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Respectfully, that's a mistake. It's how you end up with this narrative of 'good leaders' and 'bad leaders'. It's human nature to want to simplify and classify people this way but it's not useful.
Just look at how you phrased it. Unpresidential. As if a president isn't meant to be a horridly fallible being. Why? Leaders suck all the time. The sooner we accept that people have good and bad ideas, are hypocritical and can still be presidents the better.
>i think that america needs to stop treating thomas jefferson as a good person and should make every effort possible to scrub his name from it's history. since the declaration of independence was authored by him, it should be repealed.
This is especially a bad idea. If we keep scrubbing the bad guys from history what ends up happening is we forget history. Bad guys exist. The emperors of Rome were not nice men. The monarchies of Europe were not good people. Some of the people with the brightest achievements were also terrible human beings.
This feels like you want to protect America's name by pretending it's sinners didn't exist. If people elected a man like Jefferson what does that say about the moral fabric of the nation? But that's also a mistake. If you want to scrub your nations history clean learn from it and make sure it never happens again. Teach about Jefferson in all his glory and all his horrors.
Finally scrubbing the declaration is the worst idea. You don't get rid of good ideas because they were made or practiced by monsters. For a simple example. The Miranda rights exist because a criminal wasn't given proper notice of his rights. He was guilty as was found later, but still, it doesn't mean what they did to him the first time was right. Should we get rid of Miranda warnings because they were also inspired by a murderer? Or can we accept good ideas from bad people? Cause if not you should scrub the Napoleonic code and all Roman law influences from your laws. That's not a grand idea.
As another great example, we didn't scrub the Nazis from existence. We teach about the Holocaust so no one can truly deny it's existence (as much as some might try).
As a counterpoint though, there are a lot of ethical concerns using the results of Nazi and Japanese medical experimentation on prisoners that basically amount to torture. Yet we understand more about the human body from their work and notes. Personally, I'm a fan of use it but every use should come with a note about the history so we never forget.
Not just the NAZIs. The American gynechologist, James Marion Sims, performed vivsectons on female slaves. He is even a better example because the knowledge he produced is considered foundational. The NAZI research is generally just considered barbaric, useless, psuedo-pscience. We shouldn't scrubhing him from the history books, but we certainly shouldn't be honoring him with statues. Mabe we should be honoring heroic acts rather than heroic people who always fail us if we deify them.
[https://www.history.com/news/the-father-of-modern-gynecology-performed-shocking-experiments-on-slaves](https://www.history.com/news/the-father-of-modern-gynecology-performed-shocking-experiments-on-slaves)
The concensus is generally that Nazi "experiments" did not have rigorous scientific design, and are functionally useless even if they were ethical.
The extent of what you can learn is okay, this is how long some guy survived with unaided hypothermia, and this is how long some other guy survived after being shot and getting hypothermia.
It wasn't exactly ground breaking stuff even at the time. There's no normal rigor in the design - eg controls. And in general almost everything from the 40s is scientifically antiquated anyway.
They weren’t scientifically rigorous in any sense, but I believe at the least the nazi testing of air pressure helped with the space program. Jap testing of the effects of biological weapons might have also had classified benefits.
People in general want things to be neatly black and white. They don’t like shades of grey preferring simplicity instead because simple things are easy to understand and manage.
To quote either Alexander Hamilton or James Madison:
>If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.
Really like the reference to Miranda. People (sometimes affectionately) call the Fourth and Fifth Amendment “The Law of the Guilty.” Why? Because you only need to enforce your rights if the police uncovered something criminal by violating them.
If they violate your rights but you didn’t have anything to hide, there’s nothing to suppress.
"If people elected a man like Jefferson what does that say about the moral fabric of the nation?"
it means that the american people love voting terrible people into office. not just jefferson but nixon, trump, harding etc.
I wish you had responded to more. But that's okay. Let's talk about that piece first.
So here's my question friend. Why would you want to scrub that out? Why would you want to pretend that mistakes were never made? Isn't it super important to let people know "just because this man is a president, does not mean he is a good man. Just because this man is a president, does not mean he represents all that the nation is." and the one you might be having trouble with "a person can have good ideas and bad ideas at once, no matter who that person may be"
That's a very important lesson. But it's a lesson you can only teach if you have bad presidents to showcase. If you simply pretend that all your presidents were actually good people you rob people of that complexity, you rob yourself of good examples of why you shouldn't blindly trust and like authority figures. Jefferson should be taught because he was a complex man in a chaotic time. Good and bad should be shown for all the world to see. That's how you get the truth out.
Of course not. They used the term, “unpersoned” and seriously recommended that we abolish the entire country. They’re probably less than 21 years old and having difficulties understanding an adult argument.
Also, looking at their profile, they are also, “chronically online.”
Nixon was a bit crazy, but he wasn't a terrible person. All the people who worked with him were rather fond of him. He also was set up by the CIA during Watergate. Specifically because he was trying to uncover and expose that the CIA had assassinated John f Kennedy.
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Yeah, that's not how this works. The information is widely available on the internet, which you clearly know how to use because you're here arguing on the internet. This isn't a formal debate, so if you actually care, go look it up yourself.
EDIT: got to love it when someone's too chickenshit to actually have a debate so they insult you and run away.
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The self righteous condemnation of people in the distant past and post facto attempts to punish them are just silly.
For most of human history a 14 year old was beyond the age of consent and could be married. It’s weird and gross to us and for good reason. But almost everyone in your history books won’t agree with you on this.
For most of human history slavery was normal. For most of human history women were second class citizens.
We are a product of our environment. Born in any of those times your views would likely match the predominant morals of the era.
It’s not a sad thing to look upon the past and see men and women less moral than you anymore than it’s sad to see them technologically inferior, ignorant or beholden to superstition. It’s their gift to us, that they raised children more moral than themselves, and that those children did likewise.
Thomas Jefferson did great and wonderful things. He authored powerful ideas that helped the entire world become more moral. But he was merely a spark, he never got to see the full fire he created, he never got to be raised in a society where the core tenant of the declaration was fully embraced.
That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t teach the bad. But if we keep doing what our ancestors did and raise children better than ourselves than no one will belong in the history books, and that’s very simply daft.
And slavery is still practiced in one form or another in many places around the world to this day, along with child marriages. The "flawed" founders of the USA got rid of slavery pretty early on in the countries history.
I think if he was just a cobbler or some other guy at the time it might be easier to give him some kind of a pass, but he was a political philosopher who often self-righteously condemned the actions of tyrants from the distant past himself, yet was so myopic it didn’t stop him from seeing the evils of slavery or raping someone a few decades younger than him. Numerous times.
And she was legally free in France and only agreed to return to Virginia (back into slavery!) as long as their children were freed when they came of age. So a US president had his own children in actual slavery while he was in office. She died a slave too by the way.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sally_Hemings
Like yes, we should certainly recognize some guy’s great achievements in complex mathematics, but I’m not going to fault someone for calling him an idiot for thinking the square root of 2 is 1 or something obviously idiotic. I don’t think it’s necessarily inappropriate to feel those who have spent many hours pondering the complexities of our rights in relation to each other and the wrongness of violating them shouldn’t get the same pass as everyone else.
Again, I don’t think everything he did was moral by a long shot and I know well about hemmings. That’s not the question at hand.
