the eternal

You should come!! And everyone...bring booze!

My thoughts? This would be a great idea. If there's one thing we can count on from a group of of faux-goth misfits is that NO ONE on this board would be too thin skinned to accept criticism. Also Lady Gaga is a paragon of originality and For cinematic greatness, all I have to say is two words: Michael Bay Unfortunately, you're the one person on this board that still hasn't figured out where that line of appropriate/way-too-personal lies. Although, I admit I would pay to see all the DJs on the board roast each other. I'll bring the folding chair.

UNOFFICIALLY (as in it's not post-confirmed) ---Pest will bring food because he kicks ass with his cooking ---Megalicious is coming ---Since Slogo can't make it, Jessika Fxckin rocks will make his juicy balls that have graced many a function.

OH that reminds me SOMEONE commit to bring a shit ton of pop Who is out there that doesn't know how to cook????? BRING POP!!! STILL NEED Stuffing (bread/cornbread stuffing---maybe with onions & celery) Homemade turkey gravy Cranberry jello mold. Big tossed salad--OK I'll take it in my butt. Just bring it!

THIS IS NOT A...A http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6aumejrcEHs That's not it. Oh yeah. THIS IS NOT A BREW AND VIEW POST!!! BUT it's close. WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 17TH As a board, we are all meeting at Cinemark 16 in Warren,at 12 mile and Dequindre, at 7:15P. Now since it's located in the Universal Mall FIRST we pick out our favorite weave and TCB no lye relaxer THEN, once we got our hair did, AT 7:30P we go inside the movie theater and see LET ME IN Based on the Swedish film Let the Right One In (which was fucking amazing, btw) it's about a bullied young boy that befriends a young female vampire and the complications of keeping low key while draining the people in the area and restraining her urge to protect him. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nsWJt5tNLKg Like I said, the original was awesome, and I heard this American remake is fantastic too! It stars Hit Girl from the movie Kick Ass LET ME IN WEDNESDAY 11/17 7:15P Cinemark Movies 16 28600 Dequindre Warren, MI 48092 ONLY $1.50!!!

And Lindsay Lohan in a roleshe was born to play... a blitzed out whore!

OK we're definitely going! Anyone that says that they can't go because of City Club is crazy! The party's at 5P and City doesn't get going until midnight. bean just told me she's dying to wear a Christmas sweater! I might come as Chanukah Harry

How is it that one of the best goth songs is by classic rockers? Next thing you'll tell me that Charles Manson was motivated by a Beatles song. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BhHTA6Gzn0

This is turning out great! Let's keep it coming! New people are welcome you know. STILL NEED Stuffing (bread/cornbread stuffing---maybe with onions & celery) Homemade turkey gravy Cranberry jello mold. Big tossed salad--preferably on the table not in my butt Don't forget the Spanish Rice!

That can be arranged.

That's true. We have racist Dixiecrats who in the middle of the 20th century became Republicans (in response to Truman's desegregation of the army) and then, in light of this Richard Nixon using the "southern strategy" to get racists to join the GOP, and get him elected. Reagan used it in the 80s as well. ------------------ Although the phrase "Southern strategy" is often attributed to Nixon political strategist Kevin Phillips, he did not originate it,[1] but merely popularized it.[2] In an interview included in a 1970 New York Times article, he touched on its essence: From now on, the Republicans are never going to get more than 10 to 20 percent of the Negro vote and they don't need any more than that... but Republicans would be shortsighted if they weakened enforcement of the Voting Rights Act. The more Negroes who register as Democrats in the South, the sooner the Negrophobe whites will quit the Democrats and become Republicans. That's where the votes are. Without that prodding from the blacks, the whites will backslide into their old comfortable arrangement with the local Democrats.[3] --------------- There's a reason why most (as in 75-95%) African Americans will vote Democrat, even when it's this guy And a few minorities elected to Congress aren't going to change that. But I DO appreciate many in the GOP leadership trying to move past this.

Oh, please let it be Machine's new handle since getting banned. It's no fun when you don't have a guy so far right wing he likens gays to pedophiles, around.

WE'RE IN! IF ANY OF YOU DON'T COME, NUNS WILL GO TO YOUR HOUSE AND KILL YOU!

