Following the Blind Fischer

John: I may be broke, but I don’t want his crooked money! I always wondered how he could travel around Europe on a bank janitor’s salary.

Blanche: He isn’t a bank janitor at all. He’s one of the shrewdest manipulators in Canada. How do you think he got his title?

John: What title?

Blanche: You know as well as I do my uncle was knighted for his operations in the stock market.

John: It was the black market! And he wasn’t knighted, he was indicted!

Blanche: Well, whatever it was. He’s got money, and that’s all that counts.—The Bickersons

Clueless as ever, the Archbigot Brian Fischer is once again sounding off on topics way over his head and infinitely beyond his pay grade. Somehow he’s got it fixed in his little head that there’s a quick fix for the current pandemic, but sinister phantoms are keeping it from us. According to the Archbigot the Virology Journal—which he falsely claims is “the official publication of Dr. Fauci’s National Institutes of Health”—published in 2005 an article showing that hydroxychloroquine “functions as both a cure and a vaccine” for the present coronavirus. True, it wasn’t hydroxychloroquine but chloroquine, and it wasn’t COVID-19 but SARS, but those are just details. “While not exactly the same virus as SARS-CoV-1,” the Archbigot airily assures us, “it is genetically related to it, and shares 79% of its genome, as the name SARS-CoV-2 implies.” About as close as human beings are to cows, therefore. And likewise hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine are related, but hardly identical.

Worse than that, the article did not demonstrate (or assert for that matter) that chloroquine was effective against SARS; it merely pointed to that possibility. And none of this had anything to do with Dr. Anthony Fauci, regardless of the Archbigot’s little song and dance around the topic. In fact none of the eight authors had any connection with the NIH, though Fischer keeps calling them NIH researchers.

So in essence Archbigot Brian Fischer is screaming “FIRE” at the top of his lungs in an overcrowded theater. In a sane society his handlers would discreetly take him away to a padded cell somewhere where he could do no further damage, either to himself or others.

Virus Connection Host

The current pandemic is completely out of control here in the United States, with 135,235 dead, 3,355,457 infected, and no end in sight. Self-proclaimed expert Donald Trump insists that the best thing to do is to ignore the virus and hope that it just magically disappears some fine day and in the meantime reopen schools, restaurants, theaters, and other places where people congregate to appease the Hidden Hand and implore It to shower Its blessings on us again.

Is this going to work? Admiral Brett Giroir M.D. doesn’t think so—not until “we take active steps to make [the virus] disappear.” But former “Love Connection” host Chuck Woolery has the ear of the Dopey Don, and he’s sure that the experts are lying. “I think it’s all about the election and keeping the economy from coming back, which is about the election,” he observed, with the endorsement of Fake President Trump.

Woolery thinking aside, there is little reason to suppose the virus gives a shit about the Robber Baronet’s election chances. Like our Feckless Leader it has no brains, for one thing, and like me, it has no preference for which of the two political dinosaurs prevails in the electoral contest. Der Trummkopf’s notion that Covid-19 has a liberal bias is a ludicrous projection of his own hopes and fears onto the blank screen of his darkened mind, with no light of reality being allowed through its hermetically sealed boundaries.

Are We Bored Yet?

I

 am in a foul mood this bleak Saturday in the 12014^th year of the Holocene Era. It’s cold out here, and icy winds knock down boughs and powerlines outside. Inside it’s not exactly toasty, but it’s quite warm, thank you, and I suppose I ought to count my blessings.

And one of those blessings is this page on a website called Reneland, “Where The Truth About Religion Is Told, Life In Los Alamos Is Remembered and Crimes Against Women Are Acknowledged”. Reneland sounds like a fun place—so how do I explain this inane entry, over two years old now, which makes some extraordinary claims about US religious history.

The author gets off to a rocky start by confusing the foundation of the nation (in the late eighteenth century) with the coming of the first settlers (early seventeenth century). There is a considerable difference. The first settlers did not found a nation. They set up colonies. The work of founding the nation belonged to a later generation.

She goes on to say “The freedom our founding fathers were in search of was the freedom to not be persecuted for their religious beliefs by the Catholic Church. By religious beliefs I mean Christianity, or better yet Protestantism.” This is bizarre. Puritans (for example) fled religious persecution by Anglicans, Catholics fled religious persecution by Huguenots, as well as various protestants fleeing Catholic persecution.

She then randomly flails away at a straw man who claims that the founders were not Christian—a belief held by nobody that I am aware of. (But the world is large, and there are many false beliefs. Nobody of any significance believes this anyway.) Yes, she is absolutely correct that the founders were white Christian men. And so?

But the ludicrous frosting on top of this half-baked cake is the following statement, made apparently in all seriousness:

There was no idea of any other non Christian religion, no religion, pagan or Jewish religion to any documents written when the forming of our government was happening.

I freely admit that I have no idea of what Reneland was trying to say, but the founders were quite aware of a variety of nonChristian religions, and wrote about them. George Washington, father of the country, explicitly included Judaism in the religious beliefs that were held by right, not by mere toleration. Other writers mentioned Hinduism and Islam as well. The idea that non-Christian religions were missing from “any documents written when the forming of our government was happening” is, to use one of her favorite words, ignorance.

And now come the golden sprinkles on this festive offering. “Let me give you some examples in the form of quotes by our founding fathers” Reneland writes. And of course you, my long-time readers (if any there be) know what is coming. A rich offering of fake quotes, misattributions, and other bizarrenesses. Let’s go:

First up, and by far the best of the offerings, are two quotations from John Adams. (Or from my viewpoint the worst, as they are legitimate. More or less.) The first:

I must not write a word to you about politics because you are a woman.

I actually don’t know why this one is here, or what the point of including it was. It comes from a letter to his wife Abigail (11 February 1779), and is part of an explanation of why he is avoiding a discussion of politics:

I must not write a word to you about politics, because you are a woman.

What an offence have I committed! A woman!

I shall soon make it up. I think women better than men, in general, and I know, that you can keep a secret as well as any man whatever. But the world don’t know this. Therefore if I were to write my sentiments to you, and the letter should be caught and hitched into a newspaper, the world would say, I was not to be trusted with a secret.

Of course Adams had learned about the danger of intercepted letters, to his cost. And then we have this one, a familiar out-of-context quotation from Adams’ 11 October 1798 reply to the officers of the first brigade of the third division of the Massachusetts militia, slightly misquoted:

Our Constitution was made only for the [sic] moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.

And now the real fun begins. Reneland lists three quotations attributed to George Washington, of which one is legitimate. The first is an over-familiar fake:

It is impossible to rightly govern a nation without God and the Bible.

As I’ve pointed out in the past, it first appeared in this form in 1893, and rests only on the word of a lawyer who never met Washington. Believe it if you like, but there’s no reason to think it authentic. This is White Queen country here. Our next is a lightly-mangled excerpt from Washington's Farewell Address:

Let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that natural morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.

Here is the authentic passage:

Let it be simply asked, where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths which are the instruments of investigation in courts of justice? And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principles.

It’s close, at least. The third and last is a ring-tailed doozy:

We are persuaded that good Christians will always be good citizens, and that where righteousness prevails among individuals the nation will be great and happy. Thus while just government protects all in their religious rights, true religion affords to government its surest support.

As I’ve pointed out before, these are not Washington’s words in the least; they are taken from a letter written to him—let me reiterate to him—by a group of religious leaders. Washington is no more responsible for them than for any other random assemblage of words directed to him in his long and illustrious life.

Next comes a John Quincy Adams quotation, or rather, a slight misquotation:

The highest glory of the American Revolution was this, it connected in one indissoluble bond the principles of civil government with the principles of Christianity.

I’ve written about this one before. It’s basically legitimate, though it would be better to quote it directly from Adams, rather than from John Wingate Thornton. Also, John Quincy Adams isn’t really a founder.

Nor is James K. Polk, to whom this next mishmash is attributed:

The Bible is the rock on which this Republic rests. Under the benign act providence of almighty God the representatives of the states and of the people are again brought together to deliberate for the public good.

The first sentence is something usually attributed to Andrew Jackson, though on no very good authority. (Need I point out that neither is Jackson a founder?) The rest is legitimate, and is the opening of his fourth annual message to congress, 5 December 1848. Except, of course, the words “benign act” should be the word “benignant”.

