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09 November 2015
Ben Carson's Pants on Fire claim that no signer of the Declaration of Independence held office & 6 of 4,129 Ben Carson is furious that CNN quoted Ben Carson 8&9NOV15
ben carson r tb won't be with us much longer, politically speaking. I wish him health and longevity, and really really hope he finds some extremely remote, isolated place to spend the rest of his days once his campaign collapses and the only known to be true fact about him is he is one crazy s.o.b! Let's start with this piece from +PolitiFact on carson defending his lack of experience hold an elected office, followed by Daily Kos Recommended loaded with ben carsonisities.......
"Every signer of the Declaration of Independence had no federal elected office experience."
— Ben Carson on Wednesday, November 4th, 2015 in an edited Facebook post
By Louis Jacobson on Sunday, November 8th, 2015 at 10:30 a.m.
John Trumbull's
1819 painting of the drafting of the Declaration of Independence depicts
the five-man drafting committee presenting their work to the Congress.
The original hangs in the U.S. Capitol rotunda.
This is the revised version of Ben Carson's Facebook post, with the edited line highlighted.
Ben Carson -- currently the top-polling Republican presidential candidate -- posted a message on Facebook on Nov. 4
to rebut critics who say his lack of experience in elected office would
be a serious obstacle to his serving as an effective president.
Soon after it was posted, we began hearing from readers asking us to check one of his claims.
"You are absolutely right — I have no political experience," Carson
wrote in the initial version of his post. "The current Members of
Congress have a combined 8,700 years of political experience. Are we
sure political experience is what we need. Every signer of the
Declaration of Independence had no elected office experience. What they
had was a deep belief that freedom is a gift from God. They had a
determination to rise up against a tyrannical King. They were willing to
risk all they had, even their lives, to be free."
After our friends at the Washington Post Fact Checker reviewed
Carson’s claim that "every signer of the Declaration of Independence
had no elected office experience" and gave it Four Pinocchios -- the
column’s worst rating -- the quote was changed. It now reads, "Every
signer of the Declaration of Independence had no federal elected office experience" (emphasis added).
We were already looking into Carson’s initial Facebook comment when
the wording change was made. We’ll address both versions here. The signers had 'no elected office experience'
Many of the signers of the Declaration of Independence had held
elective office before joining the Continental Congress, which produced
the declaration. We found a long list, so take a deep breath before you
start reading. They include:
• John Adams. Elected to Massachusetts Assembly, 1770; attended First Continental Congress, 1774-1776.
• Thomas Jefferson. Represented Albemarle County as a delegate in the Virginia House of Burgesses, 1769-1775
• Benjamin Franklin. Philadelphia councilman, 1748; elected to the Pennsylvania Assembly, 1751.
• John Hancock. Elected to the Boston Assembly,
1766; president of the provincial congress of Massachusetts, c. 1773;
elected to the Continental Congress, 1774, and then president of the
congress in 1775.
• Samuel Adams. Elected to Massachusetts Assembly, 1765; delegate to the First Continental Congress, 1774.
• Elbridge Gerry. Elected to Massachusetts Legislature, 1773; provincial Congress, 1774.
• Roger Sherman. Elected to Connecticut General
Assembly, representing New Milford, 1755-1758 and 1760-1761; elected to
various offices representing New Haven in the 1760s and 1770s; elected
to the Continental Congress starting in 1774.
• Caesar Rodney. Elected to Delaware Colonial
Assembly, 1758-1770 and 1771-1776; delegate to the Stamp Act Congress,
1765; elected to the Continental Congress, 1774.
• George Taylor. Elected to Pennsylvania provincial assembly, 1764-69; elected to Continental Congress, 1775.
• John Morton. Elected to Pennsylvania provincial
assembly, 1756-1775; delegate to the Stamp Act Congress, 1765; president
of the provincial assembly, 1775.
• George Ross. Elected to Pennsylvania provincial assembly, 1768-1776; Elected to Continental Congress, 1774.
• James Wilson. Elected to Pennsylvania provincial congress, 1775; elected to the Continental Congress, 1775.
• Thomas McKean. Member of the Delaware Assembly,
1762-79; Delegate to the Stamp Act Congress, 1765; delegate to the
Continental Congress, 1774.
• Matthew Thornton. Member of the New Hampshire provincial assembly, 1758-1762.
• William Whipple. Elected to New Hampshire provincial congress, 1775 and 1776.
