Twelve little words gone missing

From the boys and girls over at Scrutiny Hooligans:

{quote: in part}

I can’t believe I missed this until just now.

Many of you may have read about or seen the footage of Code Pink’s protest during the shrub's address at a swearing-in ceremony for new American citizens that was held at Monticello on July 4th. If not, well, it’s on YouTube.

Looking past the protest, the shrub quoted Thomas Jefferson's last letter, which was written to Roger C. Weightman, during his speech. The letter was sent as a regret that Jefferson wouldn’t be able to attend a 50th anniversary celebration of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, which turned out to be the very day that Jefferson (as well as his Presidential predecessor John Adams) shuffled off this mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin’ choir invisible. From the shrub's address:

Thomas Jefferson understood that these rights do not belong to Americans alone. They belong to all mankind. And he looked to the day when all people could secure them. On the 50th anniversary of America’s independence, Thomas Jefferson passed away. But before leaving this world, he explained that the principles of the Declaration of Independence were universal. In one of the final letters of his life, he wrote, “May it be to the world, what I believe it will be — to some parts sooner, to others later, but finally to all — the Signal of arousing men to burst the chains, and to assume the blessings and security of self-government.”

Kind of gets you right there, doesn’t it?

Of course, anyone familiar with Thomas Jefferson’s letters would have been correct to detect something missing from that quote. It appears that Bush’s speech writers had edited out twelve words…

This is the full quote from Jefferson’s letter to Weightman.

Note the boldface emphasis:

"May it be to the world what I believe it will be, (to some parts sooner, to others later, but finally to all), the Signal of arousing men to burst the chains, under which monkish ignorance and superstition had persuaded them to bind themselves, and to assume the blessings and security of self government."

Part of me would like to think that the real reason those words were excised from Jefferson’s quote was because during his initial rehearsal of this speech the shrub kept saying “monkey” instead of “monkish” and couldn’t keep himself from laughing uncontrollably (because, like most men of his ilk, he thinks that farts and monkeys are absolutely frickin’ hilarious!), and his speech writer simply grabbed his red pen and prevented the “leader of the free world” from making an even bigger ass out of himself. But it seems to me that the real reason the words of one of our founding fathers were censored should be obvious to anyone who’s been paying attention over the last seven-odd years.

I think that Mojo Nixon said it best when he said “You know, Thomas Jefferson’s gonna be mighty pissed when he finds out about this…”

{end quote}

(Dispatches from the Culture Wars)

*****

I can not believe I missed this until now either!