So Snopes’ dopes are now the official history revisionist?
Those who misrepresent the facts are the revisionists.
Probably with the best of intentions, this story has been greatly embellished. Since it’s been passed around on the web, it’s likely the inaccuracies grew with each passing on, and without real intent to deceive on most people’s part.
I suspect with a little effort at least several dozen inaccuracies or exaggerations could be extracted from this text.
One jumps out. Rush specifically says “not one” of the signers ever recanted. This is untrue. One did. This does not invalidate the great resolve shown by all the others, but it does illustrate the exaggeration of the piece.
BTW, most of what happened to the Signers was representative of what happened to many others who were not Signers. The country was involved in a brutal foreign and civil war. Many suffered.
There is no great body of evidence that the Signers were particularly singled out as a group. It’s highly unlikely that British officers rode around with a deck of cards with the Signers’ names and faces on them.
In fact, it’s pretty well known that the Declaration was more or less forgotten for a number of years. It’s only in retrospect that it was considered of enormous importance.
Such embellishment is not harmless, IMO. The embellishments of the Washington and Lincoln legends were used as the opening chink in the armor of these great men by those who wanted to show them not just as great but flawed humans but as evil dead white men, oppressors, slavemasters and violators of civil rights. They then used this to discredit the entire American experiment. Our country is based on lies, they say.
I prefer to live by the truth and nothing but. The real truth is always, BTW, much more interesting than the hagiography. America has much to be ashamed of in our past, as does every nation that has ever existed. But it has a great deal more to be proud of.
It’s not just Snopes — there was quite a fuss about this back in 2000 when Jeff Jacoby of the Boston Globe was suspended for a few months for utilizing another version of this to write a column.
There are many mis-statements of fact in several versions of this story that circulate. The real history is glorious enough without needing to exaggerate it. Let the liberals have the field for inaccuracy!
The signers of the Declaration truly did risk all for our Independence, but there seems to be no evidence that the British in fact did target them specifically and a lot of what circulates on the Internet is not true. This web page has gone over the Limbaugh letter and the Jacoby column in much detail:
http://home.nycap.rr.com/elbrecht/signers/LIMBAUGH.htm
I have noticed that Snopes is becoming Yahoogooglized, the political agenda is showing up more and more. They called the 50 Obama lies as false because 13 of them were not entirely true.
I have no knowledge about the truth of this account of history, however, I have heard that Snopes was owned by George Soros. Has anyone else heard this?