Ok so this is hilarious. I was PMing you, telling you to post, WHILE you were posting. LET ME KNOW WHAT I CAN DO TO MAKE THIS HAPPEN with the meat and the supplies.

I refuse to commit until you post a yay or nay on the Thanksgiving thread. (I couldn't remember if you have family this year) You are explicitly mentioned on that thread and yet you don't visit. You do naaaht. DGN THANKSGIVING THREAD I mean, Tszura.

That's awesome! While you're at it, can you get Marc and Stormknight to post so I know they're coming with grill, meatloaf, and ribs?

Mormon judge convicted him of genocide. 4 million sperm. Sasha Grey's an accomplice.

Am I the only one looking at the index where it says The Republicans took the ho... What did they do with her after taking her? Read her the constitution? Quiz her to see if she could be a good mama grizzly in the making? Unzip their pants to show her all the unnecessary pork that is clogging up the bills in Washington?

Classic movies are awesome! That's because it is one of the best movies ever. Ok here's a funny thing. I wanted to completely hate the remake--Let Me in. Then I read the reviews and it sounded amazing. So, of course it bombed at the box office. WTF is wrong with people? Casablanca is the perfect movie. Every line that's said you just sit there and think, wow. So intelligent, but hilarious. You can't believe how subtle and yert cutting the movie can be. I love subtle sarcasm. That's probably why I havent gotten banned. I dont just say blatantly nasty and confrontational shit like some people. It takes more effort, but its always funny and more enjoyable. I could watch that movie 100 times. CITIZEN KANE--Now, Nocker, yohaven'tdon'tu're a cinephile with leanings towards darker cinema, so you were set up for failure immediately. Like me, you probably read a million times how the movie would change your life, all the secrets to the universe would be revealed, and you'd have a cinegasm only to be rivaled by reaching nirvana while sucking your own penis. Ok, maybe we read different tomes. But still it wasn't my favorite, but I still thought it was interesting and beautifully shot. The opening scene alone was better than Paranormal Activity, which I know isn't saying much, but still. I liked it a lot. I just wish it wasn't sold to me as the reason for living. So, in summary, Spook, I think it's great, but no matter what you think, you still need see Citizen Kane, if for no other reason, to say that you saw it...like Two Girls 1 Cup Last Movie I Saw---Sophie's Choice. Wow! Holy shit. What a movie. Despite having a lot of talking and being slow-paced (well except for the scenes when Kevin Kline is jumping around the room coked up swearing) it's thoroughly engrossing. And the "choice" scene is one of the most powerful scenes I will ever see in my entire life. That, and it's the only time you get to see Meryl Streep say "You look very nice, you're wearing your cocksucker" (well the only time except for All about Meryl featuring her first all anal three way with Nina Hartley and Marilyn Chambers---She's never stretched that much for a role before) ---------------- You know with terms like "torture-porn" for liking movies that feature nothing but torture, I wonder if there's a term for Jews that watch Holocaust-themed films

I can't believe Gaf and COTN agree with me. See this is one of those issues where the rank and file don't have the same view as the leadership. When the Suupreme Court gutted McCain Feingold allowing anonymous money to flow through to campaigns, it was something like 80% of the public was against, but the GOP leadership was for it. As for the unions, if they don't want to tell their members that their money is going to Obama, fuck em. The point of a union is to represent and support their workers, and when you don't represent the interest of your workers, you don't deserve to represent them.

I just edited the first two posts, and will continue to do so as necessary esp the list of food items needed until we have everything. As newly stated in the first couple posts, kids are welcome to Thanksgiving dinner, but Fangsgiving will feature drinking, inappropriate language, and R/-unrated movies BAD BAD R/-unrated movies so they should go. As far as teenage kids, I'll leave that up to parents' discretion.

