Further, the hypocrisy of the teaparty Constitutional positions is incredibly ironically funny and pretty sad.
They do seem to read the document, or understand the Founder's intent, they instead feel that they somehow can "feel" what those fellow white men felt and thus, with their incredibly uneducated and ignorant minds, they come to the following mutually exclusive, hypocritcal, and yes, laughable interpretations of the Constitution.
- They want to read the 2nd Amendment broadly and let anyone have a gun, anywhere, anytime, under any circumstance. A strict constructionist reading of the 2nd would leave guns only with militias.
- They want to read the equal protection clause narrowly so gays can't marry. I would argue there is no reading, at all, of the equal protection clause that could allow gays to not marry, but... Further, Sen. Vitter asshole himself seemed to argue last week that the Loving v Virginia case that allowed interracial marriage was decided wrongly, a truly insane position (dies he also believe in slavery?), but I digress.
- They want to read the reserve clause very narrowly and reserve all unenumerated rights to the states, at least when it is convenient for them.
- They want the separation of church and state essentially removed from the Constitution entirely, because, well, they argue the Founders did not really mean it. Go read Jefferson's letter to the Danbury Baptists!
Thus, the teapartiers are deluded and uninformed, but that is par for the course. The truly scary part is that folks like Vitter and Ensign and Bachmann and Boehner can get elected with clearly uninformed and unsupportable positions.