The Jefferson Lies (Library Edition): Exposing The Myths You've Always Believed About Thomas Jefferson (2012) - Plot & Excerpts
"The Jefferson Lies: Exposing the Myths You've Always Believed about Thomas Jefferson" was time well spent. This is not a dry account but a well written narrative with understandable logic, good citations and justification for the conclusions made. The book filled in a lot of blank spaces I had regarding some of these myths like whether he fathered children through a slave woman he owned. He didn't. I actually didn't think he did but through logic and citations and DNA evidence, David Barton demonstrates that not only did Jefferson NOT father such children, but that one would have to be more negligent in their scholarship than the worst high school term paper to have suggested it in the first place.And other myths are debunked such as the so-called Jefferson Bible which does not exist. His supposed anti-religious bias. (He was actually religious), and other myths.It is no surprise that David Barton is going to debunk these myths. The surprise is that it is possible for almost anyone to do it. Certainly any scholar could do so if they went to primary sources.This reminds me of the lament that Issac Asimov expressed in his "Foundation" series of novels. He wrote about the collapse of an empire and in part he blamed it on scholarship... a lack of curiosity about seeking out primary sources. Instead the scholarly characters in his novels would attempt to understand history by comparing the opinions of past historians rather than going to the primary sources such as letters, documents and going to the actual sites where events occurred and then coming to their own conclusions. When scholars don't do this, it is a sign of a breakdown of intellectual discipline.David Barton's primary point seems to be that historians have been busy recreating history in the historian's image rather than historians trying their best to find out what the history is, in context. His marking of when this history scholarship goes wrong, is not linked to particular historians but I would suggest he read (and you all read) "Inventing the Middle Ages" by Norman F. Cantor. It is a series of biographies of historians who distorted their reporting of history so as to serve their own political purposes. It is an important read. Author Barton clearly, convincingly, and compellingly ... with tons of documentation ... debunks and defeats some critical current conceptions we've been inculturated to think about Thomas Jefferson. Barton's apologetic addresses issues including allegations of Jefferson's paternity of several of his slave-girl Sally Hemmings, the secularity of U.of Virginia, TJ's supposed championing of separation of church and state, authoring his own "bible", and of course his anti-Christian deism. Barton lends thorough counter to these and more misconceptions, lending enough data and evidence without burying the reader in academic research and minutiae. The book does however illuminate the key strategies and techniques used by anti-religious academics to "revise" and rewrite history that it might better fit their views and meet their progressive, liberal lessons and syllabi. Terms including deconstructionism, American exceptionalism, modernism, minimalism, and more are explained that readers would have a more conceptual/theoretical idea of both why and how so-called historians bastardize, spin, and too often re-write history to suit their values and views. Still, as we are sadly discovering nearly every day in watching the world we live in and the escalating secular attacks on Christianity and proponents like Barton, many angry haters will write-off without even reading this outstanding book because of its author. And they will pooh-pooh the book's powerful points and attack its credibility. They will likely do so using the same minimalistic and deconstructionalist tactics of those who aspire to destroy and/or misconstrue biblical verse, to make their personal, usually humanistic perspectives. You know, isolating that passage where God allows babies to be slaughtered ... what kind of god would allow that, right? ... without putting it in the context of God's warning time and time again that he would literally eliminate an evil, sinful tribe. And that is part of Barton's mission, i.e. to help people to learn factual, oft twisted history and to understand islolated vignettes in context of how they were intended by Jefferson vs. the so-called historians who prefer to transform Thomas J's POV posthumously. Know that the author of this review is an unabashed follower of Christ and fan of Thomas Jefferson. I'm glad Barton has taken on the not insignificant challenge of correcting a corrupting culture on critical fallacies of Jefferson. And being affirmed that I'm following in Jefferson's foot-steps as he sought to follow Jesus Christ in his many-faceted roles of establishing and leading our nation.
What do You think about The Jefferson Lies (Library Edition): Exposing The Myths You've Always Believed About Thomas Jefferson (2012)?
Excellent read that exposes the lies historical revisionists have perpetuated upon the public.
—mark
I learned a lot from this book...and not all of it was about Jefferson!
—Nessie
Well written, lots of footnotes to back up his claims.
—lamia
