How did I miss this? Glenn Beck managed to defend one of the most awful and ridiculous sections of the Constitution: the Three-Fifths Clause which defined slaves as three-fifths of a person for the purposes of congressional representation.
Historians, of course, vehemently disagree with Beck's dumbstupid. University of Pennsylvania history professor Rick Beeman:
My goodness -- Glenn Beck got it completely wrong. They put [the three-fifths clause] there because delegates from the Southern states would never have agreed to the Constitution unless some weight was given to their slave populations in the apportionment of representation. They wanted slaves counted 100%, but when they saw that they could not get that, they settled for 3/5. The practical effect of that, far from making easier to abolish slavery, made it more difficult. It gave added weight to southern political power in Congress, it inflated Southern power in the apportioning of electoral votes, which led to a succession of Southern presidents. Ironically, the best thing that could have been done with respect to making it easier to abolish slavery would have been to have given slaves NO weight in the apportioning of representation.
Beck and Sarah Palin need to crack a book or go back to night school. Either that or shut the fuck up about the Constitution. They seem to get it wrong way more often than right. Of course.