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  • 2018-10-30 (xsd:date)
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  • Did Patrick Henry Say the Constitution Is 'For the People to Restrain the Government?' (en)
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  • A meme originally published on a conservative group's Facebook page in 2013 reappeared online in October 2018, with the user responsible claiming that it didn't matter whether the content was accurate. On 2 October 2018, Sean O'Brien shared a graphic first posted by Constituting America bearing a picture of Patrick Henry alongside the statement, The Constitution is not a document for the government to restrain the people: it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government. The meme was accompanied by a statement from O'Brien: However, the claim that Henry -- a self-taught lawyer who became one of the country's founding fathers -- actually made this statement had already been debunked by the time it was featured on Constituting America's page. In February 2012, author Thomas S. Kidd cited it as one of several quotes falsely attributed to Patrick Henry. Kidd, who was then an associate professor of history at Baylor University and is currently a distinguished professor there, wrote: As Buzzfeed reported in 2015, the earliest published use of the quote spotted online was in 1999. Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul misattributed the statement to Henry both on the Senate floor and in public speeches. We contacted another author who wrote a biography of Patrick Henry, Harlow Giles Unger, whose book Lion of Liberty: Patrick Henry and the Call to a New Nation was released in 2010. He told us: We also reached out to Constituting America asking if they had any documentation that would show that Henry actually made the statement depicted in the graphic. They have yet to respond. (en)
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