The Jefferson Lies Read Free

part of military preparation. For this reason, GIs in World War II were regularly grilled and tested on the identification of Axis tanks and planes so that they would be able to quickly spot and destroy enemy forces. Similarly, the reason animals are caught in traps is that they don’t recognize the snare into which they have stepped; once a beaver, wild hog, or any other animal learns to recognize the device, it is no longer effective. This is why 2 Corinthians 2:11 reminds us that if we can identify Satan’s traps, then he won’t have an advantage over us.
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    This same principle should guide our approach to the study of history: recognize and avoid the traps of historical malpractice. But once you recognize a trap, there is more. It is not enough simply to personally avoid the trap; it must also be exposed and removed so that others will not be injured. Thus, when a soldier discovers an IED, minefield, RPG, or weapons cache, he takes steps to neutralize and remove the danger so that no one else will be harmed by inadvertently stumbling into it.
    The best means for overcoming the five modern historical traps is given in Romans 12:21, which instructs us to defeat the evil with the good—that is, not just to avoid evil ourselves but also to apply its antithesis, or its antidote, to neutralize the effect of its poison. For example, praise prevails over criticism, light over darkness, gentleness over anger, humility over arrogance, and so on. So what is the antithesis for each of the five poisons so often injected into American history today?
    The effects and influences of Deconstructionism can be avoided by training oneself to search out the rest of the story and discover if there is a second view or whether there are positive aspects of the account that were omitted from the original portrayal. Of course, the negatives will always be easy to find, just as they were in Numbers 13 and 14 when ten of twelve leaders went into a land filled with milk and honey but came back talking only about its giants and problems. Joshua and Caleb demonstrated in that story that while the negatives are indeed present and cannot be ignored, the positives must also be pointed out: it was a vast, abundant, verdant land of prosperity and plenty just waiting to be entered. Identifying the negatives comes naturally; acknowledging the positives takes deliberate effort.
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    Thomas Jefferson understood this and therefore refused to let negatives prevail in his conversations. His grandson recalled learning this lesson directly from Jefferson.
    He [my grandfather] spoke only of the good qualities of men, which induced the belief that he knew little of them; but no one knew them better. I had formed this opinion, and on hearing him speak very favorably of men with defects known to myself, [I] stated them to him; when he asked if I supposed he had not observed them (adding others not noted by me, and evincing [demonstrating] much more accurate knowledge of the individual character than I possessed), observing, “My habit is to speak only of men’s good qualities.” 2
    Especially in today’s Deconstructionist-dominated environment, it will always be easy to find (or concoct) negatives about any historical figure, but it will require deliberate effort to identify the positives that have been omitted. And omission is one of the most egregious but most effective tools of revisionists.
    This point was brilliantly made by Dr. Paul C. Vitz, a professor at New York University. He was contracted to review history textbooks through a grant from the Department of Education and after examining those texts, he concluded:
    Over and over, we have seen that liberal and secular bias is primarily accomplished by exclusion, by leaving out the opposing position. Such a bias is much harder to observe than a positive vilification or direct criticism, but it is the essence of censorship. 3
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    In fact, he observed a strikingly aggressive