AND DON'T FORGET!!! FANGSGIVING--PART DEUX AFTER your shitty, restrained, forced family gathering starts to wind down. AND your racist uncle finishes talking about sending Obama back to Kenya AND your mom's done asking why can't you be normal GTFO! And come here!!!!!!!!!!! BRING YOUR GOOD LEFTOVERS! (and pick up some booze!!) LEAVE THE KIDS BEHIND! As for the ones that came for Thanksiving, I'll send em packing at 9-ish if they hadn't already left, by putting on C-SPAN I feel that it is the parent's responsibility to corrupt their children on their own time. This will be a drama-free zone ALL NIGHT! That's the whole point. There's the family you're stuck with and the family you choose. As we had last year, there will be two levels of action! Downstairs will be for the movie nerds. Upstairs will be for bad background movies, fattening desserts and a bit o partying. Warriors have guts Santa Killers have all week to wait for... Tommy Wiseau has the Room And of course Wolfman's got nards! BUT MOST IMPORTANTLY, there will be a triumphant return of the ONLY known anti-drug, Christian, Thanksgiving exploitation film ever made. If you have to see one movie with a turkey-headed man that goes Gobble Gobble before it kills you...see Blood Freak Don't feel afraid if you're new or don't yet know how amazing beanternal is. Or you do KNOW and our sexiness intimidates you DON'T WORRY When you come here, you're family. And everyone will say Hi. ESPECIALLY if you bring food.

ONE YEAR AGO I WROTE THIS POST So, bean and I were planning in sitting at home with a $.48 Banquet Turkey Pot Pie on Thanksgiving, and then I thought--- DGN THANKSGIVING! We could do a potluck, where each person brings something. Or if you can't bring something, yourself. Or if you can't bring yourself, have someone else do it. WHAT DO YOU ALL THINK??? Anyone else alone on Thanksgiving? Want to get together? Maybe find a Thanksgiving horror movie or some other flick to watch? We'll get a turkey--you'd get the rest. ------------------------------------------------ It was fucking epic! WE were completely jammed, and it was delicious, so we're doing it again! DGN THANKSGIVING! Thursday November 25th 5P Kids welcome. If we run out of food we can throw one of them on the grill!) (Just remember, I like the dark meat)MENU Turkey ---the eternal Cranberry jello ---the eternal Water ---Mother Nature Mashed Potatoes ---bean French Silk Pie ---Taysteewonderbunny & Spook Corn Pudding ---Taysteewonderbunny & Spook Gr Bean Casserole--Prick Deviled Eggs ---Prick Pumpkin Pie ---Prick Pumpkin Cheesecake-Tyger Meat Loaf ---Stormknight Ribs ---Stormknight Crescent Rolls ---Stormknight Crack Cookies ---Stormknight Grill ---Mstrbeau 7-layer tortilla---Tszura & Nightgaunt pie spanish rice---Tszura & Nightgaunt Amazing??? meat ---Pestilence Turkey Gravy ---CatsEye Soda ---The Gimp and of course Schwetty Balls ---Jesika Fkin Rocks NEED Stuffing (bread/cornbread stuffing---maybe with onions & celery) Big tossed salad--preferably on the table not in my butt DINNER GUEST CHOICE (if you think you can make something better than what's above) PLUS I NEED THESE to make a return appearance ---return food accounted for And whatever the hell anyone else brought last year, even that was just your own bad selves. YOU NOT NEEDED--- That disgustingly sweet concoction made with mashed sweet potatoes, pineapple and melted crusty marshmallows on the top. Yams Sweet potatoes---Leave em at home. My house I say YES to deviled eggs and NO to sweet potatoes or yams I put out the call and like Gothic Warriors, you heeded it Now it's time again http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u05Qot_yh9c

