The more things change.....
It was on July 4, 1951, that a young reporter for The Capital Times the late John Patrick Hunter decided to find out just how bad the political climate had become, even here in Madison, Wis. As the low man on the reporting staffs totem poll, Hunter had been tabbed to work that Fourth of July and come up with a story for the next days paper.
As he was preparing to leave the city room, he noted a framed copy of the Declaration of Independence hanging on the wall. Thinking to himself how revolutionary the declaration was at the time it was adopted, he wondered if people would sign it in 1951, an age of rampant distrust and suspicion.
So he typed up the preamble to the declaration and included six of the Constitutions first 10 amendments and the 15th Amendment (the right of citizens to vote regardless of race), putting them in the form of a petition, and then went to Vilas Park, the site of the citys biggest Fourth of July celebration. He asked a total of 112 people to sign his petition, but only one, a Madison insurance agent, did. The other 111 said no, they couldnt. Twenty of the non-signers accused Hunter of being a communist.
When told that the petition was the preamble to the Declaration of Independence and seven constitutional amendments, one woman fumed that it couldnt be Americas declaration, but rather must be the Soviet Unions.
http://host.madison.com/news/opinion/column/dave_zweifel/plain-talk-remembering-joe-mccarthy-we-need-to-fight-smears/article_ab5c2502-14b4-5ffd-a65e-bcd35191f6d0.html
Come to think of it, it's uncanny how much Ted Cruz resembles... Nah, it couldn't be...