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Samizdata quote of the day – President Thomas Jefferson edition “[A] wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicities.”
– From Thomas Jefferson’s first inaugural address.
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I find Jefferson an enigma. How very much I agree with this statement, if only that were what DC or Whitehall became! Yet, as he was speaking these beautiful words of liberty, back at his house hundreds of people were being injured at his command, had no ability to regulate their own pursuits and industry, and he, Jefferson, took all the fruits of labor that these men and women had earned.
How can one man hold in his head such amazingly profound ideas of liberty, while in his personal life pursue such dastardly ends in utter contempt of liberty? I really don’t understand it. For some there is an argument that that is just the way it was, that it never crossed their mind that slavery was wrong. But for Jefferson, his writings betray his struggle with the cause, something that only condemns him so much the more since ignorance is not his defense.
So much of what he said makes me smile, and so much of what he did makes me groan in pain. To me he was a man with amazing principles that he was very ready to toss aside. Not just here, but consider Jefferson, small government constitutionalist, and the Louisiana purchase, something that he had no constitutional authority to do. Even if it was ultimately a great thing.
And yet the words themselves speak for themselves. Their greatness and value is intrinsic no matter the voice that sounded them. I think we recently had a discussion about pithy sayings and how somehow the identity of the speaker gives them extra value. When I hear that line of thinking, this sort of thing from Jefferson (or Washington or many others) is what I think of.
‘No matter what they tell you there is good and evil in everyone.’ said Van Morrison in his song ‘Who Was That Masked Man’ on the ‘Veedon Fleece’ album.
Jefferson: sometimes referred to as the Apostle of Liberty he was a slave owner. How to square that circle? I can’t do it.
Towering intellect that he was, he did not foresee that men could injure each other by misuse of pronouns, and so left the door open.
Whilst what Fraser says is all true, I never feel the obsess over Jefferson-the-man, preferring to just ponder his words. Karl Popper essentially defined the rational scientific method & argued for open society, yet he should have pondered some of his own political theories and falsified them. Yet none of that invalidates what he wrote & the same applies to Jefferson. It is a measure of how completely the ‘enemy’ have chosen the battlefields on which we are forced to fight, even those inside our own heads.
Fraser Orr said:
What do you base your theories of Jefferson’s “dastardy” on? Did you know the man, personally, observe him in life?
Or, do you only know him from third-hand accounts, ones that were picked through by people with agendas to tear down his legacy?
I have dug through the evidence of his supposed “relationship” with Sally Hemings. There isn’t a hell of a lot of direct evidence there, and a whole lot of supposition. Yes, her descendants show genetic links to the Jefferson lineage, but there’s not a damn thing to provably show directly that it stemmed from a liaison between the two. The influx of genes could have come earlier than Jefferson, later than Jefferson, and it could have come from another Jefferson entirely. We don’t know, not in any way definitively.
As well, there’s the minor problem of expecting someone to throw out their entire upbringing and then go against the grain of the surrounding culture. I doubt seriously that you or I would instantly “reform” ourselves to immediately change in the face of a similar set of bedrock changes to our cultural programming and belief systems. Jefferson grew up in a slave society, one that assumed certain things that are far more consonant with the mass of human history than the ones we have about human liberty and dignity. The fact that he even came up with the ideas he did is the marvel, not that he failed to instantly put them into effect. I doubt that he even saw the conflict between his ideals and his reality until a good deal of time had passed, and I think that we’d be the same if something came along that shifted such basic assumptions in our lives.
This bullshit surrounding the lack of inhuman perfection in men like Jefferson is so much sophistry; they seek to discredit the man and his ideas by doing this, and you’ve fallen right into their trap. I’m not particularly disturbed by Jeffersons failings; he was human, as am I. I make no profession of perfection, and I don’t expect any more from him. Instead, I marvel at the fact that his ideas grew like a flower in a heap of dung, and respect him for having had them.
I would suggest that you examine the roots of your thoughts, and consider carefully the motivations of the people who put those into your head. “Oh, dear… The Founders weren’t plaster saints!! That makes everything they did wrong!!!”
