Kerby Anderson Engages in Historical Revisionism...:

while trying to give a lesson on historical revisionism. Reproducing a letter, he writes:

Dear Kerby,

I have heard you discuss the topic of historical revisionism on radio. I told my son about this, and he doesn't believe it. Do you have some examples of how our history has been revised from the original?

Many historians have wanted to secularize our founders. Take this quote from W.E. Woodward. He wrote that "The name of Jesus Christ is not mentioned even once in the vast collection of Washington's published letters."{1}

Anyone who has read some of Washington's writing knows he mentions God and divine providence. But it isn't too difficult to also find times in which he mentions Jesus Christ. For example, when George Washington wrote to the Delaware Indian Chiefs (June 12, 1779) he said: "You do well to wish to learn our arts and ways of life, and above all, the religion of Jesus Christ. These will make you a greater and happier people than you are. Congress will do every thing they can to assist you in this wise intention."{2}

Other examples are also available. For example, a well-worn, handwritten prayer book found among Washington's personal writings after his death had the name "Jesus Christ" used sixteen times. {3}

The actual facts: In over 20,000 pages of Washington's known writings, there is only one reference to "Jesus Christ" by name, which Anderson above cited. And a second taken from Washington's Circular to the States which refers to Jesus as "the Divine Author of our blessed religion." And that is it.

The prayer book to which Anderson refers is not written in Washington's hand has been debunked as at best, inauthentic, at worst, a fraud.

And according to Gregg Frazer's Ph.D. dissertation, there is reason to doubt those two references as expressing Washington's personal belief in Christianity. First, although both documents appear to be authentic, "neither is written in Washington's hand." These were the kinds of documents which, as with politicians today, aides write for officials to sign. It's conceivable that Washington, pressed for time, signed the documents without making revisions.

I might add that his communication to the Delaware Indian Chiefs seems to be done in the context of giving advice on how best to assimilate into American culture. And at other times Washington (and Jefferson and Madison) was remarkably accepting of Native American spirituality. These Presidents, when addressing Native Americans, systematically referred to God on their terms, as "the Great Spirit," suggesting that they worshipped the same God.

Finally, even if Washington believed that Jesus was "the Divine Author," that still wouldn't necessarily make him a Trinitarian because the theological unitarians differed on whether Jesus was just a "man" (Socinians) or some kind of "divine" being, separate from and inferior to God (Arians). In fact, Madison was probably an Arian because he seemed to follow Samuel Clarke, an Anglican Divine who was also an Arian nearly defrocked for peddling his unitarian doctrines in the Church.

If Washington, by referencing Jesus as "the Divine Author," was "hinting" at anything, he could just as easily have been signifying his Arianism as his Trinitarianism.

The case for Washington's belief in orthodox Christianity just isn't there. His public references to God fit just as easily with those of the other key Founders who were theistic/unitarian rationalists (Adams, Jefferson, Madison, and Franklin) as they do with those of the orthodox Christians.

Sister Christian:

Come on, admit it. You like this tune.



And I might add, that song fit perfectly in the drug transaction scene in Boogie Nights. It was as though Night Ranger psychically knew that movie one day would be made with that scene. So they wrote the song for it in anticipation.

The Reductio Ad Absurdum of "Shred":

When I was growing up and learning to play guitar, and in realizing just how hard it is to master this instrument, those who could play at a high level of technique, had a tendency to impress us simply with their technical skill.

Playing guitar or any instrument thus could be viewed like a race or an athletic competition: Who could play the fastest and break the speed records? "Shred" is the term of art for such playing.

Rock music, a relatively new art-form, was special in that unlike classical or jazz, many of its pioneers or present day stars did not and do not have high technical abilities, but rather rely on "raw creative talent" (and some don't even have much of that).

Yet, folks like Eric Clapton and Jimi Hendrix, who were impressive "technicians" for their time (Eric Clapton's nick name "slow hand" was because he played seemingly so fast; yet compared to many rock players today, Clapton is indeed a turtle!) pushed "rock guitar" in the direction of technique or "look what I can do, but you can't." But they also made great music. And Clapton absolutely regrets the technical innovation that he may have helped to set off. (I've read an interview where Clapton reacts to Eddie Van Halen's referencing Clapton as a major influence, that VH learned practically every Clapton lick, "note for note." Clapton's remarks were something along the lines of "don't blame me for that.")

Folks like Eddie Van Halen and Randy Rhoads pushed on and explored the waters of "virtuosity" in rock music, waters that had been long explored by jazz and classical musicians. Indeed, they weren't even the first "rock guitar" virtuosos. John McLaughlin, Al Dimeola, Steve Morse and Alan Holdsworth -- the 70s "fusion" guitarists -- covered that ground before Van Halen's first album came out. Since Van Halen, though, rock guitarists were trying to play "catch-up" to the 70s fusion guys. And by the time Paul Gilbert hit the scene in the 80s, rock guitar had caught up!

