Posted by
Rocky Mountain Foundation on Friday, February 05, 2010 7:34:03 PM
Tancredo tells NashvilleTea Party convention
America needs a Civic Literacy test for voters
Former Colorado Congressman Tom Tancredo told the first national convention of Tea Party patriots assembled in Nashville that one reason Barack Obama was elected was the civic illiteracy of too many American voters.
Tancredo told the Tea party activists,
"Because we don’t have a civics literacy test to vote, people who couldn’t even spell vote, or say it in English, put a committed socialist ideologue in the White House named Barack Hussein Obama."
Tancredo has long criticized the failure of America’s schools to teach civic literacy to future voters. He was a middle school civics teacher before running for the Colorado state legislature in 1974.
"When I say too many Americans lack civic literacy, I am not talking about any one race or color or about recent immigrants. I think it applies across the board," said Tancredo in an interview after the Nashville speech. "For many years I have advocated that anyone registering to vote should have to pass the same civics test immigrants must pass to become citizens."
Tancredo responded to critics by saying, "I will be attacked by liberals and Obama acolytes who claim a civics literacy test would be discriminatory. That is nonsense. It would discriminate only against people who do not want to learn what America is all about --- the values and constitutional principles that made America great."
The text of Tancredo’s Nashville speech can be found at --http://therockymountainfoundation.org/tomtancredosjournal.html
.