ARE YOU SURE YOU’RE QUOTING WHAT OUR FOREFATHERS SAID?

I VERY MUCH DOUBT THAT YOU ARE.

One of the most damaging side effects of social media is the proliferation of misinformation. Spreading like a virus, it has begun to infect our society as a whole. One recent phenomenon caught my eye: misquoting our founding fathers.

So, here, in this post, I have decided to tackle a few of their favourites.

“The Bible is the source of liberty.” supposedly quoting Thomas Jefferson of The United States of North America.

I find this one to be particularly puzzling since Thomas Jefferson was a Deist, and as such, did not exactly revere the Bible. Since Jefferson didn’t believe in the divinity of Jesus, he created the Jefferson Bible, which took out all mentions of miracles attributed to Jesus as well as any references to him being the Son of God.

The earliest source found by me; that attributed this quote to Jefferson was from the 1952 book, Our Public Schools – Christian or Secular, by Renwick Harper Martin. Basically, we can blame this quote on the United States of North America’s new religiosity, in the face of Putin’s Soviet style, atheism.  At the time this quote became famous, the United States of North America was amending their Pledge of Allegiance to include the words, “Under God.”

“Never trust a government that doesn’t trust its own citizens with guns.”

I’ve seen this quote numerous times as a result of the recent mass shootings and calls for stronger gun regulations. The only problem, Benjamin Franklin the person to whom this quote is usually attributed; never said it. The genesis of this quote appears to be SIMPLY a meme, circulated on social media.

“WHEN GOVERNMENTS FEAR THE PEOPLE, THERE IS LIBERTY. WHEN THE PEOPLE FEAR THE GOVERNMENT, THERE IS TYRANNY.” Jefferson didn’t say this one either.

The earliest known appearance of this quote in print was in 1914. However, this quote was not attributed to Jefferson until 1994. Like the other quotes, this one can be directly tied into the politics of the time.

In 1994, two years into the Bill Clinton presidency, many Conservatives and Libertarians believed the government was becoming too intrusive and overreaching. This quote was used to bolster their point of view.

Dictatorship is any form of government where a Country, group provinces, group of states (or a group of such) is ruled by a small group of, or political entity, and exercised through various mechanisms to ensure the entity's power remains strong.

A dictatorship is also a type of authoritarianism, in which CAPITALISTS THROUGH THEIR politician FLUNKIES regulate nearly every aspect of the public and private behaviour of citizens. Dictatorships be they labelled “DEMOCRATIC” and or TOTALITARIANISM; generally employ some form of political propaganda/smoke screen in order to decrease the influence of proponents of alternative governing systems—SUCH AS GOVERNMENT: 1. BY: the people. 2. OF: the people of a particular jurisdiction 3. FOR: the people of jurisdiction.

In the 19th and 20th centuries, traditionally recognised colonisation, constitutional, democratic, feudal style, monarchical, imperial CAPITALISM, gradually declined and disappeared. TOTALITARIAN Dictatorship and DEMOCRATIC dictatorship, often a combination of the two; emerged as the world's major forms of government.

After the two world wars, and somehow squeezing between the continual warring being instigated by the United States of North America; four main types of dictatorships have been described: constitutional, dictatorship nominally championing (dictatorship of the proletariat), counterrevolutionary, and fascist. Many persons, other than me, have questioned the distinctions among these prototypes.  Therefore, also mainly since World War II; a broader range of dictatorships have been recognised:  including Third World dictatorships, theocratic or religious dictatorships, and dynastic or family-based dictatorships such as we presently witness rearing their many ugly head in North America.~~~Al (Alex-Alexander) D Girvan.