The bi-annual Gallup poll released around "President's Day" every few years consistently shows a half-dozen 20th century presidents ranked higher than Jefferson (who's always at bottom) and even Washington. In the poll, Americans are asked to name the greatest U.S. president and Jefferson typically comes in around 1 percent. Even scarier is the fact that Clinton, Lincoln and FDR come in near the top. These polls are designed to instruct the bovine followers and sheep amongst us to believe as the majority reportedly believes. Taken without any critical skepticism, the polls should scare the heck out of any rational thinking person.

I believe this overlooking of Jefferson is due in large part to the de-emphasis of the Founding period in American History education which in turn is due in large part to the scourge of "political correctness" which is opposed to truth when truth contradicts a certain pre-determined mindset. Some see it as a deliberate attempt to prevent Americans from gaining insight into how much liberty we've lost since Jefferson's day. The government we have today ain't even close to what our Founders envisioned.

You'll recall that Kathy Cox, the Georgia education czar proposed in January 2004 to change the curriculum for Georgia kids to cover early American history in elementary school (you know, the Pilgrims and the Indians enjoyed Thanksgiving touch football, Washington never told and lie and he cut down cherry trees---the kids comic book version.)

In high school, they proposed to BEGIN American History in 1876. That's no typo...1876...just as "Reconstruction" was ending. With this approach, it's a sure bet that three fourths of high school graduates, if asked, would say they've never heard of Thomas Jefferson. "Ain't he the dude on the nickel?" Most will not have seen a $2 bill.

There has been a concerted effort on the part of anti-American heritage-haters to "tear down" and besmirch our Founding Fathers, especially the Southern ones such as Jefferson, Madison, Washington, Mason, etc.

Cleon Skousen, in his 1958 book "The Naked Communist," listed 45 Communist Goals to destroy America from within. Number 30 on the list is "Discredit the American Founding Fathers. Present them as selfish aristocrats who had no concern for the "common man." Of course, number 30 goes hand-in-glove with number 29 (discredit the U.S. Constitution) and number 31 (discourage the teaching of American History).

More recently with the rise of "political correctness," there have been repeated uses of phrases like "dead white men" to refer to the Founders and efforts to discredit these men who may have owned slaves or who advocated States rights. "Those guys held slaves, they didn't let women vote and to prove them completely irrelevant, they didn't wear their pants with a "sag" and they didn't like rap music..." (Yes, I know that the phrase "rap music" is an oxymoron.) Obviously, efforts to measure these men by today's social "standards" is inappropriate and unfair.

The ongoing efforts to discredit the Founders (specifically Jefferson) is well illustrated by the events beginning in 1998. A "study" was published suggesting that DNA evidence "proved" that Thomas Jefferson fathered a child by one of his slaves named Sally Hemings. The story was trumpeted by every large newspaper in the country and spawned volumes of commentaries in non-daily publications. It was a "hot" national story for a few weeks. The important part of the story is next.

The story was and is a gross distortion at best, but it would be fair to call it a "bold-faced lie." The evidence basically showed that the father of Hemings' child was one of 25 Jefferson males living within twenty miles of Monticello, most likely Jefferson's younger brother Randolph or one of Randolph's sons. Thomas Jefferson was 64 years of age when this alleged love-child was conceived.

A group of thirteen Jefferson scholars studied the evidence and issued a 550-page report in 2001. Of those 13 scholars, 11 wrote that allegations of Thomas Jefferson's paternity was "almost certainly false," one expressed "strong skepticism" [that Thomas Jefferson was the father] and one dissenter stated his belief that Thomas Jefferson was the father.

The BIG DIFFERENCE is that this 2001 report refuting the 1998 "story" went almost completely unreported. Samuel Francis pointed out the double standard in his syndicted columns (links to two below) and the Wall Street Journal published a story several months later in July 2001.

A columnist for the Macon Telegraph published a column slamming Jefferson as a hypocrite in 1998 but when I contacted him to publish a retraction in 2001, he was too busy investigating the scandals of Macon's mayor. Months later I contacted the columnist a second time to remind him about the Jefferson slander he needed to correct. Nope. He simply wasn't interested in the publishing the truth.

The suggestion is not new, in fact, allegations suggesting Jefferson fathered many children by his slaves were published numerous times while Jefferson was still President. Jefferson never responded to these personal attacks by his political enemies. Wow...times have changed, huh? And I recall reading the suggestion while a student in middle school (we called it junior high in those days). It was in a Gore Vidal 'historical' novel, Burr, on vice-president Aaron Burr (1801-1805) best known for killing Alexander Hamilton in a duel.

Even socialists and liberals cannot openly bad-mouth the ideas expressed in the Declaration....so they just snipe about the fact that Jefferson owned slaves and repeat this lie about his having fathered children by slaves. When they read the Kentucky Resolutions, which Jefferson wrote anonymously while vice-president in the Adams administration, they realize that Jefferson was a leading proponent of States rights within the "federal system" that includes the central government as subserviant agent to the States.

That alone is reason enough to make him a target of socialists, who by definition, advocate a large controlling central government. It was Jefferson and subsequent disciples (predominantly Southerners) who staunchly defended the Founders' original vision for a system that strictly limited the concentration of government power in any one place.

That vision has been systematically dismantled in stages ever since Lincoln crushed the Constitution and the concept of State sovereignty in practice. But, as Jefferson wrote to James Madison on the benefits of a Bill of Rights,

"Though written constitutions may be violated in moments of passion or delusion, yet they furnish a text to which those who are watchful may again rally and recall the people. They fix, too, for the people the principles of their political creed."