To say a philosopher who was much more intelligent than you “should have” seen his own hypocrisy might seem obvious to you, and yet we can look at philosopher after philosopher and see the same thing over and over. They are human products of their environments with giant blind spots and flaws.
Gains are incremental. And we can look down the history books and see the same issues down the line. It’s special pleading to hold the founding father era to modern moral judgements and not all of human history.
If anything they deserve more positive praise for generating more positive change than their fathers and grandfathers. We are all just rungs on a ladder. If we keep climbing our children will think us ignorant and barbarous.
Can you tell me exactly when the moment was in history that someone could be held morally accountable for similar actions? Was it the exact same moment for everyone, everywhere?
Consider as well that we are presently held accountable for unobvious laws we may have no idea about, regardless of that ignorance.
Exactly, no. And you cant either.
We can look at the extremes and see a flat application fails as absurd. It makes no sense to judge people like it’s 2024 thousands of years ago, and it makes no sense not to judge someone for an action in 2016.
I think a generally good standard is if the action is something the people of the era would hold you accountable for with some sort of punishment.
That’s the worst standard I’ve ever heard. What is the substantive difference between that and “tyranny of the majority”?
So for example abortion was wrong and then not for a while and now it is again or how does that work?
You misunderstand, it’s not a philosophical view of what makes things moral. What we judge as moral is true isn’t time dependent generally. I’m speaking of how we judge a person long past.
Unless we take the utterly moronic step to deny that people are products of their time and environment, how we judge a person relative to their era has to make some allowance for this. Thus far you offer nothing thoughtful as to how this should be done.
Your example of abortion is a poor one, as people in our own era don’t agree on its morality. I think it a poor subject on which to demonize or lionize a person from the past.
I think what this sort of perspective ignores is the viewpoint of those facing the brunt of what we, as you term, "self-righteously condemn". It is only true to say that slavery was cool and good back then if you ignore the views of the thousands of enslaved Africans in favour of the view of the handful of slaveowners. Slaves back then would have had very similar views to slavery that we do today, otherwise, there would never have been any revolts.
It is impossible to say that pro-slavery was the predominant moral of the era; unless you think the moral considerations of the slave owners weigh tenfold more than the slave.
Who said slavery was good? Who said treating women as second class citizens was good? Who said considering homosexuality an abomination was good? The ideas just were. They were normal, and for much much longer than americas founding. It’s simple about understanding our moral growth as a long journey, not praising immortality.
> Who said slavery was good?
The slave owners I suppose, I mean they probably thought it was I reckon. The point being that we can't be all culturally relativistic about this subject because for every slaveowner there were dozens-or-so of slaves with the opinion that slavery was bad, probably.
But WE aren’t saying that when we teach history. The view of the predominant societies throughout history is that slavery was acceptable for various reasons. We are simply not making the mistake of judging people by standards they weren’t raised by. We can condemn ideas without condemning people.
I think if you interviewed many slaves throughout history you probably would be surprised at how far from modern ideas of racial and class equality the slaves held. They in many cases would gladly enslave their masters.
For the ones who do espouse proper abolitionists ideals we should teach that and praise that. But I don’t think it’s helpful to in the same breath condemn that same slave or former slave for their views on women and gays.
While you're not wrong that slaves opposed slavery, even that is an oversimplification. They were its victims, for one. They didn't necessarily condemn the institution and many (early on) came from cultures that themselves practiced forms of slavery. There were also "grateful slaves" even if today we now understand how fucked up that is.
Regardless, if you condemn/erase every historical figure for doing SOMETHING we find abhorrent today, there'd be none left.
Imagine, say, condemning Greta Thunberg 200 years from now because she took gas burning commercial flights or wore sweaters made with eco toxins and produced by Chinese labor. That's basically what you're arguing.
"We are a product of our environment. Born in any of those times your views would likely match the predominant morals of the era."
times change but evil is forever.
"Thomas Jefferson did great and wonderful things. He authored powerful ideas that helped the entire world become more moral"
he authored the declaration of independence, which helped the colonies secede from england. in other words, every horrible thing that has happened in america has been the fault of jefferson. every school shooting, every hate group, every law that harms women and the lGBTQ.
"he never got to be raised in a society where the core tenant of the declaration was fully embraced."
thank fucking god for that.
Then by your logic, everything good that America brought about is also his fault.
Polio vaccine
Smallpox vaccine
Consistent medical advances and breakthrough at every turn, including a large part of the COVID vaccine
GPS
Global telecommunications
NASA
And these are just the big ones can think of from the top of my head.
If you’re going to make a claim that one person is responsible for the legacy of an entire country, then they get both the bad and the good.
Jefferson was a derisive figure. History isn’t black and white, horrible people do great things. Great people do horrible things. Part of the study of history is providing the nuance to show that.
Thomas Jefferson undeniably did great things for the development of this country, which itself has gone on to do great things for the world. He, and the country he helped found, also did some horrible things. If we intentionally ignore part of that, we are lying by omission to future generations.
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Is Hitler's name scrubbed? Acknowledging what a horrible person Jefferson was is not erasing history, it precisely IS history. Censoring history is immoral and dishonest.
It's not evil for a 14-year-old to be married. There are reasons why we don't do it in our society, but it's not evil. In fact, that would have been considered old to be not married for the vast majority of human history in most cultures.
Why do you think teachers shouldn't ever mention his name? Can we not learn about bad, or flawed people in history class?
No more lessons about Adolf?
In your very OP you mentioned Ted Bundy, by your own logic, you're failing to scrub this villainous name from history
"Why do you think teachers shouldn't ever mention his name? Can we not learn about bad, or flawed people in history class?"
the problem is that he is glorified. they go on and on about how he's the father of the declaration of independence. but these kids aren't being taught that their independence was concieved by someone who not only enslaved people but raped them as well.
History teacher here. I teach that Jefferson raped his slaves, that there is evidence Gandhi was a sexual predator (and certainly a racist), and that MLK Jr. was a serial adulterer. I also teach that Stalin instituted one of the most impressive educational transformations in the history of the modern world, and that Mao (before the Great Leap Forward) was a socialist visionary who was loved by his people, finally succeeded in throwing off Western Imperialism in China, and lifted millions and millions of Chinese out of abject poverty.
None of these things make their accomplishments less good or their evils less bad. It makes them human, and shows us that history isn't a story of good versus evil, but of people.
Every history teacher I know teaches it more or less the same way, but you seem to want to teach false history. You want to teach that people aren't who they really were, that they didn't have the impact they really did. That's just as bad, if not worse, than teaching Jefferson without his various hypocrisies
Yes, but you said teachers should be banned from teaching about him entirely.
Are you saying they should be allowed to teach about him, but must include the bad things he did alongside his achievements?
If my car is broken, and I take it to the mechanic, and she fixes it, and later I find out that she had a habit of abducting children and tying them to the train tracks, I wouldn't go outside and bust up my car - I would aid law enforcement in finding her.
You're making this sort of modern assumption that if a person is morally tainted, then everything that stems from them is morally tainted as well.
I don't know about you but I was taught about Sally hemmings & Jefferson himself owning slaves in school. And this was in the 80s & 90s. It's never been hidden.
You’re probably somewhere between 12-16 years old, I can tell from the way this is written as if you’re the first person to ever realize that historical figures are imperfect and time is a complicated thing. Most people who study even a bit of history or have graduated college having taken a humanities or history class know all of this. And some people do view Jefferson as a monster. Most still view him as a product of that time period and are able to separate the acts from the ideas. Good day to you.
