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by kjd
I’ve previously written about this little game those “strict constructionist” conservatives are playing in the post-Bush/Teabagging era, but it’s nice to see the Associated Press has gotten wise to it.
Republican Rep. Paul Broun of Georgia won his seat in Congress campaigning as a strict defender of the Constitution. He carries a copy in his pocket and is particularly fond of invoking the Second Amendment right to bear arms.
But it turns out there are parts of the document he doesn’t care for — lots of them. He wants to get rid of the language about birthright citizenship, federal income taxes and direct election of senators, among others. He would add plenty of stuff, including explicitly authorizing castration as punishment for child rapists.
This hot-and-cold take on the Constitution is surprisingly common within the GOP, particularly among those like Broun who portray themselves as strict Constitutionalists and who frequently accuse Democrats of twisting the document to serve political aims.
Republicans cheaply exploit the Constitution the same way they cheaply frame patriotism.
Stuff they don’t like just gets rebranded “unconstitutional.”
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Republicans are hypocrites who perceive everyone around them as hypocrites. This is one of the weird things about them.
I’m waiting for the reichwingers to call for the repeal of the 13th Amendment.
They love their country too.
Except the ones who want states to secede.
Right. The GOP is currently headquartered in the only part of the US that committed mass treason.
OT– When it comes to bio-based plastics from hemp, looks like Canada has done it:
- from “Cannabis electric car being made in Alberta”
Ok, now, how about that hemp de-criminalization!
Cheech and Chong were ahead of their time.
Psychologists call it projection, although the wiki calls ‘unconscious’ and I’m pretty sure it is used consciously by most politicians. If you call somebody a name first, it’s pretty juvenile for the second person to call them back the same name.
Like them pics?
Not so weird as all that. It’s called “projection,” which is what psychs call attributing to others what you yourself feel or believe but reject in yourself. It’s part of what keeps them from liking people whom they perceive as different (e.g. – gays, Muslims, etc.) and fearing those same people (that is, they know what THEY would do given unrestricted power, so they believe that others would do the same to them).
I guess I owe you a drink…
What’ll ya have?
Yeah. That’s a spread I saw somewhere earlier in the week. Still cute.
Hmmm. I have some home made iced tea in the fridge. So how about projecting on me some nice lemonade. *g*
Aha. Going viral. I’ll have to let my friend know.
As for the subject of this post, my word for it is constitutioness.
I may get called a heretic (or worse) for this. But maybe they’re right about the 14th amendment in this day and age. Why are we the only industrialized Western country to have such a law? We know that immigrants move here in order to have kids that are citizens. Then we feel guilty for risking splitting up the family.
I’m not dogmatic about changing the Constitution. Maybe we can strike a deal that says if we allow this to be changed, we can pass a campaign finance reform amendment.
On its way! hope you like it a little tart! *g*
Looking back at Reconstruction and how the traitors got away with armed insurrection while suffering no consequences (although they’d reply they lost all their human, well to them less than human, possessions) and were able to obstruct long enough to water down the consequences that the Radical Republicans like Sumner, Butler, and Stevens wanted to impose, it’s no surprise that they think they can get away with anything.
Look at how the subverted the constitution during Iran-Contra and how they ignored the will of the people as expressed by congress in the Boland Amendment by privately funding the contras through drug smuggling and arms dealing with that demon Iran. Then they looted the S&Ls throughout the south, most especially in Texas, and hardly anyone got prosecuted while the rest of us continue to pay for it. Democrats got into the White House and, with malice towards none, Bubba decided not to investigate the Reagan/Bush years. His reward? Monica, Travelgate, Whitewater, and the whole GOP Contract on America circus.
Obama is going to be rewarded the same way when the GOP takes over the House in November. The first order of business will be to shut down whatever is being done to hold BP accountable for its crimes, scaled back relief for homeowners, making Bush’s tax cuts permanent, and investigating the shit out of the fool in the Oval Office who allowed them to get away with all the theatrics since he was inaugurated.
I’m not sure what the situation is in the rest of the West, but I could swear I heard a report that in most countries, birth automatically confers citizenship.
I do know that in Germany, you can claim citizenship for at least one generation beyond the one born there. Relevant for my son if things really go to hell here. His father was born in Germany, and his cousins are urging him to at least get a German passport. Now mind you, these are Jews whose parents left with their families after Krystallnacht when they were teens. So you can imagine how disgusted they are with the U.S. right now.