Um, first of all, it's downright painful sometimes to read the dynamic duo of conservatives, because you both take yourself so seriously in the political forum, you completely miss satire. Please, for the love of g-d, don't ever EVER read the Onion. Your heads will explode. Those earlier signs were funny because they were poking fun at some of the far right signs held up at tea party rallies, NOT promoting the same thing. Now, in fairness, you used to see signs like those FROM the far left. HERE'S THE DIFFERENCE Those lefties, mostly anarchists and socialists, were and always will be marginalized and distanced from by the mainstream left and Democratic Party. The wacko fringe OF the tea party are NOT dismissed. In fact some were running this year! The GOP is smart though. Always has been. They waited for the tea party to grow. Energize people. They realized that most tea partiers are normal folk. Then, when it got big enough, they funneled tons of money into the movement, and then let about a third of them, the slicker more mainstream ones, get elected while taking out the other 2/3. Without the tea party, the GOP wouldn't have the enthusiasm it does. They were a very good thing. But the American people don't share all the same values with them. Which is why there'll need to be compromise, which is COMPLETELY anathema to the whole movement. The American people on the one hand, are frustrated that ---they never understood what was happening with the health care overhaul (If any of you call it Obamacare, which is wrong on so many levels, I encourage everyone on this board to bring back the term "teabagger") and ---they feel Obama dropped the ball on job creation Tea Party +1 BUT, the Americans ALSO love their social security and their Medicare (BIG GOVERNMENT PROGRAMS, BABY) and feel that Wall Street should be regulated so corporations can't get away with murder. (sorry invisible hand of the marketplace, you've been jacking yourself off one too many times at the expense of your citizens) Dems +1 There is a middle ground but I don't think for a second, the new Congress will take it. COTN--It's tough to read your posts, because they contradict your personality. You're a pretty understanding moderate guy, but if I close my eyes I would swear your posts are coming straight from Glenn Becks mouth. The idea that Pelosi is the devil, and that Obama is evil, and that all Democrats want to do is tax and punish Americans is the kind of rhetoric that is the problem in political discourse. It has squelched compromise and communication. Can't we imagine for ONE FUCKING SECOND that just maybe we have two differing schools of thought and both come from a pure place, and that BOTH Boehner AND Pelosi, the Dems AND the GOP want whats best for this country but have different paths to get us there. Compromise is dead and the next two years will be nothing but gridlock and fingerpointing. This is the best thing that could have happened to Obama. Now he'll have someone to blame when nothing happens. As for the Constitution, just because you hold it up while dressing like you're attending the country's oldest Halloween party, doesn't mean you are the #1 authority on the constitution. One of your golden girls, former witch and anti-masturbation activist Christine ODonnell hasn't even read the 1st amendment. This is the unofficial end of my post but, if any of you are bored, here's a Newsweek article on the new constitutional "scholars". America’s Holy Writ Tea Party evangelists claim the Constitution as their sacred text. Why that’s wrong. by Andrew RomanoOctober 17, 2010 Win McNamee / Getty Images Tea Partiers hold up the Constitution on Tax Day in Washington. Since winning the Republican senate primary in Delaware last month, Christine O’Donnell has not had trouble getting noticed. When the Tea Party icon admitted to “dabbl[ing] into witchcraft” as a youngster, the press went wild. When she revealed that she was “not a witch” after all, the response was rabid. O’Donnell has fudged her academic credentials, defaulted on her mortgage, sued a former employer, and campaigned against masturbation, and her efforts have been rewarded with round-the-clock coverage. Yet few observers seem to have given her views on the United States Constitution the same level of consideration. Which is too bad, because O’Donnell’s Tea Party take on our founding text is as unusual as her stance on autoeroticism. Except that it could actually have consequences. Win McNamee / Getty Images Inside the Tea Party Inside the Tea Party Last month, the candidate spoke to 2,000 right-wing activists at the annual Values Voter Summit in Washington, D.C. She wore a black suit and pearls, and swept on stage to the sound of Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’.” Most of the speech was unremarkable: a laundry list of conservative platitudes. But near the end she veered into stranger—and more revealing—territory. O’Donnell once told voters that her “No. 1” qualification for the Senate is an eight-day course she took at a conservative think tank in 2002. Now she was revisiting its subject: the Constitution. The Founders’ masterpiece, O’Donnell said, isn’t just a legal document; it’s a “covenant” based on “divine principles.” For decades, she continued, the agents of “anti-Americanism” who