And last, my favorite punching-bag, the ultra-fake Patrick Henry “quotation” written in 1956, long after the fiery orator’s death:

It cannot be emphasized enough to strongly or to often that this great nation was founded not by religionists but by Christians, not on religions but on the gospel of Jesus Christ.

It’s misquoted, but that’s the least of its problems. It is ignorance of the rankest variety to believe that Patrick Henry, or anybody of his time for that matter, could have written this—this piece of idiocy.

And it’s really too bad because, honestly, Reneland is not a bad place to visit. Just don’t drink the Kool-aid.

Cursed Be All Learning!

T

he underbrush has grown thickly about the internet since I’ve been down with the moving sickness, and frankly it’s beyond either my interest or abilities to hack it back. Luxuriant growths of strange fungi have emerged, and old thorny vines re-established themselves. (I see David Barton has a new version of his unconfirmed quotations page up, for example—and it is a rare growth indeed!) The gamergate creepers are everywhere, threatening to strangle the old growth columns, and the social injustice perennials are in full bloom.

While tramping through this tulgy undergrowth I came across this little toadstool of a website, attributed to a certain Pastor Stephen Andrew, entitled USA Christian Ministries, and containing a page of USA HistoryQuotes about God and the Bible, many of them fake. It’s apparently been there since at least 21 February 2012 (though not apparently in exactly the present form) and is a rich growth of frauds and forgeries. We find such familiar hoaxes as the Washington prayer book and the 1792 congressional proclamation approving the holy bible for use in schools. There are the rank misattributions, like the John Quincy Adams “cornerstone” quotation being attributed to his father, or the Reformed Dutch Synod’s “true religion” remark being assigned to George Washington. Not to mention the absurdity of attributing a comment by an anonymous 1956 writer to Patrick Henry. There are unsupported attributions, like Henry’s deathbed tribute to the Bible. There are incorrect citations, as when words from Noah Webster’s 1836 letter to David McClure are attributed to his preface to the 1828 dictionary. (I have read through the thousands of words in that preface, and fascinating reading it is, if you are interested in the correct pronunciation of the English language, or the derivation of its words, but he does not there discuss his views on the use of the Bible in education.)

There are the weird distortions, such as this version of Washington’s advice to the Delaware tribe:

You do well to wish to learn … above all the religion of Jesus Christ [in our schools].

You know, you don’t get to use ellipses and brackets to change the meaning of a quotation—that’s as much fraud as simply making words up and attributing them to somebody else. The same is true with his version of what he likes to call the “First Ammendment”:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion [Christian denomination], or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

And apparently, if this site is to be believed (and I see no reason why it should), both Noah and Daniel Webster said “Education is useless without the Bible”. I don’t know how many hours I’ve spent trying to run that idiotic claim down. I can easily believe that either of them—or both—actually said that, especially in the context of the whole Girard’s college imbroglio. For those who don’t know the story, Stephen Girard, the wealthiest man in the United States of his time (he bailed out the government during the 1812 war), left his fortune to a variety of public works in his adopted country. One of these was a school for the education of orphans. His French relatives wanted the cash, and Daniel Webster was one of the lawyers who fought to help them in their attempt to rob orphans of an education. One of the provisions in Girard’s will was that no priest or minister should set foot on the grounds of his school, and the anti-college team twisted that into a claim that no religion would be taught at the school. Daniel Webster claimed that a charitable bequest that excluded Christianity was invalid under the law, because, it seems, there could be no charity outside of the Christian context, and the bequest should therefore be set aside in favor of Girard’s family members. Daniel Webster cited Noah Webster (among others) in support of his position. Ultimately the judge sidestepped the whole issue by pointing out that the exclusion of ministers did not prevent religious education by laymen, and that therefore that whole line of argument was irrelevant.

I could easily imagine either Webster claiming that “education is useless without the Bible” in this context, but I haven’t found it. And, for the record, Girard’s school for orphans was indeed founded, and is still in operation to this day, though his desire that all girls and black children be excluded from his bequest is no longer honored.

Moving on, I see that Pastor Andrew’s collection of James Madison quotations is absolutely perfect—there is nothing genuine in the entire lot. They are out-and-out fakes, all of them. Taking them in order they are:

We have staked the whole future of our new nation, not upon the power of government; far from it. We have staked the future of all our political constitutions upon the capacity of each of ourselves to govern ourselves according to the moral principles of the Ten Commandments.

This is a well-known fake; Madison never wrote anything like it. Many of the words are Clarence Manion’s, taken from various forms of his 1950s lecture on “The Key to Peace”, and the entire thing may have been inspired by a few words of Madison’s in the Federalist Papers, but it doesn’t appear to be any older than about 1958. (Some writers claim a 1937 source, but the existence of that item is doubtful, to say the least.)

We then have

Religion [is] the basis and foundation of Government.

This one is particularly childish. What he actually wrote (in Memorial and Remonstrance on the Religious Rights of Man) was:

… Because finally, “the equal right of every citizen to the free exercise of his religion according to the dictates of conscience” is held by the same tenure with all his other rights. If we recur to its origin, it is equally the gift of nature; if we weigh its importance, it cannot be less dear to us; if we consider the “Declaration of those rights which pertain to the good people of Virginia, as the basis and foundation of government,” it is enumerated with equal solemnity, or rather studied emphasis.

Note that the word “religion” is part of a quotation and the words “the basis and foundation of government” are part of the title of a work he is referring to. The fraud could hardly be more transparent.

Finally we have

Cursed be all that learning that is contrary to the cross of Christ.

This is so obviously not Madison’s it is amazing that anybody could be taken in by it. As Jeffrey Shallit noted in a piece on this fake quotation (Yet Another Christian Fake Quote) Madison was more likely to say things like “Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprize, every expanded prospect” than “Cursed be all that learning that is contrary to the cross of Christ.” How did this bizarre attribution occur? A commenter on that site (me, actually, back when I still had access to my library) suggested “The Madison misattribution probably results … from human error (and failure to check sources). William J. Federer wrote in the Madison section of his America's God and Country Encyclopedia of Quotations (p. 410):

Home-schooled as a child, Madison attended Princeton University under the direction of Reverend John Witherspoon, one of the nation's premier theologians and legal scholars. The University's first president, Jonathan Dickinson, had declared: “Cursed be all that learning that is contrary to the cross of Christ.”

Somebody seeing this sentence in quotation marks in a section devoted to Madison quotations could easily be excused for mistaking it for Madison's words.”

So it would seem to be a simple case of misattribution. It was Jonathan Dickinson, not James Madison, who said “Cursed be all that learning that is contrary to the cross of Christ.” But did he? For the sake of his posthumous reputation I would hope he didn’t—but hopes are not the same as evidence. I did look for it—but I couldn’t find it.

The oldest reference to the saying that Google Books turned up was from a sketch of a speech given by the Reverend S. S. Cox D.D. in October 1845 recorded in the Permanent Documents of the Society for the Promotion of Collegiate and Theological Education at the West, Volume 1, p. 30. He attributed the following words to “a venerable man [by] the name of Witherspoon”:

Cursed be all that learning that is contrary to the cross of Christ; cursed be all that learning that is not coincident with the cross of Christ; cursed be all that learning that is not subservient to the cross of Christ.

The “venerable man [by] the name of Witherspoon” was no doubt John Knox Witherspoon (1723-1794), signer of the Declaration and president of the College of New Jersey. William Federer mentioned him along with Dickinson in the bit quoted above. But could Witherspoon have actually said these bigoted anti-intellectual words?

Well, yes he could, kind of. Context matters here. The words appear in a sermon he published in 1768, one of a group “selected in order to form a little system of the truths of the gospel”. The sermon in question is number VIII, entitled “Glorying in the Cross” and taking for its text Paul’s letter to the Galatians chapter vi, verse 14, given there as “But God forbid that I should glory save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.” In the manner of sermons “Glorying in the Cross” meanders on for a bit, as Witherspoon tries to establish to his own satisfaction at least what exactly is meant by by its subject. “The word here translated glorying, signifies at the same time exulting, or rejoicing; and therefore to glory in the cross, is the same thing as to rejoice in the Saviour.” He moves on to ask “in what it was the apostle did not glory.” From elsewhere in Paul’s works (the latter portion of II Corinthians maybe?) Witherspoon concludes there were at least three things “he renounced as any subject of boasting. 1. His learning as a scholar; 2. His privileges as a Jew; 3. Even his zeal and activity as a minister of Christ.”

