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Member Since: 6/2006Last Seen: 2/09/2010
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PrintBush, Jefferson, and the Theocratization of America
News Type: Event — Sun Jul 6, 2008 5:52 AM EDT
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On July 4th, 2008, George Bush made a speech at Monticello, former home of Thomas Jefferson, about America, its freedoms and history. Much has been made of protesters arrested, but few have seen fit to parse his words. It may be an indication of his lame duck status, or of his perpetually flagging popularity, or merely an acknowledgment of the fact that Mr. Bush does not (can not?) write his own speeches. Nevertheless, his words, delivered with the predictable missteps and contempt for truth and history we have come to expect from this Presidency, deserve at least a little scrutiny.
We honor Jefferson's legacy by aiding the rise of liberty in lands that do not know the blessings of freedom. And on this Fourth of July, we pay tribute to the brave men and women who wear the uniform of the United States of America.
It is laudable to want to honor the men and women of our armed forces, for they do seek to preserve the rights and freedom of America's citizens. It is, however, more than a little duplicitous to claim to be honoring "Jefferson's legacy" by foreign adventurism when Jefferson was so clearly opposed to entangling the welfare of the United States with the interests of foreign nations. Jefferson himself said, in his first inaugural address in 1801
"Peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations--entangling alliances with none, I deem [one of] the essential principles of our government, and consequently [one of] those which ought to shape its administration.".
Nor was that the end of his caution against America becoming embroiled in foreign adventures. Among many quotes counseling against such entanglements, Jefferson wrote to George Logan that
"It ought to be the very first object of our pursuits to have nothing to do with the European interests and politics. Let them be free or slaves at will, navigators or agriculturists, swallowed into one government or divided into a thousand, we have nothing to fear from them in any form."
The usage of Jefferson to justify the very thing Jefferson hoped to keep our country from engaging in seems particularly blockheaded, and one wonders whether such a ploy is the result of the ignorance of Bush's speech writers, or of their confidence in the ignorance of his listeners.
And yet it only gets worse...
After many years of war, the United States won its independence. The principles that Thomas Jefferson enshrined in the Declaration became the guiding principles of the new nation. And at every generation, Americans have rededicated themselves to the belief that all men are created equal, with the God-given right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. (Applause.)
Thomas Jefferson understood that these rights do not belong to Americans alone. They belong to all mankind. And he looked to the day when all people could secure them.
Certainly, Jefferson cited "the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God" and laid the concept of unalienable rights at the feet of "their Creator", but it would be a stretch to contend that Jefferson attributed those rights to God as much as to their presence as natural rights. "The Creator" entered into a Jeffersonian formulation of rights only inasmuch as he believed in a deistic, impersonal God who created nature's laws. Men's rights, as Jefferson wrote on more than one occasion, were natural rights
"Man [is] a rational animal, endowed by nature with rights and with an innate sense of justice." Jefferson to William Johnson, 1823
"A free people [claim] their rights as derived from the laws of nature, and not as the gift of their chief magistrate." Rights of British America, 1774.
Under the law of nature, all men are born free, every one comes into the world with a right to his own person, which includes the liberty of moving and using it at his own will. Legal Argument, 1770
Perhaps most distressing is the clear elision of Jefferson's own opinions about religion from the quote which is then used to bolster the notion that rights originate from God:
On the 50th anniversary of America's independence, Thomas Jefferson passed away. But before leaving this world, he explained that the principles of the Declaration of Independence were universal. In one of the final letters of his life, he wrote, "May it be to the world, what I believe it will be -- to some parts sooner, to others later, but finally to all -- the Signal of arousing men to burst the chains, and to assume the blessings and security of self-government."
That quote from Jefferson was lifted (in part) from Jefferson's letter to Roger Weightman, as America approached the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. But the part that is curiously missing sets it in contrast to the aim which George Bush gives it. In whole, Jefferson stated
"May it be to the world, what I believe it will be, (to some parts sooner, to others later, but finally to all,) the signal of arousing men to burst the chains under which monkish ignorance and superstition had persuaded them to bind themselves, and to assume the blessings and security of self-government."
Jefferson had no taste for the pronouncements of religion or for religious hierarchies; and it seems a bit of pernicious legerdemain to enlist Jefferson's words in an underhanded campaign to bolster the notion of American government's underpinnings in Christianity by purposefully erasing portions of them in order to reverse the meaning their author intended.
The chains Jefferson hoped men would be aroused to burst were the chains which religion had fettered them with: the idea that rulers ruled by Divine Right, and that rights originated from God and were best interpreted by God's emissaries.
While we contemplate the origins of this country, and on America's birthday enjoy the freedoms our Founders vouchsafed us, let us not forget the whole of who our Founders were and what they said; not merely the political uses to which their words can, with careful editing, be put.
