Haven't heard that quotation before? That's because I just made it up. Chances are, George Washington never said that, but a lack of documented evidence for the attribution of a quotation is apparently no problem for some people. It would seem that a pair of theocratically minded citizens of the United States decided it was perfectly reasonable to make up a sentence that corresponded to their beliefs, and then slap that statement on a billboard and attribute it to George Washington.
Others carry the same message but with fictional attribution, as with one billboard citing George Washington for the quote, "It is impossible to rightly govern the world without God and the Bible."I really hope some sort of truth in advertising group gets a hold of this... does anyone know of a good group to contact about this sort of thing? The blatant rewriting of history really irks me.
"I don't believe there's a document in Washington's handwriting that has those words in that specific form," Kemple said. "However, if you look at Washington's quotes, including his farewell address, about the place of religion in the political sphere, there's no question he could have said those exact words."
5 comments:
"Government should offer no assistance to religion at all, even through error."
James Madison, primary author of the Constitution.
Did he ever say this? I doubt it. I just made it up. But, when he was President he did veto a bill that would have granted some land to a church because he thought it was an unacceptable display of support of religion by government. And here is the kicker - the land grant was done to correct a clerical error, not because a politician wanted to specifically help the church. The church was built on land that was suppose to be unclaimed, (or something), basically, designated so that they could build on. A later survey however, showed that a mistake was made by someone, and the church was actually built on government property. Politicians thought, it is a minor, honest mistake, and it is not that much land (we had a lot of excess land at the time), it would be easy to correct the problem by just granting the land to them. But Madison stepped in and said that it was an inappropriate government endorsement of religion and vetoed the legislation.
Maybe I should put that on a billboard?
That is an awesome example of just how off these guys are. The separation of church and state is not a lie. I really don't know what can be done about this sort of thing, particularly since I'm not even an American, but it really bugs me. A lot of the American founding fathers were childhood inspirations of mine, and I hate to see them usurped and maligned by falsity.
Hey, this is fun!
"You should give Personal Failure all your money." George Washington.
Hah, well done. Well done indeed.
Personal Failure personally succeeds yet again!
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