Walter Williams
Real Clear Politics
7/5/2011
There’s little that’s intelligent or informed about Time magazine editor Richard Stengel’s article “One Document, Under Siege” (June 23, 2011). It contains many grossly ignorant statements about our Constitution.
If I believed in conspiracies, I’d say Stengel’s article is part of a leftist agenda to undermine respect for the founding values of our nation.
Stengel says: “The framers were not gods and were not infallible. Yes, they gave us, and the world, a blueprint for the protection of democratic freedoms — freedom of speech, assembly, religion — but they also gave us the idea that a black person was three-fifths of a human being, that women were not allowed to vote and that South Dakota should have the same number of senators as California, which is kind of crazy. And I’m not even going to mention the Electoral College.”
My column last week addressed the compromise whereby each slave was counted as three-fifths of a person for the purposes of determining representation in the House of Representatives and Electoral College.
Had slaves been counted as whole people, slaveholding states would have had much greater political power. I agree the framers were not gods and were not infallible, but they had far greater wisdom and principle than today’s politicians…
The article continues at Real Clear Politics.
If you are not familiar with Professor Williams his biography is at TownHall.com
