By: Simon Schama
The Constitution’s framers were flawed like today’s politicians, so it’s high time we stop embalming them in infallibility. With adult history buffs so deluded about the reality of the American past, it’s even more alarming that the National Assessment of Educational Progress recently rated history as the subject at which students are least proficient. This wouldn’t matter if history were just some recreational stroll down memory lane. But it isn’t. In the fiery debates of Americans long dead can be discerned the lineaments of the same core issues that divide us today. Right now, the education that might inform such a debate has turned into a schoolyard shouting match.

He may have written the Declaration of Independence, but were he around today Thomas Jefferson wouldn’t have a prayer of winning the Republican nomination, much less the presidency. It wouldn’t be his liaison with the teenage daughter of one of his slaves nor the love children she bore him that would be the stumbling block. Nor would it be Jefferson’s suspicious possession of an English translation of the Quran that might doom him to fail the Newt Gingrich loyalty test. No, it would be the Jesus problem that would do him in. For Thomas Jefferson denied that Jesus was the son of God. Worse, he refused to believe that Jesus ever made any claim that he was. While he was at it, Jefferson also rejected as self-evidently absurd the Trinity, the Virgin Birth, and the Resurrection.

Jefferson was not, as his enemies in the election of 1800 claimed, an atheist. He believed in the Creator whom he invoked in the Declaration of Independence and whom he thought had brought the natural universe into being. By his own lights he thought himself a true Christian, an admirer of the moral teachings of the Nazarene. It had been, he argued, generations of the clergy who had perverted the simple humanity of Jesus the reformer, turned him into a messiah, and invented the myth that he had died to redeem mankind’s sins.

All of which would surely mean that, notwithstanding his passion for minimal government, the Sage of Monticello would have no chance at all beside True Believers like Michele Bachmann. But Jefferson’s rationalist deism is not the idle makeover of liberal wishful thinking. It is incontrovertible historical fact, as is his absolute determination never to admit religion into any institutions of the public realm.

   From Left: Paintings of Alexander Hamilton, Paul Revere, and Thomas Jefferson.

So the philosopher-president whose aversion to overbearing government makes him a Tea Party patriarch was also a man who thought the Immaculate Conception a fable. But then real history is like that?full of knotty contradictions, its cast list of heroes, especially American heroes, majestic in their complicated imperfections.

Take another of the Founders routinely canonized in the current fairy-tale version of American origins that passes muster for history by those who don’t actually read very much of it: Alexander Hamilton. Outed by the Andrew Breitbart of his day, James Thomson Callender, for having had an “amorous connection” with the married Maria Reynolds, Hamilton responded by making an unapologetic preemptive confession?insisting that since on the truly serious issue of whether he had profited from the management of public finances he was innocent, the rest was nobody’s business but his own. Callender retorted that Hamilton had owned up to the sexual impropriety as a cover for the more serious financial one.

True history is the enemy of reverence. We do the authors of American independence no favors by embalming them in infallibility, by treating the Constitution like a quasi-biblical revelation instead of the product of contention and cobbled-together compromise that it actually was. Even the collective noun “Founding-Fathers” planes smooth the unreconciled divisiveness of their bitter and acrimonious disputes. History is a book of chastening wisdom to which we ought to be looking to deepen our understanding of the legitimate nature of American government?including its revenue-raising power, an issue that deeply captivated the antagonized minds of that first generation.

But unfortunately, there is little evidence of citizens engaging in close, critical reading of The Federalist Papers, of the debates surrounding constitutional ratification, or of the dispute that pitted Hamilton and James Madison against Patrick Henry over what was at stake in Congress’s authority to make laws “necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the…Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States.”

Instead of knowledge, we have tricorn hats. Staring at a copy of the Constitution in the National Archives and making promotional pilgrimages to revolutionary New England didn’t prevent Sarah Palin from butchering the truth of Paul Revere’s ride, turning it into some sort of NRA advisory to the British to keep their gosh-darned hands off American firearms.

