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Ad for new PBS show "Constitution USA" (I got a bad feeling about this)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTVkxx61dwU ^

Posted on 05/05/2013 9:39:09 AM PDT by Maceman

I just saw this ad for a new PBS show called Constitution USA, which premiers this week.

According to the ad, the show seeks to answer the question: "Does the Constitution have what it takes to keep up with the lives, limits and freedoms of modern America?"

Judging purely by the ad, I'd say that our Constitution is in for a real shellacking at the hands of PBS.

Here's an excerpt of a review of the show by Variety:

Sagal (host of NPR’s “Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me!”) frames the discussion with a gimmick, riding across the U.S. on red, white and blue Harley-Davidson to “find out what the Constitution means in the 21st century, how it unites us as a nation and how it has nearly torn us apart.”

The interviews range from former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor to ordinary citizens – activists on different sides of the debate, including (in the premiere) gun ownership and 2nd-Amendment rights.

Still, it’s hardly a newsflash – unless you’re dealing with a group of middle-schoolers – to say the Constitution is a document open to various forms of interpretation, which has been at the heart of disputes since it was ratified 225 years ago (said anniversary providing the ostensible excuse for this exercise).

I'm thinking there aren't enough barf bags in the world to prepare us for what looks like a major assault in the left's continuing War on the Constitution.


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Your Opinion/Questions
KEYWORDS: 2ndamendment; banglist; constitution; constitutionrelic; constitutionusa; defundnpr; defundpbs; guncontrol; partisanmediashill; partisanmediashills; pbs; secondamendment; sourcetitlenoturl; vanity
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To: TurboZamboni

Nope. He says it was ours.


41 posted on 05/07/2013 2:54:54 PM PDT by Dalberg-Acton
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To: Maceman; SandRat; cardinal4; EBH; null and void; American Constitutionalist; NonValueAdded; ...
I actually saw the first installment of the PBS series last night, and shockingly, it was much better that I had anticipated.

The gist of it is this: The narrator takes a motorcycle trip to various parts of the country where constitutional cases and controversies have arisen or might in the near future, and interviews participants or possible participants in these controversies. There was also a pretty accurate historical segment done at Independence Hall in Philadelphia, where the document was created. Surprisingly to me, the narrator didn't seem to show much of a bias for or against his interviewees, who included what you may describe as a couple of right libertarians, one who was a gun and ammo manufacturer in Montana, and they had some legit film clips of Rand Paul speaking in the Senate. They also did a pretty good job in explaining some parts of the Constitution that are frequently contested in cases and the common types of arguments used by the two sides, and kind of even questioned the SCOTUS' reasoning in Wickard v. Filburn with a slick animation of the Court's dubious thought processes.

At the very least, they discussed the Constitution with some respect, and with no hints that it was dead, which is not what one would have expected from a leftist media outlet or a 'Rat propagandist.

Still three episodes in the series remaining, so the hope is that it won't deteriorate into something much worse.

42 posted on 05/08/2013 2:54:27 PM PDT by justiceseeker93
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To: justiceseeker93

Thanks so much for the review. I very much appreciate your taking one for the team by daring to watch it. Glad it wasn’t the train wreck that I thought it would be.

I’ll look forward to your future updates.

Thanks again, really.


43 posted on 05/08/2013 2:57:45 PM PDT by Maceman (Just say "NO" to tyranny.)
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To: justiceseeker93
Thanks for the heads up.

Good shows sometimes get past PBS's apparatchiks, such as Niall Ferguson's excellent "The Ascent of Money".

44 posted on 05/08/2013 3:09:02 PM PDT by SecondAmendment (Restoring our Republic at 9.8357x10^8 FPS)
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To: justiceseeker93

“Hope springs eternal” as they stay. Thanks for the report. I notice every once in a while Frontline touches on a subject and gives decent enough coverage that it makes me ask “is this really PBS???”


45 posted on 05/08/2013 3:16:19 PM PDT by NonValueAdded (3 guns when you only have one arm? "I just don't want to get killed for lack of shooting back")
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To: justiceseeker93

...film clips of Rand Paul...

New appreciation for Rand Paul, despite his being a lone voice crying in the wilderness, and the smarmy, morally superior “regulators” he was chastising.


46 posted on 05/08/2013 3:55:47 PM PDT by Paisan
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To: justiceseeker93

Interesting, when I saw that on PBS I figured it wasn’t worth my time.


47 posted on 05/08/2013 5:20:44 PM PDT by Impy (All in favor of Harry Reid meeting Mr. Mayhem?)
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To: justiceseeker93

As far as the liberals go the US Constitution is a dead stale document that is antiquated unless they can make it do what they want it to do. i.e. make up the rules to suit them selves and make up the rules as they go.


48 posted on 05/08/2013 7:11:39 PM PDT by American Constitutionalist
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To: Maceman

” Your tax dollars at work. “ i.e. propaganda dollars provided by your good old federal liberal controlled government.


49 posted on 05/08/2013 7:12:54 PM PDT by American Constitutionalist
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To: null and void

The thing is ? they will articulate it in a way to impress upon inpressonable minds to say what they ( i.e. ungodly liberals ) want it to say and make it sound good and sound like the truth.


50 posted on 05/08/2013 7:15:22 PM PDT by American Constitutionalist
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To: SunkenCiv
Forcing me to pay for NPR and PBS violates my First Amendment rights.

Indeed

To compel a man to furnish funds for the propagation of ideas he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.
Thomas Jefferson

51 posted on 05/08/2013 7:22:03 PM PDT by Drango (A liberal's compassion is limited only by the size of someone else's wallet.)
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To: American Constitutionalist; justiceseeker93

See post #42.

