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anti-Tea Party cartoon reveals ignorance

By: Curt Levey (Diary)  |  July 21st, 2010 at 02:07 PM  | 

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In today’s Washington Post, cartoonist Tom Toles argues that the tea party movement reveals itself to be racist by “want[ing] to go back to the Constitution as it was written,” despite the document’s acquiescence in the continuation of slavery. Toles’s cartoon is a particularly hateful variant of a misleading, but all too common, argument that tries to vilify critics of a “living Constitution” and justify judicial activism by pointing out that the Constitution was written in a different and less tolerant time.

Whether ignorant or intentionally misleading, this line of argument ignores the fact that 1) the Founding Fathers provided for constitutional evolution through the democratic process of constitutional amendment, and 2) what conservatives, libertarians, and the tea party movement favors is a strict constructionist or originalist interpretation of the Constitution and its amendments, not “go[ing] back to the Constitution as it was written” sans amendments.

Toles and other critics of strict construction would benefit from reviewing the Constitution and the history of the civil rights movement. They would learn that constitutional amendments and legislation, rather than a “living Constitution,” are responsible for the greatest advances in civil rights, including the elimination of slavery and the enfranchisement of African Americans and women.

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COMMENTS

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  • http://www.2010blog.net jsanzone

    of course, no tea partiers talk about the 1st, 2nd, 4th, or 10th amendments at all (though there is some contention over the 16th and17th).

    • http://thesandsinstitute.org Vassar Bushmills

      The cartoon, and I assume Toles, were both pretty illiterate.

      • aesthete

        Even the ones who are nice and intelligent.

        • whoframedrudy

          “Toles and other critics of strict construction would benefit from reviewing the Constitution and the history of the civil rights movement.”

          I don’t think this liar Toles is ignorant of the Constitution. More likely, he hates the Constitution, including the Bill of Rights. Leftists also hate representative government.* A leftist once told me The Federalist Papers was a “bourgeois document.” They hate the Constitution because it is designed to short-circuit totalitarianism. Judges/legal scholars can honestly debate strict construction. But when the ‘Lying Left’ gets on about originalism, they reveal their animosity to the Constitution itself, regardless of interpretation, as an obstacle to their dreams of genocide.

          *”…revolution in Russia detested parliamentary institutions … democratic tomfoolery.” Ulam, Stalin biography.

    • newland65

      it dont matter, as these jurk’s that are in office, are stepping on the amendment’s anyway.. they make their own rules..

  • Locked and Loaded

    His drawing stinks; his ideology, more so.

  • IJB

    Don’t believe me? Look into what the guy’s done sometime.

    I’ll be toastin’ the day that guy kicks it, believe me…

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  • Dan McLaughlin

    That’s the same line she tried to feed to McCain, the implicit assumption being that we got rid of slavery by a Supreme Court decision, which is 180 degrees the opposite of the truth.

  • rdelbov

    still read newspapers—I hve been paperless for 18 months now–canceled after obama won

  • http://www.800cart.com Ron Robinson

    I just posted a link to Jeff Dunetz’ RD story in the comments on that WP story

  • m_quick

    I always expect to see something like this when I see his style of drawing. When I first saw his cartoons I thought they were annoying because of the writing he always does below the picture. He makes an unfunny joke about conservatives in the cartoon, then elaborates in an even less humorous way in the lower margin. It’s a double whammy of unfunny, liberal political hack nonsense.

  • RedBeard

    This does nothing to lessen their culpability, however. Anyone professionally engaged in public policy discourse should have at least a passing acquaintance with the subject at hand. Toles obviously does not. If he had such knowledge, he would not publish such tripe as this, because he would know he would be caught in a very obvious lie.

    Unless he’s stupid in addition to being ignorant, in which case all bets are off.

  • jcincy

    If this nonsense keeps up, it will be hip to be called a racist.