And I thought Gilbert was fast. That is, until I saw this guy, Scott McGill (I think the following clip may have been artificially sped up). I think we've reached a point where we have to say "enough is enough"; you are just playing too damn fast, a "reductio ad absurdum" of shred.



Seriously though, this guy does make good music (see below) in the fusion tradition of McLaughlin and Holdsworth. That above clip I think is just to show, "hey look what I can do."

Play It Again Gary:

Every year, I think, I'm going to do a post on Gary North's Ebook. Here is the first one. Here is the one from last year. And here is the book, the entire thing available online.

North is a smart fellow and a learned scholar. But he's also a Christian Reconstructionist who believes the entire Bible must be written into the civil code, including all of the brutal and barbaric passages of the Old Testament.

In studying the Founding, he has come to realize (contra many of his fellow Reconstructionists), the key Founders a) were not Christians, b) constructed a constitutional or civil order that is not at all compatible with the Reconstructionist philosophy, and c) actually secretly intended such civil order to break with the traditional Christian understanding of government, as represented by the old colonial governments which "covenanted" to the Trinitarian Christian God.

And he's angry. He's angry at our Founders for doing what they did. And at his fellow fundamentalists who defend the Founding as authentically "Christian" against the supposed revisionists who came along in the 20th Century and "stole" their Christian Heritage. No, the real culprits are the Founding Fathers, who hoodwinked Christians into accepting the anti-Christian order they founded.

Now, North is a bit of an oddball and the book goes off on an anti-Masonic conspiracy rant. But the book is useful in that it better understands what our Founders personally "intended" than what the "Christian Nation" crowd argues. Indeed, in reading their correspondence, we see that John Adams and Thomas Jefferson did indeed "secretly" intend to break with the traditional Trinitarian understanding of Christianity; they hoped that by founding America on the light of Man's Reason, Christianity itself would be transformed to throw out its Calvinistic Trinitarian doctrines and replace them with unitarian-universalist doctrines (not present day UU, but rather how unitarianism and universalism were understood in the founding era).

The obvious counter response is that we weren't "founded" on the secret intentions of Jefferson, Adams and company, but rather on the original public meaning of text of the Constitution. And such original meaning is far friendlier to public expression of religion in government than what the ACLU, Americans United, and the Supreme Court for that matter, would allow. Also, most of the orthodox Christians of the day didn't understand the principles of the Declaration and Constitution to be hostile to their faith. And they are the ones who ratified the Constitution.

North's reply would be they were sold a bill of goods, a classic bait and switch from colonial covenants founded on an authentically "orthodox Christian" worldview to a set of documents -- the Declaration and the Constitution -- which arose out of a secret Newtonian, Masonic, deistic-Unitarian worldview.

If you have the time to read it, the book is quite amuzing. And aside from some minor historical errors (for instance, George Washington was never a "Grand Master Mason," but simply a "Master Mason") the scholarship is sound, far sounder than what the "Christian Nation" folks typically produce to argue their case.

Here is the book's thesis discussing Daniel Dreisbach's view that the Constitution's treatment of religion was mainly a function of federalism, not secularism:

The unitarians and freemasons who engineered the coup used similar arguments and sentiments to strip God out of the nation’s founding covenantal document for the civil order.

For all of his footnotes, he nevertheless winds up providing lots of evidence for my original book’s central thesis, namely, that there is no neutrality, and that any attempt to achieve it in covenantal affairs inevitably winds up favoring covenant-breakers in their active pursuit of God-defying agendas. This is what happened to the Constitution, as I argued in 1989 and I argue here....Dr. Dreisbach seems almost surprised that a series of Supreme Court decisions after 1960 secularized the nation judicially. “Gosh all whillikers, how did this happen?” he seems to ask. In this book, as in Political Polytheism, I argue that this development was built into the original covenantal document.

Here is North ripping John Adams and Thomas Jefferson:

In their old age, Adams and Jefferson renewed their friendship in a long correspondence that lasted for more than a decade. Their letters reveal that they were almost totally agreed on religion. They hated Christianity, especially Calvinism.94 In Jefferson’s April 11, 1823, letter to Adams, he announced that if anyone ever worshipped a false God, Calvin did. Calvin’s religion, he said, was “Daemonianism,” meaning blasphemy.95 He knew that Adams was already in basic agreement with him in these opinions. After surveying their letters, Cushing Strout concludes: “Whatever their political differences, Jefferson and Adams were virtually at one in their religion.” Strout identifies the creed of this religion: unitarianism.96 Jefferson was systematic in his hatred of trinitarian Christianity. In his old age, he sent a letter to James Smith, which he stressed was confidential, in which he expressed confidence that “the present generation will see Unitarianism become the general religion of the United States.”97 In a letter to Benjamin Watterhouse that same year, he wrote: “I trust that there is not a young man now living in the United States who will not die a Unitarian.”98 The Bible is just another history book, he wrote to Peter Carr: “Read the Bible, then, as you would read Livy or Tacitus.”99 As for Adams, he was buried in a crypt at the United First Parish Church (Unitarian) in Quincy, Massachusetts.