I also thought it was surprisingly good.


52 posted on 05/08/2013 7:26:50 PM PDT by null and void (Republicans create the tools of oppression and Democrats use them. Gun confiscation enables tyranny.)
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To: justiceseeker93
Thanks for sharing your reaction to the program.

Hope that the other programs will be courageous in defense of the Founders' insistence that any "changes" or "amendments" to "the People's" Constitution must be done in accordance with Article V.

You mentioned that, so far, they treated it with "respect" and no mention that it is "dead."

We also must watch for that fraudulent "living" constitution meme also.

Note the following quotation from the Walter Berns essay about the Left's sleight of hand with Marshall's words, wherein they left out 8 pages of text in order to twist his words to their own ends.

"The living Constitution school also claims to have a source more venerable than legal realism or Ronald Dworkin - justice John Marshall. A former president of the American Political Science Association argues that the idea of a " 'living Constitution'...can trace its lineage back to John Marshall's celebrated advice in McCulloch v. Maryland (1819): 'We must never forget that it is a Constitution we are expounding...intended to endure for ages to come, and consequently to be adapted to the various crises of human affairs' " The words quoted are certainly Marshall's but the opinion attributed to him is at odds with his well-known statements that, for example, the "principles" of the Constitution "are deemed fundamental [and] permanent" and, except by means of formal amendment, "unchangeable" (Marbury v. Madison). It is important to note that the discrepancy is not Marshall's; it is largely the consequence of the manner in which he is quoted - ellipses are used to join two statements separated by some eight pages in the original text. Marshall did not say that the Constitution should be adapted to the various crises of human affairs; he said that the powers of Congress are adaptable to meet those crises. The first statement appears in that part of his opinion where he is arguing that the Constitution cannot specify "all the subdivisions of which its great powers will admit;" if it attempted to do so, it would "partake of the prolixity of a legal code" (McCulloch v. Maryland), In the second statement, Marshall's subject is the legislative power, and specifically the power "to make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution" the explicitly granted powers.

Neither Marshall nor any other prominent members of the founding generation can be 'appropriated' by the living Constitution school to support their erroneous views. Marshall's and the Founders' concern was not to keep the Constitution in tune with the times but, rather, to keep the times to the extent possible, in tune with the Constitution. And that is why the Framers assigned to the judiciary the task of protecting the Constitution as written."

The sly foxes who call themselves "progressives" believe the Constitution is "a flawed document," and, as such, they want to remold it so that its strict limits on their power are not "constricted" (the term recently used by the current President).

Now, isn't that just another word for "strictly limited"? Another President, Thomas Jefferson, praised that beauty of the Constitution, saying that "We, the People" should "bind them down by the chains of the Constitution"!! What a contrast in views!!

One President--who understood the advantages of liberty for a nation--saw limits on power as a good thing.

Over 200 hundred years later, a President who just told college students that big government is a good thing, must not understand the difference between liberty and tyranny. In fact, to the same students, he derided those who use such terms and warned the students against paying attention to them.

Still better watch out for the PBS version of the Founders' Constitution.

53 posted on 05/09/2013 4:02:19 PM PDT by loveliberty2
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To: loveliberty2
We also must watch for that fraudulent "living" constitution meme also.

I thought that the left's mantra was a "living and breathing" constitution. :)

One President--who understood the advantages of liberty for a nation--saw limits on power as a good thing.

Over 200 hundred years later, a President who just told college students that big government is a good thing, must not understand the difference between liberty and tyranny. In fact, to the same students, he derided those who use such terms and warned the students against paying attention to them.

Yes, you are right on target about the diametrically opposite views of the two. But when you say that Obama "must not understand the difference between liberty and tyranny," I would disagree. He does understand it, having been exposed heavily to the far left scene since childhood. From then on, he has been pretty much consistent in his dreams to transform a society which at least placed some value on liberty of the individual into one based on subjugation of the citizenry to an all-powerful government. But, as a student of Alinsky, he realizes that he has to be clever and disguise his perverse dream while trying to sell it to a prospective group of new comrades, as he attempted to do at Ohio State Sunday.

54 posted on 05/09/2013 5:41:43 PM PDT by justiceseeker93
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To: justiceseeker93
Thanks. Your points are well taken.

There is little evidence of any significant study of the history of nations, of the ideas which lead to freedom and opportunity, although there is evidence of study of Marx, Lenin and Alinsky.

The ongoing campaign rhetoric focusing on "fair share" was just a misleading call for "slavery" by another name. Government "masters" buy votes in exchange for retaining their "master redistributionist" status, while their "voters" yield up freedom for themselves and future generations.

"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." - C. S. Lewis

All who doubt the wisdom of Lewis might watch the video of the President's remarks at the National Prayer Breakfast. There, Obama arrogantly misappropriated Jesus's spiritual challenge to individuals, claiming those words as validating and authorizing abusive use of coercive power by himself and his cronies to "take" from some in order to buy votes and accumulate more power to themselves--all in the name of "helping" the beneficiaries of such unconstitutional "takings."

Hear Samuel Adams:

"Is it now high time for the people of this country to explicitly declare whether they will be free men or slaves. It is an important question which ought to be decided. It concerns more than anything in this life. The salvation of our souls is interested in this event. For wherever tyranny is established, immorality of every kind comes in like a torrent, it is in the interest of tyrants to reduce the people to ignorance and vice.” - Samuel Adams

And:

“The utopian schemes of leveling and a community of goods, are as visionary and impractical as those which vest all property in the crown. These ideas are arbitrary, despotic, and, in our government unconstitutional.” - Samuel Adams

55 posted on 05/12/2013 12:39:15 PM PDT by loveliberty2
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