Never ceases to amaze me how the self-professed “Bright” fall into these traps. Do you not recognize these things, or think about what you’ve been told, questioning the intent and motivation of those telling you these things? Do you not ever go and actually look at the evidence, which really isn’t all that good in Jefferson’s case? It ain’t exactly news that slave owners interbred with their slaves; it was ever thus. We don’t have certain proof that it was Jefferson himself, there being a multitude of other ways that genetic influx could have happened. If it did–I’ve seen some material that calls into question the interpretation of the genetic markers, and the credibility of the people doing the gene analysis.
Yet, you excoriate Jefferson. That says rather more about you than you realize.
This is an odd sort of cultural relativism that some people seem to have with regard to the past. Interestingly, many of the same people think it fine to criticize someone who grew up in another culture in the present – for instance, a person who grew up in a culture which practiced FGM. Regardless, morality is not merely what a culture or society believes it is. This is because you can coherently ask “Is what this culture practices moral?”. For instance, if a culture practices slavery, we can ask “Is slavery moral?” and this is a meaningful question. It is not like asking “Is doing the right thing moral?” or a similar question. Thus, regardless of what you think is actually moral, a culture practicing some activity does not mean that that activity is moral. If a person practices an immoral activity, it is often reasonable to criticize them. If the immoral activity is slight, criticizing it is moralistic. But in this case, slavery seems to be extraordinarily wrong. Certainly the kind of thing that it would be reasonable – indeed perhaps necessary – to criticize someone for.
I will also note that there is no dispute as to whether Jefferson practiced slavery. He most certainly did.
As to whether Jefferson’s activities are relevant to his ideas. They are certainly not. The ideas are either true or false on their own – we need not consider the man who espoused them. However, the quote had his name attached though, so it seems relevant to talk about him.
Yet, as he was speaking these beautiful words of liberty, back at his house hundreds of people were being injured at his command, had no ability to regulate their own pursuits and industry, and he, Jefferson, took all the fruits of labor that these men and women had earned.
Indeed. We British at the time liked to point out that some of the Founders owned slaves. To his immense credit, Washington (in my view a far greater man than Jefferson in terms of his own conduct) freed them in his will; Franklin freed them in his lifetime, and some, like Hamilton, did not own slaves in the first place.
I can recommend C Bradley Thompson on the topic of slavery and the actions of some of the Founders.
As Perry says, while I feel the force of the comment about Jefferson, one can also admire for all time the truths that Jefferson uttered, which apply as forcefully now as when he uttered them. He is a hero with large feet of clay.
Kirk writes: Yet, you excoriate Jefferson. That says rather more about you than you realize.
Does it? Kirk, if a Leftist had written your explanation for Jefferson’s ownership of slaves, you’d be calling it out as moral relativism. And rightly so.
Several of the Founders did not own slaves, or freed them, as I mentioned. The evils of slavery were appreciated at the time for what they were; the issue, as I see it, is that Jefferson had resigned himself to the idea that emancipation was very hard to do, and that it would tear part of the country apart. Well, he wasn’t wrong on that score.
After all, when Jefferson gave his address, Wilberforce and others in the UK were pushing to end the slave trade. Jefferson would presumably have been aware of the changes. Again, I suspect he thought the practicalities of ending chattel slavery were a big problem. And then came the cotton gin.….
Jefferson also said he knew slavery was wrong, but he simply didn’t know how to end it. The entire southern social system and economy was based on it, and even his own personal fortune and property, was inexorably tied in with it. He likened it to holding a tiger by the ears; one neither wants to keep on holding the tiger but one also cannot let it go.
As far as sleeping with Sally Hemmings, we know that one Jefferson did. That said, it is more likely that it was Thomas’ brother Peter. TJ wrote both privately and in letters that he detested the practice of masters sleeping with their slaves. It’s entirely possible that he did anyway, but I rather doubt it. But it is far more politically important to make TJ the one who slept with Sally Hemmings than a relative of his.