He's just as hard on George Washington. Here we see North discussing George Washington's systematic refusal to take communion:

Here was the strange situation: George Washington was formally a communicant church member who systematically refused to take communion. The institutional problem here was the unwillingness of church authorities to apply formal church sanctions. Any church member who refuses to take communion has thereby excommunicated himself. A refusal to take communion or a prohibition against one’s taking communion is what excommunication means. Self-excommunication is excommunication, just as surely as suicide is first-degree murder. Nevertheless, the churches to which Washington belonged did not take official action against him by either requiring him to take communion or by publicly excommunicating him. It was this disciplinary failure on the part of these churches that led to the public legitimizing of Washington as a Christian. This failure later indirectly legitimized the Constitution that he conspired to impose on the nation. Without Washington’s support of the actions of the Convention, the Constitution would never have been ratified. But Washington was deemed either too powerful or too sacrosanct to bring under church discipline.

And here North veres off into an anti-Masonic conspiracy rant:

Carter’s account of Washington’s first inauguration as President is illuminating: “On April 30, 1789, Washington took the oath of office as President of the United States administered by Chancellor Robert R. Livingston, Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of New York. General Jacob Morton, Worshipful Master of St. John’s Lodge in New York City – the oldest lodge in the city – and Grand Secretary of the Grand Lodge of New York, was marshal of the inauguration. It was one of his duties to provide a Bible for the occasion. Morton brought from the altar of St. John’s Lodge the Bible upon which Washington placed his hand while repeating the obligation to uphold the Constitution of the United States and then kissed the sacred volume to complete the ceremony.”48

You will not read in the textbooks that thirty-three of Washington’s generals were Freemasons.49 You will also not read that Lafayette was not given command over any troops until after he agreed to be initiated into Union Lodge No. 1, at which ceremony Washington officiated as Master Mason. But such was the case.50 Washington presided over a procession in Philadelphia on December 27, 1778, after the evacuation of the British. Dressed in full Masonic attire, he marched through the city with three hundred other Masons, and then held a Masonic service at Christ Church, which became his congregation of preference during his Presidency.51

As President, he received many honors from local lodges. His written replies to them were generous. He never wavered in his attachment to Freemasonry. In a letter to King David’s Lodge No. 1 of Newport Rhode Island, written on Sunday, August 22, 1790, Washington wrote: “Being persuaded that a just application of the principles, on which the Masonic Fraternity is founded, must be promotive of private virtue and public prosperity, I shall always be happy to advance the interests of the Society, and to be considered by them as a deserving brother.”52 In several letters, he referred to God as the Supreme Architect. A representative example is his letter to Pennsylvania Masons (Dec. 27, 1791): “. . . I request you will be assured of my best wishes and earnest prayers for your happiness while you remain in this terrestrial Mansion, and that we may thereafter meet as brethren in the Eternal Temple of the Supreme Architect.”53

John Eidsmoe, in his book-length defense the Constitution as a Christian document, takes seriously Washington’s outright lie – it can be nothing else – in a letter to G. W. Snyder in 1798, that he had not been in a Masonic lodge “more than once or twice in the last thirty years.”54 One does not become the Grand Master of a lodge by attending services once or twice over thirty years, but one can certainly fool two centuries of Christian critics by lying through one’s wooden teeth about it.55 The problem is, Grand Master Washington’s word to Mr. Snyder is trusted by Christians. The documentary record is not.

LOL. I think I'll end it there.

Steve Walsh Does the '80s:

This video typifies 80s cheese.

When Walsh quit Kansas, he formed a band called Streets, with some impressive musicians (especially Mike Slamer on guitar). But the genre -- commercial 80s rock -- is not exactly my cup of tea. YouTube just uploaded one of their videos.

Walsh definitely is a strange dude. He's my favorite singer though. He could be second to Henry Rollins as one of the buffest rock singers. And he actually finds a way to show himself lifting weights (and singing about "3 sets of 20") in this video. In Kansas, he used to wear an Adidas outfit with tight gym shorts that made him look like a cross between a 70s gym coach and a porn star.

But strangely enough, his weirdness entertains me.

Bill O'Reilly, Satan's Spin Doctor:

I'll let you be the judge:



Seriously though, I must confess, I'm entertained by watching the ravings of deranged lunatics, whether it be Fred Phelps, Charles Manson, Daniel Carver, or the Black Israelites.

James Madison, not a Christian, but a "Theistic Rationalist":

A while back I did a post on Madison where I noted that like Washington, he often spoke of a warm-intervening God, generically defined, but eschewed talking in Christian or Trinitarian terms, and otherwise was mum on the specific details of his creed. I linked to an excellent article by James H. Hutson on Madison's religious beliefs which noted our fourth President's conspicuous silence on the matter. Hutson does uncover a few clues as to what Madison believed. And those clues point us in the direction of Madison's belief not in Christianity, but in Theistic Rationalism. First, the words of Bishop Meade, a Founding era orthodox Christian who knew Madison personally:

His religious feeling, however, seems to have been short-lived. His political associations were[with] those of infidel principles, of whom there were many in his day, if they did not actually change his creed, yet subjected him to a[the] general suspicion of it

Note: the bracketed words are from an alternate citation of this quotation offered by David L. Holmes in his book, The Faiths of the Founding Fathers. Replace "with" for "were" and "the" for "a."

