Thomas Jefferson Will Burn Your Bibles

The other day, I hazily recalled reading in high school US History textbook that women buried their Bibles for fear that Thomas Jefferson would do something awful to the Good Book. This recollection led me to googling the phrase that appears as the title of this post and discovering on this page that this craziness actually happened in the Presidential Election of 1800. It also led me to putting together an attack

Dr. Timothy Dwight, the President of Yale, predicted in (unfortunately) a sermon that an America under the Democratic-Republican candidate would see all Bibles burned, women and children forced into legal prostitution, and the country would basically be turned into Western France (there has always been someone in this country who didn't like France).

Dwight was obviously wrong. Jefferson was elected and served two terms. Scripture was safe. Women and children were undefiled. France had its own issues to take care of and therefore did not ideologically colonize the States. TJ went down as one of the most influential leaders and although his standing has deservedly taken a hit, he's not Dwight's harbinger of a Christian dystopian nightmarescape.. I mean, he's basically a villain in Act II of Hamilton, but he's a supercool villain.

I mention this bizarre little episode to demonstrate that we don't have the market cornered on crazy doomsday prophecies around election time. This kind of nonsense has been going on for over 200 years in this country. It happens almost every election. I remember people predicting that 2012 would be a hedonistic Mad Max-style existence if Barack Obama were elected. All of which is to say don't panic about tomorrow.

Don't get me wrong. I have very strong opinions about this election that you can fairly easily parse out if you go back in my archives. How you vote is important. But fear has been given way too much free reign this year. Remember Dwight was wrong when he freaked out about Jefferson. Don't panic.