Manifest Ignorance

We've got a Congressional race in Dallas that is getting interesting. The long term incumbent, Eddie Bernice Johnson, is under the gun because she dispensed more than 23 college scholarships to her own family and key staff members. As a member of the Congressional Black Caucus Scholarship Committee, Johnson was supposed to administer a program to aid deserving minority students in her district. She declared a lack of "worthy candidates" and doled out the dollars to her own relatives. Voters are being asked to overlook this minor indiscretion and concentrate on the years of welfare pork she has gained for them. Johnson naively claims she didn't know that was wrong.

The opponent is a Black conservative. Clearly that is going to be a conflict for the minority majority district. How can they discredit an African/American candidate running against a corrupt Democrat caught with her hand in the cookie jar.

Well, how about this Dallas Morning News revelation:

Revolution Always an Option

The frightening thing about that is the fact that the interviewer, the DMN reporter and the Chairman of the Dallas County Republican Party did not recognize the language:

"We have a constitutional remedy," Broden said then. "And the Framers say if that don't work, revolution."

Watson asked if his definition of revolution included violent overthrow of the government. In a prolonged back-and-forth, Broden at first declined to explicitly address insurrection, saying the first way to deal with a repressive government is to "alter it or abolish it."

"If the government is not producing the results or has become destructive to the ends of our liberties, we have a right to get rid of that government and to get rid of it by any means necessary," 

One would assume that somewhere along the line one of the critics would have recognized the language from the Declaration of Independence.

That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. 

And, the apparent total lack of familiarity with Jefferson's oft-stated views on revolution simply ices the ignorance cake.