Happy birthday Thomas Jefferson!

[mastershake16]

Happy birthday, Mr. Jefferson.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MaqmBOyNCuE

[The Man]

Happy birthday, Mr. Jefferson.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MaqmBOyNCuE


Yes. Thank you Mr. Jefferson, on creating an a country that kills nearly millions every year! :thumbdown:

[mastershake16]

I was unaware that he made it... must have missed him at the Philly Convention in 1787.

[Robespierre Richard]

The Hamiltonist constitution completely betrayed the principles of Lockeism-Washingtonism and gave power to the bureaucratic Madisonist clique!

[#FF0000]

pFl7f_Q3uKM

[Robespierre Richard]

At least it's not Immortal Technique.

[Comrade J]

Is this supposed to be a joke or is OP really this reactionary?

[Os Cangaceiros]

The Hamiltonist constitution completely betrayed the principles of Lockeism-Washingtonism and gave power to the bureaucratic Madisonist clique!

lol nice

Shay's Rebellion = Kronstadt

[Os Cangaceiros]

Is this supposed to be a joke or is OP really this reactionary?

Well, can't speak for the OP, but there are some lefty-types who do admire facets of Jefferson's thought. Chomsky, for one.

I'm sure this board's resident anarcho-liberal could explain more, if he wasn't restricted. :crying:

Anyway, if Thomas Jefferson hadn't owned slaves and had ordered some mass executions after the revolution or something, he'd probably be regarded w/ admiration as the American Robespierre by the left. (Except by those people who's crude anti-Americanism consists of disliking anything 'murikkkan.) As it stood, though, he was a racist and a slave-owner, and that's understandly hard for anyone to stomach, historical circumstances or no historical circumstances.

[praxis1966]

^This. Fuck that guy, srsly... He was a fuckin' plagiarist anyway. Most of the shit he wrote he either stole from either Locke, Rousseau, or Paine.

If I were forced to pick a "Founding Father" that was kinda cool, it'd be Ben Franklin. Yeah, he was a bourgeois exploiter, but at least he didn't own any slaves, not to mention he was kind of a crazy fuck. He actually wanted the national bird to be a turkey, lulz... Besides, as Hunter S. Thompson put it, "Benjamin Franklin was dirty and covered with fleas and he took his women by the twos and the threes. Well, that's not true. He was pretty clean, actually."

[mastershake16]

Well, can't speak for the OP, but there are some lefty-types who do admire facets of Jefferson's thought. Chomsky, for one.

I do admire Jefferson, and so does Chomsky. Probably due to the fact that we know a thing or two about the man. I would wager that most of the people trashing him on this thread know nothing about him except that he owned slaves and was a Founding Father. He inherited slaves and it was illegal to free a slave in colonial Virginia after 1723. Even if he could where would they go? What would they do?

Judging a man without taking his historical circumstances into account is silly. Yet everyone seems to love Marx and forgive him for his anti-semitic beliefs because they were acceptable at that time. And for the record, Jefferson was anti-slavery.


The Hamiltonist constitution completely betrayed the principles of Lockeism-Washingtonism and gave power to the bureaucratic Madisonist clique!

That doesn't even make sense.

[Comrade Wolfie's Very Nearly Banned Adventures]

I do admire Jefferson, and so does Chomsky. Probably due to the fact that we know a thing or two about the man. I would wager that most of the people trashing him on this thread know nothing about him except that he owned slaves and was a Founding Father. He inherited slaves and it was illegal to free a slave in colonial Virginia after 1723. Even if he could where would they go? What would they do?

Judging a man without taking his historical circumstances into account is silly. Yet everyone seems to love Marx and forgive him for his anti-semitic beliefs because they were acceptable at that time. And for the record, Jefferson was anti-slavery.



That doesn't even make sense.


blah blah blah, fuck off to OI.

[praxis1966]

I do admire Jefferson, and so does Chomsky. Probably due to the fact that we know a thing or two about the man. I would wager that most of the people trashing him on this thread know nothing about him except that he owned slaves and was a Founding Father. He inherited slaves and it was illegal to free a slave in colonial Virginia after 1723. Even if he could where would they go? What would they do?

