Declaration of Ignorance: How the Tea Party Misunderstands the Constitution, the Founding Fathers, and the Supreme Court

A Supreme Court historian and bestselling author counters activists on the right who try to claim the Constitution as a wholly conservative document Tea party favorite Christine O'Donnell, running for the Senate, famously floored an audience by questioning whether the First Amendment called for a separation of church and state. The Republican-run House vowed to provide a constitutional justification for every bill they passed, and then passed their first bill without doing it. What's going on here? Peter Irons explains what many conservative activists think is in the Constitution, what's actually in it, and why there are so many strong emotions and strange ideas about it. Uses some of the most outrageous and controversial conservative claims to explore the way the Constitution relates to hot-button issues, including the separation of church and state, the new health care law, states' rights, immigration, and limits on the size of the Federal government Separates myth from reality, setting the record straight on the distortions and misrepresentations of the Constitution propagated by conservative Republicans and Tea Party activists Gives insights into why radical activists have come to worship the Constitution and use it to promote their agenda in a misinformed or uninformed way