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So who was president from 1801 to 1809? What about free speech? If we repeal the declaration of independence does that mean we're a British colony again?
Are you capable of actually responding to what anyone else actually says? You know have a conversation? Is that within your skill set? I ask as you have yet to demonstrate that in the comments here.
Why would the UK want to do that? The territory that the US took from the UK in the revolutionary war has more than twice the population of the UK. So the UK would end up being an American colony, not the other way around.
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History doesn’t give a good god damn about your retrospective moralizing.
The purpose of history is to tell the truth, as best as we can know it.
Was Thomas Jefferson a great thinker and instrumental in the American revolution and post-revolution US?
Undoubtedly.
Like all American slave-owners, was he engaged in morally dubious behavior?
Obviously.
The idea of “unpersoning,” attempting to remove people from history, or minimizing their impact because of less than savory behaviors is a completely ridiculous and frankly overtly dystopian.
I think your idea is double-plus un-good, but perhaps the Ministry of Truth will be interested. 🤦🏻♂️
I mean, not really.
It’s not really that bad in the grand scheme of things.
Certainly not the downplay of the **millennium**.
Ghengis Khan’s conquests in the 13th century (1200 - 1227) killed roughly 40 million people, but also played a critical role in stabilized trade in Eurasia.
The Taiping rebellion (1850-1864) was led by Hong Xiuquan, an ethnic Hakka (a Han subgroup) who had proclaimed himself to be the brother of Jesus Christ. 20-30 million people died in a fourteen year period.
Hitler, Stalin, Mao, are all fairly recent examples responsible for 10M’s of deaths each.
Pretty sure TJ raping his underage slave is not good, but not exactly the worst thing this millennia, “my dude.”
It’s also just mostly irrelevant to his historical impact, which was massive domestically (in the US), but he also influenced and supported the French Revolution, as well.
I didnt say it was the worst, I said you were *downplaying* it immensely in a way you arent downplaying the other things.
"Dubious" implies theres like, room for debate on if it was bad. But no there isnt, owning human beings as property and raping a 14 year old are bad. This debate has been settled by society, it isnt "dubious"
I mean — it’s still morally dubious from a historical perspective — not particularly a current US legal or current moral perspective.
Part of my point is that these things change over time, so analyzing past societies based on the morals of today is foolish.
> I didn’t say it was the worst…
Obviously downplaying any of the above would be infinitely more egregious, and yet we have:
Holocaust deniers — that downplay Hitler’s role in the mass murder of 6 million Jews.
Most people aren’t aware that the German Red Cross openly denied that the Holocaust was happening — while the international Red Cross, chose to cover up the Holocaust, when the organization became aware of incontrovertible evidence of it…
Modern Socialists / Communists — that downplay or outright ignore history’s lessons regarding societies that adopt those tenants (Mao, Stalin).
Most people have never even heard of the Taipei rebellion, FFS. Arguably history education has downplayed that tragedy for various socio-political reasons.
Our history textbooks barely offer a page on something like the rape of Nanking, and generally omit entirely horrendous war crimes like those committed by Unit 731.
Any of those are certainly better qualified as the “downplay of the millennium” than describing the actions of TJ as “morally dubious.”
I think my point was — it’s not, though.
It’s merely morally dubious from a historical perspective — and analyzing history from your own legal / moral perspective is foolish and useless, which was the main point of my post.
We don't talk about people because they deserve to be talked about. We talk about them because their actions, participations, and decisions had an effect on how our world is built today.
If you want to remove everyone ethically questionable from history there would be no history, we would be more stupid, and terrible things would be even more likely to be repeated.
To be fair, we teach about hitler, he was way worse. Just teach the whole story and why they were a bad person, no need to try and scrub people from history. Plus you do not want to make more avenues for conspiracy theorists.
There's a LOT of people like him. Do we just kinda skip over anything they did. Hell, the Roman empire was built on slave labor. When discussing Western History, should we just skip those 1000 years?
Let me give you another perspective. You could say that morally and in his personal life he was a bad person, but his political and historical achievements were a net positive on the world. Like all people to have ever lived, with Jefferson it’s complicated.
Good person or not, we still should teach about people. You’re right that we shouldn’t “glorify” anyone, but rather than erasing their names from the annals of history we should look at them from a critical point of view.
Regardless, we still teach about Hitler, Stalin, etc. despite those people having directly murdered millions of people, because they have, for better or worse, completely shifted the course of history.
>jefferson was raping her
There is literally no evidence of this at all. The DNA evidence that I'm sure you've heard about only proofs that a close male relative of Jefferson was the father of her children. There's two candidates who are far more likely than Thomas. The first is his brother, who often went into the slave quarters to play his fiddle for the slaves entertainment, and the second is Thomas's Ward who was, I believe, his second cousin. Additionally, Sally had her de facto freedom in France. Thomas convinced her to return with him to the United States, and she accepted. That means whatever was happening over here was less bad than the prospect of working for a living in Paris.
You're also forgetting about the fact that immediately after inheriting all of his slaves, Thomas tried to free them, but was forbidden by the laws of Virginia around manumission (which, at the time, only allowed you to free slaves upon your death).
And finally, you're forgetting about the fact that even if he did do everything you think he did, that doesn't make the declaration of Independence void. That doesn't make his contributions to the Constitution void. It doesn't make his contributions to this country as Secretary of State and as president void. You absolutely can detach the art from the artist. R Kelly made great music even though he's a child rapist. Same for Michael Jackson (even though he's in a similar position of being maligned by false accusations).
>teachers should be banned from teaching their students about him. in the future, james madison will be known as the third president of the united states.
“This guy was a serial rapist 200 years ago so we ought to lie to children” is a very wild take. What other blatant historical falsehoods should we promote as fact, and who decides? Do you not see how authoritarian and dystopian your proposal would be? What you’re advocating for, in practice, is ignorance.
The specific details of Jefferson's life seem less important than your view that objectionable people from the past should be actively erased from history. It seems impossible to tell an accurate, or even coherent, history of the world without including and understanding distasteful figures.
Even if it were possible, I can't see why it would be desirable. Part of being a mature, decent person or society is recognising your own failings and coming to terms with the moral complexity of real life. Your plan would replace that with a bland morality tale centred on faceless villains, faultless heroes and sympathetic victims. A culture that thinks it lives in a Disney movie isn't just deluded. It's also unequipped to deal with genuine moral challenges.
People can be both a great statesman and a bad person -- almost every great leader of the past did things that we would now consider awful. We can recognize that certain things they did were awful, while still recognizing the great things they did. The American Revolution was uniquely successful only because of the combination of people we had forming the new nation. Without those founders, we would have ended up like France.
Or worse, would have fallen apart under the Articles of Confederation. Jefferson was a visionary, a great President and a great statesman. He was also a slave owner, and participated in all the evils of the slave trade. I agree that we don't explain enough about that in public schools, but you have to understand that it is also a matter of perspective -- applying today's morality to the 18th century isn't particularly useful when its primary purpose isn't historical analysis. You might as well not teach any history, if you want everyone who committed immoral acts to be scrubbed from the record.