Even if I accept the totality of the above statement as veritable, you still can't argue your way around Jeffersonian policy on Native Americans. Their extermination and forced Anglicization began during his presidency. "...[I]t was during Jefferson's presidency that the basic decisions were made that required the deportation of massive segments of the Indian population to land west of the Mississippi..."the seeds of extinction" for Native American culture were sown under Jefferson. (Ellis, 1997)." (Source: http://www.earlyamerica.com/review/2002_summer_fall/tj_views.htm) That's enough for me in and of itself to not have a whole helluva lot of respect for the guy.


That doesn't even make sense.

It was meant to be satire, homie.

[Os Cangaceiros]

I do admire Jefferson, and so does Chomsky. Probably due to the fact that we know a thing or two about the man. I would wager that most of the people trashing him on this thread know nothing about him except that he owned slaves and was a Founding Father. He inherited slaves and it was illegal to free a slave in colonial Virginia after 1723.

Other founders like Washington freed their slaves. Jefferson could've found ways to free his slaves if he wanted to, especially considering his position.


Even if he could where would they go? What would they do?

Honestly that sounds like something that would come straight out of the mouth of a slave owner. "Yeah, I could free them, but what would they do if I did? Better to keep them here where they have direction in their lives."


Judging a man without taking his historical circumstances into account is silly. Yet everyone seems to love Marx and forgive him for his anti-semitic beliefs because they were acceptable at that time.

I don't make excuses for Marx and his anti-Slav beliefs, or Bakunin's anti-semitic beliefs, or anyone else.

[mastershake16]

Even if I accept the totality of the above statement as veritable, you still can't argue your way around Jeffersonian policy on Native Americans. Their extermination and forced Anglicization began during his presidency. "...[I]t was during Jefferson's presidency that the basic decisions were made that required the deportation of massive segments of the Indian population to land west of the Mississippi..."the seeds of extinction" for Native American culture were sown under Jefferson. (Ellis, 1997)." (Source: http://www.earlyamerica.com/review/2002_summer_fall/tj_views.htm) That's enough for me in and of itself to not have a whole helluva lot of respect for the guy.



You think Jefferson himself ordered the those decisions? He didn't want to conquer the Indians.
bahaha

[#FF0000]

Other founders like Washington freed their slaves. Jefferson could've found ways to free his slaves if he wanted to, especially considering his position.

He was massively in debt when he died, so I don't know if there was much he could do actually.

[mastershake16]

he was massively in debt when he died, so i don't know if there was much he could do actually.

qft

[#FF0000]

but still fuck jefferson just because it makes OP so mad.

EDIT: Actually Jefferson did free a handful of his slaves. Out of the hundreds and hundreds that he owned.

I don't know, man. Theoretically he might've been against slavery but I am thinking about it and he was definitely never really committed to it.

[mastershake16]

Seriously? lol

[#FF0000]

Seriously? lol

Yeah, the dude wobbled (http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/jefferson_papers/mtjtime3d.html) hardcore.


April 22. Jefferson writes John Holmes, a Congressman from Maine, criticizing the Missouri Compromise which maintains the balance of free and slave states in the Union by admitting Maine with Missouri. In 1819, a bill to admit Missouri to the Union was before Congress when a New York representative proposed an amendment prohibiting slavery in the new state. Though this measure did not pass, Jefferson sees the debate surrounding the Compromise as an example of unprofitable northern interference in a southern institution. He has completely withdrawn from his earlier calls for abolition, viewing it as a problem so complex as to be intractable and therefore best left to the next generation to accomplish. Jefferson describes the Missouri Compromise as a "fire bell in the night" and the "knell of the Union."So, yeah he was once an abolitionist, and then stepped back and I assume took the position that most people did until the Civil War of thinking slavery would simply die out.