dominate “the D.C. cocktail crowd” have disrespected the hallowed document. But now, finally, in the “darker days” of the Obama administration, “the Constitution is making a comeback.” Like the “chosen people of Israel,” who “cycle[d] through periods of blessing and suffering,” the Tea Party has rediscovered America’s version of “the Hebrew Scriptures” and led the country into “a season of constitutional repentance.” Going forward, O’Donnell declared, Republicans must champion the “American values” enshrined in our sacred text. “There are more of us than there are of them,” she concluded. By now, O’Donnell’s rhetoric should sound familiar. In part that’s because her fellow Tea Party patriots—Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, the guy at the rally in the tricorn hat—also refer to the Constitution as if it were a holy instruction manual that was lost, but now, thanks to them, is found. And yet the reverberations go further back than Beck. The last time America elected a new Democratic president, in 1992, the Republican Party’s then-dominant insurgent group used identical language to describe the altogether different document that defined their cause and divided them from the heretics in charge: the Bible. The echoes of the religious right in O’Donnell’s speech—the Christian framework, the resurrection narrative, the “us vs. them” motif, the fixation on “values”—aren’t coincidental. From a legal perspective, there’s a case to be made that O’Donnell’s argument is inaccurate. The Constitution is a relentlessly secular document that never once mentions God or Jesus. And nothing in recent jurisprudence suggests that the past few decades of governing have been any less constitutional than the decades that preceded them. But the Tea Party’s language isn’t legal, and neither is its logic. It’s moral: right vs. wrong. What O’Donnell & Co. are really talking about is culture war. When Barack Obama took office, experts rushed to declare an end to the old battles over race, religion, and reproductive rights—whether because of Obama’s alleged healing powers, or the Great Recession, or both. But these analyses ignored an important reality: at heart, the culture wars were really never about anything as specific as abortion or gay marriage. Instead, as James Davison Hunter wrote in Culture Wars, the book that popularized the term, the conflicts of the 1990s represented something bigger: “a struggle over…who we have been...who we are now, and...who we, as a nation, will aspire” to be. Such conflicts, Hunter explained, pit “orthodox” Americans, who like the way things were, against their more “progressive” peers, who are comfortable with the way things are becoming. Shane Bevel / AP PHOTOS: A History of America's Conservative Movements A History of American Conservative Movements For the forces of orthodoxy, the election of a black, urban, liberal Democrat with a Muslim name wasn’t a panacea at all; it was a provocation. So when the recession hit, and new economic anxieties displaced the lingering social concerns of the Clinton era, political fundamentalists sought refuge in a more relevant scripture—one that could still be made to accommodate the simpler, surer past they longed for but happened to dwell on taxes and government instead of sinning and being saved. The Constitution was waiting. Today, Tea Party activists gather to recite the entire document to each other. They demand that a wayward America return to its Constitutional roots. They even travel to Colonial Williamsburg and ask the actor playing George Washington how to topple a tyrannical government. In short, they take their Constitution worship very, very seriously. The question now is whether the rest of us should as well. Contemporary Constitution worshipers claim that they’ve distilled their entire political platform—lower taxes, less regulation, minimal federal government—directly from the original text of the founding document. Any overlap with mainstream conservatism is incidental, they say; they’re simply following the Framers’ precise instructions. If this were true, it would be quite the political coup: oppose us, the Tea Party could claim, and you’re opposing James Madison. But the reality is that Tea Partiers engage with the Constitution in such a selective manner, and for such nakedly political purposes, that they’re clearly relying on it more as an instrument of self-affirmation and cultural division than a source of policy inspiration. In legal circles, constitutional fundamentalism is nothing new. For decades, scholars and judges have debated how the founding document should factor into contemporary legal proceedings. Some experts believe in a so-called living Constitution—a set of principles that, while admirable and enduring, must be interpreted in light of present-day social developments in order to be properly upheld. Others adhere to originalism, which is the idea that the ratifiers’ original meaning is fixed, knowable, and clearly articulated in the text of the Constitution itself. While conservatives generally prefer the second approach, many disagree over how it should be implemented—including the Supreme Court’s most committed originalists, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. Thomas sympathizes with a radical version of