[Nesster]

I saw this in a few places... and I'm amazed, I mean, one does elide for the sake of a rousing speech, but then one doesn't completely re-write history. This is getting into cavemen and dinosaurs territory

Doug Kendall: The Unbearable Lightness of Michele Bachmann

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) had an interesting take this weekend on America's first European settlers, who she said "had different cultures, different backgrounds, different traditions."

"How unique in all of the world, that one nation that was the resting point from people groups all across the world," she said. "It didn't matter the color of their skin, it didn't matter their language, it didn't matter their economic status."

"Once you got here, we were all the same. Isn't that remarkable?" she asked.

Speaking at an Iowans For Tax Relief event, Bachmann (R-MN) also noted how slavery was a "scourge" on American history, but added that "we also know that the very founders that wrote those documents worked tirelessly until slavery was no more in the United States."

"And," she continued, "I think it is high time that we recognize the contribution of our forbearers who worked tirelessly -- men like John Quincy Adams, who would not rest until slavery was extinguished in the country."

It's true -- Adams became a vocal opponent of slavery, especially during his time in the House of Representatives. But Adams was not one of the founders, nor did he live to see the Emancipation Proclamation signed in 1863 (he died in 1848).

Bachmann's story has more shameful errors than one can recount, but the most disturbing thing about her speech is that these errors appear deliberate, in service of a whitewashed, Tea Party vision of the American founding, where the Founders could do no wrong.

Bachmann makes no mention of the Founders like Thomas Jefferson and James Madison who owned and sold slaves throughout their lives. Nor does she bring up those stinging phrases from the Constitution such as "three-fifths of all other persons" that enshrined the institution of the slavery in our Nation's charter until it was amended after the Civil War. Rather, she, like her colleagues on the House floor recently, left these portions out, and she ended her story about John Quincy Adams (age 8 when his father, John Adams, signed the Declaration of Independence) with the admonition that "Instead of continuously going back and looking at the weaknesses and stains of America, let's look at the greatness of America . . ."

America is great and so were our Founders, but America's Founders were not perfect. By deifying the founding moment, Bachmann and the Tea Party ignore the great and enduring accomplishments of successive generations of Americans -- the Reconstruction Republicans (Amendments 13-15), the Progressives (Amendments 16 -17), the Women's Suffrage Movement (Amendment 19), the Civil Rights Movement (Amendment 24) -- who fought tirelessly to make our Constitution and this country the "more perfect union" we live in today.

The lightness of Michele Bachmann's historical account isn't unbearable because of its inaccuracies: it's unbearable because it misrepresents the arc of historical progress that makes America great.

....not to mention, Lincoln, who she doesn't, who was the Great Emancipator and one of the founders of the Republican Party.

[redrockcoulee]

A reader once commented on CNN that " the United States is the greatest country on Earth because we freed the slaves".

Sorry but the slaves were free in the British Empire decades before the US and slavery existed after the Civil War.

History might not repeat itself but if you do not know it it becomes much easier to be deceived by those with an agenda to do so.

[jeffkrol]

Might as well lump her w/ Beck who said..........

Michele Bachmann, you are one of the truth tellers.

"I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past." -
-- Thomas Jefferson

[jogiba]

[YT]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eg8kDG94kb8[/YT]

[Nesster]

in her defense - she was looking into HER webcam meant for the tea party express website - the general feed was from another camera which made her look like she was speaking to your neighbor.

Her version of history goes in to the same mythical place as does Beck's. That is, dimly remembered facts strung together in a hazy chain of school history classes, and buttressed by current evidence and plausible explanation.

This is where the Founding Fathers live: in Washington DC of course. They are all Founding Fathers up to Lincoln; after Lincoln we enter the historical era. In part through photographs and other media, in part because there aren't any Monuments or Buildings in DC. And this all makes some sense, as according to some our country has been on the wrong path since Woodrow Wilson in 1912. Do you realize 1912 is 47 years after Lincoln was shot? That's closer to Wilson than Kennedy's shooting is to 2011!

[jeffkrol]

AllGov - News - Michele Bachmann Wins Fake Facts Title

Michele Bachmann is in a class by herself, as far as political fact-checkers are concerned. The outspoken, and often inaccurate, Republican congresswoman from Minnesota has made more than a dozen assertions that either were false or really false, according to PolitiFact.com, the Pulitzer Prize-winning feature of the St. Petersburg Times that checks whether statements made by politicians are true.

“We have checked her 13 times, and seven of her claims [proved] to be false and six have been found to be ridiculously false,” PolitiFact editor Bill Adair told Minnesota Public Radio. “I don’t know anyone else that we have checked, more than a couple times, that has never earned anything above a false. She is unusual in that regard that she has never gotten a rating higher than false.”

Even more ridicule was heaped on Bachmann for comments at the end of her statement, where she sought to conclude on a rousing patriotic note. As the backdrop changed to the famous photograph of the American flag being raised over the Pacific island of Iwo Jima she talked about the "miracle" of America's creation, referring to the battle of Iwo Jima at the close of the second world war as "a battle against all odds".

David Frum, a former speechwriter for George Bush, was one of many to highlight the historical inaccuracy of that statement. He tweeted: "Did Bachmann really say that Iwo Jima was a battle against the odds? For the Japanese I guess …"

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jan/26/tea-party-reply-state-of-the-union