Tradition!

As Americans, we have such faith in the rightness of the principles established at the beginning of our nation. We are fiercely protective of our traditions and fearful of straying too far from the path envisioned by our founding fathers. Our independence was hard-won, after all, and our democratic republic does indeed offer us a precious freedom.

Since our country's history is not very long --only a few hundred years-- it seems as though we should be able to remember it accurately and easily stay on track, but this is surprisingly not so.  

For instance, people get upset when changes are proposed to the Pledge of Allegiance, especially when it is proposed that the words, "under God" be tampered with, even though there was no such thing as a 'pledge of allegiance' until 1892, that it was not officially recognized by Congress until 1923, and the words 'under God' were not added until 1954. 

And from time to time a furor erupts as to whether the phrase "In God We Trust" on our currency should be removed or altered -- as if the motto was handed down directly from Washington and Jefferson.  In reality our money did not include this phrase until 1864.  So intense is the debate on this subject that The Supreme Court was recently asked to take up the question of whether the motto is a government endorsement of religion, which would be a violation of the separation of Church and State.  (The Court denied review without comment -- wisely, it seems to me.)

These examples came to mind this morning when I found the above Internet meme posted on the facebook page of Being Liberal. Here is a relatively rare example of a liberal group using one of the 'founding fathers' to make a point. Conservative groups --especially The Tea Party -- are far more likely to quote (or misquote) our early statesmen, most often these days in the context of the second amendment and the right to bear arms. 

Many sources report the fact that John Quincy Adams did not take the oath of office using a Bible, that he used a book of  law instead, so the first part of the meme's assertion is correct. But did he make this choice specifically to demonstrate support for the separation of Church and State? 

There doesn't seem to be any evidence to support this claim.  He apparently makes mention of the choice in his diary, indicating that he chose the book of law because he was swearing fealty to those laws, to upholding the Constitution. 

I think the makers of the meme have overstepped, choosing a motivation for his actions because it suits their purpose.

John Quincy Adams was an extremely religious man who held the Bible in highest esteem, as his letters to his son  make abundantly clear.  Here is an excerpt from one letter:

St. Petersburg, Sept., 1811

MY DEAR SON: In your letter of the 18th January to your mother, you mentioned that you read to your aunt a chapter in the Bible or a section of Doddridge’s Annotations every evening. This information gave me real pleasure; for so great is my veneration for the Bible, and so strong my belief, that when duly read and meditated on, it is of all books in the world, that which contributes most to make men good, wise, and happy — that the earlier my children begin to read it, the more steadily they pursue the practice of reading it throughout their lives, the more lively and confident will be my hopes that they will prove useful citizens to their country, respectable members of society, and a real blessing to their parents. 

It is interesting then, that he, of all Presidents, would choose not to use it in his inauguration.  Perhaps he felt that the Bible was too sacred to be involved in any non-religious ceremony.  

His decision, then, might represent a sort of deliberate separation of church and state, but a different sort than we are accustomed to these days.   Rather than venerating the State as something not to be corrupted by the influence of any one religious power,  it seems Adams could be suggesting the Bible might be too pure and sacred for him to involve with mundane matters.  

Protecting the Sheep from the Wolves

There's nothing much to debunk about this meme, since I will accept the quote as belonging to Ron Paul, without investigation.  He's had a long career and this statement certainly seems to reflect his general views on taxation.  As far as claiming to know the intentions of the Founding Fathers, he is entitled to his opinion.

What I find interesting is the circulation of this Internet meme by conservative groups.  For instance, I saw it shared on the facebook page of this group, called We, the People,Will Be Heard, which seems to be anti-Obama, anti-gun control, anti-liberal. Their tag line is "Sheepdogs educating and protecting the sheep from the wolves." A recent post suggests the group believes that the shootings in Newtown, CT were staged.  

In trying to determine why such a group would choose to share this particular meme, I can only conclude that it has something to do with opposition to President Obama's insistence that spending cuts alone will not fix what ails our economy and his repeated call for raising taxes on the wealthiest Americans.

Ron Paul is a wealthy man. A retired medical doctor and member of congress, most of his income does not come from salaries or even from the sales of books he's written. Most of his money comes from property management groups and investments in gold and silver mining ventures. 

Ours is a capitalistic society -- it's good to be successful and rich -- but I think it's also important to consider how  Ron Paul's proposed tax reforms would benefit him personally, in addition to how they could benefit the nation's economy and the rest of America's working citizens -- because the first is definite and the second is speculative.

"As president, Ron Paul will support a Liberty Amendment to the Constitution to abolish the income and death taxes," his website says. "And he will be proud to be the one who finally turns off the lights at the IRS for good."

