The Language of Faction

Is anyone else disturbed by the language being used by some of the GOP hopefuls? I personally have trouble with the terms “state’s rights” and “cession”. These terms were last used rhetorically during desegregation of the South in the 1960s, and during the violently factional discussions leading up to the Civil War in the 1850s. Rick Perry says he is reborn – and I think he might have been George Wallace in a previous life, or maybe John Calhoun. I can only assume Texas A&M didn’t offer a US History class in their Ag Program. The idea that a state has the right to secede from the Union was settled in the bloodiest War in American history, at the cost of 618,000 American lives.
Some of the GOP candidates have demonstrated an extremely shaky knowledge of US History. Bachman believes that the US Constitution was intended to form a theocracy. I am sure that would surprise the hell out of James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, John Adams, and John Jay. The only mention in the US Constitution of religion is in Article VI which specifies that “no religious test shall ever be required as Qualification of any office or Public trust under the United States”. The 1st Amendment of the Bill of Rights starts out: “Congress shall make no laws respecting the establishment of a religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,”
In the Federalists Papers, authored by the same people who wrote the US Constitution and served in the first federal government, Alexander Hamilton and James Madison “the Father of the Constitution” both argue against the danger of factions to the Union. Madison, in Federalist 10, defines the most serious source of faction to be “the diversity of opinion in political life which leads to dispute over fundamental issues such as what regime or religion should be preferred.” This doesn’t really sound to me like they were thinking about a theocracy.
I'm admittedly a liberal, and definitely not a registered Republican, but I am looking at this use of language from the point of view of a teacher. The thing that bothers me the most is the intentional twisting or horrific ignorance of US History. These two candidates are making George W. Bush look like a genius.