Monday, 4 July 2016

10 Quotes The Founding Fathers Never Said



















The early leaders of the United States were a remarkable group of individuals, with a peculiar blend of vision and genius. There are seven in particular who are credited with establishing the foundation of the nation. These are: John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and George Washington. It makes sense that Americans look to them for guidance when there are questions about modern questions from religion, to the place of firearms, to the scope of government.


Unfortunately, a lot of the wisdom attributed to these seven is bogus. Some of it may have been said, but it was said be a different person. Some quotes are garbled versions of what they said that distort their meaning, and some are total fabrications by people who want to win an argument and think creating a fake quote is a good tactic to use


It is difficult to rank order bogus quotes, so this list does not attempt to do so, though #1 is definitely the most egregious.


10John Adams And The Holy Ghost


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“There is no authority, civil or religious—there can be no legitimate government—but what is administered by this Holy Ghost. There can be no salvation without it—all without it is rebellion and perdition, or, in more orthodox words, damnation.”—John Adams


There are a number of spurious quotes used to buttress the idea that the Founders were all devout Christians who founded the United States on biblical principles. This quote—which was featured on Glen Beck’s series “Founders Fridays”—is one. Unlike many other quotes on this list, this meme actually contains the words of John Adams, but edited to change its meaning.


The quote comes from an 1809 letter to his friend, Benjamin Rush. Reading the whole thing shows that Adams was making fun of the idea that the Holy Ghost gave divine authority to bishops, kings, and heads of state. Adams was a believer but, as a Unitarian he didn’t believe in the Holy Ghost. He was also deeply skeptical of the clergy’s claims of special knowledge and rejected the idea of a divine appointment of kings.


For the record, the founders were not united in any view of religion. George Washington, John Jay, and Alexander Hamilton were Episcopalians (with varying degrees of piety), John Adams was Unitarian, Ben Franklin and Thomas Jefferson were deists (those who believe in God without recourse to supernatural revelation), and there is some question whether James Madison was Episcopalian or deist. Despite their differing views, they held in common the idea that religion should not be commingled with government.


9James Madison On The Commandments


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“We have staked the whole future of American civilization, not upon the power of government, far from it. We have staked the future of all of our political institutions upon the capacity of mankind for self-government: upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves, to control ourselves, to sustain ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God.”—James Madison


This statement once was widely quoted at one point by religious conservatives, including David Barton and the late Jerry Falwell. It is used much less since Madison scholars reported that it is not found anywhere in his writings


It looks a little like something Madison did say. In Federalist Papers XXXIX he refers to “ . . . that honourable determination which animates every votary of freedom, to rest all our political experiments on the capacity of mankind for self government.” But this has been altered and the reference to the 10 Commandments added.


8George Washington On The Bible


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“It is impossible to rightly govern a nation without God and the Bible.”—George Washington


Sometimes claimed as part of Washington’s farewell address of 1796, this appears to have been invented for a biography of him first published in 1835, but it does not appear in any of his papers. The Mount Vernon archive contains several other false quotes about Washington’s thoughts on Christianity in American life, including: “What students would learn in American schools above all is the religion of Jesus Christ.”


Washington was a professing Episcopalian. It’s impossible to judge the depth of his faith, but it is known that he made few public professions of it. He also believed in the full equality of Americans regardless of religion, and there is no record of him ever expressing the thought that Christianity should be the official religion of the US.


7Thomas Jefferson On Hypocrisy


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“The Christian god can easily be pictured as virtually the same god as the many ancient gods of past civilizations. The Christian god is a three headed monster; cruel, vengeful and capricious. If one wishes to know more of this raging, three headed beast-like god, one only needs to look at the caliber of people who say they serve him. They are always of two classes: fools and hypocrites.”—Thomas Jefferson


While some bogus quotes try to make all of the Founders devout Christians, others work just as hard at making them anti-religionists. This is one of several memes that suggest Jefferson viewed belief in God in contempt. Thomas Jefferson may have been the most skeptical of the founders about religion. He created the “Jefferson Bible” by removing all passages involving miracles or divine intervention and all passages characterizing God as harsh or judgmental. What was left was mostly the ethical teachings of Jesus, for which Jefferson had deep regard.


While this passage contains some of Jefferson’s words, they are strung together out of context. Jefferson was critical of the tenets of Christianity and had no interest in organized religion, but his views on God and Jesus were complex, and not entirely negative. At this distance, we can’t exactly what he believed but we can tell that he didn’t make this statement.


6John Adams on God’s Essence


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“God is an essence we know nothing of. Until this awful blasphemy is gotten rid of there will never be any liberal science in the world.”—John Adams


This quote is actually two sentences from different letters, written five years apart. The way they’re joined in the meme makes it seem as if Adams is saying belief in God must go in order for science to make progress. Actually, Adams believed in God, but thought that the nature of God—aside from goodness, power, wisdom, and other virtues—was unknown and unknowable. In other words, he seemed to regard belief in God as a good thing, so long as the believer did not make unwarranted assumptions about God. This is the gist of the letter that the first sentence was taken from. The second sentence, which talks about the “awful blasphemy” is referring to the doctrine of the incarnation. Adams admired Jesus as an ethical teacher, but thought the idea that he was God in human form was nonsense. Like Jefferson, he was neither an Orthodox Christian nor an outright atheist, but an original thinker with a unique take on religious ideas.


5Ben Franklin on Liberty


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“Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote.”—Ben Franklin


One of the most unusual trends in bogus memes is using the engineers of American democracy to denounce democracy. The first part of the quote sounds a little like the sort of aphorism Franklin was fond of writing. The second part, about the well-armed lamb, does not reflect his ideas at all. In fact, neither comes from Franklin, and the word “lunch” was not even in use until decades after his death. The search engine at the Franklin Papers Online—an excellent tool for checking Franklin quotes—verifies that Franklin didn’t say this.


Dr. Franklin was an active proponent of democracy, as were the rest of the Founders, including Thomas Jefferson. Despite that, there’s a similar meme that goes around with Jefferson’s name attached to it.


“A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where 51 percent of the people may take away the rights of the other 49.”—Thomas Jefferson.


Like the Franklin meme, this appears to be in modern saying falsely attributed to a founding father. It does not appear in any of Jefferson’s letters or papers.


4Thomas Jefferson On Criminals And Government


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