The Founding Myth: Why Christian Nationalism Is Un-American

by Andrew L. Seidel

Another reporter, John Hunter from the Capital Times in Madison, Wisconsin, attempted an interesting social experiment to measure the fear. On July 4, 1951, Hunter asked passersby to sign a petition comprising the first six amendments to the Constitution; the Fifteenth Amendment, which guarantees the right to vote regardless of race; and the preamble to the Declaration of Independence (“We hold these truths…”). People were so scared and suspicious that of the 112 people Hunter asked, only one agreed to sign.52 Most declined because they thought the ideas contained in those excerpts were too communist, un-American, or subversive. Twenty actually accused Hunter of being a communist. Responses included: “That might be from the Russian Declaration of Independence, but you can’t tell me that it is ours,” and “You can’t get me to sign that—I’m trying to get a loyalty clearance for a government job.”53 Other newspapers around the country repeated the experiment, with similar results.54 Reactions like these, remarked Chief Justice Earl Warren in 1955, “cause[d] some thoughtful people to ask the question whether ratification of the Bill of Rights could be obtained today if we were faced squarely with the issue.”55