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What We Lose When We Lose Thomas Jefferson – By Samuel Goldman

41 points by hui-zheng 5y ago

reactspa 5y ago
[flagged]
1cvmask 5y ago
Statues are all about symbolism. Invading soldiers removed the statue of the Iraqi leader: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jul/08/toppling-saddam-hussein-statue-iraq-us-victory-myth https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jul/08/toppling-sadda... The statues of communist heroes are removed by law in Ukraine. Societies change and evolve with time, either endogenously or exogenously (they are invaded), and thus the symbols change. Todays hero is tomorrows zero. Clearly Thomas Jefferson is anathema to enough people in New York City to be taken down. Among the reasons they cite is that he was a slaveowner. By that benchmark they will have to take down a lot of statues and rename a number of bridges and schools. Eventually the fight will come to the pictures on cash currency. - The irony is this is published by Bari Weiss. She has a history of being a cancel culture advocate herself: https://theintercept.com/2018/03/08/the-nyts-bari-weiss-falsely-denies-her-years-of-attacks-on-the-academic-freedom-of-arab-scholars-who-criticize-israel/ https://theintercept.com/2018/03/08/the-nyts-bari-weiss-fals... And using accusatory words and ad hominem that she does not herself know the meaning of: https://twitter.com/turncoatd/status/1268691071342501888 https://twitter.com/turncoatd/status/1268691071342501888
- kradeelav 5y ago
  Good point with symbolism. I could be wrong, but to your last part - the sense I've gotten from her recent writing as of the last two years is she's changed her mindset regarding cancel culture (if not in whole, then a large part). not that i'd call it atonement outright, but that she's focused a lot more lately on those who've been "cancelled" and talking with them 1-on-1 and showcasing what they have to say.
- nuerow 5y ago
  > Statues are all about symbolism. Statues, and monuments, are way more than symbolism. Their purpose is to shape the public opinion regarding specific values and look up to the ideas that the statues and monuments represent, so that they become an ever-present reminder to everyone of what values the ruling regime wants to be adopted and followed by the populace.
- krrrh 5y ago
  It’s amazing that the same two links always get repeated as if they diminish an impressive career as a journalist and editor. Greenwald has done important work, but his slander against Weiss is not one of them. David French was involved at the time of the events as the head of FIRE, here’s his recounting https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/03/the-sliming-of-bari-weiss/amp/ https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/03/the-sliming-of-bari-w... French: > In fact, if you read Bari’s own writing at the time, you won’t find a call to terminate professors. Instead, you’ll find a critique of a department that she had good reason to believe had lost its way. That’s free speech. That’s an exercise of her own academic freedom. It’s not a shout-down. It’s not a threat. It’s a debate. Regardless, it’s sad that our culture today makes it so normal to attack a 37-year-old with a strong record of free speech advocacy during her actual career over something she’s accused of doing while in college. Accusations of hypocrisy require a statue of limitations.
- StanislavPetrov 5y ago
  >Clearly Thomas Jefferson is anathema to enough people in New York City to be taken down. Don't mistake the will of the people of New York City with the will of the bureaucrats who made this decision. For a variety of reasons they have very little, if anything, in common.
  - 1cvmask 5y ago
    That's why I used enough people as opposed to more definitive words like a majority or plurality. You oftentimes only need a strong energized minority to push through many changes in the government. But what might have been a small minority in NYC calling for changes in the 1990s is clearly a bigger community now. These change advocates will go all the way to changing holidays as well.
- finite_jest 5y ago