Facts, as John Adams insisted when defending British redcoats after the Boston Massacre, “are stubborn things.” He would be horrified by the regularity with which American history is mangled in the interests of confirming prejudices. It matters when Glenn Beck‘s guest Andrew Napolitano pins the responsibility for the 17th Amendment, instituting direct election of senators, on a Wilsonian plot against American liberties, rather than the proposal of a Republican senator in 1911 that was approved by Congress before Wilson ever set foot in the White House. It matters when Bachmann mischaracterizes the Founding Fathers as working “tirelessly until slavery was no more in the United States.” What made the Constitution acceptable throughout the Union was a Faustian bargain that counted slaves as three fifths of a citizen, thus artificially bloating the political representation of the slaveholding South.

‘Founding Fathers’ Owned Slaves; The ‘Evils of Slavery‘ & Michele Bachmann’s Lies

With adult history buffs so deluded about the reality of the American past, it’s even more alarming that the National Assessment of Educational Progress recently rated history as the subject at which students are least proficient. This wouldn’t matter if history were just some recreational stroll down memory lane. But it isn’t. In the fiery debates of Americans long dead can be discerned the lineaments of the same core issues that divide us today. Right now, the education that might inform such a debate has turned into a schoolyard shouting match.

The Anti-Obama Racist, Bigoted Tea-Partiers — Have Made Anti-Intellectualism Their Rallying Cry.

As the electioneering rises to a din, those who dare to read history for its chastening wisdom will be fatuously accused of “declinism.” But it is those who reduce history’s hard and honest reckonings to exceptionalist chest-thumping who will be the true agents of degeneration. As one of Jefferson’s favorite books, Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, so luminously argued, there is no surer sign of a country’s cultural and political decay than an obtuse blindness to its unmistakable beginnings.

Books: The Historical Founders

1. Revolutionaries: A New History of the Invention of America (See all History of Revolution Books) by Jack Rakove. — Compulsive and compulsory reading on the Revolution and forging of the Constitution.

2. Defiance of the Patriots: The Boston Tea Party and the Making of America (See all 18th Century World History Books) by Benjamin L. Carp. — A wise and illuminating study of the original tea party.

3. American Scripture: Making the Declaration of Independence by Pauline Maier. — The definitive book, and a thrilling read, on the writing of the Declaration.

4. The Federalist Papers (See all Constitutions Books). The priceless document of two mighty intellects, Alexander Hamilton and James Madison, united in common cause of creating an enduring American government.

About The Author: Simon Schama — is University Professor of Art History and History at Columbia University in New York. Since 1990, he has also written and presented more than 30 documentaries on art and history for the BBC. He is best known for writing and hosting the 15-part BBC documentary series A History of Britain. Other works on history and art include The Embarrassment of Riches, Landscape And Memory, Dead Certainties, Rembrandt’s Eyes, and his history of the French Revolution, Citizens. Schama is an art and cultural critic for The New Yorker.

   Columnist – John Sammon
Arrogance takes many forms and as we prepare to celebrate July 4 I ask the question, do you think America is the greatest country on earth?

If you do, I respect your right to an opinion, but if you do think we’re the greatest, what is this based upon? Is it because we have more power than other countries? Military power? Is it because we have more money than other countries?

Recently, a columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer decried the behavior of Republicans who are attempting she said to stall budget talks and to engage in political one-upmanship instead of dealing with the president in extending the national debt ceiling, the ability of the U.S. to borrow money and live over our means, something you wouldn’t do with your own family budget. This is a disaster set to happen in August if the debt ceiling isn’t increased in which the U.S. could default on money owed if it doesn’t increase the amount it can borrow.

If we don’t extend our ability to live beyond our means it could collapse the United States. Both China and Saudi Arabia keep excess money in U.S.-backed T-bills because of their faith in the country’s financial institutions.

America because of its arrogance wants to fight three wars simultaneously while militarizing outer space and at the same time shipping low-skilled factory jobs over to China which in turn erodes the middle or potential middle class here.

And we borrow money instead of dealing with it.

