Joe Scarborough: “I thank the gentleman. And revisionism occurs all the time, and we are told that our Founding Fathers were racists and…”

“I thank the gentleman. And revisionism occurs all the time, and we are told that our Founding Fathers were racists and bigots and that they were radicals and that is--you know, that did not happen before 1994. It is very interesting that Jefferson was the hero of liberals until 1994, and then a group of us got elected quoting Jefferson, saying the government that governs least governs best, and suddenly he was not a useful hero. In fact, we had people actually writing op-eds this past year saying that the Jefferson Memorial needed to be taken down brick by brick by brick because he was a racist and because he was a radical. Mr. Speaker, that just shows how desperate revisionists are. They would say the same thing of Abraham Lincoln if we quoted Lincoln too much, and I want to quote Lincoln because I am sure that if a President, sitting President today, said these words, he or she would be called a radical. Abraham Lincoln said this in 1863 in a proclamation. He said we have grown in numbers, wealth and power as no other Nation has ever grown, but we have forgotten God. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace and too proud to pray to the God that made us. My gosh. If we said that, we would be called radicals, we would be called extremists, and now what they will tell us is that this is about religion, that you are trying to make everybody a Christian or a Jew or a Muslim. It is not the case.…”