Thursday, April 13, 2006

April 13, 1743 - Thomas Jefferson born

April 13th is Thomas Jefferson's birthday.

In his six-volume biography of Jefferson, Dumas Malone writes,
In religion as in economics Jefferson was an advocate of laissez-faire.
Jefferson would have opposed today's court-imposed secularism, as much as he would have opposed the court's destruction of laissez-faire capitalism.

Jefferson was the principal but not the sole author of the Declaration of Independence. His draft was re-worked by a committee composed of John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Robert R. Livingston, and Roger Sherman, all of whom believed that God had actively and supernaturally intervened during the American Revolution in response to the prayers of the colonists -- a belief not usually associated with "deism."

In his original draft of the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson had written:
And for the support of this declaration, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.
But the committee amended it to read:
And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.
Jefferson's draft read:
We therefore the representatives of the United States of America in General Congress assembled, do in the name, and by the authority of the good people of these [states reject and renounce all allegiance and subjection to the kings of Great Britain and all others who may hereafter claim by, through or under them; we utterly dissolve all political connection which may heretofore have subsisted between us and the people or parliament of Great Britain and finally we do assert and declare these colonies to be free and independent states,] and that as free and independent states,
The committee added, and Congress accepted:
We, therefore, the representatives of the United States of America in General Congress assembled, appealing to the supreme judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do in the name, and by the authority of the good people of these colonies, solemnly publish and declare, that these united colonies are, and of right ought to be free and independent states; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British crown, and that all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved; and that as free [etc.]
Jefferson called himself a Christian. His so-called "Jefferson Bible" was a compendium of Christian morality to be used to "civilize" the Indians. As an example, then-Justice Rehnquist noted,
From 1789 to 1823 the United States Congress had provided a trust endowment of up to 12,000 acres of land "for the Society of the United Brethren, for propagating the Gospel among the Heathen." See, e. g., ch. 46, 1 Stat. 490. The Act creating this endowment was renewed periodically and the renewals were signed into law by Washington, Adams, and Jefferson.
WALLACE v. JAFFREE, 472 U.S. 38 (1985)
John Adams, a member of the committee that revised Jefferson's draft of the Declaration of Independence, was castigated by the modern Supreme Court (Allegheny v. ACLU (1989)) for violating the Court's standards of political correctness:
The history of this Nation, it is perhaps sad to say, contains numerous examples of official acts that endorsed Christianity specifically. [The footnote, 53, cites Leo Pfeffer, "quoting the explicitly Christian proclamation of President John Adams, who urged all Americans to seek God's grace "through the Redeemer of the world" and "by His Holy Spirit").] [492 U.S. 573, 604]
Another biographer of Jefferson, Dickinson Adams, concludes that

unlike many other adherents of the Enlightenment, especially those in France, Jefferson's rationalism led him ultimately to an affirmation of faith rather than a rejection of religious belief.
Jefferson's Extracts from the Gospels (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983) p. 3.
Had Jefferson lived to see the rise of the "Cult of the Omnipotent State," he would have repudiated the Hoax of Higher Criticism.

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