Meade also noted:

I was never at Mr. Madison's but once, and then our conversation took such a turn--though not designed on my part--as to call forth some expressions and arguments which left the impression on my mind that his creed was not strictly regulated by the Bible.

Hutson's paper also notes a Bostonian's account of an 1815 dinner conversation with Madison:

He talked of religious sects and parties and was curious to know how the cause of liberal Christianity stood with us, and if the Athanasian creed was well received by our Episcopalians. He pretty distinctly intimated to me his own regard for the Unitarian doctrines.

Clues, yes. But nothing from the horse's [Madison's] mouth. Although, in an era when orthodox Christianity was far more socially and legally entrenched and when one could ruin one's reputation by wearing one's heterodoxy on one's sleeve (what happened to Paine), keeping "religious secrets" as Madison and Washington did, seems to me to point strongly in the direction of adhering to the so called "infidel principles," commonly believed by the elite Whigs of the Founding era.

But I have uncovered an interesting letter from Madison, written in 1825, which I think sheds some light on Madison's personal beliefs. I'm going to reprint the entire letter TO FREDERICK BEASLEY on Nov. 20, 1825, which you may also read here.

I have duly recd the copy of your little tract on the proofs of the Being & Attributes of God. To do full justice to it, would require not only a more critical attention than I have been able to bestow on it, but a resort to the celebrated work of Dr. Clarke, which I read fifty years ago only, and to that of Dr. Waterland also which I never read.

The reasoning that could satisfy such a mind as that of Clarke, ought certainly not to be slighted in the discussion. And the belief in a God All Powerful wise & good, is so essential to the moral order of the World & to the happiness of man, that arguments which enforce it cannot be drawn from too many sources nor adapted with too much solicitude to the different characters & capacities to be impressed with it.

But whatever effect may be produced on some minds by the more abstract train of ideas which you so strongly support, it will probably always be found that the course of reasoning from the effect to the cause, "from Nature to Nature's God," Will be the more universal & more persuasive application.

The finiteness of the human understanding betrays itself on all subjects, but more especially when it contemplates such as involve infinity. What may safely be said seems to be, that the infinity of time & space forces itself on our conception, a limitation of either being inconceivable; that the mind prefers at once the idea of a self-existing cause to that of an infinite series of cause & effect, which augments, instead of avoiding the difficulty; and that it finds more facility in assenting to the self-existence of an invisible cause possessing infinite power, wisdom & goodness, than to the self-existence of the universe, visibly destitute of those attributes, and which may be the effect of them. In this comparative facility of conception & belief, all philosophical Reasoning on the subject must perhaps terminate. But that I may not get farther beyond my depth, and without the resources which bear you up in fathoming efforts, I hasten to thank you for the favour which has made me your debtor, and to assure you of my esteem & my respectful regards.

Letter from James Madison to Frederick Beasley (Nov. 20, 1825), in 9 The Papers of James Madison, 1819-1836, at 229 (Gaillard Hunt ed., 1910).

While Madison is not entirely explicit regarding what he really believes, there are two important clues which point in the direction of Madison's personal disbelief in orthodox Christianity, instead belief in the same system of Theistic Rationalism in which Jefferson, Adams, and Franklin believed. First, when it comes time to discuss God's attributes, Madison does not, which it would seem he would do were he a Christian, turn to the Bible or the explicit creeds of the Episcopal Church to which he nominally belonged, but rather, he attemps to understand God's attributes on rationalistic terms, through philosophical reasoning.

Second, the "Dr. Clarke" to whom Madison refers is "Dr. Samuel Clarke," an Anglican minister, also a theological unitarian who was nearly defrocked for peddling his unitarian doctrines (he wasn't defrocked because he promised to stop doing so). Indeed, in Gregg Frazer's Ph.D. thesis, he notes that Clarke's work was part of what the orthodox Christians of the day referred to as "Satan's bookshelf" at Harvard, an institution which had orthodox Christian origins but during the Founding era was overtaken by Unitarians.

If You are Going to Criticize Popular and/or Elite Culture...:

you should at least get your facts straight:

No so today. Our elite culture treats symbols of authority with mockery. Robert Mapplethorpe put crosses in jars of urine, and the philistines who read the New Yorker and sent money to the ACLU line up to defend his freedom of expression. Not, mind you, his mere and uncontested right to put crosses in piss, but his right to federal funding, to space in art museums, to celebration and acclaim as a great, liberating artistic genius.

For those who don't know, the writer confuses Robert Mapplethorpe with Andres Serrano.

