Posted on 07/05/2012 1:42:45 PM PDT by Kaslin
It's somehow not enough that longtime PBS omnipresence Bill Moyers has to join his fellow leftists in denouncing America's origins for Independence Day. But the supposedly probing journalist descended to spreading the historical myth that Thomas Jefferson sired slave children with Sally Hemings.
He hasn't read the books of Jefferson scholars denouncing these tales as "An American Travesty"? Moyers also scooped this refuse on his latest PBS show Moyers & Company.
On Alternet, the Moyers column was titled "Celebrating An Unfinished Revolution."
The founders surely knew that when they let these ideas loose in the world, they could never again be caged.Yet from the beginning, these sentiments were also a thorn in our side, a reminder of the new nation's divided soul. Opponents, who still sided with Britain, greeted it with sarcasm. How can you declare "All men are created equal," without freeing your slaves?
Jefferson himself was an aristocrat whose inheritance of 5,000 acres, and the slaves to work it, mocked his eloquent notion of equality. He acknowledged that slavery degraded master and slave alike, but would not give his own slaves their freedom. Their labor kept him financially afloat. Hundreds of slaves, forced like beasts of burden to toil from sunrise to sunset under threat of the lash, enabled him to thrive as a privileged gentleman, to pursue his intellectual interests, and to rise in politics.
Even the children born to him by the slave Sally Hemings remained slaves, as did their mother. Only an obscure provision in his will released his children after his death. All the others -- scores of slaves -- were sold to pay off his debts...
Yes, Thomas Jefferson possessed "a happy talent for composition," but he employed it for cross purposes. Whatever he was thinking when he wrote "all men are created equal," he also believed black people were inferior to white people. Inferior, he wrote, "to the whites in the endowments both of body and mind." To read his argument today is to enter the pathology of white superiority that attended the birth of our nation.
On the PBS show on June 29, Moyers decried "cream and peaches history," as if he's actually shoveling history instead of bunk about Thomas Jefferson:
BILL MOYERS: Why do politicians whitewash history?KHALIL GIBRAN MUHAMMAD: Because it helps them get elected. Why else do politicians do what they do?
MOYERS: How does it help them get elected though? Does it mean-- you mean we the voters like our cream and peaches history?
MUHAMMAD: Just like black folks like celebrating -- having barbecue and shootin' fireworks on the 4th of July without any, you know, sense of contradiction in that moment. People want to be happy. People want to celebrate. People want to feel a sense of belonging. And so when politicians craft stories that remove the ugly aspects of the past, which, you know, are really ugly. I mean, there's just no way around them. They are feeding that desire, that sense of belonging, that sense that we are a good people by nature.
Then we were told America is just as deeply racist now as it was many decades ago, citing a study of "stop and frisk" policies that discriminated against black and Latino youth in New York:
MOYERS: It was -- it's amazing to me, astonishing to go through here and find so much of the evidence you've collected. You have even President Roosevelt telling black college graduates in 1904 that, quote, "Criminality is in the ultimate analysis a greater danger to your race than any other thing can be." And one sociologist after another saying, "You blacks are your own worst enemies, because of your criminal--"MUHAMMAD: That's right.
MOYERS: "--nature." And that took hold in the ideology of dominant America, did it not?
MUHAMMAD: And that's the same dominant ideology that we have today. I mean, it's not packaged in the same explicit rhetoric. But it has given birth to policies like stop, question, and frisk that Mayor Bloomberg has --consistently defends, Ray Kelly consistently defends. Policies such as mass incarceration.
We are still living with the same basic ideas and arguments about the relationship between black criminality and social responsibility, between segregation and public safety today as we were in the 1890s in this country.
This all led Moyers to conclude:
MOYERS: So given the weight of history that you carry with you as a scholar and as a human being, given the heavy hand of history on our backs, how are you going to celebrate the Fourth of July? Seriously. Can you be unaware of all this when you're having that barbecue?MUHAMMAD: This is a culture of escapism. Let's not forget this. So I probably will go see some blockbuster Hollywood movie in the serenity of air conditioning and hot, buttered popcorn, and take the day off from the weight of history.
MOYERS: Ah, America, right? Thank you very much.
The problem with liberals is they joyfully focus on the darker episodes in our history, browbeating Americans for political purposes.
Americans need to remember what a remarkable country this is when looked at in the context of human history, and how justifiably proud they should be of their past.
I watched the 'Revolutionary War' series on the Military Channel over the holiday. The narrative was replete with sly messages and subtle hints about hidden motives and questions concerning Americans' moral character. Always with a grain of truth perhaps, but always there whether relevant or not.
I used to allow such propaganda to color my impression of the past as well. Then I dug a little deeper. And the deeper a person digs into our history, the more obvious what a good people we are. Imperfect, but remarkable.
If asswholes had their own country, Moyers and Maher would be co-presidents.
Remember that next time your spouse cheats on you.
What I’ve read is that the children born to Sally Hemings could have been fathered by anyone of several Jefferson men. It merely suits America hating, race card playing liberals to put forth Thomas Jefferson as the father, so that they can draw a moral equivalency between an esteemed Founding Father and the immoral behavior of Bill Clinton, Barney Frank, et al. The question that black liberals never answer is, “if you are so horrified at America’s history of slavery and Jim Crow, why are you here?” We know the answer to that one.
This is deliberate and calculated. Take away a peoples history and pride. What have you got? A compliant people.
Bastards.
OK....I BELIEVE it.....WHY, you ask?? Because he was the FIRST DEMOCRAT PRESIDENT!!! THERE.....
Very true!
Moyers is a pig.
Moyers lives off the government teat. Always has. He’s a frickin’ hypocrite that once “outed” gays for LBJ.
He’s a monster and PBS and NPR should be cut off from federal funds.
Oh, but the GOP are to cowardly to even do that because a Dem can go “boo” by saying “Republicans hate Sesame Street” when anyone with a brain could just point out to the Henson Productions massive profits as reason they should pay for the program themselves.
Talk about crony capitalism. Oh, I forgot. The GOP-e are pussies.
And Bush and his elite threw Tomlinson under the bus.
FU Rove.
The fact that l paid worthless propagandist Moyer’s
salary w/ my taxes makes me ill.
Not only was Sally Hemings his wife’s half sister, she was raised in the Jefferson household to help tend their children. She accompanied his youngest daughter on the voyage to France when Jefferson was there on State business. Relationships between people, long dead, are much more complicated then the judgement of those living.
I wouldn’t doubt she remind him of his wife and home and if she had not been a slave, he would have married her. People back then tended to marry within the common families more often then outside them. One look at the Jefferson and the Wayles family tree shows this.
That was beautifully written and I completely agree.
We don’t need “fixing”. Those that look to other nations for examples on how to fix us ... they will fix us until we’re broke and broken.
We have a black president.
I don’t say this because I’m fixed on his race. I don’t say this because I think it’s a problem... I say this so that when one of these liberals tell me how much better it is in liberal countries like France or the UK... I can say:
“When did THEY elect a minority as leader of the nation ... or the free world?”
Madison Hemings was living in Ohio in 1870. The census taker wrote on the census form "This man is the son of Thomas Jefferson." Obviously Madison had told him that--it wasn't supposed to be noted but obviously the census taker couldn't resist writing it down. I've seen the census record on microfilm.
Been married for 56 years and still waiting for that to happen the first time. So is she.
Thanks, Road Glide. Much appreciated.
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