• Stephen Hopkins. Speaker of the Rhode Island Assembly,1750s; member of the Continental Congress beginning in 1774.
• Lewis Morris. Member of New York provincial legislature; delegate to the Continental Congress, 1775.
• Philip Livingston. Alderman, New York City.
• Carter Braxton. Virginia House of Burgesses, 1770-1785; delegate to the Continental Congress, 1774-75.
• Thomas Nelson Jr. Member of the House of Burgesses, 1774; Virginia provincial convention, 1775.
• Francis Lightfoot Lee. Member of the Virginia House of Burgesses 1758-1775; elected to Continental Congress, 1775.
• Benjamin Harrison. Elected to Virginia House of Burgesses, 1764; member of the Continental Congress, 1774.
• George Wythe. Member of the Virginia House of Burgesses, 1755-65.
• William Hooper. Elected to general assembly of North Carolina, 1773; member of Continental Congress, 1774-1776.
• Joseph Hewes. Member of the colonial assembly of
North Carolina, 1766-1775; member of new provincial assembly, 1775;
elected to Continental Congress, 1774.
• John Hart. Member of the New Jersey Assembly, 1761-1771; member of provincial assembly, 1775; elected to the Continental Congress, 1776.
• William Williams. Town clerk, selectman, provincial representative, elected state legislator, delegate to colonial conferences, 1770s.
• William Paca. Delegate to the Maryland Legislature, 1771; elected to Continental Congress, 1774.
That’s at least 28 of the 56 signers -- about half, and we were conservative in who we counted. The real number may be higher.
Either way, Carson’s original claim, that "every signer of the
Declaration of Independence had no elected office experience," is way,
way off. The signers had 'no federal elected office experience'
The edit Carson made to the Facebook post doesn’t help his case,
since there was no federal government before the Declaration of
Independence was signed. This makes his entire claim illogical, experts
say,
"Of course they did not have federal elected office experience
because there was no federal government at the time -- we were a British
colony," said Michael Gerhardt, scholar in residence at the National
Constitution Center and professor of constitutional law at the
University of North Carolina.
"It does not make sense to use the term ‘federal’ when no federal
government existed," agreed Danielle Allen, a political theorist and
author of Our Declaration: A Reading of the Declaration of Independence in Defense of Equality.
"The signers of the declaration very often had leading political
experience in their colony or, as they called them, in their
‘countries.’ "
Jan Lewis, a professor of history at Rutgers University-Newark and the author of The Pursuit of Happiness: Family and Values in Jefferson’s Virginia, finds Carson’s claim ridiculous.
"It makes about as much sense as saying none of them had been to the
moon," Lewis said. "Of course they hadn't, because it was an
impossibility at that time. No one could possibly serve in the federal
government before there was a federal government, at least in the
absence of time travel."
Carson’s staff did not respond to an inquiry for this article. Our ruling
Both the initial and the revised versions of Carson’s claim are far
off base. About half or more of the declaration’s signers had held
elective office previously, a reality that severely undercuts Carson’s
overall point that the drafting of the Declaration of Independence
showed how a lack of political experience can produce landmark political
achievements. As for his later addition of "federal" to the comment,
this makes the claim nonsensical, since there was no federal government
prior to the signing of the declaration.
We rate Carson’s claim Pants on Fire.
Ben Carson, Facebook post, Nov. 4, 2015
USHistory.org, Signers of the Declaration of Independence, accessed Nov. 6, 2015 Washington Post Fact Checker, "Ben Carson’s absurd notion that the Founding Fathers had ‘no elected office experience,’ " Nov. 5, 2015
Email interview with Emily Sneff, research manager of the Declaration Resources Project at Harvard University, Nov. 6, 2015
Email interview with Andrew J. O'Shaughnessy, vice president of the
Thomas Jefferson Foundation and professor of history at the University
of Virginia, Nov. 6, 2015
Email interview with Michael Gerhardt, scholar in residence at the
National Constitution Center and professor of constitutional law at the
University of North Carolina, Nov. 6, 2015
Email interview with Jan Lewis, professor of history at Rutgers University-Newark and the author of The Pursuit of Happiness: Family and Values in Jefferson’s Virginia, Nov. 6, 2015
Email interview with Danielle Allen, political theorist and author of Our Declaration: A Reading of the Declaration of Independence in Defense of Equality, Nov. 6, 2015
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