George and Jesus

by Har­vey Wasser­man
Feb­ru­ary 14, 2010

“God made the idiot for prac­tice, and then He made the school board.”
–Mark Twain

Today’s New York Times Sun­day Mag­a­zine high­lights yet another mob of extrem­ists using the Texas School Board to bap­tize our children’s textbooks.

This end­less, ever-angry esca­lat­ing assault on our Con­sti­tu­tion by cru­sad­ing theocrats could be oblit­er­ated with the effec­tive incan­ta­tion of two names: Ben­jamin Franklin, and Deganawidah.

But first, let’s do some history:

1. Actual Founder-Presidents #2 through #6 — John Adams, Thomas Jef­fer­son, James Madi­son, James Mon­roe and John Quincy Adams — were all free­think­ing Deists and Uni­tar­i­ans; what Chris­t­ian pre­cepts they embraced were mod­er­ate, tol­er­ant and open-minded.

2. Actual Founder-President #1, George Wash­ing­ton, became an Angli­can as required for orig­i­nal mil­i­tary ser­vice under the British, and occa­sion­ally quoted scrip­ture. But he vehe­mently opposed any church-state union. In a 1790 let­ter to the Jews of Truro, he wrote: The “Gov­ern­ment of the United States, which gives to big­otry no sanc­tion, to per­se­cu­tion no assis­tances, requires only that they who live under its pro­tec­tion, should demean them­selves as good cit­i­zens.” A 1796 treaty he signed says “the gov­ern­ment of the United States of Amer­ica is not, in any sense, founded on the Chris­t­ian reli­gion.” Wash­ing­ton rarely went to church and by some accounts refused last reli­gious rites.

3. Wash­ing­ton was also the nation’s lead­ing brewer, and since most Amer­i­cans drank much beer (water could be lethal in the cities) they reg­u­larly trem­bled before the keg, not the altar. Like Wash­ing­ton, Jef­fer­son and Madi­son, vir­tu­ally all Amer­i­can farm­ers raised hemp and its variations.

4. Jef­fer­son pro­duced a per­sonal Bible from which he edited out all ref­er­ence to the “mirac­u­lous” from the life of Jesus, whom he con­sid­ered both an activist and a mortal.

5. Tom Paine’s COMMON SENSE sparked the Rev­o­lu­tion with nary a men­tion of Jesus or Chris­tian­ity. His Deist Cre­ator estab­lished the laws of Nature, endowed humans with Free Will, then left.

6. The Con­sti­tu­tion never men­tions the words “Chris­t­ian” or “Jesus” or “Christ.”

7. Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Amer­ica was filled with Chris­tians whose com­mit­ment to tol­er­a­tion and diver­sity was com­pletely adverse to the vio­lent, racist, misog­y­nist, anti-sex theo­cratic Puri­tans whose “City on the Hill” meant a total­i­tar­ian state. Inspi­ra­tional preach­ers like Rhode Island’s Roger Williams and reli­gious groups like the Quak­ers envi­sioned a nation built on tol­er­ance and love for all.

8. The US was founded less on Judeo-Christian beliefs than on the Greco-Roman love for dia­log and rea­son. There are no con­tem­po­rary por­traits of any Founder wear­ing a cru­ci­fix or church garb. But Wash­ing­ton was famously painted half-naked in the buff toga of the Roman Repub­lic, which con­tin­ues to inspire much of our offi­cial architecture.

9. The great guerilla fighter (and fur­ni­ture maker) Ethan Allen was an aggres­sive athe­ist; his beliefs were com­mon among the farm­ers, sailors and arti­sans who were the back­bone of Rev­o­lu­tion­ary America.

10. America’s most influ­en­tial states­man, thinker, writer, agi­ta­tor, pub­lisher, citizen-scientist and proud lib­eral lib­er­tine was — and remains — Ben­jamin Franklin. He was at the heart of the Dec­la­ra­tion, Con­sti­tu­tion and Treaty of Paris end­ing the Rev­o­lu­tion. The ulti­mate Enlight­en­ment icon, Franklin’s Deism embraced a prag­matic love of diver­sity. As early America’s dom­i­nant pub­lisher he, Paine and Jef­fer­son printed the intel­lec­tual soul of the new nation.

11. Franklin deeply admired the Ho-de-no-sau-nee (Iro­quois) Con­fed­er­acy of what’s now upstate New York. Inspired by the leg­endary peace­maker Deganaw­idah, this demo­c­ra­tic con­gress of five tribes had worked “bet­ter than the British Par­lia­ment” for more than two cen­turies. It gave us the model for our fed­eral struc­ture and the images of free­dom and equal­ity that inspired both the French and Amer­i­can Revolutions.

