Fareed Zakaria and the Meaning of American Citizenship

A video clip of Fareed Zakaria, the liberal CNN host, criticizing the Constitution in a recent interview by Charlie Rose has been going viral on the internet the past few days. In Zakaria’s own words:

“Whenever we have a problem we tend to think our Constitution is the best ever created in the history of the world, the people who created it were demi-gods, it never needs to be changed, we have the best political system in the world, the Senate is the marvel of the world. The truth is we have a pretty complicated, antiquated system that has gone pretty dysfunctional, the role of money has been so large, our tax system is a joke; you have a 14,000 page tax code which is basically institutionalized corruption…Why can’t we do best practices? … Are we willing to accept other people know a lot about what’s going on?”

Watching this clip, it struck me that a Voices of the Tea Party e-book on what it means to be an American citizen would be a worthy undertaking, especially in light of the fact that so many talking heads inflicted upon us by the mainstream media have a poor understanding of it.

Putting aside for a moment my irritation at once again being lectured by a talking head from CNN who knows little about America beyond the walls of the Ivy League, New York City, or Washington, D.C. ( Zakaria’s colleague Eliot Spitzer and his former colleague Christiane Amanpour come to mind), let’s examine the merits of his argument, and the authority with which he makes it.

You can read the rest of this article at Broadside Books' "Line of Fire" here.