Are you still with me? Do you see where we’re going here? “The apostle Paul” he observes “had been brought up at the sect of Gamaliel, and seems to have been well accomplished in every branch of human science. Yet he speaks of it with great neglect, or rather with a noble disdain, when compared with the doctrine of the cross…” Witherspoon asks rhetorically “What is the meaning of this renunciation of human learning and wisdom? Is there any real opposition between learning and the cross? Would not the legitimate use of human wisdom lead us to embrace it?” For him this renunciation implies, first “An admiration of the divine glory in that which had not on it any of the marks of human wisdom…”, second “such a superlative admiration of this glorious and interesting object, that all the knowledge he possessed, and the honour he could otherwise acquire, seemed to him unworthy of regard…”, and third, “humility and self-denial, with the noble contempt of vain embellishments, which showed he was not building a monument to himself, but seeking the honour of his Saviour.”

And at this point he enters the caveat that is the source of this passage:

Mistake me not, my brethren: I am not speaking against learning in itself; it is a precious gift of God, and may be happily improved in the service of the gospel; but I will venture to say, in the spirit of the apostle Paul's writings in general, and of this passage in particular, Accursed be all that learning which sets itself in opposition to the cross of Christ! Accursed be all that learning which disguises or is ashamed of the cross of Christ! Accursed be all that learning which fills the room that is due to the cross of Christ! and once more, Accursed be all that learning which is not made subservient to the honour and glory of the cross of Christ!

As is my custom I have bolded the material that is reflected in the misquotation under consideration. (It will be noted that the first and third of Cox’s curses have Witherspoon’s first and fourth curses as their source; the second however is not parallel to either Witherspoon’s second or third. Go figure.) So, yeah, Witherspoon is indeed the source of the fake Madison quotation; the context mitigates the anti-intellectualism of it somewhat. But not much, no.

For my part, I am unenthusiastic about ideologies that would set limits on inquiry. I mean, I have nothing against the gospel per se; there are some nice things in it, considering that it was the product of a benighted and savage era. It is as straw compared to the work of Aristotle or Archimedes, and less useful than the advice of Sun Tzu, but it has its points. When used to impede the advance of knowledge, however, I will venture to say in no uncertain terms, Accursed be all that learning that limits itself to the cross of Christ! Accursed be all that learning that exists only to exalt the cross of Christ! Accursed be all that learning that erases knowledge for the cross of Christ! and once more, Accursed be all that learning that is made subservient to the honour and glory of the cross of Christ! Such “learning” is unworthy the efforts of the minds that wasted their abilities on it, loving the darkness rather than shining their lamps into the shadowed corners of the cosmos to see what really was there. It’s akin to those lawyers who would rob orphans of an education if that education didn’t include their particular unsubstantiated pet notions.

Still, at least the reverend John Witherspoon had a mind, and made what appears to be a sincere effort to come to grips with the meaning of his text. Today's Christ-mongers are too busy selling a product to worry about such niceties. Manufacturing appropriate quotations and rewriting constitutions to suit their theological fancies are more their speed. Research is hard. Why do it, if you can just make things up? Use your ellipses as scissors and your brackets as paste and you can make anybody say anything you like. It's not like people have access to repositories of documents they can visit, or even conjure up in their own homes if they have an internet connection. No, they'll believe whatever you tell them. And trusting pastors with websites can be counted upon to spread your message.

And so with that I bid a fond farewell to this fantastic fungal growth in a remote corner of the online woods. I would suggest that the good Pastor Andrew needs to weed his garden a bit. There are a lot of tares mixed in with his wheat.

Something Sinister

Yesterday failed congressional candidate Matthew Burke found something sinister in President Obama’s hosting of the White House Iftar, an annual celebration for the past eighteen years. In a mere 280 words or so this “conservative” writer manages to cram more misinformation and outright lies than could be unpacked in an essay ten times the length. There’s probably a true word in there somewhere or other, but you’d be hard-pressed to find it.

All right, maybe the reverend Jeremiah Wright is or was an “(admitted) Marxist” as Matthew Burke claims; I don’t know, and Burke provided no citation for his assertion. Standard biographical sketches make no mention of this, so I’m dubious—but let it go. But it wasn’t Jeremiah Wright who said that Obama was “steeped in Islam” and “knew very little about Christianity” as far as the available record shows—it was Ed Klein, who was summarizing things he claimed Wright had told him in an interview. I don’t know how accurate Klein may have been in reporting Wright’s view—but the words are his, not Wright’s.

And again, Obama never “declared in 2008, completely on the wrong side of history, that America was no longer Christian.” Far from it. What he said was—and this is completely on the right side of history, so far—“Whatever we once were, we are no longer a Christian nation—at least, not just. We are also a Jewish nation, a Muslim nation, a Buddhist nation, and a Hindu nation, and a nation of nonbelievers.” As is well known, his original speech read “we are no longer just a Christian nation”; when he delivered it he accidentally omitted the word “just” and had to backtrack. He quite correctly noted that religious diversity (present since the founding) was growing in the United States, and that Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus and nonbelievers now have a substantial presence in the country. That’s a fact, by the way—not just the opinion of some self-described former Financial Advisor/Planner.

Yes, but the proper thing for the president of the United States to do is to merely tolerate Islam and other “legitimate religions” says this tea-party “writer”. The Father of our Country, George Washington, had a very different view: “All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship,” he wrote to the Hebrew Congregation in Newport, Rhode Island, on 18 August 1790, “It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people, that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights.” Ah, but what did he know? Who ya gonna to believe, America’s Founding Father, or some “Constitutional Conservative” with an anti-American axe to grind?

Oh, yeah, by the way—George Washington never said that line about it being impossible to govern without God and the Bible—it was some lawyer in 1893. You could have looked it up, Matthew—if you weren’t so busy making a goddamn jackass of yourself.

Decaying Horse Department

If there are so many damn examples of “irrefutable quotes and facts from history that our country was founded upon Biblical principles” why do its proponents keep drawing on the same short list of known fakes? Case in point: one Earl53 posting here (doing a partial cut-and-paste from “Forsaken Roots”) manages to reel off seven fake quotations and three false items of information, along with six or seven genuine quotations. (There is also one dubious item of information, in that John Adams didn’t claim that United States was exclusively founded on “the general principles of Christianity” but only that “the general principles of Christianity” were among the principles upon which the country was founded.)

This is a pretty high level of adulteration, all things considered, and contains some pretty cheesy stuff—the Patrick Henry and Congressional resolution about school bibles are particularly transparent fakes that never should have fooled anybody. And Earl53 doesn't improve matters any by pretending later on to have documents from the Library of Congress backing up his school bible fake resolution; presumably he is referring to the genuine Aitken Bible resolution, but as he gave no actual citation it is entirely possible that he was just blowing more hot air, as when he pretended that his production was not just another cut-and-paste job based on “Forsaken Roots”. (The Jefferson and school bible fake quotations both come from that source, as does the misinformation about early American universities—a dead giveaway. Copying other people’s bonehead mistakes is a sure way to be caught.) Anyway, for the record, here is another clueless clown’s score:

The fake quotations:

1. the Patrick Henry “religionists” misattribution, actually written in 1956 in The Virginian;
2. The Jefferson “real Christian” frankenquote with its two sentences taken from widely separated letters juxtaposed;
3. the Washington “without God and the Bible” invention (mixed with some genuine material from the Farewell Address);
4. a prayer from the Washington prayer-book hoax;
5. the John Quincy Adams “indissoluble bond” misattribution (actually written by John Wingate Thornton);
6. the fake Congressional resolution about approving the Bible for use in schools (A “Forsaken Roots” invention based on the genuine resolution commending the Aitken Bible);
7. the Franklin “Bible and newspaper” misattribution (actual author unknown).

The incorrect information:

1. that 106 of the first 108 universities in the United States were distinctly Christian;
2. that Thomas Jefferson wrote “I am a real Christian” etc on the front of his Bible;
3. that John Adams was chairman of the American Bible society (it was his son; the father took a dim view of Bible societies).

The genuine quotations:

1. the John Jay “prefer Christians for their rulers” passage;
2. the Daniel Webster “good Christians” quotation;
3. the John Dickenson “higher source” quotation;
4. part of Benjamin Franklin’s prayer for prayer at the Constitutional Convention;
5. possibly the “rebellion to tyrants” line (author unknown, but suspected to be Franklin);
6. the Adams “morality and religion” quotation (except for the word “true” added before “religion”);
7. the Adams “pure virtue” quotation.

