I can’t wait for Ross Douthat to address the "myth" that Republican Tea Party candidates are completely clueless about the U.S. Constitution, never mind huge chunks of US history. Perhaps he can start with Christine O’Donnell’s surprise at hearing that the doctrine of separation of church and state emanates from the First Amendment’s "establishment clause" and was put there at the insistence of early conservative Christians, among others.

My handy pocket version, a gift from the American Civil Liberties Union, a group whose function is to defend the freedoms and personal rights in the Constitution, quotes the 1st Amendment as follows:

AMENDMENT 1
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, or petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

The folks who first ratified the Constitution did so on the condition that this first and possibly most important of the Bill of Rights would be quickly added to the new framework to make sure that the new Government they were creating respected profound and essential constraints on its power to force any person what to believe, profess, write, publish and say. No one who doesn’t understand these foundational Amendments has any business exercising the powers of a U.S. Senator.

But here’s Delaware Tea Party-Republican Senate candidate, Christine O’Donnell, revealing in a debate she doesn’t have a clue. Via AP at HuffPost:

The exchange came in a debate before an audience of legal scholars and law students at Widener University Law School, as O’Donnell criticized Democratic nominee Chris Coons’ position that teaching creationism in public school would violate the First Amendment by promoting religious doctrine.

Coons said private and parochial schools are free to teach creationism but that "religious doctrine doesn’t belong in our public schools."

"Where in the Constitution is the separation of church and state?" O’Donnell asked him.

When Coons responded that the First Amendment bars Congress from making laws respecting the establishment of religion, O’Donnell asked: "You’re telling me that’s in the First Amendment?"

Her comments, in a debate aired on radio station WDEL, generated a buzz in the audience.

PBS has been running a fascinating history called God in America: How religious liberty shaped America. One of the episodes describes how the establishment and free exercise clauses of the 1st Amendment came to be.

It’s a long story, not merely of religious intolerance and persecution in Europe — the common school book version we learned as kids — but more importantly, a history of how Jews, Catholics, evangelist Christians, fundamentalists and others demanded the right to believe and worship as they chose even though the established Anglican Church in some American colonies often sought to suppress and exclude competing faiths.

For example, Baptists were not allowed to practice in some Southern colonies, because Anglicans used the power of the state to maintain a privileged and exclusive status. The Baptists sought Thomas Jefferson’s help securing religious freedom from oppression by the established church, which banned their meetings and ministries and imprisoned their early preachers.

Like all other faiths, Baptists needed not only the right to practice their religion, but an assurance that the Anglicans, or whatever religion dominated the state, did not use the power of the state to discriminate against them and other sects. And they particularly didn’t want the new federal government to establish or prefer a dominant religion, because the preferred sect would use government to harass, ban and even criminalize other sects. Making sure that no particular religion, no matter how popular, could use government that way became the basis for prohibiting the establishment of any religion — what came later to be called, the wall of separation of church and state.

Christine O’Donnell is hardly the only Tea Party candidate either ignorant of or confused by the U.S. Constitution while claiming to be staunch defenders. In fact, there’s very little about the Constitution that Tea Party candidates actually accept.

During this campaign, we’ve seen Tea Party/Republicans tell us they firmly believe in the Constitution, but they don’t mean that in the usual sense. They believe in the 1st Amendments’s free exercise clause, except when they’re telling Muslims where they can’t worship; the Establishment clause doesn’t mean anything and government can impose their preferred religious views in public schools; the First Amendment is fine for them, but not for you. Freedom of the press means private guards can arrest and handcuff reporters asking candidates questions in public buildings. The Second Amendment does not include the phrase, "a well regulated militia . . ."

They’ve never heard of the Fourth Amendment, because it’s okay for government to spy on its citizens without cause or court warrants. The Fifth Amendment apparently doesn’t preclude torture and forced confessions or using those in criminal trials, not does its due process clause apply to people or their private property; it apparently only protects corporations foreclosing on your house. And the Sixth Amendment’s right to a speedy trial doesn’t apply to people whom we label terrorists. The 14th Amendment as it applies to states is similarly up for grabs.

But it’s not just the Bill of Rights they selectively believe in. They don’t have a problem with the expansion of executive power way beyond it’s terms, as long as the President is not a Democrat, liberal or black man. The founders gave the Congress extensive powers, but the Tea Party/Republicans can’t stand the commerce clause, unless it’s interpreted by Justices who thought child labor laws were an infringement on the sanctity of contracts and free enterprise; they can’t find the "necessary and proper" clause and give no credit to the Preamble’s mandate to "promote the general welfare."

Having ignored some of the most important provisions of the Constitution, it then becomes possible for them to read into the 10th Amendment everything they oppose. Thus the federal government can’t protect workers, can’t set minimum wages, can’t regulate businesses when they pollute or commit fraud, can’t establish a system of national health insurance (even if purchased from private insurers), and can’t provide social security. But just in case government tries, let’s take the Senate out of democracy and repeal the 17th Amendment, and while we’re at it, let’s make sure the government can’t collect an income tax.

These people are free to advocate for a different form of government, but they shouldn’t be believed when they claim that what they prefer bears any resemblance to the U.S. Constitution. They just don’t believe in that.