We have two stark choices. Don’t extend the debt ceiling, default on money owed and financially implode, or keep borrowing and shuffle off dealing with the situation until next year as we have done for decades by living on borrowed time. Let’s assume the second scenario.

That will allow us to continue to be the greatest country on earth.

That’s what the Philadelphia Inquirer columnist said we are. She also said we’re the “unchallenged global leader of the world, the financial leader of the world, and in a leadership role.”

Most Americans would probably agree with those statements.

But do the people of other countries agree that we are leaders over them?

Are we the greatest because we’re powerful, militarily and financially? Is an elephant a greater creature than a mouse merely because of its size and power? Also, how many people in other countries believe America is the greatest country on earth? If it is we who are proclaiming ourselves the greatest, I have always been dubious about self-proclamations of superiority.

If we’re the greatest, are we better than other people, and how are we better? Everyone on earth wants the same things, love and affection, security and safety, comfort and an interesting and stimulating life, wealth and happiness. We can’t be greater than other people in those ways.

Are we braver? I don’t think courage is a strictly American value.

Are we more generous? A case can be made that America has given much over the years. But that assumption carries with it the automatic polar opposite that other countries give less, and give less as a matter of choice. Many countries in the world are impoverished. They have less to give if its money or raw materials.

Therefore, is being richer being greater?

Are we kinder? I don’t think kindness is a mostly American emotion.

Why are we greater than other countries?

Is it because we achieve more? We sent a man to the moon. The ability to do this again depends on money and power. The little country of Nepal and its people can hardly be blamed for having a smaller GNP and for not having an ambitious space program and as a result being a lesser people.

The concept of greatness means that you have to be greater than others, in other words, have supremacy over others. That’s the only way to be greater. Greater means better.

Let’s say that our form of free-market capitalism and our form of government are better than other countries, and remember, this is a self-proclamation, because, when was the last time you heard a Frenchman say, you’re better than he is?

I’m willing to accept that our form of government is better than that of Communist North Korea. But having a superior government is a little bit like having a better car. You’re richer and more successful than I am. You drive a more expensive and a better car. Are you greater than I am because your car is faster and gets you where you want to go? My slower more junkie car gets me where I want to go too. Most of the time.

I don’t feel you’re better than me because of your car.

I don’t feel any greater than a British person, or an Indian, or an islander on Samoa, and I think the idea of greatness comes down to simply money and power.

I think Gandhi, a truly great man who had very little except powerful ideas of equality and not supremacy, would agree. The above are the wrong reasons to feel the greatest.

Once again, the right-wing media has found a way to criticize basically anything Obama does or says:

Conservative media figures are attacking Michelle Obama over her efforts to encourage healthy eating and reduce childhood obesity, baselessly claiming that Americans “will be reported” or be “jail[ed]” for eating french fries. [ READ MORE ]

Right-wing media have seized on reports that, when reviewing the Afghanistan war’s strategy, President Obama “avoided talk of victory.” But many military leaders, including Gen. David Petraeus, agree with Obama and have said that Afghanistan is not a war “you win.” [ READ MORE ]

They’ve also attacked Obama for omitting the words “the Creator” when quoting from the Declaration of Independence. You see, to them, this is just further evidence that Obama is a godless, heathen, secret Muslim, anti-colonial Kenyan…or whatever. [ READ MORE ]

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

1. The Great ‘Tea-Party’ Fear: Pollution of The White ‘Stock’ — The Strange Sexual Obsessions Driving the Tea Party Movement: The great white fear of interracial “pollution” has found its most acute expression with Obama as president. He is the offspring of not simply an interracial relationship, but an international coupling as well. He is the child of 21st century globalization, the symbolic representation of a hope for a world without borders, without race prejudice, without white privilege. — [ READ MORE ]

2. America Just Can’t Deal With Reality Any More

3. The Real ‘Un-Americans’ and Dinesh D’Souza’s ‘Summa Idiotica’

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   Sam Vaknin, Ph.D.
By Sam Vaknin — Author of “Malignant Self Love – Narcissism Revisited“

