"We, the People" have stood by for decades while generations of those so-called "liberals" (now self-describing themselves to be "progressives") have redefined, renamed, and put in place false ideas about America's form of government and who is in charge.
Reich, the Clintons, Obama, and the rest rely on widespread constitutional illiteracy when they make bold statements like those emanating from them in recent times.
IDEAS HAVE CONSEQUENCES, and we can lose our freedom and our happiness if we act on belief in wrong ideas.
This is true in every area of our lives. If we take some action because someone else told us something, and we believed them, and they were wrong, then we may have to live with some pain or hurt because we didn't check it out before we acted.
This is especially true about what we know or think we know about our freedom and our Constitution and Bill of Rights.
An example: some years ago, an organization at a major private university published a lesson plan for teachers to use in teaching students about the Constitution. A lead sentence read: "The Constitution is the power and authority of the central government over the people and the states."
Let me repeat. The lesson plan read: "The Constitution is the power and authority of the central government over the people and the states."
Now, if youth have been taught to believe that, and if enough Americans really believe that, then we will see government as this gigantic POWER and source of AUTHORITY for our lives. We will tend to look to government to solve all our problems. We will let government regulate and interfere with all the important decisions of our lives, and we will think that government can spend our money more wisely than we can, can take care of us better than we can take care of ourselves, and we may begin to rely on Washington and State capitals for looking after us from the cradle to the grave. And every time we rely on government to do something for us, government tends to get bigger and bigger and more and more powerful because we are giving it more and more power over our lives.
This is the idea Reich has bought into, and this is why he mischaracterizes the Tea Party movement's goals.
Reich fails to acknowledge that the Constitution is the "People's" document to limit the coercive powers of those they elect to government: the Constitution is not the elected representatives in government's document to limit the rights of "the People."
As a result of his wrong-headed understanding about the distinguishing idea of the U. S. Constitution and who are its KEEPERS*, he makes ill-advised accusations.
*" If these Commentaries shall but inspire in the rising generation a more ardent love of their country, an unquenchable thirst for liberty, and a profound reverence for the constitution and the Union, then they will have accomplished all, that their author ought to desire. Let the American youth never forget, that they possess a noble inheritance, bought by the toils, and sufferings, and blood of their ancestors; and capable, if wisely improved, and faithfully guarded, of transmitting to their latest posterity all the substantial blessings of fife, the peaceful enjoyment of liberty, property, religion, and independence. The structure has been erected by architects of consummate skill and fidelity; its foundations are solid; its compartments are beautiful, as well as useful; its arrangements are full of wisdom and order; and its defences are impregnable from without. It has been reared for immortality, if the work of man may justly aspire to such a title. It may, nevertheless, perish in an hour by the folly, or corruption, or negligence of its only keepers, THE PEOPLE. Republics are created by the virtue, public spirit, and intelligence of the citizens. They fall, when the wise are banished from the public councils, because they dare to be honest, and the profligate are rewarded, because they flatter the people, in order to betray them." - Justice Joseph Story - Concluding para., "Commentaries on the Constitution . . . ."
Our nation's schools are the very definition of a godless, socialist, single-payer, and compulsory-use welfare entitlement program.
So?....Question: Does any conservative **seriously** believe that any socialist, godless, single-payer, and compulsory-use program will teach children the principles of the **CONSTITUTION***????? Really? Are they that naive?
All it took to give the nation Franklin D. Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, the 17th Amendment, feminism, unions, the federal reserve, usurpation of large tracts of state land for federal parks, the failed One World League of Nations...etc...was??????
Answer: One to three generations of citizens schooled to be comfortable with socialism in their socialist-funded, single-payer, and compulsory-use government schools.
If we wish to take back the Constitution we must abolish the K-12 socialist-funded, single-payer, compulsory-use, and GODLESS schools.
If children are schooled in socialist-funded, single-payer, compulsory, and GODLESS schools we will raise up voters who are more than happy to be prisoners of the state.