President Jefferson governed in line with his words – which allowed him to abolish all internal Federal taxes, there were no excise taxes (on whiskey and so on) again till the Civil War – it is often forgotten that taxes on whiskey stills (and other such) is one of the reasons that people left Scotland and Ireland to come to America in the 1700s, and was a reason for the American Revolution against the British Parliament (Parliament, not “the King”, imposed taxes) in 1776.
The ordinary men who fought in the American Revolution could not give a damn about No Taxation “Without Representation” – they wanted “No Taxation” (forget “Representation”) – and so were disgusted when Washington, really Alexander Hamilton, imposed a Whiskey Tax in 1794 (exactly the sort of thing they had fought against the British Parliament to end) – President Jefferson and his Treasury Secretary Albert Gallatin got the Congress to end all internal Federal taxation.
As for slavery – as Steven R points out, Jefferson repeatedly condemned it.
However, Jefferson also wrote, rightly or wrongly, that the races could not really live together after slavery was abolished – that the races (partly due to the history of slavery – partly due to other differences) would fight. And a mass expulsion, or mass killing (genocide), of black people was something he did NOT want to do.
The two countries that make up the island of Hispaniola bring some light to the discussion – in Haiti white people were indeed almost wiped out and the black people were reduced to slavery-by-another-name (forced labour on government projects – much as in Ancient China, the First Emperor and all that) by a brutal government, but in what is now the Dominican Republic history was very different – black and white Dominicans fought TOGETHER against domination by Haiti – and intermarried.
The Dominican Republic is far from perfect – but it is not Haiti.
It should be remembered that although President Jefferson kept a firm grip on government spending, which allowed him to get rid of all internal Federal taxes, he was not shy of spending money when an opportunity presented itself to save money in the future, by spending money now.
For example, Napoleon was desperate for money (gold – real money is a commodity such as gold or silver, that people value before-and-apart-from its use as money) and offered to sell land to the United States, just about doubling the size of the United States – President Jefferson agreed.
The reasoning of Jefferson was that Americans were expanding into these, lightly populated, areas anyway – so America could either buy the lands from powers such as France, or fight wars to take them – and buying the land was much less expensive than war.
The “Empire of Liberty” from “sea to shining sea” was the aim – and was finally achieved under President Polk (a Jeffersonian). Although by that time the great slavery problem has become far worse than in the time of Jefferson.
In the time of Jefferson Southern leaders agreed that slavery was against natural law (natural justice) – the issue was how to end it (without genocide and so on).
But by the mid 19th century Southern leaders were arguing that slavery was a “positive good”.
I’m with Kirk on this.
If anything, Jefferson is a bit too liberal for my liking. Although he governed as a libertarian, his writing is more populist/democratic than you might think. I understand he even expressed sympathy with the idea of women voting, albeit he concluded that the time wasn’t right.
If you’re looking for a villain, consider Andrew Jackson or Polk.
@Steven R
He likened it to holding a tiger by the ears; one neither wants to keep on holding the tiger but one also cannot let it go.
Question for you Steven. What would you do were you to find yourself in Jefferson’s position? Owner of a large plantation and hundreds of slaves? For Jefferson there are two questions: what should I do personally and what should I do governmentally. Perhaps as President or founding father the tiger was an impossible problem to solve. But it seems clear to me that he, personally, could have emancipated his slaves (in secret perhaps to save the wrath of his neighbors), sold off his farm and moved into a nice Yankee town with the proceeds. It isn’t like he was making a big profit on his farm, perhaps had he left and dedicated his time to, for example, writing books or architecture, he would not have spent his life in constant fear or bankruptcy or clouded with the taint of slavery.
Is that a huge change in his life? Yes, it is, but FFS he was keeping hundreds of slaves! It seems a different approach to life might well be appropriate.
Perhaps that doesn’t solve the problem for the country, but at least his hands would have been clean. And perhaps he could have served as an example that might have lead others to do likewise. Who knows, had he done so he could have lulled the tiger to sleep and allowed slavery to die slowly rather than in the bloodletting nightmare a generation after his death. Perhaps not, but hope springs eternal.
