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From: Tim Stevens [delete]
Date: Sun Aug 7, 2005 8:15 pm
Subject: Re: [HRSepCnS] Blast From the Past Fashback with Jeff Sinclair
Part 1
My only regret is that I no longer have the kind of time available to do
the kind of research necessary to dissect the intellectual dishonesty of
people like Gardiner line by line. As I may have mentioned (I cannot recall
if it was by private e-mail or in another group or what), it takes the
honest and thorough historian/skeptic/scientist at least four times as long
to produce the same quantity of material that right-wing propagandists or
other "woo woos" who are not fettered by the need to present evidence or
logically coherent arguments free of debate fallacies.
That being said, however, it pays off in the long run. If you produce
enough documented credible evidence, the woo woos, who are too lazy to even
produce new forms of propaganda after a point, generally tend to circle
back and recycle arguments they posted about a month ago. If you have
documented this and remember the arguments, it is immensely fun to provide
a link back to that rehashed bit of propaganda and its subsequent
dismemberment, thus doubling the deserved humiliation of these arrogant
fascist and theocratic types. (The pseudonym, BTW, is from a character in
my favorite science fiction series - Babylon 5 - which due to the fact that
it never insulted my intelligence deserved some sort of back-handed
recognition).
Now to catch up on my e-mail.....
Tim
----- Original Message -----
From: buckeyeelo
To:
Sent: Sunday, July 31, 2005 7:50 AM
Subject: [HRSepCnS] Blast From the Past Fashback with Jeff Sinclair
Part 1
BTW, Jeff Sinclair was a created name of a current member of this
group. (no not me) Perhaps he will claim the credit he is due from
this wonderful article he wrote
soc.history.war.us-revolution > Deism
From: Jeff Sinclair <jeffreysincl...@my-deja.com>
Newsgroups:
soc.history.war.us-revolution,alt.history.colonial,alt.deism,alt.religion.deism
Subject: Gardiner Distorts Bailyn and Smears Allison (Part 1 of 2)
Date: Sun, 16 Jan 2000 05:39:46 GMT
<<Part 1 of 2>>
In article <3880A835.3E3C0...@pitnet.net>,
Gardiner <Gardi...@pitnet.net> wrote:
buck...@exis.net wrote:
"Michael A. Clem" <mac.l...@juno.com> wrote:
:|Well, Gardiner probably has touched upon some of the truth, even
if he's not
:|entirely correct. But that just makes matters more puzzling.
If some, or even
:|many, of the Founding Fathers were, in fact, Christian, then why
did they go to such
:|lengths to protect all religious freedoms and to keep religion
out of government?
:| Furthermore, if he wants to argue that deism and Unitarianism
has changed so much
:|in two hundred years, then isn't it possible, or even likely,
that Christianity,
:|too, has changed in that same time frame?
:|
:|--Mike Clem
Below, Alison uses Bailyn's book in the most dishonest of ways. It is
one thing
to disagree, Alison, it is quite another to entirely distort a
scholar's
writing:
But let's take a look at what Alison has done:
The main influences at work that helped to create this nation:
[the order of listing means nothing]
As a matter of fact, Bailyn did give an order of listing, and you
flipped it on
its head. His order was
1. The tradition of the Puritan Revolution
2. New England Puritanism
3. The Common Law Tradition
4. Enlightenment Rationalism
5. Classical Antiquity.
Here is the dishonest list that you provided, and here is the proof
of its
dishonesty.
Jim Allison's list is not in the least dishonest for, as I shall now
demonstrate it, is Gardiner who shall now be shown to be the
distortionist, as usual. Bailyn _nowhere_ gives this order of listing.
This is a complete and utter fabrication by Gardiner. The order that
Jim Allison lists them is the order that these factors appear in the
book.
(1) Heritage of classical antiquity
Knowledge of classical authors was universal among colonists with
any
degree of education.
Here is what Bailyn says about the "influence of classical
antiquity"-
-
"Most conspicuous in the writings of the Revolutionary period was the
heritage
of classical antiquity. Knowledge of classical authors was universal
among
colonists with any degree of education, and references to their work
abound in
the literature...BUT THIS ELABORATE DISPLAY OF CLASSICAL AUTHORS IS
DECEPTIVE.