I’d say that’s about 40 points out of a possible 100. In other words, you just flunked American History, Earl53. A sad commentary on the American school system, it seems. But thanks for playing.

Glory 2—The Quickening

A few more thoughts on Archbigot Fischer’s novel exegesis of the word religion, based on his remembrance of the notions of the backward schoolchildren of his youth.

Actually it can’t possibly be correct. The First Amendment reads in part:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, nor prohibiting the free exercise thereof…

If the term religion is here supposed to mean Christianity, then the meaning of this passage has to be only that Congress is restricted from establishing some brand of the Christian religion as the state church, leaving it free (apparently) to go ahead and establish (say) Buddhism or Islam as a state religion just so long as Christianity is tolerated, and its “free exercise” not prohibited. Surely that can’t be the intention.

The only way to make the Archbigot’s notion work is to assume that religion in the first clause means, well, “religion”, while in the second clause it suddenly changes its meaning to “the Christian religion”. That’s a lot of extra work to put the same damn word to—and it is actually the same word, used once and only once, making this construction in point of fact impossible.

What about the Constitution’s only other mention of religion, that “no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States”? Again, if religious applies only to the Christian religion, then the absurd proposition appears that the Constitution prohibits the government from requiring adherence to some particular Christian creed, but allows it to enjoin some Islamic or Hindu set of injunctions. This concept does not seem to me to have been well thought out. I would say that it is quite clear that—whatever the use of the word may have been in their time—the Framers meant religion in its broadest sense.

But is the Archbigot correct that “at the time of the Founding” the term religion “essentially had to do with what brand of Christianity you wore”? We’ve already seen that his own witness, Justice Story, let him down. What if we examined some other specific examples of the term in its native habitat? Consider this observation, written by James Madison to a Dr. Motta:

Among the features peculiar to the political system of the U. States, is the perfect equality of rights which it secures to every religious sect. … Equal laws, protecting equal rights, are found, as they ought to be presumed, the best guarantee of loyalty & love of country; as well as best calculated to cherish that mutual respect & good will among Citizens of every religious denomination which are necessary to social harmony, and most favorable to the advancement of truth. The account you give of the Jews of your congregation brings them fully within the scope of these observations.

Note here that the Jews are included in Madison’s understanding of the phrases “religious sect” and “religious denomination”. There’s no indication here that he shares the Archbigot’s playground definition that makes religion exclusively Christian.

Let’s take an example from Dr. Benjamin Rush. He wrote in his essay “On the Proper Mode of Education: in a Republic”:

Such is my veneration for every religion that reveals the attributes of the Deity, or a future state of rewards and punishments, that I had rather see the opinions of Confucius or Mahomed inculcated upon our youth, than see them grow up wholly devoid of a system of religious principles.

So it appears that when Benjamin Rush used the term religion, he would include “the opinions of Confucius or Mohamed” in it. Are we to suppose that he mistakenly thought Confucius and Mohammed were Christians? No; as his very next words make clear he preferred the “truth of the Christian revelation” to other religious doctrines. In other words Confucianism, Islam, and Christianity were all included in his notion of religion.

And here’s one from John Adams, written to Mordecai Manuel Noah, 31 July 1818:

It has pleased the Providence of the “first cause,” the universal cause, that Abraham should give religion, not only to Hebrews, but to Christians and Mahometans, the greatest part of the modern civilized world.

So it seems that when Adams used the word religion, he included Judaism and Islam as well as Christianity in its compass.

Even a quick survey shows a number of counter-examples to Brian Fischer’s claim, and these among key players in the Founding of the United States. Further, there’s no way of making sense of the Constitution if his implausible suggestion be accepted. I don’t mean to beat a dead horse to a bloody pulp here, but—get real, man. It’s pretty clear that when the Framers wrote of an establishment of religion, they meant what they said—not merely that no Christian sect would be established as a national religion over others, but that no religion of any kind should be established. And if they did indeed mean disestablishment all round, then it’s clear that they meant free exercise across the board as well. It was the same damn word, for God’s sake.

Celebration of the Clueless

From one Mychal Massie comes the most colossal drivel I’ve read in a long time—well, I’m sure I could find worse, but it’s amazingly idiotic:

Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and Benjamin Franklin all wrote that they had signed the Constitution July 4, 1776, but there are some historians who argue that they signed a month later. So the question becomes, whom are you going to believe—the men who were there and participated, or PBS and the History Channel?

Me, I’ll go with the historians who’ve actually examined the evidence, but I’d be really surprised to find that any of them said the Constitution was signed in 1776, in July, August, or any other month. And yet after this gaffe this Massie character has the colossal gall to lecture his readers about the true meaning of the Constitution. It appears the Founders “intended for God to be acknowledged and prayers to be offered in conjunction with good government and the observance of federal holidays and the ceremonies adjoining same.” (These are actually his words.) If the Founders had wanted “no state-sanctioned religion”, then they would have included the concept somewhere in the Constitution, Mychal Massie thinks. As proof they didn’t intend the no religious test and no establishment clauses to forbid government-mandated religion* he writes:

One of the clearest examples showing that the Founding Fathers never intended the First Amendment to be applied as it is today comes from John Adams. The day before he would sign the actual Constitution, Adams wrote a letter to his wife, Abigail. The very first paragraph on the third page of that letter, Adams wrote: “I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated, by succeeding generations, as the great anniversary festival. It ought to be commemorated as the Day of Deliverance by the solemn acts of God Almighty.”

First of all I would observe of course that even in this very dishonest presentation of the famous Adams quotation Adams nowhere states that government is to require such acts. But the fact is that Adams only includes such devotions to God among various kinds of celebrations he anticipates for the second of July (and what were you saying, Mychal Massie, about the Founders and dates again?):

The Second Day of July 1776, will be the most memorable Epocha, in the History of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated, by succeeding Generations, as the great anniversary Festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the Day of Deliverance by solemn Acts of Devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more.

If this is “[o]ne of the clearest examples” showing that the Founders meant to establish religion when they wrote that they didn’t, the rest of his examples must be utter dreck.

(h/t Jon Rowe)

*Of course this restriction originally was only binding on the Federal Government, not the states. The states wrote their own versions of disestablishment both before and after this date.

The Impotent Rage of the Clueless

Why do the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing?

Psalms 2:1

As robots insist on spamming my posts I’ve made it a policy to close comments down after a couple of weeks, so I only have to tend to a few recent entries. If a friend of the blog stops by an older post, as sometimes happens, or somebody else contributes something valuable and I happen to notice it, then I’ll okay it. If somebody decides to unload a bucketful of bile at an old post, it will probably go down the toilet without being read. I’m sorry, but my time is reasonably valuable, and I have better things to do as I prepare to be finally pigeonholed in that great archive in the sky.

But the squawk of a complacent gull when he realizes he’s been had by some fast-talking con-artist is music for my soul. One of this breed—a character going by the handle TSVDP—saw fit to spam an earlier post with his inane jibber-jabber. Apparently his feelings were hurt on learning that his favorite Patrick Henry quotation—the one about “this great nation” being founded on Christianity, not religious freedom—is a piece of modern tripe, concocted in living memory and disseminated by sleazy hucksters out to fleece such gullible lambs as he. “You don’t make a point at all,” he squeals, “If not it confirms what Henry said and that he was a Christian.” Well, yeah, not that anybody has ever denied that Henry was a Christian, or a slave-owner, or a father, a lawyer, a legislator, an orator. None of that’s at issue here. The only question before us is the author of that “this great nation” and “religionists” quotation—and fortunately that’s a fact easily determined.

Let’s review, shall we, the bizarre history of this quotation. It begins, in a way, with something Patrick Henry actually did write. On 20 November 1798 the once-fiery orator and successful lawyer sat down to write his last will and testament. After carefully dividing up his lands, money, and slaves amongst his wife and children, he added a pious afterthought:

This is all the Inheritance I can give to my dear family, The religion of Christ can give them one which will make them rich indeed[.]

The founder passed away in June of the next year, leaving damn little behind him as a legacy to the nation. His words, that had inspired a revolution, were for the most part lost. When William Wirt attempted to collect them for his sketch of Patrick Henry’s life (issued 1816) he had to do for the most part with recollections, fragments, and speeches patched together from the fading memories of those who had been present.

