To have a professor get arrested for the crime of jaywalking—especially when the professor has to be subdued and knocked to the ground by back-up police--is about as visually dramatic as it gets at annual conferences like the American Historical Association meeting held earlier this month in Atlanta. This British historian, Dr. Felipi Fernandez-Arnesto, was, in his own words, transported on “a dirty, fetid paddy wagon hand-cuffed to another suspected felon,” and while spending eight hours in jail subjected to humiliating searches, and fed “revolting cellophane-wrapped sandwiches.” This news story was met by the to-be-expected spate of indignant letters to the editor the following day—many charging another abuse of police power. The same day the indignant letters to the editor were published the Atlanta Journal-Constitution published the police officer’s account of the story: the professor did not follow his repeated directions to use a nearby crosswalk to avoid the dangerous stretch of street between the two convention hotels. So goes the historical account—citizens quick to jump on the police before they know the whole story—and the newspaper publishing those letters but not any that followed the policeman’s revelation.

But historians are guilty of more egregious forms of jaywalking—to use the apt metaphor: distorting history, and their roles as scholars. This group of “scholars” did something decidedly unscholarly at the meeting funded by their universities: they voted in a resolution against war, specifically the Iraq war. The panels consisted of the usual panoply of multicultural, anti-West advocacy, as well. And, thus, many of these scholars share much in common with newly elected Muslim Congressman Keith Ellison who has distorted history for his own purposes.

Banking on the public’s ignorance of history and the mainstream media’s complicity, Keith Ellison had Thomas Jefferson’s Koran taken out from the Library of Congress under security, for his swearing-in ceremony. In this p.r. stunt he tried to claim Jefferson’s blessing. The mainstream media presented it as another way to upstage what they see as ignorant rubes who would be upset by a Congressman not using the traditional Bible in the swearing-in ceremony. Pulitzer-Prize winner of fragmented bromides, Leonard Pitts, claimed that Ellison’s use of this “Quran” taught us “a surprising fact: Thomas Jefferson owned a Quran.”

Pitts continued his lecture: “Which probably shouldn’t surprise us at all. Jefferson was renowned for his restless intellect and wide-ranging interests. Still, one hopes the tacit reminder that this Founding Father and author of American values did not fear the Quran will silence those who have condemned that book for his swearing-in. One hopes, but one does not expect.”

Of course. One cannot “expect” of ignorant conservative rubes. For which one has to write in short sentence fragments. Hope only. Someday, maybe—as enlightened as Leonard Pitts. For now, silence them.

But surprisingly this party line liberal gives a nod of approval to a “Founding Father” as “author of American values.”

Whoa! Weren’t Jefferson and all the other Founding Fathers supposed to be imperialistic, slave-holding, hypocritical sexist pigs?

When did Jefferson turn into the archetype of the modern progressive--so open-minded and peace-loving, with a “restless intellect,” that he embraced the “Quran”?

Apparently, now if one owns a copy of that holy book, it means that he approves of it. Well, I’ve owned copies of Mein Kampf.

Does that mean I approve of Hitler’s ideas?

That’s what I had to disabuse a freshman of once as I corrected his paper in which he wrote about the “great man” Adolf Hitler. He apparently was asleep when I told the class that Mein Kampf was an example of propaganda that relied on logical fallacies.

Mr. Pitts and the imperialistic left-wing editors also need refresher courses in logic and history.

The Washington Post claimed that this “holy book” has “an unassailably all-American provenance” because it was owned by Jefferson. This congratulatory announcement of Ellison’s “savvy bit of political symbolism” was spread through blogs like the Huffington Post and “Wren’s Nest News. Featuring the latest in Witch/Pagan & Mainstream Religious News.”

While the self-proclaimed intellectuals and profanity-spewing bloggers applauded Ellison’s “savviness,” those who know history and have retained the ability to smell a rat—but not crowned by the Left with Ph.D.’s or Pulitzer prizes--started spreading the truth about why Jefferson might need to refer to his Koran: he needed to know the enemy.

He needed to understand Muslim pirate slavers off the Barbary states who were pillaging villages and making slaves of non-Muslims: women as concubines and boys who were castrated. They also enslaved the Christian crews of American ships. While John Adams argued for paying tribute, Jefferson argued for war.

During a 1786 meeting with Sidi Haji Abdul Rahman Adja, the “Dey of Algiers” ambassador to Britain, then American ambassador to France, Jefferson, and American ambassador to Britain, Adams, asked him why Muslims held hostility towards America. They later reported to the Congress that the Dey had answered that Islam “was founded on the Laws of their Prophet, that it was written in their Quran, that all nations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as Prisoners, and that every Musselman (Muslim) who should be slain in Battle was sure to go to Paradise.” Continued...