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 | Los Angeles Times: Jefferson Bible reveals Founding Father's view of God, faith | The L.A. Times | Sat Jul 5 | 0 |
| Jefferson Bible reveals Founding Father's view of God, faith | The L.A. Times | Sun Jul 6 | 0 |
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{"commentId":2126512,"authorDomain":"iarnuocon"}
Happy Birthday, America...
{"commentId":2126512,"threadId":"307062","contentId":"1642189","authorDomain":"iarnuocon"}
- 7 votes
#1 - Sun Jul 6, 2008 5:56 AM EDT{"commentId":2126541,"authorDomain":"winsomecowboy"}
happy birthday to that mostly muffled [apart from you and others] crew of Americans who's ideals are based on respect for the foundations rather than the incontinent nappies of reactionary cathode based cowardice. Fear itself being the latest American ideal. Thanks for being uncowered.
{"commentId":2126541,"threadId":"307062","contentId":"1642189","authorDomain":"winsomecowboy"}
- 6 votes
#2 - Sun Jul 6, 2008 6:15 AM EDT{"commentId":2126765,"authorDomain":"Wheel"}
great article, thanks.
{"commentId":2126765,"threadId":"307062","contentId":"1642189","authorDomain":"Wheel"}
- 4 votes
#3 - Sun Jul 6, 2008 8:34 AM EDT{"commentId":2127044,"authorDomain":"sushicat"}
Timely, well written article. Something to contemplate.
{"commentId":2127044,"threadId":"307062","contentId":"1642189","authorDomain":"sushicat"}
- 3 votes
#4 - Sun Jul 6, 2008 9:47 AM EDT{"commentId":2127477,"authorDomain":"JoulesBeef"}
result of the ignorance of Bush's speech writers, or of their confidence in the ignorance of his listeners.
Unfortunately it appears to be the latter. And it almost seems purposeful. I am hoping the death of tv with the rise of the net might help our intellect recover some.
Bush is always invoking the greats a bit of nlp to try to assocaite himself into the history books.
he landed on the abraham lincoln after we "freed" the iraqis.
he spoke in front of a painting of george washignton when eh spoke on the iraqis first vote.
SO him invoking jefferson isnt a surprise, but if he wanted it to be honest, he would only give speaches in front of a picture of bennedict arnold.
{"commentId":2127477,"threadId":"307062","contentId":"1642189","authorDomain":"JoulesBeef"}
- 4 votes
#5 - Sun Jul 6, 2008 11:15 AM EDT{"commentId":2127531,"authorDomain":"wilder"}
More like Bush v. Jefferson...
Based on Jefferson's own writings, he would cringe at the criminal action of the Bush Company...
Perhaps it's time for another "Boston Tea Party" as it relates the the enormous amount of liberties this administration has removed.
{"commentId":2127531,"threadId":"307062","contentId":"1642189","authorDomain":"wilder"}
- 7 votes
#6 - Sun Jul 6, 2008 11:27 AM EDT{"commentId":2129730,"authorDomain":"Griff69"}
I think that's one component of it, but the other, perhaps larger component, is that most people in this country agree with half of the BS. We are very sharply polarized into two large groups (and a third group of some fringe nuts like me) who each favor giving up certain rights. The only reason we're not worse off than we are is that they disagree on which rights we should give up.
or ignoring the description of the President's legitimate powers as expressed in Article II of the Constitution.
Don't limit that to the Executive. All three branches regularly usurp powers that are not granted to them, while the fourth branch watches Lost.
{"commentId":2129730,"threadId":"307062","contentId":"1642189","authorDomain":"Griff69"}
- 4 votes
{"commentId":2127933,"authorDomain":"kaiji"}
Thomas Jefferson understood that these rights do not belong to Americans alone. They belong to all mankind.
Very laudable sentiment. If only it were so in application.
{"commentId":2127933,"threadId":"307062","contentId":"1642189","authorDomain":"kaiji"}
- 4 votes
#7 - Sun Jul 6, 2008 12:51 PM EDT{"commentId":2129117,"authorDomain":"darkknightjrk"}
Totally agree--if Jefferson were around today, he would not like what he would see.