This Poster Nails Kansas:

From a poster in "The Rush Forum":

Quite possibly the most underrated prog band from the '70s to mid-'80s. Most people know them from "Carry On Wayward Son" and "Dust In The Wind," but Kansas (on mainly their first five studio albums) belongs in the same category as Genesis and Yes for orchestral-sounding prog-rock. Kerry Livgren, who wrote most of their "deep, pondering" tunes, was equally adept at both lead guitar and keyboards, which when combined with Steve Walsh's searing organ playing and Richard Williams' "meatwall" heavy guitar, made the band sound both like a hard rock band and an art-rock prog band. Steve Walsh had an instantly recognizable voice, and he could sing his ass off. Having a full-time violinist in Robby Steinhardt also helped define their unique sound. In any one song they could go from a loud twin-guitar/organ attack to a soft piano/violin duet. Kansas was very diverse.

Growing up I was into Led Zep, Deep Purple, Ted Nugent, Aerosmith, Boston, and the whole southern rock thing. Then I heard Kansas' Leftoverture album, featuring a 6:41 instrumental (with a small vocal section thrown in) named "Magnum Opus." It featured tricky time changes and insane playing. I'd never heard anything like it, and that album introduced me to prog rock. A couple of years later Rush's Permanent Waves came out, and I haven't listened to Ted Nugent since.

A while back I linked to their prog-rock masterpiece "The Pinnacle." The same YouTube member also put up "Journey From Mariabronn," which was also played on the Don Kirsher show. Though, "The Pinnacle" was a more polished performance (given that "Journey" was played shortly into the band's career, "Pinnacle" was played on a subsequent Kirshner show, after the band had a few years of touring under its belt). I've embedded Journey from Mariabronn because it is, I think, one of the best written progressive rock songs. And Steve Walsh's voice is in its prime in the performance.



Now Walsh, unfortunately (despite being a fitness buff, who even now in his mid-50s can run 20 miles at a time), did a lot of drugs and alcohol and for a while didn't take care of his voice causing it to terribly deteriorate. For instance, see this performance of "Dust in the Wind" on their Live at the Whiskey video, which marked a low point for Walsh's voice.



As you can see, he can still carry a tune and phrase nicely, but he lost almost all of his smooth tone (and some of his range) which was what was so appealing about his voice. Then after being arrested a number of times, in his mid-40s (about 10 years ago) he cleaned up his act and rehabiliated much (but not all) of what he lost in his voice. From their 2002 DVD, entitled Device Voice Drum, here is "Carry on Wayward Son," where Walsh redeems his "hoarse" performance in Live at the Whiskey (not quite how he sounded in the 70s, but at times he gets close).

American Revolution & Founding Era Blog:

Brain Tubbs often disagrees with my portrayal of the Founders in the way that I stress the key Founders who happened to be freethinking theistic (unitarian) rationalists.

I would say that, for the other side, he has a good blog -- one that points out facts that perhaps go unstressed by me -- except that he has a permalink to Wallbuilders. And that I think destroys any credibility that he might hope to achieve.

My list of scholars associated with the more social conservative side on church/state issues, whom I greatly respect (though I have some serious disagreements with some of them) include James H. Hutson, Philip Hamburger, Daniel Dreisbach, and Vincent Phillip Munoz.

David Barton, William Federer, D. James Kennedy, and Tim Lahaye (yes, Lahaye, a number of years ago, wrote a book on the Founders and Religion that is as bad as anything Barton has put out) are ahistorical hacks who offer quotations either badly taken out of context so as to be grossly misleading, or sometimes downright fraudulent.

Even Hutson recognizes this. Indeed, in the preface to his fine book of quotations he mentions as the prime motivation in writing this work that previous quote books offered by religious conservative "scholars" (I put that word in quotations because none of them, it seems, are trained historians) have been so shoddy. His words:

Few compilers of the religious quote books are academic historians....The[ir] contempt for professional historians seems, unfortunately, to have fostered a corresponding contempt for the craft of history, for some of the compilers display a cavalier attitude toward factual accuracy and the use of evidence which comprises the integrity of their work....Convinced that the subject, Religion and the Founding, deserves better treatment than it has received in the religious quote book genre, I offer a quote book that is as objective as possible and that conforms to the canons of historical scholarship.

P. x.

It is a great, and very useful book.

Congrats to Sandefur:

Congratulations to my co-blogger Timothy Sandefur on the release of his new book, published by The CATO Institute.

Sandefur is one of the nation's leading property rights lawyers as well as one of the brightest young minds in libertarian thought. I'm just glad that we share a blog-platform together.

Psychological Stress Caused by Premillenial Rapture Teachings:

Here is a good post from an old friend (his family owned my first place of minimum wage employment) about psychological stress caused to children whose parents follow the Rapture teachings. Those of us who grew up outside of such a tradition could always just laugh it off as crackpot nonsense. But if you are a little kid whose parents tell you this is the Truth, such can be downright frightening. Kevin writes:

On a personal note, I remember watching A Thief in the Night as a kid. I was probably 11 and my sister was 9. This film had a very negative impact on both my sister and I. For many years we lived in fear. If our parents would be away from us for a length of time, we would become filled with anxiety. We thought that our parent's were raptured and we were "left behind." This bad theology and the films and books based on it, has caused my sister and I a great deal of emotional and psychological stress. The fact that my parent's and the church we went to considered this movie appropriate for us is unimaginable to me.

