Curtis Dahlgren
Will the real Thomas Jefferson please STAND UP?
By Curtis Dahlgren
"History is more or less bunk." — Henry Ford
Let's play "What's My Line?" Contestant #1 says, "My name is Tom Jefferson and I was a Deist." Contestant #2 says, "My name is Tom Jefferson and I was a secular philosopher of the Enlightenment." Contestant #3 says, "My name is Tom Jefferson and I was a pioneer lawyer in the Freedom from religion movement."
Our panel of "experts" says: "All of the above!" SURVEY SEZ: "The 'experts' must know what they're talking about, right?" But would "You Bet Your Life," or even your DeSoto, on that? GONG! Better NOT!
The magic word for the day is bunkum; say the magic word and you get a gold star. The "Jefferson" described above is a fictional character who never existed. Our friendly local purveyors of social "science" have swallowed a line — hook, bait, and bobber. They were fed that "line" in college and now we're all being taken for a ride, as in "Jump in, hang on, and shut up." But there is a right answer to the question, Who was the real Thomas Jefferson? Facts, as someone once said, are stubborn things.
The awkward "trivia" fact for those who teach our teachers is: Jefferson left behind 18,000 public and private letters that we know of, plus his official speeches and papers. With all that evidence, how could so many, for so long, be so wrong? I hate to have to be the one to burst the bubble, but here's just a small sample of Jefferson's actions as President of the United States:
Certainly he read philosophers such as Plato (he read everything, but he didn't like Plato). But he also read the Bible in four languages! He was only 33 years old when he wrote the Declaration of Independence, and over the next 50 years (it should go without saying) his view of the universe had been "evolved" and fine-tuned! After losing a wife and daughter, and approaching the end of his own life, his letters took on a "new tone."
One of his biographers, who spent over 50 years studying Jefferson the man, said that when he was young he thought he would someday know Jefferson completely. But that in the end, he didn't think anyone in this life would ever really know Jefferson. That makes it all the more outrageous when latter-day "historians" dogmatically claim to "know" that he was a Deist or an advocate of absolute "separation" of religion and state!
Deists believed in a hands-off God, a world without miracles; Jefferson thought America was a miracle! Most of the clergy called him an infidel when he ran for President, but Jefferson would be dumbfounded to wake up and discover that one out of his 18,000 letters is now being used to try to "cleanse" the public square, and the arena of ideas, of religion (that Virginia's Freedom OF Religion is now being stood on its head as public "Freedom FROM Religion")!
Jefferson had us pegged from the beginning though. As were the rest of the Founders, he was realistic about human nature, and once said that "from the conclusion of this [Revolutionary] war, we will be going downhill." To the orthodox Left, virtue is repulsive, so one's self-esteem can only be enhanced by poking holes in the armor of our heroes, with shoddy and very shallow scholarship.
In the old days, even orphans had a role model, the "father of our country."
Those of us who went to the "old school" always knew that Washington was a virtuous man with or without the "cherry tree" story. The evidence was there, but the New Age schools are using the cherry tree story as the excuse to toss out 22 million volumes of evidence about our forebears from the Library of Congress (figuratively speaking)! And some of those schools that were named for Washington have even changed their names; it's all about the true agenda!
There will be consequences for this wild joy ride by our educators. Lincoln once said that those who twist history have "no right to mislead others, who have less access to history, and less leisure to study it, into [a] false belief . . . " Teddy Roosevelt also has a quote about those who intentionally "mislead" others in the name of obtaining leadership during a political campaign.
John Adams' last words were, "Jefferson still lives." He didn't know that Jefferson had died earlier on the same day, July 4, 1826, but his words are prophetic. Lincoln said that "soberly, it is now no child's play to save the principles of Jefferson from total overthrow in this nation"!
The same goes for January 2004, and this isn't just an intellectual jousting match among eggheads, nor a game that politicians and judges play. There are consequences out in the real world, intended or not intended!
As I said, boys and girls, the word for the day is "bunkum." Back in the 1820s, there was a congressman from Buncombe County, North Carolina and one day he gave an extremely long and boring, meaningless to the business at hand, speech in Congress. He explained to his colleagues later that he was only "speaking to Buncombe." Thus originated Henry Ford's term, bunk (short for "Buncombe").
In the "soft sciences" in our colleges and universities today, much of what passes for "knowledge" is just subjective bunk aimed at pleasing one's professor and/or graduate teacher, who in turn is just trying to please his department head, who may be just trying to please some new theory out there in the pop culture (i.e., Buncombe).
P.S. On the eve of the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, a Sheboygan woman gave birth in the bathroom stall at work, stuffed tampon flaps into the baby's mouth to shut it up, and put it, in a plastic bag, into her locker. She then went back to work without even wondering if it was a "she" or a "boy." The police found the baby girl frozen solid in the woman's car trunk, but in the end she may be punished less than someone who kills a cat, because if she had "aborted" the baby a day earlier she would have been a "heroine" to the pop culture. Welcome to the "age of tolerance"!
If you think our Founding Fathers would "sit down and shut up"
when the Freedom they lived and died and bled for is now being invoked
in the name of such grisliness and narcissistic depravity, you are full of
BUNK!
* Footnote: facts in this column came from The Real Thomas Jefferson by Maxwell, et al (quoted by D. James Kennedy), Christianity and the Constitution, the Faith of Our Founding Fathers by John Eidsmoe (Baker Books, Grand Rapids MI), and other documented sources.
© Curtis Dahlgren
"History is more or less bunk." — Henry Ford
Let's play "What's My Line?" Contestant #1 says, "My name is Tom Jefferson and I was a Deist." Contestant #2 says, "My name is Tom Jefferson and I was a secular philosopher of the Enlightenment." Contestant #3 says, "My name is Tom Jefferson and I was a pioneer lawyer in the Freedom from religion movement."
