Last week, Washington Post reporter Dan Balz explained that Newt Gingrich was “an idea-spewing machine” and a “one-man think tank”–even warning that “a keen intellect can also translate into the appearance of intellectual superiority.” Well OK.
A few days in Balz’s paper, readers learned that in a recent speech Gingrich called Barack Obama a “food stamp president.” Which I think must be some wonky think tank rhetoric.
Matthew Yglesias also noted that in the same appearance, Gingrich advocated a return to Jim Crow-era voting laws, saying: “But maybe we should also have a voting standard that says to vote, as a native born American, you should have to learn American history.”
Well, he’s definitely spewing something.
I think Newt’s on to something.
Not the voting requirement, but many more Americans, native born or no, should know this country’s history, don’t you think?
I’d recommend Howard Zinn’s “A People’s History of the United States”.
But I suppose that isn’t really what he has in mind. He’s looking for something with a good deal more red, white and blue to it.
Especially the white.
And of course it’s blatantly self-centered of Gingrich to say that voters should have to learn American history, he being a former history professor and all. What next? Will Dr Rand Paul (ophthalmologist) advocate that all voters should have to learn the intricacies of human eyeball before being able to vote? But of course this is all just a ruse of the Republicans to try to reduce the voter base so that their candidates would prevail. They’re not going to truly advocate educational tests for voters since they’d lose half their base (ie; Tea Partiers, rednecks, cranks, etc) in the process – – – they just want to SOUND high-minded while actually finding some way to exclude blacks, Latinos, unemployed, and other likely Democratic voters.
I agree strongly with DL above (and was recently pleased to hear anecdotally that Zinn’s book HAD been used in some HS history classes here in WI), and I would add another title to the list, “American Holocaust” by prof David Stannard, c1992, where we learn such facts as the European settlement resulted in deaths of 60-80 million native Americans (North, South, & Central) from European diseases and massacres by 1600, and little tidbits like the fact that Columbus’ was a former slave-trader who was driven by gold lust, and his ship had taken taken 6 natives captive within hours of landing. It’s a difficult book to get through – – – similar to reading about the Nazi/Jewish holocaust – – – but it IS true history, not the nativist propaganda that too often gets taught…
Im a tea party member(like you have not guessed)Always thought Newt a very smart legislator BUT!!!!See that “but” was always tied to his penchant for saying some very flippant things.This week he actually helped Barock when called Ryans plan “radical right wing social engineering”.Now from a tea party standard there are things in that plan that we are worried about.But we respect that someone threw down the gauntlet and said “if you can do better step on up”.As a Republican- Newt just showed he may not be as smart as everyone thought he was, by alienating his base in one fell swoop.I never considered him a serious candidate.Better than Barock?My God of course yes…who isnt?Newt scared me when he said he felt that America needed him.Um …not so much
In 1994, NPR replayed a radio interview conducted by Robert Krulwich in 1984. When asked how the Republicans would get the economy out of another deep recession they said they would grow the economy and the deficits would go away. Gingrich said that we must evolve from a manufacturing based economy to an information economy. He went on to explain how that type of economy could create jobs. His idea was to launch a hospital into space where burn victims could regrow their own skin while free of the earth’s gravitational pull. Yessiree, he wanted to launch burn victims into space where they could grow new skin. I presume that the G force of the launch would peel any remaining skin that the burn victim might still have right off of his body so that when he got to the gravitation free space hospital he would have to grow it all back.
Well, Gingrich promptly put his big fat foot into his big dumb mouth, didn’t he? First, the truth-telling about the Nincompoop’s (P. Ryan) “plan” to destroy Medicare and throw millions of old people into the streets. Gingrich was just trying to convince those oldsters that he, the Great Ideas Man, wasn’t down with the insane Ryan and the other Bagger worshippers of Ayn Rand. No sir. What great fun it was, then, to see the Republicons eat their own! Watching Gingrich angrily and futilely attempt to walk back his statements was pure entertainment. The Republicons are so stupidly ruthless, so cravenly anti-democratic, so shamelessly in thrall to their Corporate overlords that we “normal Americans” (I got that one from Newt–brilliant, Idea Man!) actually think that poor Sarah P. looks like a cross between Ghandi and Winston Churchill at this point. Run, Sarah, run! You too, Bachmann! And Pat Robertson–why not, dude?
Wish I could have as much fun with these people as you do Tim, but here in Florida we are now living their nightmare “solutions”. Voting rights just took a giant step backward with the passage of a bill designed to do exactly that. Scott and Co. have done major damage during this last session, and everyone here in Florida is just relieved the session has ended. On a positive note 65% of my neighbors lost the guy they would have voted for when Trump walked away….of course we are left shivering at the thought of the next one they pick.
Over and over, we read about how Newt Gingrich is such a
great “idea” man. I remember him for his Contract for America
which included the balanced budget amendment. Great idea!
