The Jefferson Lies (2 page)

xii

Jefferson was truly a visionary and an innovator—a Renaissance man in the classical sense of the term. He was masterful and skilled in diverse areas, and his multidimensional abilities were profusely praised by those who knew him. For example:

• Marquis de Chastellux, a French general who served with Jefferson during the American Revolution, described him as “a musician, skilled in drawing, a geometrician, an astronomer, a natural philosopher, legislator, and statesman.”
⁸

• Dr. Benjamin Rush, one of Jefferson's fellow signers of the Declaration of Independence, said he was “enlightened at the same time in chemistry, natural history, and medicine.”
⁹

• John Quincy Adams knew him as “a man of very extensive learning and pleasing manners.”
¹⁰

• The Reverend Ezra Stiles, a military chaplain in the Revolution and the president of Yale, called him a “naturalist and philosopher, a truly scientific and learned man.”
¹¹

• General Marquis de Lafayette considered him a “great statesman, zealous citizen, and amiable friend.”
¹²

• Alexis de Tocqueville, historian and political leader who penned the famous
Democracy in America
as a result of his visit to America in 1831, called Jefferson “the greatest [man] whom the democracy of America has as yet produced.”
¹³

Perhaps the best summation was given by President John F. Kennedy, who once quipped to a group of Nobel Prize winners dining with him at the White House:

I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered together at the White House, with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone. Someone once said that Thomas Jefferson was a gentleman of 32 who could calculate an eclipse, survey an estate, tie an artery, plan an edifice, try a cause, break a horse, and dance the minuet.
¹⁴

xiii

Jefferson was a remarkable man, and it is an understatement to say that his positive influence was enormous. He indisputably helped shape America for the better, and he exerted a positive influence on nations across the world. Wherever tyranny is opposed and freedom pursued, Jefferson and his words are held forth as the embodiment of liberty and limited government—a fact especially reaffirmed in the latter part of the twentieth century.

For example, Chinese students who strove to force democratic reforms under their totalitarian government regularly invoked Jefferson, even as the world watched the Communist tyrants massacre those students at Tiananmen Square.
¹⁵

When Czechoslovakians rose to throw off forty years of Soviet Communist tyranny, Czech leader Zdenek Janicek quoted Jefferson and his words to encourage the revolting Czech workers,
¹⁶
and after Vaclav Havel became the first president of the freed Czech Republic, he, too, pointed to Jefferson and his governing philosophy as the standard for his new nation.
¹⁷

During Poland's struggle for independence from the Soviet Union, Jefferson was invoked so often that award-winning Polish author Jerzy Kosinski observed, “In every Pole, there is Jefferson more than anyone else.”
¹⁸

Reform-minded Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev spoke openly of Jefferson's positive influence upon him, explaining: “For myself, I found one thing to be true: having once begun a dialogue with Jefferson, one continues the conversation with him forever.”
¹⁹

When the Soviet Union fell in 1991 and Russia became free from its Communist oppressors, Andrei Kozyrev, the foreign minister of the new Russian republic, openly acknowledged that he was indebted to Jefferson and his governing philosophy.
²⁰

xiv

This pattern has been repeated around the globe. As former prime minister of England Lady Margaret Thatcher affirmed, “[I]n the history of liberty, he's a great figure everywhere in the world.”
²¹

Jefferson and his ideas of liberty, freedom, limited government, and God-given inalienable rights literally changed the world, and historians across the generations consistently praised his contributions and influence.

American history presents few names to its students more attractive and distinguished than that of Thomas Jefferson, and rarely has a single individual, in civil station, acquired such an ascendancy over the feelings and actions of a people.
²²

—B
ENSON
L
OSSING, 1848

Thomas Jefferson . . . [was] singled out to draft the confession of faith of the rising empire. He owed this distinction to . . . that general favor which follows merit, modesty, and a sweet disposition. . . . No man of his century had more trust in the collective reason and conscience of his fellow-men, or better knew how to take their counsel.
²³

—
G
EORGE
B
ANCROFT
, “Father of American History,” 1864

[He] had a faith in humanity that never wavered. He aimed to secure for it law that should deal out equal and exact justice to all men, and he sought to lift all men up to their native dignity by life-long labor in the cause of education.
²⁴

—R
ICHARD
F
ROTHINGHAM
, 1872

Few men have exerted as much influence in establishing the free institutions of the United States as Thomas Jefferson.
²⁵

—B
ENSON
L
OSSING
, 1888

xv

Of all the men of that time, there was, perhaps, none of wider culture or keener political instincts.
²⁶

—J
OHN
F
ISKE
, 1891

[O]ne of the finest traits of his character was his magnanimity. . . . His dearest aim was to bring down the aristocracy and elevate the masses.
²⁷

—E
DWARD
E
LLIS
, 1898

Jefferson often made mistakes, but, as he said of Washington, he “erred with integrity.” If he changed his mind, it was because he had new light or a clearer understanding; if he altered his course, it was because he believed he could accomplish greater good.
²⁸

—W
ILLIAM
E
LEROY
C
URTIS
, 1901

Democracy has won in the United States, and the spirit of its founder lives in all our political parties. He has stamped his individuality on the American government more than any other man.
²⁹

—H
ENRY
W
ILLIAM
E
LSON
, 1904

[Jefferson] is a kind of Rosetta Stone of the American experience, a massive, tectonic intelligence that has formed and rattled the fault lines of our history, our present moment, and, if we are lucky, our future.
³⁰

—K
EN
B
URNS
, 1996

Regrettably, this once universal praise of Jefferson has diminished in recent years. Mention Jefferson today and most Americans who have been through American history classes since the 1960s will retort, “Yeah, he may have done some of those things, but he was also a racist and a bigot—a slaveholder. And he slept with his fourteen-year-old slave Sally Hemings and made her pregnant. And he hated religion so much that he founded the first secular university in America, even writing his own Bible from which he cut out scriptures with which he disagreed.”

xvi

Why can today's Americans list so many negatives about Jefferson but so few positives?

