5 ms·

Read Jefferson's views on usufruct and compare with his desire to maintain his estate's wealth and not free slaves for said wealth. It's hard to not think lowl

by syki 5y ago

Read Jefferson's views on usufruct and compare with his desire to maintain his estate's wealth and not free slaves for said wealth. It's hard to not think lowly of a man with such views that are backed up with such actions. Your refusal to condemn Jefferson for his actions is odd. It's not like the man was devoid of praiseworthy actions but he was no saint.

bhupy 5y ago
> Your refusal to condemn Jefferson for his actions is odd. It's not like the man was devoid of praiseworthy actions but he was no saint. You're right, just to take a step back and make it absolutely clear, I definitely condemn Jefferson for his ownership of slaves. That said, I view his praiseworthy actions as sufficiently admirable as to outweigh his misdeeds, and on net I have a great deal of respect for Jefferson, warts and all. The commentary around maintaining wealth / avoiding bankruptcy is not mean to excuse the trade-off he ultimately had to make, but to make it clear that he wasn't some cartoon villain, even if I disagree with the ultimate trade-off he personally did make.
- tptacek 5y ago
  Nobody's telling you not to respect Jefferson. Where you'll get pushback is in your attempt to say he wasn't a rank hypocrite. He obviously was.
  - bhupy 5y ago
    I see, then we're not really disagreeing on much. On net, one can deeply agree with Jefferson while overlooking (or perhaps even excusing) his alleged hypocrisy, especially considering that his written word carried a lot of weight in helping to legitimize the abolitionist cause (indeed, to the chagrin of the Confederates, per the Cornerstone Speech). All I'll say in addition is that the modern day cultural effort to eradicate our Founding Fathers from our institutions (i.e. "telling [us] not to respect Jefferson") is anathema to that.
    - tptacek 5y ago
      I don't agree with that last assertion, and would counter that our reverence for the founders and their documents has papered over a lot of fucked up shit baked into our governance (the fact that a Wyoming vote is 50x more valuable than a California vote is hard to get past). But reasonable people can and do disagree about it. I don't think reasonable people can disagree about Jefferson being a hypocrite.
      - bhupy 5y ago
        > would counter that our reverence for the founders and their documents has papered over a lot of fucked up shit baked into our governance (the fact that a Wyoming vote is 50x more valuable than a California vote is hard to get past). I'm glad you brought this up, because it, to me, exposes the core of the problem. The fact that Wyoming's vote is 50x more valuable than California's isn’t unique to the US, and is the case in many Federations that grant co-sovereignty. In Switzerland, the upper house is set up in exactly the same way; the number of people represented by a single seat in their upper house varies by a factor of 45.8, due to the equal representation as opposed to proportional representation. The same is true of the European Union, whose upper house also grants equal representation to Malta and Germany, with a veto power. Ditto Australia. That's exactly what you want if you're trying to balance the needs of a decentralized and heterogenous federation, and that's how the US was set up. This doesn't allow the minority to rule against the majority, but it does allow the minority to protect itself from the majority with a veto power on Federal legislation (but absolutely not for State legislation). Appealing to anti-slavery is a poor argument against this aspect of Switzerland's system, as is the case for America. Bringing up the Founders' alleged hypocrisy vis-a-vis slavery strikes me as a game of misdirection to poorly argue against the merits of building anti-majoritarian checks that allow minorities to protect themselves from majorities from passing new laws onto them. If you really think that the US should be structured as a weaker Federation (or perhaps even a unitary republic), as opposed to the more strong Federal republic of the status quo, you can argue that on the merits (and to be sure, it's certainly debatable!) without conflating it with slavery, or ad hominem attacks against the Founders. It would be tantamount to attacking the merits of having a strong central bank by appealing to Alexander Hamilton's philandering adultery. I’d also add that appealing to slavery hypocrisy is a particularly poor line of attack on a strong Federal system with a Senate-like institution, because the U.S. Senate was proposed by the Free States (New Jersey Plan, Connecticut Compromise), not the more populous slave States, which wanted a purely proportionally apportioned legislature (Virginia Plan). > I don't think reasonable people can disagree about Jefferson being a hypocrite. Reasonable people can absolutely disagree about whether Jefferson's hypocrisy was justifiable, given the morals of the time. And further, reasonable people can support the "fucked up shit baked into our governance" as features and not bugs, and appeal to Jefferson (and Madison) in doing so.

