Here’s a thought, why not let the founders speak for them selves? Why should one “expert” or another edit what they actually said? Oh, I know…because it doesn’t fit in the elitist progressive agenda. After all they know more about the founders than the founders did of themselves. For example George Washington said to his mother after a big battle at fort Necessity and a new appointment:”The God to whom you commended me, madam, when I set out upon a more perlious errand, defended me from harm, and I trust He will do so now. Do not you?” Oops! The ACLU is going to be all over him! Wait…he’s dead. So I guess they will just keep hiding what he and the other founders said from our children!
I responded, yes by all means, let the Founders speak for themselves. Not phony “experts” like David Barton or Peter Marshall. Or this commenter him or herself. The quotation s/he tried to pass is nowhere to be found in Washington's official writings.
I did a google search and found it in some 19th and early 20th Century sources like the notoriously shoddy, revionist book George Washington, The Christian.
On a related note, Clayton Cramer encounters a bogus GW quote:
Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.
As Cramer notes:
The problem is that when I search the George Washington Papers at the Library of Congress--it isn't there. Searching books.google.com, the earliest example is from Christian Science Journal in 1902--and there's no citation.
14 comments:
"Some of my finest hours have been spent on my back veranda,
smoking hemp and observing as far as my eye can see."
- Thomas Jefferson
August 7, 1765
Heh. Cramer finds this one to be bogus too.
Heh. Urban myths abound.
But the Bible does say:
And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.
http://bible.cc/genesis/1-29.htm
That's the pot smoker's prooftext.
That's funny because just the other night a guy we busted for drugs was using the Bible as well to defend himself. I wonder if he'll be aloud to use that defense in court.
Church/state conflict in the making???
Brad,
Don't you see? This is exactly like a "Christian" violating the secular civil law, trying to use Romans 13 in his defense with the logic -- your [the government's] law doesn't accord with God's [how I interpret the Bible's] law, therefore you are not a "minister of God, a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil," and therefore I can resist or disobey you as much as I want.
That's the very creative American Founding understanding of the Bible, 101.
Point taken, Jon and I am sure you have opened a can of worms that is going to take this thread in a very different direction.
As for the "Christian" telling me that his biblical interpretation makes law enforcement null and void...well...usually those are the same guys who get to experience this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UxGqHDtOpuM
Nothing like the "electric" feeling of the "Holy Spirit." =)
>> and therefore I can resist or disobey you as much as I want.
It works every time if you're strong enough to make it stick, and then YOU get to make the rules! God has nothing to do with it.
I'm sure that commenter wholeheartedly believes the stories of George Washington praying on his knees at Valley Forge, as well.
>> and therefore I can resist or disobey you as much as I want.
It works every time if you're strong enough to make it stick, and then YOU get to make the rules! God has nothing to do with it.
Nice, Eli. Thrasymachus' argument in Plato's Republic.
Justice is in the interest of the stronger.
It's never been refuted, even by Plato himself.
THIS is political philosophy, the way it is.
"Don't you see? This is exactly like a "Christian" violating the secular civil law, trying to use Romans 13 in his defense with the logic -- your [the government's] law doesn't accord with God's [how I interpret the Bible's] law, therefore you are not a "minister of God, a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil," and therefore I can resist or disobey you as much as I want.
That's the very creative American Founding understanding of the Bible, 101."
Locke's version is just a valid and credible as Frazer's if not more. If you are going to make theological truth statements like these you have to back them up. Calvinism does not = Christianity or truth in general.
If one was to attack all the logical errors in Calvinism that premise Frazer's view of Romans 13 that is where "creative" Christianity comes in.
The real question is how Frazer and company defend sitting back and allowing a tyrant to violate the rights of your neighbor that you say you love and is the property of God? It is love to allow Hitler to kill all those JEws and do nothing? If you look at the statement Love God and your neighbor as yourself. It would seem his interpretation seeks to accomplish number one by violating two and three.
This is the weak link in your argument Jon and anyone who knows any better because they have read and understand the Bible is going to use it against you to muddy the waters of otherwise good arguments about Barton and others.
By the way Frazer himself even states that it is ok to violate secular law if it would cause you to sin. He just does not add violating love by allowing your neighbor who is made in the image of God to be slaughtered by a tyrant.
This is a good example of reason/logic trumping dogmatic systematic teaching of a branch of the church. These guys nail Catholics but I am finding more room for dissent in Catholicism than Calvinist Evangelicism by the day as I look into it.
Yes Brad Jon knows when he states this that the thread will go elsewhere. I am still waiting on his interposition post that will start Romans 13 round 4.
"It works every time if you're strong enough to make it stick, and then YOU get to make the rules! God has nothing to do with it."
If you go back to my debate with Frazer, you will see that this is one of my main arguments that he did not successfully address in my mind. He sees God behind all of this because everything that happens is God's will. Others who believe in human choice and that God allows this choice to affect things can look at a coup and see God may very well have nothing to do with it.
There only good verse is that God sets up and deposes Kings. But I think it means something different than they do. Even if God is the invisible hand behind all this it does not mean that all that happens is his will.
Calvinism does not = Christianity or truth.
Hi:
Did you actually find an 18th century source for this quotation? Or should that have been late 19th and early 20th centuries? The earliest source I could find (via Google) was Benson John Lossing's Mary and Martha, the Mother and the Wife of George Washington (1886).
Gah. Thanks for pointing out the typo to be corrected immediately.
This appears to conform to the "Christian nation" guy's account of Washington's letter to his mommy.
http://www.nationalcenter.org/Braddock%27sDefeat.html
No "God."
No, Jon, don't thank me for the clarification. I actually read this blog, and do the homework assigned.
;-)
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