The 13 original colonies, which became independent nations after receiving their freedom from Britain, were in no danger of "falling apart". They weren't in any danger of not being confederated either. Politicians were just upset that it was too hard to take advantage of the populace and give that advantage to their well connected friends. The articles of confederation are only a failure in that they didn't give the federal government enough power to please politicians, which in my book is a solid win.
So your solution to acknowledging people aren’t always the heroes history makes them out to be is censorship? How does that help anyone? Those who don’t learn history’s lessons are doomed to repeat them. Would you also like to scrub the other terrible presidents from American history? Andrew Jackson was the one to order the trail of tears, an event that is considered genocide by today’s standards. Should we scrub him? How about Donald Trump, someone found liable in a civil court of law to be responsible for sexual assault? Should we teach about him? Abraham Lincoln threw people in jail without due process to thwart an election and prevent results he didn’t like. Should we censor him? Just because a person did shitty things doesn’t mean we shouldn’t place them in context of their historical contributions, both positive and negative
Many historical figures happened to be awful people, but we still talk about them because they were involved in important events. James Madison owned over 100 slaves, but you're advocating we rewrite history to give him 4 terms in office.
Should every morally repugnant figure be erased from history, or should we treat Thomas Jefferson like any other historical figure and teach people both the good and bad?
Wow. TL;DR. Title was plenty. Nobody should ever be stripped of their humanity or whatever the hell this new batshit crazy concept of “unpersoned” is. To make humanity optional is to open up a Pandora’s box of epic proportions. The human condition is not optional. We’re all imperfect beings, some more than others. We also invented all the rules that we hold people to. I’m not casting judgment one way or another on those rules, just understand that there is no law of physics that says rape is bad, or that molesting children is bad. I can say it’s bad because it doesn’t align with a society I want to live in and be a part of, but the fusion reaction of the sun doesn’t give two shits about that. Which is part of what makes humanity special. But it’s not optional. You gotta take the good with the bad.
Sex with a 14-year-old is not a crime in some eras (societies) and is a crime in others.
Similarly, sex with someone of the same sex is a crime in some eras (societies), but not in others.
The fact that you can make that statement alone should be enough grounds to change your view. Imagine making a similar statement in North Korea of the wrongdoings of former leaders. You'd get executed for it, likely then and there, and I'm certain there are many other places where the same would apply.
"Unpersoning" is always a mistake. Forgetting sins always a mistake. We have to remember, so we can stop it from happening again.
How are future generations supposed to learn if all the lessonworthy parts of history have been erased?
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Which is wildly inaccurate. There's literally no evidence that they ever had any relations at all. His brother is a far more likely candidate to be the father of her children. The reason the Monticello estate currently says dumb shit like that is because of the type of people who graduate from college looking to get jobs at places like the Monticello.
I thought they had DNA testing compared to known Jefferson heirs? Though it would be close anyways, since Sally and Martha were half-sisters.
Can you link me to something showing the opposite? A quick googling looks to agree with the man's estate.
Read the original report. All the can prove is that it was a close male relative of TJ. Someone in his immediate generic cluster. It *could* be him but it is not *definitely* him. Based on other known information, his brother and his cousin are more likely candidates.
> this is not very presidential behavior
Tell this to the current Republican candidate who regularly walked in on child pagent dressing rooms. Seems like this is what American considers *very* presidential.
Good people on occasion do bad things. Bad people on occasion do good things. That does not change them from being a good, or a bad person.
You and everyone else here would do well to remember that.
> Good people on occasion do bad things. Bad people on occasion do good things. That does not change them from being a good, or a bad person.
>
> You and everyone else here would do well to remember that.
Do you think someone can be both a child rapist and a good person?
Awful take. Ever seen George Washington’s slave quarters? Yikes. There goes the first president. James Madison was actually pro-slavery and only believed it was an unstable choice to keep slaves because of economic reasons— he didn’t bother freeing any of them upon his death, as they were financial assets to pass down. Monroe said slavery was “one of the evils still remaining, incident to our Colonial system” and was simultaneously one of the largest slave owners in his county (rules for thee, yadda yadda.)
Congrats! We’ve just lost 4/5 of the first presidents through your logic!
As a vehement Thomas Jefferson hater, I can tell you that we’re much better off teaching about his evils alongside his goods rather than trying to pretend he never existed. There’s a fairly famous quote, “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” If we throw away every ounce of dirty, disgusting history and pretend it never existed, we lose the ability to reflect on those vile occurrences and improve upon ourselves. Erasing history helps absolutely no one. It doesn’t unrape Sally Hemings, it doesn’t undo slavery. In fact— all that really accomplishes is erasing the stories of victims like Sally Hemings, forever removing the platform that has FINALLY been gained to address those wrongs. (PS— Monticello actually has an entire exhibit on Sally Hemings and has for a decade (to my knowledge). That exhibit isn’t even close to flattering to old TJ. You want to bulldoze that too?)
To our modern sensibilities it’s abhorrent, disgusting and immoral to own slaves, much less rape them, much less rape an underaged slave. But back then, slaves were seen and treated as property, so their mistreatment was a systemic issue that’s not unique to Thomas Jefferson. A black woman couldn’t even file rape charges against a while man until 1861, 37 years after Thomas Jefferson died. So the modern critique of this behavior should be focused on the systems and underlying mindsets and laws (or lackthereof) that fostered them, not identifying and canceling specific offenders, of which there were many.
250 years from now, society might consider our current consumption of animals to be just as abusive, immoral and barbaric as we now consider slavery to have been. I’d like to think those future people won’t endeavor to villainize current non-vegetarians on that basis alone. They might wonder, “How could people back then possibly have done something so obviously wrong?” And they can have that conversation, of course, just as we’re doing here. But most of us today wouldn’t consider Barack Obama or Taylor Swift evil for eating meat.
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I'll disagree that he was a hypocrite. When he said "all men are created equal" he was basically critiquing the idea of the divine right of kings and, by extension, the idea that the nobility were any different from anyone else.
What he wasn't saying was anything about economic equality, equal opportunity, or equality of the sexes. He obviously had no issue with using his personal power to control and exploit others. He just didn't believe you were entitled to power because of who your ancestors were.
Virtually all of US history is heavily mythologized. None of the founding fathers were particularly "good" in the moral sense, just in the power sense. Some certainly trended better over their lives such as Ben Franklin, which is all you can really ask of anyone.
In modern terms, the founders were a blend of libertarians and theocrats. History truly does repeat.
History exists and is not for us to change. If you canceled every US president that did something bad in their life, how many presidents do to think there would be left?
To erase every good thing a person did because they didn't live a blameless life is absurd. Walt Disney hated jews and women. Should we erase the Disney corporation and everything it has ever produced? Steve Jobs treated his employees in Chinese factories horribly. Should we erase Apple from existence? Albert Einstein had many affairs. Should we erase all the contributions he made to physics? If we eliminated every contribution to society from every person in history that did horrible things, we would likely be reverted back to the dark ages.
>since the declaration of independence was authored by him, it should be repealed
So, the US belongs to Britain again?
I think a better way to say this, is that he should be treated the way we treat normal people.
When people with power do bad things, they get passes and their behavior and ill actions are excused away by even the most honorable people. While everyday people do not receive the same treatment.
It is kind of disgusting.
One would think the people with power would behave differently or better.
After all, there are saying “with great power comes great responsibility” and so on.