[praxis1966]

You think Jefferson himself ordered the those decisions? He didn't want to conquer the Indians.
bahaha

Uhh Yeah, since he was the one who instructed William Henry Harrison on how to forcibly relocate every independent tribe between the Atlantic states and the Mississippi. After the Louisiana purchase, he came up with the idea of forced Anglicization as a way to deal with the Native Americans west of it. It's true he wrote fondly of them, but I'm far less concerned with what someone says versus what they do. Your mocking overconfidence seems to suggest that not only did you not read the source I cited, but you don't seem to know as much as you think you do about Thomas Jefferson.

bahaha That shit.

[mastershake16]

I still respect him highly.

[kitsune]

Chomsky recognizes Jefferson's racism (http://www.chomsky.info/talks/20080424.htm), and his objection to state capitalism (http://www.chomsky.info/books/warfare02.htm). He doesn't fetishize the man like so many Americans do. He recognizes that Jefferson was pretty damn bright about some things and pretty damn fucked up about other things.

[Kuppo Shakur]

Yet everyone seems to love Marx and forgive him for his anti-semitic beliefs because they were acceptable at that time.
HAHAHAWHAT
Who does that?:laugh:

And for the record, Jefferson was anti-slavery.
HAHAHAWHAT
HAHAHAHAHA

[praxis1966]

I still respect him highly.

While we're at it, there's also Jefferson's sexism... Considering his input into the drafting of the US Constitution and its lack of universal suffrage, it's not unworthy of mention. Zinn quotes Jefferson directly, "...Jefferson underscored his phrase 'all men are created equal' by his statement that women would be 'too wise to wrinkle their foreheads with politics.'" (A People's History of the United States, p 110) On the subject of women's education, Jefferson "suggested women should not read novels 'as a mass of trash' with few exceptions. 'For a like reason, too, much poetry should not be indulged.' Female education should concentrate, he said, on 'ornaments too, and the amusements of life.... These, for a female are dancing, drawing, and music.'" (ibid, pp 117 - 118)

There's really nothing there to like. He plagiarized the best ideas he gets credit for, he was a sexist, a racist, a slave owner, a womanizer, and as president he laid the foundations for the Native American genocide.

Shake off the remnants of your bourgeois education, man. The guy was a prick.

[mastershake16]

I thought Jefferson was in France while the U.S. Constitution was being written, and Madison reported to him about it? How much influence could he really have?

Also whats the source of that Jefferson quote? Doesn't sound like him tbh

[praxis1966]

I thought Jefferson was in France while the U.S. Constitution was being written, and Madison reported to him about it? How much influence could he really have?

Through his return correspondence to the very letters you referenced Madison sent him (Source: http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/jefferson/jefffed.html).


Also whats the source of that Jefferson quote? Doesn't sound like him tbh

The latter was from a letter to Nathaniel Burwell. The former is from a letter to Anne Willing Bingham and refers to a burgeoning women's movement in the US (Library of Congress digital exhibit with a picture of the actual letter: http://myloc.gov/Exhibitions/creatingtheus/BillofRights/DemandforaBillofRights/ExhibitObjects/WomensRights.aspx?Enlarge=true&ImageId=83398ad0-3b15-41a8-8987-8e2e45313a43%3aa26b0205-8397-4fd0-a1f3-bd760665849c%3a288&PersistentId=1%3a83398ad0-3b15-41a8-8987-8e2e45313a43%3a3&ReturnUrl=%2fExhibitions%2fcreatingtheus%2fBillofR ights%2fDemandforaBillofRights%2fExhibitObjects%2f WomensRights.aspx). There's also this, a piece of advice he gave his own daughter, "A lady who has been seen as a sloven or slut in the morning will never efface the impression she has made, with all dress and pageantry she can afterwards involve herself in...I hope therefore, the moment you rise from bed, your first work will be to dress yourself in such style as that you may be seen by any gentleman without his being able to discover a pin amiss." (Source: http://www.earlyamerica.com/review/fall97/jeffersn.html)

[El Chuncho]

Yes. Thank you Mr. Jefferson, on creating an a country that kills nearly millions every year! :thumbdown:

And for being so nice to your slaves. :rolleyes: