Claim: “We Need to Forgive Thomas Jefferson.” Do We Really?
“Tell me who your friends are, and I’ll tell you who you are,” the saying goes. Revealing who your heroes and hated foes are says a lot about you, too. This brings us to Americans who revile Thomas Jefferson (when their ancestors revered him). What can we say about them?
Writing at the Washington Examiner, commentator Andrew Fowler is saying that these Americans should “forgive” Jefferson. And forgiveness is a beautiful thing, emphasized by none other than Jesus Christ himself. Nonetheless, critics may note, actually applicable here is another Christian principle Jesus articulated:
“Hypocrite!” He said. “First remove the plank from your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.”
No, that isn’t directed at Fowler, who has good intentions. But does the problem so many have today with Jefferson — and the Founders generally — really concern those men’s sins?
Or does it have more to do with the critics’ own sins?
Slavery — Again
Speaking of sins, Fowler mentions the riots in France and elsewhere. And he warns that they could come to a town near you. The point: We’re ripe for it. Many in our country today — both immigrants and the homegrown — despise Western civilization, Christianity, and our traditions in general. The writer then states that a “spiritual remedy is required, and the path forward lies through reconciling with Jefferson.”
Why Jefferson? Fowler explains:
More than any other Founding Father, Jefferson embodies the country’s original sin and underlying hypocrisy: The same man who championed “all men are created equal” owned slaves, whom he seldom emancipated, unlike George Washington. Moreover, despite seeing slavery as a “moral depravity” and contrary to natural law, he still saw blacks as inferior to whites, and he foresaw slavery as the defining issue that could destroy the nation he helped found.
Perhaps his greatest offense is fathering six children with his slave, Sally Hemmings [sic].
Well, the above presents a lot to unpack, as every sentence is in some way problematic. Addressing the points sequentially:
- What country doesn’t have slavery as an “original sin”? The institution was, after all, once ubiquitous throughout the world (and still exists today). The “original sin” bit is stupid talk we should banish from our tongues.
- “Hypocrisy” is saying one thing while intending to do another. So often at issue when people speak of it is actually contradiction. Regardless, contradiction and hypocrisy have always been part of the human condition, not just the American condition. Ergo, this is more silly talk.
- The same people who despise Jefferson almost always also dislike Washington.
- As for black “inferiority,” black mathematician and astronomer Benjamin Banneker sent Jefferson his almanac in 1791. Upon reading it, Jefferson questioned his own beliefs, praising the work as evidence that black people had talents equal to those of other races. And whether or not the Founder completely repudiated his views isn’t the point. It is, rather, that this history is nuanced — and poorly understood by moderns.
- Regarding Hemings, first, while the children very well might have been Jefferson’s, this claim isn’t unassailable. Second, do people today really regard this as his “greatest offense” when most now accept premarital sex, cohabitation, and out-of-wedlock child-bearing? Now that would be hypocrisy.
Nothing to Forgive
Interestingly, most MSN readers who commented on Fowler’s article disagreed, in part, with the author.
“There is nothing to forgive,” one wrote — “we need more statues of him.”
“If you are alive today, and holding a grudge against Thomas Jefferson, you are a nut,” another asserted.
What’s ironic is that reflected in all the Founder criticism is a certain prejudice: DEI-based historical analysis.
That is, we never hear that Martin Luther King, Jr. or Muhammad needs forgiveness. King was reportedly a closet Marxist and a phony pastor. He was a foul-mouthed womanizer who allegedly participated in orgies and might have fathered an out-of-wedlock daughter. It’s also claimed that he witnessed a rape in a hotel room and, far from stopping it, encouraged the assault.
And Muhammad? He was a slave owner and trader who led military campaigns, engaged in massacres and torture, and married a prepubescent girl.
It’s not just them, either: “Woke,” fashionable figures never get the deep-sin, historical proctology exam. That’s reserved for the West’s heroes — for “dead white males.”
So, clearly, none of this has to do with honest attempts at applying a virtue yardstick. It’s instead about demoralizing American society. It concerns socially engineering the young so as to instill in them a hatred of good and lust for evil. You make them despise our country by encouraging antipathy for her creators and attachment to her detractors, the Left’s faux heroes.
“The Best Defense Is a Good Offense”
In fairness to Fowler, he is making a larger point. For example, he mentions the brilliant Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, who positively cited Jefferson while applauding the American Revolution. But the issue is that even conservatives today, as conservatives will, have fallen victim to a leftism-borne myth. To wit: We should not mount a defense for America and the West.
We should take the offense for it.
After all, we have nothing to be defensive about — ours is the greatest civilization to ever grace God’s green Earth. We just need to start acting like it again.
We can begin by eliminating what has led to the anti-Founder sentiment: The teaching of children about slavery.
“Hold on, Duke, that’s part of our history!” you say? Read on.
Perspective
Let’s consider an analogy. When you have a young child, at some point he’ll want to know a bit about his parents’/family’s “history.” So you might tell him how mommy and daddy met, why they liked each other so much, and other related things. But imagine you said:
“Well, ya’ know, kiddo, mommy was around the block with lots of guys. She had a couple of abortions, too. And daddy, whoa, he got nabbed with drugs at age 19: possession with intent to distribute. He might’ve ended up behind bars, too, except that his dad knew the local prosecutor.”
Would continuing in this vein be wise? There might be a time, during a heart-to-heart when the tyke is grown, to perhaps broach family sins. But it’s inappropriate with a kid, as it could scandalize the family. With youths, it’s prudent focusing on the positive.
It’s no different with a national family. Only a small percentage of history can be taught, especially to young children. So you must pick and choose wisely. Be mindful of the goal, too: giving students a basic understanding of their civilization’s founding and how it’s meant to function, and a sense of national pride. Do just this and you’ve accomplished a lot.
As for those who’d dispute this, the cultural devolutionaries, should we pay them any mind? These wokesters are almost universally vulgar, sexually depraved, hateful, and generally vice-ridden. The problem is their sins, not the Founders’. They shouldn’t be asked to forgive — they should be asking for forgiveness (but won’t).
There’s another irony, too. These critics embrace every fashionable view today, knee-jerk style and dogmatically. Yet they’d have you believe that had they lived centuries ago, they’d have opposed the day’s fashions — including slavery. That’s about as believable as an email from a Nigerian prince.
