*
On June 7, 1797 President Adams received a unanimous ratification of the Treaty of Tripoli from the US Senate. This is significant for two reasons. The first is that this was the 5th United States Congress and had a significant number of founders and framers serving in it. So these were the men responsible for getting the US going: revolution, first and second founding**.
The second has to do with Article XI of the Treaty of Tripoli, which states:
As the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion,-as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Musselmen,-and as the said States never have entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mehomitan nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.
That first clause is a real doozy! It puts paid to the revisionist and inaccurate lie that the US was founded to be an explicitly Christian nation. Had that actually been the case, this language would not have survived to ratification as many of the men involved in America’s founding were voting on the treaty’s ratification.
* Image of the Treaty of Tripoli was found here.
** By first and second founding I’m referring to the form of government of the US as founded under the Articles of Confederation (first founding) and then the very different form of government of the US as founded under the Constitution (second founding).
Omnes Omnibus
It says we are cool with Musclemen (like Ah-nuld) not Muslims, you silly pointy-headed intellectual.
raven
@Omnes Omnibus: The old Minnesota coach?
Omnes Omnibus
@raven: You lost me – my fault, I am sure.
Adam L Silverman
@Omnes Omnibus: I thought it was the applesauce.
rea
As the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion,-as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Musselmen,-and as the said States never have entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mehomitan nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.
Of course, we were at war with them within 5 years.
Petorado
Unleash the kerning checkers!
Geeno
@rea: But only because a local lord in Tripoli seized a US ship. Unlike the European nations, we couldn’t afford to set up a ransom arrangement, so we invaded to retake the ship – and the “hostages” who were really secondary.
Schlemazel
@Omnes Omnibus:
Mussleman was a very successful coach of mens basketball at the University of MN. He has a decent career in the NBA (I believe, I don’t pay any attention to squeekball)
My favorite story from his time as coach (early 70s) was he wsa asked by a sports reporter from the St.Paul Pioneer Press if he really thought he “could draw a crowd with 5 spear chuckers in the starting lineup”. The paper was banned from his locker room for the season. That team had a run in with the Buckeyes later when they started dropping the big N on the Gopher players. It turned into a brawl, big enough that there is even a wikipedia page on it.
Keith P.
I remember an interview with Gore Vidal where the interviewer asked him what the Founding Fathers would think of some of the politicians today trying to claim the country is this-and-that (AFAIK, it was specifically about the US being a Christian nation). No shit, Vidal said that the Founding Fathers “would have had them hung.”
BillinGlendaleCA
@Omnes Omnibus:
As a Californian, I’m not cool with Musclemen; did you see what one did to our state?
? Martin
My mom’s report from Iowa is that Trump is probably going to win the nom. She’s been a GOP Iowa delegate. She’s not a party insider, but she knows all the rich Republicans and has enough free time to attend events and she finds the caucuses to be charming (enough so that she does the Dem caucuses in off-years just to see how they do it – completely different activities, btw).
She’s completely horrified by Trump, but I attribute most of that to her being a native New Yorker and so she has the same ‘abusive overconfidence as cover for not knowing what the fuck you are doing’ radar about New Yorkers that I do. And while Iowans haven’t taken well to his NY mannerisms, they seem to be getting used to it enough and the message is resonating well. He’s probably a lock for the west side of the state and some of the north, less so for the southeast, and he’s not really losing ground. Cruz has gotten a boost from the endorsement from King, but otherwise folks there seem to genuinely think that Muslims are at any moment going to fall out of the sky riding sky camels and cut off their heads. Fox News has convinced them of this reality.
Lee
I had a long conversation with someone on Facebook regarding this.
Apparently wingnuts completely dismiss this treaty because we were under duress.
Schlemazel
@Lee:
Yes that is the excuse I got. Apparently they made the treaty with their fingers crossed behind their backs if you believe this line of bush-wa
? Martin
@Schlemazel: I’m going to assume that Witte was the one who dropped the n-bomb given the intensity and specificity of the retaliation. I also like the cameo by Dave Winfield in there.
Video of brawl
Gus diZerega
@srv: That would include Muslims.
It would appear to exclude right wing Christians who support torture and worse more than any other significant subgroup of Americans.
Adams would likely be surprised that secular states are demonstrably more moral that the more religious states in this country, including his now secular Massachusetts; but being a man of reason and a deist, he would immediately see that morality and religion are not as linked as it may have seemed at the time.
Lee
@Schlemazel:
I thought it was an odd argument to make. My guess is that they get all of their bad agruments from the same website (freerepublic ?) then spread them around.
