Michele Bachmann, wrong again

REP. MICHELE BACHMANN: What I love about New Hampshire and what we have in common is our extreme love for liberty … You’re the state where the shot was heard around the world in Lexington and Concord. And you put a marker in the ground and paid with the blood of your ancestors the very first price that had to be paid to make this the most magnificent nation that has ever arisen in the annals of man in 5,000 years of recorded history.

The battles of Lexington and Concord took place in Massachusetts, not New Hampshire.

Bachmann was in New Hampshire to test the waters for a presidential run. It’s likely those waters were a bit chillier after she botched a fundamental fact about the state that every elementary school student should know.

And given the egregiousness of that error — especially coming the leader of a faction that claims to revere the ideals of the American Revolution — it’s picking nits to point out that recorded history began with the advent of writing in the 4th Millennium BC, which was 6,000, not 5,000, years ago.

This is at least the second time this year that Bachmann has bungled American history. In late January, when she delivered the tea party’s response to the president’s State of the Union address, she asserted that the Founders ended slavery:

BACHMANN: We know there was slavery that was still tolerated when the nation began. We know that was evil. And it was a scourge, and a blot and a stain upon our history. But we also know that the very founders that wrote those documents worked tirelessly until slavery was no more in the United States. And I think that it’s high time that we recognize the contributions of our forebears who worked tirelessly — men like John Quincy Adams, who would not rest until slavery was extinguished in the country.

For the record, slavery ended at the end of the Civil War in the 1860s, three-quarters of a century after the country was founded. The middle-aged men who wrote the Constitution — which these elites chose to do in secret — were all long dead by the time the Civil War started. Finally, John Quincy Adams, the sixth president of the United States, was not a Founder — he was a law student around the time that the Constitution was adopted. She may have been referring to JQA’s father, John Adams, the second president, who died on July 4, 1826, the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. His last words were “Thomas Jefferson survives.” But he was wrong. Jefferson died that same day.

In New Hampshire Saturday, Bachmann also claimed that public schools are brainwashing students:

BACHMANN: I don’t think that our public schools are necessarily the place where one fixed set of political beliefs should be imposed on students … I think that knowledge, facts, and information should be on the table, and let students decide what their beliefs should be.

In her case, getting a little “knowledge, facts and information” on the table would be a good start.