by Jim » Wed Jan 19, 2011 1:33 pm
Wood: In other words, Lepore contends, the Tea Partiers regard “the founding” of the United States as “ageless and sacred and to be worshiped,” and its historical texts “are to be read in the same spirit with which religious fundamentalists read, for instance, the Ten Commandments.” Her book, she writes, “is an argument against historical fundamentalism.”
If Wood is right, poor Ms Lepore has confused the Revolutionary War/Founders with the Constitution, upon which the existence of the nation stands as a nation of laws, the antithesis of monarchy/anarchy. If she considers the Constitution and the Ten Commandments as outdated – as do myriads of present-day religionists – so be it but she’d better thank her lucky stars that she’s wrong. Historical fundamentalism has its place and the nation errs in straying from it.