The subject of Sally Hemmings, it think we need a bit of a bigger picture. She was not just some farm girl he plucked off the estate for a night of fun and frolics. She lived with him for several years in Paris, and she became pregnant by him there when she was 16 years old and he thirty years her senior. She went on to bear him many children, and they seem to have had an ersatz relationship that lasted his whole lifetime during and subsequent to his ambassadorship in Paris. While in Paris, where slavery was illegal, he paid her (and her brother) a wage and there she could have self emancipated, but she chose to return to Virginia with him. What the nature of their relationship was I think is impossible to tell. Clearly exploitive, but Hemmings seems to have had a genuine affection for Jefferson and he her, perhaps in a stockholm syndrome kind of way.
The need to “defend” Jefferson from the accusation of the rape of Sally Hemmings seems a bit like swatting a fly on the enormity of his sins.
But that doesn’t change the intrinsic value of his sayings or bring to nothing the amazing things he achieved in the founding of the Republic. I think, for all his sins, he is one of the most interesting and important men in history.
Were I a black kid in high school, trying to find my identity and understand my history, would I be uncomfortable going to “Jefferson High”? It is not woke or fragile to think that that might bother me. For the same reason that I think Stoke Mandeville hospital have dissociated themselves from and removed plaques and statues of Jimmy Savile, even if he did a lot of good for the institution.
@Steven R said…
As far as sleeping with Sally Hemmings, we know that one Jefferson did.
At the time, there were twenty-five known post-pubescent white males who all carried the same “Jefferson DNA”.
That said, it is more likely that it was Thomas’ brother Peter.
His name was Randolph. And a lot of the circumstantial evidence used to tie Thomas to the paternity applies moreso to Randolph. In addition, there is other circumstantial evidence that points to Randolph as well.
TJ wrote both privately and in letters that he detested the practice of masters sleeping with their slaves. It’s entirely possible that he did anyway, but I rather doubt it.
Thomas never socialized with his slaves. On the other hand, Randolph was known to regularly sing, dance, drink, and play the fiddle deep into the night with the Monticello slaves in their quarters when he visited. Which was a lot after his first wife died. When Randolph remarried, his new wife kept him on a tight leash, and he didn’t visit the family at the estate as much. Randolph’s widower period corresponds nicely with Sally’s pregnancies.
Jonathan Pierce said:
I “explain” nor excuse Jefferson’s slave ownership. The only point I made regarding it is that to expect someone bred and raised in that environment to rise above it is expecting rather a lot, and that factor is why Jefferson’s contributions to the Founding ought to be seen as flowers in a desert, more to be marveled at because of where they are than that they exist at all.
The current mania is that the “enlightened” brights expect and demand that everyone be saints, or else they’re to be cancelled. I don’t look to pop stars for moral guidance, nor do I look to sports figures for the provision of solid behavioral examples and personal rectitude. Not in today’s benighted environment, that excuses all when you’re of the right sort.
There’s nothing factual about the speculations relating to Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings. We don’t even have eye-witness testimony about their relationship, just supposition from long-ago events and circumstances. The genes we see in the Hemings descendants today could mean that Thomas Jefferson did take advantage of his slave, but then again… They might not. They might not even be “there”, for all we know. We’re going on the testimony of first-generation genetic investigators whose motivations were questionable, as was their technology. There’s no telling why those markers are there, and that’s assuming we know how all that crap even works. How much of the genetics there are from environmental epigenetic effects that both lineages could well have picked up independently?
All y’all who put all this faith in genetic sequencing are in for a shock, in coming years. Just as nobody saw chimeras as a possibility, there is far too much that we just don’t know. The most that anyone should have said about the Jefferson/Hemings genes is that there are some similarities that make for some interesting implications, if we have it right, and there’s nothing to really say we do. Get back to me in a hundred years, when there’s more skill and more knowledge to examine these things, and to ensure that there wasn’t any cross-contamination.
I mean, hell, OJ Simpson got more “benefit of the doubt” than Thomas Jefferson did, and that was with a hell of lot more actual, y’know… Evidence.
