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Thomas Jefferson: Scientist, Inventor, Gadgeteer
Hugh Pickens writes "Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence, whose signing we celebrate today, was considered an expert in architecture, civil engineering, geography, mathematics, ethnology, anthropology, mechanics, and the sciences. Although Jefferson never failed to acknowledge that in science he was 'an amateur,' Jefferson's home at Monticello was filled with examples of his scientific philosophy. An inventor and gadgeteer of great ingenuity, Jefferson's practical innovations or improvements on others inventions included: the swivel chair, the polygraph, letter press, hemp break. pedometer, mouldboard plow, sulky, folding chair, dumb-waiter, double acting doors, and a seven day clock. Throughout his life Jefferson experimented in agriculture with studies in crop rotation, soil cultivation, animal breeding, pest control, agricultural implements and improvement of seeds. Jefferson promoted science as President by recommending to Congress a coast survey to accurately chart the coast of America that later evolved into the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey. Jefferson's expert testimony before Congress led to the establishment of the Naval Observatory and the Hydrographic Office and Jefferson's report to Congress on a plan of coinage and weights and measures based on the decimal system was expanded into the National Bureau of Standards. Jefferson never applied for a patent, which was consistent in his belief in the natural right of all mankind to share useful improvements without restraint."
Now I know who to blame for my dizziness. Damn you and your fun contraptions!
Yeah... really awesome human being.
Being such a influential and powerful person, it is unfortunate that as president Jefferson didn't go on to dismantle the patent system since he saw for himself that 'useful improvements should be shared without restraint".
It would have saved us all from the broken system we have today where big corps sue each other until one leaves or theres a cross licensing agreement in place to block new players from entering the market.
"It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg."
"Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should 'make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' thus building a wall of separation between church and State."
"Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law."
"And the day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerve in the brain of Jupiter."
"I do not find in orthodox Christianity one redeeming feature."
-- Thomas Jefferson
Articles are user submitted. Why don't you go a write a blurb and a good one. No one will RTFM anyway.
What the hell is a "hemp break pedometer"?
a successful terrorist, otherwise known as a revolutionary.
... he was never able to satisfactorily distinguish between "principle" and 'practice".
As in the principle of being opposed to slavery while in practice shagging the property.
I read somewhere that at the beginning of their revolutionary path Jefferson and many of the founding fathers were using various alias names and operated via proxies to conceal their true identity and goals. Ok, if they had been more open of their goals and identities they would have been shot and not remembered. Right to be anonymous, maybe it should have been written into constitution.
maybe EFF could use that as a propaganda tool
In the spirit of Independence Day, there's an article on WSJ about what life was like in 1776, in case you want to see just how much has changed since Jefferson's times and why we no longer have Jeffersons.
Actually it doesn't exist anymore. it was only around in the first second of the universe. It decayed into the other subatomic particles like quarks and photons. That is why they had to build a 10Bn$ machine to recreate conditions just after the big bang. Didn't you read anything on the LHC in the last 5yrs?
"That's right...I said it."
There are also news articles all over the place...on other sites. If you always get your science news from /. you will always be a few seconds behind everyone else. I had the luxury of watching it live and it was great. I even put a video of the last 2min on my youtube channel :D
"That's right...I said it."
So, like, Jefferson didn't write the Declaration of Independence, but, he like, discovered it!
Jefferson's position on the granting of patents [1]changed through the years. In his article "Godfather of American Invention," Silvio Bedini notes that in 1787 Jefferson's opposition to monopoly in any form led him to oppose patents.[2] But by 1789, Jefferson's firm opposition had weakened. Writing to James Madison, Jefferson said he approved the Bill of Rights as far as it went, but would like to see the addition of an article specifying that "Monopolies may be allowed to person for their own productions in literature, and their own inventions in the arts, for a term not exceeding --- years, but for no longer term and for no other purpose."[3] Also in 1789, while Jefferson was still in Paris, the first patent act was introduced during the first session of Congress and enacted into law April 10, 1790. Under the new law, the Secretaries of War and State and the Attorney General constituted a three-man review board, with the Secretary of State (Jefferson), playing the leading role. Two months after the law was passed, Jefferson remarked it had "given a spring to invention beyond his conception."[4]
http://www.monticello.org/site/research-and-collections/patents
Thomas Jefferson was the first patent examiner and granted quite a few patents.
your gravity fails and negativity don't pull you through
How dare you? The founding fathers were perfect. Please report to the nearest american patriot association for your burning at the stake.
you sarcasm is lacking so I will answer accordingly.
