- "The Mass of Mankind Has Not Been Born with Saddles
on Their Backs"
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- Thomas Jefferson to Roger Weightman, declining to attend
the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence in the District
of Columbia. This was the last letter written by Jefferson, who died 10
days later, on July 4, 1826. --LB
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- Monticello, June 24, 1826
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- Respected Sir -
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- The kind invitation I receive from you, on the part of
the citizens of the city of Washington, to be present with them at their
celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of American Independence, as one
of the surviving signers of an instrument pregnant with our own, and the
fate of the world, is most flattering to myself, and heightened by the
honorable accompaniment proposed for the comfort of such a journey. It
adds sensibly to the sufferings of sickness, to be deprived by it of a
personal participation in the rejoicings of that day. But acquiescence
is a duty, under circumstances not placed among those we are permitted
to control. I should, indeed, with peculiar delight, have met and exch
anged there congratulations personally with the small band, the remnant
of that host of worthies, who joined with us on that day, in the bold and
doubtful election we were to make for our country, between submission or
the sword; and to have enjoyed with them the consolatory fact, that our
fellow citizens, after half a century of experience and prosperity, continue
to approve the choice we made. May it be to the world, what I believe it
will be, (to some parts sooner, to others later, but finally to all,) the
signal of arousing men to burst the chains under which monkish ignorance
and superstition had persuaded them to bind themselves, and to assume the
blessings and security of self-government. That form which we have substituted,
restores the free right to the unbounded exercise of reason and freedom
of opinion. All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man.
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- The general spread of the light of science has already
laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has
not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and
spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God. These are
grounds of hope for others. For ourselves, let the annual return of this
day forever refresh our recollections of these rights, and an undiminished
devotion to them.
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- I will ask permission here to express the pleasure with
which I should have met my ancient neighbors of the city of Washington
and its vicinities, with whom I passed so many years of a pleasing social
intercourse; an intercourse which so much relieved the anxieties of the
public cares, and left impressions so deeply engraved in my affections,
as never to be forgotten. With my regret that ill health forbids me the
gratification of an acceptance, be pleased to receive for yourself, and
those for whom you write, the assurance of my highest respect and friendly
attachments.
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- Th. Jefferson
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- July 4th reminds literate Americans of at least five
words, "all men are created equal," from Thomas Jefferson's Declaration
of Independence. But few know one word from his last statement on it, a
masterpiece, written 10 days before his death on - yes - the 4th of July,
1826, the 50th anniversary of the document that created our modern political
world.
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- Jefferson's stature fell from national demigod to all-too-human
in the wake of Fawn Brodie's book, "Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate
Portrait," and recent DNA documentation that he fathered at least
one child by a slave, Sally Hemmings. Nor did the dying author of the earthshaking
phrase free his other slaves, as Washington did.
-
- Nevertheless, that doesn't diminish the impact of his
youthful words. As America's ambassador, he was lionized by Paris in 1789.
His egalitarianism was what they wanted when they stormed the Bastille.
Later, John Brown's abolitionism was based on the Declaration and the Bible,
and Lincoln at Gettysburg was "dedicated to the proposition that all
men are created equal."
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- Modern republicanism, like its ancient models, was created
topdown, by some of the educated privileged. In his writings on slavery
we find primordial racism mixed with noble sentiments. In his 1781 "Notes
on the State of Virginia," he announced the blacks' "own judgment
in favor of the whites, declared by their preference of them, as uniformly
as is the preference of the orangutan for the black woman over those of
his own species."
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- Yet his "Autobiography" truthfully relates
how, "in 1769," at 26, he "became a member of the legislature
... I made one effort ... for the permission of the emancipation of slaves
which was rejected." He returned to the question in the Declaration's
original version. George III had
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- "waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating
its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant
people who never offended him, captivating and carrying them into slavery
... Determined to keep open a market where men should be bought and sold,
he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt
to prohibit or restrain this execrable commerce."
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- He added that the British organized slaves to kill rebel
masters. But other signers saw what Jefferson wouldn't. They couldn't denounce
Britain for American slavery without being hypocrites. The passage was
struck.
