Utah's Republic

Oak, thanks for making these recommendations. My grandchildren live in the ASD and your recommendations are what my daughter and son-in-law went by in this important vote.

Oak, thanks for making this list and helping me realize if these people get elected to ASD school Board I need to put my kids in a charter school so they can get a real education and not be “indoctrinated” INTO ultra-right wing beliefs.
Maybe I should just start my own charter school that allows for freedom of thought and won't be controlled by conservatives who only want their ideas taught and non-others like what is happening in Texas right now. Unbelievable that people want to rewrite history to fit their modern political views. I am guessing that Texas is going to rewrite their textbooks that show LBJ never lied to America about the Gulf of Tonkin fiasco, since Johnson was a Texan. That would line up with how Oak is trying to rewrite what our Founding Fathers actually believed, what the Book of Mormon actually says and means, what the D&C says and means, that McCarthy was a great man, that Goodlad is a terrorist, that ASD is indoctrinating our kids into communism and socialism, that Howard Stephenson is a good person with no self-interests, etc.

Sasafras, instead of just tossing out such lines that insinuate falsehoods, why don't you actually spell one out and debate the facts? For example, why don't you explain how I'm trying to rewrite what our Founding Fathers actually believed. I'd love to hear your argument.

So I need to retract my comments about putting my kids in Charter schools since every single one of Oak's endorsed candidates LOST. I guess this means that the people have been educated by this website and Oak's rants in the news and yet they still choose to not follow him and his ideas.

Actually, one of the candidates I endorsed made it through in every primary. So are you going to explain how I'm trying to rewrite what our Founding Fathers actually believed? You've made the charge, now please present some facts if you have some to share.

Oak one simple example of how you have changed the founding fathers views was slavery. You said most of them opposed slavery. Yet this is not true during the time of the framing of the Constitution. Yes Franklin and Washington and some Northerners were not big supporters of slavery and got the Constitution to be revised from “Life, Liberty, and Property” to “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness,” but do not be mistaken that the overwhelming majority of the framers of the Constitution fully supported slavery- including Jefferson and Monroe. They still interpreted slavery as part of their “pursuit of Happiness.”

Sasafras, I highly recommend you get “The Real Thomas Jefferson” and read his actual words and actions instead of the revisionist nonsense that is passed around by modern day “historians.”

When Jefferson was 25 he wrote the first draft of the Virginia Constitution and included a provision that all children born in the state would be born free. If the state had adopted this measure, slavery would have been gone within one generation without a war or any expense to the taxpayers.

Jefferson also wrote the Ordinance of 1784, a preliminary draft of the Northwest Ordinance, which would govern the land between the Appalachians and the Mississippi River. Jefferson included in his bill a clause that would have prohibited slavery in these new territories after 1800.

Jefferson said this regarding slavery:
“This abomination must have an end. And there is a superior bench reserved in heaven for those who hasten it.” (“The Writings of Thomas Jefferson,” Ford 4:410)

In this lengthy quote Jefferson explains his views that slavery was an abomination and that at some point in the future the roles could be reversed and blacks could be the masters and whites the slaves.

