Student Loans Lead To Holocausts. Or Something.

The latest incredibly-inane-Tea-Party-statement-du-jour from south of the border originates with a gentleman by the name of Roscoe Bartlett:

“Not that it’s not a good idea to give students loans; it certainly is a good idea to give them loans,” Bartlett said. “But if you can ignore the Constitution to do something good today, tomorrow you will be ignoring the Constitution to do something bad. You could. There are more people in our, in America today of German ancestry than any other [inaudible]. The Holocaust that occurred in Germany — how in the heck could that happen? And when you start down the wrong road, it can be a very slippery slope.”

Now, I’m not going to comment on the flagrant abuse of Godwin’s law here, because frankly that has become pretty much par for the course among politicians who don’t use the Internet. What I am going to comment upon is the bizarre logic with regard to the Constitution.

Mr. Bartlett seems to be treating the Constitution here the way that the Bible is often treated. What I mean by this is not that he’s regarding it as something which he needs to obey regardless of his personal preferences (a point upon which he is correct), but because he seems to be reading things into the Constitution which aren’t actually there and then acting as if they’re iron-clad.

This kind of ‘logic’ is surprisingly common among Biblical ‘literalists’ who, in spite of their protestations, have an entire conception of Christianity seems based around things which were made-up centuries later.

About thevenerablecorvex

I have the heart of a poet, the brain of a theoretical physicist, and the wingspan of an albatross. I am also notable for my humility.

View all posts by thevenerablecorvex →

2 Responses to Student Loans Lead To Holocausts. Or Something.

Lindsay says:

September 8, 2012 at 1:40 am

A lot of Tea Party/Tenth Amendment types are of the opinion that all omissions from the Constitution are purposeful — that anything the Founders don’t mention is omitted not because the country has grown, its demographics have changed, and technology and economics have remade the world several times over in the 220-some years it’s been since the Constitution was written in 1787, but because the Founders thought of all those things and rejected them as being Too Much Government.

There are interesting parallels between strict-constructionist conservatives’ attitudes toward the founding of the USA and Christian ideas about the Fall of man … both postulate an ideal state from which we have regrettably declined by our moral laxity. I’m sure that even the bit about the Fall is an idea older than the Bible, though … it seems like people have always looked back on some lost Golden Age or other.

- thevenerablecorvex says:
  
  September 8, 2012 at 2:04 am
  
  “… it seems like people have always looked back on some lost Golden Age or other.”
  
  I’ve always just assumed that they were secretly just wishing for their own childhood and projecting to the res of the world.