Glenn Beck mangled US history pretty spectacularly in a health care rant yesterday, attacking Tom Harkin for saying that reform would make health care “an unalienable right.” Beck’s response: “Tom! I don’t know if you’ve read the Declaration of Independence, but you don’t have the power to grant people rights. In case you missed it, ‘all men are created equal, they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.’ Who the hell do you think you are Congress? You are not God.”
This is “staggeringly untrue,” notes Glynnis MacNicol of Mediaite, because granting rights is “exactly what Congress does. ” Congress can create rights through constitutional amendments. That’s how women got the right to vote. “This is pretty basic American history. Which I have to assume Beck has read. Which makes me wonder if he is assuming his viewers haven’t.” (More Glenn Beck stories.)