{"commentId":2129117,"threadId":"307062","contentId":"1642189","authorDomain":"darkknightjrk"}
- 4 votes
#8 - Sun Jul 6, 2008 5:05 PM EDT{"commentId":2129204,"authorDomain":"Zoilus"}
"Whenever... preachers, instead of a lesson in religion, put [their congregation] off with a discourse on the Copernican system, on chemical affinities, on the construction of government, or the characters or conduct of those administering it, it is a breach of contract, depriving their audience of the kind of service for which they are salaried, and giving them, instead of it, what they did not want, or, if wanted, would rather seek from better sources in that particular art of science." --Thomas Jefferson to P. H. Wendover, 1815. ME 14:281
"Ministers of the Gospel are excluded [from serving as Visitors of the county Elementary Schools] to avoid jealousy from the other sects, were the public education committed to the ministers of a particular one; and with more reason than in the case of their exclusion from the legislative and executive functions." --Thomas Jefferson: Note to Elementary School Act, 1817. ME 17:419
"No religious reading, instruction or exercise, shall be prescribed or practiced [in the elementary schools] inconsistent with the tenets of any religious sect or denomination." --Thomas Jefferson: Elementary School Act, 1817. ME 17:425
"I do not know that it is a duty to disturb by missionaries the religion and peace of other countries, who may think themselves bound to extinguish by fire and fagot the heresies to which we give the name of conversions, and quote our own example for it. Were the Pope, or his holy allies, to send in mission to us some thousands of Jesuit priests to convert us to their orthodoxy, I suspect that we should deem and treat it as a national aggression on our peace and faith." --Thomas Jefferson to Michael Megear, 1823. ME 15:434
"The clergy, by getting themselves established by law and ingrafted into the machine of government, have been a very formidable engine against the civil and religious rights of man." --Thomas Jefferson to Jeremiah Moor, 1800.
"The Christian religion, when divested of the rags in which they [the clergy] have enveloped it, and brought to the original purity and simplicity of it's benevolent institutor, is a religion of all others most friendly to liberty, science, and the freest expansion of the human mind." --Thomas Jefferson to Moses Robinson, 1801. ME 10:237
"But a short time elapsed after the death of the great reformer of the Jewish religion, before his principles were departed from by those who professed to be his special servants, and perverted into an engine for enslaving mankind, and aggrandizing their oppressors in Church and State." --Thomas Jefferson to Samuel Kercheval, 1810. ME 12:345
"[If] the nature of... government [were] a subordination of the civil to the ecclesiastical power, I [would] consider it as desperate for long years to come. Their steady habits [will] exclude the advances of information, and they [will] seem exactly where they [have always been]. And there [the] clergy will always keep them if they can. [They] will follow the bark of liberty only by the help of a tow-rope." --Thomas Jefferson to Pierrepont Edwards, July 1801. (*)
"This doctrine ['that the condition of man cannot be ameliorated, that what has been must ever be, and that to secure ourselves where we are we must tread with awful reverence in the footsteps of our fathers'] is the genuine fruit of the alliance between Church and State, the tenants of which finding themselves but too well in their present condition, oppose all advances which might unmask their usurpations and monopolies of honors, wealth and power, and fear every change as endangering the comforts they now hold." --Thomas Jefferson: Report for University of Virginia, 1818.
"I am for freedom of religion, and against all maneuvers to bring about a legal ascendency of one sect over another." --Thomas Jefferson to Elbridge Gerry, 1799. ME 10:78
"The advocate of religious freedom is to expect neither peace nor forgiveness from [the clergy]." --Thomas Jefferson to Levi Lincoln, 1802. ME 10:305
"The clergy...believe that any portion of power confided to me [as President] will be exerted in opposition to their schemes. And they believe rightly: for I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man. But this is all they have to fear from me: and enough, too, in their opinion." --Thomas Jefferson to Benjamin Rush, 1800. ME 10:173
"Believing... that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their Legislature should 'make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' thus building a wall of separation between Church and State." --Thomas Jefferson to Danbury Baptists, 1802. ME 16:281
"I am really mortified to be told that, in the United States of America, a fact like this [i.e., the purchase of an apparent geological or astronomical work] can become a subject of inquiry, and of criminal inquiry too, as an offense against religion; that a question about the sale of a book can be carried before the civil magistrate. Is this then our freedom of religion? and are we to have a censor whose imprimatur shall say what books may be sold, and what we may buy? And who is thus to dogmatize religious opinions for our citizens? Whose foot is to be the measure to which ours are all to be cut or stretched? Is a priest to be our inquisitor, or shall a layman, simple as ourselves, set up his reason as the rule for what we are to read, and what we must believe? It is an insult to our citizens to question whether they are rational beings or not, and blasphemy against religion to suppose it cannot stand the test of truth and reason. If [this] book be false in its facts, disprove them; if false in its reasoning, refute it. But, for God's sake, let us freely hear both sides, if we choose." --Thomas Jefferson to N. G. Dufief, 1814. ME 14:127