Republicans took over the House in 1994. Under Clinton, the
country created 22 million jobs, and there was a surplus when
Clinton left office. Since then, the United States has had the
biggest deficits and the biggest national debt, and the biggest tax-cuts, mostly for the rich, in its history. Why don’t we just
call all the tax-cuts starting with Reagan interest free loans and
call them in? After all, the rich have had the use of all this money all this time @ no interest.
You are all wasting time and effort. Newt is not a serious candidate. Trust me on this.Of course he looks great next to Obama.As does Sarah and about 20 or 30 other people.In a sense- who wouldn’t?But at the end of the day…Newt won’t see the end of the day.
I don’t know if voters need to take an a course in US History, but many voters need a course in the US Constitution, the entire document with all its warts. It was painfully apparent that the Tea Party faithful have little knowledge or interest in it. I don’t claim to be a constitutional scholar and would be first in line to enroll. I wonder who else would attend.
As for Newt, it was interesting to see him crash and burn so quickly. I guess there is a difference between Fox News and the campaign trail. So far there is no announced Republican candidate who could fill Barack Obama’s shoes. If they aren’t philanderers, they believe in the rapture, or will not state their true beliefs in fear of the right-wing conservatives.
I’m sorry about your predicament there in Florida, Carol. For many years now, Florida, along with other backward states like Utah and Oklahoma, has actually gotten nuttier and more reactionary, something I wouldn’t have thought possible. This is no slight against the many fine people who live in those states. I’ve been watching Florida for a while, and I’m well aware of the madness that possesses your ruling class. In particular, they seem determined to destroy the state’s natural places through tremendous, sociopathic greed and maniacal land grabbing.
Yeah, “an idea-spewing machine” and a “one-man think tank”–even warning that “a keen intellect can also translate into the appearance of intellectual superiority.”
Yeah, “a BAD idea-spewing machine” and a”one-man NON-thinktank” and note the word appearance in the next quotation, as in the optical illusions one is sometimes taken in by, no real substance just the “appearance” of what is not in reality there.
Hey, Tony Z., you said: “many voters need a course in the US Constitution,” Well, not just voters, how about legislators? Many people like to talk about the “original intent ” of the Founders. SCOTUS judges like Scalia, who would have us believe that they alone know what the Framers meant, that an ordinary person is too daft to understand and can’t read as well as judges can.
There are even courses given by a schoolyard of hacks that have said there is no separation of church and state and that the First Amendment protects Christianity only, and no one else, and the Xians are out of the goodness of their hearts extending protection to other religions. And the Constitution is based on the law of Moses brought to the West by ancient Anglo-Saxons from the Ten Tribes of Israel and it is supposed to restore the fifth century kingdom of the Anglo-Saxons.
(Yea, there are actual classes being given spouting this garbage). They say that virtually all of modern life and government is unconstitutional, things like SS, the Federal Reserve, the EPA, The Civil Rights Act of 1964, hate crime laws, all violate god’s laws. State governments are not required to observe the Bill of Rights, according to these nuts, and the first Amendment establishes the religion of America to be Christianity, nondenominational Christianity. Classes are sometimes held in Arizona by Russell Pearce’s brother Lester, and recall the SB 1070 immigration bill was Russell’s own. There are interested people who are getting ripped off, because the class is called The Substance and Meaning of the Constitution. These earnest folks are there to learn, instead they get lies, misinformation and false interpretations, they listen attentively to poisonous rubbish. Citizens are a bit unhinged with all the bad economic news and the unemployment and the low wages if one is lucky enough to have a job. And they are exploited by these opportunists whose advocates are the Tea Party rethugnut rightwingnuttery nutjobs, who are given unearned credibility. Why is it that we give credibility to teabagger idiotic no nothings who operate at such a low intellectual level imitating the pundits of real high level intelligence, but instead they are political wannabes who misuse simple words and try to equate themselves to top scholarly individuals who coin words by saying they can make up words too, just like William Shakespeare.
There is a toxic coalition of the FOX noise machine’s talking heads and sacrificed liberals who come on FOX and try to no avail to be a counterargument for the non-fact machine echo chamber, along with conservative radio hosts and dittoheads, angry “patriot” groups along with power-hungry right wing nuttery nutjobs who can only feed the fellow citizen frenzy with mythology and lies. These classes of the Constitution are associated with a group that was a brainchild of W. Cleon Skousen, a John Bircher if there ever was one, you may remember Skousen is one of Beck’s heroes. They have even infected public schools sponsored by some city governments, civic groups, and school districts are falling for it, being persuaded by the National Center for Constitutional Studies who is responsible for the content in the classes.
The Constitution has been co-opted by the Teabaggers and the Republican party in trying to be relevant have joined them. It does not seem to matter that they espouse big whoppers of lies, for they think the Founders wrote the Constitution for conservatives and free market advocates, privatization is a big part so they say. Hell, it is right there in the Constitution, even though it isn’t, but who cares they want to win. Michele Bachmann has started having classes with folks like the great Constitutional scholar Sean Hannity, and Judge Antonia Scalia who says there is no protection for women in the 14th Amendment. He also says direct election of senators is a bad idea. He apparently wants to re-institute the Millionaires Club of the late 19th century, for which the 17th Amendment curbed the club’s activities of buying senators. Tea Partiers talk about government oppression, but seldom do they complain about corporate oppression which is much more obtrusive.