Sadly, enough this bad theology is still raging on. Tim Lahaye continues to write his popular best selling Left Behind Series. To date there have been 15 of these dangerous and fantastic novels written, and he will soon release a 16th!

When will this madness end?

Now, from his blog, you can see that Kevin is still a devout Christian, in spite of all this.

My parents, on the other hand, are, like me, more or less open-minded and hopeful agnostics (but we have closed our minds to many belief systems, for instance, the one above-mentioned and Muslim fundamentalism). But when I was growing up my parents told me that there is a God, that Jesus was his son, you/good people go to Heaven when you/they die. (We attended Church on Christmas and Easter only; and though I was, at my grandmother's behest, baptized Catholic -- else I end up in Limbo had I died as a baby -- I was never confirmed, and have never taken communion).

And that's fine. I think you need to tell children whatever is needed to give them a sense of comfort and security. Certainly, they shouldn't have horrific religious tales thrust on them. And that probably goes for the other side -- atheism -- as well. If one is an atheist and believes that to be the Truth, if that will upset little children, then that Truth, like Santa's nonexistence, probably should be reserved for when they are a little older.

Downsize DC Show:

I want to thank Jim Babka for hosting me on his show. I had a great time. And if interested, you can listen to my appearance here.

Justice Douglas as...:

A while back after reading Jim Lindgren's account of a meeting with Justice Burger, I noted that Burger reminded me Judge Smails (Ted Knight) of Caddyshack fame.

So now I read Judge Posner's very interesting discussion of Justice Douglas where Posner writes:

Apart from being a flagrant liar, Douglas was a compulsive womanizer, a heavy drinker, a terrible husband to each of his four wives, a terrible father to his two children, and a bored, distracted, uncollegial, irresponsible, and at times unethical Supreme Court justice who regularly left the Court for his summer vacation weeks before the term ended. Rude, ice-cold, hot-tempered, ungrateful, foul-mouthed, self-absorbed, and devoured by ambition, he was also financially reckless--at once a big spender, a tightwad, and a sponge--who, while he was serving as a justice, received a substantial salary from a foundation established and controlled by a shady Las Vegas businessman.

After reading that, I thought to myself, man, Douglas was Dan Fielding. (Except on Night Court, Fielding seem to be portrayed as a conservativish Republican Prosecutor, while Douglas was a liberal).

Heads Up:

I'm going to be on Jim Babka's show tomorrow (Sunday) at 5:00pm (tune in at 5:07) Eastern time discussing the Founders & Religion.

You can listen to the show on the Internet here. Listen on the first or second feeds.

Another David Barton Myth Debunked:

This time by a 17-year-old highschool senior, homeschooled, Christian conservative, the exact audience which Barton targets for his propaganda (indeed, he's been nicknamed their "lesson-planner"). And that's a real shame. Some of those homeschooled Christians are real bright; they deserve better than Barton.

The myth in question is about the so called "Jefferson Bible." Barton's website claims:

The reader, as do many others, claimed that Jefferson omitted all miraculous events of Jesus from his "Bible." Rarely do those who make this claim let Jefferson speak for himself. Jefferson's own words explain that his intent for that book was not for it to be a "Bible," but rather for it to be a primer for the Indians on the teachings of Christ (which is why Jefferson titled that work, "The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth"). What Jefferson did was to take the "red letter" portions of the New Testament and publish these teachings in order to introduce the Indians to Christian morality.

And then we have D. James Kennedy spreading the myth:

So what about the Jefferson Bible, that miracles-free version of the Scriptures? That, too, is a myth. It is not a Bible, but an abridgement of the Gospels created by Jefferson in 1804 for the benefit of the Indians. Jefferson's "Philosophy of Jesus of Nazareth Extracted From the New Testament for the Use of the Indians" was a tool to evangelize and educate American Indians. There is no evidence that it was an expression of his skepticism.

And others:

There never was a Jefferson Bible per se. Jefferson did cut out miracles from the Gospels in order to produce a book on ethics -- the ethics and morals of Jesus Christ for the purpose of evangelizing and educating the American Indians.

But Derek Wallace actually researches the primary sources in context and discovers that Jefferson's Bible really was for his own use and was an expression of his skepticism. In fact, Jefferson thought much of Scripture was a corrupted "dunghill," with "diamonds" of Truth buried therein. From Jefferson's October 13, 1813 letter to John Adams (and Adams by the way, approved of Jefferson's editing Scripture, because he too thought the Bible was errant, and noted if he had the time, Adams himself would have produced his own Bible with the "error" edited out):

In extracting the pure principles which [Jesus] taught, we should have to strip off the artificial vestments in which they have been muffled by priests, who have travestied them into various forms, as instruments of riches and power to themselves . . . We must reduce our volume to the simple evangelists, select, even from them, the very words only of Jesus, paring off the amphibologisms into which they have been led, by forgetting often, or not understanding, what had fallen from him, by giving their own misconceptions as his dicta, and expressing unintelligibly for others what they had not understood themselves. There will be found remaining the most sublime and benevolent code of morals which has ever been offered to man. I have performed this operation for my own use, by cutting verse by verse out of the printed book, and arranging the matter which is evidently his, and which is as easily distinguishable as diamonds in a dunghill.