He would immediately repeal capital gains taxes, which the candidate says "punish you for success" and "interfere with your efforts to hedge against inflation by purchasing gold and silver coins."

He would repeal the 1993 Social Security tax increase, and work in the long run to exempt Social Security benefits from taxation. Paul would drop the corporate tax rate to 15%.

While he would like to move to a flat tax or fair tax, Paul also suggests something of a back-up plan:

"Restraining federal spending by enforcing the Constitution's strict limits on the federal government's power would help result in a 0% income tax rate for Americans," his website says.

It also might be of interest to the folks at We, the People, Will Be Heard to know Ron Paul's reason for choosing not to endorse Mitt Romney over President Obama in the 2012 election:

“I don’t think there’s enough difference between the two candidates, and I assume the victor today will be the status quo,” the former presidential candidate told CNN on Tuesday. “We’re going to continue with basically the same policies that we’ve had for a long time, so I don’t see the election, as the way its turning out, to be very crucial at all.”

Big Government

This Internet meme is so easily debunked that I feel somewhat embarrassed choosing to write about it, but I suppose it's still important to remind people that Thomas Jefferson is one of the most often mis-quoted figures in American history.  

According to the historians at Monticello, "Neither this quotation nor any of its variant forms has been found in the writings of Thomas Jefferson."  So that's that.  End of blog entry.  I am free to get on with the rest of my day -- unless we want to talk a bit about why such a meme would be created and disseminated.  

I found this meme on a facebook page called Political Follies, shared from a blog of the same name.   No mission statement is given, but the content is consistently anti-Obama, anti-Democrat, anti-liberal.  

In such an environment, why quote Thomas Jefferson?

I suppose because he is one of our nation's 'founding fathers' and therefore perceived as an infallible authority on the way the United States should be run.  

The inference to be derived from this particular misquote is that Jefferson was in favor of smaller government and therefore, if alive today, he would be opposed to President Obama's administration because it favors larger government.  Apparently the opinion expressed would have less import without the Jeffersonion seal of approval.

Studying Jefferson a bit, it does seem that he generally favored decentralized power, but  he was able to put aside his qualms about employing the power of the federal government when it was expedient to do so -- like when he wanted to purchase the Louisiana territory.

Everyone knows that Thomas Jefferson is responsible for putting into words some of our nations most cherished principles --  ". . . all men are created equal. . . " being chief among them -- yet he owned slaves all his life and advocated the forced relocation of North America's indigenous peoples.  

The more one learns about Thomas Jefferson, the more clear it becomes that he was a complex individual living in complicated times, and that his viewpoints evolved in response to changing circumstances.  

I do not pretend to know for whom Jefferson would have voted in this past November's election or whether or not he would support a ban on semi-automatic weapons, but I am confident that he would give careful consideration before casting his vote or taking a stand on any issue. 

I am also confident that he would pay no heed  to groups who create Internet memes like the one pictured above, nor to those individuals who 'like' and 'share' such folderol indiscriminately and irresponsibly.

Trying to fit an idea of Jefferson's into a visual sound bite is like trying to catch the ocean in a tea cup:
those who try succeed only in revealing their own limitations.

You Didn't Build That!

This meme is both puzzling and frustrating.  The words of the quotation and the words of commentary are weirdly paired, resulting in dizzying discord for the logical mind.  Frankly, it pains me even to lay eyes upon it.  (No pun intended.)

The only way I know to make any good come from a meme as irresponsibly crafted as this one is to use it as a tool for investigative learning.  So with that in mind, here we go:

I have not determined the original source for the meme, nor do I remember how I first stumbled across it, except that I keep running into people online who are refuting it.  These debunkers are typically critics of President Obama's policies who reject the notion that the words of Thomas Paine are being used to support the recent words of the President.

The words inside the quotation marks are easily attributable to Thomas Paine.  They appeared in an essay from 1795 entitled, "Agrarian Justice".

What's odd about the quote as shown is that Paine is cut off mid-sentence and made to sound like anything but the eloquent intellectual he was.  Given that the meme's creator seems wanting to transfer the authority of Paine to this message, it surprises me that his words would be so butchered.

Note that Paine is clearly intending to present a simile of some sort.  ". . . and it is as impossible . . ." As impossible as what? We don't know because the creator of this Internet meme chose to truncate his sentence. Next, then, we have to ask ourselves what might be the purpose of this choice, which means that we need to examine the original quote and at least some of its context:

 "Land, as before said, is the free gift of the Creator in common to the human race. Personal property is the effect of society; and it is as impossible for an individual to acquire personal property without the aid of society, as it is for him to make land originally.

