WaPo Columnist: The Constitution is Impossible to Understand Because It’s Over 100 Years Old
**Written by Doug Powers
WaPo and Newsweek columnist as well as MSNBC contributor Ezra Klein claims that it’s impossible to understand the US Constitution because it’s over 100 years old.
An effective argument, provided he’s lobbying to get a White House nomination for the next SCOTUS opening:
The Constitution is over 100 years and as such doesn’t make sense anymore? Saul Alinsky’s over 100 years old too but Klein doesn’t seem to have much trouble relating to him. It’s not the age the left fears, it’s the constraint of the content.
A breakdown of the indecipherable complexities of the Constitution from Stephen Gutowski:
But lets cut Ezra some slack. I mean just look at the first amendment. It’s confusing as hell:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
“Congress shall make no law”. What in the world could that mean?
Beware those who can make complete sense out of a 2500-page health care bill and bloated tax code but who say it’s impossible to decipher the massive six-page US Constitution.
**Written by Doug Powers
Twitter @ThePowersThatBe
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Constitution? It seems to be shredded daily by bho, his entire team, and the dc bunch! Sorta makes me sick for my America’s future if we don’t stop what is happening in dc.
L
The Constitution makes no sense to the Left because they believe with every fiber of their being that the masses are descended from and little smarter than animals who they must control for our own good. They deny the Creator (remember Obama’s editing of the Declaration of Independence) along with our rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, which He gave us. Only the Constitution stands between them and the tyranny they would impose.
Sure…those who are paying attention to our Constitution today are continually amazed at the clarity and at the wisdom shown by the writers 240 years ago. But, and it’s a big but, ask our so called legislators today to explain anything in the 1,000 page bills they vote for and good luck with that! I call big BS.
Which is why the text of the Constitution is kept from those the left has been
teacheindoctrinating on school campuses nationwide since the ’60s.This guy, kind of says it all about the Progressive movement.
To me, it’s funny the left claims to not understand the Constitution when my leftist friends told me in the past that “Bush trampled on the Constitution with the Patriot act” and all that other anti-American jazz he got away with. Sheesh. Make up your minds, lefties. How can you claim *Bush* trashed the Constitution when it’s too complex for your little pea brains to comprehend to begin with?
*out*
Strom Thurmond wrote the Constitution?!
Did I hear that twit right?!?
Did he say, at 0:58, that the Constitution “had no binding power on anything”???
I know that the left likes to point out that the Declaration is not a binding document….maybe he doesn’t know the difference between the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence??
Hey, people, this kid has an American college education. Cut him some slack!
Das Kapital was first published in 1867, making it more than 100 years old, so would Ezra Klein say that it’s also impossible to understand? Or is his copy just hard to understand because the pages are stuck together?
I watch this punk’s video, and I am overwhelmed by the urge to pimp-slap his face until it looks like a festered canker.
I hate being moved to violence. The shear arrogance, pomposity, and elitism of the Left compels me.
Now difficult to understand.
On December 30th, 2010 at 2:43 pm, Hangfire said:
I watch this punk’s video, and I am overwhelmed by the urge to pimp-slap his face until it looks like
a festered cankerHenry Waxman.{Self-editing complete.}
“Ezra Klein” is the first listing under “Idiots”.
Suddenly, I no longer understand Beethoven’s 9th Symphony.
I no longer understand Moby Dick.
I no longer understand Mysterious Island.
Now undertood to be attributed to global warming. Or cooling.
Q: Can’t MSNBC, Newsweek, and the Washington Post find any Conservative Jews in the news business?
1977 “One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer” (Rudy Toombs)
2010 “How do we get these morons out of office” (Cicero Kid)
I love the smell of commies squirming when they see the hammer coming down on their collective heads … it smells like victory!
Hey they said the same thing about the Bible!
With this trend apparently their attention span will soon be relegated to “Tiger Beat”! Is that even around anymore?
George Costanza: [pretending to be a white supremacist to get a free limo ride] Ahhh, ASTROTURF! You know who’s responsible for that, don’t ya? The JEWS!
Does this mean that he wants to stop teaching Beowulf (1,000 years old) and Shakespeare (400 years old) to high schoolers?