Our panel of "experts" says: "All of the above!" SURVEY SEZ: "The 'experts' must know what they're talking about, right?" But would "You Bet Your Life," or even your DeSoto, on that? GONG! Better NOT!
The magic word for the day is bunkum; say the magic word and you get a gold star. The "Jefferson" described above is a fictional character who never existed. Our friendly local purveyors of social "science" have swallowed a line — hook, bait, and bobber. They were fed that "line" in college and now we're all being taken for a ride, as in "Jump in, hang on, and shut up." But there is a right answer to the question, Who was the real Thomas Jefferson? Facts, as someone once said, are stubborn things.
The awkward "trivia" fact for those who teach our teachers is: Jefferson left behind 18,000 public and private letters that we know of, plus his official speeches and papers. With all that evidence, how could so many, for so long, be so wrong? I hate to have to be the one to burst the bubble, but here's just a small sample of Jefferson's actions as President of the United States:
- He attended religious services in the Capitol Building (and such services were also held in the Supreme Court building)!
- He favored using the word "God" in the national motto!
- He granted land, buildings, and salaries for clergy teaching in Indian schools!
- Supported the use of the Bible as reading materials in such schools!
- He personally prayed at public events!
- Exempted churches from taxation!
- In 1801, he wrote that "the Christian religion, when divested of the rags in which [the clergy] have enveloped it, is a religion of all others most friendly to liberty, science, and freest expansion of the human mind." *
Certainly he read philosophers such as Plato (he read everything, but he didn't like Plato). But he also read the Bible in four languages! He was only 33 years old when he wrote the Declaration of Independence, and over the next 50 years (it should go without saying) his view of the universe had been "evolved" and fine-tuned! After losing a wife and daughter, and approaching the end of his own life, his letters took on a "new tone."
One of his biographers, who spent over 50 years studying Jefferson the man, said that when he was young he thought he would someday know Jefferson completely. But that in the end, he didn't think anyone in this life would ever really know Jefferson. That makes it all the more outrageous when latter-day "historians" dogmatically claim to "know" that he was a Deist or an advocate of absolute "separation" of religion and state!
Deists believed in a hands-off God, a world without miracles; Jefferson thought America was a miracle! Most of the clergy called him an infidel when he ran for President, but Jefferson would be dumbfounded to wake up and discover that one out of his 18,000 letters is now being used to try to "cleanse" the public square, and the arena of ideas, of religion (that Virginia's Freedom OF Religion is now being stood on its head as public "Freedom FROM Religion")!
Jefferson had us pegged from the beginning though. As were the rest of the Founders, he was realistic about human nature, and once said that "from the conclusion of this [Revolutionary] war, we will be going downhill." To the orthodox Left, virtue is repulsive, so one's self-esteem can only be enhanced by poking holes in the armor of our heroes, with shoddy and very shallow scholarship.
In the old days, even orphans had a role model, the "father of our country."
Those of us who went to the "old school" always knew that Washington was a virtuous man with or without the "cherry tree" story. The evidence was there, but the New Age schools are using the cherry tree story as the excuse to toss out 22 million volumes of evidence about our forebears from the Library of Congress (figuratively speaking)! And some of those schools that were named for Washington have even changed their names; it's all about the true agenda!
There will be consequences for this wild joy ride by our educators. Lincoln once said that those who twist history have "no right to mislead others, who have less access to history, and less leisure to study it, into [a] false belief . . . " Teddy Roosevelt also has a quote about those who intentionally "mislead" others in the name of obtaining leadership during a political campaign.
John Adams' last words were, "Jefferson still lives." He didn't know that Jefferson had died earlier on the same day, July 4, 1826, but his words are prophetic. Lincoln said that "soberly, it is now no child's play to save the principles of Jefferson from total overthrow in this nation"!
The same goes for January 2004, and this isn't just an intellectual jousting match among eggheads, nor a game that politicians and judges play. There are consequences out in the real world, intended or not intended!
As I said, boys and girls, the word for the day is "bunkum." Back in the 1820s, there was a congressman from Buncombe County, North Carolina and one day he gave an extremely long and boring, meaningless to the business at hand, speech in Congress. He explained to his colleagues later that he was only "speaking to Buncombe." Thus originated Henry Ford's term, bunk (short for "Buncombe").
In the "soft sciences" in our colleges and universities today, much of what passes for "knowledge" is just subjective bunk aimed at pleasing one's professor and/or graduate teacher, who in turn is just trying to please his department head, who may be just trying to please some new theory out there in the pop culture (i.e., Buncombe).
P.S. On the eve of the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, a Sheboygan woman gave birth in the bathroom stall at work, stuffed tampon flaps into the baby's mouth to shut it up, and put it, in a plastic bag, into her locker. She then went back to work without even wondering if it was a "she" or a "boy." The police found the baby girl frozen solid in the woman's car trunk, but in the end she may be punished less than someone who kills a cat, because if she had "aborted" the baby a day earlier she would have been a "heroine" to the pop culture. Welcome to the "age of tolerance"!
If you think our Founding Fathers would "sit down and shut up"
when the Freedom they lived and died and bled for is now being invoked
in the name of such grisliness and narcissistic depravity, you are full of
BUNK!
* Footnote: facts in this column came from The Real Thomas Jefferson by Maxwell, et al (quoted by D. James Kennedy), Christianity and the Constitution, the Faith of Our Founding Fathers by John Eidsmoe (Baker Books, Grand Rapids MI), and other documented sources.
© Curtis Dahlgren
The views expressed by RenewAmerica columnists are their own and do not necessarily reflect the position of RenewAmerica or its affiliates.
(See RenewAmerica's publishing standards.)