Around 1823 somebody thought it worthwhile to excerpt the “religion of Christ” passage from Henry’s will, and it went the rounds of various periodicals. It wasn’t quite the way Henry had written it, however. Somehow it had undergone a strange metamorphosis:

I have now disposed of all my property to my family; there is one thing more I wish I could give them, and that is the Christian Religion. If they had that, and I had not given them one shilling, they would be rich; and if they had not that, and I had given them all the world, they would be poor.

This version was reprinted in numerous sources up to the present time, but not without challenge. Some time in the early 1840s James W. Alexander, a Presbyterian minister, went to Charlotte county, Virginia, and obtained the actual words direct from the will. He published them in 1847 as part of a volume called Thoughts on Family Worship. The two versions have remained in competition ever since.

In 1956 a historical revisionist writer for The Virginian used the passage—the fake version—as a springboard for his own thoughts on religion in America. This author wrote:

There is an insidious campaign of false propaganda being waged today, to the effect that our country is not a Christian country but a religious one—that it was not founded on Christianity but on freedom of religion.

It cannot be emphasized too strongly or too often that this great nation was founded not by “religionists” but by Christians—not on religion but on the Gospel of Jesus Christ. For this very reason, peoples of other faiths have been afforded asylum, prosperity and freedom of worship here.

In the spoken and written words of our noble founders and forefathers, we find symbolic expressions of their Christian faith. The above quotation from the will of Patrick Henry is a notable example.

Several people thought this piece of revised history was worth quoting on its own, but it wasn’t until 1988 that somebody had the bright idea of crediting part of the 1956 comment to Patrick Henry himself. It appeared as his (according to David Barton) in a book called God’s Providence in American History by Steve C. Dawson, and was almost immediately picked up and popularized by Barton himself in his Myth of Separation. From there it spread far and wide. Somebody even added that it was from a speech to the Virginia House of Burgesses in May 1765, despite the fact that Henry was first seated there late that month and no speeches of his are recorded for that time except the famous one in support of his Stamp Act resolutions, reconstructed from memory years after his death. The incongruity of Henry’s speaking of “this great nation” before it even came into existence, and his foreknowledge that “peoples of other faiths” would be “afforded asylum, prosperity and freedom of worship here” at a time when religious freedom was nonexistent in most of the colonies apparently shot by the oblivious transmitters of Barton’s fantasies. The thing is, like Chief Seattle lamenting the demise of the buffalo, Henry just plain knows too much. It’s a dead giveaway.

But Christian nation fantaisists apparently have no sense of history whatever. Like their idiot founder, history is whatever suits their fancy. You like the Fifth Monarchy slogan, no king but king Jesus? Why not give it to John Hancock and John Adams and have them say it at the beginning of the battle of Lexington? Does it matter that they weren’t there? Does it matter that there is no record of it’s being said? Not in the least. History by this logic can be whatever you want it to be. If it feels right, then it’s history. Much easier to go by your gut than to do, oh, say, actual research.

Evidence? The Christian Nationites don’t need no stinking evidence when they set out to invent new legends about the past. Or as TSVDP puts it, “No one has to prove anything that has been around and in books for hundreds of years to Atheist Scum trying to rewrite history.” I love the way he turns the world upside down. It’s not Rushdoony and Barton and that gang out to rewrite history—no, it’s the generations of historians that came before them who are doing the rewriting—via time machine, I suppose. And by the way 1988—the date this “religionists” nonsense first appeared as Henry’s in any book—is hardly “hundreds of years” ago, though maybe it seems that way to Ahistoricist Scum like TSVDP. Neither is 1956, the date it was first written, for that matter. Yeah, okay, I know it’s the twenty-first century now, and 1988 is so twentieth century, but that hardly adds up to “hundreds of years”. Or maybe TSVDP has a numerancy problem. Maybe all big numbers look alike to him. Maybe he meant to say “dozens” instead of “hundreds”. He might as well have said “millions”—it would have been just as accurate.

There is one point I do agree with our clueless comment-slinger about, though. “…your boogey man David Barton is a joke,’ he writes, “most people don’t even know who he is…” I don’t know about that last comment, seeing as he’s giving lessons on constitutional law (believe it or not) to congressmen and being featured on popular shows in the mainstream media and advising the Texas Board of Education on history (despite his complete lack of any qualification for the task), but he definitely “is a joke”. Which makes it all the more puzzling, if TSVDP feels that way, that he feels obliged to go way out on a limb to support one of Barton’s, uh, errors—to put it charitably. Nobody ever heard of this Patrick Henry “quotation” before Barton put it in a book—and if it weren’t for his footnote, nobody would even know that he wasn’t the one who first came up with it.

As a parting shot our feckless friend returned a third time to add, “Your comment FAILS in all possible ways that Henry did not say this. The burden of proof is for you to prove he did not say this.” Well, no. Mind you, even if it were I have amply shown that this alleged observation cannot belong to Henry’s time, that it is not found in his writings, and that it was written by somebody else more than a century and a half after Henry’s death. That’s pretty conclusive, really. But it’s all window-dressing, and entirely unnecessary—done only for my own satisfaction. It is always up to the person making a positive assertion to show evidence that what he says is true. In the case of a quotation, fortunately, that burden of proof is easily met. All it takes is a citation to a primary source. Martin Porter’s first principle of quotation is a good rule to follow here: “Whenever you see a quotation given with an author but no source assume that it is probably bogus.” If no source is given, or a nonsense source like “May 1765 Speech to the House of Burgesses”, then—lacking other evidence, or the time or inclination to follow up on it by doing actual research—a reader is entirely justified in assuming that the alleged quotation is fake.

Notes
A transcription of Patrick Henry’s will is found at the Red Hill Patrick Henry National Memorial website. An earlier transcription appears in George Morgan, The True Patrick Henry (Philadelphia, 1907), pp. 455-7.

The oldest example of the fake version of the quotation from Patrick Henry’s will I could find was in the 29 November 1823 issue of The Manchester Iris, a Weekly Literary and Scientific Miscellany, vol. II, p. 387.

Impossible to Verify

I stumbled onto an internet meme involving an odd use of the phrase “natural history” that led me here, to a weblog entry entitled simply “Natural History is Not Science” by somebody calling himself Dr. David Shormann. The piece turns out to be the usual claptrap about how geology and astronomy and the like are “interesting, fun, and adventure-filled pursuit[s]” but not “real science” because you can’t examine a supernova in a laboratory or watch the continents drift in real time or whatever the nonsense of the day is—as it’s retread stuff I didn’t really pay attention. The thing that did catch my attention, however, was the author’s bizarre claim that it is impossible to ever verify a historical event. Speaking about the past he says “you can theorize all day long, but unless you have a time machine, you can never verify your ideas”.

WTF? Where’d that come from? Of course you can verify your ideas—or disprove them, for that matter. Here’s an example from something I’m working on right now. I have a narrative in front of me, a narrative that purports to be the true story of a man’s life in nineteenth century America. It has some quite interesting material in it, if true. But is it? According to Dr. David Shormann there is no way on earth that I can determine this, since I don’t happen to have a time machine. I guess I just have to take it at face value.

Or do I? The author claims to have been raised by a man named Drake on a farm adjoining the land owned by former President Andrew Jackson. No way I can test this, right? Think again. Our narrator supposedly lived there from say 1836 to 1847. This means that if I look at the 1840 census I should find an entry for a man named Drake somewhere near the entry for Andrew Jackson, and there should be at least one male inhabitant in the correct age range for our narrator. Finding that would tend to confirm our narrative; not finding it to disconfirm. (No evidence of this sort of course proves or disproves a claim; proof belongs to logic and mathematics, not to history.) There was no such man, by the way, not a good sign.

Our narrator claims to have met Kit Carson in a St. Louis hotel in 1847, and to have accompanied him thereafter to Bent’s Fort in Colorado. Well, Kit Carson’s activities are well-documented for this time-period. If the narrative were true we would expect to find other records of Kit Carson staying at a St. Louis hotel, and leaving town with a fifteen-year-old boy in tow. The records do indicate that Carson was in St. Louis in 1847, but he stayed at a private residence, not a hotel, and he went from there to Arizona with an army regiment and went on from there to California—not to Bent’s Fort. And no fifteen-year-old boy puts in an appearance. Not conclusive, but a bad sign.

Again, he claims to have bought land on the Sacramento River and ranched there from 1867 to 1872. If he did, there should be a title transfer recorded in the land records there (and there isn’t). And he should have shown up in Sonoma county or thereabouts in the 1870 census. Instead he shows up in that census at the opposite end of the state, in Santa Barbara county, landless and breaking horses for a living.