Tart is terrific (in more than one way). Thanks.
I’m not for changing any part of the Fourteenth Amendment. It was watered down enough back in the Reconstruction era just to get it passed in its present form. To change it now would be just another win for the neo-confederates who have been obstructing this country ever since they lost that war.
Another thought: if they want to change that part of the 14th then they should be made to accept changing the 2nd amendment to what its real intent is, i.e., the right of militias, state militias, to bear arms. Meaning the National Guard or any other legitimate group recognized by the various states and municipalities. This ridiculous thought that the framers thought it would be a good idea for every single citizen to be armed is not sensible, not in this country anyway. Maybe in Switzerland where everyone who’s ever been in the service is considered to be a defender of the country it makes sense, but not in this land of fruitcakes.
I am rubber, you are glue. Whatever you say bounces off me and sticks to you. I say this since the whole name calling thing is so juvenile and shows a lack of maturity or thinkyness.
Unconstitutional Constitutionalists.
Yep, juvenile. Only in U.S. politics, it seems to work for the original name caller (aka negative ads) but not for the one who calls it back.
I doubt if more than a handful of them know the difference between the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. For all their love of waving it around, they have an equal if not greater aversion to READING it.
Assuming facts not in evidence, namely that they CAN read.
Here’s a sentence about EU citizenship, a function of citizenship of any member country. This sentence refers to citizenship in member coutries:
That’s a fair point. Neither document is written in monosyllabic, simple sentence form.
Ooops. Forgot the link.
Same as it ever has been.
Libertarians want government out of their lives, but still want all of its benefits and services.
Conservatives want a strict reading of the Constitution, except where it conflicts with their ideology.
Think John Roberts. At his confirmation hearing, he said he was a big defender of stare decisis. As a justice, he has overturned every precedent he didn’t completely agree with. He said a justice was like an umpire calling balls and strikes, but the only strikes he calls are for those pitches crossing the far right edge of the plate.
In this type of discussion, I am always reminded of the following passage from Through the Looking Glass:
Actually, I think only France and the US have liberal policies on citizenship. In most countries, if you were born there but your parents came from somewhere else, you are not a citizen. This is true even in Germany. Think about the large numbers of Turks born in Germany, brought up in Germany, with few or no ties to Turkey but still refused citizenship. OTOH I met a German several years ago, part of a German community that had settled in Russia near the Don in the 1800s. He got German citizenship automatically.
Well done, Humpty Dumpty.
A toast to Humpty Dumpty. All hear!
And also Mithras61 @9: no, no, no. One of the most important things liberals do not get about conservatives is that catching them in hypocrisy doesn’t mean anything. Liberals tend to see conservatives as simply liberals with different policy preferences (more or less government spending on education, the military, social welfare, etc.) and that could not be further from the truth. As I talked about yesterday in Glenn Smith’s article
You are wasting your time pointing out hypocrisy on the part of conservatives, in their world there is no “rationality”, no “reality” and no “truth”: the purpose of speech is to advance the goal of maintaining the status quo, and anything you say or do to advance that goal is not only acceptable but noble. A collection of unbelievable, preposterous and unmitigated lies that maintains the status quo is not just useful but worthy of admiration.
At the bottom of the website I linked to (just went back to check) it stated that it was not a govt website, so they could have gotten it wrong. I was thinking about the Turks in Germany when I was typing about the citizenship in that country. I thought maybe it had become more harmonized under EU, but perhaps not.
Well, without calling you names because I don’t know you or your motives, this is part and parcel of the kind of cafeteria Constitutionalism referenced in the original post. Conservatives are equally fond of playing the “why are we the only industrial Western country to …” card when it suits them, and when you ask that question is regards to, say, health insurance all of a sudden it’s “SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP BECAUSE WE’RE SPECIAL THAT’S WHY.”
They love their country very much. They just have to smack it around once in a while when it pisses them off by doing that thing that it knows perfectly well pisses them off. It’s the country’s fault, really.
But there are people in-between who could be influenced by actual evidence. Besides, it’s also important even for us to keep pointing out the hypocrisy, as it helps maintain sanity.
How can one claim to love America while so very clearly hating so many Americans? Makes no sense, no?
