White House re-writes Presidential history

Across America, schoolchildren plug the words "Jefferson" and "biography" into www.google.com to find the information they need to produce papers and essays on the author of the Declaration of Independence. What they'll find at the top of the list, unfortunately, is the official biography of Jefferson at www.whitehouse.gov... on the White House's taxpayer-funded website.

Reading the White House's biography of our third president, a student would never know that Jefferson founded the world's oldest continuously operating political party - the Democratic Party. Instead, the site says, "Sharp political conflict developed, and two separate parties, the Federalists and the Democratic-Republicans, began to form. Jefferson gradually assumed leadership of the Republicans, who sympathized with the revolutionary cause in France."

The reality, of course, is that the Democratic-Republicans went by that compound name from their formation in the 1790s until 1844, when the party officially dropped the word "Republicans" from its name. (The modern-day Republican Party came into being a decade later, after both the Federalist the Whig parties had collapsed; the first Republican presidential nominee was Abraham Lincoln.)

The White House's website opens Jefferson's biography in a startlingly out-of-context way that seems to imply Jefferson was a Bible-thumping believer like George W. The lead sentence of his biography says: "In the thick of party conflict in 1800, Thomas Jefferson wrote in a private letter, 'I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.'"

www.commondreams.org...


It's nice to know that Bush is able to re-write history to fit his own political agenda. The US is starting to become more and more like 1939 germany everyday.

That's pretty messed up really. Iwonder if anything like that is happening over here in Englad. It probably is and I'd love to see it.

The first thing I notice when I came to US back in 81 is that education here was very regional, and that students were lacking in history I come from a mostly catholic rule island and in 9 grade we learned about Darwin and evolution with not problem, my childrens school bypass evolution entirely because it was to controversial, so I took upon myself to teach my childrens about it, when i started working for the school system I meet teachers whit masters and doctors degree that asked me if I need it a green card to be here (I am puertorrican) and if puerto rico was attached to mexico, will that answer how educated are our children here in US? must of the test book are made in california and they are subject to editing by religious zelots member of school boards. And the last thing they dare to try is to take the word evolution from the text book here in Georgia.

[Edited on 27-4-2004 by marg6043]

ahhh, you've got to love selective memory, that's pretty messed up. Does it really surprise any of you though?

History....has ALWAYS been written by 'the victors' on any given issue.
When an entire populace is wiped out WHO is left to tell the truth?
When you gain POWER POLITICLY, you can change the 'story' of any given issue that you so choose.....

Originally posted by theRiverGoddess
History....has ALWAYS been written by 'the victors' on any given issue.
When an entire populace is wiped out WHO is left to tell the truth?
When you gain POWER POLITICLY, you can change the 'story' of any given issue that you so choose.....

Kinda sounds ALOT like the bible to me. How many times has that book been re-written by the current political figure head? I'm surprised Bush and Co. haven't tried to re-write that one yet.......maybe next term.

Didn't Jefferson die in 1826, about 30 years before the formation of the Republican party? This is interesting!

Ok, I just read through the biography of Jefferson from whitehouse.gov. I'm not really understanding what the big problem is. At the time, according to a vast majority of respectable history books, Democratic-Republicans took the short name of Republican. The opposing party was called the Federalists. It wasn't Democrat v. Republican, it was Democratic-Republican v. Federalist, or Republicans versus Feds. This isn't rewriting history.

The names made sense for our blossoming nation, as well. One group wanted all power to lie in the nation's central government, the Federalists. The Democratic-Republicans (our nation is a democratic republic) wanted the power to stay with the people, or more accurately, with the state governments.

As for Jefferson founding the Democratic party, this is NOT the Democratic party you've come to know and love. The Democratic-Republicans were against federal taxes, against any income tax, isolationist, against any form of welfare (it was up to the state, not the central government), and were, to some degree, expansionist in so far as they would support any nation rising up against it's monarchy in order to set up a democratic republic.

Look into the history of all political parties. Both the democratic and republican parties have changed drastically over the years. In the late 1800s, to be democratic now, you would have called yourself a republican, and to be a republican now, you would have called yourself a democrat.

I don't know what history books you read jungle jake, but all the ones I've ever read recognize that the republican party wasn't officially created until the late 1850s. This is the first place I've ever read that said Jefferson was a republican, and nothing more. He was like you said a democrat-republican, but they dropped the republican part shortly after.

It's historical revisionism to 'glorify' the party.


I was also glancing around at some of the other biographies and found that a lot of the quotes are used out of context.

Originally posted by AF1
The US is starting to become more and more like 1939 germany everyday.

Weimar.....look up how many times I've posted that!
And "Brownshirts" are spilling out of the crevices here as well.

We all need to get away from thinking that the "term" republican-democrat had anything to do with the current party systems we have today. Neither of todays parties have anything in common with Jefferson's party. Jefferson would have croaked with the Federal handouts to big business and federal welfare handouts.

THe fact that the Bush administration uses its website for propaganda should be expected, I would expect no different from any president. In fact, I remember Clinton was always drawing comparisons between himself and Truman. It would be interesting to have seen this same website during his administration.