No, it counts how many steps you take in any given period of time. Some people use them as exercise devices and attempt to take at least 10,000 steps in a day. Not sure how many miles that translates into, but i am sure a quick google search or some math whiz from here can figure it out.
"That's right...I said it."
It was not quite hyperbole when JFK jokingly addressed a group of Nobel winners at the White House: "I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered at the White House - with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone."
Man, he accomplished so much, yet still found time to regularly impregnate the help!
"Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket." -- Eric Hoffer
If you are going to mention the coastal survey, why not also mention the Lewis and Clark expedition? The "Corps of Discovery" was a huge cartographic, biological, geological, and sociological enterprise. They took the best scientific equipment they could, charted rivers and mountains, kept daily records, and brought back samples. They didn't know what was in the Rocky Mountains, and Jefferson told them to find Mastodons.
Lewis was Jefferson's personal secretary, and Jefferson made sure that Lewis had all the scientific training possible at the time. I'd say that pushing through the funding and planning of the mapping of the the Rocky Mountains, Missouri River and Columbia River ranks up there with the dumb waiter.
I love how people are bringing up his slave owning in the modern day. Of course it's not right by today's standards, but you know, back then it was actually kewl to own people.
Besides this isn't about his slave owning. It's about his scientific endeavors. Put all the bad things and negativity about him aside for the moment and we can talk about it later, but for now, let's talk about the kewl shit he did to help make the world a better place.
"That's right...I said it."
At the same time a young Abraham Lincoln was just starting his vampire-hunting career
Not to take anything away from the Man, but being a polymath appears to be a necessary qualification to be a national hero, one of the Founding Fathers, or the Great Leader of a country. Why is it necessary to prove that a man is a larger-than-life expert in everything?
... he sure did a great job as the author of the Patent Act and first Patent Examiner. Isn't it somewhat more reasonable to say that he never patented his own inventions because, y'know, he'd be the one examining them and granting the patent and that would be a huge ethical breach and lead to charges of corruption?
The Constitution contains a clause empowering the government to establish a system of weights and measures.
Jefferson, in part because of his experience as a surveyor using chains divided into 100 links, and also from reading 'Disme: the art of tenths by Simon Stevin' was familiar with the benefits of doing measurement calculations in decimal units, and proposed that the US adopt a decimal system of weights and measures.
Unfortunately Congress did not appreciate the usefulness of this idea and failed to act on the proposal setting a really bad precedent.
As ambassadors to France he and Ben Franklin had access to French intellectuals and brought up this topic to the French. Whether the French would have developed this independently or not I don't know. Certainly they may have known about the idea from other sources.
But if Congress had heeded his ideas the US would have had a decimal measurement system before any other nation. Jefferson may also have been the catalyst for the French adoption of their decimal measurement system.
Because of Jefferson the US had the first decimal system of any type in its currency thanks to Jefferson, predating the metric system.
So please add this quote to your list:
⦠every branch to the same decimal ratio, thus bringing the calculations of the principal affairs of
life within the arithmetic of every man who can multiply and divide plain numbers.
- Thomas Jefferson
Why yes. Funny you should ask that. .It was one of his black projects for the US government to use on TOR.
Book it.
In my visit to Montecello, the factoid that impressed me most was the meat ration of his workers (yes, slaves). It was half a pound a week! Three quarter pounder burgers are routinely on the menu now a days. Most of us work in air conditioned offices clicking keyboards and mouse. Even the blue collar workers have so many machines assisting them it is practically a walk in the park compared to the work done by Teejay's workers. But they made do with just half a pound of meat!
