Having some fun at the tea partiers' expense.

[beachmom]

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/8/2/13216/53291

[TayTay]

1. Excellent post.

The Founding Fathers had to deal with a country that had many religious differences. They had been through numerous religious revivals that had swept the colonies at various points in time. While Jefferson did have a belief in a "Supreme Being"; he did not wish to impose his definition or any one definition of religion on the nation. Yes, Jefferson's was a "Christian" view, but Jefferson was a rationalist and his view of Religion was without any concept of AntiChrist, The Rapture or other modern Evangelical beliefs. (Those things had not yet been invented in America yet, at least not as we see them now.) Jefferson loved science and scientific discovery and decried anything that put limits on the mond of man and freedom of thought.

Jefferson said he wanted three things on his tombstone that would mark the things he was most proud of in his life. Those three things were: Author of the Declaration of Independence, Author of the Virginia Statue of Religious Liberty and the founder of the University of Virginia.

Sadly, Jefferson's Statute on Religious Liberty was repealed by the Virginia Legislature in a recent session.

[MBS]

2. Tay, your last sentence was a stunner.

UUGGH. Given the politics of Virginia these days, no surprise, sadly. But it's an awful statement about the ugly place of our country these days -- a place so at odds with the most fundamental principles of our country, and so unworthy of the Founding Fathers.

do you happen to have a link to this depressing bit of info?

[TayTay]

3. It may have been in error

I cannot verify that this has passed. I know that it was proposed in the Virginia General Assembly and has the support of the VA AG (who is crazy) and the new Gov (who is also crazy.)

Anyway, see for yourself the effort to "reform" the Virginia Act for Establishing Religious Freedom, written by Thomas Jefferson.

Jefferson's http://religiousfreedom.lib.virginia.edu/sacred/vaact.html">original text as approved by Virginia in 1786

http://www.newvastatute.org/index.html">New Virginia Statue on Religious Freedom

My apologies. I think I find even proposing to amend this masterpiece of American thought offensive. However, I cannot verify that this piece of legislation has yet passed. Stay tuned.

[wisteria]

4. I thought I had read it had passed recently, but I cannot locate anything reference to this either.

[ladym55]

5. Feel sorry for the re-enactors

It must be hard to be patient with such incredible idiots with such a complete lack of understanding of their own history.

And the tea baggers are lucky they didn't meet Thomas Jefferson. They REALLY would not have liked what he had to say ... especially in regard to religion. At our last visit to Colonial Williamsburg, we had a chance to hear from George Washington, Patrick Henry (who didn't want separation of church and state), and Jefferson.

The reality of the Founding Fathers is far, far away from the cartoon images created by Glenn Blecch for his mindless viewers.

[TayTay]

6. I agree with that.

It is always treacherous to read modern motives into the past. The Founders of this nation had enough problems to deal with in their own times. They were not psychics who were prescient for all of time. That just invests human beings with god-like abilities. This was a concept that the Founders themselves heartily disliked. One of the "sells" of the American Revolution was that people don't have to stay with something that isn't working just because it's a tradition. Change can be a good thing, as long as it is a well-thought out change.

I see this idea of reading the modern into the past with the Salem Witch Trials. (Happens all the time. Can't tell you how many "time travel" books or shows have settled on 1692 Salem as a topic.) The Witch Trials were a peculiar phenomenon that does speak to a human mind set of blaming "the other" but it is also something unique that happened when and where it happened for a reason that is not going to be duplicated. (It happened in a particular time and in a particular place that is inseparable from the event.) The Left is just as guilty of this foamy "I see profound dead people all over the place" thing as the Right.

[beachmom]

7. Totally agree with you about the Left, which is why I put in my lessons learned

that anyone ideological can make this mistake. For example, let's take WWII. We were the good guys 100%, right? Well, after reading Stud Terkel's The "Good" War, I learned it was a lot messier than that. I think it's a case where the more you learn about history the more humbled you are. But some only want to impute on historical figures certain viewpoints which may or may not be right. Plus, with Jefferson, many on the Left may like his views on the separation of church and state, but he did after all own slaves. In fact, watching "John Adams" I saw the Founding Fathers make a terrible compromise by leaving slavery legal. I think that has influenced our politics to this day, and not in a good way. They were wise men who also were craven politicians. But many want to paper over this to reenforce their viewpoints. That is a mistake.

[ProSense]

8. This is the reason the RW always

try to frame their virtues in conjunction with the Founding Fathers. They don't consider the moral struggles even as these men were trying to do right by the country. I guess we have come a long way, but the whole birthright issue is a reminder that Republicans haven't.

[TayTay]

9. We see gods were there were only human beings

The problem with history is that it is taught without passion or storyline. It seems flat like everything was pre-ordained. Nothing could be further from the truth.

My Dad fought in WWII. He needed positive reinforcement that all the horrible things he saw, and did, had meaning. That is the problem of war, we seek meaning in slaughter. The ends of the winners is used to retroactively enforce the decisions of the battles and the generals.

Slavery, and it's insertion into all of the colonies, was America's original sin. (All colonies bear this sin. All colonies either practiced slavery or profited from it.) Yet the fight over slavery was an incidental fight of that period. Retroactively, the Civil War was about slavery. (We required the moral narrative to make sense of the fight and simply it.) Yet, the Civil War was also about a lot more than that and contains issues we still are fighting about.

There are no simple actions in history. I agree with you on that wholeheartedly.

[beachmom]

10. History in school is flat, but once I got to college, and even moreso

after I was done with school, I would occasionally read books on history. Some of them really brought history to life, making it exciting and real. One was "No Ordinary Time" about FDR and the war. I highly admire the FDR presidency, yet I would hardly worship the man whose character was often deeply flawed. Yet, overall, he made a lot of very good decisions. But most people don't know all of this, then are disgusted and horrified by the compromises made by politicians. Hey, that is how it goes, folks! When something good like health care reform gets done, then the awful compromises were worth it. But since people think history was all neat and perfect, that that means everything is bad today. Yes, many things ARE bad, but not everything.

[YvonneCa]

11. "History is a story...

...well-told." If it isn't, it can be very dry and boring. I had a GREAT history teacher in high school. His class had us laughing and discussing ALL the time. He knew how to tell the stories...and kept high school students engrossed. Not an easy feat!

He kept a sign on his wall that said, "Those who forget history are apt to repeat it." He was right...in more than one respect. :7

[ladym55]

12. Excellent points

We have created myths and heroes from flawed human beings. This is especially true of the Founding Fathers. We have the painted images of the men in wigs with quill pens. We conveniently overlook the ugly politics and compromise that went into the creation of our nation. And slavery IS this nation's original sin. We are still dealing with its aftereffects.

Thing is when we allow the complexity of the story line in history we must face our flawed selves, the people who were perfectly okay slaughtering Native Americans, owning and beating slaves, and exploiting immigrants. That is an uncomfortable process. It's MUCH easier to present the simple mythology.