[chessplayer]

The all-out war against and hatred of our Founding Fathers is more out in the open than ever before. So James Madison is no better than Barney Frank. Thomas Jefferson is no better than Botox Pelosi, etc.

[Recovering_Democrat]

Yeah, but for God’s sake: it is NEWSWEEK. The toilet paper of news magazines.

[DemforBush]

“The Constitution’s framers were flawed like today’s politicians...”

Yes, yes they were. Which is why they knew well enough to frame a document that entrusted power in the citizenry, and not a handful of elites.

[DoughtyOne]

You’ve really got to be dead asleep on the railroad tracks, not to hear this Leftist freight train approaching.

This verges on sedition IMO. You destroy the founders, and nothing they did is deemed worthy of remaining in tact.

This is an attack on the United States, that is more dangerous than any other since our founding.

[Lets Roll NOW]

Love it or leave it. I think we should bring back a Founding Father tradition - duels. “Yeah, I’m questioning your patriotism pinko. Meet me out back”. Won’t need a recall for that one.

[Norm Lenhart]

Hmmmm...
30. Discredit the American Founding Fathers. Present them as selfish aristocrats who had no concern for the “common man.”

Congressional Record—Appendix, pp. A34-A35
January 10, 1963
Current Communist Goals
EXTENSION OF REMARKS OF HON. A. S. HERLONG, JR. OF FLORIDA
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
Thursday, January 10, 1963
Mr. HERLONG. Mr. Speaker, Mrs. Patricia Nordman of De Land, Fla., is an ardent and articulate opponent of communism, and until recently published the De Land Courier, which she dedicated to the purpose of alerting the public to the dangers of communism in America.
At Mrs. Nordman’s request, I include in the RECORD, under unanimous consent, the following “Current Communist Goals,” which she identifies as an excerpt from “The Naked Communist,” by Cleon Skousen:
[From “The Naked Communist,” by Cleon Skousen]
CURRENT COMMUNIST GOALS
1. U.S. acceptance of coexistence as the only alternative to atomic war.
2. U.S. willingness to capitulate in preference to engaging in atomic war.
3. Develop the illusion that total disarmament [by] the United States would be a demonstration of moral strength.
4. Permit free trade between all nations regardless of Communist affiliation and regardless of whether or not items could be used for war.
5. Extension of long-term loans to Russia and Soviet satellites.
6. Provide American aid to all nations regardless of Communist domination.
7. Grant recognition of Red China. Admission of Red China to the U.N.
8. Set up East and West Germany as separate states in spite of Khrushchev’s promise in 1955 to settle the German question by free elections under supervision of the U.N.
9. Prolong the conferences to ban atomic tests because the United States has agreed to suspend tests as long as negotiations are in progress.
10. Allow all Soviet satellites individual representation in the U.N.
11. Promote the U.N. as the only hope for mankind. If its charter is rewritten, demand that it be set up as a one-world government with its own independent armed forces. (Some Communist leaders believe the world can be taken over as easily by the U.N. as by Moscow. Sometimes these two centers compete with each other as they are now doing in the Congo.)
12. Resist any attempt to outlaw the Communist Party.
13. Do away with all loyalty oaths.
14. Continue giving Russia access to the U.S. Patent Office.
15. Capture one or both of the political parties in the United States.
16. Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken basic American institutions by claiming their activities violate civil rights.
17. Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers’ associations. Put the party line in textbooks.
18. Gain control of all student newspapers.
19. Use student riots to foment public protests against programs or organizations which are under Communist attack.
20. Infiltrate the press. Get control of book-review assignments, editorial writing, policymaking positions.
21. Gain control of key positions in radio, TV, and motion pictures.
22. Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression. An American Communist cell was told to “eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms.”
23. Control art critics and directors of art museums. “Our plan is to promote ugliness, repulsive, meaningless art.”
24. Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them “censorship” and a violation of free speech and free press.
25. Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio, and TV.
26. Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as “normal, natural, healthy.”
27. Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with “social” religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity which does not need a “religious crutch.”
28. Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the ground that it violates the principle of “separation of church and state.”
29. Discredit the American Constitution by calling it inadequate, old-fashioned, out of step with modern needs, a hindrance to cooperation between nations on a worldwide basis.
30. Discredit the American Founding Fathers. Present them as selfish aristocrats who had no concern for the “common man.”
31. Belittle all forms of American culture and discourage the teaching of American history on the ground that it was only a minor part of the “big picture.” Give more emphasis to Russian history since the Communists took over.
32. Support any socialist movement to give centralized control over any part of the culture—education, social agencies, welfare programs, mental health clinics, etc.
33. Eliminate all laws or procedures which interfere with the operation of the Communist apparatus.
34. Eliminate the House Committee on Un-American Activities.
35. Discredit and eventually dismantle the FBI.
36. Infiltrate and gain control of more unions.
37. Infiltrate and gain control of big business.
38. Transfer some of the powers of arrest from the police to social agencies. Treat all behavioral problems as psychiatric disorders which no one but psychiatrists can understand [or treat].
39. Dominate the psychiatric profession and use mental health laws as a means of gaining coercive control over those who oppose Communist goals.
40. Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce.
41. Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents. Attribute prejudices, mental blocks and retarding of children to suppressive influence of parents.
42. Create the impression that violence and insurrection are legitimate aspects of the American tradition; that students and special-interest groups should rise up and use [”]united force[”] to solve economic, political or social problems.
43. Overthrow all colonial governments before native populations are ready for self-government.
44. Internationalize the Panama Canal.
45. Repeal the Connally reservation so the United States cannot prevent the World Court from seizing jurisdiction [over domestic problems. Give the World Court jurisdiction] over nations and individuals alike.

