Thursday, June 10, 2010

Warning: These documents may be hazardous to your ignorance

Here's another example of the commonly-held belief that our society is losing its marbles. A publishing company called Wilder Publications produced copies of the United States Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, Articles of Confederation, Thomas Paine's Common Sense, and the Federalist Papers. So far so good - lots of publishing companies print these documents.

However, Wilder added something to the Constitution, the Declaration, and the other documents that other companies have not: A warning label.

Here's what some people think of the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the Declaration of Independence:
“This book is a product of its time and does not reflect the same values as it would if it were written today.”
Wow. Exactly which values would that be? The adherence to limited government? The idea that we have natural rights that government cannot take away? The abolition of slavery?

If Wilder Publications was afraid that their copies of our founding documents would cause controversy, I wonder if they are satisfied that their idiotic warning labels will offend many more people than the documents themselves ever will?

"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free... it expects what never was, and never will be." -Thomas Jefferson

4 comments:

Don, American Idle said...

What other books have these idiots published? I wouldn't want to buy something from them by mistake.

"Product of its time?" Product of ALL time. God bless America.

W.R. Chandler said...

Amen, Don. "Product of ALL time." I like it!

Anonymous said...

A few suggestions:

The value that slavery was OK?
The value that women should not vote?

W.R. Chandler said...

If you can read the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, and think that the documents says that slavery was OK, then you need to reread those documents and especially the notes that were taken regarding the debates over slavery.

Show me where in the Constitution that it said women could not vote. That prohibition was enforced on a local level, and individual states were rectifying the situation decades before the 19th Amendment was ratified.