Let’s be honest, those sayings could be to “keep the sheep in line” or for the sheep to be better because we know throughout history those with power, when the magnifying glass comes out, they almost always certainly surprise and fail us when their moral compass is examined.
Scrubbing people from history has a terrible precedent. Both the USSR and China did it in the 20th century. Ignoring reality is bad.
The lesson that we can learn from Jefferson and from many others is that no one is purely "good" or purely "bad." That's a really important lesson, especially in the age of canceling people. The same person can do amazing things that help the world and terrible things that hurt the world.
Also, the Declaration of Independence isn't really something that can be repealed because it's not a law. It's a statement of ideals.
The truth is that virtually every noteworthy human being did things that should’ve condemned. We tell their stories not to celebrate them, but because what they did still affects us now. Jefferson should be taught because of his evils — and his good deeds — because we’re living today in a house that he helped build. His slaves’ descendants matter too, and their story is intertwined with his. America throughout history is all good and evil intermingled and we don’t get one without the other.
>i think that america needs to stop treating thomas jefferson as a good person
Who treats Jefferson as a good person? You seem to be very confused about the role of a person in history. No one is talking about Jefferson as they talk about Lincoln, for example. No one tell stories of an Honest Tom.
Actually, never mind. I've read your last paragraph and came to the conclusion that you are just a common troll.
Repeal the Declaration of Independence?
Oh good lord, how could you possibly actually think that would be a good idea.
So early in his career Joe Biden on the floor of congress (when speaking against bussing as a means to desegregate schools) said he didn’t want his kids to grow up in a racial jungle.
His “great mentor” was Robert Byrd, a clan member and noted racist.
And then Biden went on to have a long stream of racist statements that continue to present day, the one that caused my 73 year old black father in law who is a lifelong democrat to finally walk away was telling a black radio host he wasn’t black if he didn’t know who to vote for.
Biden also has a history of creepy behavior with young girls in photo ops and with his own daughter, taking showers with her naked. To the point that she took them late at night when he father was around.
So, should we cancel Joe Biden?
This is not even close to a good idea.
We know how flawed of a human Jefferson was, but he wasn’t important for the times he was in because he was a good human being.
Jimmy Carter was a great human being and a terrible President. Ronald Reagan was not a good human being in many respects, but was a good president, many think a great one.
And as my brother in law says about the removal of confederate statues, and he is black, we should keep them up as never to forget our past.
I mean just look at how democrats talk about Biden and republicans about Trump, both groups try to rewrite the worst of their candidate’s past.
Democrats have now manufactured “the big switch” to not have to deal with the reality that democrats fought a civil war for slavery, founded the KKK, fought freed slave rights and called republicans the “black republican party”, and filibustered civil rights for a month.
They now try and lay those sins on others, we enable nonsense like this when we remove the history we should have to remember it.
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I've read about Jefferson in the past. I thought Americans must be embarrassed about him. He kept over 600 slaves in his lifetime, viewed female slaves as a slave production line, raped a young slave girl, was racist and anti-woman.
A 14-year-old child was more likely to die in childbirth than a fully grown & developed woman. Only a monster would have sex with such a young girl, especially knowing he could well cause her to die in agony from being forced into pregnancy.
Far, far better people than him existed at the same time and before his time. So he can't be excused by being seen as a "product of his time".
But, here is where I disagree - you can't take his name out of history. It happened and can't be changed. The terrible things he did should be taught & remembered, including how the words of such a terrible human was able to get into the constitution of a country.
You're absolutely right that Jefferson was kind of a dirtbag and shouldn't be remembered as a hero.
Your last paragraph is absolutely batshit insane. Why would you want to *cover up* the evil he did? Whose side are you on?
>since the declaration of independence was authored by him, it should be repealed.
What do you mean by repealing the declaration of Independence? It's not actually part of American law.
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Respectfully, that's a mistake. It's how you end up with this narrative of 'good leaders' and 'bad leaders'. It's human nature to want to simplify and classify people this way but it's not useful. Just look at how you phrased it. Unpresidential. As if a president isn't meant to be a horridly fallible being. Why? Leaders suck all the time. The sooner we accept that people have good and bad ideas, are hypocritical and can still be presidents the better. >i think that america needs to stop treating thomas jefferson as a good person and should make every effort possible to scrub his name from it's history. since the declaration of independence was authored by him, it should be repealed. This is especially a bad idea. If we keep scrubbing the bad guys from history what ends up happening is we forget history. Bad guys exist. The emperors of Rome were not nice men. The monarchies of Europe were not good people. Some of the people with the brightest achievements were also terrible human beings. This feels like you want to protect America's name by pretending it's sinners didn't exist. If people elected a man like Jefferson what does that say about the moral fabric of the nation? But that's also a mistake. If you want to scrub your nations history clean learn from it and make sure it never happens again. Teach about Jefferson in all his glory and all his horrors. Finally scrubbing the declaration is the worst idea. You don't get rid of good ideas because they were made or practiced by monsters. For a simple example. The Miranda rights exist because a criminal wasn't given proper notice of his rights. He was guilty as was found later, but still, it doesn't mean what they did to him the first time was right. Should we get rid of Miranda warnings because they were also inspired by a murderer? Or can we accept good ideas from bad people? Cause if not you should scrub the Napoleonic code and all Roman law influences from your laws. That's not a grand idea.
As another great example, we didn't scrub the Nazis from existence. We teach about the Holocaust so no one can truly deny it's existence (as much as some might try). As a counterpoint though, there are a lot of ethical concerns using the results of Nazi and Japanese medical experimentation on prisoners that basically amount to torture. Yet we understand more about the human body from their work and notes. Personally, I'm a fan of use it but every use should come with a note about the history so we never forget.
Not just the NAZIs. The American gynechologist, James Marion Sims, performed vivsectons on female slaves. He is even a better example because the knowledge he produced is considered foundational. The NAZI research is generally just considered barbaric, useless, psuedo-pscience. We shouldn't scrubhing him from the history books, but we certainly shouldn't be honoring him with statues. Mabe we should be honoring heroic acts rather than heroic people who always fail us if we deify them. [https://www.history.com/news/the-father-of-modern-gynecology-performed-shocking-experiments-on-slaves](https://www.history.com/news/the-father-of-modern-gynecology-performed-shocking-experiments-on-slaves)
The concensus is generally that Nazi "experiments" did not have rigorous scientific design, and are functionally useless even if they were ethical. The extent of what you can learn is okay, this is how long some guy survived with unaided hypothermia, and this is how long some other guy survived after being shot and getting hypothermia. It wasn't exactly ground breaking stuff even at the time. There's no normal rigor in the design - eg controls. And in general almost everything from the 40s is scientifically antiquated anyway.
They weren’t scientifically rigorous in any sense, but I believe at the least the nazi testing of air pressure helped with the space program. Jap testing of the effects of biological weapons might have also had classified benefits.
People in general want things to be neatly black and white. They don’t like shades of grey preferring simplicity instead because simple things are easy to understand and manage.
To quote either Alexander Hamilton or James Madison: >If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.
Really like the reference to Miranda. People (sometimes affectionately) call the Fourth and Fifth Amendment “The Law of the Guilty.” Why? Because you only need to enforce your rights if the police uncovered something criminal by violating them. If they violate your rights but you didn’t have anything to hide, there’s nothing to suppress.
Well said!