President Jackson paid off the national debt – he did not just “balance the budget” he paid off the entire national debt.
Certainly he was a man-of-blood – so were his enemies, but the criticism of Congressman David (not “Davy” please) Crockett is valid – saying that you are no more cruel than your enemies does NOT give you a justification for cruelty. To someone like Crockett how you win a war was at least as important as winning it – “that is why he ended up dead” comes Jackson’s reply, but all men die. Win every battle – and you will still die in a few years.
President Polk could have annexed all of Mexico – he choose not to. Mexico was just as expansionist as the United States, it wanted to take land to. President Polk only took land that was very thinly populated (there was not one large town) – and no Mexicans were forced to leave.
Nor, contrary to the myth, were clearly defined private landowners robbed – the problem was that Spanish land surveys were a total mess (remember Mexico was only about 20 years old before the war – before that it has been part of the Spanish Empire)- the land owning was NOT clear – not legally clear at all.
The great mistake of President Polk (he himself bitterly regretted it) was not vetoing the Department of the Interior.
The Department of the Interior institutionalised the practice of giving food, and other services, to Indian tribes.
Contrary to the mythology the issue was not racial – it was political.
The adopted son of Andrew Jackson was an Indian – and his leading tribal enemy was white (a renegade who had joined a tribe) – it was “who are you loyal to?” that was the question. Killing was normal (Jackson did not care what race someone was in terms of killing them – like men of his time, he was happy to kill people of any race, killing was what a man did) the question for a man was “whose side are you killing for?”
Remember you could not be a member of a tribe and a United States citizen till 1924 – it would have seemed insane to someone of the times of Jackson or Polk that someone could be a member of a tribe and an American at-the-same-time.
But it is more than keeping the tribes by giving them stuff (and thus prolonging the wars) – the Department of the Interior got control of LAND.
The Federal Government is only supposed to have Washington D.C. and military bases – it is NOT (under the Constitution) supposed to control vast areas of the West.
That was what the Department of Interior led to – and President Polk greatly regretted not vetoing it.
It does not matter what skin colour the private landowners of the West have – as long as they private individuals and families.
Not tribes – and not the government either. They must not control the land.
And not Corporations either.
In some ways Jackson and Crockett were similar men – both would have laid down their own life for their friends, but Crockett believed that one should care about one’s enemies as well – that they were also made in the image of God.
Someone like Jackson was more typical of most men – he may have paid lip service to the “love your enemies” stuff in church, but he did not really believe it.
He came from a tough background – as a young boy he had his face slashed by a British officer (for refusing to clean his boots – I believe Andrew’s brother had already been killed by this time, but I could be mistaken), Andrew Jackson cried (young boy – face slashed by a sword, it is understandable), but his mother was not understanding – and flogged him.
“Boys do not cry – boys fight!” his mother screamed as she flogged him, Andrew was grateful for the lesson and followed it for the rest of his life.
Bad Guy? If you were an enemy – after all he had seen the remains of ancient towns in America (it is in his writings) his view was that the nomads must have exterminated them, centuries ago. I suspect I know how he would have responded to city riots in the 1960s (or later) and the invasion over the border since the 1965 Act – there would have been a warning, but only one warning, then there would have been action to end the challenge, without any restrictions on the violence of the action.
Senator “Bullion” Benton (another Scots-Irish – Ulster Scot, like Jackson and Crockett) summed him up.
“Do you remember President Jackson?”
“Of course I remember him! I shot him once – he was fine man…”.
In Ulster Scots (what Americans sometimes call “Red Neck” – although these men were well read and some of them became wealthy) culture – killing someone (or trying to kill them) does not mean you dislike them.
“Nations are created by killers and last as long as they are feared – and no longer” – I forget who said that, but it is apt for Jackson. Although was Lincoln different? He fought a war that killed almost 700 thousand people (the best part of a million people dead – out of a population of 30 – 40 million?) rather than allow the nation to be broken up by secession.
Thomas Jefferson (in a letter to James Madison), 1785
mila s
“uncultivated lands” – then go run a farm on such land, some land is uncultivated for very good reasons.
