With all of the over dramatic political ads that I am sure you have all grown sick of, I thought this might be a nice respite. I have to give fellow contributor Caitlin Hopkins credit for the majority of this piece, since I found the following video on her excellent blog, Vast Public Indifference -- which you all must subscribe to if you have not already.For most of the "campaign" 0f 1800 -- not really a campaign in the way we think of campaigns today -- Jefferson was labeled an atheist, rebel, etc. by the Adams people. One of the major reasons for such labels was due to the fact that Adams' supporters pounced upon some unpopular statements made by Jefferson on the issue of religion. The most popular statement that was scrutinized was from Jefferson's Notes on Virginia, in which he stated:
"The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbour to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg."Anyway, here is a funny youtube take on the 1800 campaign against Thomas Jefferson. Enjoy!
14 comments:
The specifics of Jefferson's theological heterodoxy were unknown, although folks had their suspicions.
Altho I ain't read his book, I caught Edward J. Larson on C-SPan hawking his "Magnificent Catastrophe", an account of the 1800 election.
What I heard Larson say was that Adams aligned all the mainstream Protestant sects, Jefferson the others. And I'll repeat here the most interesting thing I've found about 1800, that Jefferson's VP Aaron Burr was the grandson of Jonathan Edwards, that great fire & brimstone preacher.
It wasn't exactly God vs. atheism even though the Federalist organ, The Gazette of the United States tried to make it so.
It was more like the ins vs. the outs, and had Virginia not changed its elector rules and Burr handing Jefferson his home state of New York, 1800 might have turned out differently.
As this blog is (to my mind) a joint inquiry, not a firing line, I hope my points of order are absorbed into our further discussion and not simply elided for their inconvenience to various agendas.
I hate repeating myself. Really.
"The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbour to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg"
-- Thomas Jefferson
I always liked that sentiment ... too bad it didn't make it into the Constitution ;-)
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www.eagleforum.org/column/2008/aug08/08-08-22.html
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I can't get this link to work. www.eagleforum.org/column/2008/aug08/08-08-22.html /
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But, I think the Ad produced by Alexander Hamilton could have been all about Obama and produced by Corsi.
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Check out the link.
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Help!!
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What am I doing wrong.
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I want to show a link with a name I have given it that, when you click on it, will take you to the site I mean to be referenced.
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A great irony of the 1800 campaign is that John Adams and Thomas Jefferson were so remarkably similar in their theology.
Pinky,
You've incidentally included an extra space and slash, " /", in the link.
This one works
http://www.eagleforum.org/column/2008/aug08/08-08-22.html
This one does not
http://www.eagleforum.org/column/2008/aug08/08-08-22.html /
Eric,
Yes I agree. And that's a fact that not enough folks today realize (on this blog we can help stress this fact). It seems that the confusion that existed in the minds of the folks in 1800 -- that Jefferson was overly atheistic or deistic and that Adams was a traditional pious Christian -- still exists today.
I guess I'd prefer to be anonymous too, if I believed Ellen White (Seventh Day Adventist) was the "Anti-Christ".
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But, Jonathon, you're talking about confusion.
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Are we able to draw any conclusions were any drawn during the early daze of our republic?
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I know the dominant media of the day was the pulpit as t-v land is today; so, I would imagine there is where we would learn about such things.
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Hey, Abbbbotttt!
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Thanx for the update on the code.\
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Can you teach me how I can substitute my choice of text for the actual link so that when someone clicks on it they will be sent to the link?
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Pinky,
The part following `href=' the is the URL/link and the part between `>' and `<' is the descriptive text.
<a href="http://www.url.com/page.html">description<\a>
Does that make sense?
Absolutely.
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Thanks.
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I used to know that. Now, I know it again.
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Thankee Kindlee
Are we able to draw any conclusions were any drawn during the early daze of our republic?
One conclusion I've drawn was that information passed much slower and less efficiently and effectively. The dirty tricks are the same. But if we had technology and the National Enquirer back then, I think the "dirt" on Jefferson's and Adams' heterodoxy (among other things) would have been dug up.
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