The Stupid, OH, THE STUPID! MAKE IT STOP MAKE IT STOP MAKE IT STOP!

[elfs]

I was reading through the Republican National Party Platform (hey, someone has to!) and I came across this jaw-droppingly stupid paragraph (page 11):

It is also important, as part of cultural integration, that our schools provide better education in U.S. history and civics for all children, thereby fostering a commitment to our national motto, E Pluribus Unum.

The National Motto of the United States of America is not "E pluribus unum." "E pluribus unum" was authorized as a motto to appear on the Great Seal of the United States, and was often used de facto, but the phrase itself was never signed into law as the national motto.

The national motto of the United States is "In God We Trust." It has been "In God We Trust" since Dwight D. Eisenhower (R) signed the law establishing it as such. It is the only official motto the United States of America has ever had.

The hacks who put together the Republican Party Platform don't even know their own history (American or party) or their own law. How the Hell did this thing make it out of committee?

Idiots. It's time the Republican party just gave up pretending to care about America.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

And I'd really expect them to be the first to harp on "In God We Trust" too.

That's appallingly ignorant

[ideaphile.livejournal.com]

But it isn't stupid. It doesn't show an inability to reason from cause to effect or a stubborn refusal to recognize the nature of reality.

It wouldn't take you 30 seconds to start finding extraordinarily stupid claims in the platform of the Democratic Party. Both party platforms are full of this kind of thing.

Why don't you spend your time writing about these problems instead? It'd be more difficult than all this overly casual sniping over irrelevant trivia, but I'd think it would be more rewarding, and at least some serious commentary might have some serious effect.

(Incidentally, IS there a platform for the Democratic Party this year? http://www.democrats.org/platform goes to the 2004 platform. There are plenty of drafts of a 2008 platform but I couldn't find anything final.)

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[sianmink.livejournal.com]

They probably think it's the same thing.

Stunning lack of knowledge of our own history, it's not much of a stretch to add in a stunning lack of understanding of Latin.

[duskwuff.livejournal.com]

Debatable (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E_pluribus_unum). While the US didn't have a national motto until "In God We Trust" was adopted in 1956, "E pluribus unum" was used as an unofficial motto before then.

[elfs.livejournal.com]

It is not debatable that whoever wrote the Republican National Party Platform did not know the law.

A bit of a digression

[ideaphile.livejournal.com]

I was curious where "E pluribus Unum" came from, and how it got onto our money. It turns out that Congress wrote it into the law in 1782 defining the Great Seal of the United States, and did call it a "motto."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Seal_of_the_United_States
http://memory.loc.gov/ll/lljc/022/0300/03490339.gif

Certainly not "our national motto," though, so this has no bearing on the issue at hand.

(Though after review of that section of the Republican platform, I don't think it was making any attempt to identify the legal motto of the country. Certainly the sentence would have been more correct if it had said "a commitment to E Pluribus Unum, one of our national mottos," or possibly "a commitment to our traditional motto" or "our first national motto," but in my many years in the publishing industry I know how infelicitous phrasings can creep into heavily edited documents even when everyone involved is being careful and reasonable.)

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[jordan179.livejournal.com]

It is not debatable that whoever wrote the Republican National Party Platform did not know the law.

I argue that they almost certainly did know the law, since politicians are mostly lawyers.

Wow, guess it was "debatable."

Re: That's appallingly ignorant

[jordan179.livejournal.com]

Why don't you spend your time writing about these problems instead? It'd be more difficult than all this overly casual sniping over irrelevant trivia, but I'd think it would be more rewarding, and at least some serious commentary might have some serious effect.

Because then someone would point out the far more serious ignorance of history displayed by Obama in his famous statement that FDR, Truman and JFK were all not afraid to negotiate with America's enemies and thus achieve diplomatic success? Among other Democratic jawdroppers?

Re: That's appallingly ignorant

[ideaphile.livejournal.com]

But you know, one of the major themes of international politics in the 20th century was the increasing reliance on diplomacy, and I think that worked out okay.

I don't know what specific statement you're referring to. Obama had that line about how it's wise to be willing to talk with your enemies, but that doesn't sound like the same thing, and anyway, that's a sensible statement.

Of course, sometimes it's a thin line between negotiation and threats, and Obama seems to forget that. Was Kennedy negotiating with or threatening the Soviets during the Cuban Missile Crisis? I could go either way.

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