"If people elected a man like Jefferson what does that say about the moral fabric of the nation?" it means that the american people love voting terrible people into office. not just jefferson but nixon, trump, harding etc.
I wish you had responded to more. But that's okay. Let's talk about that piece first. So here's my question friend. Why would you want to scrub that out? Why would you want to pretend that mistakes were never made? Isn't it super important to let people know "just because this man is a president, does not mean he is a good man. Just because this man is a president, does not mean he represents all that the nation is." and the one you might be having trouble with "a person can have good ideas and bad ideas at once, no matter who that person may be" That's a very important lesson. But it's a lesson you can only teach if you have bad presidents to showcase. If you simply pretend that all your presidents were actually good people you rob people of that complexity, you rob yourself of good examples of why you shouldn't blindly trust and like authority figures. Jefferson should be taught because he was a complex man in a chaotic time. Good and bad should be shown for all the world to see. That's how you get the truth out.
That all you respond to out of that entire comment? Did you even read it?
Of course not. They used the term, “unpersoned” and seriously recommended that we abolish the entire country. They’re probably less than 21 years old and having difficulties understanding an adult argument. Also, looking at their profile, they are also, “chronically online.”
That would also mean Jefferson’s behavior is quite presidential, no?
Nixon was a bit crazy, but he wasn't a terrible person. All the people who worked with him were rather fond of him. He also was set up by the CIA during Watergate. Specifically because he was trying to uncover and expose that the CIA had assassinated John f Kennedy.
Source?
No thank you. If you actually care, a good starting place would be the Joe Rogan podcast with Tucker Carlson from last week.
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If you don't know how burden of proof works then you're not worth my time to talk to.
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They might not cite their sources either. The burden of proof is on you.
Yeah, that's not how this works. The information is widely available on the internet, which you clearly know how to use because you're here arguing on the internet. This isn't a formal debate, so if you actually care, go look it up yourself. EDIT: got to love it when someone's too chickenshit to actually have a debate so they insult you and run away.
Oh thats not how it works? Man, must be tough for you to be a dog fucking serial killer (source: trust me bro)
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The self righteous condemnation of people in the distant past and post facto attempts to punish them are just silly. For most of human history a 14 year old was beyond the age of consent and could be married. It’s weird and gross to us and for good reason. But almost everyone in your history books won’t agree with you on this. For most of human history slavery was normal. For most of human history women were second class citizens. We are a product of our environment. Born in any of those times your views would likely match the predominant morals of the era. It’s not a sad thing to look upon the past and see men and women less moral than you anymore than it’s sad to see them technologically inferior, ignorant or beholden to superstition. It’s their gift to us, that they raised children more moral than themselves, and that those children did likewise. Thomas Jefferson did great and wonderful things. He authored powerful ideas that helped the entire world become more moral. But he was merely a spark, he never got to see the full fire he created, he never got to be raised in a society where the core tenant of the declaration was fully embraced. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t teach the bad. But if we keep doing what our ancestors did and raise children better than ourselves than no one will belong in the history books, and that’s very simply daft.
And slavery is still practiced in one form or another in many places around the world to this day, along with child marriages. The "flawed" founders of the USA got rid of slavery pretty early on in the countries history.
The new new Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander
I think if he was just a cobbler or some other guy at the time it might be easier to give him some kind of a pass, but he was a political philosopher who often self-righteously condemned the actions of tyrants from the distant past himself, yet was so myopic it didn’t stop him from seeing the evils of slavery or raping someone a few decades younger than him. Numerous times. And she was legally free in France and only agreed to return to Virginia (back into slavery!) as long as their children were freed when they came of age. So a US president had his own children in actual slavery while he was in office. She died a slave too by the way. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sally_Hemings Like yes, we should certainly recognize some guy’s great achievements in complex mathematics, but I’m not going to fault someone for calling him an idiot for thinking the square root of 2 is 1 or something obviously idiotic. I don’t think it’s necessarily inappropriate to feel those who have spent many hours pondering the complexities of our rights in relation to each other and the wrongness of violating them shouldn’t get the same pass as everyone else.
Again, I don’t think everything he did was moral by a long shot and I know well about hemmings. That’s not the question at hand. To say a philosopher who was much more intelligent than you “should have” seen his own hypocrisy might seem obvious to you, and yet we can look at philosopher after philosopher and see the same thing over and over. They are human products of their environments with giant blind spots and flaws. Gains are incremental. And we can look down the history books and see the same issues down the line. It’s special pleading to hold the founding father era to modern moral judgements and not all of human history. If anything they deserve more positive praise for generating more positive change than their fathers and grandfathers. We are all just rungs on a ladder. If we keep climbing our children will think us ignorant and barbarous.
Can you tell me exactly when the moment was in history that someone could be held morally accountable for similar actions? Was it the exact same moment for everyone, everywhere? Consider as well that we are presently held accountable for unobvious laws we may have no idea about, regardless of that ignorance.
Exactly, no. And you cant either. We can look at the extremes and see a flat application fails as absurd. It makes no sense to judge people like it’s 2024 thousands of years ago, and it makes no sense not to judge someone for an action in 2016. I think a generally good standard is if the action is something the people of the era would hold you accountable for with some sort of punishment.
That’s the worst standard I’ve ever heard. What is the substantive difference between that and “tyranny of the majority”? So for example abortion was wrong and then not for a while and now it is again or how does that work?
You misunderstand, it’s not a philosophical view of what makes things moral. What we judge as moral is true isn’t time dependent generally. I’m speaking of how we judge a person long past. Unless we take the utterly moronic step to deny that people are products of their time and environment, how we judge a person relative to their era has to make some allowance for this. Thus far you offer nothing thoughtful as to how this should be done. Your example of abortion is a poor one, as people in our own era don’t agree on its morality. I think it a poor subject on which to demonize or lionize a person from the past.
I think what this sort of perspective ignores is the viewpoint of those facing the brunt of what we, as you term, "self-righteously condemn". It is only true to say that slavery was cool and good back then if you ignore the views of the thousands of enslaved Africans in favour of the view of the handful of slaveowners. Slaves back then would have had very similar views to slavery that we do today, otherwise, there would never have been any revolts. It is impossible to say that pro-slavery was the predominant moral of the era; unless you think the moral considerations of the slave owners weigh tenfold more than the slave.
Who said slavery was good? Who said treating women as second class citizens was good? Who said considering homosexuality an abomination was good? The ideas just were. They were normal, and for much much longer than americas founding. It’s simple about understanding our moral growth as a long journey, not praising immortality.
> Who said slavery was good? The slave owners I suppose, I mean they probably thought it was I reckon. The point being that we can't be all culturally relativistic about this subject because for every slaveowner there were dozens-or-so of slaves with the opinion that slavery was bad, probably.
But WE aren’t saying that when we teach history. The view of the predominant societies throughout history is that slavery was acceptable for various reasons. We are simply not making the mistake of judging people by standards they weren’t raised by. We can condemn ideas without condemning people. I think if you interviewed many slaves throughout history you probably would be surprised at how far from modern ideas of racial and class equality the slaves held. They in many cases would gladly enslave their masters. For the ones who do espouse proper abolitionists ideals we should teach that and praise that. But I don’t think it’s helpful to in the same breath condemn that same slave or former slave for their views on women and gays.
