If you want to buy a copy of the United State Constitution from Amazon, you will find this warning someone at Wilder Publishing, and someone else at Amazon, apparently thought was a good idea. And I quote:
"This book is a product of its time and does not reflect the same values as it would if it were written today. Parents might wish to discuss with their children how views on race, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, and interpersonal relations have changed since this book was written before allowing them to read this classic work."
The publisher, when asked about this said, "This is a generic warning that we put on all of our books. It was not our intention to tell people how to interpret the U.S. Constitution. We specialize in classic books and we were receiving complaints about the values depicted in some of the books. We wrote the disclaimer so that we could stop having to point out to readers that people held different values one hundred and two hundred years ago. It seems we're damned if we do and damned if we don't."
And the American IQ continues to sink into double digits. Classic books written hundreds of years ago reflecting values other than those we're familiar with today? What a revelation.
I'm now waiting for Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer to be removed from library shelves. How dare Mark Twain tell a story dealing with the historical time in which he lived. White washing a fence? Who does that? What does it all mean? There must be something sinister about it. He was clearly a racist.
For heaven's sake. A warning about reading one of the founding documents of our Republic to put it into historical context?
I'd like to suggest you pick one up at CATO.org without the warning and just read it for what it is: Brilliant, forward thinking and full of common sense. Something sorely lacking in today's world.
I'm back in the alternate universe.
Comments