Another Fabricated Jefferson Quote

My friend David sent me a link to the webpage of one Christian Hartsock, suggesting him as a Robert O'Brien Trophy nominee. Turns out the lad is only 18 and still in high school, so I'll be more gentle than usual. I'm not even going to bother to fisk the entire essay found on the front page. But I can't let this one statement go by without pointing out that it is completely fictional. He writes:

To the contrary, however, the left's beloved "separation of church and state" mantra originated not in the Constitution, but in a letter from Thomas Jefferson to the Danbury Baptist Association in 1802 (11 years after the First Amendment was incorporated into the Constitution) regarding their concerns that the Congregationalists may abuse their power to attain a favored position. Explicitly, Jefferson wrote: "[the] wall of separation between church and state...is a one-directional wall. It keeps the government from running the church, but makes sure that Christian principles will always stay in government."

This "quote" is made up of whole cloth. Nowhere in Jefferson's reply to the Danbury Baptists is there any statement even close to this. The entire text of the letter can be found here, judge for yourself. Nor does any such statement appear anywhere else in Jefferson's writings. It does appear on dozens of webpages written by the equally credulous, but it is a complete fiction. Worldnutdaily columnist Devvy Kidd uses it too. The Jeremiah Project presents it, but not as a quote from Jefferson, it's their interpretation of what Jefferson meant. The problem, as always, is that these fake quotes get passed along and changed, so one religious righter's interpretation suddenly gets quotes put around it and attributed to one of the founding fathers. The Jeremiah Project also presents the fraudulent Madison quote about staking the future of civilization on the ten commandments. Also completely non-existent. And both fake quotes were included in David Barton's original videotape America's Godly Heritate. See a transcript of that here. David Barton is the primary source of a dozen fictitious quotes and hundreds of false arguments about the founding fathers, and this man is on the Republican National Committee and is being lauded by Senator Majority Leader Bill Frist, who encourages his colleages to listen to this fraud.

P.S. In perusing this kid's website, it's clear that he just accepts blindly any rumor or "fact" that supports his position. In a post on the Terri Schiavo situation, for instance, he repeats the absolutely false claim that Michael stood to inherit $1 million in malpractice settlements once Terri died. Complete poppycock. It's sad to see a bright young man so easily manipulated. One can only hope that at some point he wakes up and starts using his mind as more than a recorder.

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Glad you took my advice about being gentle honey LOL

Ed,

Did you send him a nice note, pointing out his errors? No point in fisking him here if he never sees it.

Don

I sent him an email. And he thanked me and told me he would have the offending quote removed.

I just sent an email to Devvy Kidd. I'll be curious to see if she bothers to correct her article. Anyone wanna take any bets on it?

From the Dominionists convocation at the Reclaim America conference.

"Our job is to reclaim America for Christ, whatever the cost," Kennedy says. "As the vice regents of God, we are to exercise godly dominion and influence over our neighborhoods, our schools, our government, our literature and arts, our sports arenas, our entertainment media, our news media, our scientific endeavors -- in short, over every aspect and institution of human society."

To implement their sweeping agenda, the Dominionists are working to remake the federal courts in God's image. In their view, the Founding Fathers never intended to erect a barrier between politics and religion. "The First Amendment does not say there should be a separation of church and state," declares Alan Sears, president and CEO of the Alliance Defense Fund, a team of 750 attorneys trained by the Dominionists to fight abortion and gay marriage. Sears argues that the constitutional guarantee against state-sponsored religion is actually designed to "shield" the church from federal interference -- allowing Christians to take their rightful place at the head of the government. "We have a right, indeed an obligation, to govern," says David Limbaugh, brother of Rush and author of Persecution: How Liberals Are Waging War Against Christianity. Nothing gets the Dominionists to their feet faster than ringing condemnations of judicial tyranny. "Activist judges have systematically deconstructed the Constitution," roars Rick Scarborough, author of Mixing Church and State. "A God-free society is their goal!"

Activist judges, of course, are precisely what the Dominionists want. Their model is Roy Moore, the former Alabama chief justice who installed a 5,300-pound granite memorial to the Ten Commandments, complete with an open Bible carved in its top, in the state judicial building. At Reclaiming America, Roy's Rock sits out front, fresh off a tour of twenty-one states, perched on the flag-festooned flatbed of a diesel truck, a potent symbol of the "faith-based" justice the Dominionists are bent on imposing. Activists at the conference pose for photographs beside the rock and have circulated a petition urging President Bush to appoint Moore -- who once penned an opinion calling for the state to execute "practicing homosexuals" -- to the U.S. Supreme Court.

"The other side knows we've got strongholds in the executive and legislative branches," Cass tells the troops. "If we start winning the judiciary, their power base is going to be eroded."

To pack the courts with fundamentalists like Moore, Dominionist leaders are planning a massive media blitz. They're also pressuring Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist -- an ally who's courting support for his presidential bid -- to halt the long-standing use of filibusters to hold up judicial nominations. An anti-filibuster petition circulating at the conference blasts Democrats for their "outrageous stonewalling of appointments" -- even though Congress has approved more nominees of Bush than of any president since Jimmy Carter.

Ed,

You'll be getting, if you haven't already gotten it, a very bizzare autoreply explaining that she gets 15,000 emails a month and can't possible respond to all of them. And then she rants and raves about a bunch of strange things.

Jon-
I already got it, and had a good laugh about it. I especially liked her declaration that, "I don't have to respond at all, but I use this form response because I'm trying to help everyone by giving them other sources of factual information and sources to research on issues." Yes, she actually underlines "factual". Rather ironic given that one single column contains at least 4 completely fraudulent quotations attributed to the founding fathers.