And again he spent time in the 1860s fighting the Apaches with General Crook—when General Crook according to army records, newspaper accounts, and a host of other documents was fighting the Shoshones in Idaho. He was the scout who brought in the Modoc leader Captain Jack in 1873 according to his own account—but reporters on the scene make no mention of him, assigning that feat to a regular army detachment, assisted possibly by some Warm Springs Indians. This is supported by the military records, by recollections of participants, and by contemporary references, none of which so much as allude to our narrator’s participation in events.

Now, not everything in this guy’s narrative failed to pan out. He claims for example to have been in Seattle in 1888, and sure enough, his name appears there in the city directory, just as it should. He claimed to have known Buffalo Bill Cody—and there are witnesses who saw Buffalo Bill embrace him and give him a seat of honor when he showed up as an old man at one of his wild west shows. But when so many records of the time fail to bear out his story, or worse yet, place him elsewhere from the place he claimed to have been, it’s impossible to take his account very seriously.

My point is this: contrary to Dr. Shormann’s claims, it is entirely possible to verify, or to controvert, historical hypotheses. Police investigators do it every day. So do epidemiologists. Realtors. Lawyers. Accountants. It’s part and parcel of the way we do business in the world. And we don’t need time machines to do it.

Quotation of the Day

…[D]oughnuts, even Spudnuts, don’t come close to the movement to improve American education inspired by the Soviet launch of Sputnik. From just getting history horribly in error, Palin came close to ridiculing American business with her idea of meeting the challenges like space exploration, with doughnuts and coffee. Doughnuts and coffee will not lift student test scores, nor are they the answer to lifting our economy today and keeping the U.S. competitive and on top, in the future.

Ed Darrell

The Self-Blinded Leading the Sighted

God, it’s St. Lucy’s Day already, meaning that the holiday season is considerably advanced, and I don’t have a thing to wear. St. Lucy—bah. You may remember Lucy as the psychotic medieval woman who ripped her own eyes out and sent them to an admirer as a gift. Apparently the guy said he liked them, or something like that. Those were the days, my friend. One of those gay little old-time legends that brighten the spirits in this dark time of year.

Well, my spirits were brightened, anyway, by this strange piece—an instance of the blind presuming to instruct the sighted on the meaning of color. Some Yakima lady named Kara L. Kraemer, it seems, was so incensed by somebody daring to observe that US law was not based on the Bible and never should be, that she set out to instruct him by delivering a few choice quotations from the Founders that she’d apparently dug up from some moldering trash heap somewhere, and—you guessed it, knowing me—she’s included a couple of familiar fakes among them. And, no surprises here either, those that aren’t fake are absolutely irrelevant to the point. Nice job, lady.

She’s got John Dickenson comparing the proposed Constitution to the Bible, in that both have come under attack; she’s got James Wilson repeating the old legal maxim (shot down by Jefferson) that Christianity is part of the common law, and James McHenry pleading for the establishment of a private Bible society in Maryland. She’s got Carroll of Carrollton arguing that people won’t be virtuous on their own without the threat of “wicked eternal misery” or the promise of “good eternal happiness” to goad them on. (He was taking a swipe at the excesses of the French Revolution, by the way.) She’s got Sam Adams comparing the American revolution to the Reformation: “Our Fore-Fathers threw off the Yoke of Popery in Religion; for you is reserved the honor of levelling the popery of Politicks” (a portion of the passage that she omits, incidentally). And she’s got two fakes and one dubious entry: the Washington “god and the bible” concoction, the Patrick Henry “religionists” misattribution, and the dubious Patrick Henry story about the Bible being worth more than all the other books put together that rests on third-hand testimony from an anonymous source. Not a good showing from somebody who pretends to be combating ignorance.

If I were to make a recommendation to Kara Kraemer, it would be that if she wants to combat ignorance she should start with the person closest to her—herself. But like St. Lucy, I’m sure she knows better.

[Update: The article linked to here has changed since I first wrote and then replied to a comment here. The original introduction read only:

In honor of National Bible Week and to combat Stiefel's statement of ignorance, I offer the following quotes from our founders in regard to the Bible:

This is what I was making fun of, not the present more elaborate introduction that gives a coherent (though flawed) explanation for the quotations that follow. The author has also corrected the information about the one Patrick Henry statement, though she has incorrectly attributed the fake Washington "God and the Bible" quotation to Paulding's book (which even if correct would not be a reliable source, what with it being an undocumented children's book and all). Had I first seen the article in its present state I wouldn't have responded as I did, or indeed at all. sbh]

Phil Brennan: Reporting from Fantasyland

Over at Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub, one of my favorite blogs, Ed Darrell has spotted an online editorial so clueless I couldn’t help but take a few potshots at it as well. The author, Phil Brennan, worries about what would happen if the birthers were successful in their quest to have President Obama declared ineligible if “it turns out that Obama can’t come up with a legitimate birth certificate showing that he was indeed born on U.S. soil in what was then the territory of Hawaii” in 1961. According to the provisions of the Constitution, he claims, all bills signed by Obama and all appointments made under Obama would be nullified, “John McCain would be declared the legitimate President of the United States and Sarah Palin the Vice President starting with Inauguration Day, 2009,” and to top it all off “there would be blood in the streets as the labor union and the rest of the thuggery that supports him would erupt in violence”.

Now I don’t really expect any sense or sanity from a birther—and Brennan in earlier outbursts shows that he has drunk deep of that particular flavor of Kool-Aid™. In one he writes that the location of Obama’s birth “remains questionable. Proof of United States Citizenship hasn’t been provided”—this despite the fact there is an accessible public record of his Hawaiian birth. (Why do they think states place birth notices in local papers, anyway?) But this clueless clown thinks that Hawaii was a territory in 1961—this despite the fact that his own claims about his personal history show he must be old enough to remember Hawaii becoming a state, as I am. (Hell, I remember our school proudly unfurling its new forty-nine-star flags just after Hawaii became a state, rendering them obsolete before they could even be properly displayed.)

And Brennan worries about strange things. The Republicans, he thinks, may blow their chances this year by being too cooperative with the Democrats. (In what alternate universe does this Brennan live?) If Universal Health Care was already in effect, he writes, he, Brennan, would now be dead, thanks to its Death Panels, a necessity when health care will be rationed. (Does he really think health care isn’t rationed now?) He imagines that the “climate change threat” is “non-existent” and that any effort to prevent disaster will “drive millions of American jobs overseas and impose crippling costs upon the American people” (and yet the temperatures keep on rising). Brennan in fact is far more worried about the possible “eruption of the simmering mass of magma that is edging slowly upwards beneath the caldera at Yellowstone National Park” which will “devastate much of the U.S., spreading massive clouds of volcanic ash across a huge swath of the nation” thus causing a “new ice age” resembling “what we know as the Little Ice Age which occurred between the 16th and the 19th centuries”.

This self-described veteran reporter seems to have problems distinguishing probable from improbable, and fact from outright fantasy. Suppose, for instance, that Obama were to be determined (for whatever reason) to be ineligible to serve as president. In that case the Constitution does not specify in some strange Ruritanian fashion that the state must revert to a villain, no matter whom, but rather provides that the vice president (in this case Joe Biden) would assume the office. Nor would laws and appointments suddenly become null and void as in some bizarre Y2K scenario nor would chaos reign.

Get a grip, Phil. Take your medications. There are no bomb-throwing Bolsheviks waiting in the wings to execute the royal family. Oh, and by the way, the “Little Ice Age” has been greatly exaggerated. You could look it up, if that didn’t get in the way of your, uh, journalism.

Picking on the Clueless pt XXX

Picking on the Clueless

Over at my other blog, Fake History, I get a certain amount of traffic, and even an occasional commenter. Yesterday some guy calling himself “David d” left a comment on my entry about a quotation falsely attributed to George Washington:

What students would learn in American schools above all is the religion of Jesus Christ.

I pointed out there that the fake is based on something George Washington did say during a difficult meeting with a delegation of Delawares intent on preserving the peace with the Euro-American colonists:

You do well to wish to learn our arts and ways of life, and above all, the religion of Jesus Christ.

Nothing here about students, American schools, or the like of course. As I pointed out in my entry it would be an unlikely topic for George Washington to have commented on, given the circumstances of his time and place. I noted that as the “American schools” quotation is fake, and apparently recent, I felt no need to research its actual provenance, beyond noting that the earliest source Google Books could come up with was a 2006 book by a guy named Bob Klingenberg.

