”
Herman Cain Presidential announcement – May 21, 2011
Centennial Olympic Park, Atlanta, Georgia
Those are ideas from the Declaration of Independence drafted by Thomas Jefferson. You won’t find them by rereading the Consitution, unless you’re looking on the reverse side of your Pocket Constitution.
As I’ve pounded into the ground already, the path from the Declaration of Independence to the US Constitution was not a continuous line from the same political motivations. Jefferson was so outraged by what the authors of the Constitution had done, he ran for President as the leader of the anti-Federalists (which included Patrick Henry and others) who were concerned that Alexander Hamilton and John Jay had hijacked the new country in order to establish a strong central government based on the same government and banking system as England for their own personal gain and desire for power.
Cain is already in trouble for not knowing what the concept of “right of return” is in relation to Israel. This is really surprising, since Cain has been doing a talk show in Atlanta for quite a while. While it’s probably true that Israel isn’t as big of an issue in Atlanta as it is in New York, it’s alarming how big the holes in Cain’s knowledge of governemt issues are.
Hopefully, Republicans won’t cower in fear at being critical of Herman Cain’s ignorance because he has black skin. Herman Cain almost makes Alan Keyes look coherent.
on top of that more obvious point – he chastises “some people” for wanting to rewrite the Constitution – then at the end implies he wants to alter or abolish the current government. Talk about cognitive dissonance…
It’s always useful to see the entire context 🙂
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nU7dFQPlmHw&feature=related
Just before the quote above:
“You know, the Founding Fathers they kept it simple – they wrote the Declaration of Independennce – they designed and wrote the Constitution of the United States of America and one of the other things that is part of our vision is that we don’t need to rewrite the Declaration…[begin original clip] we don’t need to rewrite the Constitution….”