Saturday, August 06, 2016

After Trump-Khan dust-up, pocket Constitution climbs bestseller list — but it's not the version you'd think

The L.A. Times reports:
Though Donald Trump’s ongoing feud with the father of a U.S. soldier killed in Iraq is being credited with boosting sales of a pocket edition of the Constitution, the version being snapped up by Amazon customers is actually the one favored by armed militias and published by a right-wing religious group.

Khizr Khan, whose Muslim son died saving fellow soldiers in 2004, waved a different pocket edition at the Democratic National Convention while dramatically asking the Republican presidential candidate if he’d ever really read it.

The gesture – and Trump’s refusal to let the issue fade – seemed to have inspired a run on Amazon’s 52-page “Pocket Constitution,” a $1 reprint (“identical in spelling, capitalization and punctuation”) of the supreme law of the United States, complete with the Bill of Rights and Declaration of Independence.

On the same Amazon page, buyers are also invited to purchase a copy of “Great Again” by Donald J. Trump, “a blueprint for how to Make America Great Again.”

Published by the National Center for Constitutional Studies (NCCS) in Idaho, the little Constitution book became Amazon’s biggest seller in recent days, outdistancing even the new Harry Potter release. (The pocket book slipped to second place Friday when Amazon temporarily sold out of all its copies).

Some constitutional scholars say that a number of quotations in the NCCS version are either deliberate alterations or taken out of context. The underlying message is that the U.S. is a Christian nation not intended to be ruled by a single government.
Note the liberal hysteria of "taken out of context". After all, America was founded by Protestant Christians.