Skip to main content

Comrade Jefferson Spreads His Poison

March 2023
1min read

The People’s Bicentennial Commission, a private group working outside of what it feels are federal efforts to commercialize the two hundredth anniversary of our republic, came up with some rather startling results in a survey taken last summer. The commission sent out ten pollsters who asked twenty-three hundred federal employees to endorse a paragraph that read: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. …”

It turned out that 68 per cent of those approached not only did not hold these truths to be self-evident but in fact found them decidedly subversive and refused to sign. Fortyseven per cent of those polled did not recognize the passage as part of the Declaration of Independence, but of those who refused to sign, 83 per cent did recognize it.

Here are some of the remarks made by those who would not sign: “Looks like trash. Commie stuff. So that’s what our Founding Fathers were up to. …” “I’ve read this many times and it doesn’t make sense. I’m a law student. …” “What’s this? An anti-ciA thing?” “Yes, I recognize it. It’s from the Communist Manifesto. I read it in a history book.”

Of the minority willing to sign, one said: “What, the Declaration? Why, hell, yes, I’ll sign anything written by a Democrat.”

We hope you enjoy our work.

Please support this 72-year tradition of trusted historical writing and the volunteers that sustain it with a donation to American Heritage.

Donate

Stories published from "December 1975"

Authored by: Allan L. Damon

The filibuster has played a key role in the enactment of federal law since 1789, but is rarely used outside the U.S. Senate.

Authored by: John A. Phillips

How a champagne picnic on Monument Mountain led to a profound revision of Moby Dick — and disenchantment

Authored by: George E. Hopkins

New York to Los Angeles in an unheard-of 48 hours! And what a way to go—luxuriously appointed planes, meals served aloft, and a window seat for every passenger

Authored by: Don Troiani

BATTLES OF THE REVOLUTION

Authored by: Bernard A. Weisberger

To spend and be spent for the Good of Mankind is what I chiefly aim at

Authored by: Joe McCarthy

With a wave of his plastic wand Carl Fisher transformed a tangle of mangrove swamps into a peculiarly American resort

Authored by: Scarritt Adams

The Union desperately needed an extraordinary warship to counter the ironclad the Confederates were building

Authored by: James Penick Jr.

THUS SPAKE THE GREAT INDIAN CHIEF TECUMSEH, PREDICTING— SOME BELIEVED—THE SERIES OF VIOLENT EARTHQUAKES THAT STRUCK THE MIDWEST IN THE WINTER OF 1811–12

Featured Articles

Rarely has the full story been told about how a famed botanist, a pioneering female journalist, and First Lady Helen Taft battled reluctant bureaucrats to bring Japanese cherry trees to Washington. 

Often thought to have been a weak president, Carter was strong-willed in doing what he thought was right, regardless of expediency or the political fallout.

Why have thousands of U.S. banks failed over the years? The answers are in our history and politics.

In his Second Inaugural Address, Abraham Lincoln embodied leading in a time of polarization, political disagreement, and differing understandings of reality.

Native American peoples and the lands they possessed loomed large for Washington, from his first trips westward as a surveyor to his years as President.