Now this David d got all bent out of shape about this simple declaration, and he showed up crowing:

You really need to learn to perform some due diligence before you write of things you no [sic] very little about.

You misleadingly wrote, “The fake quotation is very modern, probably twenty-first century in origin. I’ve made no special effort to run down its history; the oldest reference Google Books turned up was from 2006, in a book called Is God with America? by Bob Klingenberg (p. 188)”

That set off the “truth alarm”. So I did just a little research NOT using google which many believe has a liberal bias programmed into its search engines. And found a reliable source going back over 70 years. Nice try.

Now I have to say that that would have been interesting. Not impossible by any means, but interesting. Some fake quotations do indeed lurk for long periods of time in obscure corners of the intellectual web, before springing out to ensnare the unwary. And reliable sources sometimes do transmit unreliable information.

But this was not such an example, alas. No, David d was so colossally inept that he got caught in a trap of his own making. His reference for the fake quotation? It was Fitzgerald’s edition of Washington’s papers, the very source I linked to in my entry, and it did not contain the fake quotation at all, but only the genuine one, as I’d already explained ad nauseam.

What the hell was David d thinking (assuming that that isn’t giving him too much credit)? Did he suppose that nobody would check up on him? Fitzgerald’s edition is actually online, so there is no difficulty in checking it out. I can only assume that our clueless clown was just making things up and hoping nobody would actually call him on his bluff. Clearly his claim to have done “just a little research” was a vast overstatement, unless his definition of “research” is “bullshitting”.

Now David d adds a crowning touch to his display of ignorance and incompetence. Allow me to let him hang himself with his own words:

You know a big problem I have with many skeptics and naysayers is their willful ignorance on many topic that they pretend to know something about.

Read the facts man!

http://www.wallbuilders.com/libissuesarticles.asp?id=8755

Peace out.

Ah, yes, the infamous Wallbuilders site, the source of so many lies and misinterpretations. That’s really convincing.

But—and this is the cream of the jest—David d apparently never bothered to check out his own link. Because Wallbuilders does not back him up on this fake, not in the least. What’s given at his link is the same genuine quotation given by Fitzgerald and by my own site, and not the fake quotation at all.

Epic fail, David d—and, by the way, I don’t believe for a moment that you are really the homeschooling advocate whose name and email address you’re using. I took a brief look at his site and I doubt that he’d be either as incompetent or as, well, illiterate as your comment is.

Peace off, man.

Absolute Idiocy

This piece from CBS News (h/t Jennifer McCreight) contains an entire month's worth of stupid. Examples:

John Boehner claimed, apparently with a straight face, that "Republicans believe that all lives are created equal, and should be defended with equal vigilance." When did Republicans start opposing capital punishment, again? I missed that day. Gee, one of the reasons I remain a Republican (though In Name Only, I'm constantly told) is that I believe strongly that certain people (mass murderers, killers motivated by ideology or money, and people who poison wells, for example) should be put to death. Most Republicans will defend a person's right to kill somebody for breaking into his home, or even for breaking into a neighbor's home. Are they willing to defend the trespasser's life "with equal vigilance"? I doubt it very much.

John Boehner's spokesman (and I suspect soon-to-be former spokesman) Kevin Smith adds that Boehmer supports existing hate crime legislation based on immutable characteristics, like religion and gender, but not on changeable characteristics like (apparently) sexual orientation or disability. (Uh, fact check: gender isn't actually covered under existing law; its part of the proposed expanded legislation.) I am again surprised to learn that the Republican Party is apparently endorsing the extreme position taken by Islamic militants—a person who has once joined a religion is a member for life. Doesn't this conflict with the First Amendment—you know, that whole pesky "freedom of religion" thing? Oh, yeah, that's right—the words "freedom of religion" don't actually appear in the Constitution; that's some fantasy cooked up by historical revisionists and activist judges. God, it's getting harder to keep up with the lunacy.

Republican Tom Price (whom I've never heard of before, thank the gods) calls all hate crime legislation "a despicable and unconstitutional bill that penalizes thought and places a premium on some classes of individuals over others". He claims to believe that "All violent crimes demonstrate hate"—this in the teeth of common sense. You don't have to hate your grandma to murder her for her money; you just have to put your own wishes above her continued existence. And what about "premeditation"—the thing that distinguishes first-degree murder from its lesser cousins? Doesn't that penalize thought? I mean, the victim is just as dead whether he was killed in the heat of an argument or in cold blood with malice aforethought. Murder vs. self-defense, rape vs. consensual sex, theft vs. borrowing—all of these involve reading minds, as the pro-hate-crimes crowd looks at it, that is, determining the motives of the people involved. All of these in Tom Price's idiotic world must then be written off as crimes, since we don't want to penalize thought, or place a premium on some classes of individuals (women who don't consent to sex, say?) over others (women who do, for example?).

And Price's spokesman Brendan Buck added a further touch of lunacy: "We believe all hate crimes legislation is unconstitutional..." I'm not sure under what clause they think the absolute right to commit crimes motivated by hate falls, but no, there is nothing in the Constitution that forbids looking into a person's motives for committing a crime, and for judging the severity of the crime accordingly. Our entire penal code is shot through with just those sorts of issues.

And finally, another gem from Kevin Smith: the present changes in the law "could eventually invite the prosecution of Americans for their thoughts and religious beliefs, basic provinces protected by the First Amendment." First I would point out that thoughts and religious beliefs are not actually covered by the First Amendment, which protects only religious expression (the "free exercise" clause). Thoughts and beliefs are nowhere mentioned in the Constitution; they are protected only by an implied right to privacy without which the First and Fourth Amendments at least make little sense. I can think all I like about how much I'd like to go out and murder my noxious neighbor. I can believe, if I like, that he is a blight on humanity and the world would be a better place without him. I may even hold as a religious view that I am required to go out and eliminate this pestilence from the face of the earth. I can make plans about how I would go about murdering him. Hell, I even have the right to go out and buy the materials I'm going to need to carry out my plan, assuming that no illegal substances are involved. But fantasy is one thing, and reality another. If I carry out the crime, if I murder this obnoxious fellow, then my thoughts and beliefs and the actions I carried out in furtherance of my plans are all fair game to determine my motive, and in particular, whether the crime was premeditated.

I can see no valid reason why anybody who is not planning on running about murdering gay men or beating up women or whatever depraved fantasy turns him on should be opposed to this bill. If the idea is that it may have a chilling effect on people advocating violence against women (whether from the pulpit or from any other venue), or against various minority groups, well, yeah, I kind of hope it does. People shouldn't actually urge their followers to commit violent acts. And if your religion says that you should murder your daughter for bringing shame on her family, or that you have a right to beat a man to death for your perception of his sexual orientation, then maybe it's time to change your fucking religion.

Oh, yeah, I forgot—religion is one of those immutable things.

Unbelievable

This one comes from South Carolinians for Science Education, courtesy of Pharyngula. Apparently, for some unfathomable reason, the people responsible for approving textbooks for South Carolina got a pair of ignorant fools to review two reputable biology textbooks and actually held them up for approval based on their uninformed ramblings. The characterization of them as ignorant fools is mine, but is justified by their own words. Examples follow:

Authors incorrectly refer to the Theory of Gravity when it is the Law of Gravity. Just as there is a big jump from hypothesis to theory, there is another big jump from theory to law and proper citation should be noted. [p.3, RJL and S critique]

Now I'm not a scientist, nor do I play one on the internet. I'm perfectly willing to concede that things may have changed a great deal since I learned the basics. I was taught Newton's Theory of Gravitation along with Einstein's Theory of Relativity and so on. But I've never heard of this progression from hypothesis to theory to law. Theories contain laws, and put them into a larger context that presumably explains them, but I've never heard of a theory becoming a law. If Newton's theory of gravitation has become a law of some kind, I apparently missed it. And if I'm confused on this point, so are the authors of the Wikipedia articles on gravitation, since they still refer to Newton's theory. To me, this criticism sounds just plain ignorant. If in other respects these reviewers showed they knew what they were talking about, I'd be inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt. That, however, is far from the case.

Statement that earth was formed about 4.5 BYA is speculation. [p. 2 RJL and S critique]

It’s speculation in the same sense that the claim the Washington Monument is 555 feet high is speculation. The age of the earth is a matter of measurement, not speculation.

