"Never believe everything that you read on the internet."
- Abraham Lincoln, Baltimore Herald-Sun, 35th Feb 1931
It used to be that people had the ability to see obvious lies like the quote above and realise that they are outrageous lies. Abraham Lincoln never said that, never would have known what the internet is, not published that quote in a non-existent newspaper, and certainly on a date that never could have existed. At any rate, publishing anything 66 years after you have died, is extremely difficult.
The internet generally and especially websites like Facebook, is replete with quotes like this; shared by people who have given exactly zero thought to them, and made up by people with either devious, diabolical, or nefarious designs.
This image has been doing the rounds, circulating in what I assume are 'conservative' political circles in the United States. America seems to have this strange love affair with its so-called Founding Fathers and so I guess that co-opting them in an appeal to authority in an attempt to criticise democracy, is useful in the purpose of undermining their political opponents.
However, if one bothers to check the validity and veracity of these quotes, we verify that they are vile and vexatious.
Jefferson:
I did a comprehensive search through Monticello.org which is a useful and reasonably reliably repository for all things Jeffersonian. The problem is, that this returns nothing. I have to conclude that this Thomas Jefferson quote is purely and simply a fabrication; a lie; it has been made up.
Adams:
This is a thing which actually exists. This particular quote from John Adams, comes from a letter that he wrote in 1814; to do with the failure of the French Revolution and in the context of Napoleon hacking his way across Europe.
Adams is a particularly interesting character, from what I have read of his letters and papers, it seems that at one point he supported the idea of some kind of mixed government; which would consist of a republic or commonwealth, with or without some kind of monarchy.
The letter is found in full, here:
https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/99-02-02-6371
Franklin:
Not only can I find no solid evidence about this Franklin quote about democracy being two wolves, I don't think that this sounds anything remotely like him. It is one thing to make up a quote but quite another to make up a quote which isn't even in the same style as the person who supposedly wrote or said it. The first citation that I could find for this, was in 1987.
Hamilton:
Hamilton was invited to the Constitutional Conventions as a New York Junior Delegate. Thanks to the Lin-Manuel Miranda musical of his same name, Hamilton one one occasion spoke at the Constitutional Convention for a reported six hours.
This quote by Hamilton at the Constitutional Convention exists, sort of. Rather, this citation of this quote cuts off the end of Hamilton's sentence; which actually reads:
"Real liberty is never found in despotism or the extremes of democracy, but in moderate governments."
Portions of this speech are found, here:
https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Hamilton/01-04-02-0108
What are we to make of all of this? If we take stock, we have an invented quote, a quote from a private letters, an invented quote which doesn't even remotely sound plausible, and a quote which in cutting off the last clause deletes the point that he was trying to make.
It probably should be troubling to most people in a marketplace of ideas that there are not only lies being passed off as fact and they get shared and re-shared and remain unchecked, but it isn't. People are mostly happy with sharing utter garbage if it happens to agree with what they already think.
Granted, that in the light of the forging of a new country which was started on the back of a war and predicated on its own contemporary lies, this is not a new phenomenon. It has to be said that to some degree, that these four people were critical and perhaps even fearful of unregulated government.
However, even we we exchange these lies as the truth, it doesn't really make a lot of sense to quote them anyway, with reference to a modern context. Unless there is some absolute immutable truth here, it doesn't do justice to them or us to use quotes which are rooted and reliant upon 18th century European ideas that we no longer use as frameworks for modern discourse.
I don't know if it helps making an appeal to authority in misquoting and misrepresenting 18th century political leaders, if you want to 'prove' a point. It's even more absurd that these people are claimed to be revered, when you attribute lies to them. I simply do not know how you can take it as as gospel truth, when the quotes themselves aren't even real. It's even more more absurd that I as an Australian, having no actual material interest in the political football match which happens in the United States, should be so able see quotes like these and know that they are rubbish.
Even if these quotes were absolutely reliable (which I am not saying for a second that they are), they why are they being taken as absolute truth in the first place? Does it even make any sense to apply what a bunch of racist and slave owning white men said 250 years ago, in a modern democracy?
At any rate, the people who live in a modern democracy, in the space and time of here and now, are the people who live in a modern democracy, in the space and time of here and now. Four dead guys aren't here, they don't have to think about the problems which exist now, and the apparatus of modern political states which was built after wars that were far more hideous than they could have dreamed of, also exists in the space and time of here and now. Surely democracy belongs to the people who are currently alive, rather than the ghosts of long dead white guys, whom you don't even care enough about to bother to fact check to see if what you claim they said, is real or not?
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