Today, Constitution Day, Michele Bachmann wrote on her Congressional website — not her presidential candidacy website — an explanation as to why the Constitution is a great document — and why it is dead.
Everyone knows, from Junior High history classes, the greatness of the Constitution is its ability to be applied to what are now 224 years of change. It has stood the test of time because of both its simplicity and its elasticity.
But Michele Bachmann, founder and head of the House Tea Party Caucus, is of course a strict constitutionalist. In other words, if the words are not exactly written into the constitution, whatever the topic is, is unconstitutional.
Bachmann (or, her ghost writer,) in, “The Constitution: Freedom Defined,” pens two excellent paragraphs about the beauty of the Constitution.
But then she reveals her ignorance:
“Tragically though, over the years, activist judges and lawmakers have taken the Constitution’s sacred words and twisted them to include meanings the founders never intended. America, in several ways, has strayed away from our original moorings; so many have forgotten the words that guided our country’s greatness for so many years.”
Remember when a much less well-known and much less-dangerous Bachmann embarrassed herself cross-examining Tim Geithner and Ben Bernanke in 2009? (Look at the DOW numbers, too.)
What Geithner and Bernanke should have said was,
Article One of the United States Constitution, section 8, clause 18, says, “The Congress shall have Power – To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.”
Period. The end.
This is the “Necessary and Proper Clause,” also known as the “Elastic Clause.”
“Tragically though, over the years, activist judges and lawmakers have taken the Constitution’s sacred words and twisted them to include meanings the founders never intended,” Bachmann wrote.
Yes, twisted them to include things like atomic energy regulation, the Internet, public airways, airline travel, NASA, social security, the automobile…
The Constitution only works if it is elastic.
The Constitution and the Bible are similar in that if you claim only the words printed, with no interpretation or understanding of the beauty of their depth can be attributed to them, then both documents must be thrown in the trash, for they are dead, have long outlived their possible usefulness.
Or, you can do what every intelligent being since they were both drafted does: interpret.
Of course, Bachmann stupidly shoots herself in the foot with her very next line.
“The beauty of the Constitution is that it’s not just a document, it is an idea.”
Via Dictionary.com:
i·de·a
[ahy-dee-uh, ahy-deeuh
]
noun
1.any conception existing in the mind as a result of mental understanding, awareness, or activity.2.a thought, conception, or notion: That is an excellent idea.3.an impression: He gave me a general idea of how he plans to run the department.4.an opinion, view, or belief: His ideas on raising children are certainly strange.
5.
a plan of action; an intention: the idea of becoming an engineer.
Exactly.