And this is not the only time Jefferson discusses, in his private correspondence, his "Bible"; many times, he notes that his Bible is for his own use.

Read the rest of the article; it's quite good. I'd say that at 17, Mr. Wallace's skills at historical research have already surpassed Barton's.

Roy Moore Joins WND:

I second Ed Brayton's thoughts. I'm sure Moore's columns will provide much future entertainment and fodder for us.

Seriously though, I think, in this past post, I answered the basics of what Moore writes in his introductory column. I'll expand a little here.

First, Moore could argue that as a matter of constitutional technicality, he was in the right (although, the way our system works is that state courts must obey federal court commands, and if you think a lower federal court erred, you may appeal the case to higher federal courts, up to the Supreme Court of the United States, and make your case there). In fact, Moore does argue this:

As the former chief justice of the Supreme Court of Alabama, I lost my position because I chose to follow God and the United States Constitution, our rule of law, instead of a federal judge's unlawful order commanding me to remove a Ten Commandments monument from the rotunda of the Alabama state judicial building.

There are a couple doctrines which some serious constitutional scholars advance that suggest on originalist grounds, Moore's case didn't involve an Establishment Clause issue (and we'd have to get 5 Justice Thomases on the Supreme Court and wait for such a ruling to come down in order for Moore, as Chief Justice of a State Court, to get to lawfully keep his monument, though). For instance, the argument that the Establishment Clause is a federalism only provision. Or if anything is incorporated against the states, it is an individual right to be free from coercive establishments, things that actually "pick the pockets or break the legs," (a metaphorical phrase for real harm) of individuals. If a rock displayed on public grounds with a religious message doesn't actually harm you in any real sense, then no Establishment Clause issue is raised.

If that were the proper way to understand the Establishment Clause (as Justice Thomas argues), then not only would Moore be able to keep his rock, but...a Muslim Judge could erect a monument to Allah, a Hindu Judge to Shiva, a Pagan Judge to the Greek and Roman Gods of Justice, (all of them could argue that our rights come from such divine sources), or an atheist Judge could erect a monument which says "under no God" and no Establishment Clause issue likewise would be implicated.

But that's not what Moore was fighting over. Indeed, if Moore understood the issue in that respect, I don't think he would have bothered with a fight which ended up destroying his career. As he writes:

But my case was not about a monument and it was not about the Ten Commandments: It was about the acknowledgment of the Judeo-Christian God as the sovereign source of our law, liberty and government.

What Moore actually did was misunderstand and betray our Founding Fathers (Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Franklin, et al.) who never identified God in their public supplications as the God who revealed the Ten Commandments to Moses. They replaced the Biblical God with a generic "Nature's God," and the Ten Commandments, with the Ten Amendments of the Bill of Rights. If Moore had simply erected a multi-ton monument of the Declaration of Independence with its invocation of a generic God and Divine Providence and also featured the Ten Amendments of the Bill of Rights on the stone (and nothing more), I wouldn't have had a problem with that. And, if you want to challenge strict secularists who want no mention of the Divine in the public square, that would be a test case which correctly understands Founding history and political philosophy.

Also, there is no such thing as the "Judeo-Christian" God as Jews and Christians worship different gods. The Christian God is triune in nature, while the Jewish God is not. Moreover, the Founders didn't use the term "Judeo-Christian" and otherwise did not try to make any kind of coalition, or draw a lowest-common-denominator between Jews and Christians only. Back then, though the colonies varied in which particular religious sects received rights, the two strongest competing philosophies were that which held Protestant Christians only ought to receive the full rights of conscience and that which would grant rights universally to those with creeds no matter how unorthodox. Our key Founding Fathers fell into the latter. In other words, they would grant Jews full rights of conscience along with, in Jefferson's words, "the Gentile, the Christian and Mahometan, the Hindoo, and Infidel of every denomination."

To repeat, you will not find the key Framers -- Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Franklin -- identifying God exclusively as the God who revealed the Ten Commandments to Moses or the God of the Bible. Now, their generic monotheistic God could be, in the minds of private citizens, the God of the Bible, or some very unorthodox Providence. But He (or She or It) is not so specifically defined. Even when Washington addressed the Jews and noted the God whom they worshipped -- "Jehovah" -- was the same "Wonder Working Deity" in whom he believed, he said so as a religious universalist who customarily referred to God in specific terms used by those he addressed (Washington never used the word "Jehovah" when not speaking to Jews as far as I know). Indeed, when speaking to the Native Americans, Washington, Jefferson, and Madison (perhaps Adams, I haven't yet found his quotations as I have with the other three), referred to God as "The Great Spirit," just as the Indians did.