originalism known as the Constitution in Exile. In his view, the Supreme Court of the 1930s unwisely discarded the 19th-century’s strict judicial limits on Federal power, and the only way to resurrect the “original” Constitution—and regain our unalienable rights—is by rolling back the welfare state, repealing regulations, and perhaps even putting an end to progressive taxation. In contrast, Scalia is willing to respect precedent—even though it sometimes departs from his understanding of the Constitution’s original meaning. His caution reflects a simple reality: that upending post-1937 case law and reversing settled principles would prove extremely disruptive, both in the courts and society at large. As Cass Sunstein, a centrist legal scholar at the University of Chicago who now serves in the Obama administration, has explained, “many decisions of the Federal Communications Commission, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, and possibly the National Labor Relations Board would be [ruled] unconstitutional” if Thomas got his way. Social Security could be eliminated. Same goes for the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Reserve. Individual states might be allowed to establish official religions. Even minimum-wage and maximum-hour laws would be jeopardized. Tea Partiers tend to sound more like Thomas than Scalia. Every weekday on Fox News, Glenn Beck—“the most highly regarded individual among Tea Party supporters,” according to a recent poll—takes to his schoolroom chalkboard to rail against progressives like Woodrow Wilson and Franklin D. Roosevelt. “They knew they had to separate us from our history,” he says, “to be able to separate us from our Constitution and God.” In Beck’s view, progressives forsook the faithful Christian Founders and forced the country to adopt a slew of unconstitutional measures that triggered our long decline into Obama-era totalitarianism: the Federal Reserve System, Social Security, the graduated federal income tax. True patriots, according to Beck, favor a pre-progressive vision of the United States. When Nevada Senate nominee Sharron Angle says we need to “phase out” Social Security and Medicare; when Alaska Senate nominee Joe Miller asserts that unemployment benefits are “unconstitutional”; when West Virginia Senate nominee John Raese declares that the minimum wage should “absolutely” be abolished; when Kentucky Senate nominee Rand Paul questions the legality of the Civil Rights Act of 1964; when Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann claims that Obama’s new health-insurance law violates the Constitution; and when various Tea Party candidates say they want to repeal the amendments that triggered the federal income tax and the direct election of senators—this is the vision they’re promoting. At times, the Tea Party can seem like a popularized, politicized offshoot of the Constitution in Exile movement. Over the years critics have lodged dozens of objections to originalism—the disagreements among the Founders; the preservation of slavery in the final product; the inclusion of an amendment process—and they apply to the Tea Party’s interpretation of the Constitution, too. But at least originalism is a rational, consistent philosophy. The real problem with the Tea Party’s brand of Constitution worship isn’t that it’s too dogmatic. It’s that it isn’t dogmatic enough. In recent months, Tea Party candidates have behaved in ways that belie their public commitment to combating progressivism. They’ve backed measures that blatantly contradict their originalist mission. And they’ve frequently misunderstood or misrepresented the Constitution itself. In May, for example, Paul told a Russian television station that America “should stop” automatically granting citizenship to the native-born children of illegal immigrants. Turns out his suggestion would be unconstitutional, at least according to the 14th Amendment (1868) and a pair of subsequent Supreme Court decisions. A few weeks later, Paul said he’d like to prevent federal contractors from lobbying Congress—a likely violation of their First Amendment right to redress. In July, Alaska’s Miller told ABC News that unemployment benefits are not “constitutionally authorized.” Reports later revealed that his wife claimed unemployment in 2002. The list goes on. Most Tea Partiers claim that the 10th Amendment, which says “the powers not delegated” to the federal government are “reserved to the states,” is proof that the Framers would’ve balked at today’s bureaucracy. What they don’t mention is that James Madison refused a motion to add the word “expressly” before “delegated” because “there must necessarily be admitted powers by implication.” In last week’s Delaware Senate debate, O’Donnell was asked to name a recent Supreme Court case she disagreed with. “Oh, gosh,” she stammered, unable to cite a single piece of evidence to support her Constitution in Exile talking points. “I know that there are a lot, but, uh, I’ll put it up on my Web site, I promise you.” Angle has said that “government isn’t what our Founding Fathers put into the Constitution”—even though establishing a federal government with the “Power To lay and collect Taxes” to “provide for the common Defence and general Welfare” is one of the main reasons the Founders