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
I got your higgs boson right here.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Not sure if alluding to your penis as being the size of a sub-atomic particle is REALLY the way to go on this.
THL phish sticks
The Higgs bosun is an elementary particle in the standard model. It can't decay into anything, and it can't transmute into another elementary particle, like a quark or photon.
I knew this would show sooner or later. Yeah, according to our standards, he was an ass for owning other humans even though he should have known it was wrong to do so.
Guess what? Three hundred years from now you might be remembered as an ass who actually drove around in a big thing which continuously generated carbon dioxide even though you should have known it was wrong to do so.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
He fathered children from a slavewoman. There is no evidence that he treated her any different than family.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sally_Hemings
He was also opposed to slavery, but did not think the south could handle integration and continued to own slaves.
Jefferson DID know slavery was wrong and made many public statements to that effect and attempted on several occasions to end it in America or in Virginia. But his reputation is forever tarnished because he did not free his own slaves whom he knew to be wrongly held in bondage.
In 300 years fertility will be like a light switch. Turn it on and off as needed. People will look back at abortion as an unbelievable horror because they won't be able to understand the concept of an unwanted pregnancy.
It isn't like slavery was invented in the US. People were held in slavery since the beginning of time and still are in certain parts of the world. Heck even the 13th amendment allows it as a punishment.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
There is no evidence Jefferson ever raped a slave.
There is much more evidence that in an age of slave maltreatment and subhuman living conditions, Thom treated those in his care with the kindness that he would hirelings. More so, in fact. The slaves quarters, nicely designed along with Monticello, were engineered as nicely as a working mans house could be expected to be. His Mistress/slave had her own "apartment" and bore him a child that he cared to send to college. His "slaves" were taught skills not often relegated to slaves or indentured servants . From fine furniture making to advanced agriculture from mechanics to various sundry other crafts, Thoms knowledge poured into them. Remember, this was a man so impressed with Jesus Christ's character, that he edited down the bible to only include Christ's input so that his life could be seen as a whole for philosophical reasons. Google " Jefferson Bible". We can conclude only that Jefferson liked the Negro ladies and cared enough about Negroes to treat them as well as everyman. The kindness in this, you will note , is that his "slaves" didn't have to put up with the inhuman bullshit their fellow slaves did at other owners hands. Turning a slave loose back then was no panacea. The slave had to be ready to operate in a white world and have almost independent means. I commend Jefferson as a humanitarian activist and refute the general disinformation spread by opportunists victimizing the gullible. Liars have to cover up and hide, the truth can walk around naked all day.
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
Uhm, yeah, the realization that slaves weren't in for a better time of it, being free and on their own must've set in at some point, just like it is for you, right now. Then all his other activities regarding slavery, make more sense now. uhm hmm.
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
Monticello is really worth a visit. I thought the clock at the main entrance to the building was fascinating. It uses weights that look like cannon balls to power the mechanism. However, there wasn't enough room for the weights to descend downward to allow the clock to run for a full week at a time. Jefferson's solution? Cut holes in the floor and allow the weights to travel down into the cellar / basement area. He decided to leave the weights exposed because boxing them in would have blocked some of the windows. However, by leaving them exposed he was able to make additional use of them - he marked the days of the week on the wall, so that the position of the weight showed the day of the week.
It's also interesting that the clock has two faces - one on the interior of the house, and the other above the main entrance on the exterior. Jefferson decided that the exterior face should only have an hour hand. Now, the reasoning given by the tour guides is that the slaves and farm hands didn't need to know the minute, only the hour - precision to the minute wasn't necessary for them. However, the more I've thought about it, I think Jefferson had a more practical reason in mind. With two hands, and from a far distance, it's difficult to make out which is the hour and which is the minute. With just an hour hand it would be easier to tell the time from a very far distance. That fits in more with his sense of invention and practicality.
Better known as 318230.
If the Texas School Board Association had its way, school pupils in Texas would never hear of Jefferson. Instead, they'd learn how great a contributor to America was (wait for it...) Phyllis Schlafly.
It is truly a strange world in which we live.