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- The Notes gave his emancipation plan. Blacks born after
passage would be colonized to a place under US protection until they became
a sovereign state. "It will be asked, why not retain them and incorporate
the blacks into the state?" But
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- "Deep-rooted prejudices entertained by the whites;
ten thousand recollections by the blacks, of the injuries they have sustained
... will produce convulsions, which will probably never end but in the
extermination of the one or the other race."
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- For him, "the improvement of the blacks in body
and mind, in the first instance of their mixture with the whites ... proves
that their inferiority is not the effect merely of their conditions of
life." But he noted the absence of naturalist studies of blacks. "The
opinion that they are inferior in the faculties of reason and imagination,
must be hazarded with great diffidence. To justify a general conclusion,
requires many observations ... I advance it, therefore, as a suspicion
only."
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- Indeed, when Benjamin Banneker, a free inventor, sent
him a copy of his Almanac, Jefferson delighted to reply that "nobody
wishes more than I do to see such proofs ... that nature has given to our
black brethren, talents equal to those of the other colors."
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- In 1784, Congress, under the Articles of Confederation,
defeated his proposal to prohibit slavery, after 1800, in the western territories
from Alabama to Ohio. But three years later, it declared that everyone
born north of the Ohio River was automatically free, and the Constitutional
Convention arranged to ban slave importation in 1808.
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- Lincoln was correct:
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- "(T)o the extent that a necessity is imposed upon
a man, he must submit to it. I think that was the condition in which we
found ourselves when we established this government. We had slaves among
us; we could not get our Constitution unless we permitted them to remain
in slavery; we could not secure the good we did secure if we grasped for
more; but having by necessity submitted to that much, it does not destroy
the principle that is the charter of our liberties."
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- As the slavery issue went into political limbo in the
US, Jefferson began to deteriorate as a thinker on the question. He refused
to sign a French call to outlaw the slave trade. He didn't propose a ban
on slavery in the Louisiana Territory that he bought from the French. By
1820 he opposed the Missouri compromise, which allowed slavery there, but
barred it in the rest of the Territory, north of 36"o 30'.
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- Jefferson saw the new attacks on slavery as an election
ploy by former Federalists. "As the passage of slaves from one state
to another, would not make a slave of a single human being ... so their
diffusion over a greater surface would ... proportionately facilitate the
accomplishment of their emancipation."
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- Unreality can go no further. Nevertheless we must apply
the historical statute of limitations. The 1st modern political thinker
could not possibly understand what we learn, after the event, from his
trajectory: If you are in politics and, for whatever reason, you do not
fight what you know to be profoundly evil, inexorably you adapt to it and
rationalize accommodation. Therefore he fancied that extending slavery
would hasten emancipation, the last thing slavery expansionists intended.
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- Given his accommodation to slavery, what then is still
significant in Jefferson's thought? The only republics then in existence,
Switzerland, Genoa and Venice, were aristocracies. Collectively, the founding
fathers established a huge and successful republic of commoners. Republicanism
became the progressive norm, worldwide. Beyond that, his lasting personal
contribution was his lifelong actions and writings separating church and
state.
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- Jefferson's epitaph deliberately omitted his being twice
elected President, and listed what he considered his major achievements,
the Declaration, Virginia's Statute of Religious Freedom, and the establishment
of the University of Virginia.
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- In 1786, with able assistance from James Madison, his
lifelong associate, he succeeded in disestablishing the Episcopal Church
in Virginia. In 1802, as President, he defined the meaning of the 1st Amendment
on religion in a letter to the Danbury, Connecticut Baptist Association:
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- "Believing with you that religion is a matter which
lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other
for his faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government
reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence
that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature
should "make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting
the free exercise thereof," thus building a wall of separation between
Church and State."
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- Jefferson wanted to say more. He sent his draft reply
to his Attorney General with a note:
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- "The Baptist address ... furnishes an occasion,
too, which I have long wished to find, of saying why I do not proclaim
fastings and thanksgivings, as my predecessor did. The address, to be sure,
does not point at this, and its introduction is awkward. But I foresee
no opportunity of doing it more pertinently. I know it will give great
offense to the New England clergy; but the advocate of religious freedom
is to expect neither peace nor forgiveness from them."
