Just read a fascinating article in Newsweek about how the Tea Party screamers profess to worship the Constitution, but in fact don’t understand the document at all.

In case folks don’t have time to read the entire article I’ve pulled out another wonderful quote from Thomas Jefferson from the article.

“As usual, Thomas Jefferson put it best. In a letter to a friend in 1816, he mocked “men [who] look at constitutions with sanctimonious reverence, and deem them like the arc of the covenant, too sacred to be touched”; “who ascribe to the men of the preceding age a wisdom more than human, and suppose what they did to be beyond amendment.” “Let us follow no such examples, nor weakly believe that one generation is not as capable as another of taking care of itself, and of ordering its own affairs,” he concluded. “Each generation is as independent as the one preceding, as that was of all which had gone before.” “

My Constitutional law professors taught that the Constitution is a living document and needs to be interpreted in light of societal changes.  As the Newsweek article pointed out if we follow the path of the Originalists we are going to end up unable to enforce minimum wage/maximum hours, it would allow states to found a religion, no Medicare, no Social Security.

And if you carried this to it’s logical conclusion you’d want to get rid of those pesky amendments.  Oh, wait, the Tea Party does want to do away with birth right citizenship.