I wish I could recall who said this, but I think the best analogy was: Back in World War II, American soldiers would take dead Germans, put them in American uniforms, stuff fake battle plans in the pockets and leave them for the Germans to find. Now, was that lying? Sure it was. Are you going to condemn them for that? Of course you’re not. It’s a life-and-death war; you’re going to do what you have to do.
That’s how conservatives see this. It’s a life-and-death war for our civilization, so they’ll just do whatever they have to do. All through the Iraq war, they firmly believed that someday we would thank them for lying to us. Hell, we’d apologize to them for being so thick that they HAD to lie to us.
David Dayen has a fresh cross-post up: Obama Planning “Mission Accomplished”-Type Speech on Iraq
Like reddflagg says @32, it isn’t about making sense. It’s about the right kind of people “winning.” Notice, for example, the distinction between “the United States” and “America.” It’s never about “saving” the United States; that’s a plitical entity. It’s about saving the high holy land known as “America.”
If it really is such a life & death war (25 U.S.ians died of terrorism last year, so it MUST be an existential threat, but I digress), why is it that wingnuts do such stoopid things to ‘defend’ themselves. Ya’d think they’re playing for the other team, judging by their words & actions.
EXACTLY! And to continue your analogy, it is silly to criticize the soldiers as “lying” in that situation- of course they are. In the same way, when you accuse a conservative of hypocrisy or of lying his internal response is likely “of COURSE I am lying, what is your point? I am sure you are too.” And conservatives really believe that they are doing the right thing. They see society as sort of like Jenga: pull out pieces (traditional marriage, traditional male-dominated-stay-at-home-mother families, etc.) and all of society will collapse. Now, that isn’t to say that to beat them we must join them and be irrational liars, but beating our heads against the wall about their nonsensical, irrational view of reality won’t help either.
Not all Americans – Certain types of Americans – like a big ol’ mamma grizzly bear protectin’ her cubs. Watch out when that momma grizzly puts down her Bud Light and gets off the couch.
“I wish I could recall who said this…”
Possibly urban legend(s) based on this:
Major William Martin R.M
True, but I doubt that most of the people in the middle will be swayed by rationalism either. Most of us, particularly the majority of the population who are working-class, make decisions based on our guts, not our heads. In the example we are talking about, a response to conservatives such as “Hypocrisy! You say you support the Constitution, but you only support the 2nd Amendment and not the Establishment Clause of the 1st nor the Equal Protection clause of the 14th” isn’t likely to resonate with those in the middle, their guts. Just off the top of my head “The republicans want a dictatorship” or “the republicans are stealing from you” for example, would.
The Rethugs love the 2nd and hate the rest.
No, I’m saying that they feel justified in lying, and engaging in hypocritical rhetoric because they are certain we are doing the same, and that their fears about what we’ll do are mirror-image of what they would do in an unrestricted political power situation.
Your point on opinion vs. truth is spot-on though. My parents are conservatives and I asked them WHY they keep sending out the same old birther crap after I’d pointed them to evidence debunking their claims, and they said,”We have to save the country from Obama, no matter what lies we have to tell or who we have to destroy to get there.”
It shocked me to my core (not so much that they were willing to lie & advocate treason, but because that they were willing to admit it in writing).
That’s a good story. I think a lot of liberals are shocked when a conservative will own up to lying for a purpose, whereas the conservatives take it as given that everyone is simply pushing a perspective. I myself spent a lot of time as an undergraduate student arguing with the token conservative in every class. Every time he (they are invariably male) would offer up this broad generalization and I would say “hey, wait a minute, that isn’t true” and offer detailed evidence to the contrary he would simply change the subject, trying to assemble a collection of half-truths and outright lies into something believable in the aggregate. It wasn’t until later that I realized that you can’t compete with them that way, it’s like dealing with a used car salesman, you aren’t going to get an intelligent rational discussion from them.
I don’t know about heretic but your poorly informed.
Here is the law in France
See the legal text which took me five minutes to find.
If your going to make comments you can t least do some research before you talk about things you don’t know shit about.
If I was someone like Alan Grayson I would be on every TV channel and every blog saying. Yea, I agree with Republicans and in the spirit of bipartisanship I would also like to propose that we put the 2nd Amendment on the table as well becuase it’s only fair we discuss some of our consituents concerns. So thanks Republicans for suggesting we talk about getting rid of the 2nd amendment. We had no intention of talking about it but since the Republicans suggested it we though that we would go along.