Or does he believe that the works can be understood when taught/studied properly?
Maybe Ezra needs a Spanish version.
Klein probably has trouble with the comic sections in last Sunday’s paper.
The United States Constitution was designed to control the Government and not the people.
This idea that a government would not have full control over the life and death of all citizens is confusing and revolting to libtards like Mr Klein.
Most libs think freedom and liberty is an outdated and confusing idea.
How will they feed and care for themselves without the nanny state?
Aye, there’s the rub.
And yet the Self-professed small constitutional right is all about allowing the government to define “press” in the Julian Assange case.
And the right to a speedy trial certainly doesn’t apply to the “people” in Guantanamo.
Clean your own house first.
I’d call this guy an idiot, but that would be an insult to idiots everywhere.
This guy doesn’t have the intelligence to be classified a higher life form than an amoeba.
People too stupid to understand the Constitution don’t belong commenting on it. They don’t belong in the gov or the media. The Constitution is a brilliant piece of work which annoys libs because self reliance and hard work are not interesting. Libs always want something for nothing and then call that fair.
Balderdash, my good fellow. He is a man of letters, from the good state of California.
UC Santa Cruz and UCLA vouch for him. I swear it so.
Yes. Yes it is over 100 years old. So’s yer mom.
He probably keeps mistaking it for the editorial section.
No, Klein is not stupid. He is insane.
Seriously.
He can’t understand the Constitution because it says things that make him unhappy. It makes his head hurt. So instead of trying to understand it, he defers to some authority he respects to tell him what it really means, as long as what they tell him doesn’t make him unhappy. If what they tell him makes him unhappy, then he loses respect for that authority and finds another one who will tell him something that makes him feel good.
Just think about it. Is anyone really that stupid?
How about all the people who voted for bho based on?
a. his good looks
b. his pecs
c. his hook shot
d. his smile
e. all of the above
What the liberals really don’t like about the Constitution is what it says, plainly enough to be understood by anyone. That’s why they’ve spent 100 years reinterpreting it into a “living” document that means whatever they say it means, not what it actually says.
It clearly states that none but a natural born citizen may be President, but the person in office now does not fit that description.
just the latest communist attack on our nation, out in the open for all to see.
they never stop, and they never stop lying.
pretty funny how desperate the killers of our nation are becoming, now that we are starting to stop their America-cide.
and at #36, not this communist ratbag Klien is not insane, he’s a dedicated communist doing what they do, attack common sense and attack decent societies. attack truth, attack those who build, attack and misrepresent laws that constrain the communist government.
And that is the reason that Mallard Fillmore (the duck comic strip) was relegated to the Editorial Section – the libtards found it to be “offensive” to those who would prefer to peruse the comics in relative comfort. The Editors felt it was too “political” to be considered a comic strip. Yeah, right. Look at Doonesbury. On second thought, don’t look at Doonesbury.
f. dibs on a piece of SugaBama’s stash money
Anesthetics for performing surgery was discovered by Dr. Crawford Williamson Long in 1842.
I say we remove what little is left of Ezra Klein’s brain without the use of anesthetics because they’re over 100 years old and can’t be understood.
No doubt THE favorite, never-miss, comic strip read for Klein, as it is for all liberal comic strip readers.
It should be on the Editorial Page.
Stupid is as stupid says and these clown are as stupid as you can get. Problem is they glorify in their own stupidity.
The 13th Amendment barring slavery was ratified in 1865, making it over 100 years old. So Mr. Klein, does that mean it can’t be understood so slavery is now legal in the US?
I guess that fits with what democrats have always stood for: slavery, segregation, and anti-civil rights.
Of course, these are the same liberal dolts fail to follow the highly rigid and extremely complicated rules and regulations written over 100 years ago as brought forth by Representative Moses:
“Thou shalt not…”
Well, another item to go on my “most stupid things ever heard” list. Perhaps we should outlaw all books over 100 years old because they are “impossible to understand” eh?
What a moron.
Isn’t it ironic that this bit:
…is the part that ensures that you can go on MSNBC and demonstrate for all 17 viewers how clueless you are.
On The Origin Of Species by Darwin was published in 1859, making it over 100 years old.
