Founding Fathers under attack: Students demand Thomas Jefferson statue removal

So freedom mattered less than his own personal privilege, comfort, and wealth? What an upstanding hero this guy was.

I'm judging him by the standards of his own time. There was an abolition movement in existence during his lifetime. No one forced him to own a plantation or be a cash crop planter. He choose to continue that lifestyle because his wealthy lifestyle mattered more than his supposed beliefs in freedom.

 

Fake conservatives care more about protecting a statue of Thomas Jefferson than they do about protecting his actual political legacy.

Fake conservatives have done more to destroy the legacy of Jefferson than almost anyone else in the country.

 

Jefferson was part of that abolition movement. Jefferson could have easily said and done nothing about slavery. Instead, he regularly spoke against it and promoted laws that were designed to bring about its abolition. Could he have done more than he did? Yes. But you could probably say the same thing about anyone. Nobody is perfect. Nobody is 100% consistent. And Jefferson was no exception.

 

Jefferson was a big part of that abolition movement. He called slavery "a moral evil for which the nation would ultimately have to account to God" in his Notes on the State of Virginia. Yes, he did not free slaves for his own personal prestige, but that was not the main reason. He felt that slaves were unprepared for freedom (lack of education) and would just end up dead or returned to slavery. He proposed a gradual voluntary training and education for slaves so that one day they could be free.

So, NO.....you are not judging him on the standards of his own time. You are rewriting history to fit your narrative and are only viewing the situation and Jefferson's situation from a myopic viewpoint that does not consider all aspects. Jefferson did much more for slaves by NOT freeing them (or at least he thought he was) than he could have done by freeing them.

 

Until they can destroy everything. Everything they don't like.

 

I think it depended on their wealth. They had slaves if they were relatively rich, and they hired free laborers if they couldn't buy slaves.

 

Yes, fake Conservatives suck as much as progressives suck trying to reshape or revise our history. Quit trying to claim the moral high ground and debate the topic at hand, not focus on individuals or what you think they stand for.

 

I am debating the topic.

Fake conservatives are whining because someone wants to take a statue of Thomas Jefferson down.

Meanwhile, these fake conservatives are doing everything they can to reverse Thomas Jefferson's actual political legacy.

Tell me. What's more important? Protecting a statue of Jefferson or protecting his political beliefs?

 

No, you aren't. You are throwing out fake accusations because not everyone wants to believe your nonsense. Get over it, move on.

 

Everything I said was true.

In another thread, you said the foreign policy ideology of men like Jefferson no longer mattered.

Yet you're lamenting the status of Jefferson's statue.

Apparently, you care more about protecting a statue of Jefferson than you do about protecting his actual beliefs.

Sorry if my truthful comments make you uncomfortable, but I'm going to keep making those comments just the same. Get over it.

 

They were just a bunch of racist pricks that didn't want to pay taxes. Why should I defend them when they went out of their way to prevent all men from being equal?

 

Agreed.

 

Except plenty of actual abolitionists didn't own slaves. He put his personal privilege and wealth ahead of his supposed beliefs in freedom.

 

Translation: "Jefferson talked a big game, but it was all bullshit propaganda as his actual actions showed."

 

Who wasn't racist back then? Do their flaws erase their redeeming qualities? Not all the founders owned slaves, by the way. And many of the founders helped to establish the abolitionist movement that eventually resulted in the end of chattel slavery in the US. Their legacy is far more complex than just being "racists" who "didn't want to pay taxes".

 

Yes, as I said, Jefferson fell short of perfection. But that doesn't make him unworthy of our admiration.

No, not really. He risked his life and his fortune to rebel against a monarchy. He could have easily ended up at the end of a rope.

Just curious: How many monarchies have you overthrown?

 

But he did attempt to abolish slavery. He had 600 slaves at some point but in 1808 we made it a federal crime to import or export slaves from abroad. This was based on Jefferson's denunciation of the international slave trade in 1806.

 

Jefferson pushed forward laws that were designed to either abolish slavery or ameliorate the conditions of slaves. He signed the law that banned the transatlantic slave trade. He frequently lent his voice and his pen to the abolitionist cause when he could have just as easily said nothing.

 

He spent the rebellion in France where he would have had asylum had it failed. Not much of a risk.

I helped overthrow a dictatorship that was considerably worse than anything the British Parliamentary Monarchy ever was. And I didn't own slaves while I was doing it.

 

Making the international slave trade illegal made every domestically owned slave more valuable. It was self-serving.

 

The banning of the Transatlantic Slave Trade only made Jefferson's own slaves that much more valuable. It was an action to make himself richer.

 

You are really misrepresenting the facts. I'm thinking you might really know very little about Jefferson.

Are you aware that it was Jefferson's speech to Congress in 1086, where he said: "I congratulate you, fellow-citizens, on the approach of the period at which you may interpose your authority constitutionally, to withdraw the citizens of the United States from all further participation in those violations of human rights ... which the morality, the reputation, and the best of our country have long been eager to proscribe" that caused Congress to outlaw the international slave trade in 1807?.

 

That isn't even true. Jefferson spent time in America and France during the revolution. At one point, he was almost captured by the British army. He wrote the declaration of independence in Philadelphia. Why should anyone take you seriously when you cannot even get basic facts right?

Which dictatorship did you help to overthrow? How did you help to do this? And how large was your personal fortune at the time?

 

Jefferson was evil, so the system of government he set up is evil and we much tear it all down and replace it with a multicultural communist paradise or perhaps the tribal culture that was practiced in Africa at that time. Is that where you are going with this?

 

Empty words that lined his own pockets.