a new kind of ex-Attorney General

That's for darned sure. Herr Ashcroft made Attila the Hun look like a flaming liberal.

February 24, 2002

ASHCROFT, AMERICAN HISTORY, AND SPEAKING IN TONGUES

John Chuckman

John Ashcroft, Attorney General of the United States, recently repeated an old
chestnut about America being a Christian nation whose Founders were Christian
gentlemen.

The claim is common among the country's fundamentalist Christians, but it is so
ignorant of actual history one wonders whether it should not be taken as another
serious indictment of American public education. Some readers may not be aware
that Mr. Ashcroft's background includes familiarity with such arcane subjects as
speaking in tongues. As for Mr Bush, who touched the same theme in China,
perhaps no comment on his grasp of history is required.

The late eighteenth century, following on the Enlightenment and waves of reaction to
the violent excesses of the Reformation and Counter-reformation over the previous
two centuries, was perhaps the lowest point for Christian influence ever. Virtually all
educated people in Europe were deists and many were open skeptics.

America was not free of this influence despite its many Puritan immigrants. Indeed,
many of the best educated citizens at this time were educated in Europe. And the
small number of good libraries owned by educated people often contained the works
of Enlightenment authors. Virtually all the ideas in the Declaration of Independence
and even some of the words of the Constitution derive from these European sources.
It is due precisely to the unique qualities of the period that we owe America's early
embrace of religious tolerance. The immigrant Puritans had displayed no religious
tolerance , and in fact were some of the worst fanatics from Europe.

Washington was a deist. He was a member of the Masons, a then
comparatively-new, secretive fraternal organization widely regarded as unfriendly to
traditional Christianity and reflecting European secular attitudes. He did attend
church regularly, but this was done with the aristocratic notion that it set an example
for the lower classes, Washington being very much a planter-aristocrat (he used to
refer to the independent-minded Yankee recruits in the Revolution, who had had the
practice of electing their officers before he was appointed as commander, as "a dirty
and nasty people."). This was a time when there was an established church in
Virginia, and it functioned as an important quasi-political organization.

Washington always used deistic terms like Great Providence. His writings, other than
one brief note as a very young man, do not speak of Jesus, and he died, knowing he
was dying, without ever calling for prayer, Bible, or minister. There is a story given
by some of his best biographers shedding light on his church-going. He apparently
never kneeled for prayer nor would he take communion. When one parson brought
this to his attention after the service, Washington gave him the icy stare for which this
aloof, emotionally-cold man was famous and never returned to that church.

Thomas Jefferson was accused publicly of being an atheist. More than any other
Founder, Jefferson was under the spell of European (and particularly, French)
thought. His writings, and references to him by friends, certainly make him sound like
a private skeptic. He belonged to no church. He explicitly denied the divinity of
Jesus, viewing him as a great teacher of human values. At best he was a deist
referring in his private writings to God as "our god."

Jefferson who, despite high-sounding words, was something of a hypocrite on many
aspects of civil liberties, and particularly on slavery, was at his best on the need for
religious liberty. Despite his free-thinking reputation, he formed alliances with groups
like the Baptists, who deeply resented paying taxes to the established church in
Virginia, and won a long battle for a statute of religious liberty.

Thomas Paine, whose stirring words in Common Sense contributed greatly to the
Revolution, was often accused of atheism because of his religious writing, but deism
is closer to the truth. His later writing done in Europe, The Age of Reason, was
regarded as scandalous by establishment-types. France, during the Terror under
Ropespierre, turned to a new kind of state religion. This, the very brave Paine, living
in Paris, also rejected, writing,

"I do not believe in the creed professed… by the Roman church,
by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the protestant
church, nor any church that I know of. My own mind is my own
church."

The great Dr. Franklin, who incidentally lived about a quarter of his life on diplomatic
missions in Europe and who as a very young man had run away from a home where
rigid religious principles were imposed, was a typical deist of the period. He was an
active member of the first Masonic temple in America. His attitudes were so
amicable to French intellectuals and society, he was embraced, as no other
American has ever been, as a national figure in that country.

