I made this comment sort of half heartedly last night while reading a book in which someone quotes Thomas Jefferson to justify their position on agriculture and society. George noted that it seemed like Jefferson had a lot of opinions on a lot of things, and I said that I suspected that much like people use select "proof text' scriptures to bolster or defend their opinion, many people in non-religious settings, or when the use of the Bible would be offensive, people turn to quoting the founding fathers. I am sure they were a diverse (at least as far as the definition of diverse would go for 1775) and complicated group of folks, and so you can likely find, and twist to your own devices, a quote from some founding father or another about your particular topic. And time and tide has dulled us enough as a nation to only remember that the person's name means they were important and yet we know little about their personalities. We forget little tidbits like Ben Franklin was a philandering lush and Jefferson a Bible-editing deist- or that George Washington shrunk from being president and Sam Adams was a hot-head. So, just as I do with those who would throw out a random Bible verse to back their argument, I also will think twice before giving much credence to a position backed by a random quote from a well-known name of the 18th century.
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