Even mega-states are typically founded by a small nucleus of pioneers, visionaries, and activists. The United States is a relatively recent example. The character of the collective of Founding Fathers has a profound effect on the nature of the polity that they create: nations spawned by warriors tend to be belligerent and to nurture and cherish military might throughout their history (e.g., Rome); When traders and businessman establish a country, it is likely to cultivate capitalistic values and thrive on commerce and shipping (e.g., Netherlands); The denizens of countries formed by lawyers are likely to be litigious.The influence of the Founding Fathers does not wane with time. On the very contrary: the mold that they have forged for their successors tends to rigidify and be sanctified. It is buttressed by an appropriate ethos, code of conduct, and set of values. Subsequent and massive waves of immigrants conform with these norms and adapt themselves to local traditions, lores, and mores.

Back to the United States:

Thinkers and scholars as diverse as Christopher Lasch in "The Cultural Narcissist" and Theodore Millon in "Personality Disorders of Everyday Life" have singled out the United States as the quintessential narcissistic society.

The "American Dream" in itself is benign. It involves materialistic self-realization, the belief in the ideal of equal opportunities and equal access to the system, and in just rewards for hard work, merit, and natural gifts. But the Dream has been rendered nightmarish by the confluence with America’s narcissistic traits.

America’s internal ethos is universally-accepted by all Americans. It incorporates the American Dream and the conviction that America stands for everything that is good and right. Consequently, as the reification of goodness, the United States is in constant battle with evil and its ever-changing demonic emissaries – from Hitler to Saddam Hussein.

There is no national consensus about America’s external ethos. Some Americans are isolationists, others interventionists. Both groups are hypervigilant, paranoid, and self-righteous – but isolationists are introverted and schizoid. Theirs is  siege mentality. Interventionists are missionary. They feel omnipotent and invincible. They are extroverted and psychopathic.

This pathology can be traced back and attributed to a confluence of historical events and processes, the equivalents of trauma and abuse in an individual’s early childhood.

The United States of America started out as a series of loosely connected, remote, savage, and negligible colonial outposts. The denizens of these settlements were former victims of religious persecution, indentured servants, lapsed nobility, and other refugees. Their Declaration of Independence reads like a maudlin list of grievances coupled with desperate protestations of love and loyalty to their abuser, the King of Britain.

The inhabitants of the colonies defended against their perceived helplessness and very real inferiority with compensatory, imagined, and feigned superiority and fantasies of omnipotence. Victims frequently internalize their abusers and themselves become bullies. Hence the rough, immutable kernel of American narcissism.

The United States was (until the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s) and still is, in some important respects, a pre-Enlightenment, white supremacist society. It is rife with superstition, prejudice, conspicuous religiosity, intolerance, philistinism, and lack of social solidarity. Its religiosity is overt, aggressive, virulent and ubiquitous. It is replete with an eschatology, which involves a changing cast of demonized "enemies", both political and cultural.

The Civil War was fought between 2 America’s: the South, a perverted rendition of Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries, and the North, a harbinger of modern, multicultural immigrant societies. The North and the American Dream prevailed, the slaves were freed, and the Southern way of life, that of "gentlemen with leisure", was replaced by a workaholic society where everyone is a slave to money and leisure is an ever rarer commodity.

Americans’ religion is a manifestation of their "Chosen People Syndrome". They are missionary, messianic, zealous, fanatical, and nauseatingly self-righteous, bigoted, and hypocritical. This is especially discernible in the double-speak and double-standard that underlies American foreign policy.

American altruism is misanthropic and compulsive. They often give merely in order to control, manipulate, and sadistically humiliate the recipients.

Narcissism is frequently comorbid with paranoia. Americans cultivate and nurture a siege mentality which leads to violent acting out and unbridled jingoism. Their persecutory delusions sit well with their adherence to social Darwinism (natural selection of the fittest, let the weaker fall by the wayside, might is right, etc.).

