Tag: James Madison

Did the Founders Hate Government?

Exclusive: Orwell’s insight that who controls the present controls the past, and who controls the past controls the future could apply to the American political debate in which the Right has built a false narrative that enlists the Framers of…

The Roots of US Religious Tolerance

From the Archive: Ex-Sen. Rick Santorum’s accusation that President Obama follows a “phony theology,” one not “based on the Bible,” revives the right-wing notion that the United States must be a “Christian nation” and that “separation of church and state”…

Madison: Father of the Commerce Clause

Exclusive: The Tea Party has been fueled by the idea that key Founders, like James Madison, opposed a strong central government and thus laws like “Obamacare” are unconstitutional. But Madison was the framer who devised the Commerce Clause upon which…

The Right’s Inside-Out Constitution

Exclusive: It has become an article of faith on the American Right that the Founders opposed a strong central government and that federal activism — from Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal to President Obama’s health-care reform — violates the nation’s first…

The Founders’ True Foresight

Exclusive: The Tea Party’s revisionist history of the nation’s founding document may play well with the ill-informed, but the truth is the framers of the Constitution were fed up with state “sovereignty” and decided on a strong central government, a judgment that has…

Ron Paul’s False Founding Narrative

Exclusive: Rep. Ron Paul and other right-wingers have lured many average Americans into their camp by creating a false narrative about America’s Founding, claiming that the drafters of the Constitution wanted a weak central government. But that’s not the real…

How Propaganda Targets Iran

America’s Founders saw press freedom as a key check on government dishonesty, but today’s media has become a powerful ally of official lies by funneling sophisticated propaganda especially in support of war, as Lawrence Davidson notes about the hysteria over Iran.

Would the Founders Back Health Law?

Exclusive: President Barack Obama’s health care law is heading to the rightist-dominated U.S. Supreme Court which may render a decision during the heat of Campaign 2012. Some Republican jurists are sure to claim that the law violates the “originalist” thinking…