As for “unemployed poor” – if there are no laws rigging the labour market (such as the 1875 and 1906 Acts in Britain) there will be no “unemployed poor” although they may work in factories rather than farms.
“tax the higher portions of property in geometrical progression as they rise”
That is nonsense – “but Jefferson said it”, yes – and it is still nonsense. It would do harm – not good.
He also said he would rather that most people in France die than the French Revolution fail.
There was no real justification for the Revolution – Louis XVI was not a tyrant, he was weak (very weak) but well meaning man, and as for preferring the idea of most people being dead rather than a return to the monarchy – at best that was talking without thinking.
John Adams ran a farm – with his own hands, he also had a more sane view of the French situation.
When I first read the specific Jefferson quote about this, it reminded me of Mao Zedong saying he’d be happy with a nuclear war as the survivors would at least be communists. Now, I’m not saying Jefferson was a Maoist, but he does come across as an early example of the modern (and highly privileged) enthusiast for revolutions, not too dissimilar to his friend Thomas Paine.
Admittedly, the more I have read on the subject and period, the more I sympathise with George III, my fellow Brits, and the American Loyalists over the War of Independence. But regardless of that, and even if they did not always pursue the best policies, people like John Adams and Alexander Hamilton were philosophically much more sound and conservative than Jefferson.
The problem with all of this is that we want to remember the things we like about historical figures, whatever those might be, and ignore the rest of their oeuvre. In Jefferson’s case, I find a lot more good than bad, but that’s my perspective.
I don’t know that revisiting these historical figures with today’s moralizing mania for critique is a good idea. You do Jefferson; who is going to be doing you in a few hundred years? Perhaps you’ll be burnt in effigy for your failings of foresight and “proper action”.
It’s better to look at what good came out of Jefferson’s works and life, while frankly admitting his flaws. I don’t say “Ignore the slaves in the corner…”, but I would point out that his ideals shaped the world to be a better place than he found it.
I never really read his attitude about the French Revolution as being particularly astute, either. I suspect that were he on-scene, back in France? He’d have likely sung a different tune, watching his friends and acquaintances head off to the guillotine. It’s easy to be enthusiastic about things when you’re a few thousand miles away, and not fully aware of what the hell is actually going on with things. I rather doubt that the excesses of the Revolution were reported to him, things like the Vendee and all that. Look at the rose-colored lenses we have about the Revolution, even now: Who was taught that it was full of injustice, massacre, and abuses? I wasn’t; I had to do a lot of reading after my formal schooling to discover all the bad things brought on by the Revolution.
Martin – when Thomas Paine sobered up he protested against the murder, by the French Revolutionaries, of people who had committed no real crime – and that protest almost got Mr Paine murdered himself.
Mr Jefferson was drunk on words rather than booze – so it was harder for him to sober up.
John Adams and Alexander Hamilton did not get on – and there were policy (not just personal) reasons for that.
I do not care for Hamilton’s vision of a permanent national debt to bind men of property to the government – but, yes, he was talking about a drop in the ocean compared to the size of the debt now.
If Mr Hamilton was around now – he would utterly denounce the Federal Government, as would all the Founders, he would argue that it has destroyed the currency and every bit of sanity in the financial system and general economy – and Mr Hamilton, like Mr Jefferson (and the rest), would be right – this Federal Government has to go, it has become a cancer.
Jacob Rees-Mogg is a good man – but he keeps saying that the American economy is doing well, it is NOT. The economic statistics are a mixture of distortions and downright lies, the American government has become an abomination. None of the Founders, none of them, would support this regime.
My favorite Founding Father?
I have two….
The strict moralist – Roger Sherman.
And the morally lax rogue – G. Morris.
A bit odd to admire both of them – but I do.
And they agreed on some of the basic principles of policy.
Kirk writes: The only point I made regarding it is that to expect someone bred and raised in that environment to rise above it is expecting rather a lot, and that factor is why Jefferson’s contributions to the Founding ought to be seen as flowers in a desert, more to be marveled at because of where they are than that they exist at all.