I just mercilessly mocked him for coming up with something so stupid (the people who fought for our independence caved because of some pirates) that he dropped it.
BruceFromOhio
Apparently wingnuts completely dismiss this treaty because we were under duress.
I thought it was lactose intolerance.
Seriously, we fought off the English, who had plenty of guns and money. But, oh no, we were under duress, so it doesn’t count. I expect that sun rises in east and water is wet are also debatable.
Omnes Omnibus
@Schlemazel: I assumed it was something like that.
p.a.
Article 6 Para 3 US Constitution:
Adam L Silverman
@rea: these things happen…
Schlemazel
@Lee:
Its funny to see the looks on their faces when it is pointed out to them how stupid their argument is. You can see the gears grind to a halt & the little engineer has to back the toy train up and take another run at it.
NotMax
Because he so obviously hated America, time to change the name of the District of Columbia from Washington.
(Over to you, Herr Trump.)
Adam L Silverman
@efgoldman: I went to a Jesuit high school and a Methodist university. Does that count?
p.a.
@Schlemazel: The founders were being PC?!
Schlemazel
@Adam L Silverman:
A name like Silverman, a Jesuit HS and Methodist U . . . gotta be a story in there someplace!
Schlemazel
@p.a.:
HA! I had not thought of it that way, now I hope someone uses this argument in front of me again because I will definitely drop that one on them! The little choo-choo will really go flying!
catclub
Our later history is not as rosy in the no establishment of religious immigration tests as many here seem to think. Juan Cole itemizes the bad things done to bar various religions in our past.
Most did not end until 1965.
? Martin
@p.a.: Obviously the founders never would have included such a provision had Islam been invented at the time they wrote it.
Adam L Silverman
@Schlemazel: Maybe there is, maybe there isn’t…
When I was preparing to go to high school, one of the best ones in the state, and certainly one of the two or three best ones in the Tampa area, if not the best one, was Jesuit High School. So I applied, got in, did decently. I have some issues with math that started catching up with me in geometry. Specifically, I can learn the rules and understand how to do the operations, but can’t do any calculations without making an error and I can’t catch the errors. Its like being math tone deaf.* Regardless, it was a good place. For college I went to Emory, which was a very good place for me.
* This made teaching undergrad and graduate stats somewhat interesting back when I was an academic. I made it clear to the students that this would happen and encouraged them to look for, catch, and correct my errors in the examples I was doing on the board.
p.a.
@? Martin: given its history since, oh, Constantine, one could argue that Christianity had been invented, but no longer existed in 1789.
Bring back the Cathars!
Ohio Mom
@Schlemazel: that is a perfect description. Over the years in discussing other topics with um, less informed people, I have seen the gears lock up several times. There is a split second of deer in headlights, then as you said, the toy train starts up again. It is really something to witness, the psychological defenses against cognitive dissonance in action.
redshirt
Obviously the Founding Fathers don’t know jack about America.
Trump 16! Make America Great Again!
Matt McIrvin
@Lee: By selectively insisting that various statements are lies you can make a wonderfully unfalsifiable argument about anything. It’s kind of like the way they insist that the perfectly friendly Muslims you know are all hiding their scimitar-waving jihadi murder-lust behind a facade of lies, which they prove by pointing to some Quran verse about lying to infidels.
Schlemazel
@Adam L Silverman:
Thats a lot less interesting than I imagined. Glad it worked out for you.
p.a.
@Ohio Mom: In my experience they just continue making their assertions; a tape loop. There was no active thought or research involved. Just regurgitation of what they heard on hate radio, Fux etc.
Conservative epistemic closure: the SOURCE of information should be deconstructed. Not the information itself. The source is proof of the truth.
Matt McIrvin
@catclub: What I wonder when people bring this stuff up is whether any of these past laws excluded even US citizens of the wrong religion who travel abroad, as Trump has proposed.
Ohio Mom
@p.a.: Yeah, most of the time you can’t make a dent. But a couple of times I’ve seen the gears stop for a moment, like Schlemazel describes, before the loop starts again. It’s fleeting.
p.a.
Taibbi:
The problem not only with fundamentalist Christians but with Republicans in general is not that they act on blind faith, without thinking. The problem is that they are incorrigible doubters with an insatiable appetite for Evidence. What they get off on is not Believing, but in having their beliefs tested. That’s why their conversations and their media are so completely dominated by implacable bogeymen: marrying gays, liberals, the ACLU, Sean Penn, Europeans and so on. Their faith both in God and in their political convictions is too weak to survive without an unceasing string of real and imaginary confrontations with those people — and for those confrontations, they are constantly assembling evidence and facts to make their case.
