Posted on 07/05/2015 3:24:11 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
GETTYSBURG, Pa. — “Lincoln hated Thomas Jefferson.” That is not exactly what we expect to hear about the president who spoke of “malice toward none,” referring to the president who wrote that “all men are created equal.”
Presidents have never been immune from criticism by other presidents. But Jefferson and Lincoln? These two stare down at us from Mount Rushmore as heroic, stainless and serene, and any suggestion of disharmony seems somehow a criticism of America itself. Still, Lincoln seems not to have gotten that message.
“Mr. Lincoln hated Thomas Jefferson as a man,” wrote William Henry Herndon, Lincoln’s law partner of 14 years — and “as a politician.” Especially after Lincoln read Theodore F. Dwight’s sensational, slash-all biography of Jefferson in 1839, Herndon believed “Mr. Lincoln never liked Jefferson’s moral character after that reading.”
True enough, Thomas Jefferson had not been easy to love, even in his own time. No one denied that Jefferson was a brilliant writer, a wide reader and a cultured talker. But his contemporaries also found him “a man of sublimated and paradoxical imagination” and “one of the most artful, intriguing, industrious and double-faced politicians in all America.”
Lincoln, who was born less than a month before Jefferson left the presidency in 1809, had his own reasons for loathing Jefferson “as a man.” Lincoln was well aware of Jefferson’s “repulsive” liaison with his slave, Sally Hemings, while “continually puling about liberty, equality and the degrading curse of slavery.” But he was just as disenchanted with Jefferson’s economic policies.
Jefferson believed that the only real wealth was land and that the only true occupation of virtuous and independent citizens in a republic was farming. “Those who labour in the earth are the chosen people of God, if ever he had a chosen people,” Jefferson wrote.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
The thing that I find the most troublesome (tedious?) about an article like this is the over-simplifications required to either deify or demonize.
Thomas Jefferson was a complicated but dynamic human being. He’s never been one of my favorites because I’ve long thought him two-faced, but he made many significant contributions to our nation.
For later...
Thomas Jefferson? That original proponent of limited government? Here we go again. Now explain to me how he would be a Democrat by modern standards? Just because Democrats claim it doesn’t make it so.
That’s a pretty messed up assertion to make. The guy is dead. It is fruitless and vile to assume what a person would or would support in modern times. I’m not a big fan of Jefferson myself, but that’s sick to speak for someone who cannot defend himself.
Exactly:
“Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add 'within the limits of the law' because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.” — Thomas Jefferson
Well, they’ve kidnapped Jesus and made him the poster-boy for illegals, gays, abortion, and anti-military endeavors. So what? They use whatever they can get their hands on to support their deluded life views. That doesn’t prove anything.
Awesome post.
Of course it does. Perception is everything, and the RATs control the DNC-media and all levels of "education".
that particular quote
That ‘particular quote’ is the “marching orders” for the Conservative Cause.
Say what you will about T. Jefferson - and this thread says much - HE, among the Founding Fathers, is one of the few who is still left standing.
It is this “Gray Area” of the American Experience, that evokes the most debate and dissension.
Have at it.............
Jefferson, of course, spent his entire life laboring in the earth.
Are you aware that most if not all of the colonies had property taxation, which increased greatly during the Revolution, and continued under the states?
Amounts and how taxes are levied has changed, but back in the time of the Founding, if you didn’t pay your property taxes it would be taken for taxes just like today.
Yes - they are my marching orders, I know that.
There is much discussion on this point among the Founding Fathers. It's telling that the funding of the federal government was very sketchy throughout the lifetime of the Founding Fathers - they knew not to feed the beast.
I find the piece to be quite fanciful, and without much of a point.
***
It does have a point, i.e., continuing the attack on our Founding Fathers. Notice the Sally Hemmings lie being trotted out once again.
Tom left the country defenceless against the British navy in the war of 1812.
Long Island Sound and the Chesapeake were British lakes.
All for fear of a standing army which he obviously confused with A NAVY.
You could put it off until your death, in most cases. At that point, the State would step in and get its pound of flesh. I'm talking about the laws passed within recent decades which forfeit "your" land to the true owners after a short period of time, typically three-four years.
I don't disagree with paying property taxes, but I can't understand how our true owners conned the peasantry into accepting this state of affairs.
I mean, if you own a chunk of property worth $50,000 outright, and the State puts the arm on you for $500, which you don't pay for whatever reason - how is it that the State can steal that property just to get their $500?
The peasants were asleep at the switch when those particular outrages were passed in the middle of the night.
And not just land - but personal property, as well. Virginia itself is a notable example.
>>they’ve kidnapped Jesus and made him the poster-boy for illegals, gays, abortion, and anti-military endeavors.
(Guitar intro)
Jesus just left Chicago
And He’s headin for DC
Well now, Jesus just left Chicago
And He’s headin for DC
Workin’ one end to the other
And all points in between
Took his junk down to Las Vegas
Guess he had to raise some cash,
He was talkin to the sinners
Who simply want to touch his sash,
And then he back out on the golf course,
Where he spend most of his time.
Oh, take me with You, Jesus
(Guitar solo)
Except that trade embargo that almost strangled the country’s economy in its infancy.
Today's GOP (Give Obozo Power) is well into destroying itself under pro-big business uber alles trash like McConnell and Boehner and the GOP National Committee Leadership. All that any of them care about is this year's corporate bottom line and the public be da*ned.
When Obozo proposed "Fast Track Authority" to allow him to sell out the man in the American Street, allow big corporations to lay him off and keep their fat profits abroad safe from American taxation, enshrine "free trade" on the altar of American law to maximize the salaries and profits of the big shots, and was joined by Wall Street, K Street and the US Chambers of Crony "Commerce," Mitchie McTurtle and the brain dead Suntan Man of the House came running like Pavlov's dog to slavishly serve "the interests." Yes, Massah, whatever you say, Massah. This is Hamilton's dream and our nightmare all in one super secret bill. So secret that even your Congressman or Senator cannot have a copy or even take notes. WHY IS THAT?????
Senator Jeff Sessions says that these treasonweasels are about nothing less than the destruction of American sovereignty in favor of an amoral international body serving the big business interests.
If these Hamiltonian jerks don't wake up and soon, an ever-increasing percentage of the GOP will refuse to vote. Say hello to POTUS Hillary, a Demonrat Senate, and, God forbid, a Demonrat House. They fight. Our cowards refuse to fight.
The GOP base consists not of country club snobs, corporate boodlers, and coupon clipper, but of what Obozo and, truth be known, the GOP "leaders" in secret deride as "bitter clingers." We are gun people, seriously religious defenders of actual marriage and of unborn babies and of traditional American values, believers in borders that keep cheap labor out, and, yes, believers that American jobs should be reserved for American workers, that employment should be stimulated and not suppressed, that the American dream (not Hamilton's) includes an expectation of increasing wages and increasing modest salaries for the first time since Nixon was POTUS, and that the USA should stop sitting still for being an international punching bag.
In the event that the TransPacific "Trade" Sellout were defeated, I don't know a single person who would say: "Oh, darn! I had so wanted to be laid off in favor of the transfer of my job to Bangladesh!" or "Golly, I wanted to be further ruled by the unelected and in TPP's case by the unAmerican powers like the European Union" which is apparently being invited into the TPP decision-making elite. Do you?
If you are maintaining a federalist/anti-federalist ping list, count me in!
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