I’m off to Iraq and packing what I hope will be a powerful weapon for good, 500 copies of the pocket edition of the American Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States of America. They don’t provide a template for an Iraqi constitutional order, but they may help to provide an inspiration for a regime of liberty in Iraq. My colleagues at Cato have produced a bilingual English-Spanish edition and I hope to arrange for a bilingual English-Arabic edition soon, as well.
Be sure to tear out the pages with the 16th, 17th, and 18th amendments (as well as the 21st) before you hand them out.
The Cato pocket editions are such wonderful tools. It would be interesting to see them distributed in places like China and Iran. I say leave in all the pages–you can learn a lot from ideological evolution.
Kudos to you Mr. Palmer, and good luck. I agree this needs to spread like wildfire across the Mideast.
I wish you the best, but I think you should be distributing those books among the US troops in Iraq. They are in sore need of understanding what it is they took an oath to uphold.
I don’t see much point in distributing English copies of the Declaration and Constitution among the Iraqis (although with only 500, I suppose you might find that many Iraqi who can read English.) An Arabic translation would make a lot more sense.
That’s a great idea! You’ll need all the extra toilet paper you can carry!
Oh what? Tell me there isn’t an institution in Amurka that doesn’t treat the constitution like toilet paper. And rightfully so, it’s usually printed on quality papyrus, very gentle on the netherparts.
On Cato Institutes delivering copies of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States of America overseas.
Every wonder when the people in this government in Washington talk about helping people (those put in control by guess who?) of the government in some far off place write a constitution they always speak of forming a Democratic government and to my knowledge have never offer to share the Constitution of these united States with anyone of them?
Considering (to those who know this) that the founders wanted nothing to do with a Democratic government one should ask, what’s wrong with this picture?
And still nothing about this contradiction shows up in print or on TV.
These people in foreign countries are not fools, but they find it profitable to talk to fools.
If Cato is serious in helping these people they should take the Constitution of the Confederacy rather than the present one as it corrected several errors that are in the present one that has allowed less than honorable men and women to obtain places of power in this country.
Considering that both the D’s and R’s in Congress by their actions and acts do nor consider their word their BOND and the Constitution only when it serves their purpose it can only be construed to be a mockery and most assuredly will not be taken seriously by either side wherever it is presented.
Johnnie Sancedio
Better to give them Thoreau’s Civil Disobedience
or Lysander Spooner’s Constitution of No
Authority.
The uS Constitution is a flawed document.
The two above are not.