It’s no acci­dent today’s fun­da­men­tal­ist cru­saders and media blovi­a­tors (Rev. Lim­baugh, St. Beck) seek to purge our children’s texts of all native images except as they are being force­ably con­verted or killed.

Today’s fun­da­men­tal­ists would have DESPISED the actual Founders. Franklin’s joy­ous, amply rec­i­p­ro­cated love of women would evoke their lim­it­less rage. Jefferson’s pater­ni­ties with his slave mis­tress Sally Hem­ings, Paine’s attacks on the priest­hood, Hamilton’s bas­tardly phi­lan­der­ing, the grass­roots scorn for orga­nized reli­gion — all would draw howls of right­eous right-wing rage.

Which may be why theo­cratic fun­da­men­tal­ists are so des­per­ate to san­i­tize and fic­tion­al­ize what’s real about our history.

God for­bid our chil­dren should know of Amer­i­can Chris­tians who embraced the Ser­mon on the Mount and renounced the Book of Revelations…or natives who estab­lished democ­racy on Amer­i­can soil long before they saw the first European…or actual Founders who got drunk, high and laid on their way to writ­ing the Constitution.

Faith-based tyranny is anti-American. So are dis­hon­est text­books. It’s time to fight them both.

HARVEY WASSERMAN’S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES is at www.harveywasserman.com, along with PASSIONS OF THE POTSMOKING PATRIOTS by “Thomas Paine.” This arti­cle is writ­ten in honor of the spirit of Howard Zinn.

From: Eustace Mullins -” Last Writ For A Mar­tyr via

Eustace Mullins, known for his sem­i­nal book, The Secrets of The Fed­eral Reserve, passed away at the age of eighty-seven on Feb­ru­ary 2, 2010. His pass­ing, like his books, was com­pletely buried in the estab­lish­ment media. For all his efforts in reveal­ing the nature of “our” bank­ing sys­tem, he achieved the sta­tus of a non-person, a blacked-out dis­si­dent in the Amer­i­can Oligarchy.

From: Santa Fe Insti­tute econ­o­mist: one in four Amer­i­cans is employed to guard the wealth of the rich via

Here’s a fas­ci­nat­ing pro­file on rad­i­cal Santa Fe Insti­tute econ­o­mist Samuel Bowles, an empiri­cist who says his research doesn’t sup­port the Chicago School effi­cient mar­ket­place hypoth­e­sis. Instead, Bowles argues that the wealth inequal­ity cre­ated by strict mar­ket eco­nom­ics cre­ates inef­fi­cien­cies because soci­ety has to devote so much effort to stop­ping the poor from expro­pri­at­ing the rich. He calls this “guard labor” and says that one in four Amer­i­cans is employed to in the sec­tor — labor that could oth­er­wise be used to increase the nation’s wealth and progress.

The greater the inequal­i­ties in a soci­ety, the more guard labor it requires, Bowles finds. This holds true among US states, with rel­a­tively unequal states like New Mex­ico employ­ing a greater share of guard labor than rel­a­tively egal­i­tar­ian states like Wisconsin.

The prob­lem, Bowles argues, is that too much guard labor sus­tains “ille­git­i­mate inequal­i­ties,” cre­at­ing a drag on the econ­omy. All of the peo­ple in guard labor jobs could be doing some­thing more pro­duc­tive with their time–perhaps start­ing their own busi­nesses or help­ing to reduce the US trade deficit with China.

Guard labor sup­ports what one might call the beat-down econ­omy. Com­mu­nity Action’s Porter sees it all the time.

“We have based almost every­thing we have done on the idea that we always need a part of our work­force that is marginalized–that we can call this group into action at any time, pay them noth­ing and they will do any­thing that needs to be done,” she says.

More dis­cour­ag­ing, per­haps, is the sta­tis­ti­cal fact that a per­son born into this work­force has lit­tle chance of ris­ing beyond it.

From: Late Night: How Not to be “Seen” via

I said this last week:

The White House has spent this last year insu­lat­ing the pres­i­dent from the grit and grime of the health reform bat­tle, think­ing that if Obama stayed above the fray, he would be seen as more presidential—or at least would retain that “new car smell” and those lofty approval numbers.

And this week, it seems more and more peo­ple are noticing—or, per­haps, more accu­rately, they noticed a long time ago, but now they feel more com­fort­able talk­ing about it.

