Via his wife's Facebook page, Minnesota state representative Glenn Gruenhagen shared a spurious Thomas Jefferson quotation above a link to a 2009 post on the Surly Trader about the devaluation of the dollar and inflation. The Surly Trader post predicts massive inflation, the root case of which was President Richard Nxon's 1971 speech "which put an official end to the gold standard and the Bretton Woods agreement from 1944."
Gruenhagen shares this supposed wisdom from Thomas Jefferson:
"If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their Fathers conquered...I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies... The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs." Thomas Jefferson
Both The Jefferson Monticello.org (a private non-profit, Thomas Jefferson Foundation, Inc., that maintains and operates Jefferson's home) and Snopes discuss the fabrication of the quote. The discussion at Monticello.org is the most extensive.
While some might defend the "truthiness" of the spurious Jefferson quotation, and Gruenhagen's use of it as harmless, it's worth noting that Gruenhagen was one of the forces behind 2005's American Heritage Education Act.
Posted by EdWatch, a defunct conservative education reform group, theocrat Michael Chapman wrote in American Heritage Education Act Passes!:
On July 14, 2005, Governor Pawlenty signed the Minnesota Education Omnibus bill into law. Included in the 128 pages were two short paragraphs that open the door to begin reclaiming Americas forgotten heritage. The American Heritage in Public Education Act does two things: 1) It encourages schools to teach Americas Founding Principles from original sources. 2) It prevents the censorship of religious references from those sources. [bold emphasis added].
. . .Representative Mark Olson (R, Big Lake) and I began six years ago on an idea to prevent the censorship of Americas true heritage. We had several goals. In addition to encouraging the study of our Founders uncensored writings, speeches, proclamations, and original documents, we sought to give students the freedom to choose religious topics when other students were allowed to freely choose a topic.
In 2002, American Heritage Research brought in Historian David Barton (www.wallbuilders.com) to help testify on behalf of the American Heritage Act. Bartons extensive collection of rare founding documents and my examples of censored Minnesota curriculum, along with testimony from Representative Mark Olson and school-board member Glenn Gruenhagen, [emphasis added] overwhelmed the House Education Committee and the bill passed. That year the full House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed the bill by a supra majority. Sadly, the Senate education committee despite Senator Bachmanns best efforts refused to allow a vote!
Bluestem is all for students studying primary documents created by the founding fathers. All that we ask is that those documents are for real--not bogus quotations floating around the Internet--or circulated by David Barton.
Founding Fathers? A-okay. Unfounded founders' quotes? Not so much.
Screenshot: Glenn Gruenhagen gives his wife a little fake Jefferson. Via Facebook.
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