Why does this happen?
I just don't see how you can take off Jefferson as an influencer of the country's intellectual origins.
Because Jefferson says things like:
Educate and inform the whole mass of the people... They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty.
He who knows nothing is closer to the truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors.
I am mortified to be told that, in the United States of America, the sale of a book can become a subject of inquiry, and of criminal inquiry too.
If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.
To compel a man to furnish funds for the propagation of ideas he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.
And that SCARES our government!