Conservatives say that the Constitution was designed to restrain the federal government and to maintain the purity of the Anglo-Saxons, yet they can show no evidence for it. The Constitution does show a lot of things the federal government can do and even lays out what the states cannot do, and even is explicit when it says that the federal government has the final say and is the supreme law of the land. I guess they missed that part. What seems obvious that the Constitution was overwhelmingly concerned with making sure the federal government had enough power, even supplanting the Articles of Confederation because it took too much power from the federal government and gave it to the states. Nowhere in the Constitution does it say the states have equal powers, and much of the Constitution was reliant on international laws, not as what some of the states are attempting to do in passing laws that disallows using international law in court cases.
There is a mutilation going on to the Constitution, by conservatives who think it was written in stone like the ten commandments, they cringe at the idea of it being a living document. They want it to be like the bible, inspired and unchanging. Well, the bible was written from 1657 BC to 98 AD and nothing new has been added since, 1900 years ago. And there is no science in it, and human knowledge has grown by leaps and bounds for those 1900 years. The Founders put in the Constitution the notion that knowledge would change and grow over time.
Article 1 Section 8: “To promote the Progress of Science…….” If the Framers had not expected there to be a progression of science they wouldn’t have put it in there.
The Constitution is written in English and like most documents, needed a good editor. The Constitution had not only a good editor in Gouverneur Morris, who served on the Constitutional Convention’s Committee of Style. Morris was the chief draftsman, while James Madison was the chief architect. Morris’s task was to shape the verbiage of committees into ringing prose. He once commented on his work years later when he said: “Having rejected redundant and equivocal terms, I believed it to be as clear as our language would permit.” So a goal was for it to be clear, clarity is utmost in these writings. These folks were lawyers, wordsmiths, who made a living in the use of words and meanings of those words. If they had wanted this country to be a Christian Nation they would have made it explicit, nobody would have to pour over the documents trying to decipher the hidden meanings in the text, as David Barton is wont to do. A case in point about clarity, the original draft of the Preamble referred to all thirteen states, as the country became more of a cohesive group, the Civil War made it clear that this was one nation, historian Shelby Foote pointed out that “Before the war; it was said, ‘The United States are…….’After the war, it was always”the United states is’ And that sums up what the war accomplished. It made us an is.'”
If the 2nd Amendment was meant for all citizens to arm themselves with a gun with no restrictions, the authors would have said so explcitly, instead there is in the 2nd Amendment the context of the pesky notion about a militia. Why would they put in the context of a militia for which the right to bear arms being necessary to the security of a free state? Again these guys did not mince words, words was their thing, they meant what they said and said what they meant.
Consider the National Guard that is a present day militia, when they are done with their exercises they put their arms back into the armory, they don’t take them home. Besides there were no UZIS, no assault rifles, 31 shot magazines, automatic handguns, when the 2nd Amendment was written, what they had was one shot muskets. I think every gun owner should have as their weapon, a one shot musket, while getting rid of all other guns, that would fulfill their rights of the 2nd Amendment.
Amendment 2 – Right to Bear Arms. Ratified 12/15/1791. Note
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
Sorry for so much verbiage, just trying to make a point.
Raymond not to much verbiage at all.In fact everything you wrote is a huge… and i do mean huge endorsement of the TEA PARTY.We in the tea party came together to put the constitution back in the equation because we felt the government had tuned a blind eye toward it. Although we have our preference in interpretation, and you yours…… the reinvigorating discussion, and importance is the goal.Obama sees it as a mean document that inhibits governments power.We feel good about just that. You and I rising this document to pre-eminent status ,makes us fellow Tea party travelers.I feel the Democratic party has been seminal in de emphasizing our sacred trust to the constitution.The conservatives with pumping life back into it.And so the tea party meets the conservatives upon that field.The hatred for the TEA PARTY is simple fear.Fear that the limiting powers of the constitution will be given new life.Both right and left are showing sighns of that fear.
P.s your musket idea is an old one.The founding fathers wanted an armed people not to protect themselves from foreign foes….. but to be protected from their OWN government.Handguns today are still sisters to handguns of that time. Better built and more accurate to be sure.But in every way similar.And as the constitution ratified the creation of an “army”….it did not specify that it be for all time only armed with muskets only.The two points are identical in legal interpretation.And don’t lean on the idea that only militia be armed.In those days militia meant armed citizenry.Period. There is no statute to numbers ,or style of orginization.As the English stated “the American is armed on average, and skilled in their weapons use”.
Switzerland’s militia and army are given their weapons after completion of their time in service.They are the heaviest armed population….and one of the safest.