  I think reducing Weiss to a cancel culture advocate is the same kind of mistake as the one puritan statue-topplers are making.
xrd 5y ago
"The question, though, is whether everyone implicated in slavery is ipso facto ineligible for public celebration." The answer is yes. You can celebrate him privately. We can criticize publicly his incredible hypocrisy. Or just note that his document said men and everyone knows it meant white men, a dishonest omission. No one is going to put up statues of Bari Weiss. Her "voice" is just outrage pushing.
- jfengel 5y ago
  I assume there must be some actual thing that Weiss does, but I have seen nothing from her on HN except being outraged about various supposed abuses. What is it that's supposed to make her relevant here?
chuckee 5y ago
Jefferson more than just didn't live up to his ideals by owning slaves. His ideals themselves would be anathema today: Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate than that these people [negros] are to be free. Nor is it less certain that the two races, equally free, cannot live in the same government. Nature, habit, opinion has drawn indelible lines of distinction between them. It is still in our power to direct the process of emancipation, and deportation, peaceably, and in such slow degrees, as that the evil will wear off insensibly; and their places be, pari passu, filled up by free white laborers. If, on the contrary, it is left to force itself on, human nature must shudder at the prospect held up. -https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Jefferson_and_slavery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Jefferson_and_slavery Rather conflicts with the narrative that the US was founded as a melting pot nation.
- TheMonarchist 5y ago
  It was a melting pot of the British, the Irish, the Dutch, the French etc. In the old world all nations lived relatively isolated, save them whose profession involved travel, that was expensive and painstaking.
  - sudosysgen 5y ago
    The Irisih? You'd find many that would oppose the integration of their culture into American culture at the time. Let alone German culture. Make no mistake, the USA at the outset was meant to be an Anglo nation, not a melting pot.
    - rufus_foreman 5y ago
      >> You'd find many that would oppose the integration of their culture into American culture at the time. Let alone German culture Well the "many" failed in their opposition then. The default culture of the US is German, German is the largest self-reported ancestry group in the US.
      - sudosysgen 5y ago
willcipriano 5y ago
Jefferson created what is called the Jefferson Bible[0], it is the story of new testament without any magic or superstition. It primarily consists of the words of Jesus and his moral teachings over his worldly actions. I think it's best to read Jefferson in a similar way. As a paragon of virtue Jefferson fails, but he has some wisdom to share on the nature and design of large scale human organizations. I don't think Jefferson would've wanted to look over the New York City Council anyway, he's probably much more at home in a library or museum. [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jefferson_Bible https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jefferson_Bible
rayiner 5y ago
Jefferson is a fascinating example of how contemporary historical revisionism is invoked in an extremely selective manner. Jefferson was a Francophile and was probably the founding father most closely aligned with continental European Enlightenment thinking. For example, he’s the source of the notion that the founding fathers were “deist.” Jefferson was, and maybe Franklin, but most of the others weren’t. He’s the main source for the notion of “wall of separation of church and state,” which is much closer to French secularism than what either the Constitution says or what the other founders likely intended. (At the time, several states had “established” churches, so the notion that the establishment clause required a wall of separation is quite odd: https://constitutioncenter.org/interactive-constitution/interpretation/amendment-i/interps/264 https://constitutioncenter.org/interactive-constitution/inte....) The Supreme Court ginned up the modern doctrine almost solely based on one of Jefferson’s letters. (To