I have to give endorsed Republican congressional candidate and Norwegian-American “anchor baby” Lee Byberg credit for zeal for the United States Constitution, if not for accuracy about its creation.
The McLeod County Chronicle reports in Lee Byberg wants to bring U.S. back to the Constitution:
Lee Byberg had an appropriate audience when he spoke to Tom Schoper’s American History class at GSL High School Friday.
Byberg, the Republican-endorsed candidate for U.S. Representative from Minnesota’s 7th District, wants the country to get back to the roots established when its Founding Fathers adopted the U.S. Constitution.
“I want to bring government back to the Constitution,” Byberg told the students. “Our leaders have ignored the Constitution.”
Byberg said the framers of the Constitution, in 1775, debated a new form of government, a change from the autocracies of Europe, which were based on the idea that the common man was incapable of making decisions regarding government.
The question the Constitution framers debated, Byberg said, was “can man govern himself – are we capable of self-government?”
As someone who spent near five years of her mid-to-late twenties working in The Library Company of Philadelphia and who has held the sacred documents of the revolution (or at least the homework assignments for it) in her hot little hands, I find this passage to be most fascinating.
The Library Company was used as a reference library by the First and Second Continental Congresses, as well as the Constitutional Convention, since the library was at that time located near the Carpenters and Independence Halls. The First Continental Congress met in 1774 to debate a response to the Coercive or Intolerable Acts. The Second Continental Congress began meeting in 1775 but didn’t write the Constitution, though the Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking Up Arms, Declaration of Independence and Articles of Confederation came out of this body.
The United States Constitutional Convention convened in 1787 to write and adopt the Constition, which was quickly ratified by the states; the Bill of Rights was added in 1791. Typically, distinctions are made when discussing the Signers of the Declaration and the Framers of the Constitution.
On the other hand, Byberg is quite correct in a very strict sense. Our nation’s leaders do ignore the Constitution that was debated in 1775. Yes, indeedie. Why, that rascally Ben Franklin at The Library Company of Philadelphia didn’t even record that sacred document as ever having been on file.
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