Cypress (06-07-2022)
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Agreed they didn't agree with the mayhem. The French Revolution was how most revolutions turn out; dictatorships. We, the People were lucky we didn't end up like the rest.
He was great, but you are right that others were great too. One person that's often underrated is George Mason. Maybe because he refused to sign the Constitution. LOL
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Mason
"Hatred is a failure of imagination" - Graham Greene, "The Power and the Glory"
Cypress (06-07-2022)
thanks for the comment
Right, that's why I said Jefferson's legacy is for his rhetoric, not for the way his aspirational ideas didn't match his personal conduct. I also tried to be careful to say that Jefferson embraced the radical ideals of the French revolution, if not the terroristic regime instigated in 1792 by Robespierre et al.
Even by American standards, the ideals of the French revolution were radical and democratic in a way the American revolution wasn't. That is why most Anglo-American intellectuals thought the ideals of the French revolution were going to far.
I would say America history, broadly speaking, owes more to Jefferson's rhetoric of the self-evident nature of human equality. Adams and Hamilton were aristocrats who didn't trust democracy. The emergence of populist-based Jacksonian democracy, emancipation and the 13th amendment, and the switch to popular election of senators probably owes far more to Jeffersonian ideals than to anything Adams, Washington, or Hamilton wrote.
Frederick Douglass and the abolitionists were able to use Jefferson's words to turn the tide against slavery, so Jeffersonian ideals shaped this nation, even as we realize the man's personal actions didn't match the rhetoric.
Jefferson blamed the British for introducing the evils of slavery to North America - but it is widely thought as a businessman he wasn't willing to give up his slaves and concede his business to his economic competitors in Virginia.
It is obviously a dark stain on his reputation as an individual.
Using today’s understanding, you can admonish any of the Founding Fathers for something they did or said, but you have to consider context. Fact is they were not perfect men, but those men that created the new country that today values those principle they are being criticized for today
Cypress (06-07-2022)
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