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- He was persuaded him not to gratuitously pick a fight,
and the reply ultimately didn't deal with thanksgivings. But in 1808, he
did explain his policy in a letter to Reverend Samuel Miller:
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- "I do not believe it is for the interest of religion
to invite the civil magistrate to direct it's exercises, it's discipline,
or it's doctrines; nor of the religious societies that the general government
should be invested with the power of effecting uniformity of time or matter
among them. Fasting & prayer are religious exercises. The enjoining
them an act of discipline. Every religious society has a right to determine
for itself the times for these exercises, & the objects proper for
them, according to their own particular tenets; and this right can never
be safer than in their own hands, where the constitution has deposited
it."
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- If he had no choice but to adapt to the continued existence
of black slavery, he never compromised his right to think for himself.
As he was victorious on this early on, and proud of his Presidential separatism,
his writings on religion, psychologically uncorrupted by political necessity,
could continue to be vigorous and are literary classics thru to his final
testament.
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- In a 1787 letter to a young nephew, Jefferson told him
to "Question with boldness even the existence of a god; because, if
there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of
blindfolded fear."
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- In an 1800 epistle, he explained why the clerics were
"in arms" against him. "They believe that any portion of
power confided in me will be exerted in opposition to their schemes. And
they believe rightly, for I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility
against any form of tyranny over the mind of man."
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- In his Presidential days, his followers were called the
Republican Party. It became universally known as the Democratic Party in
the 1820s. The present Republicans took the vacated name when they set
up in 1854, against the Democrats, to identify with Jefferson. Yet can
anyone imagine a major 2004 Presidential contender from either party talking
like him about Judaism and Christianity? Jesus,
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- "Like Socrates & Epictetus ... wrote nothing
himself. But he had not, like them, a Xenophon or an Arrian to write for
him. On the contrary, all the learned of his country, entrenched in its
power and riches, were opposed to him lest his labors should undermine
their advantages; and the committing to writing his life and doctrines
fell on the most unlettered and ignorant men; who wrote, too, from memory,
and not till long after the transactions had passed.
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- According to the ordinary fate of those who attempted
to enlighten and reform mankind, he fell an early victim to the jealousy
and combination of the alter and the throne, at about 33 years of age,
his reason having not yet attained the maximum of its energy, nor the course
of his preaching, which was but of 3 years at most, presented occasions
for developing a complete set of morals.
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- Hence the doctrines which he really delivered were defective
as a whole, and fragments only of what he did deliver have come down to
us mutilated, misstated, and often unintelligible.
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- They have been still more disfigured by the corruptions
of schismatising followers, who have found an interest in sophisticating
and perverting the simple doctrines he taught by engrafting on them the
mysticisms of a Grecian sophist, frittering them into subtleties, and obscuring
them with jargon, until they have caused good men to reject the whole in
disgust and to view Jesus himself as an impostor. Notwithstanding these
disadvantages, a system of morals is presented to us, which, if filled
up in the true style and spirit of the rich fragments he left us, would
be the most perfect and sublime that has ever been taught by man."
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- The 'good men' referred to in this 1814 letter were rare
to nonexistent in America, but ambassador Jefferson had met or read them.
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- "If we did a good act merely from the love of God
and a belief that it is pleasing to Him, whence arises the morality of
the Atheist? It is idle to say, as some do, that no such thing exists.
We have the same evidence of the fact as of most of those we act on, to
wit: their own affirmations, and their reasoning in support of them. I
have observed, indeed, generally, that while in Protestant countries the
defections from the Platonic Christianity of the priests is to Deism, in
Catholic countries they are to Atheism. Diderot, D'Alembert, D'Holbach,
Condorcet, are known to have been among the most virtuous of men. Their
virtue then, must have had some other foundation than the love of God."