  • scubadiver49er

    I’m now out of a job because of “The Three Stooges” (Barry, Henry & Nancy) and I’m checking every source I can to try & find some semblance of a job, thanks to Barry willfully tanking the economy. I’m a firm believer of the Cloward – Piven strategy, trying to collapse the economy so he can take over, only worse than what we got with FDR and the “New Deal”. When viewing what BHO has done from this standpoint, EVERYTHING he’s signed into law to date is one more step towards his eventual takeover.

    “I just can’t wait to be King” – Lion King.

  • ontap

    I racist

    So they say I

    Have come to be

    Wanting not for

    Someone else?s dollar

    Striving to be free

    Yet respectful enough

    To not do anything I please

    Knowing right from wrong

    Knowing charity from greed

    Knowing compassion from abhor

    I racist

    So they say I

    Have come to be

    Associating with a party

    That prefers tea to coffee

    Looking to better the lot of all

    And realizing that government

    Has been the source of the fall

    I racist

    So they say I

    Have come to be

    Not focused upon the news of the day

    Looking over my shoulder

    To remiss of better days

    When truth and purpose

    Was a part of the American way

    Not the lies and distractions

    That has brought this

    Country to fray

    I racist

    So I may be

    A banner with thou

    Cannot shame me

    For character is the truth of oneself

    And reputation is the public perception

    Given by those who conspire and deceive

  • http://www.facebook.com/vidaestrada Veronica

    I so love the internet.

    Yeah, we’ve got twitter mentality going on, people thinking before they write (I’m guilty), etc.

    And these leftist baffoons aren’t thinking twice about exposing their gameplan.

    That’s great for us. Now we know why they defecate all over the Constitution.

    Knowing is wonderful, actually, because we deserve the truth about what lying in their black little, weasley, shriveled up hearts.

    Now we know they’re propelling socialism and the “living Constitution” with their slavery, civil rights and distributive wealth arguments.

    As though this country was corrupt and needs more “change.”

    Keep it up, fools.

    I just came across a kid’s Constitution book in my library, specifically on the Bill of Rights — and I couldn’t quite figure out why Martin Luther King’s picture was right beside the title page. — usually, the pages to the left of the title page are blank. But in this book, there was King. No prob.

    Well, come the end of Chapter 1, we’ve got several pages referencing slavery. They devote each chapter to the first 10 amendments, but they close up the book with a whole chapter devoted to civil rights and slavery — with the final chapter focusing on activism (“.. the Supreme Court ruled that schoolchildren can’t be required to salute the American flag..”)

    It’s all stated less ominously than you would think. This is a kid’s book and it is very, VERY subtle.

    Now we know their basis for a “living Constitution.”

    Curt, this is a very important post.

    Maybe add something like ” — their reason for a “living” Constitution”?

    When I clicked on this post off the frontpage, I was expecting a silly mockery of the teaparty again.

    This post is much more than that. A very important post, thank you!

  • paulainnes

    The Radical/Liberal Dems and Republicans are desperate and pitiful in their desperation. I guess I need to say this one more time but, just because a person doesn’t care for and vote for Obama, doesn’t mean that they are racists.

  • trp878

    Toles is no different than any of us. “Opinions are like rectums, we all have one.”

  • markducharme

    …for it is fools who think such people, as “mr.” toles, lack only education. He means us harm. He is a willing and malicious tool for evil. He, and every other twit in the fake news media, HATES liberty and is simply pounding the drum that numbs the masses into accepting their plight as non-elites, thus protecting his station in society as a permanent member of the elite class.

    “Review” nothing. This guy, and his ilk, knows the truth and intentionally shields others from it – clear enough?

  • sccrenny

    has all the intellectual honesty and integrity of “Blacks will steal from you” and “Democrats are corrupt socialists”. You would find many times the “facts” and “examples” of the last two than the first, but all three are equally, patently and blatantly dishonest and destructive.

  • newland65

    what a bunch of bull,, we all are racist’s commie b word