All the world's an analog stage, and digital circuits play only bit parts.
no vampire hunting? not even as a hobby?
His point is that this Separation protects religion from the state as much as the state from religion. The distinction he drew was between "actions" and "opinions", one of which is open to reason, debate and consensus, and the other only to the individual's conscience. Would that we made the same distinction between "science" and "creation", but then we'd have nothing left to talk about on /.
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
Absolutely. However, evidence suggests that this was not the case with Thomas Jefferson. Sally Hemings went with him to France where slavery was illegal and if she desired she could have left him and remained in France. She chose to stay by his side. That their relationship had to be secret during their lifetimes is tragic, and we can never know the full story. Evidence suggests Thomas Jefferson was a good man living in bad times.
He put his penis in a woman who did not have the legal right to consent or not.
She was a slave. Legal property. She did not have at the time any rights. Today she would have full protection under the Constitution, and today Jefferson would be a rapist. But today is not yesterday.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
along w the rest of the founders he was an avid supporter of growing hemp and smoking weed
and yes he was jailed in turkey for smuggling mandarin hemp seed
back in the day we didnt have no old school
He was also a non-Christian Deist at best, who perhaps accepted a Creator but considered Jesus merely a great philosopher. Reflecting those beliefs, late in life he penned what is now called the Jefferson Bible, his own personal rewrite of the New Testament which excluded what he termed the "mystical" elements but retained the ethical and philosophical teachings of Jesus which he admired. Allegations of atheism apparently dogged him throughout his political career, and he was quite keen to keep his true existential beliefs to himself; after he penned his Bible, he sent a copy to a trusted friend, who proved to be not so trustworthy and shared it with others in Britain, causing Jefferson much anxiety that it would be publicized widely in America.
It becomes quite a bit more difficult to swallow claims that the United States were founded as a Christian nation when pivotal Thomas Jefferson was anything but. Given his minority beliefs, it also becomes easier to understand why "tyranny of the majority" was such a concern. In large part we got the Representative form of democracy that we have because Jefferson himself feared what an unrestricted "democratic" majority would do to people like him. I for one am glad that Jefferson was a closeted outcast; had he been more "transparent" about his own beliefs we might very well have wound up enduring something much more like the theocracy that some Christians claim we should have had.
It's not the size that matters. It's how massive it is.
You are welcome on my lawn.
It's hemp BRAKE, not break.
OP got it wrong.
He put his penis in a woman who did not have the legal right to consent or not. He abused his position of power as a slaveowner (which is another issue altogether) to have sex with a slave. In no case did this woman have any legal protection to object. You can argue whether she loved him or not. That is unknown. Would she still have had sex with him if he didn't own her and she had full citizenship rights?
In any case, he is clearly a rapist. These morals should have been evident even centuries ago.
Until very recently in human history, the vast majority of women were first the property of their fathers, and then the property of the man their father gave them to, called her husband, who could put his penis in her without her having any legal right to consent or not. That is, if she wasn't just taken from her father or husband by someone with the power to do so.
Many women are still in this position today. Your outrage would be better targeted on their predicament, instead of on a man with few competitors for liberating mankind from oppression.
Wasn't the declaration signed on the 3rd?
It was first read to the people on the 4th, and thus celebrations happen on that day, but the actual signing was the 3rd...
Maybe in some western and some Asian civilizations this would be true. But in some civilizations in the Americas, particularly the Haudenosaunee, women were not only not property of anyone, they held equal rights, were the only ones able to own property, and Clan Mothers decided which men would go off and do their bidding.
That may very well be the cause, but unless the Haudenosaunee made up a sizeable fraction of the worlds population, "the majority" still stands.
And your characterization of Haudenosaunee women as holding "equal rights" isn't correct on the face of it, except in the Orwellian sense: "All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others". You describe them as having rights their men folk did not.
I like when nerds try to have opinions about something other than technology. It reminds you of why that word still carries some pejorative meaning.
This can easily be solved by looking at a dictionary. Please do so.
