This Mormon pseudo-historian is why the Oregon militants are so confused about the Constitution
"The militants do read those pocket Constitutions, but they’re also reading fraudulent interpretations scribbled in the margins, so to speak, by a communist-hating conspiracy theorist promoted by Glenn Beck, reported the Los Angeles Times. Those annotations were written decades ago by W. Cleon Skousen, an ultra-conservative Mormon and former FBI agent who believed the Founding Fathers had established a Christian theocracy and never intended for the federal government to have any authority. Constitutional scholars, however, generally hold Skousen’s theories in churlish regard. The Pulitzer Prize-winning constitutional historian Jack Rakove, of Stanford University, said Skousen’s writings were “a joke that no self-respecting scholar would think is worth a warm pitcher of spit.” Skousen, who died in 2006, both inspired and drew inspiration from the John Birch Society — co-founded by the Koch brothers’ father — and his utopian philosophies helped spark the right-wing “Sagebrush Rebellion.” He found an even wider audience three years after his death, when Glenn Beck helped make his book, The 5,000 Year Leap, a best-seller by writing a forward for a new edition and promoting the alternate U.S. history on his CNN program at the time. Beck also folded Skousen’s teachings into his “912 Project,” which frequently overlaps with local Tea Party groups."
