Must Read - Anti-Americanism Is Racist Envy

Forbes.com ^ | 07.21.03 | Paul Johnson

[Waco]

Being a turd is an awful way to waste a lfe.

[Clemenza]

Great article regarding "Euro-Peon" attitudes.

[ml/nj]

Paul Johnson on Mr. Jefferson:

From claret to concubinage, there was no delight he did not sample, or rather indulge in habitually. (p. 242)

So Jefferson's wife was in intimate daily contact ... with her husband's concubine. (p. 242)

Jefferson's expensive tastes might not have proved so fatal to his principles had he not also been an amateur architect of astonishing persistence and eccentricity. (p. 244)

It is just as well that Jefferson had no sense of humor: he constitutes in his own way an egregious comic character, accident-prone and vertiginous, to whom minor catastrophes accrued. (p. 246)

As originally built his bedroom [at Monticello] accorded him no privacy at all, a curious oversight considering he had a passion for being alone and unobserved. Thereafter the search for privacy became an obsession in the many changes of design ... Contemporaries assumed they were there so his alleged mistress, Sally Hemmings, could slip in and out of his chamber unobserved. (p. 247)

(Page references to the hardcover edition of A History of the American People)

Why does anyone pay any attention to what this guy says?

ML/NJ

[Clemenza]

I should note that I disagree with Johnson's first point. We are NOT A DEMOCRACY. Our Republican form of government protects the minority (think gun owners and fundamentalist Christians) against, what Jefferson called "the tyranny of the majority." He also tends to forget that some of the most asinine ideas of this country's history (Prohibition, the Free Silver movement, Anti-Masonic parties) were the product of Populism.

[Clemenza]

Paul Johnson tells a good story, but he is far from an accurate historian.

[Khurkris]

" Why does anyone pay any attention to what this guy says? ML/NJ"

I don't see any problems with his observations.

[TheCrusader]

'Intellectuals' = prideful baloons awaiting the inevitable burst through the pinprick of logic and faith.

[kromike]

Always remember, John Kerry wanted/wants this nation to be more like Europe...

[G.Mason]

You were correct. This is a must read.

In fact I enjoyed it so much I am tempted to re-enlist in the military, in hope that one day (soon) we will invade those Euro-weenies and kick those elitest scum suckers all over that polluted continent.

First we shall tune up our Euro-weenie fighting skills on the American elite, and of course the non-elite Democrat Party types before we go.

[ml/nj]

I don't see any problems with his observations.

This is because you have not yet learned much about history.

Consider:

Jefferson's wife was in intimate daily contact ... with her husband's concubine.

Jefferson's wife died when Sally Hemmings was not yet nine years old.

or this other quote I picked:

As originally built his bedroom [at Monticello] accorded him no privacy at all, a curious oversight considering he had a passion for being alone and unobserved. Thereafter the search for privacy became an obsession in the many changes of design ... Contemporaries assumed they were there so his alleged mistress, Sally Hemmings, could slip in and out of his chamber unobserved.

and contrast it with this written by Mr. Jefferson's granddaughter in 1858:

His apartments had no private entrance not perfectly accessible and visible to all the household. No female domestic ever entered his chambers except at hours when he was known not to be there, and none could have entered without being exposed to the public gaze.

Do you have other information, or has your thought been poisoned by the "All Presidents do it," stories told by the Great Stainmaker and his minions?

ML/NJ

[onja]

Just for your info. We aren't a democracy. We're a republic. Athens was the only true democracy.

[Fee]

When you lose power (control of events) nations naturally lash out at the gaining power. I think it is more with human's tribalistic nature. Not long ago we Americans were angry at the Japanese for building better cars, steel, electronics, and accumulating more money than us. It got so bad, that we rejected the right of a Japanese businessman from buying one of our financially strapped baseball teams. We claimed that only Americans can own baseball teams (of course Canadians exempt).

[Capt. Tom]

Hence, the argument goes, the U.S. is not so much an "educated democracy" as it is a media-swayed and interest-group-controlled populist regime.

Well?? - Tom

[expat_panama]

McCoullough did a good job of exposing this Sally Hemmings story for the lie it is. People are complicated and Jefferson had short comings, but Hemmings was not one of them. I find the way people carelessly bandy about this nonsense is disgusting.

[popdonnelly]

I don't think Thomas Jefferson is above criticism, any more than anyone else is. He was criticized quite a bit when he was President.

[Vasilli22]

bump

[ml/nj]

I don't think Thomas Jefferson is above criticism, any more than anyone else is.

Do you think maybe the criticism should be intellectually honest? Ad hominem attacks, ala Johnson, just don't cut it in my book. Jefferson could be criticised for expanding the powers of the Presidency by going ahead with the Louisana Purchase for example, but isn't "an egregious comic character, accident-prone and vertiginous, to whom minor catastrophes accrued," a bit much?

ML/NJ

[goldstategop]

Like Robert Kagan wrote in his now famous monograph, "Of Paradise And Power," Americans are Martians and Europeans are Venusians. The differences spill over into everything and with each passing year, the gulf between the Atlantic grows ever wider. Americans are faulted for being a nation at the same time the Europeans have struggled to suppress nationalism once and for all. That perhaps as anything, is the impetus behind European Anti-Americanism. Europe's elites cannot in the final analysis, bear to see America succeed where they have failed. And not only has Europe failed to regains it once pre-eminent place in the world, the very fact of American hyper-power at one remove only testifies to European impotence and decline. The Europeans have detached themselves from involvement in the world at large in inverse proportion to America's deep entanglement in its affairs.

("Denny Crane: Gun Control? For Communists. She's a liberal. Can't hunt.")

[Khurkris]

Knock off the ridiculous clinton* minions insults.

I happen to agree with his comments regarding 'anti-Americanism' in Europe.

They may not be as all inclusive as I would write, but they have a ring of truth to them.

His comments about Jefferson do not negate the validity of his article here.

And your snide comments lessen your impact.