I recommend we stop teaching it to our school children because it can’t be understood.
I’m sure you are right…it has far too many words with more than 4 letters and sentences conatining more than 3 words. AND it must have more than a dozen pages…certain to lose the reader’s attention.
Completely incomprehensible for an average person who has been
educatindoctrinated in our public school and univeristy systems.It’s possible Klein is one of the snakes, not just one of the many insane leftists, but most of them are insane. And he’s not stupid.
To be clear: Insane = badly disconnected from reality.
In the case of leftists, their disconnection is from political reality.
That disconnection may be congenital, or it may be learned, but either way they have a pathological inability to see anything that contradicts the emotional construct they’ve created to deal with political reality. Seeing those things is just too upsetting.
My favorite, most recent glaring example of the condition clearly manifesting in a widespread way is the angst with which the leftists have been shrieking the NY Victory Mosque isn’t a Victory Mosque. Anyone who can’t see what it is clearly has a mental problem. Every single jihadist on the planet knows what it is.
The left would gleefully burn the constitution if they could get away with it and write a new one.
Wait a minute…..
That’s pretty much what Obama is doing in the White House.
***
Klein looks like prime CZAR material to me. He should do very well in the new Bureau of Internet Censorship.
***
WAPO really knows how to grow ‘em.
***
John Bibb
***
Oh, Look, Jane. See the
Constituti..uh, the paper. Is the paper nice? No, no it is not! Run, Dick. Run away from the paper. See Spot get the paper. No, Spot, no! Get off the paper! Let Spot chew on the paper. It is notrelevan…uh, good any more. It is OLD! Good Spot. Eat the paper! I will sue you, Dick, for looking at me. Jane can sue. Sue, sue, sue! Jane will live with Sue. The End.“How should I know what the Constitution is all about. When it was written I wasn’t even born yet!” — Ezra Klein
Dictators don’t need a constitution. Wait a minute it was the constitution that put him in power in the first place.
What we are getting is NewSpeak. To the Left making sense is not important, because individuals are not important.
Klein said the Constitution “has no binding power on anything”.
WTF!? The Constitution is only our charter of government. Without it the federal government has no legitimacy whatsoever.
Who’s the ditz who says people have been giving “lip service” to the 223 year old Constitution?
He tries to explain it all away here.
We were all mistaken and – like Obama and his misunderstood Marxist intentions – he is willing to admit he didn’t sell it well enough for us to understand.
It’s too short. Two pages? P-f-f-f-f-t! Plain and simple words used in elegantly simple sentences? Doublr p-f-f-f-f-f-t!
To properly constitutionalize left-wing tyrannies requires a minimum of 6,000 thousand pages containing words specifically invented to describe and define high-concept and complex socialist concepts. That’s why communism and other socialist ideologies are always created by intellectual geniuses. The rest of us are just too dumb to grasp the beauty and wisdom of socialism. That’s why democracies are always voted out of existence. I’ll let my friend Hugo Chavez elaborate on the above.
Hugo? Take it away!
6,000 pages to hide plans and schemes. Sort of like our own 1200 page ObaMao Care legislation and the ever-expanding IRS code, et al.
As it’s been said: “If you can’t dazzle them with brilliance, then baffle them with B.S.” – and many of those tyrannies had and usually have ill-educated populations easily baffled by an unreadable constitution.
Our Democrats leaders, with GOP assistance, have been doing well in emulating such tyrannies by leading the way in de-educating and indoctrinating our own population with such masterpieces of government documents.
Yes indeed your intention was, if anything, clear enough and we ‘get it’. You despise our Constitution and depend on making its clear intention to LIMIT government as murky as you possibly can in order to twist its meaning to suit your commie agenda. Go live in Cuba Mr. Klein, Castro is calling you.
Don’t forget that Ezra was also the founder of JournoList, the embodiment of journalistic integrity such as it is. His mug screams wuss. Anyone know the over / under on the number of times Ezra got whirled in high school?
He is right ya know. I am confused too. No matter how hard I look in the Constitution I cannot locate the language that gives a woman or her doctor the right to kill unborn or partially born babies, cant find the right of babies born to illegal immigrants within our borders to automatically obtain US citizenship, or the right of government to seize someone’s personal property for building a mall, the right to force people to buy health insurance, or the right to have race be a consideration in school admissions and fire department promotions. Yes, the Constitution is very very confusing.