[Dogbert41]

Except they were able to come up with the Bill of Rights and the Constitution, wereas today’s politicians come up with Obama Care and gun control, the IRS and EPA, the FDA and then give the FDA SWAT teams!

[ken21]

shama’s not a u.s. citizen?

[cashless]

Infallible? No, dear Professor, not infallible. But unlike you, a better understanding of the fallen nature of man and his fallen desire to rule over other men despotically. A concept you evidently overlooked early in your academic pursuit of snobbish arrogance. You over educated pri*ck.

[FlingWingFlyer]

It’s tough to boycott Newsweak because people really don’t have to go to the dentist that often.

[cripplecreek]

"The Constitution’s framers were flawed like today’s politicians, so it’s high time we stop embalming them in infallibility,"

Nobody says they were perfect or infallible, just that they got it right the from the beginning. I doubt Schama would care much for who I give credit to for our founders getting it right though.

[bunkerhill7]

This is an Anti-American public act of betrayal:

Each president recites the following oath, in accordance with Article II, Section I of the U.S. Constitution:

“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

[Qbert]

“We do the authors of American independence no favors by embalming them in infallibility, by treating the Constitution like a quasi-biblical revelation...”

Pretty precious considering that Newsweak’s old editor once referred to Obama as a “sort of God”, and that he moves, “[A]s he wishes to move, and the world bending itself to him’.

I guess we’re only supposed to worship backbencher state senators.

[cripplecreek]

I wonder if this “historian” is aware of what our most liberal founder did 224 years ago tomorrow?

(June 28, 1787, Benjamin Franklin Requests Prayer in the Constitutional Convention)

[Billthedrill]

Simon Schama is best known as a history popularizer, his best book, IMHO, being Citizens, a study of the French Revolution. Best to him, but history in this sense is not the proper arena of an educated elite, it belongs to those who embrace it and protect it, and if certain aspects of popular, i.e. "Tea Party" admiration trend toward the uncritical it is a far better thing than the relentlessly critical and even more superficial approach taken by, say, Howard Zinn, a popularizer even more successful than Schama himself.

What a detailed study of the men we label Founders has taught me is that they were remarkably admirable, unmistakably human, and imbued with a sense of political creativity that has not been seen since and very seldom prior. This is not worship, it is a candid assessment of worth. Would I stack Hamilton up against Pericles? Absolutely. Madison against Solon? You better believe it. Washington against any founder of any state in history? Yes. Franklin? No comparison anywhere, because Archimedes wasn't a statesman.

I'll happily listen to counterarguments should Schama decide to offer any. But the problem with equating undue reverence with undue disdain is that it cheapens reverence and accords disdain an undeserved virtue. All IMHO, of course.

[Freedom4US]

You have to understand their utter need to frame the terms of any debate.

If they can do that, they “win” everytime. They start with a pre-determined
or desired outcome and work backwards to get it. In the case of the framers and more particularly the constitution, not to mention modern politicians, they don’t want YOU to read the constitution or Bill of Rights for yourself, they want you to read their interpretation. “We’ve just heard the candidates speech, now we’ll tell you what they really meant.”

This is especially true in academia, they basically tell you what conclusions must be drawn, and grades suffer for concluding wrong.

[Pollster1]

""The Constitution’s framers were flawed like today’s politicians, so it’s high time we stop embalming them in infallibility," snarked the subheading for Schama's June 26 post."

Jimmy Carter, despite his gigantic flaws as a leader displayed much less severe personal flaws. As for Bill Clinton . . . there are degrees of imperfection and in his personal life he rose to the top on the scale of sleaze. While the Founding Fathers were also imperfect, they created a governmental blueprint that would if followed make our government the best in the world, primarily because they recognized (as many on FR have observed) the limitations of the flawed and shallow men who have followed them.

[muawiyah]

Simon Schama is a funny little foreign guy who teaches, ha, ha, ha, ha, ~ this kills me ~ ART HISTORY at Columbia University.

It's all lies doncha' know.

Simon should be sent packing back to his smarmy little island.

I'm sorry my ancestors didn't kill more of his in the Revolution ~ might have eliminated him from the current timeline and we'd never know about him.

He's an embarrassment to all fair minded people in any country.

[Gene Eric]

>> Schama-mama: so it’s high time we stop embalming them in infallibility

Said the career academic enshrined with self-eminence and peer adulation...

[LetMarch]

The enemies of of an established nation must seek to destroy it’s foundation. Look at Psalm 11:3: “If the foundations be destroyed, what will the righteous do?”

No man can read the prayers, of Washington, Adams, Madison and not respect the purposes and goals of of these founders, and stand in awe of the costs they gave to found a “Nation under God, Indivisible.....

And if you will, read the purposes and lives of those that founded: Yale, Harvard, Princeton etc. (But it seems those great University’s foundation have been destroyed).

Go back to Psalm 9:7; “The wicked shall be turned into hell, and all nations that forget God.”

My prayer is: “Blessed is the nation whose God is the LORD;....” (Psalm, 33:12a)

Proverbs 14:34 says: “Righteousness exalteth a nation: but sin is a reproach to any people.”

Last; “By mercy and truth iniquity is purged, and by the fear of the LORD men depart from evil.” (Proverbs 16:6)

[denydenydeny]

Of course the Left’s hagiographic figures (Martin Luther King, Gandhi, Che Guevara, Malcolm X, etc.) are prsented as flawless saints, “Christlike” (except that Jesus is treated with contempt; Jesus fathered kids with Mary Magdalene, the Da Vinci Code told me so).

But if anyone referred to the reverent portrayals of MLK, Rosa Parks, and Malcolm X as “ancestor worship,” it would be a hate crime.