Liberals have their own interpretation of history in which the founding fathers were all atheists and big government socialists. Just try convincing them otherwise and suddenly you’re a racist.
A brand-new myth to me.
I have to call foul regarding the first point since, well, actually, Jefferson actually DID expand government. According to the book “Liberty: The God that Failed”, Jefferson did several actions that if anything increased government influence far beyond that of what King George III did and/or advocated for big government advocates, which includes, but wasn’t limited to:
1. His call for the shooting of Tory counter-revolutionaries who should have been treated as prisoners of war, pursuant to a bill of attainder he himself drafted and pushed through the Virginia legislature.
2. Jefferson’s support for the early Jacobin massacres as expressed in the “Adam and Eve” letter.
3. His lifelong ownership of slaves, some of whom he had flogged for attempting to escape, and his continued slave trading while President.
4. Endorsement of state law prosecutions for “seditious libel” against the President and Congress.
5. His approval of an expedient and quite illegal “amendment” of the Constitution by the Republican-controlled House to expand the definition of “high crimes and misdemeanors” in order to facilitate the impeachment of his Federalist opponent, Judge Pickering, for drunkenness.
6. Jefferson’s declaration that “where the laws become inadequate even to their own preservation… the universal resource is a dictator, or martial law.”
7. His embargo of American shipping, including the federal seizure of ships and cargoes, without due process.
8. His instigation of “treason” trials and his demand for the death penalty for American citizens who had merely attempted to recover their own property from federal agents.
You can find this on page 237-239 of Liberty: The God that Failed. Or you can look it up on The Distributivist Review. Either way works.
The second point I can definitely agree with, and the third point is iffy (while he did support religion to some degree, he did at the same time act as cheerleader to the Jacobin murders even after most other founding fathers became sickened with them).