Gingrich primus inter pares

Just what we need as a leader during a time of deep national and international volatility: someone like Newt Gingrich, described by the Tampa Tribune as “…still histrionic and overly confident.”!

His solution to governing is to ignore the Supreme Court when it is convenient and blindly follow the dictates of an ultra-conservative right-wing group which claims a special understanding of the U.S. Constitution.

For all their waving about of paperback copies of the Federalist Papers, has anyone actually read all 85 essays?

It is filled with dense prose and frequent references to ancient cultures and pivotal world leaders. 

Hamilton, Madison and Jay read Latin, Greek and studied the political histories of Europe and the East, as did educated readers of the day.

Today, lacking that “liberal” education, we have to rely on sources like Google, a thick dictionary and our elected representatives to help us understand what our Founding Fathers understood about liberty and justice for all.

Take an example from Hamilton’s Federalist No. 34 to the People of the State of New York, January 4, 1788:

 “It will be readily understood that I allude to the COMITIA CENTURIATA and the COMITIA TRIBUTA. The former, in which the people voted by centuries, was so arranged as to give a superiority to the patrician interest; in the latter, in which numbers prevailed, the plebian interest had an entire predominancy. And yet these two legislatures coexisted for ages, and the Roman republic attained to the utmost height of human greatness.”

 What high school teacher today could readily enlighten an inquiring student on the meaning, context and implications of even this short passage?

We have dumbed down our schools, our teachers, our students and our selves about why we have this Constitution under which we live; and truly, even why we should care.

No wonder we are so willing to accept dumbed down political hacks to lead us.

<IMHO> Fred Jacobsen

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