THE DAN RATHER SYNDROME

Here's what the university where he teaches says about Joseph Ellis:

"Joseph Ellis, a professor of history at Mount Holyoke since 1972, is one of the nation’s foremost scholars of American history. He is the author of seven books, including bestsellers American Sphinx, which won the National Book Award (1997); Founding Brothers: the Revolutionary Generation, which received the Pulitzer Prize in history (2000); and His Excellency: George Washington (2004). His most recent book, American Creation: Triumphs and Tragedies in the Founding of the Republic (Knopf, 2007) is a study of political creativity in the founding era."

The university says a great deal more in its laudatory comments, but you get the idea, this fellow is one smart guy.

But let's back up a bit. I don't know about you, but Presidents' Day is one of my least favorite holidays. No mail. Banks closed. Mattress sales. Nobody cares about that day dedicated to all the presidents of the United States. All the presidents? Didn't February used have a holiday dedicated to the birthday of President George Washington whose birthday is on the 22nd?

Yes, and like so much junk that came out of the 1960's, the shift from Washington’s Birthday to Presidents’ Day began late in the decade when Congress proposed a measure known as the Uniform Monday Holiday Act. Now, the Father of our country no longer has his own day, but is lumped with all who've held the office, the good, the bad, and the downright ugly. Now, on that day, we're supposed to honor all the presidents, even the two who were impeached as well as Buchanan, Polk, and Wilson (shudder).

And this brings us to Dr. Joseph Ellis, scholar, historian, and esteemed professor. Dr. Ellis recently wrote an article in "Time Magazine" in which he said that President Washington "began the political tradition that produced Social Security, Medicare and, more recently, Obamacare.” He also wrote that Washington began the tradition that led to FDR's being in office for almost four terms.

Wait. What? Washington, one of our Founding Fathers began a tradition of taking from some and giving to others? Washington began a tradition of the welfare state? Washington said, "Government is not reason. It is not eloquence. Government is force; like fire it is a dangerous servant -- and a fearful master.”

The welfare state operates by taking from those who earn money and giving it to those who don't. Thomas Jefferson said, "A wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government.”

The Founders knew history and had learned that once people get on the dole, it's both difficult and dangerous to try to get them off. Many a riot was caused in Rome when official tried to stop their bread and circuses given by the government.
Not only that, but David Azzerod points out that "Ellis even had the gall to hail Washington—the man who gracefully and voluntarily relinquished power after two terms when he could have stayed on for life—as the father of 'strong executive leadership' and the precursor to Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who stayed in office for an unprecedented 12 years."

So how can such a man of scholarship like historian Ellis write such things? It's easy and the Bible tells us why. Because of man's fallen nature, no one is without bias, although we like to claim we're free from it. Jesus referred to this when He said, "He who is not with Me is against Me." Fallen will hang onto that bias no matter what. I would suppose that Ellis is a passionate partisan of FDR and nationalized health insurance, so no matter what, he will hogtie George Washington to the causes for which he's passionate.

The Pharisees saw Jesus perform so many miracles that all the books in the world couldn't hold them. The Pharisees heard the words He said, speaking like no other man had ever spoken, yet most of them held on to their bias against Him, no matter what evidence, including fulfilled prophecies, to the contrary.

A recent example of the bulldog tenacity fallen man has to keep on holding to what's false, no matter what was Dan Rather's passionate opposition to candidate George W. Bush who was running for a second term against John Kerry. According to The New York Post, Dan Rather was given "photocopied memos that purported to show Bush had been AWOL for a significant portion of his National Guard tenure." Yet, there was a problem. "The font and spacing on the memos perfectly matched the default settings on a 21st-century Microsoft Word program," which, being interpreted meant, "They're fake."

But that didn't stop Rather; no matter what, to this day, he still refuses to admit it that the information was false.

This leads us to the point. Fallen man will hold to the false, even that which has been demonstrated to be a lie, a fiction, and a myth, no matter what. Take evolution for example and a favorite ploy of the evolutionist. He will say things like, "Science says . . ." or "Science tells us . . ." Sounds good, doesn't it? We hear it all the time. But there's a logical fallacy in those statements--science doesn't "say" or "tell" us anything, people do. People look at what's there and interpret what they see, rightly or wrongly, and then those people tell us something. People talk; science neither talks nor interprets. Yet he holds to his premise, "Science says."

Look at the form and order in the universe, a universe which operates by observable rules. These rules hold true whether you live on Mars, the moon, or the earth. Yet, we're told, "Science says there's no Person, no intelligence who formed the rules, set them in motion, and sustains them; it's all by chance. But science doesn't say that, scientists do. Like someone said, "To suggest that the precision of the universe came about by chance is far more ridiculous than claiming that the sand castle on the beach appeared spontaneously as the result of natural conditions."

But, no matter, Rather-like, fallen man holds on, no matter what.