Naomi LaChance — Ultra-Right Annotated Edition of Pocket Constitution Tops Amazon Charts After Khizr Khan’s DNC Speech

Unintended consequences.

The book’s notes and annotations are by W. Cleon Skousen, a rabidly anti-Communist ideologue who took to rewriting history to support his ultra-right, Bible-based theories.
Skousen’s edition interprets the Constitution as evidence that the United States is subject to a Christian God’s ruling. It emphasizes that the federal government should not interfere in people’s lives.

The book was lauded by Ammon Bundy, who led the armed occupation of an Oregon wildlife refuge this winter: “That’s where I get most of my information from. What we’re trying to do is teach the true principles of the proper form of government,” he told The Los Angeles Times.

Skousen was a former FBI agent and briefly the police chief of Salt Lake City — until the mayor fired him, saying he was “a master of half truths” and ran the police department “like a gestapo.” Following his death in 2006, he became a darling of the Tea Party.
Florida state officials distributed as many as 80,000 copies of the NCSS pocket Constitution in 2013 until the Tampa Bay Times noted its religious messages.

“There’s conservative, there’s right-wing and there’s off the charts,” Sean Wilentz, a Princeton University history professor, told the newspaper. “Cleon Skousen was off the charts.” Wilentz described Skousen and his allies as “paranoid theocrats.”
There are more than 15,000,000 copies of this constitution in circulation, according to the NCCS.

The Intercept
Ultra-Right Annotated Edition of Pocket Constitution Tops Amazon Charts After Khizr Khan’s DNC Speech
Naomi LaChance