Consequently, the United States always finds itself in company with the least palatable regimes in the world: together with Nazi Germany it had a working eugenics program (the 1935 anti-Jewish Nuremberg Laws and the Nazi sterilization law were modeled after American anti-miscegenation and sterilization statutes), together with the likes of Saudi Arabia it executes its prisoners, it was the last developed nation to abolish slavery, alone with South Africa it had instituted official apartheid in a vast swathe of its territory.

Add to this volatile mix an ethos of malignant individualism, racism both latent and overt, a trampling, "no holds barred" ambitiousness, competitiveness, frontier violence-based morality, and proud simple-mindedness – and an ominous portrait of the United States as a deeply disturbed polity emerges.

Also Read

•    Islam and Liberalism

•    Narcissistic Collectives

•    The Cultural Narcissist

•    The Roots of anti-Americanism

•    And Then There Were Too Many

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The Constitution of the United States and The Declaration of Independence are the principal documents that define America. These official papers speak of the brotherhood of man, freedom of expression and freedom from tyranny, and they are universally regarded as America’s greatest contribution to the codification and expression of democracy.

In eight short years George W. Bush sullied America’s international reputation, and left the peoples of the world wondering if America still abides by our founding charters.

Bush’s Patriot Act stripped Americans of their civil liberties and Bush’s torture memos gave license to the military and CIA to torture suspected terrorists, many of whom were guilty only of farming while Muslim.

It’s no longer The Declaration of Independence that defines America to the world, for too many foreigners our great democracy is now defined by the Patriot Act and the Bush torture memos.

The authorship of some of the torture memos is under dispute, but John Yoo who was a legal advisor to President Bush wrote most of them. Yoo contributed to the Patriot Act, and wrote most of the infamous torture memos in which he advocated the legality of torture, and argued that “enemy combatants” could be denied protection under the Geneva Conventions.

President Obama has commenced the struggle to restore America’s good name, he has shown a willingness to talk peace instead of threatening war.

But the only way in which the world will be convinced that we have returned to our democratic roots is if the authors of the torture memos are brought to justice. There should be no amnesty for torturers, and we shouldn’t allow them to hide under “executive privilege.”

President Obama recently released a few of the torture memos, this is a good start but he must release all of the memos. Obama must valiantly defend the Constitution against the crimes of Bush and Cheney.

The Obama administration isn’t going to prosecute CIA agents who engaged in torture because the Bush legal team told them it was legal. Under this spurious logic Germans who ran concentration camps shouldn’t have been prosecuted because genocide and torture were legal under the Nazi regime.

   Waterboarding Torture | [ Enlarge PIC ]

But it’s not the CIA agents but Bush, Cheney and Yoo that the Obama administration should be most concerned about bringing to justice. Attorney General Eric Holder must immediately appoint a Special Prosecutor to investigate the torture and warrantless wiretapping that was rampant in the Bush administration.

Because the Obama administration has thus far failed to adequately deal with the torturers, Spain has stepped into the breach. Spain has started legal proceedings investigating the torture cabal in the Bush administration, unfortunately it looks like the torture probe is going to come to a halt.

“Spanish prosecutors have recommended against an investigation into allegations that six senior members of the administration of George Bush, the former US president, gave legal cover for the torture of ‘terror’ suspects at Guantanamo Bay.

The prosecutors’ ruling is not binding, but it could mean the case against the suspects fails to proceed.

Spanish law gives its courts jurisdiction beyond national borders in cases of torture, war crimes and other heinous offenses, based on a doctrine known as universal justice.” — [ Read More ]

We shouldn’t depend on Spain or the World Court to do our dirty work for us, it’s imperative that we punish the torturers.

Dear readers if you love America and hate those who have tarnished our reputation abroad and stripped away our civil liberties in the homeland please sign the online petition that tells Congress: No Amnesty for torturers. — [ Read More ]

If you can tolerate an Orwellian world where torture is called “enhanced interrogation” then simply do nothing. If an America that outsources torture doesn’t bother you, go back to googling Paris Hilton. But if you want America to once again stand for liberty, equality and justice, demand that Obama and Congress take action against the Bush team of torturers.

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