When I compare the group of people who started the United States of America, to the current crop of so-called "leaders" in the congress and the White House, I can't help but notice the following:
1. The current crop of "American Leaders" are made up of rent-seekers, such as lawyers
There is no "inventor" amongst the current crop of "American Leaders"
2. Very few of the founding fathers of America were rent-seekers. In fact, many of them were inventors
Thomas Jefferson wasn't the only inventor in the group, btw
Ben Franklin was another famous inventor
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
I knew this would show sooner or later. Yeah, according to our standards, he was an ass for owning other humans even though he should have known it was wrong to do so.
There were plenty of people who were opposed to slavery in the Eighteenth century (Samuel Johnson springs to mind), so you can't use cultural relativism as an excuse for him.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Jefferson DID know slavery was wrong and made many public statements to that effect and attempted on several occasions to end it in America or in Virginia. But his reputation is forever tarnished because he did not free his own slaves whom he knew to be wrongly held in bondage.
If there's one thing worse than believing in slavery and holding slaves, it's not believing in slavery and still holding slaves.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Too bad it didn't happen. It'd have stopped trouble they cause nowadays (gangsta wannabe crap those punks do).
Always good to see reminders that the US is the land of the free, if you're a rich white Christian male.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
He put his penis in a woman who did not have the legal right to consent or not.
She was a slave. Legal property. She did not have at the time any rights. Today she would have full protection under the Constitution, and today Jefferson would be a rapist. But today is not yesterday.
So much for your Constitution then.
Seriously, why do you Americans go on as if the Constitution was the word of God and a statement of Eternal Truth, when it allowed for things like slavery?
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Your outrage would be better targeted on their predicament, instead of on a man with few competitors for liberating mankind from oppression.
Jefferson has few competitors in human history for sheer hypocrisy. Liberty without fraternity or equality is just the freedom to make money unscrupulously
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
He was also opposed to slavery, but did not think the south could handle integration and continued to own slaves.
That is like being "opposed" to child labour, but cheerfully employing eight year olds to sweep your chimney for pennies.
The phrase to describe this is "rank fucking hypocrisy.".
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
> He also raped a slave (at least per current definitions).
Good thing you were there and can now inform us it was not love. Congrats on the time machine.
Having sex with a slave is the same as having sex with a child. There can, by definition, be no informed consent.
If he had loved her that much he should have freed her.
At least Medieval barons exercising their droit de signeur weren't bleating hypocritically on about freedom and equality while they raped their victims.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Being a relatively humane slave owner is just being a slave owner with added hypocrisy.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
You're implying that rape and slavery are wrong. What a naive view of the history of humanity.
There is a difference between describing the facts of history and making considered moral judgements upon those facts, you stupid twat.
You're implying that rape and slavery are right. The vast majority of civilised people would disagree with you. Human beings are not mindless ants condemned to repeat the same behaviour endlessly.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
If you always get your science news from /. you will always be a few seconds behind everyone else
OMFG the unspeakable horror. For those few seconds, I am deeply unfashionable. People are probably laughing at me on my facebook page and posting amusingly misspelled tweets about me.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
It's not the size that matters. It's how massive it is.
In that case I've got a black hole in my pants. Oh, wait...
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
In a world where the only aid you can give is by buying the slave to keep them from a harsh end, I can see him still hating slavery.
The hypocrisy is failure to acknowledge that , while clinging to the trendy bullshit that we know is political cover up that only benefits
charlatans like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. Use your head for something besides disinformation storage for the status quo.
I'd have bought slaves, just as surely as I have a houseful of dogs that I've rescued. Same principle. Jefferson was a man of means and could afford it.
To turn that into something bad and spread it to soil his reputation instead of shine it is just evil.
Now you can set the next gullible, public school brainwashed schmo, straight.
Now Lincoln on the other hand was a racist atheist prick, speaking of popular disinformation. I wonder why Jackson doesn't denounce him for his view that physical differences will keep the black man from ever being equal to the white man OR his suggestion to congress that we ship all the blacks to South America.( Rejected by both congress and South American countries)
I'd like to thank my old History/Government teacher for being a real history detective and producing ancient books and documents that showed me back in the 80's that most of what we are taught is just convenient bullshit.