Separate an individual from society, and give him an island or a continent to possess, and he cannot acquire personal property. He cannot be rich. So inseparably are the means connected with the end, in all cases, that where the former do not exist the latter cannot be obtained. All accumulation, therefore, of personal property, beyond what a man's own hands produce, is derived to him by living in society; and he owes on every principle of justice, of gratitude, and of civilization, a part of that accumulation back again to society from whence the whole came."

So what's not to like about the rest of the sentence?  It seems to support the President's words fairly well, if we assume that the caption "You Didn't Build That" is meant to refer the President's controversial remarks during a campaign speech in Roanoke,Virginia.

Here's the portion of the President's speech which included that phrase:

    " If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help.  There was a great teacher somewhere in your life.  Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive.  Somebody invested in roads and bridges.  If you’ve got a business -- you didn’t build that.  Somebody else made that happen.  The Internet didn’t get invented on its own.  Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet."

The second caption, "Notice that Thomas Paine did not use the word . . . government!" is completely mystifying.  Where are we to notice this?  In the incomplete quote provided for us to consider?  And what does the word government have to do with the message presented here?

But wait.  What if  this last part is intended as the the meme's most important component? It is presented as an emphatic imperative, after all.  Perhaps the intended message is not to support President Obama's assertion, but rather to disagree with it.  Are we being directed to consider the difference between "society" and "government"?  President Obama is often characterized as supporting big government.  Is that what this is about?

But then how to explain this blogger's characterization of the meme as being circulated by leftists?  

The essay in which these words of Paine's appear was written in the midst of the French Revolution and describes in great detail a plan "To create a national fund, out of which there shall be paid to every person, when arrived at the age of twenty-one years, the sum of fifteen pounds sterling, as a compensation in part, for the loss of his or her natural inheritance, by the introduction of the system of landed property: And also, the sum of ten pounds per annum, during life, to every person now living, of the age of fifty years, and to all others as they shall arrive at that age."

The essay is all about government -- revising government, revising society, re-defining what it means to be civilized.

So who created this Internet meme and what is the intended message?

I have no clue.  But I did enjoy reading both Thomas Paine's essay and President Obama's campaign remarks. I particularly like this bit from "Agrarian Justice":

"Cultivation is at least one of the greatest natural improvements ever made by human invention. It has given to created earth a tenfold value. But the landed monopoly that began with it has produced the greatest evil. It has dispossessed more than half the inhabitants of every nation of their natural inheritance, without providing for them, as ought to have been done, an indemnification for that loss, and has thereby created a species of poverty and wretchedness that did not exist before."

If I were in the business of designing internet memes, and if my intention was to suggest President Obama's remarks were a paraphrase of Thomas Paine's, this is the one I would have made:

What do you think? 

Trading Liberty for Security?

This meme has been floating around for a while now. Most recently I saw it "liked"  by someone who "shared" it from someone . . .  who shared it from The Tea Party's facebook page.

The man pictured is indeed Benjamin Franklin, but he is misquoted.

Franklin's actual words were something more like this: 

"They who can give up essential Liberty, to obtain a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.", though there are several variations recorded.


By using the words of Franklin,in the context of the current gun control debate, The Tea Party seems to be suggesting  that those who are calling for gun control measures are willing to make a bad trade that will later be regretted, that being afraid of more gun deaths, they are willing to surrender liberty in exchange for security. Moreover, this sense of security they seek would be false because in the long run allowing government regulation of guns and ammunition will result in tyranny and then as a society we will have neither liberty nor security.

But I remember this same quote being used back when the Bush administration was implementing lots of security measures -- at a break neck speed, with some expressing concern that he was overstepping the bounds of executive power -- - designed, allegedly, to protect our society from further attacks by terrorists. Some at that time were worried about the wisdom of trading personal liberty for the promise of greater security.

Take a look at what one conservative publication had to say back in 2006: 

"The point is that situations to preserve public safety are seen as worthy of curtailing certain individual rights, contrary to what our loyal dissenters tell us. The founders recognized this, which is nothing more than observing the common sense principle that the Constitution is not a suicide pact."

http://www.renewamerica.com/columns/meyer/060911

Quoting the words of our Founding Fathers is like quoting the Bible. Taken out of context and manipulated, the words of both can be made to mean almost anything, whatever suits the purpose at hand. 

Our society is searching now for a solution to a problem that everyone agrees is important. No one on either side of the gun control debate believes that it is good and right for unarmed civilians to be murdered. And no one on either side of the debate believes it would be good if the government had lots of guns and no civilians had any. All agree that we need to do a better job of securing public safety.

We need to treat the discussion with due respect and stop all the posturing and propaganda. One thing both sides have in common is fear -- the fear of losing something dear and precious. 

Because we are afraid and the problem is complex and there is no obvious automatic fix, we run the risk of turning our fear upon one another and mistaking each other for the enemy.

We can work toward a solution only when we become good faith listeners and good faith speakers.