Josh Hawley used to be a law professor, which leads one to believe that he checks his facts. Not so much. The Missouri senator has been getting severely roasted after he fired off a “Patrick Henry quote” that’s not actually from Patrick Henry.
“It cannot be emphasized too strongly or too often that this great nation was founded, not by religionists, but by Christians,” Hawley tweeted while erroneously citing Henry. “Not on religions, but on the Gospel of Jesus Christ. For this very reason, peoples of other faiths have been afforded asylum, prosperity, and freedom of worship here.”
However, it turns out Hawley’s mistake goes even further. On top of the Henry quote being fake, the source of the text is not great:
“Not only is this a fake quote from Henry, the source is the April 1956 edition of the virulently antisemitic & white nationalist magazine ‘The Virginian,’” historian Seth Cotlar noted. “It was reprinted in The American Mercury in 1956, the year that antisemitic rag hired George Lincoln Rockwell.”
Not only is this a fake quote from Henry, the source is the April 1956 edition of the virulently antisemitic & white nationalist magazine “The Virginian.” It was reprinted in The American Mercury in 1956, the year that antisemitic rag hired George Lincoln Rockwell. pic.twitter.com/xJyzaicTIB
— Seth Cotlar, mostly now at the other places (@SethCotlar) July 5, 2023
There’s also the fact that the Founding Fathers were big on America not being a Christian nation and wrote official documents saying as much.
Via Raw Story:
In the 1797 Treaty of Tripoli ending war between the United States and the Barbary pirates, John Adams wrote, “The government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion.” Thomas Jefferson — who was as bitter an ideological rival to Adams as modern-day Democrats are to Republicans — agreed, writing, “Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law,” and saying the First Amendment establishes “a wall of separation between church and state.”
Following in the footsteps of his fellow conservative Ted Cruz, Hawley has been getting ruthlessly dunked on over the past 24 hours. You can see some of the reactions below:
You will be unsurprised to hear that Patrick Henry never said this. It comes from a 1956 article in a magazine called The Virginian. But what’s a fake quote between friends? https://t.co/PZCEhfNlqW
— James Surowiecki (@JamesSurowiecki) July 5, 2023
Not Josh Harley sharing a fake quote that actually originated in a 1956 issue of the white supremacist magazine The Virginian. https://t.co/kp5iqnZHKE
— Dan McClellan (@maklelan) July 5, 2023
It cannot be emphasized too strongly or too often that this quotation is fake.
Give me authentic quotations from the Founders, or give me none. https://t.co/dOzrQeWaRL
— Bill Kristol (@BillKristol) July 5, 2023
15 hours and this fake quote is still up. Christian Nationalists’ identity depends on deliberately spreading disinformation about American history, especially the founders and the founding. https://t.co/z6bRSUYnQW
— Andrew L. Seidel (@AndrewLSeidel) July 5, 2023
Nothing describes the idiocy of the current Republican Party like a Yale law grad who clerked with the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court using a fake quote from a guy who opposed the US Constitution. https://t.co/pmTDQOZW5p
— Opie
(@showmeopie) July 5, 2023
My high school freshman world history students take greater care in quoting historical sources than a U.S. senator with degrees from Yale and Stanford. I am both proud and disturbed. https://t.co/lRNAbPv6Xw
— T Blake
(@Blakenomics) July 5, 2023
Christian theocrat uses a fake quote to make his case. Many of the founding fathers were deists and the constitution establishes a secular government. Your version of christian Saudi Arabia is authoritarian and unpopular. Give it up https://t.co/SCu5MFAWjg
— Secular Talk
(@KyleKulinski) July 5, 2023
“As one of the largest Founding Fathers, I wish Josh Hawley would stop using fake quotes” — Abraham Lincoln https://t.co/rmsAq1UV3q
—
Jon Schwarz
(Via Josh Hawley on Twitter, Raw Story & HuffPost