If you want to say that the Founders' "Nature's God" is the God in the Bible, the best you could argue is yes, He is with one serious caveat: He is the Biblical God except for everything written in the Bible about Him which didn't comport with their understanding of Man's Reason, like His irrational wrath and jealously. These Founders believed the Bible was errant; it contained in Adams's words "errors and amendments" (or in Jefferson's, its history was "defective and doubtful") and Man's Reason was the penultimate tool for determining which parts of the Bible were legitimately revealed by God (as Jefferson put it, Man's Reason could find the "Diamonds" of Truth among the "Dunghill" of error contained in the Bible) and which were not. Everything that didn't passed the "Reason" smell test was thus properly edited from the Bible. And doctrines like the Trinity and the Incarnation were the most unreasonable "corruptions" of Christianity which, as John Adams put it, "stupified" the minds of the Christian world. Adams went so far as to tell Jefferson that even if God Himself told him the Trinity were true, he wouldn't have believed the doctrine because 1 is not 3 and 3 is not 1, period. And both Jefferson and Adams explicitly doubted that the Ten Commandments were in fact revealed by God.

Somehow, I don't think the likes Roy Moore think such a God deserves worship or public acknowledgement. But Jefferson and Adams (along with the similarly heterodox Ben Franklin, and two other lesser well knowns) were the men who actually wrote the Declaration of Independence.

It's a pity Moore doesn't properly understand the Founding. If he did, he might still have a job.

John Adams on Thanksgiving Proclamations:

This may surprise some folks. It's well known that Washington, Adams, and Madison issued Thanksgiving proclamations (to a generic God), while Jefferson refused. And Madison, in his Detached Memoranda seemed to indicate it's improper for the federal government to do this (thus giving support to the notion that Founding-era practice is not dispositive, that indeed, it's entirely possible to raise a constitutional ideal one minute, then break it the next).

Before seeing this quotation in James H. Hutson's fine book, I didn't know that Adams too regretted issuing the Thanksgiving Proclamation. His words are quite interesting:

The National Fast, recommended by me turned me out of office. It was connected with the general assembly of the Presbyterian Church, which I had no concern in. That assembly has allarmed and alienated Quakers, Anabaptists, Mennonists, Moravians, Swedenborgians, Methodists, Catholicks, protestant Episcopalians, Arians, Socinians, Armenians, & & &, Atheists and Deists might be added. A general Suspicon prevailed that the Presbyterian Church was ambitious and aimed at an Establishment of a National Church. I was represented as a Presbyterian and at the head of this political and ecclesiastical Project. The secret whisper ran through them "Let us have Jefferson, Madison, Burr, any body, whether they be Philosophers, Deists, or even Atheists, rather than a Presbyterian President." This principle is at the bottom of the unpopularity of national Fasts and Thanksgivings. Nothing is more dreaded than the National Government meddling with Religion.

John Adams to Benjamin Rush, June 12, 1812. Old Family Letters, 392-93; taken from Hutson's The Founders on Religion, 101-02.

Rebroadcasting Propaganda:

Coral Ridge rebroadcast last year's propaganda special attempting to prove we were founded (in a public sense) as a "Christian Nation." Here is how I dealt with it last year (which also links to other posts which address Kennedy's spurious claims).

One thing I missed in last year's discussion: It noted how Ben Franklin proposed a prayer at the constitutional convention. Franklin was a theist who believed in an interventionist God, but otherwise rejected the key tenets of orthodox Christianity. Coral Ridge said that was the "turning" point in the convention (I guess they assumed the conventioneers actually prayed), that after the event, the convention went from the brink of failure to success. Which is utter nonsense: The convention did not pray; they rejected Franklin's call to prayer.

One more word about the whole "covenants" thing. Usually, there is a kernel of truth in urban myths. The special argued that the Declaration and Constitution were based on earlier documents -- "covenants" with the Christian God. What's truly remarkable about this claim is that neither the Declaration or the Constitution contain covenants to God. The kernel of truth is perhaps earlier covenant documents influenced our Founding insofar as those covenants were experiments with self-government. But what is distinctive about the Declaration and the Constitution is that they do not covenant, but rather replace covenants with the social contract. So the Declaration and Constitution are like earlier Christian covenants, except with the heart ripped out of the earlier documents: The covenants with God.

My own opinion on the ideological origins of the US Constitution, similar to what Bernard Bailyn has argued, is that the Founders drew from a variety of intellectual sources and synthesized them, including 1) Christian-Biblical principles, 2) Pagan Greco-Roman principles, 3) traditional common law or "rights of Englishmen" principles, and 4) modern Enlightenment principles or "the rights of man." Now, the Founders probably thought that these sources by-in-large agreed on most matters. Yet, when a conflict occurred, something had to dominate. And it was not the Bible or "Christian principles." Rather, it was Enlightenment principles which trumped and Man's Reason was the ultimate lens through which all of the sources were to be viewed.

Bad Neighbors:

This is not the way to handle things if your neighbor has a recalcitrant child with developmental disabilities.