While I agree with most of that paragraph, as I said, plenty of the other Founders did not have slaves; several who did freed them, either during their lives, or in their wills. They were “bred and raised in that environment”, and they rose above it.
I think Fraser Orr has also nicely responded to most of the other points in ways better than I could do.
Johnathan Pearce.
Yes.
As for Jefferson – his creditors (he was a three time bankrupt – or close to it three times) would have argued about whether he, or they, owned his slaves.
He did organize an “escape” of some slaves he was close to.
I would agree it is wrong to judge Jefferson by presentist standards. I think it’s absolutely fine to highlight that in his own time there were people who noted how the grandiose philosophe inspired rhetoric of the likes of Jefferson clashed with their own keeping of slaves (‘how is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?’ – Samuel Johnson), and that there were contemporary critics of the French revolution who were far more on the ball about what was going on than Jefferson (see Edmund Burke, Joseph De Maistre, John Adams etc).
The real issue with the whole “Jefferson wuz a slaveowner…” is that they’re trying to destroy whatever credibility and virtue the man created in his life by obsessing over the issue. The reality is, everyone’s life is a mixture of good and bad, and were we to demand that every person we were going to listen to have been a saint…? Well, there would then be damn few people to listen to.
I just about guarantee you that were you to go back and look, every single individual in the history of ever has had skeletons in their closet. It’d be my guess that were you to interview contemporaries of Buddha and Jesus Christ, you’d likely find a few people who’d happily tell you all about their personal failings before their rise to acclaim.
None of this should detract from those good things that these people came up with, and those things shouldn’t be thrown out with the bathwater, as the new-age perfectionists demand.
I find it rather telling that they’ll happily tear down Jefferson and the other founders for their little peccadilloes, but they’ll turn an utterly blind eye to the failings of their own heroic tyrants like Marx, Lenin, and Mao. Jefferson owned slaves, oh dear!!
Never mind the millions killed at the whim of Mao or Lenin’s acolyte, Stalin. We won’t mention them, ‘cos they weren’t really killed by “real socialism”, whatever the hell that is.
I’ll guess that, in 100 years, Western society will have settled on one “side” of the abortion issue. (It doesn’t matter which side, for my purposes here.)
Which will win? Will the anti-abortion side prevail? If so, will we look back at people fighting for abortion rights today as baby-killers?
Will the pro-choice side win? If so, will we look back at the anti-abortion people of today as being woman-haters and woman-oppressors?
Will we then – in 100 years – despise and cancel everyone who was alive today who supported the losing side of that argument?
Choose carefully. Your rep forever could depend on it.
It’s a worthwhile thing to consider.
My guess, based on the simple fact that the people who’re for unlimited abortion are eliminating their own kind from the gene pool, is that they’re going to be the ones everyone laughs at.
What’s the line? “The future belongs to those who show up for it…”? And, by virtue of that which they advocate for, they’re not going to be showing up in any large numbers.
Personally, abortion is one of those things that I feel is both wrong and immoral, but… I have a hard time squaring that with the idea that banning it entirely means consigning someone to suffering through 9 months of a pregnancy and unwanted birth. Every kid ought to be wanted, and if they’re not, well… Maybe they’re better off aborted, and the species is better off, as well.
Regardless, abortion is a choice, and once you’ve made it, you’re not going back. All those Eastern European women who used abortion as birth control represent the kids who were never born, never grew up, and that’s maybe a good thing, because now they’re not around to draft into Putin’s armies… Evolution in action.
Frankly, I think that the birth rates and all that are a subtle critique and check on the idiots of the leadership class. You can’t manage your nation such that life is nice enough that people want to raise kids there? That it isn’t too damn hard and expensive to do that? Well, guess what? You’re going to suffer the demographic consequences, and your ill-managed nation is going down to demographic decline.
Note that this is happening to both Western and Eastern nations alike; the Japanese have munged things up as professionally as Putin did, and their birth rates show that fact. Same with Korea, China… All the rest.
