The Jefferson Lies Read Free Page A

secularist tendency among those texts:
    And the facts are clear: religion, especially Christianity, has played and continues to play a central role in American life. To neglect to report this is simply to fail to carry out the major duty of any textbook writer—the duty to tell the truth. 4
    It is indeed the duty of those who present history to tell the truth—to tell the whole truth, not just a part of it. As John Adams explained:
    [T]ruth and right are invariably the same in all times and in all places. . . . But passion, prejudice, interest, custom, and fancy are infinitely precarious [unstable]; if therefore we suffer our understandings to be blinded or perverted by any of these . . . we shall embrace errors. 5
    Very simply, when we don’t tell the whole truth but are “blinded or perverted” by passion or bias, then “we shall embrace errors.”
    One of the best ways to find the complete story about an individual is not through a sterile academic study whereby one slice out of a complex historical life is extracted and analyzed under a modern microscope. Rather, the best means is by examining the full life, events, and writings of an individual.
    In the case of Thomas Jefferson, one of the easiest ways to check his complete story is to read some of the earlier biographies about him, such as the 1858 three-volume set by Henry Stephens Randall. Even today, this work is still considered the most authoritative ever written on Jefferson, for Randall was the only biographer approved by the family and given full access to the family papers, records, family members, and family remembrances. Many other early biographies of Jefferson are also worth the read 6 and are usually available for reading online or downloading, as is Randall’s work. 7
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    In short, an antidote for Deconstructionism is to get the full story, especially the part that includes the good things. Lady Margaret Thatcher once wisely repeated the words of a great educator on this point.
    Teach them [children] everything that is best in life—teach them all the good things our country has done—and you will find we shall get a very much better education. 8 (emphasis added)
    The remedy for the second device, Poststructuralism , is (1) to acknowledge individuality—to examine the person himself rather than the various groups and agents to which others are trying to attach him and (2) to recognize and acknowledge fixed and absolute overarching transcendent principles. For example, citizens are entitled to enjoy their God-given inalienable rights (as specified in the Bill of Rights) not because they belong to any particular group but rather because they are individual human beings. Someone does not receive the right of habeas corpus or religious expression or self-protection because he or she belongs to the majority or the minority, is black or Latino, is male or young. Rather, it is because those rights are bestowed on every individual by our Creator. Recognizing individuality is the approach that God takes: everyone is accountable to God individually rather than as part of some group; God provides salvation to individuals not groups. So, too, good history focuses on an examination of the individual and not just his group.
    And because Poststructuralism also encourages personal interpretation of history based on how one “feels” about the person or event, individual feelings must be set aside in the quest for truth. It really doesn’t matter how someone “feels” about Jefferson or whether or not they like him; what matters are facts and truth. As James Madison affirmed, “For what is the object of our discussion? Truth, sir—to draw a true and just conclusion.” 9
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    Personal feelings must be subjugated to objective truth. Either Jefferson did or did not promote emancipation, did or did not encourage public religious expressions, did or did not include religion in education, regardless of