{"id":3956,"date":"2005-04-13T09:58:47","date_gmt":"2005-04-13T13:58:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/3956.html"},"modified":"2005-04-13T09:58:47","modified_gmt":"2005-04-13T13:58:47","slug":"the-magna-carta-its-not","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/the-magna-carta-its-not\/","title":{"rendered":"The Magna Carta it’s not"},"content":{"rendered":"

I can appreciate the fact that House Republicans look back at the “Contract with America” with solemn reverence, but this is just silly<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Members of Congress want to ensure that our nation’s children understand basic American civics. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.), for example, put a link to the Constitution on his Web site so young people can read the document and simple explanations of what it’s about. If the kids get interested, there’s a link they can click on for “related topics,” which takes them to a review of “Great Documents of Freedom.”<\/p>\n

Here they find, first, the Magna Carta in 1215, with a nice overview of its place in the road to democracy. Next, the Declaration of Independence in 1776 and, of course, the Bill of Rights in 1791.<\/p>\n

But then there’s a bit of a dry patch for a couple of hundred years until — what else? — the “Contract With America” in September 1994.<\/p>\n

This ranks right up there with the Bill of Rights, DeLay’s account says, because it “presented clearly defined positions on issues of concern” to people, not piddly stuff. Moreover, it “was a written commitment,” so “the people could read The Contract with America<\/i> and embrace the agenda presented in the document.”… “The resulting vote [in November 1994] re-established the people’s control of Congress,” our primer tells us, after “the people” lost control.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Those italics are in the original. In fact, DeLay places so much significance on the Contract with America that it italicizes every reference to the document — an honor DeLay does not extend to the Bill of Rights or the Declaration of Independence.<\/p>\n

Of course, if DeLay wanted to offer students a more accurate picture, he might want to include a few more details, such as the fact that only 20% of voters had even heard of the document before going to the polls in 1994, it had virtually zero impact on the election, and since the Contract “re-established the people’s control of Congress,” Republicans have proceeded to reverse and\/or ignore most of the document’s provisions, including promises on term limits, a balanced-budget amendment to the Constitution, and a provision forcing members of Congress to abide by the same laws as everyone else<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Funny, it seems DeLay forgot to mention this. I can’t imagine why he’d want students to read an incomplete version of history.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I can appreciate the fact that House Republicans look back at the “Contract with America” with solemn reverence, but this is just silly. Members of Congress want to ensure that our nation’s children understand basic American civics. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.), for example, put a link to the Constitution on his Web site […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3956","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3956","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3956"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3956\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3956"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3956"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3956"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}