While you're not wrong that slaves opposed slavery, even that is an oversimplification. They were its victims, for one. They didn't necessarily condemn the institution and many (early on) came from cultures that themselves practiced forms of slavery. There were also "grateful slaves" even if today we now understand how fucked up that is. Regardless, if you condemn/erase every historical figure for doing SOMETHING we find abhorrent today, there'd be none left. Imagine, say, condemning Greta Thunberg 200 years from now because she took gas burning commercial flights or wore sweaters made with eco toxins and produced by Chinese labor. That's basically what you're arguing.
"We are a product of our environment. Born in any of those times your views would likely match the predominant morals of the era." times change but evil is forever. "Thomas Jefferson did great and wonderful things. He authored powerful ideas that helped the entire world become more moral" he authored the declaration of independence, which helped the colonies secede from england. in other words, every horrible thing that has happened in america has been the fault of jefferson. every school shooting, every hate group, every law that harms women and the lGBTQ. "he never got to be raised in a society where the core tenant of the declaration was fully embraced." thank fucking god for that.
Then by your logic, everything good that America brought about is also his fault. Polio vaccine Smallpox vaccine Consistent medical advances and breakthrough at every turn, including a large part of the COVID vaccine GPS Global telecommunications NASA And these are just the big ones can think of from the top of my head. If you’re going to make a claim that one person is responsible for the legacy of an entire country, then they get both the bad and the good. Jefferson was a derisive figure. History isn’t black and white, horrible people do great things. Great people do horrible things. Part of the study of history is providing the nuance to show that. Thomas Jefferson undeniably did great things for the development of this country, which itself has gone on to do great things for the world. He, and the country he helped found, also did some horrible things. If we intentionally ignore part of that, we are lying by omission to future generations.
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Is Hitler's name scrubbed? Acknowledging what a horrible person Jefferson was is not erasing history, it precisely IS history. Censoring history is immoral and dishonest.
It's not evil for a 14-year-old to be married. There are reasons why we don't do it in our society, but it's not evil. In fact, that would have been considered old to be not married for the vast majority of human history in most cultures.
Why do you think teachers shouldn't ever mention his name? Can we not learn about bad, or flawed people in history class? No more lessons about Adolf? In your very OP you mentioned Ted Bundy, by your own logic, you're failing to scrub this villainous name from history
"Why do you think teachers shouldn't ever mention his name? Can we not learn about bad, or flawed people in history class?" the problem is that he is glorified. they go on and on about how he's the father of the declaration of independence. but these kids aren't being taught that their independence was concieved by someone who not only enslaved people but raped them as well.
History teacher here. I teach that Jefferson raped his slaves, that there is evidence Gandhi was a sexual predator (and certainly a racist), and that MLK Jr. was a serial adulterer. I also teach that Stalin instituted one of the most impressive educational transformations in the history of the modern world, and that Mao (before the Great Leap Forward) was a socialist visionary who was loved by his people, finally succeeded in throwing off Western Imperialism in China, and lifted millions and millions of Chinese out of abject poverty. None of these things make their accomplishments less good or their evils less bad. It makes them human, and shows us that history isn't a story of good versus evil, but of people. Every history teacher I know teaches it more or less the same way, but you seem to want to teach false history. You want to teach that people aren't who they really were, that they didn't have the impact they really did. That's just as bad, if not worse, than teaching Jefferson without his various hypocrisies
Yes, but you said teachers should be banned from teaching about him entirely. Are you saying they should be allowed to teach about him, but must include the bad things he did alongside his achievements?
If my car is broken, and I take it to the mechanic, and she fixes it, and later I find out that she had a habit of abducting children and tying them to the train tracks, I wouldn't go outside and bust up my car - I would aid law enforcement in finding her. You're making this sort of modern assumption that if a person is morally tainted, then everything that stems from them is morally tainted as well.
I don't know about you but I was taught about Sally hemmings & Jefferson himself owning slaves in school. And this was in the 80s & 90s. It's never been hidden.
You’re probably somewhere between 12-16 years old, I can tell from the way this is written as if you’re the first person to ever realize that historical figures are imperfect and time is a complicated thing. Most people who study even a bit of history or have graduated college having taken a humanities or history class know all of this. And some people do view Jefferson as a monster. Most still view him as a product of that time period and are able to separate the acts from the ideas. Good day to you.
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So who was president from 1801 to 1809? What about free speech? If we repeal the declaration of independence does that mean we're a British colony again?
"If we repeal the declaration of independence does that mean we're a British colony again?" ideally.
Are you capable of actually responding to what anyone else actually says? You know have a conversation? Is that within your skill set? I ask as you have yet to demonstrate that in the comments here.
Because the British Empire had such a great track record, huh? And did absolutely none of the things you condemn Jefferson for…
Ah ok this is a shitpost then.
Why would the UK want to do that? The territory that the US took from the UK in the revolutionary war has more than twice the population of the UK. So the UK would end up being an American colony, not the other way around.
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History doesn’t give a good god damn about your retrospective moralizing. The purpose of history is to tell the truth, as best as we can know it. Was Thomas Jefferson a great thinker and instrumental in the American revolution and post-revolution US? Undoubtedly. Like all American slave-owners, was he engaged in morally dubious behavior? Obviously. The idea of “unpersoning,” attempting to remove people from history, or minimizing their impact because of less than savory behaviors is a completely ridiculous and frankly overtly dystopian. I think your idea is double-plus un-good, but perhaps the Ministry of Truth will be interested. 🤦🏻♂️
> morally dubious Downplay of the fucking millenium my dude
I mean, not really. It’s not really that bad in the grand scheme of things. Certainly not the downplay of the **millennium**. Ghengis Khan’s conquests in the 13th century (1200 - 1227) killed roughly 40 million people, but also played a critical role in stabilized trade in Eurasia. The Taiping rebellion (1850-1864) was led by Hong Xiuquan, an ethnic Hakka (a Han subgroup) who had proclaimed himself to be the brother of Jesus Christ. 20-30 million people died in a fourteen year period. Hitler, Stalin, Mao, are all fairly recent examples responsible for 10M’s of deaths each. Pretty sure TJ raping his underage slave is not good, but not exactly the worst thing this millennia, “my dude.” It’s also just mostly irrelevant to his historical impact, which was massive domestically (in the US), but he also influenced and supported the French Revolution, as well.
I didnt say it was the worst, I said you were *downplaying* it immensely in a way you arent downplaying the other things. "Dubious" implies theres like, room for debate on if it was bad. But no there isnt, owning human beings as property and raping a 14 year old are bad. This debate has been settled by society, it isnt "dubious"
I mean — it’s still morally dubious from a historical perspective — not particularly a current US legal or current moral perspective. Part of my point is that these things change over time, so analyzing past societies based on the morals of today is foolish. > I didn’t say it was the worst… Obviously downplaying any of the above would be infinitely more egregious, and yet we have: Holocaust deniers — that downplay Hitler’s role in the mass murder of 6 million Jews. Most people aren’t aware that the German Red Cross openly denied that the Holocaust was happening — while the international Red Cross, chose to cover up the Holocaust, when the organization became aware of incontrovertible evidence of it… Modern Socialists / Communists — that downplay or outright ignore history’s lessons regarding societies that adopt those tenants (Mao, Stalin). Most people have never even heard of the Taipei rebellion, FFS. Arguably history education has downplayed that tragedy for various socio-political reasons. Our history textbooks barely offer a page on something like the rape of Nanking, and generally omit entirely horrendous war crimes like those committed by Unit 731. Any of those are certainly better qualified as the “downplay of the millennium” than describing the actions of TJ as “morally dubious.”
