Not that Thomas Jefferson really needed to be vindicated, but so many of us have grown so tired of the right's ceaseless assertions that the founding fathers were all traditional Christians, theocrats all, just like them in nearly every way. Tea Party activists dress in period clothing to reinforce (to whom?) their assertions as if the more often they are asserted, the more likely they are to be true. Here in Sanford, there is a clever little blog whose authors possess such arrogance that they actually post using the names of the men whose writings and actions founded America. It's sickening to those of us who know better, those of us who have read Jefferson, Madison, Paine, that their biographies and writings are being obscured and revised by theocrats with purposes that these men would perhaps call ignoble, at best.
Thankfully, David Barton's latest attack on American history has been discredited. Kudos to Thomas Nelson Publishers for doing the right thing by pulling his Jefferson book from the shelves. If you find yourself in need of an excellent short biography of Thomas Jefferson which does *not* rely on inventions and the mangling of facts, I recommend Christopher Hitchens' Thomas Jefferson: Author of America.
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