This is from yesterday’s Shouts and Murmers column by Jack Hitt blogged in the New Yorker Magazine. I thought about posting the entire thing, but decided on trying to pick some highlights. The interesting thing is that often Shouts and Murmers is fictionalized or even pure fiction but Hitt has included approprite citations. Let’s start at the beginning.
1500s: The American Revolutionary War begins: “The reason we fought the revolution in the sixteenth century was to get away from that kind of onerous crown.”—Rick Perry
1607: First welfare state collapses: “Jamestown colony, when it was first founded as a socialist venture, dang near failed with everybody dead and dying in the snow.”—Dick Armey
1619-1808: Africans set sail for America in search of freedom: “Other than Native Americans, who were here, all of us have the same story.”—Michele Bachmann
Bet the folks at Jamestown didn’t know it was socialist venture. I always thought they were looking for things that would make them rich.
1776: The Founding Synod signs the Declaration of Independence: “…those fifty-six brave people, most of whom, by the way, were clergymen.”—Mike Huckabee
1787: Slavery is banned in the Constitution: “We also know that the very founders that wrote those documents worked tirelessly until slavery was no more in the United States.”—Michele Bachmann
1801: “Thomas Jefferson creates the Marines for the Islamic pirates that were happening.”—Glenn Beck
And the blog helpfully includes a picture of the “Founding Synod.”
Illustration courtesy of the Library of Congress.
Moving on to the Civil War, I bet you didn’t know this.
1861:Civil War breaks out over pitting “individual rights as proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence against collective rights.”—The Weekly Standard
More recent history doesn’t fare much better.
1916:Planned Parenthood opens genocide clinics: “When Margaret Sanger—check my history—started Planned Parenthood, the objective was to put these centers in primarily black communities so they could help kill black babies before they came into the world.”—Herman Cain
1950: Senator Joseph McCarthy saves America from Communism: “Joe McCarthy was a great American hero.”—Representative Steve King
1963: G.O.P. clergyman delivers his famous “I have a dream” speech: “It should come as no surprise that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was a Republican.”—Human Events blog
1964: Republicans fight for the Civil Rights Act: “We were the people who passed the civil-rights bills back in the sixties without very much help from our colleagues across the aisle.”—Representative Virginia Foxx
1967: Indonesia brainwashes its first Islamic terrorist spybot: “Why didn’t anybody ever mention that that man right there was raised—spent the first decade of his life, raised by his Muslim father—as a Muslim and was educated in a Madrassa?”—Steve Doocy
And to the Clinton years.
1993: Hillary Clinton claims her first kill, Vincent Foster—Jerry Falwell video
1994: Bill Clinton tops Hillary with twenty-four murders: these people died “under other than natural circumstances.”— Representative William Dannemeyer.
1998: Actually, the Clinton murders number forty people: “There was talk that this would be another body to add to the list of forty bodies or something that were associated with the Clinton Administration.”—Linda Tripp.
1998: Update: Clinton murders eighty people: “In recent months, a list of more than 80 deaths associated directly or indirectly with Clinton has been the buzz of the new media.”—Joseph Farah
And finally to things I know you didn’t know that President Obama can add to his list of accomplishments.
2011: Arabic is declared America’s second language: “Some of our state’s educational administrators joined the feds in seeking to mandate Arabic classes for Texas children.”—Chuck Norris
2011: Obama outlaws fishing: people “can’t go fishing anymore because of Obama.”—Rush Limbaugh
2011: Obama provides health insurance for dogs: “In the health care bill, we’re now offering insurance for dogs.”—Glenn Beck
All I can say it is a good thing that the President included health care for dogs because Seamus could have probably used it.
FortLeft 