Quote: “Actually I was trying to take my mind off the infuriating fact that you only won by siding with the bloody French, who at the time had the most repressive, aristocratic, anti-republican and anti-freedom form of government on the planet.”
Actually, we begged them to side with us which was rather interesting because we had spent the last 100 years trying to kick them off the continent. But that aristocracy you cite to paid a high price for its involvement in the form of the import of revolutionary ideas (that unfortunately spun out of control).
On another note, isn’t it funny how today we are spinning back toward a repressive, aristocratic, anti-republican and anti-liberty form of government? Makes one wonder what it was all about.
Sometimes, in my more maudlin moments, I worry that elitism, autocracy and repression are the natural lot of Humanity. Every nation, every government system always seems to slowly revert back to such things. Liberty and democracy and freedom are the exception in this world, not the rule, and have to be fought for tooth and nail.
Perhaps that’s what Jefferson meant with his “tree of liberty” quote.