But here’s the twist. They are not looking for facts with which to defeat opponents. They are looking for facts that ensure them an ever-expanding roster of opponents. They can be correct facts, incorrect facts, irrelevant facts, it doesn’t matter. The point is not to win the argument, the point is to make sure the argument never stops. Permanent war isn’t a policy imposed from above; it’s an emotional imperative that rises from the bottom. In a way, it actually helps if the fact is dubious or untrue (like the Swift-boat business), because that guarantees an argument. You’re arguing the particulars, where you’re right, while they’re arguing the underlying generalities, where they are.
Once you grasp this fact, you’re a long way to understanding what the Hannitys and Limbaughs figured out long ago: These people will swallow anything you feed them, so long as it leaves them with a demon to wrestle with in their dreams.- Matt Taibbi
Omnes Omnibus
@Ohio Mom:
It’s astounding
Time is fleeting
Madness takes its toll…
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@catclub:
I respect Dr. Cole’s opinions, but it doesn’t really seem kosher to claim that Japanese, Chinese, and Indian immigrants are three separate examples of discrimination when immigrants from the entire continent of Asia were excluded at the time.
Race-specific exclusions were much, much more important at the time, and there were a lot more racial designations. Religion was a secondary consideration, and mostly contributed to the feeling that those races were “alien” and therefore should be excluded.
jl
@rea:
” Of course, we were at war with them within 5 years. ”
We were at war with the local strongman in Tripoli to get back a pirated ship and hostages. And also Algiers. Other treaties with other Barbary Coast states held. In fact, I think some of the first displaced persons the US took in as refugees were Muslims from Morocco, which also had disagreements with other Barbary states. So, we were not at war with all of them ever or all them at once, and we were at war with some of them never.
Adam L Silverman
@Matt McIrvin: Which is actually a defensive permission for obfuscation that only applies to some Shi’a. And only when they are among Sunni that have demonstrated that they would do harm to the Shi’a as apostates for being Shi’a.
Adam L Silverman
@Schlemazel: What, pray tell, did you imagine?
Omnes Omnibus
@Adam L Silverman: Don’t encourage them.
Redshift
@Adam L Silverman: Have you been tested for learning disabilities? Ms. Redshift has dyscalcula, dyslexia with numbers, and it sounds similar. There are some useful compensation techniques.
jl
@Gus diZerega: I agree. He may have grown politically more conservative, but he was a Unitarian free thinker all his life who believed in natural religious law. Adams thought that all the worlds great religions, including the then rather mysterious and barely understood Buddhism of Tibet, Islam, and even the corrupt conventional organized Judaism and Christianity were all divinely inspired by revelations that were in some sense true. But, being led by corrupt humans, each and everyone would become corrupt as time went on.
Adams hated the fundies of his day, and considered them as corrupt and worthless and immoral as the most depraved Hindoo, or Second Temple, priest.
Anyway, to Adams, the idea of worthy religion that could encourage and enforce good behavior was not limited to Christianity at all.
Edit: as I think I mentioned once before, his letters to Jefferson, Adams said he thought the Vedic hymns were the most sublime religious text that expressed the essence of true religious revelation. That was followed by asking if Jefferson could track down some Hindu and Buddhist texts. Adams was not an Xtianist.
Schlemazel
@Adam L Silverman:
Well here is an old story I find amusing
Jewish kid was not doing well in school, dad took him out of public school and put him in a Jewish private school. They threw him out because he was not doing the work. His dad was at wits end when he ran into the parish priest. The priest noticed his neighbors distress & asked what the problem was. When he hear the sad story he told the day to send his son to the local Catholic school. He ws desperate so he did & instantly became an A+ student. Dad was stunned so he asked his son what happened. “Well dad, the first day at school Father called me into his office & showed me the only other Jewish person in the school. When I saw what they had done to him I figured I better shape up!”
Omnes Omnibus
@efgoldman: Hey, we had Connecticut and Mass (before the Irish, Italians, and Portuguese showed up), damn it!
jl
@efgoldman: Well, that Washington letter to the Hebrews of CT was just symbolic, nice nostalgic stuff we don’t have to take seriously. It just proves Washington was a great and good man, is all. Other than that we don’t need to pay it no mind.
Kind of like his orders to his Revolutionary War troops forbidding abuse or torture of captured British soldiers. That was just symbolic too. Anyway, there wasn’t any existential threat to the US back then like there is now, also too in addition, and besides! I mean, c’mon, we won the Revolutionary War after all. QED.
jl
@Omnes Omnibus: Wait, what? Washington wrote a letter a Jewish Congregation holding a mass in CT? Huh… I better refresh my memory on a few subjects.