Take, for instance, Sen­a­tor Sher­rod Brown (D-OH), who told Sam Stein:

The pres­i­dent was weigh­ing in pretty heav­ily on the dis­cus­sions between the House and Sen­ate before the Mass­a­chu­setts spe­cial [Sen­ate] election–it’s dried up since.

Or the Demo­c­ra­tic source that told Chris Frates at Politico that dur­ing a Thurs­day meet­ing between the Demo­c­ra­tic cau­cus and Obama:

Pelosi expressed frus­tra­tion with the pace of progress and the president’s deci­sion not to weigh in pub­licly on a way for­ward, accord­ing to the source.

There are also sim­i­lar leaks and state­ments about frus­tra­tions expressed by Sen­a­tors Franken (D-MN) and Sanders (I-VT).

And then there’s Rep. Pete DeFazio (D-OR), appear­ing ear­lier tonight on The Ed Show, who was even more explicit:

The White House has really checked out of this debate—I mean, they have not been direc­tive. I mean, the pres­i­dent came to our cau­cus and in response to one mem­ber said he sup­ported the pub­lic option. Well that’s great, but where was the bully pul­pit in sup­port of the pub­lic option? … I haven’t seen them deliver at all in this debate. Remem­ber, they started by cut­ting a deal with the Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal industry—couldn’t have been a worse start.

But, in con­trast, Pres­i­dent Obama made a series of pub­lic stops yes­ter­day where he made a point of urg­ing Con­gress, like he did in his State of the Union, to pass health care leg­is­la­tion. Pub­licly engag­ing (after months of what many com­plained was an obvi­ous absence from the debate) while pri­vately step­ping away. Is that a strat­egy for get­ting real health care reform, or is that a strat­egy for get­ting reelected?

I know what the White House is think­ing, but I’ve got news for them: Not only will leav­ing Con­gress to “get it done” all by themselves—leaving the House to try to fig­ure out some way to pres­sure the Sen­ate into mak­ing sen­si­ble, pro­duc­tive changes—not pro­duce a qual­ity reform bill (or any bill at all), the pres­i­dent will not be insu­lated from the failure.

I expect the polit­i­cal team at 1600 Penn­syl­va­nia Ave. thinks that it might be a win-win. Either they get to sign a bill, no mat­ter how inef­fec­tual, and call it a vic­tory, or they don’t get a bill, and can blame obstruc­tion­ists in Con­gress or the flawed process dur­ing this year’s elec­tions (and 2012, too). But it’s not going to go down that way.

Here’s John Nichols from the same Ed Show segment:

[T]he Amer­i­can peo­ple don’t care what a fil­i­buster is, they don’t care what clo­ture is—there’s a new pew cen­ter poll that says that they don’t even know what those things are—what they care about is whether their kids, whether their par­ents, whether they have health care. And if the Democ­rats don’t get this—I start with Barack Obama, nobody gets off the hook, Barack Obama, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, and the whole Demo­c­ra­tic Party—if they don’t get that the issue is health care, not Sen­ate rules, they are going to be beaten awfully badly this fall. They may not lose all their majori­ties, but they will lose their abil­ity to func­tion, and, in so doing, they will have sac­ri­ficed their abil­ity to set this coun­try right, that isn’t just bad pol­i­tics, that’s bad morality.

The White House still does not seem to under­stand this, but it looks like many in Con­gress (such as those quoted above) now do. After a year of avoid­ing the spotlight—letting Con­gress work out their health reform plans in pub­lic while cut­ting his own deals in private—the pres­i­dent now tries to appear engaged in front of the cam­eras while try­ing hard not to have a hand in either a failed effort or the break­ing of some of his secret deals behind the scenes. Instead of “The buck stops here,” Obama is posi­tion­ing him­self for “It’s not my fault.” From “agent of change” to “vic­tim of cir­cum­stance.” Is that really how the pres­i­dent wants vot­ers to think of him in Novem­ber of 2010 or 2012? Is that really how he wants to be seen?

Barack Hus­sein Obama was elected the 44th pres­i­dent of the United States on Tues­day, sweep­ing away the last racial bar­rier in Amer­i­can pol­i­tics with ease as the coun­try chose him as its first black chief executive.

“If there is any­one out there who still doubts that Amer­ica is a place where all things are pos­si­ble, who still won­ders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time, who still ques­tions the power of our democ­racy, tonight is your answer,” said Mr. Obama, stand­ing before a huge wooden lectern with a row of Amer­i­can flags at his back, cast­ing his eyes to a crowd that stretched far into the Chicago night.

“It’s been a long time com­ing,” the president-elect added, “but tonight, because of what we did on this date in this elec­tion at this defin­ing moment, change has come to America.”