OFTEN THE LEARNING BEHIND IT WAS SUPERFICIAL; OFTEN THE CITATIONS
APPEAR TO HAVE
BEEN DRAGGED IN AS WINDOW DRESSING"
(Alison's source citation, 24-25)
Note first of all, that Gardiner dishonestly emphasizes that which is
not emphasized in the book. Also note what Gardiner dishonestly left
out, concerning classical antiquity:
(p. 25)
"Yet Jefferson was a careful reader of the classics, and others too—
James Otis, for example, who wrote tratises on Latin and Greek prosody—
were thorough scholars of the ancient texts. What is basically
important in the American's reading of the ancients is the high
selectivity of their real interests and the limitation of the range of
their effective knowledge. For though the colonists drew their
citations from all portions of the literature of the ancient world,
their detailed knowledge and engaged interest covered only one area and
one small group of writers. What gripped their minds, what they knew in
detail, and what formed their view of the whole of the ancient world
was the political history of Rome from the conquests in the east and
the civil wars in the first century B.C. to the establishment of the
empire on the ruins of the republic at the end of the second century
A.D. For this knowledge of this period they had at hand, and need only,
Plutarch, Livy, and above all Cicero, Sallust, and Tacitus—writers who
had lived either when the republic was being fundamentally challenged
or when its greatest days were already past and its political values
decayed. They had hated and feared the trends of their own time, and in
their writing had contrasted the present with a better past, which they
endowed with qualities absent from their own, corrupt era. The earlier
age had been full of virtue: simplicity, patriotism, integrity, a love
of justice and of liberty; the present was venal, cynical, and
oppressive."
To be noted especially in contrast to Gardiner's deliberate
distortion: "gripped their minds", "knew in detail", "detailed
knowledge", "engaged interest", "scholars of the ancient texts". Funny
how Gardiner managed to elide right over this whopper. Should you pick
up this book to check for yourself, the discussion of this ends on page
26.
(2) Ideas and attitudes associated with the writings of
Enlightenment
rationalism, including the leading secular thinkers of the European
Enlightenment.
Here is what Bailyn actually says about the European enlighteners:
"Citations, respectful borrowings from, or at least references to,
the
eighteenth century European illuminati are everywhere in the
pamphlets of
Revolutionary America. The citations are plentiful, BUT THE KNOWLEDGE
THEY
REFLECT, LIKE THAT OF THE ANCIENT CLASSICS, IS AT TIMES
SUPERFICIAL... THEIR
INFLUENCE, THOUGH MORE DECISIVE THAN THAT OF THE AUTHORS OF CLASSICAL
ANTIQUITY,
WAS NEITHER CLEARLY DOMINANT NOR WHOLLY DETERMINATIVE."
(Alison's citation, p. 28-30.)
Here we have a classical "cut and paste" which is dishonest to the
core. The first part of the quote above is on page 28. I will get to
this in a minute.
The section on the enlightenment in this book begins on p. 26 and runs
through p. 31. It begins as follows:
(pp. 26-27)
"More directly influential in shaping the thought of the Revolutionary
generation were the ideas and attitudes associated with the writings of
Enlightenment rationalism—writings that expressed not simply the
rationalism of liberal reform but that of enlightened conservatism as
well.
"Despite the efforts that have been made to discount the influence of
the `glittering generalities' of the European Enlightenment on
eigthteenth-century Americans, their influence remains, and is
profusely illustrated in the political literature. It is not simply
that the great vertuosi of the American Enlightenment—Franklin, Adams,
Jefferson—cited the classic Enlightenment texts and fought for the
legal regognition of natural rights and for the elimination of
institutions and practices associated with the ancien regime. They did
so; but they were not alone. The ideas and writings of the leading
secular thinkers of the European Enlightenment—reformers and social
critics like Voltaire, Rousseau, and Beccaria as well as conservative
analysts like Montesquieu—were quoted everywhere in the colonies, by
everyone who claimed a broad awareness."
More such enlightenment thinkers are then noted.
Now, to the first part of Gardiner's citation, this time in its total
context (p. 28):
"Examples could be multiplied almost without end. Citations, respectful
borrowings from, or at least references to, the eighteenth century
European illuminati are everywhere in the pamphlets of Revolutionary
America.
"The citations are plentiful, but the knowledge they reflect, like that
of the ancient classics, is at times superficial. Locke is cited often
with precision on points of political theory, but at other times he is
referred to in the most offhand way, as if he could be relied on to
support anything the writers happened to be arguing. Bolingbroke and
Hume are at times lumped together with radical reformers, and secondary
figures like Burlamqui are treated on a level with Locke. Nor were the
critical, reforming writings of the Enlightenment, even some of the
most radical, used extensively by the left wing of the Revolutionary
movement. Everyone, whatever his position on Independence or his
judgement of Parliament's actions, cited them as authoritative; almost
no one, Whig or Tory, disputed them or introduced them with apology."
Note above: "everyone…cited them as authoritative", "everywhere in the
pamphlets of revolutionary America", "their influence remains", "quoted
everywhere in the colonies".
What's more here is the _second part_ of Gardiner's selective quote
above, this taken from page 30 and restored to its original context:
"Referred to on all sides, by writers of all political viewpoints in
the colonies, the major figures of the European Enlightenment, and many
of the lesser, contributed substantially to the thought of the
American; but except for Locke's, their influence, though more decisive
than that of the authors of classical antiquity, was neither clearly
dominant nor wholly determinative."
Distortion number two dealt with.
<<Continued in Part 2>>
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