Mike J
@efgoldman: Why do you think they came up with the Bermuda race[1]? Fastest way out of Newport.
[1] If I win the powerball lottery (very unlikely since I don’t play, but my odds aren’t much worse than they are for those who do), I’ll be buying a boat to do this race.
jl
@jl: Oops. I keep getting those little states back east all mixed up. Walk down the block and you’re three states away.
I meant Rhode Island. Sorry.
ThresherK (GPad)
@efgoldman: Which kind of WASP? Seems Roger Williams ended up leaving Plymouth because the Pilgrims’ idea of religious liberty meant “we won’t make you Anglican, you’re free to worship just like we do. Exactly like we do.”.
And some people say the old traditions are gone.
Adam L Silverman
@Redshift: I’m not kicking the numbers. I see a 4 and know its a 4. What happens is that when I perform the operations I make errors and then can’t see where I made the error even though I know the concepts and rules. It is what it is, and its why we have computer programs to run the data.
ThresherK (GPad)
@efgoldman: I grew up so Northeastern Catholic than in fourth grade I thought a mixed marriage meant a wedding with Irish on one side of the aisle and Italians on the other side.
Scamp Dog
@Schlemazel: There was another boy who was having trouble with math. Just couldn’t get it. His parents tried making him do more problems, but he refused. They tried hiring tutors, bringing in psychologists, but still nothing worked.
Finally, in desperation, they send him to the Jesuit High School. The first day when he came home, he went straight to his room, opened up his math book and got to work. He came out for dinner, ate quickly, and when back to studying.
This went on for weeks. Finally, he came home with his first report card from the school. His parents see that he’s gotten an A in math! “What did it?” they asked. Was it the nuns? The Jesuit philosophy of learning? Encouragement from kindly priests?
“No, I knew they were serious about math when I saw the guy they had nailed to the plus sign.”
Adam L Silverman
@Schlemazel: So funny and true story: At Jesuit in Tampa, once you pass the entrance exam you still have to come for an interview. Your parents come as well. Or at least they did this back when I was 13. So ours was scheduled with one of the seminarians, Mr. Paul. After it was all over he tried to make a joke. He asked if I knew what happened to the last Jewish boy who hadn’t behaved there. I said no and he then half turned in his chair and pointed to the full size crucifix on the wall above him. My Mom wasn’t just not amused, she was a bit freaked. She grabbed my Dad’s arm, started pulling, and said we were getting out of there. My Dad who had a ribald sense of humor got it. So even if you’re version of the story is an urban legend like joke, I actually lived a variant of it.
Adam L Silverman
@efgoldman: Emory was a lot like that. Its officially still a Methodist school, but other than the chaplain and the Candler School of Theology its simply a private university.
Adam L Silverman
@efgoldman: Tuoro in Newport. Not sure where the second oldest congregation is, but, if I’m recalling correctly, the third oldest is in York, PA.
redshirt
God, religion is a scourge.
ThresherK (GPad)
@efgoldman: No, I knew they weren’t Anglican. It’s just that their leaving to worship meant their own rligious tests, and that gets overlooked too much by Fundies.
Oh, yes, the Poles were well represented in the Catholic schools of my upbringing. All the spelling and pronunciation tricks for Polish and Italian I garnered at an early age.
Vince
@Gus diZerega: Adams was very much not a deist. He was a very devout Christian. Are you thinking of Jefferson?
Redshift
@Adam L Silverman:
Savannah, GA, I believe.
Actually, according to Wikipedia, the oldest congregations are, in order, New York, Newport, RI, and Savannah. The oldest (existing) synagogue buildings are Newport, Charleston, SC, and Baltimore.
scav
Throw this in: Oldest existing purpose-built mosque building in America? Seems to be in Cedar Rapids IA (Mother Mosque of America). Built in 1934, in part by — yes — essentially Syrians.
J R in WV
@Adam L Silverman:
A Hebrew educated by Jesuits and Methodists???
No wonder you’re hopelessly confused about the history of this great organization founded by Lush Rimbaugh! Which organization knows the true secrets about the founding of Amurika~!! ;-)
/snark
I was aware of the meaningful details of this treaty, but had forgotten it’s great implications in this tempest of stupid being fomented by the know-nothings. Thanks for digging it up and putting it back in circulation.
matt regan
Damn all Cathars to hell. Bring back Pelagius!