“There must doubtless be an unhappy influence on the manners of our people produced by the existence of slavery among us. The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submissions on the other. Our children see this, and learn to imitate it; for man is an imitative animal. This quality is the germ of all education in him. From his cradle to his grave he is learning to do what he sees others do. If a parent could find no motive either in his philanthropy or his self love, for restraining the intemperance of passion towards his slave, it should always be a sufficient one that his child is present. But generally it is not sufficient. The parent storms, the child looks on, catches the lineaments of wrath, puts on the same airs in the circle of smaller slaves, gives a loose to the worst of passions, and thus nursed, educated, and daily exercised in tyranny, cannot but be stamped by it with odious pecularities. The man must be a prodigy who can retain his manners and morals undepraved by such circumstances. And with what execration should the statesman be loaded, who, permitting one half the citizens thus to trarnple on the rights of the other, transforms those into despots, and these into enemies, destroys the morals of the one part, and the amor patriae of the other. For if a slave can have a country in this world, it must be any other in preference to that in which he is born to live and labour for another; in which he must lock up the faculties of his nature, contribute as far as depends on his individual endeavours to the evanishment of the human race, or entail his own miserable condition on the endless generations proceeding from him. With the morals of the people, their industry also is destroyed. For in a warm climate, no man will labour for himself who can make another labour for him. This is so true, that of the proprietors of slaves a very small proportion indeed are ever seen to labour. And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with his wrath? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep for ever: that considering numbers, nature and natural means only, a revolution of the wheel of fortune, an exchange of situation is among possible events: that it may become probable by supernatural interference! The almighty has no attribute which can take side with us in such a contest. – But it is impossible to be temperate and to pursue this subject through the various considerations of policy, of morals, of history natural and civil. We must be contented to hope they will force their way into every one's mind. I think a change already perceptible, since the origin of the present revolution. The spirit of the master is abating, that of the slave rising from the dust, his condition mollifying, the way I hope preparing, under the auspices of heaven, for a total emancipation, and that this is disposed, in the order of events, to be with the consent of the masters, rather than by their extirpation.” (“Notes on Virginia,” Bergh 2:225-227)

I don’t have source documents on Monroe to make statements as to his beliefs regarding slavery but during his presidency he signed the Missouri Compromise which would not allow slavery in the newly acquired Louisiana territories.

Again, not having source documents I can’t say definitively, but this statement from the website that calls itself the “home of President James Monroe” seems to indicate he recognized slavery as an evil and sought a way to put it to rest:

“Torn between his belief in the evil of slavery and his fear that immediate abolition would result in mob violence and race wars, Monroe came to believe that colonization was an effective means of reducing, and ultimately eliminating, slavery in the United States. Monroe and Jefferson exchanged a variety of ideas on colonization from the early 1800's thorugh Monroe'e election as President in 1816. In 1817 the American Colonization Society was formed to seek the end of slavery through repatriation of freed slaves. The Society established Liberia (Liberty) on Africa's west coast in 1822 as a place where Africans captured on foreign slave ships and freed slaves from the United States could be resettled. Because Monroe endorsed the Society during his presidency, the new nation's capital was named Monrovia.” (source: http://www.ashlawnhighland.org/jm–slavery.htm)

So I would ask that you prove “the overwhelming majority of the framers of the Constitution fully supported slavery.” You're obviously wrong on Jefferson and it would appear you're wrong on Monroe as well.

Actually Oak i have read that book and the whole series. you misunderstood my comment. I said Jefferson and the Founding Fathers “supported” slavery- I did not say many of them didn't privately think it was wrong. Economically and politically Jefferson, Monroe, and many others had to support slavery if they wanted to have a United country. That is why Jefferson never DID anything to end or stop slavery as President. His actions and words did not match up on slavery. As a slave owner, he supported slavery during his lifetime. As governor, Monroe executed 30 slaves for a revolt they may or may not have participated in- to show his public “support” of slavery. Also, if they truly felt the conviction of how evil slavery was, why would they compromise on the issue and not expressly forbid it in the constitution? Because they “supported” it for the good of the country. If only the E.F. could compromise on anything.
I find it funny that you call modern historians revisionists and yet that is exactly what you are. You are trying to convince people of things that cannot be proven. I find it funny also that people like you put down “modern historians” for discovering new things about history and therefore our understanding of history changes. Even as our National Archives release classified documents every week our history is changing and the only people looking at those documents are “modern historians.” China has recently allowed more of their documents and histories to be made open to the world. Our knowledge of history will naturally change once we begin to read these documents. Is that revisionist or historians doing their job? History is about always finding more evidence and putting together all the pieces as to what actually happened. History is not about taking an emotional or political view and trying to find facts that support that view and disregarding all other facts that might oppose that view. (That last sentence destroys all of the Far-Right and Far-Left Radio and TV wackos views, like Glenn Beck)
Oak, you are unwilling or unable to look at things without your biases of that event. Not that I am perfect on this issue either, but as I have said numerous times I am at least willing to question myself and see what is really going on. Your fanaticism is quite frightening.