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- In 1819 or 1820, he produced "The Life and Morals
of Jesus of Nazareth," aka "the Jefferson Bible." He took
scissors to Greek, Latin, French and English versions of the gospels, cutting
out every bit of "monkish ignorance and superstition." Even Jesus
is not without philosophical sin, he explained in a covering letter:
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- "(I)t is not to be understood that I am with Him
in all His doctrines. I am a Materialist; He takes the side of Spiritualism.
He preaches the efficacy of repentance towards forgiveness of sin. I require
a counterpoise of good works to redeem it, etc."
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- Jefferson's Jesus is born in Luke 2:1 thru 2:7 and is
laid in the manger. But everything about angels appearing to shepards,
telling them of the savior's birth, was cut to Luke 2: 21, as, eight days
later, he's circumcised.
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- Jefferson leaps over predictions that he's the messiah
to Luke 2: 39, where the family returns to Nazareth. Everything is cool
until mom and pop lose him at 12, on a trip to Jerusalem, and find him
challenging "the doctors" in the temple. His "How is it
that ye sought me? Wist ye not that I must be about my Father's business"
is snipped out. Jefferson has no time for 12 year old saviors.
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- So it goes until John 19:41-2, as they put Jesus in the
sepulcher. Jefferson segues to Matthew 37:60, where they "rolled a
great stone to the door of the sepulcher, and departed." The author
of the Declaration of Independence believed Jesus was a great philosopher,
not the son of God, nor the messiah, and philosophers don't rise from the
dead.
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- Jefferson is For Today
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- Jefferson believed there was a God. However he was learned
in the history of religious fanaticism and separated church and state because
he believed connecting them was corrupting for both. Thanks to him and
Madison, if America wasn't perfect in this regard, it was the best there
was. But he never tried to convert anyone to his religious skepticism and
it never took root among the people. They didn't read Greek and Latin or
study law. They knew little science. Most were barely literate. Once separation
was established, religion flourished. Eventually the two 'Jeffersonian'
parties became bywords for corruption, and pandering to religious voters
became normal. "In God we trust" got onto our money, "under
God" into the school Pledge of Allegiance, and now the US simultaneously
militarily protects Islamic fundamentalist Saudi Arabia and Israel, an
Orthodox Jewish state.
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- Paradoxically, the Bush administration's determination
to destroy Jefferson's wall elevates his religious writings to a central
position in contemporary America. Now is the time to publicize them to
build his wall, straight up to high heaven above. Bush is a classic Christian
God and country right-winger. But his country's defining statements are
Jefferson's Declaration and Madison's Bill of Rights. Any critical mind
reading the two authors, and then listening to Bush babbling about a "crusade"
against Islamic fundamentalism immediately sees that there is not a spec
of Jefferson and Madison in him. And it is still Jefferson's wall that
legally defines the relationship between religion and America's government.
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- In terms of education, the country is catching up with
him. It is no accident that the antiwar movement has been rooted in the
campuses since the 60s. Today, sending their kids to college is the normative
American ambition. Already, even 17% of Blacks over 25 have degrees.
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- One out of seven Americans now say they have no religion.
But the Declaration's "nature's God" is still the God of most
of the educated. If Bush's base is the 47% of Americans (57% of Blacks)
who believe God created the world about 10,000 years ago, 42% combine belief
in a God with the knowledge that the world is millions or billions of years
old.
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- Tens of millions have abandoned their birth religion.
In 2001, 49% of all American Jews, the most educated stratum on the planet,
said Judaism was no longer their religion. The classic WASP religions,
Episcopalianism and Presbyterianism, are losing their educated. Millions
have poured out of the Catholic Church and the rate of abandonment is accelerating
in the wake of the molestation scandals.
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- In religious sect after sect there is a battle over women
and gay ministers. Forty-four percent of Americans now believe that atheists
can go to heaven. While I must laugh at the notion of them leaving the
porch light on for me for a heaven that I wouldn't even think of visiting
(Too many Confederate soldiers already there), nevertheless, that growing
posthumous ecumenicalism symbolizes the move away from the theological
fanaticism encouraged by Bush and accepted as given by electoral liberals.
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- Our moral standards are changing. A majority of Americans
now believe premarital sex is OK. By now a majority of 18 to 30s believe
marijuana should be legal.