be fair, they properly understood what Jefferson meant.) Today, there’s a lot of “guilt by association” attacks on various ideas Jefferson held. When critics attack Jefferson for being a slaveholder, they also attack notions like federalism or small government or gun rights as being conceived out of a desire to protect slavery. But they never attack his ideas of secularism, even though they could. Until the mid-20th century, “science” (or what passed for it at the time) was more aligned with things like slavery and eugenics. In the famous Cornerstone Speech, for example, the Vice President of the Confederacy declares the new rebel nation to be founded on the scientific truth that the races aren’t equal, and characterizes abolitionists as “zealots.” See: https://www.battlefields.org/learn/primary-sources/cornerstone-speech https://www.battlefields.org/learn/primary-sources/cornersto.... (Which they were—abolition among white Americans was driven mainly by Quakers and other religious fundamentalists. Lincoln’s Republican Party was a fusion of capitalists and religious nuts.)
- totalZero 5y ago
  I blame Lin-Manuel Miranda.
poulsbohemian 5y ago
This author needs to check their premise. >>The question, though, is whether everyone implicated in slavery is ipso facto ineligible for public celebration. That standard doesn’t only exclude Jefferson but virtually every major figure in American history before 1861. Yes. And why is that so bad? I'd rather live in a society that truthfully acknowledges its history rather than one that clings to a false hero myth. >> That’s why attacks on Columbus Day are as misplaced as removal of the Jefferson statue. The holiday and memorials in many cities aren’t really about the Genoese explorer who served a Spanish king. They are confirmations of the presence of Italian-Americans in public life, to say nothing of the courage and adventuresome spirit that led to the discovery of the New World. It's a darn big jump from Jefferson to Columbus. In fact, this paragraph feels like it reveals the author's real intentions - lead with Jefferson to create sympathy with the reader, then redirect to Columbus. As I've stated publicly in my own community (in which Italians were a significant early immigrant group) do you really want to be represented by such a monster? Even in his own lifetime he was charged criminally. Plenty of better ways to celebrate the contributions of Italian-Americans.
- rayiner 5y ago
  > Yes. And why is that so bad? I'd rather live in a society that truthfully acknowledges its history rather than one that clings to a false hero myth. You’re creating a false dichotomy. We already truthfully acknowledge the history. We learned about Sally Hemings when we toured Monticello (which most Virginia public school students did at some point) back in the 1990s. But Jefferson is still a hero. He was a key founder of the most successful democracy on earth. He was born into a time where slavery had always existed. (It’s acknowledged in both the Bible and the Quran, and neither demands it’s abolition.) But he played a key role in creating the framework that ultimately dismantled an institution that had existed since antiquity. The reason erasing Jefferson is bad is because it robs us of understanding how we got here. I come from a poor country (Bangladesh). And what drives me nuts about this debate over Jefferson is that Americans are so myopic about the fragile nature of prosperity. Americans are like fish in a tank—they assume the world is just a hospitable place with filtered water and food that rains down periodically. Fish-like, they don’t wonder why things are so good for them. But Jefferson is, in part, why. Ideas are a dime a dozen, but Jefferson’s ideas have been proven empirically because they produced this country. And that makes him infinitely more worthy of honor than virtually anyone else you might consider building a statute for.
CryptoPunk 5y ago
Judging people who lived in the distant past by modern standards is such an ignorant exercise of self-righteousness. You are no better than Jefferson by virtue of opposing slavery in the modern day. You had the benefit of social norms that instructed you of its evils, and made it easy to denounce it.