Too bad you missed Glenn Beck's excellent Founders Friday show tonight where he talked a bit about this very issue. Great stuff.

The biggest disappointment I have with Franklin, Jefferson, and Washington is that though they verbally argued against slavery, they still kept slaves to the end of their lives–thus the birth of American politics–where you do what I say, not what I do.

I watch Founder's Friday, but the only problem with the series is that Glenn Beck is the host and some of his historians on the show are not exactly scholarly. I watched the one about Ben Franklin and Beck asks a historian to give his opinion as to when he thinks America went wrong. Somehow the show about Ben Franklin turned into a show about socialism in America. The historian replied, “the 60's.” Glenn Beck said the 1860's? (What Beck wanted hear). The historian replied, “the 1960's.) I about threw my remote at the TV. The historian self-admittedly based his opinion on his upbringing in the 1960's and his hatred for social programs as his supporting evidence. Glenn Beck, as expected, ate up the response since it didn't stray from his viewpoints.

For me, as a historian, this is not what good historians do. Historians don't answer questions about when they think America went wrong because it is a vague question of perception, and if they do answer such questions they try to bring in historical facts and connect the dots rather than personal anecdotal evidence. I realized right there that Beck only seeks like-minded historians to affirm his own viewpoints, rather than bring a variety of historians into the newsroom for a vigorous debate in front of the public. Because of this, I don't view Founder's Friday as a good source of information for those wanting to learn about history. Founders Friday mixes in facts with commentary and spin, spin, spin to a specific political agenda. For those wanting to learn about our founding fathers, I suggest reading a variety of books by a variety of scholarly authors and then develop your own commentary.

Franklin released his slaves in 1775. Jefferson educated his like very few did in his day. You can read about the great love Jefferson's slaves had for him in The Real Thomas Jefferson. I don't know much about Washington and his treatment of his slaves, but I would imagine he was good to them. I can't imagine what a difficult time they had going through a cultural shift of that nature. We probably can't appreciate what it was like so many years ago.

Actually, Franklin owned slaves up to 1781. He was certainly conflicted over the issue since slavery was a means of economic life back then which is why Jefferson or Washington never divested themselves of them. Franklin, was extraordinarily wealthy, yet still bought and sold slaves at various times which I find troublesome. I don't care how good you are to your slaves, that is no excuse for owning someone and denying them their freedom and while Jefferson was personally kind to many of his slaves, his slave masters were not always so kind. I agree that there was a cultural shift underway, but I like to make mention from time to time that our founding fathers were not perfect men or demi-gods that some like to infer.

Lewis, how do you keep your composure at church when they sing “praise to the man who communed with Jehovah?” Joseph is revered but everyone knows he wasn't perfect or a demi-god. Nobody has inferred that any of the Founders were either. What is recorded in scripture is that they were inspired and directed by God to establish the constitution to preserve agency.

Jefferson is to Slavery as the American people is to the Federal Reserve Bank. The Federal Reserve Bank has made us all Slaves. We do not like being Slaves but we do not want to eliminate the Federal Reserve because we would have no money or way to run our economy. The Federal Reserve is just as immoral as Slavery. It doesn't use legal tender but illegal.

The pure American Constitutional Republic died in about 1800.

Jefferson, Franklin and Monroe also knew Israelite history. When the Israelite people where released from Slavery and the hardships that they faced they wanted to be back in slavery. I think these men wanted to avoid the the mess that releasing the Slaves to fast might cause. They not only wanted the slaves released but they may have wanted the slaves to like and love there freedom.

Bravo, Bros! keep going like this, more good info again.

Bravo, Bros! keep going like this, more good info again.