-
- Scientific American and Science magazine, the popular
'techie' journals, are alarmed at Creationist attacks on evolution and
Bush's patronage of them. They are also scandalized at the Democrats adaptation
to the religious right.
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- In 6/02, the Senate voted 99-to-0 to condemn a federal
court ruling, striking "under God" from the Pledge of Allegiance.
Among these degenerates was Paul Wellstone, our liberals' latest hero.
In the House, only three Representatives voted no. On 3/4/03, the Senate
voted 94-to-0 to condemn the 9th Circuit Court's later position, upholding
most of the earlier decision.
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- Most progressives think the Democrats automatically oppose
Bush's pandering to the religious right. But reality is more complex. When
Geraldine Ferraro represented a Catholic congressional district, she was
against abortion. The same with Dick Gephardt and Dennis Kucinich. But
suddenly, when they developed national ambitions, like Paul they saw the
light and got in harmony with the national party, which knows it would
lose its liberal wing if it abandoned abortion, nationally. But such "voting
my district" Catholic pandering is still the norm for many local Democrats.
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- Wellstone voted to condemn the court because his "democratic
wing of the Democratic Party" are "economic populists."
Their electoral strategy is to take an economic position a big whole nickel
better for ordinary Americans than Bush, without losing votes by unnecessarily
differing with Joe Sixpack when it comes to his prejudices.
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- That may or may not work for them, electorally. But it
is impossible to believe that Jefferson would have voted for putting in
"under God," when it is well known that it was inserted in 1954
to contrast the US with 'Godless, atheist Communism.' Their Senate votes
should remind us is that, in life, Modern Democrats, including their liberals,
have a dreadful record when it comes to keeping politics and religion separate.
We must always remember that it was the Democrats who 1st patronized Israel,
an Orthodox Jewish state, and it was two Democrats, Jack and Bobby Kennedy,
who committed the vilest violation of religious freedom in American history,
the wiretapping of Martin Luther King.
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- Educated Americans know they should know more about the
Founding Fathers and the history of the 1st Amendment. It is up to us to
take Jefferson and Madison on religion and separation of church and state
to them.
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- I'm certain there is no God. But that isn't the issue.
Some atheists, as with Stalin, have committed crimes as great as their
theological competitors. The tasks before us are separation of religion
and politics and the popularization of scientific knowledge. It is up to
all progressives to mobilize the one in seven non-religious, the principled
scientists, and the many Christians, Jews, Muslims and other religious
who believe in separation, to defend it against its enemies, the Senatorial
scoundrels and their infamous Republican and Democratic parties.
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- Lenni Brenner, editor of 51 Documents: Zionist Collaboration
with the Nazis, can be reached at BrennerL21@aol.com
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-
- Comment
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- From Doug Watkins
7-6-3
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- Dear Jeff,
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- I wish to make a comment about an article that was posted
to your website titled "Jefferson is for Today" on 7-6-2003.
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- To: Lenni Brenner
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- I write this comment to you for myself mostly. I had
to respond in some way to your atheist fiews more that what you said about
Thomas Jefferson's beliefs.
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- Yes, I do believe, like you that the churches of America
are really in trouble. I also know for a fact our government is declining
into the athiestic chasm that it was designed to become.
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- The churches are falling away because the Bible you do
not believe in said it would in the "last days". It is called
the Apostacy. Yes, it is true but not because you are realizing it.
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- You said that there is no God. I say, that there is a
God. But, neither you can prove to me that there is NO God any more than
I can prove to you that there IS a God.
-
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- You see, there is only One that can prove that there
is a God and IS GOD who proves it. He does not need you to prove there
isn't nor me to prove there is a God.
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- I have a free gift from God called FAITH. It is God that
poves to me through accepting his free gift of faith that is the "auther
and finisher of my faith".
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- I certainly refrain from quoating scripture and verse
to your Mr. Brenner since you do not believe it anyway.
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- But, let's let God prove it for Himself. I will make
one more statement of FACT: I will see my Lord Jesus in the Rapture before
your see your Antichrist during the tribulation which is just now begining.
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- Doug Watkins
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