Typo

I just noticed that there's a typo in my nitpick.

The Constitutional Convention first convened on May 25th, 1787.

 

Just so ya know...

Congress ratified the Articles of Peace April 15, 1783, which amounted to a formal ceasefire. The Treaty of Paris was signed Sept. 3, 1783 and ratified by Congress on Jan. 14, 1784. Congress continued to meet under the authority of the Articles of confederation throughout the war and its aftermath, right through to the Constitutional Convention. Any way you slice it, Muldoon's an idiot. Since the purpose of the speech was not to show that Green Berets are ignorant, but to justify the lack of democracy in South Vietnam, I'd say you found a really flagrant error.

 

American History Refresher

The nitpicker's first objection claims that Muldoon says the Revolutionary War ended in 1776. Muldoon does not say this. He states, "After the Revolutionary war." He does not state nor imply that he is referring to the end of the war. He could just have likely meant "after the war started" as "after the war ended."

\r\rMuldoon claims that the colonists began in 1776 to start coming up with a constitution. He is absolutely correct. After they signed the Declaration of Independence, the next order of business was to design a constitution to govern their new nation, and they began this endeavor in July of 1776.\r

\rThe second bulleted comment claims that the Articles of Confederation were a constitution. They were not. They were Articles of Confederation. Nowhere in the text of this document is the word constitution written or implied. The creators of the Articles were aware that it was a temporary document, meant to unify a group of colonies at war. And while it is true that the colonies agreed to the Articles in 1777, they were not officially in force until March 1, 1781, when Maryland ratified them.\r

\rThe final version of the Constitution, the one that exists today (barring amendments added), was completed on September 12, 1787, therefore Muldoon's reference to "1776 to 1787" is correct.\r

\rIf there is anything to nitpick in Muldoon's statement, it is his characterization of the colonists' efforts as "peaceful." I've read the transcripts of the Constitutional Convention, and man, those guys liked to insult each other!\r

 

Correction to Incorrect Dates in Previous Comments

Just to clear up the confusion of dates in this thread, the Revolutionary War is generally regarded to have started on Apr. 19, 1775 at Lexington, Mass. with "The Shot Heard Around the World." The first major battle between the Americans and British occured in Boston at the Battle of Bunker Hill on Jun. 17, 1775, not in 1776 as stated above. Likewise, the Second Continental Congress convened in Philadelphia on May 10, 1775, not Jul. 1776. The Articles of Confederation were adopted by the Congress on Nov. 15, 1977 as the government of the new United States of America, pending ratification of the individual states. It's incorrect to think of the Articles of Confederation as a constitution, since it created a very weak central government. This government lacked, for example, any power to impose taxes as it had no method of enforcing payment. It could not even control commerce between the states, leading to a series of conflicting tax laws and tariffs between states. Not only this, but the Articles required unanimous consent from all the states before any changes could take effect. States took it so lightly that their representatives were often absent, and the national legislature was very frequently blocked from doing anything, even ineffectual things, pending appearance of a quorum. The last battle of the Revolutionary War was on Nov. 2, 1782 when the Americans attacked a Shawnee Indian Village in the Ohio Territory. The last major battle against the British ended with the British surrender at Yorktown, Va. on Oct. 19, 1781. Congress officially declared an end to the Revolutionary War on Apr. 11, 1783. The final Treaty of Paris was ratified by Congress on Jan 14, 1784, which is the date the War officially ended between all of the parties involved. In response to the Shay's Rebellion, Congress endorsed a resolution calling for a constitutional convention beginning in May 1787. Of the original 13 states, only Rhode Island chose not to send any delegates. Rather than revise the Articles of Confederation, the delegates at the Constitutional Convention voted to create an entirely new form of national government separated into three branches - the legislative, executive and judicial - thus dispersing power with checks and balances, and competing factions, as a measure of protection against tyranny by a controlling majority. This is the beginning of the drafting of our present Constitution. The delegates voted to approve and sign the final draft of the Constitution on Sept. 17, 1787. New Hampshire was the last of the nine states needed to ratify the Constitution before it was adopted when it did so on Jun. 21, 1788. On Jul. 2, 1788 the formal announcement was made by the president of the Congress that the Constitution was then in effect. The first Congress convened New York on Mar. 4, 1789, but was without a quorum. On Apr. 1, 1789 a quorum was reached and the House of Representatives began to function. The last of the original 13 states to ratify the Constitution was Rhode Island, which did so on May 29, 1790. In Muldoon's speech he seems to imply that the 13 states signed the Consititution in 1787. In fact, it was the delgates to the Constitutional Convention from 12 of the 13 original states who signed the paper. So, if one wants to know the number of years of "peaceful effort" Muldoon refers to it's more like five than 11 - the period between when Congress declared an end to the Revolutionary War in Apr. 1783 and the adoption of the Constitution by the ninth of the 13 original states in Jun. 1788. The years of "peaceful effort" before all 13 original states signed, i.e., ratified, the Constitution would then be approximately seven, which is the period from Apr. 1783 to May 1790. In reality, it only took just over one year before the concept of the Constitution was proposed in May 1787 and it was ratified by the minimum number of states for its adoption in Jun. 1788. In each case, it appears Muldoon either suffers from a faulty memory, was misinformed by his history teachers, or perhaps he was simply home sick on the days those subjects were covered in class.

 

It doesn't matter

How much Muldoon did or did not know about the history of the constitution is not a relavent movie nitpick. He said exactly what a character in his position might have said. Characters in movies can be wrong.