41 points by hui-zheng 5y ago

[flagged]

Statues are all about symbolism. Invading soldiers removed the statue of the Iraqi leader: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jul/08/toppling-saddam-hussein-statue-iraq-us-victory-myth https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jul/08/toppling-sadda... The statues of communist heroes are removed by law in Ukraine. Societies change and evolve with time, either endogenously or exogenously (they are invaded), and thus the symbols change. Todays hero is tomorrows zero. Clearly Thomas Jefferson is anathema to enough people in New York City to be taken down. Among the reasons they cite is that he was a slaveowner. By that benchmark they will have to take down a lot of statues and rename a number of bridges and schools. Eventually the fight will come to the pictures on cash currency. - The irony is this is published by Bari Weiss. She has a history of being a cancel culture advocate herself: https://theintercept.com/2018/03/08/the-nyts-bari-weiss-falsely-denies-her-years-of-attacks-on-the-academic-freedom-of-arab-scholars-who-criticize-israel/ https://theintercept.com/2018/03/08/the-nyts-bari-weiss-fals... And using accusatory words and ad hominem that she does not herself know the meaning of: https://twitter.com/turncoatd/status/1268691071342501888 https://twitter.com/turncoatd/status/1268691071342501888

kradeelav 5y ago
Good point with symbolism. I could be wrong, but to your last part - the sense I've gotten from her recent writing as of the last two years is she's changed her mindset regarding cancel culture (if not in whole, then a large part). not that i'd call it atonement outright, but that she's focused a lot more lately on those who've been "cancelled" and talking with them 1-on-1 and showcasing what they have to say.
nuerow 5y ago
> Statues are all about symbolism. Statues, and monuments, are way more than symbolism. Their purpose is to shape the public opinion regarding specific values and look up to the ideas that the statues and monuments represent, so that they become an ever-present reminder to everyone of what values the ruling regime wants to be adopted and followed by the populace.
krrrh 5y ago
It’s amazing that the same two links always get repeated as if they diminish an impressive career as a journalist and editor. Greenwald has done important work, but his slander against Weiss is not one of them. David French was involved at the time of the events as the head of FIRE, here’s his recounting https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/03/the-sliming-of-bari-weiss/amp/ https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/03/the-sliming-of-bari-w... French: > In fact, if you read Bari’s own writing at the time, you won’t find a call to terminate professors. Instead, you’ll find a critique of a department that she had good reason to believe had lost its way. That’s free speech. That’s an exercise of her own academic freedom. It’s not a shout-down. It’s not a threat. It’s a debate. Regardless, it’s sad that our culture today makes it so normal to attack a 37-year-old with a strong record of free speech advocacy during her actual career over something she’s accused of doing while in college. Accusations of hypocrisy require a statue of limitations.
StanislavPetrov 5y ago
>Clearly Thomas Jefferson is anathema to enough people in New York City to be taken down. Don't mistake the will of the people of New York City with the will of the bureaucrats who made this decision. For a variety of reasons they have very little, if anything, in common.
- 1cvmask 5y ago
  That's why I used enough people as opposed to more definitive words like a majority or plurality. You oftentimes only need a strong energized minority to push through many changes in the government. But what might have been a small minority in NYC calling for changes in the 1990s is clearly a bigger community now. These change advocates will go all the way to changing holidays as well.
finite_jest 5y ago
I think reducing Weiss to a cancel culture advocate is the same kind of mistake as the one puritan statue-topplers are making.

xrd 5y ago

"The question, though, is whether everyone implicated in slavery is ipso facto ineligible for public celebration." The answer is yes. You can celebrate him privately. We can criticize publicly his incredible hypocrisy. Or just note that his document said men and everyone knows it meant white men, a dishonest omission. No one is going to put up statues of Bari Weiss. Her "voice" is just outrage pushing.

jfengel 5y ago
I assume there must be some actual thing that Weiss does, but I have seen nothing from her on HN except being outraged about various supposed abuses. What is it that's supposed to make her relevant here?

chuckee 5y ago

Jefferson more than just didn't live up to his ideals by owning slaves. His ideals themselves would be anathema today: Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate than that these people [negros] are to be free. Nor is it less certain that the two races, equally free, cannot live in the same government. Nature, habit, opinion has drawn indelible lines of distinction between them. It is still in our power to direct the process of emancipation, and deportation, peaceably, and in such slow degrees, as that the evil will wear off insensibly; and their places be, pari passu, filled up by free white laborers. If, on the contrary, it is left to force itself on, human nature must shudder at the prospect held up. -https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Jefferson_and_slavery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Jefferson_and_slavery Rather conflicts with the narrative that the US was founded as a melting pot nation.

TheMonarchist 5y ago
It was a melting pot of the British, the Irish, the Dutch, the French etc. In the old world all nations lived relatively isolated, save them whose profession involved travel, that was expensive and painstaking.
- sudosysgen 5y ago
  The Irisih? You'd find many that would oppose the integration of their culture into American culture at the time. Let alone German culture. Make no mistake, the USA at the outset was meant to be an Anglo nation, not a melting pot.
  - rufus_foreman 5y ago
    >> You'd find many that would oppose the integration of their culture into American culture at the time. Let alone German culture Well the "many" failed in their opposition then. The default culture of the US is German, German is the largest self-reported ancestry group in the US.
    - sudosysgen 5y ago

willcipriano 5y ago

Jefferson created what is called the Jefferson Bible[0], it is the story of new testament without any magic or superstition. It primarily consists of the words of Jesus and his moral teachings over his worldly actions. I think it's best to read Jefferson in a similar way. As a paragon of virtue Jefferson fails, but he has some wisdom to share on the nature and design of large scale human organizations. I don't think Jefferson would've wanted to look over the New York City Council anyway, he's probably much more at home in a library or museum. [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jefferson_Bible https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jefferson_Bible