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
Please remain civil.
No, I am implying there is no right and wrong, just arbitrary moral values being forced on social groups through conditioning.
And the majority is always right, of course.
From a certain point of view, accepting what we are as nature has created us is a more healthy attitude than repressing our desires in the name of an artificial higher moral standing forced on us through indoctrination. Now, if you'd rather indulge in self-deception to persuade yourself you're better than animals or that men that came before you, that's your own choice, but that doesn't mean it's the only acceptable way for men to live.
So much for your Constitution then. Seriously, why do you Americans go on as if the Constitution was the word of God and a statement of Eternal Truth, when it allowed for things like slavery?
The Constitution is not supposed to be an immutable document, otherwise the authors would not have allowed for amendments. It is not the word of any god. It reflected the state of society at the time. Society changed and the Constitution was amended and reinterpreted. If it had tried to ban slavery it would never have been ratified and there would be no USA.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
The state of Virginia passed a law specifically so that Jefferson (and I believe one of the other founders) couldn't afford to free his slaves. They made it mandatory for any slave owner wishing to free a slave to provide sufficient money to support that slave for the rest of their life, the supposed 'justification' being that since blacks were incapable of working without continual instruction and supervision any freed slave would need to be financially supported in perpetuity.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
Whereas in the Old Testament, having a wife and concubines was commonplace. Some men had more than one wife. The New Testament didn't change that, either, with no real mention of plural marriage either way.
"You might as well get your son a ticket to hell as give him a five string banjo." -unknown minister
Isn't it horrible when hypocrites liberate mankind?
Amidst all the cheers and applause for Jefferson, I dare to offer my opposing view.
As governor of Virginia, he failed to properly defend the state's armory and then fled in a cowardly fashion when the redcoats showed up. In effect, he handed over the weapons and ammunition needed for his state's defense to the enemy, without offering any resistance.
As secretary of state, he was utterly disloyal to President Washington and sided with France against the government of which he was a part. Fortunately, Washington, Hamilton, and Adams prevented Jefferson from doing too much damage to American foreign policy.
As president, Jefferson stripped the Navy of its capital ships at a time when Britain and France were most threatening. Then he paid off the Barbary pirates and set free those which his naval captains had captured... even ordering pirate ships to be returned. Later, the country was so poorly defended that his successor had to flee the capital to avoid capture during the War of 1812.
As president, his policy of shutting off trade with Britain and creating an economic depression did more damage than what the British had attempted to do. During his second term, he so totally lost interest in performing the duties of the presidency that he effectively turned over the operations of the government to James Madison; Madison was the de facto president in 1807 and 1808, before he was elected in 1808.
Jefferson may have had some private virtues, though I cannot name them. But he was cowardly in battle, disloyal to the president to whom he'd sworn allegiance, unwilling or unable to perform the essential duties of his office, and so ignorant of economic principles that he did more damage to the nation's economy than did our mortal enemies.
Now Lincoln on the other hand was a racist atheist prick
Maybe he was that, I don't know - not from USA, so I would not be expected to necessarily have knowledge of Lincoln any more than you would be expected to know of Urho Kekkonen (or even that, Kekkonen was president between 1956–1982) - but what I'd like to know is why did you include being "atheist" in what clearly was meant to be a set of negative qualities? What do you have against being an atheist?
In capitalist USA corporations control the government.
Because I never heard of the atheist yet , who wasn't set to be a bigger pain in the ass than a busload of evangelical Christians proselytizing their short sited crap too. Absent the purpose handed to others in life who defer to a higher power, the atheist fills his empty space with smug attention whoring lacking both thought and substance. We could always take a poll of people who are neither Christian or atheist, asking who are the bigger sphincters, but, my friend , we already know.....
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
What a load of crap - please leave my ass...
And you can take that as my reply representing my view, as neither Christian nor atheist (although used to be), of your BS.
In capitalist USA corporations control the government.
The reader will note, no thought or substance went into the above reply as predicted. Frankly, the rest of it , went as predicted, as well.
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!