by syki 5y ago

bhupy 5y ago

> Your refusal to condemn Jefferson for his actions is odd. It's not like the man was devoid of praiseworthy actions but he was no saint. You're right, just to take a step back and make it absolutely clear, I definitely condemn Jefferson for his ownership of slaves. That said, I view his praiseworthy actions as sufficiently admirable as to outweigh his misdeeds, and on net I have a great deal of respect for Jefferson, warts and all. The commentary around maintaining wealth / avoiding bankruptcy is not mean to excuse the trade-off he ultimately had to make, but to make it clear that he wasn't some cartoon villain, even if I disagree with the ultimate trade-off he personally did make.

tptacek 5y ago
Nobody's telling you not to respect Jefferson. Where you'll get pushback is in your attempt to say he wasn't a rank hypocrite. He obviously was.
- bhupy 5y ago
  I see, then we're not really disagreeing on much. On net, one can deeply agree with Jefferson while overlooking (or perhaps even excusing) his alleged hypocrisy, especially considering that his written word carried a lot of weight in helping to legitimize the abolitionist cause (indeed, to the chagrin of the Confederates, per the Cornerstone Speech). All I'll say in addition is that the modern day cultural effort to eradicate our Founding Fathers from our institutions (i.e. "telling [us] not to respect Jefferson") is anathema to that.
  - tptacek 5y ago
    I don't agree with that last assertion, and would counter that our reverence for the founders and their documents has papered over a lot of fucked up shit baked into our governance (the fact that a Wyoming vote is 50x more valuable than a California vote is hard to get past). But reasonable people can and do disagree about it. I don't think reasonable people can disagree about Jefferson being a hypocrite.
    - bhupy 5y ago
      > would counter that our reverence for the founders and their documents has papered over a lot of fucked up shit baked into our governance (the fact that a Wyoming vote is 50x more valuable than a California vote is hard to get past). I'm glad you brought this up, because it, to me, exposes the core of the problem. The fact that Wyoming's vote is 50x more valuable than California's isn’t unique to the US, and is the case in many Federations that grant co-sovereignty. In Switzerland, the upper house is set up in exactly the same way; the number of people represented by a single seat in their upper house varies by a factor of 45.8, due to the equal representation as opposed to proportional representation. The same is true of the European Union, whose upper house also grants equal representation to Malta and Germany, with a veto power. Ditto Australia. That's exactly what you want if you're trying to balance the needs of a decentralized and heterogenous federation, and that's how the US was set up. This doesn't allow the minority to rule against the majority, but it does allow the minority to protect itself from the majority with a veto power on Federal legislation (but absolutely not for State legislation). Appealing to anti-slavery is a poor argument against this aspect of Switzerland's system, as is the case for America. Bringing up the Founders' alleged hypocrisy vis-a-vis slavery strikes me as a game of misdirection to poorly argue against the merits of building anti-majoritarian checks that allow minorities to protect themselves from majorities from passing new laws onto them. If you really think that the US should be structured as a weaker Federation (or perhaps even a unitary republic), as opposed to the more strong Federal republic of the status quo, you can argue that on the merits (and to be sure, it's certainly debatable!) without conflating it with slavery, or ad hominem attacks against the Founders. It would be tantamount to attacking the merits of having a strong central bank by appealing to Alexander Hamilton's philandering adultery. I’d also add that appealing to slavery hypocrisy is a particularly poor line of attack on a strong Federal system with a Senate-like institution, because the U.S. Senate was proposed by the Free States (New Jersey Plan, Connecticut Compromise), not the more populous slave States, which wanted a purely proportionally apportioned legislature (Virginia Plan). > I don't think reasonable people can disagree about Jefferson being a hypocrite. Reasonable people can absolutely disagree about whether Jefferson's hypocrisy was justifiable, given the morals of the time. And further, reasonable people can support the "fucked up shit baked into our governance" as features and not bugs, and appeal to Jefferson (and Madison) in doing so.