Posted on 07/01/2016 8:18:53 AM PDT by TangledUpInBlue
I once admired Jefferson, seeing him as an essentially good, no, great man with one tragic flaw: The writer of the inspiring words “all men are created equal” owned slaves. Now, I see Jefferson as an egregious hypocrite, who willfully betrayed the ideals he espoused.
I reached this conclusion only after visiting Monticello, Jefferson’s famous Virginia estate, last month. Previously, I didn't realize the extent of Jefferson’s slave ownership, and I lazily—and ignorantly--excused it as a common ethical blind spot of his time.
*Jefferson often denounced slavery. He wrote in 1774, "The abolition of domestic slavery is the great object of desire in those colonies where it was unhappily introduced in their infant state.” Yet over the course of his life he owned a total of 600 slaves, who worked on his Monticello farm and other holdings.
(Excerpt) Read more at blogs.scientificamerican.com ...
[ Why confuse today with 240 years ago when a self-hating Liberal white guy can write bullshit about how he despises his own country. Where are all the uplifting stories from Tehran or Mogidiahu? ]
They will give a “Cultural Pass” to brutal regimes because they don’t live in the USA, but Cultural excuses only work geographically, not temporally....
“For Independence Day, A Look at Thomas Jefferson’s Egregious Hypocrisy”
Yeah.
For Independence Day.
Right.
Communist anti-American ethos has taken over just about everything.
Google “anthony johnson and Casor suit” for a very interesting read on slavery in early colonial America. You will be shocked...
Egregious hypocrisy? Mr. Horgan is oblivious to how he is repudiated by his own words. This article is a baby-step toward taking down the monuments to Jefferson, Washington, and yes, Lincoln.
My family subscribed to SA for GENERATIONS.
That ended when they got political.
Scientific American is gone.
It’s about deconstructing (destroying) this country.
Slavery in America: Source of immense problems, including to the present day.
We have been paying for that “cheap labor” and will continue to pay for it, into the foreseeable future.
Jefferson was pretty much an economic failure, as a plantation owner. Washington manumitted his slaves in his will. Jefferson died in debt, and his debtors would not have allowed it.
“When they were released, they should have been sent back to their homelands with payment for their work, IMO. Leaving them in the US only caused more misery for them. Up to this day, many are miserable living in the US.”
Up to this day? As if slavery ended a couple decades ago? Nobody today is responsible for what happened before they were born. Slavery is in the past. The civil rights charlatans make a good living off of it. Blacks are free to dream, work, succeed, and enjoy the fruits of thier labor like everyone else. And there are many successful blacks in every profession and vocation.
There will always be miserable, unhappy malcontents who just want free crap - no matter their color. Welfare helped create an entire class of them.
I believe your are mistaken. Jefferson freed 5 slaves while alive and 5 others were freed in his will after his death.
G.W.P. Custis, father-in-law of Robert E. Lee, freed his 75 or 80 slaves in his will. Colonel Lee, as executor to the Custis estate, freed those slaves over a 5 year period as specified by the will. Slaves could be freed in Virginia.
There was a law, seldom enforced evidently, that forbade freed slaves from living in Virginia.
There were pro”s and con’s to the nation for having slaves. Nothing more, nothing less, imo. Way to big of a deal is made of it. If slavery were legalized today, people would be standing in long lines to get theirs.
No, it’s just revisionist, leftist propaganda.
So did he allow his own progeny to stay slaves as well? What an unpleasant man.
Oh yeah, the last bit was tripe.
But I’m taking it on face value that the Lafayette conversation was real.
[ No, it’s just revisionist, leftist propaganda. ]
for a leftist is is easier AND SAFER to become a “self-deconstructionalist” than it is to criticize a current exotic culture that is currently committing human atrocities.
Well said.
**If slavery were legalized today, people would be standing in long lines to get theirs.**
This is exactly how I feel when I am waiting in a long, slow-moving line, to renew my CCW every six years.
Scientific American lost its way many many years ago.... it is an outpouring of PC tripe, well not that I bother to look at it anymore....
[ Slavery in America: Source of immense problems, including to the present day.
We have been paying for that “cheap labor” and will continue to pay for it, into the foreseeable future. ]
Cheap labor never really works out well does it....
Liberals call Slaver “America’s Original Sin”, it is NOT.
The British Started it, it should be called: “America’s Inherited Sin from the British empire”
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