rayiner 5y ago

Jefferson is a fascinating example of how contemporary historical revisionism is invoked in an extremely selective manner. Jefferson was a Francophile and was probably the founding father most closely aligned with continental European Enlightenment thinking. For example, he’s the source of the notion that the founding fathers were “deist.” Jefferson was, and maybe Franklin, but most of the others weren’t. He’s the main source for the notion of “wall of separation of church and state,” which is much closer to French secularism than what either the Constitution says or what the other founders likely intended. (At the time, several states had “established” churches, so the notion that the establishment clause required a wall of separation is quite odd: https://constitutioncenter.org/interactive-constitution/interpretation/amendment-i/interps/264 https://constitutioncenter.org/interactive-constitution/inte....) The Supreme Court ginned up the modern doctrine almost solely based on one of Jefferson’s letters. (To be fair, they properly understood what Jefferson meant.) Today, there’s a lot of “guilt by association” attacks on various ideas Jefferson held. When critics attack Jefferson for being a slaveholder, they also attack notions like federalism or small government or gun rights as being conceived out of a desire to protect slavery. But they never attack his ideas of secularism, even though they could. Until the mid-20th century, “science” (or what passed for it at the time) was more aligned with things like slavery and eugenics. In the famous Cornerstone Speech, for example, the Vice President of the Confederacy declares the new rebel nation to be founded on the scientific truth that the races aren’t equal, and characterizes abolitionists as “zealots.” See: https://www.battlefields.org/learn/primary-sources/cornerstone-speech https://www.battlefields.org/learn/primary-sources/cornersto.... (Which they were—abolition among white Americans was driven mainly by Quakers and other religious fundamentalists. Lincoln’s Republican Party was a fusion of capitalists and religious nuts.)

totalZero 5y ago
I blame Lin-Manuel Miranda.

poulsbohemian 5y ago

This author needs to check their premise. >>The question, though, is whether everyone implicated in slavery is ipso facto ineligible for public celebration. That standard doesn’t only exclude Jefferson but virtually every major figure in American history before 1861. Yes. And why is that so bad? I'd rather live in a society that truthfully acknowledges its history rather than one that clings to a false hero myth. >> That’s why attacks on Columbus Day are as misplaced as removal of the Jefferson statue. The holiday and memorials in many cities aren’t really about the Genoese explorer who served a Spanish king. They are confirmations of the presence of Italian-Americans in public life, to say nothing of the courage and adventuresome spirit that led to the discovery of the New World. It's a darn big jump from Jefferson to Columbus. In fact, this paragraph feels like it reveals the author's real intentions - lead with Jefferson to create sympathy with the reader, then redirect to Columbus. As I've stated publicly in my own community (in which Italians were a significant early immigrant group) do you really want to be represented by such a monster? Even in his own lifetime he was charged criminally. Plenty of better ways to celebrate the contributions of Italian-Americans.

rayiner 5y ago
> Yes. And why is that so bad? I'd rather live in a society that truthfully acknowledges its history rather than one that clings to a false hero myth. You’re creating a false dichotomy. We already truthfully acknowledge the history. We learned about Sally Hemings when we toured Monticello (which most Virginia public school students did at some point) back in the 1990s. But Jefferson is still a hero. He was a key founder of the most successful democracy on earth. He was born into a time where slavery had always existed. (It’s acknowledged in both the Bible and the Quran, and neither demands it’s abolition.) But he played a key role in creating the framework that ultimately dismantled an institution that had existed since antiquity. The reason erasing Jefferson is bad is because it robs us of understanding how we got here. I come from a poor country (Bangladesh). And what drives me nuts about this debate over Jefferson is that Americans are so myopic about the fragile nature of prosperity. Americans are like fish in a tank—they assume the world is just a hospitable place with filtered water and food that rains down periodically. Fish-like, they don’t wonder why things are so good for them. But Jefferson is, in part, why. Ideas are a dime a dozen, but Jefferson’s ideas have been proven empirically because they produced this country. And that makes him infinitely more worthy of honor than virtually anyone else you might consider building a statute for.

CryptoPunk 5y ago

Judging people who lived in the distant past by modern standards is such an ignorant exercise of self-righteousness. You are no better than Jefferson by virtue of opposing slavery in the modern day. You had the benefit of social norms that instructed you of its evils, and made it easy to denounce it.