Reference to 3 billions years old is not on solid grounds since dating methods are unreliable. [p. 4, M&L critique]

For this, I'll let Kenneth Miller, one of the authors under attack, take it:

The reviewer claims that there are scientific data that do not support evolution. However, he does not say what that data might be. Instead, he claims (without any supporting data or reference) that information showing that living organisms appeared on the planet nearly 3 billion years ago is unreliable. Why is that information unreliable? Has the reviewer discovered patterns of radioactive decay that violate the laws of physics? He does not say, and therefore it is impossible to evaluate these critical comments.

I admire the author's politeness, considering the boorishness of the critique. But since I don't have any horse in this race, I'll say outright anybody this foolish, ignorant, or mendacious has no business reviewing a serious textbook. Period.

Eruption Mt. St. Helen in 1980 proved long ages are not needed for geological formations. Canyons in GA and WA states were formed in days or months, respectively, and not millions or billions of year. [p. 1, M&L critique]

Again, it's hard to say whether the reviewers are being deliberately obtuse, or are genuinely stupid. Volcanic eruptions don't form multiple layers of different kinds of rocks containing distinctive fossils, just to point out one of the most obvious flaws with this "argument". As Kenneth Miller pointed out with commendable restraint in his reply:

The fact that some geological features can be formed rapidly does not mean that all are formed that way. There is abundant evidence, taught as a required part of the earth science curriculum in South Carolina, that the well-defined geological ages of the earth extend over hundreds of millions of years. [p. 1, reply]

Again, I don't know where to begin with what appears to me to be rank idiocy, either real or assumed. Do these guys have a point, or think they do? Or is this just some kind of snow-job? Oh, and by the way, speaking as one of the many who shoveled ash from my yard in 1980, it's Mount St. Helens, not Mt. St. Helen. I'm just saying.

Now this next "point" is interesting, in that it occurs in critiques of both volumes:

Statements on vestigal organs are grossly misleading. In recent reports, it was shown that the appendix, often cited as a vestigal organ, provides beneficial bacteria to intestines. This whole section should be deleted or updated to accurately reflect the state of knowledge. [p. 3, RJL and S critique]

Statements on vestigal organs are grossly misleading. In recent reports, it was shown that the appendix, often cited as a vestigal organ, provides beneficial bacteria to intestines. This whole section should be deleted or updated to accurately reflect the state of knowledge. [p. 2-3, M&L critique]

This is extremely odd. It almost looks as though the authors pulled out a piece of boilerplate and stuffed it into their critiques without any regard for whether it had anything to do with the books they were supposedly reviewing. Of course a reputable reviewer would never do anything like that, and we can be certain that this comment was somehow relevant to both textbooks. Or can we? Miller wrote:

Curiously, the reviewer complains that the appendix has been mistakenly cited as a vestigial organ when it actually performs a useful, if non-essential function. This comment suggests that the review does not understand the meaning of the word “vestigial,” which does not imply that an organ is without function. Rather, it means that the organ is reduced in size and importance, a “vestige” of its appearance in other organisms, as our text correctly notes. The comment also suggests that the reviewer has not read our book carefully, since we do not cite the appendix as such an organ.

Gee, I wonder what we're supposed to make of that, then. An incompetent criticism that doesn't apply to the book supposedly being reviewed. Again, this appears to be rank idiocy--even I know that a vestigial organ may perform a function. This next example of blithering incompetence is beneath contempt:

Since Archaeopteryx was a bird, it should not be used to show “evolution of a dinosaur to bird”. [p.3, RJL and S critique]

A bird with reptilian teeth and a bony tail? Oh, come off it. This is just creationist-gibber, the same as I've been hearing since I was a kid. You know, people, it doesn't matter how many times or how loudly you proclaim the archaeopteryx was only a bird, it remains as much a transitional form as ever. Though of course in a sense, given a long-enough perspective, we're all transitional forms. Except for those of us who turned out to be dead ends. More silliness accompanies an illustration of a scorpion in amber:

Since scorpions are still scorpions after 25 millions of years (if date is accurate), what does this prove? [p. 4, M&L critique]

Miller replies:

This ancient scorpion, trapped in amber, is used to indicate that fossils provide reliable and detailed records of past life. The text makes no other claim about the scorpion shown within the amber, and therefore there is no reason for the reviewer to object to it.

Any questions?

Robins were and are still robins. No evidence is presented of one kind of animal changing to another kind of animal! Charles Darwin shifted his thinking on origins after he became anti-God. [p. 1, M&L critique]

Now it's getting creepy. What do the reviewers mean by "kind"? This sounds like more creationist-gibber to me--you know, how every animal is supposed to reproduce after its "kind" in Genesis. If they have some scientific definition in mind, they should use the appropriate word--say, "species" or "genus" or whatever. Otherwise it just seems like some sort of weasel word-trick--you know, if I show you one species of elephant changing to another in the fossil record, you come back with, yes, but they're still elephants! That's not what I meant by "kind"! (Yes, I've had this argument before.) If I show a larger series of fossils documenting a transition from say a shrew-like animal to an early primate, then you come back with, oh sure, but they're all still monkeys. That's not what I meant by "kind" at all! And if I ask you flat out what you do mean by "kind", it turns out that you don't have a definition at all. "It's up to you to define 'kind'," you reply virtuously. "All I'm doing is pointing out flaws in your argument." As a fellow named Burns once observed in our high-school English class, he would never believe in evolution until I could show him an example of a cow giving birth to a goat. My reply at the time was that I'd believe in creationism (or whatever they were calling it back in the Palaeolithic) when I saw a cow giving birth to a bicycle.

The comment about Darwin is inexplicable. Miller's observation that "The claim that Darwin “shifted” his views for theological reasons are not supported by any Darwin scholar I know of" doesn't go far enough. It is a matter of indifference how or when or on what occasion that Darwin came to his beliefs as far as the subject of biology is concerned. Further, this looks to me like creationist projection, an all-too-common failing among the biblical-literalist crowd. Creationists reach their conclusions for theological reasons; it makes them feel better to suppose that others do likewise. It puts them on the same footing, so to speak.

But these guys sink even lower than this in the next bit:

The Nebraska man used previously to show descent of man was fabricated from one tooth in 1922. And this tooth was proven to be an extinct pig’s tooth and in 1972 the extinct pig was found to demonstrate a fraud used to promote the evolutionary worldview point in textbooks for 50 years. [Pp.1-2 RJL and S critique]

This one is really unbelievable and shows a most profound ignorance of the simplest facts of the history of science. Only an uneducated boob would claim that the so-called Nebraska Man was “a fraud used to promote the evolutionary worldview point in textbooks for 50 years.” In the first place “Nebraska Man” was a mistaken identification, not a fraud, and in the second, the tooth (mis-)identified as a hominid tooth was correctly identified in 1927 as the tooth from a peccary. “Nebraska Man” had no influence whatsoever on evolutionary theory and as far as I can tell has never been used in textbooks of any kind, unless you count creationist “textbooks”. Finding a hominid specimen in North America would have been extremely surprising under any circumstances, which is one reason this identification was always under suspicion for the brief time that “Nebraska Man” was considered a possibility.

Can they go lower yet? Just how many sub-basements are there beneath contempt, anyway? Turns out the answer is, yes, they can. Although this next one looks like a parody, I am not making it up. They reviewers actually wrote:

Hitler, Stalin, Planned Parenthood, racists, and others have cited Charles Darwin in their genocide programs that have killed an estimated 300 million people. Social Darwinism is a dark side of Charles Darwin’s publications that is often overlooked or excused. High school students should be aware that thoughts and thought process and actions have serious consequences. [p. 2, M&L critique]

I particularly like the inclusion of Planned Parenthood among those with "genocide programs"; I guess they threw that one in just in case somebody started thinking they were actually sane people. That's a dead giveaway that the reviewers have a couple of chips missing in their motherboards. Social Darwinism, by the way, owes a great deal more to Calvin than to Darwin, and has no connection to biology at all. I would also note that the reviewers provide no evidence whatsoever linking Hitler or Stalin with Darwin, and I personally doubt that they can. Hitler came by his anti-Semitism strictly through Christian notions, leading back through Martin Luther to the Gospel of Matthew. Inane (and downright ignorant) remarks like this go far to discredit anything these reviewers have to say, if they hadn't already revealed themselves to be uneducated boobs with their remarks about archaeopteryx and Nebraska Man.

With advisers like these, it is no wonder that the US is falling behind in science education.