"History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance of which their civil as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purposes." --Thomas Jefferson to Alexander von Humboldt, 1813. ME 14:21
"In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own." --Thomas Jefferson to Horatio G. Spafford, 1814. ME 14:119
"I have been just reading the new constitution of Spain. One of its fundamental bases is expressed in these words: 'The Roman Catholic religion, the only true one, is, and always shall be, that of the Spanish nation. The government protects it by wise and just laws, and prohibits the exercise of any other whatever.' Now I wish this presented to those who question what [a bookseller] may sell or we may buy, with a request to strike out the words, 'Roman Catholic,' and to insert the denomination of their own religion. This would ascertain the code of dogmas which each wishes should domineer over the opinions of all others, and be taken, like the Spanish religion, under the 'protection of wise and just laws.' It would show to what they wish to reduce the liberty for which one generation has sacrificed life and happiness. It would present our boasted freedom of religion as a thing of theory only, and not of practice, as what would be a poor exchange for the theoretic thraldom, but practical freedom of Europe." --Thomas Jefferson to N. G. Dufief, 1814. ME 14:128
"To compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors, is sinful and tyrannical." --Thomas Jefferson: Bill for Religious Freedom, 1779. Papers 2:545
{"commentId":2129204,"threadId":"307062","contentId":"1642189","authorDomain":"Zoilus"}
- 7 votes
#9 - Sun Jul 6, 2008 5:21 PM EDT{"commentId":2134103,"authorDomain":"basseq"}
The thing is: Jefferson wasn't always right. Hard to say, considering my alma mater pretty much worships the guy.
{"commentId":2134103,"threadId":"307062","contentId":"1642189","authorDomain":"basseq"}
- 1 vote
#10 - Mon Jul 7, 2008 2:09 PM EDT{"commentId":2134427,"authorDomain":"basseq"}
True 'nuff.
{"commentId":2134427,"threadId":"307062","contentId":"1642189","authorDomain":"basseq"}
- 5 votes
{"commentId":2134456,"authorDomain":"Zoilus"}
Nobodies always right, No one.. The problem is, the Right will bring these imperfections up, and use them as an excuse to disregard and discredit al the good they have done... That is why the Far-Right are the so contemptible in my mind.
{"commentId":2134456,"threadId":"307062","contentId":"1642189","authorDomain":"Zoilus"}
- 3 votes
{"commentId":2134540,"authorDomain":"basseq"}
The Left is just as guilty of that crime, so let's not go pointing political fingers.
{"commentId":2134540,"threadId":"307062","contentId":"1642189","authorDomain":"basseq"}
- 3 votes
{"commentId":2134714,"authorDomain":"Zoilus"}
The Left is just as guilty of that crime, so let's not go pointing political fingers.
Really? I don't see it nearly Have as much from the Democrats. And when I do it's because they are caught red-handed soliciting gay sex in airport restrooms or hookers on the internet, or going to White Supremacist gatherings throwing birthday celebrations commemorating Hitler.
{"commentId":2134714,"threadId":"307062","contentId":"1642189","authorDomain":"Zoilus"}
- 2 votes
{"commentId":2135268,"authorDomain":"Wheel"}
Whenever people start to judge the people of the past with the standards of the present a mistake is being made. I'm very sure our granchildren's grandchildren will judge use harshly for the mess we're making of their world, and they will be just as wrong as we are to judge people of the far past by our standards of today.
{"commentId":2135268,"threadId":"307062","contentId":"1642189","authorDomain":"Wheel"}
- 5 votes
{"commentId":2135791,"authorDomain":"kerwynw"}
Wheel: I agree its a great way for the addled one G.W. Bush to do a CYA job to mask his many foreign policy blunders. Unlike Bush, Jefferson persuaded France to supply ships and guns to help the U.S. defeat the British during the war for Independence. It's a complete role reversal. Bush has alienated most of our former allies save (ironically) the British so he should not be trying to tie his conduct to past governments especially one of the founding fathers it is insulting to say the least.
{"commentId":2135791,"threadId":"307062","contentId":"1642189","authorDomain":"kerwynw"}
- 3 votes
#11 - Mon Jul 7, 2008 5:47 PM EDT{"commentId":2135931,"authorDomain":"Zoilus"}
Yeah, But Clinton did it too!
{"commentId":2135931,"threadId":"307062","contentId":"1642189","authorDomain":"Zoilus"}
{"commentId":2140176,"authorDomain":"kerwynw"}
Yeah, But Clinton did it too!
Please explain to me exactly what Clinton (I assume you mean Bill not Hillary) did Don.
{"commentId":2140176,"threadId":"307062","contentId":"1642189","authorDomain":"kerwynw"}
{"commentId":6065867,"authorDomain":"whatisanaphro11"}
{"commentId":6066010,"authorDomain":"whatisanaphro11"}
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