[cross-posted at Liberty & Power]
I just saw Lynne Cheney interviewed on the Daily Show, and she made the same argument as the one that Lindsey Graham made in January – that the lack of progress in Iraq is no big deal, since it also took the United States a fair while after the revolution to get a constitution.
What I said then still applies:
Sorry, no. The United States’ first constitution was adopted provisionally in 1777, and formally ratified in 1781. What is conventionally called “the” U.S. Constitution was the second one. … And if [Cheney] is suggesting that the level of civil chaos in Iraq today is comparable to that of the United States in the 1780s, I think the historians among us might venture a dissent.
The comment by Graham prompted this response from me.
Oops. The links didn’t make it. The article is here: https://www.fee.org/in_brief/default.asp?id=1065