STF NA MÍDIA

ment, have responded with a
campaign to “take back the
Constitution.” They are urging
Americans and lawmakers
to sign a pledge to honor
the whole Constitution, e-
ven the parts many Tea Party
supporters would prefer to
ignore — say, the amendments
allowing an income
tax, and granting birthright
citizenship. And they are
trying to get people to see the
Constitution not as a limit
on federal power but as the
spirit behind progressive
laws.
The struggle over the holiday
is yet another proxy in the
fight over the proper role of
government. On one side are
those who embrace an “originalist”
view of the Constitution,
where New Deal judicial
activism started the
country down the path to
ruin. On the other are those
who say that its language —
allowing Congress to levy
taxes to provide “for the general
welfare,” to regulate
commerce, and to do what is
“necessary and proper” to
carry out its role — affirms
the broad role of the federal
government that has developed
over the last 100 years.
“It has evolved to the point
where it seems many in the
Tea Party believe the entire
20th century is unconstitutional,”
said Doug Kendall, the
president of the Constitutional
Accountability Center
and a leader of the progressive
coalition behind the effort
to, in his words, “rebut the
fairy tales being peddled by
the Tea Party.”
This may seem like a fight
reserved to costumed Revolutionary
War re-enactors —
or Ron Paul supporters, who
will commemorate the holiday,
as they have the anniversary
of the Boston Tea
Party, with a fund-raising
event. But the question of
who owns the Constitution
has very current implications
in the fights over Social Security
and Medicare, and
most immediately, in the
court challenges to the health
care overhaul that Democrats
passed and Tea Party supporters
loathe.
In one respect, the Tea Party
has already won. When
groups on the left talk about
the Constitution, they are
increasingly emphasizing the
original text — as the originalists
do — rather than the
Supreme Court decisions
that have upheld programs
like Social Security.
Tea Party Patriots, a large
umbrella for groups across
the country, began encouraging
its members this year to
“adopt a school” for the
Constitution Week, next
week. It provided local
groups with templates for a
series of letters to school
superintendents, to inform
them about a law passed in
2004 that requires schools
that receive federal money to
teach about the Constitution
on Sept. 17, or the adjacent
days.
(The letters did not mention
that the law was the work of
Senator Robert C. Byrd, who
was famous as a champion of
the Constitution, but also of
the kind of big government
liberalism that the Tea Party
believes the Constitution is
intended to constrain.)
Tea Party groups were instructed
to ask schools how
they planned to observe the
law, and to suggest that they
use a curriculum provided by
the National Center for
Constitutional Studies.
The center, based in Arizona,
offers books and courses now
popular among Tea Party
groups — including “The
5000 Year Leap,” made a
bestseller by Glenn Beck’s
recommendation. They emphasize
the 10th amendment
in arguing for states’ rights,
and argue that the income tax
was a progressive perversion
of the Constitution and that
the founding fathers did not
intend the separation of church
and state. (The course
materials also show how to
memorize the preamble to
the Constitution using sign
language.)
Tea Party Patriots also distributed
a new coloring book
that argues that the government
has “grown far beyond
what the Constitution allows,”
and casts modern-day
Tea Party groups in the role
of the original colonists, fighting
for freedom against an
overbearing government.
“A lot of what happens in
Washington is not the process
we agreed to in that
Constitution,” said Bill Norton,
who coordinated the
adopt-a-school program for
Tea Party Patriots.
But he said the program was
not political. “We go right
back to the founders when it
comes to the Constitution,”
he said. “The material we’re
bringing in is very historical,
there’s no agenda in either
direction.”
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