The extreme right in the US has been quietly waging war for the hearts and minds of the next generation of Americans for years. The most conspicuous of these means has been through the attempted replacement of Darwinian natural selection and the theory of evolution with the pseudo-science known as intelligent design[1]. It is theology, teamed up with some technical terms and jargon to give it the veneer of inquiry and rationalism, which pretends to stand on at least a co-equal footing with the actually empirical and proven work of Mr. Darwin. This subterfuge – as it cannot justly be called anything else – is necessary to avoid having creationism thrown out its ear from public schools by court challenge, as clearly violating the separation of Church and State inherent in our Constitution[2].

Another, and equally insidious, tactic has been the whole-sale revisioning of American history, especially the founding of the Republic. In this version, the Founding Fathers were all pious, deeply religious men, who never had any intention of actually separating Church and State in the Constitution. Of course, there were plenty of pious and religious men –and women – in the Colonies at the time of the Revolution. The history of the American Revolution is impossible to understand outside the context of the Great Awakening and religious revivals of the 1760’s. But conservatives go far beyond this acknowledgment. They aggressively extirpate from the record – to the greatest degree possible – those Founders whose non-conformist beliefs clash with their own orthodoxy.

None of the Founders comes in for more grief than Thomas Jefferson. As Father of the Country, the frankly Deist and Masonic George Washington is untouchable, but his more skeptical pronouncements are rarely repeated by his modern admirers on the right. John Adams is characterized more as a Puritan, rather than an ardent defender of religious separation and tolerance. Franklin, the scientist and rationalist, is given minor play in revisionist history, as belonging to the pre-Revolutionary generation.  Jefferson[3], on the other hand, as the author of the Virginia Act of Establishing Religious Freedom of 1779[4], and whose skepticism and scorn for standing clergy were too well-documented to be ignored, has become something of the “anti-Founder” for the most zealous of the revisionists.

Jefferson is not shy about his beliefs. The Virginian praised the benevolence of Jesus and called Christianity: “the most sublime and benevolent code of morals which has ever been offered to man.” But beyond this, Mr. Jefferson was an avowed materialist who did not go in for much of the miraculous in the Bible and still less the credulity of the common folk with which the clergy of all faiths maintained their sway over the masses. In a letter written to his nephew, Peter Carr, giving advice as to the proper course of study for the young man, he touches upon the study of religion and give the following advice[5]:

“4. Religion. Your reason is now mature enough to examine this object. In the first place, divest yourself of all bias in favor of novelty & singularity of opinion. Indulge them in any other subject rather than that of religion. It is too important, and the consequences of error may be too serious. On the other hand, shake off all the fears & servile prejudices, under which weak minds are servilely crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. 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.

You will naturally examine first, the religion of your own country. Read the Bible, then as you would read Livy or Tacitus. The facts which are within the ordinary course of nature, you will believe on the authority of the writer, as you do those of the same kind in Livy & Tacitus. The testimony of the writer weighs in their favor, in one scale, and their not being against the laws of nature, does not weigh against them. But those facts in the Bible which contradict the laws of nature, must be examined with more care, and under a variety of faces. Here you must recur to the pretensions of the writer to inspiration from God. Examine upon what evidence his pretensions are founded, and whether that evidence is so strong, as that its falsehood would be more improbable than a change in the laws of nature, in the case he relates.

For example, in the book of Joshua, we are told, the sun stood still several hours. Were we to read that fact in Livy or Tacitus, we should class it with their showers of blood, speaking of statues, beasts, &c. But it is said, that the writer of that book was inspired. Examine, therefore, candidly, what evidence there is of his having been inspired. The pretension is entitled to your inquiry, because millions believe it. On the other hand, you are astronomer enough to know how contrary it is to the law of nature that a body revolving on its axis, as the earth does, should have stopped, should not, by that sudden stoppage, have prostrated animals, trees, buildings, and should after a certain time gave resumed its revolution, & that without a second general prostration. Is this arrest of the earth’s motion, or the evidence which affirms it, most within the law of probabilities?

You will next read the New Testament. It is the history of a personage called Jesus. Keep in your eye the opposite pretensions: 1, of those who say he was begotten by God, born of a virgin, suspended & reversed the laws of nature at will, & ascended bodily into heaven; and 2, of those who say he was a man of illegitimate birth, of a benevolent heart, enthusiastic mind, who set out without pretensions to divinity, ended in believing them, and was punished capitally for sedition, by being gibbeted, according to the Roman law, which punished the first commission of that offence by whipping, & the second by exile, or death in fureâ. See this law in the Digest Lib. 48. tit. 19. §. 28. 3. & Lipsius Lib 2. de cruce. cap. 2. These questions are examined in the books I have mentioned under the head of religion, & several others. They will assist you in your inquiries, but keep your reason firmly on the watch in reading them all.

    Do not be frightened from this inquiry by any fear of its consequences. If it ends in a belief that there is no God, you will find incitements to virtue in the comfort and pleasantness you feel in its exercise, and the love of others which it will procure you. If you find reason to believe there is a God, a consciousness that you are acting under his eye, & that he approves you, will be a vast additional incitement; if that there be a future state, the hope of a happy existence in that increases the appetite to deserve it; if that Jesus was also a God, you will be comforted by a belief of his aid and love. In fine, I repeat, you must lay aside all prejudice on both sides, and neither believe nor reject anything, because any other persons, or description of persons, have rejected or believed it. Your own reason is the only oracle given you by heaven, and you are answerable, not for the rightness, but uprightness of the decision. I forgot to observe, when speaking of the New Testament, that you should read all the histories of Christ, as well of those whom a council of ecclesiastics have decided for us, to be Pseudo-evangelists, as those they named Evangelists. Because these Pseudo-evangelists pretended to inspiration, as much as the others, and you are to judge their pretensions by your own reason, and not by the reason of those ecclesiastics.”

It should be plain why modern conservatives are horrified by Jefferson, and see him as nothing less than Satan’s Whelp; the serpent sent to the earthly Eden of America to introduce rationalism in our perfect theological society. While he cannot be completely expunged from memory – he did write the Declaration of Independence after all, not to mention serving twice as President – his role is minimized, his name rarely mentioned, and then only with a sniff and a shake of the head. The Founding black sheep.

Besides my personal abhorrence for this sort of shuffling, ideological rewriting of “common history” – so commonplace in the former Soviet Union – the very notion of blindly ignoring what contradicts our beliefs in the face of all evidence against it is dangerous and worrisome. Today more than ever, an educated workforce is the best advantage a national economy has to compete against the rivals. Scientific knowledge and rationalist modes of thought are far more important than rote memorization; yet that is precisely contrary to what these dangerous pedagogues are attempting to achieve. More troubling still, democracy itself is founded on the education, skepticism and common sense of the public – which is precisely why Jefferson considered his founding of the University of Virginia to be his life’s most important achievement. Undermine that, and you undermine the Republic. Which is perhaps what these people and their leaders are after: the Theocratic Republic of America.