They Read But They Do Not Comprehend

Maha has a good post on how the right wing reads things like the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. It's sort of amazing how they can completely blip on what's there and go right back to their pre-ordained conclusion:

Another commenter disagreed with this, saying, “the federal government gets its *just*” powers to govern from the Constitution, not from the people or the states.”

To which I did not say –

“Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”

This is the foundational philosophy that our country was built on; this was Jefferson laying out the moral justification for declaring independence. It’s right there bleeping in front of your face, and you can’t see it.

Not having the ability, claimed, apparently, by Constitutional originalists, to read the minds of people dead for better than 200 years, I figure we should probably assume that they meant what they wrote, and go from there. It's not, it seems, an assumption shared by the right wing.