Alexander Hamilton, undoubtedly the most intellectually gifted of the Founders other
than Franklin, paid lip service to religion, but he was known during the Revolution as
a rake. Later, his distinguished career in Washington's cabinet was marred by a great
sexual scandal. Generally, Hamilton used religion to promote his political aims,
ignoring it whenever it was convenient. In this respect, perhaps he qualifies as a
thoroughly modern American version of a Christian.

Gouveneur Morris, who wrote the draft of the Constitution we all recognize from the
notes of others, was an extremely worldly and aristocratic man. He was also one of
Washington's most trusted confidants. He was perhaps the most rakish, womanizing
diplomat America ever sent to Europe, sharing at one point a mistress with
Talleyrand, the most amoral ex-cleric who ever practiced statecraft. In general,
Europeans were astonished that a man so worldly and so arrogantly patrician in
temperament represented the young republic for a period in France.

Abraham Lincoln, while not a Founder, is the most beloved of American presidents.
Lincoln's closest friend and most interesting biographer, Herndon , said flatly that
Lincoln was a religious skeptic. This has always so upset America's establishment
historians that Herndon has been accused of writing a distorted book, a rather
ridiculous charge in view of a close friendship with his subject and twenty years spent
collecting materials.

Lincoln never attended church, and when he refers to God in speeches during the
Civil War, it is always with words acceptable to secular, educated people who
regarded the King James Bible as an important cultural and literary document apart
from any claims for its sacredness. There is reason to believe that as the bloody war
continued, Lincoln, who suffered from severe depressions, turned to the Bible for
consolation, especially to the story of the struggle of the Hebrews. Lincoln was also
an extremely astute politician who used every means at his command in the great
battle with secession, and his references to the Almighty may well have been part of
his psychological artillery. He certainly did not invoke the name of Jesus.

Patrick Henry, who incidentally opposed ratification of the Constitution, was a
Christian, but he was once described by Jefferson as "an emotional volcano with little
guiding intelligence."

At least he didn't burn women and children.

Great for John Ashcroft. A decent, competent man who like so many was
badly maligned by malicious Democrats in Congress.

That statue to the right of Ashcroft...IT'S TOPLESS!

Quick, somebody spend several thousand dollars to cover it up ASAP!

The framers were culturally Christian. You can take the lion out of the jungle but you can't take the jungle out of the lion.
Keeping Ceasar and God separate does sound a little New Testament to me.

I often admired John Ashcroft until he appointed Patrick Fitzgerald as special prosecutor to look into Valerie Plame and Joe Wilson partisan hacks who were outraged as all liberals are outraged.
Fitzgerald spent more than 2 and one-half years and millions in taxpayer money to indict Scooter Libby when he didn't find a crime had been committed by Richard Armitage another liberal who actually leaked the news of Valerie Plame Wilson who was not covert and hadn't been for five years or more.
Robert Novak said he got Valerie Plame's name from Marquis Who's Who in America bio of Joe Wilson.
Wilson was fired from John Kerrys campaign for lying to the Senate.
Then, he was picked up and dusted off by Chuckie Schemer Schumer and taken to a TV news conference to give the Democrats an isssue in 06.
Fitzgerald has done many fine prosecutions but, the Libby prosecution for lying and not outing a covert agent was justice run amok.Fitzgerald had to redeem himself so he indicted Libby to overshadow the sloppy job.Jerry White, Springfield, IL P.S.
American taxpayers should seek relief from all the excessive abuse of power.

Like all good ex-Bush administration hacks, Ashcroft is cashing in.

This group's idea of public service is helping themselves to the treasury and helping their friends to government contracts.

Athena,

Take a lokk at all the ex-Clinton administration officials: Start with AlGore and see all the money he is making on the hype of global-warming.

Like Bush, Ashcroft may be interested in immunizing himself via his cries for telecom immunity. All lobbyists (D and R) are able to legally use the contacts and people--in the present for personal and private corp gain--that they mentored and groomed while previously in public office on taxpayer salaries. This has always been wrong but legal thanks to congress over many years.

For Jerry White-- I think Comey did the appointment of the SP.

Check out the protest of John Ashcroft that went down at Cornell University. For a great picture, go to www.ithacajournal.com And just search "ashcroft" on google news.