created a Constitution to replace the weak, decentralized Articles of Confederation. In 2008 Palin told Katie Couric that the Constitution does, in fact, guarantee “an inherent right to privacy,” à la Roe v. Wade, but added that “individual states…can handle an issue like that.” Unfortunately, Palin’s hypothesis would only be viable in a world without the Fourteenth Amendment, which gave Washington sole responsibility for safeguarding all constitutional rights. Then there are the proposed amendments. In the current Congress, conservatives like Michele Bachmann have suggested more than 40 additions to the Constitution: a flag-desecration amendment; a balanced-budget amendment; a “parental rights” amendment; a supermajority-to-raise-taxes amendment; anti-abortion amendment; an anti-gay-marriage amendment; and so on. None of these revisions has anything to do with the document’s original meaning. The truth is that for all their talk of purity, politicians like Palin, Angle, and Miller don’t seem to be particularly concerned with matching their actual positions to the Constitution they profess to worship. For them, the sacred text serves a higher purpose—and in the end, that purpose isn’t hard to pinpoint. Since the earliest days of the republic, Americans have, like the Tea Partiers, spoken of the Constitution in religious terms. In 1792, Madison wrote that “common reverence…should guarantee, with a holy zeal, these political scriptures from every attempt to add to or diminish from them.” George Washington’s Farewell Address included a plea that the Constitution “be sacredly maintained.” In his Lyceum speech of 1838, Abraham Lincoln cited the document as the source of “the political religion of the nation” and demanded that its laws be “religiously observed.” In 1968, Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black called the Constitution his “legal bible,” and a few years later, during Richard Nixon’s impeachment hearings, Texas Rep. Barbara Jordan testified that her “faith in the Constitution is whole.” But the similarity between these figures and the Tea Partiers ends at the level of language. For leaders like Lincoln and Jordan, the Constitution is a symbol “that suppl[ies] an overarching sense of unity even in a society otherwise riddled with conflict,” as sociologist Robin Williams once wrote. It is an integrative force—the cornerstone of our civil religion. The Tea Partiers belong to a different tradition—a tradition of divisive fundamentalism. Like other fundamentalists, they seek refuge from the complexity and confusion of modern life in the comforting embrace of an authoritarian scripture and the imagined past it supposedly represents. Like other fundamentalists, they see in their good book only what they want to see: confirmation of their preexisting beliefs. Like other fundamentalists, they don’t sweat the details, and they ignore all ambiguities. And like other fundamentalists, they make enemies or evildoers of those who disagree with their doctrine. In the 1930s, the American Liberty League opposed FDR’s New Deal by flogging its version of the Constitution with what historian Frederick Rudolph once described as “a worshipful intensity.” In the 1960s, the John Birch Society imagined a vast communist conspiracy in similar terms. In 1992 conservative activists formed what came to be known as the Constitution Party—Sharron Angle was once a member—in order to “restore American jurisprudence to its Biblical foundations and to limit the federal government to its Constitutional boundaries.” Today, Angle asserts that “separation of church and state is an unconstitutional doctrine,” and Palin claims that “the Constitution…essentially acknowledg[es] that our unalienable rights…come from God.” The point is always the same: to suggest that the Constitution, like the Bible, decrees what’s right and wrong (rather than what’s legal and illegal), and to insist that only the fundamentalists and their ilk can access its truths. We are moral, you are not; we represent America, you do not. Theirs is the rallying cry of culture war. The Tea Partiers are right to revere the Constitution. It’s a remarkable, even miraculous document. But there are many Constitutions: the Constitution of 1789, of 1864, of 1925, of 1936, of 1970, of today. Where O’Donnell & Co. go wrong is in insisting that their idealized document is the country’s one true Constitution, and that dissenters are somehow un-American. By putting the Constitution front and center, the Tea Party has reinvigorated a long-simmering argument over who we are and who we want to be. That’s great. But to truly honor the Founders’ spirit, they have to make room for actual debate. As usual, Thomas Jefferson put it best. In a letter to a friend in 1816, he mocked “men [who] look at constitutions with sanctimonious reverence, and deem them like the arc of the covenant, too sacred to be touched”; “who ascribe to the men of the preceding age a wisdom more than human, and suppose what they did to be beyond amendment.” “Let us follow no such examples, nor weakly believe that one generation is not as capable as another of taking care of itself, and of ordering its own affairs,” he concluded. “Each generation is as independent as the one preceding, as that was of all which had gone before.” Amen.