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Ronald Feinman: Michelle Bachmann's Total Ignorance of American History

[Ronald Feinman is professor of American History, Government and Politics, as well as a lecturer on modern American topics.]

Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann is demonstrating her total ignorance of American history and the history of her Republican party, based on the text of her speech to be delivered tonight after President Obama’s State of the Union Address!

She says slavery was ended by the Founding Fathers, showing she is unaware of the role of her Republican Party, Abraham Lincoln, and the Civil War in ending slavery. She is, as always, demonstrating her total lack of knowledge of the American past and the American Constitution, joining many other Republicans, including Sarah Palin, in this regard!

But now, Pat Buchanan, former challenger for the Presidency against George HW Bush in 1992, and running for President as a third party party candidate in 2000, has also demonstrated his lack of knowledge, by asserting there were more slaves in the Union states that had slaves (Maryland, Delaware, Kentucky, Missouri) than in any of the Confederate States that broke away from the Union! He also said incorrectly that George Washington freed his slaves after his wife died, but the reality is that his wife outlived him by over two years!

The ignorance and lack of knowledge of these and other Republican leaders is shocking and reprehensible!

The Founding Fathers (Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Hamilton, Franklin) and the statesmen of the pre Civil War era (Daniel Webster, Henry Clay, Stephen Douglas, William Seward, Charles Sumner, Abraham Lincoln) would be shocked and mortified if they came back today and witnessed the TOTAL STUPIDITY AND IGNORANCE of many GOP leaders, and Republicans of the Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, and Dwight D. Eisenhower era would also be ashamed of what their party has become: a party without legitimacy, ethics, character, and morality!
Read entire article at Progressive Professor (Blog)