Dr. Gingrich blows hemp history orals; flunks Washington and Jefferson 101

The Internet is buzzing about the Newt Gingrich comment in Concord, NH, Jan. 4,

"I think Jefferson or George Washington would have rather strongly discouraged you from growing marijuana, and their techniques of dealing with it would have been more violent."

I was there! I heard the answer, and I was shocked at the blunder!
This was a bigtime inaccurate answer to a question from a student about Washington and Jefferson growing marijuana at Mount Vernon and Monticello, and why it is illegal today. The student used the government approved term for the hemp plant to avoid confusing Dr. Gingrich. There is no record of Washington or Jefferson growing any psycho-active varieties of the hemp plant (i.e. marijuana) or using it to get high. The student's point had nothing to do with getting high. The student, Patrick Fitzgerald, a member of the New Paltz, NY slashroot collective, was participating with Students for Sensible Drug Policy at the College Convention 2012 at the convention center in Concord.

Here's an excellent 90 second video of official guides at Mount Vernon providing a tour explaining hemp production under George Washington's expert and profitable management. It made me wonder if Newt Gingrich ever did "the tourist thing" and visited Mount Vernon while he served in Congress.

Sam Stein at Huffington Post provided a more detailed report of the whole exchange.

Should Gingrich have known that Washington and Jefferson cultivated hemp and would never threaten cultivators?
Federal law has forbade "hemp" cultivation, even the non-psychoative kind grown by the founding fathers (since it "looks" like marijuana) since 1937. With no hemp industry in the last 84 years (except for World War II, see "Hemp for Victory") we could expect that many Americans and Members of Congress would be ignorant of the fact that marijuana, then called hemp, was widely cultivated in 18th and 19th century America.

Newt's Ph.D. from Tulane University was in Modern European History, so if his study of history ignored early U.S. history to favor his academic specialty, his ignorance of Jefferson and Washington would be perfectly excusable.

But in his campaign stump speeches he purports to be an expert on the founding fathers: what they believed, how virtuous and industrious they were, how they knew the value of a profit and how to make one, etc. I may be used to an unusually high standard in History professors since I took courses with Roger Lane at Haverford College.

But I think it would be unlikely that a well educated historian concerned about the lessons of Revolutionary times would be ignorant that hemp was a widespread major crop in America, one of the "Naval Stores" (cordage, tar, pitch and timber) that were important to build wooden 18th century sailing ships for trade and war.

In 2010 Newt Gingrich wrote two novels about George Washington and the Revolutionary War. Perhaps he is not a particularly curious researcher.

Or perhaps he was just trying to B.S. his clever way around a question that he want to sneer at.

As it happened, seven hours later on Wednesday evening, another SSDP student, Brian Broom-Peltz, caught Governor Romney leaving his rally in Peterborough, NH to ask him about "industrial hemp." Governor Romney said he didn't know what that was. Oh well, maybe if Brian had said industrial marijuana or cannabis hemp or something else, the governor would have made the connection.