The answer is found in five twentieth-century practices that now dominate the study of American history and its heroes: Deconstructionism, Poststructuralism, Modernism, Minimalism, and Academic Collectivism. Although these five
isms
might suggest that an ivory-tower discussion is about to commence, this is not the case. Once we go through each of the five, you may have an
aha!
moment and recognize how each has shaped your own view of Jefferson. In fact, if you now think poorly of Jefferson, I can promise you that you will almost assuredly hold a very different opinion at the end of this book—and such is its object: to reverse the effect of the five malpractices of modern history that have distorted not only the presentation of Jefferson in particular but of American history in general.

Deconstructionism

The first of the five methods by which Jefferson (and most traditional history) has been impugned is
Deconstructionism
. Deconstructionism “tends to deemphasize or even efface [malign and smear] the subject” by posing “a continuous critique” to “lay low what was once high.”
³¹
It “tear[s] down the old certainties upon which Western Culture is founded”
³²
and the foundations on which those beliefs are based.
³³
In short, Deconstructionism is a steady flow of belittl ing and negative portrayals of Western heroes, beliefs, values, and institutions. Deconstructionists make their living by telling only part of the story and spinning it negatively, manipulating others into supporting their views and objectives.

xvii

Deconstruction of American heroes, values, and institutions—which especially occurs in today's classrooms—is the reason most Americans can recite more of what's wrong with our nation than what's right. They can identify every wart that has ever appeared on the face of America over the past four centuries, but not what has made America the envy of every people in the world—every people, that is, except Americans.

Recall the students in the beginning of this chapter who believed all the Founders in the painting were proslavery. When I ask those same students to point out in the painting notable religious signers such as Robert Treat Paine, Roger Sherman, Benjamin Rush, Francis Hopkinson, John Witherspoon, Lyman Hall, Charles Carroll, or others, they look at me quizzically and say they've never heard those names before. They can always point out only Jefferson and Franklin—the two least religious among the Founders—but not the others. Students are taught the exception rather than the rule. (Incidentally, even the religious views of Franklin and Jefferson are frequently inaccurately portrayed in today's academic settings.)

Under Deconstructionism students are similarly taught about the “intolerant” Christian Puritans who conducted the infamous witch trials. And while twenty-seven individuals died in the Massachusetts witch trials,
³⁴
almost universally ignored is the fact that witch trials were occurring across the world at that time; in Europe, 500,000 were put to death,
³⁵
including 30,000 in England, 75,000 in France, and 100,000 in Germany.
³⁶
Additionally, the American witch trials lasted eighteen months, but the European trials lasted years.
³⁷

Furthermore, the Massachusetts witch trials were brought to a close when Christian leaders such as the Reverend John Wise, the Reverend Increase Mather, and Thomas Brattle challenged the trials because the Biblical rules of evidence and due process had not been followed in the courts, thus convincing civil leaders and the governor to end those trials.
³⁸
Twenty-seven deaths in America but 500,000 in Europe? Why emphasize the twenty-seven but ignore the 500,000? The answer is “Deconstructionism”—presenting a negative portrayal of American faith and values.

xviii

Rarely do students hear that it was these “despised” Puritans who instituted America's first elective forms of government, originated the practice of written constitutions,
³⁹
constructed the first bills of rights to protect individual liberties,
⁴⁰
instituted the free market economic system,
⁴¹
or began America's system of common, or public, schools.
⁴²

In short, Deconstructionists happily point out everything that can possibly be portrayed as a flaw—even if they have to distort information to do so—but they remain conspicuously silent about the multitude of reasons to be proud of America and its many successes and heroes. They have led Americans toward knowing everything that “lays low” American traditions, values, and heroes but virtually nothing that honors or affirms them.

Poststructuralism

The second historical device for attacking and pulling down what is traditionally honored is called
Poststructuralism
. Poststructuralism is marked “by a rejection of totalizing, essentialist, foundationalist concepts” such as the reality of truth or “the will of God.”
⁴³
Poststructuralism discards absolutes and is “a-historical” (that is, non- or anti-historical),
⁴⁴
believing that nothing transcendent can be learned from history. Instead, meaning must be constructed by each individual for him- or herself, and historical meanings may shift and change based on an individual's personal views.
⁴⁵
Poststructuralism is especially evident in the judiciary, where judges often interpret and ascertain the meaning of the Constitution for themselves, redefining even the simplest words with new and previously unknown meanings that the judge has supposedly discovered for him- or herself. Poststructuralism also encourages citizens to “view themselves as members of their interest group first, with the concerns of their nation and the wider community coming second, thus encouraging individual anarchy against traditional national unifying values.”
⁴⁶
In the past, America was characterized by the Latin phrase on the Great Seal of the United States:
E Pluribus Unum
, meaning “out of many, one.” This acknowledges that although there was much diversity in America, there was a common unity that overcame all differences. But Poststructuralism reverses that emphasis to become
E Unum Pluribus
—that is, “out of one, many,” dividing the nation into separate groups and components with no unifying commonality between them. In short, Poststructuralism ignores traditional national unifying structures, values, heroes, and institutions and instead substitutes personally constructed ones.