Sure, and the First Ammendment, which protects even stupid journalists, would no longer exist and neither would your job.
What’s even more appalling is that his ideology and agenda is being taught utterly unchallanged from grades three on up.
James Greenidge
Queens NY
I know a few Bible verses I could quote. But, the Bible is over 2 hundred years old, so he SURE wouldn’t understand IT!
This Klein kid is begging for an attitude adjustment. Of course, treason always does.
Ezra, heres the title of a document thats less than 100 years old that you should consider reading…..MEIN KAMPF
It’s impossible to understand because it is over 100 years old. How hard can it be? Is he saying that historians, lawyers, archeologists and anyone who specializes in studying the past has only 99 years before the window for understanding closes?
This guy must record his diary on an Etch-a-Sketch.
No one has ever read the Constitution aloud before Congress? Well, that explains everything. Perhaps they ought to include Powerpoint illustrations or a short instructional video for the old-timers who need a refresher course.
The Founding Fathers wrote the Constitution in such a clear and precise language that anybody with half a brain can understand it. That is exactly why the Main Stream Media is a problem with it.
That says it all.
So what does that say about the WaPo’s first 33 years of publication?
If this had been a congressman’s quote, I’d call for some jail time for him.
This is what I want. Pass a law that is extra constitutional, go to jail. As citizens, that is the only way we are going to protect ourselves from these over-stepping wankers.
Oddly enough – more coherent than the next 100 years….
If these FlashBloggers (Journalists?) were educated in public schools in the 80s, 90s, 2000 etc I don’t doubt that they can’t understand something written in English.
The koran was written over a 100 years ago, so I guess its too complicated, burn them and we should just have an old fashion Memphis BBQ of pork!
GSP
Ezra Klein is trolling for a job at the New York Times AND the Supreme Court? Ambitious.
Politicians that passed 2000 page bills they never read and think they are hot spit ain’t never read the constitution either. Take time to read it and if you can’t understand it ask Sarah or Michelle (Malkin or Bachman). She can explain it in words you can understand.
It isn’t hard to understand, but easy to ignore by Both Parties. That’s the problem. Both Parties ignore it, and the Government Schools don’t teach it either.
Liberals and neocons both ignore it, as do 99% of voters.
In fact, a vote for R or D Jerseys is a vote to ignore. Hopefully in time, that will change, hopefully!
The Original Framers and their intent were Better than Ezra.
Never mind the fact that the man is a Constitutional dunce – this points to far deeper issues – such as the fact that it might be prudent to revoke his driver’s license and prevent him from breeding. If he is incapable of comprehending quite blunt and straightforward language, it seems more likely than not that Mr. Ezra is “touched in the head”…he’s “special”
What this douchebag wants is to replace our Constitution with the Soviet one.
Following Klein’s logic, there’s no sense in recording history since the records are unfathomable after a century.
He must have no friends who are historians or linguists.
Sigh… Looks like another revolution is in order. Or maybe all the vapid empty shells like Ezra Klein can just volunteer to emigrate to Socialist Compound Europe and save us all a lot of trouble
What is this “Constitution” of which you speak?
Yes, pookie, there are people who think they’re smart, that really are THAT stupid!
Yeah, the Muslims want to use the Constitution to overthrown our government, and they must understand it to be able to make that claim, but liberals….well, they are just so cerebral, and special that it’s meaning evades them. Tell me again; why do liberals believe their thought process is so superior?
Best comment from the Stephen Gutowski link:
An oxymoron for the ages, that is.
Some state laws about murder are over 100 yrs old so Eziie needs to be careful where he goes, lest his own words allow the killers to go free.
Here’s something else very interesting regarding the reading of the Constitution and the Declaration of
Independence by the Republicans in the Congressional well seen at the Newbusters.com web page: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2011/01/05/nyt-implies-house-gop-reading-constitution-racist
THIS.IS.COMPLETE.HORSEHOCKEY.BY.THIS.NY TIMES.WRITER!!