I share a sentiment with the Tea Party movement, and it's not a trivial one: Historical illiteracy is a threat to the health of the republic. Our ignorance of the key events and basic concepts of the nation's development is a matter of statistical fact, and despite years of warnings we continue to show little interest in how the past determines contemporary choices.
Where we differ, the Tea Partiers and I, is on the question of what historical literacy looks like. For them, it is strictly a matter of everyone else acknowledging that the Founding Fathers would take their side in the present-day debates; that Franklin, Jefferson, and Washington were "rightwing extremists," as a popular T-shirt puts it. At Tea Party rallies, quotes from Founding Fathers are emblazoned on protest signs and declaimed from podiums; audiences recite them right along with the speaker; and, of course, there are always a few people on hand who feel such a surge of enthusiasm that they are moved to dress up in the manner of late-eighteenth century Bostonians.
Historical ignorance is bad for several reasons, first of which is that rewriting history to suit the needs of the present is a horrible fallacy. But more than that is how the manufactured quotes invented by the right-wing have taken on a quality of gospel. "Bible bullets" is how a professor of Christian history I know put it. Gospel quotes are used by uncritical thinkers to shut down and get shut down in debates over scripture. Manufacturing quotes by Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and George Washington create a secular version of bible bullets, ready to be aimed at anyone who disagrees with the teabagger crowd.
Frank, a Ph.D in history, analyzed two telling phrases used by teabaggers to gain historical approval from the revered founders. It does not matter how mangled the intent of the founders has become in modern America, the point from an authoritarian view is to win, period.
The first is from Franklin, Dr. Frank pulled this one from one of his favorite teabagger authors, but it appears all over the place. "Benjamin Franklin said, 'The Constitution only gives people the right to pursue happiness. You have to catch it yourself."' Sounds good right? Only thing is that it is the Declaration of Independence that produced the non-legally-binding "right to pursue happiness," and that was only because TJ did not like the idea of a "right to property" as why the revolution was carried out. Frank then traces the history and finds that the "catch it yourself" comes from 1970s self-help books.
The second was from Jefferson himself. "The issue today is the same as it has been throughout all history, whether man shall be allowed to govern himself or be ruled by a small elite." This quote is so popular it makes facebook regularly. Trouble is that while Jefferson did rail against tyranny, this "quote" is actually the interpretation of TJ's work by a law professor in 1980. The teabag movement has a very different understanding of elitism than say, anyone who has ever had a job and stepped back even for a moment to critically examine why bosses are such jerks. But beyond that, these secular bible bullets have only the amount of power as we give them. This is the reason bible bullets hold such sway over fundamentalists, and why teabaggers are so eager to believe them. Quoting founders to support their authoritarian vision is a simple way to shut down debate. Outsiders hold the founders in high regard as well, transferring "truth" of tradition to narrow interpretations gives them inordinate power over popular beliefs.
"One reason these quotations have multiplied is that they seem true to Ben and Tom as we all know them through their appearances over the years in movies, musicals, and schoolbooks: the earthy Founder, cracking wise; the rebel Founder, seething against tyrants. Those who use the mysterious quotes do not mean to deceive. In nearly every case, they are merely repeating something they've read numerous times in what appear to be authoritative works. All journalists, myself included, have made similar mistakes.2
On the other hand, when you set the Founders up as infallible oracles of democracy, when you claim clairvoyance with their political spirit, when you dedicate yourself to remedying the nation's historical illiteracy, you put yourself under a special obligation. And given that it is only a little more difficult to use the Internet to check fake quotes than to reproduce them, one wonders: Why don't the guardians of Founder purity take that step? Why do fakes proliferate instead of disappear?"
My hat is off to Dr. Frank for diving into this novel subversion of our freedom to make our own destiny.
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