Forum: Putting words in mouths of giants grabs mic from truth
Published 1:30 am Saturday, January 14, 2023
By Ken W. White / Herald Forum
Thomas Jefferson, founding father, statesman, diplomat, lawyer, architect, philosopher, author of the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, third president of the United States, and, lest we forget, slave owner, once proclaimed: “The Bible is the cornerstone of liberty.”
Except those are not his words.
Jefferson never wrote or appeared to believe those words, and the overly used quotation has never been found in any of his writings. In fact, Jefferson spurned biblical views of Christianity itself, let alone of questions of human freedom and liberty.
He followed the liberal stance of deism. He valued reason over divine revelation, and even omitted miracles in his Jefferson Bible to make Jesus compatible with his secular view. To Jefferson, miracles violate nature and are not possible. He believed that the Bible should merely be used to further lawful societies and encourage some level of morality.
So why do the words continue to follow Jefferson? Why does such a claim continually show up on the internet?
Maybe another American historian and philosopher, Howard Zinn, experienced the reason why. In 1969, Zinn attended the annual conference of the American Historical Association where he grabbed a microphone to denounce the Vietnam War and American racism. But before he could speak, the mic was wrestled out of his hands. The episode became known as the “Struggle for the Mic.”
Maybe the phony Jefferson quotation is part of a larger, continuing American struggle for the mic, and those who advance the bogus words understand that controlling the mic means controlling the past, and ultimately, controlling the present.
The “struggle for the mic” reveals a pattern of deception in American politics, and Jefferson is not the only injured party. There is Martin Luther King and the misprinting of his “I Have A Dream” speech. In numerous textbooks, trade books and periodicals, the reprinted speech contains senseless errors — some more serious than others — that distort what King actually said. Some omit words and phrases, other add words he did not say; and still others change word order and figurative language. The goal seems purposeful and political. It presents Martin Luther King as supporting slow and gradual change to confront racism — which he did not — and as making nonsensical grammatical errors, which he did not. The truth is found in recordings of the speech.
The struggle for the mic can also have a deadly impact when the wrong people have control. In August 1964, the U.S. entered the Vietnam War based on an “unprovoked attack” on American forces by North Vietnamese in the Gulf of Tonkin. Except, after decades of government secrecy, the truth came out in the early 2000s when nearly 200 documents were declassified. They showed that the president knew there was no attack and U.S. officials distorted the truth for political gains.
Controlling the mic claimed 58,220 American and more than 3 million Vietnamese lives.
The struggle for the mic continues today with the downplaying and denial of covid-19. As PolitiFact reported, “lies infected America in 2020. The very worst were not just damaging, but deadly.” From the very beginning, President Trump ignited confusion and conspiracies with his talk of “the China virus” and drinking bleach to kill it. The lies and misinformation about the vaccine and masking continue.
Nearly 1,115,000 Americans have lost their lives to covid so far, and the Brookings Institution estimates that Trump is responsible for 70 percent of these deaths or more than 780,000 Americans who needlessly died.
Trump followed up his presidential spread of misinformation about the pandemic with the “Big Lie” about the 2020 election and his rallying for white supremacists and insurrectionists on Jan 6, 2021. Right-wing social media still attack Anthony Fauci, most recently when Elon Musk tweeted, “My pronouns are Prosecute/Fauci.” Fauci and his family are the subjects of death threats by Christian nationalists and other violent extremists.
Finally, Thomas Jefferson did actually express words about what he believed to be the cornerstone of liberty. He repeated it over and over. To his 15-year-old nephew, he wrote: “Follow truth, justice and plain-dealing.” Describing his youthful self in later years: “Never fearing to follow truth.” In a letter to John Adams, he advised: “Follow truth as the only safe guide.”
So I can imagine, with a sense of humor, Thomas Jefferson taking the stand at the annual conference of the American Historical Association, grabbing the mic and exclaiming:
“For here we are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead nor to tolerate any error so long as reason is left free to combat it.”
Ken W. White lives in Marysville.
