Turn on Fox News any day and you'll see the talking heads - Paliin, Beck, Backmann, Hannity blathering on and on about defending the Constitution.
Not that any of them has ever done anything to defend the Constitution, or, for that matter ever even read the Constitution.
However there was a time when folks stepped up - back in the Joe McCarthy era, when McCarthy conducted hearings to "expose" communists in our midst. He called hundreds, mostly intellectuals and entertainers, to be examined under oath, and many of them refused, citing their 5th Amendment right against self incrimination.
Then, one day he called Pete Seeger.
The examination went something like this:
McC: Have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?
PS: I refuse to answer based on my Constitutional right.
McC: So, you plead the Fifth?
No, Sir. I refuse to answer based on my First Amendment right.
McC...ah, ah, ah, blubber.
You see, Pete had read the Constitution, and McC, like the present right-wing flag wavers of today, had not.
Not the last time ole Pete stood up.
He stood up forty years ago against a war which was just as stupid as the present wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Gag on this, war mongers -
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The worms have long ago eaten McCarthy's rotten corpse. Ole Pete? He's still gettin' it.
Not that any of them has ever done anything to defend the Constitution, or, for that matter ever even read the Constitution.
However there was a time when folks stepped up - back in the Joe McCarthy era, when McCarthy conducted hearings to "expose" communists in our midst. He called hundreds, mostly intellectuals and entertainers, to be examined under oath, and many of them refused, citing their 5th Amendment right against self incrimination.
Then, one day he called Pete Seeger.
The examination went something like this:
McC: Have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?
PS: I refuse to answer based on my Constitutional right.
McC: So, you plead the Fifth?
No, Sir. I refuse to answer based on my First Amendment right.
McC...ah, ah, ah, blubber.
You see, Pete had read the Constitution, and McC, like the present right-wing flag wavers of today, had not.
Not the last time ole Pete stood up.
He stood up forty years ago against a war which was just as stupid as the present wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Gag on this, war mongers -
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The worms have long ago eaten McCarthy's rotten corpse. Ole Pete? He's still gettin' it.