When the majority of your potential mothers would rather abort their babies than raise them…? You’re doing it wrong. We’re going to see the effects of that playing out over the remainder of our lives, and I suspect that there are going to be a lot of heartfelt lessons to be learned. Same with expending your nation’s youth in some stupid war for national aggrandizement while most of your people live in villages without indoor plumbing.
Properly, a nation’s leadership ought to be looking out for the overall benefit of said nation, down to the lowest level. If your working class can’t earn a decent living such that they want to raise kids in your national milieu, maybe you ought to be fired and replaced with someone who pays attention to that?
I was talking to someone in line at the pharmacy today, while waiting to pick up my mom’s meds, and just that point came up: Trump is who they’re voting for, come November, and the reason why is just that point: He’s the only one even paying lip service, let alone doing something, for those people. It’s very obvious that the opposing side just doesn’t give a flying f*ck for their own people, and want different voters. Which explains why they’re allowing them across the border…
Very ugly sentiments exposed, from a variety of people I’d have never expected to hear such things from. I think we may be closer to a “Timisoara Moment” than many calculate, when everyone looks around and realizes that nearly everyone else feels the same way about the regime…
@bobby b
Will we then – in 100 years – despise and cancel everyone who was alive today who supported the losing side of that argument?
FWIW, if we are around in a form that resembles today’s humans in 100 years I doubt very much that the abortion debate will have been settled. However, I think better parallel is to consider animal welfare. Will we, 200 years from now where we have factories that can manufacture food indistinguishable from animal muscle, look back on our forebears with horror to think of the dreadful conditions in which we enslaved animals? I think it is an interesting comparison because it illustrates the core idea of moral relativism: morality depends very much on the stage of a society. We can only afford to be horrified at some particular moral outrage when we have the technology to provide alternatives. (one might hear arguments about slaves and cotton gins here.)
But even moral relativism doesn’t get Jefferson off the hook. As I have said many times he knew very well how awful his slave owning ways were. He struggled with it. He knew well that his sins were black, and he did not have the excuse of ignorance.
However, I think this is really rather off the point I originally made. It was not, especially, to condemn Jefferson for his slave keeping, though I am certainly happy to do that. Rather it is the irredeemable, irreconcilable contrast between his high words of liberty, and his appalling practice of slavery.
Imagine if we discovered an implacable, evangelizing vegan, CEO of PETA, who owns a couple of the worst kind of factory farm.
For Jefferson, I suppose “hypocrisy” is the word, but it hardly seems adequate in face of such monstrous crimes.
I’ve read many Jefferson quotes. His work on the rights of man. I wish we had someone like him today.
Here’s an experiment in “what was it like back then” that everyone can do. Go live in the woods for a few weeks, a few months, whatever it takes to have to figure out how to survive long term in such conditions. Then go home and experience electricity, a heated and air conditioned home with a full refrigerator and running water. I expect you will be drop jawed, dumbfounded at what blessings those things are.
Next, can you extrapolate those feelings to imagine how you would behave in a slave owning economy that existed before your grandfather’s grandfather’s grandfather? I suspect that any such experiment we can devise actually doesn’t allow you to imagine such ancient social settings, the “context”.
But thank you all, so much more well read than me, for the history lessons and commentary in this blog entry. Great stuff and politely delivered!
Kirk – people openly saying they are going to vote for President Trump (assuming he is not falsely imprisoned or murdered) is a good sign – it means that people have the courage to speak out.
As for Thomas Jefferson and slavery – I believe it was he who wrote the North West Ordinance keeping slavery out of new areas that Americans were expanding into in that time (the Indian tribes practiced slavery – but Americans should not).
Should he have been like Prime Minister Lord Grey (who freed the slaves living in the British Empire) or Alexander II of Russia (who freed, from serfdom, more people than anyone else in history – and without the terrible war that happened in America in the 1860s) – well YES he should.
But the position he found himself in was rather different.
Thomas Jefferson also doubted that the races could live together in peace – so that freeing the slaves would have to mean also driving them away or being destroyed by them or their descendants, let us hope he was WRONG.