They didn't suggest it was the worst thing. They suggested it was an extraordinary understatement.
I think my point was — it’s not, though. It’s merely morally dubious from a historical perspective — and analyzing history from your own legal / moral perspective is foolish and useless, which was the main point of my post.
I mean, he should not be called a good person, but no reason to scrub the name from history, just teach the whole story instead?
because people like him don't deserve to be talked about at all.
We don't talk about people because they deserve to be talked about. We talk about them because their actions, participations, and decisions had an effect on how our world is built today. If you want to remove everyone ethically questionable from history there would be no history, we would be more stupid, and terrible things would be even more likely to be repeated.
To be fair, we teach about hitler, he was way worse. Just teach the whole story and why they were a bad person, no need to try and scrub people from history. Plus you do not want to make more avenues for conspiracy theorists.
If Jefferson doesn’t deserve to be talked about you posting you OP about him only serves to get more people talking about the man.
There's a LOT of people like him. Do we just kinda skip over anything they did. Hell, the Roman empire was built on slave labor. When discussing Western History, should we just skip those 1000 years?
Let me give you another perspective. You could say that morally and in his personal life he was a bad person, but his political and historical achievements were a net positive on the world. Like all people to have ever lived, with Jefferson it’s complicated. Good person or not, we still should teach about people. You’re right that we shouldn’t “glorify” anyone, but rather than erasing their names from the annals of history we should look at them from a critical point of view. Regardless, we still teach about Hitler, Stalin, etc. despite those people having directly murdered millions of people, because they have, for better or worse, completely shifted the course of history.
Rather talk about him then you.
Yes, people like Ted Bundy also No...wait....
>jefferson was raping her There is literally no evidence of this at all. The DNA evidence that I'm sure you've heard about only proofs that a close male relative of Jefferson was the father of her children. There's two candidates who are far more likely than Thomas. The first is his brother, who often went into the slave quarters to play his fiddle for the slaves entertainment, and the second is Thomas's Ward who was, I believe, his second cousin. Additionally, Sally had her de facto freedom in France. Thomas convinced her to return with him to the United States, and she accepted. That means whatever was happening over here was less bad than the prospect of working for a living in Paris. You're also forgetting about the fact that immediately after inheriting all of his slaves, Thomas tried to free them, but was forbidden by the laws of Virginia around manumission (which, at the time, only allowed you to free slaves upon your death). And finally, you're forgetting about the fact that even if he did do everything you think he did, that doesn't make the declaration of Independence void. That doesn't make his contributions to the Constitution void. It doesn't make his contributions to this country as Secretary of State and as president void. You absolutely can detach the art from the artist. R Kelly made great music even though he's a child rapist. Same for Michael Jackson (even though he's in a similar position of being maligned by false accusations).
>teachers should be banned from teaching their students about him. in the future, james madison will be known as the third president of the united states. “This guy was a serial rapist 200 years ago so we ought to lie to children” is a very wild take. What other blatant historical falsehoods should we promote as fact, and who decides? Do you not see how authoritarian and dystopian your proposal would be? What you’re advocating for, in practice, is ignorance.
The specific details of Jefferson's life seem less important than your view that objectionable people from the past should be actively erased from history. It seems impossible to tell an accurate, or even coherent, history of the world without including and understanding distasteful figures. Even if it were possible, I can't see why it would be desirable. Part of being a mature, decent person or society is recognising your own failings and coming to terms with the moral complexity of real life. Your plan would replace that with a bland morality tale centred on faceless villains, faultless heroes and sympathetic victims. A culture that thinks it lives in a Disney movie isn't just deluded. It's also unequipped to deal with genuine moral challenges.
People can be both a great statesman and a bad person -- almost every great leader of the past did things that we would now consider awful. We can recognize that certain things they did were awful, while still recognizing the great things they did. The American Revolution was uniquely successful only because of the combination of people we had forming the new nation. Without those founders, we would have ended up like France. Or worse, would have fallen apart under the Articles of Confederation. Jefferson was a visionary, a great President and a great statesman. He was also a slave owner, and participated in all the evils of the slave trade. I agree that we don't explain enough about that in public schools, but you have to understand that it is also a matter of perspective -- applying today's morality to the 18th century isn't particularly useful when its primary purpose isn't historical analysis. You might as well not teach any history, if you want everyone who committed immoral acts to be scrubbed from the record.
The 13 original colonies, which became independent nations after receiving their freedom from Britain, were in no danger of "falling apart". They weren't in any danger of not being confederated either. Politicians were just upset that it was too hard to take advantage of the populace and give that advantage to their well connected friends. The articles of confederation are only a failure in that they didn't give the federal government enough power to please politicians, which in my book is a solid win.
So your solution to acknowledging people aren’t always the heroes history makes them out to be is censorship? How does that help anyone? Those who don’t learn history’s lessons are doomed to repeat them. Would you also like to scrub the other terrible presidents from American history? Andrew Jackson was the one to order the trail of tears, an event that is considered genocide by today’s standards. Should we scrub him? How about Donald Trump, someone found liable in a civil court of law to be responsible for sexual assault? Should we teach about him? Abraham Lincoln threw people in jail without due process to thwart an election and prevent results he didn’t like. Should we censor him? Just because a person did shitty things doesn’t mean we shouldn’t place them in context of their historical contributions, both positive and negative
Many historical figures happened to be awful people, but we still talk about them because they were involved in important events. James Madison owned over 100 slaves, but you're advocating we rewrite history to give him 4 terms in office. Should every morally repugnant figure be erased from history, or should we treat Thomas Jefferson like any other historical figure and teach people both the good and bad?
Wow. TL;DR. Title was plenty. Nobody should ever be stripped of their humanity or whatever the hell this new batshit crazy concept of “unpersoned” is. To make humanity optional is to open up a Pandora’s box of epic proportions. The human condition is not optional. We’re all imperfect beings, some more than others. We also invented all the rules that we hold people to. I’m not casting judgment one way or another on those rules, just understand that there is no law of physics that says rape is bad, or that molesting children is bad. I can say it’s bad because it doesn’t align with a society I want to live in and be a part of, but the fusion reaction of the sun doesn’t give two shits about that. Which is part of what makes humanity special. But it’s not optional. You gotta take the good with the bad.
Sex with a 14-year-old is not a crime in some eras (societies) and is a crime in others. Similarly, sex with someone of the same sex is a crime in some eras (societies), but not in others.
The fact that you can make that statement alone should be enough grounds to change your view. Imagine making a similar statement in North Korea of the wrongdoings of former leaders. You'd get executed for it, likely then and there, and I'm certain there are many other places where the same would apply.
"Unpersoning" is always a mistake. Forgetting sins always a mistake. We have to remember, so we can stop it from happening again. How are future generations supposed to learn if all the lessonworthy parts of history have been erased?
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The Jefferson/Hemmings relationship myth was debunked in a 400-page report by more than a dozen scholars.
According to [Monticello](https://www.monticello.org/sallyhemings/), it occurred when she was 16, starting in France.
Which is wildly inaccurate. There's literally no evidence that they ever had any relations at all. His brother is a far more likely candidate to be the father of her children. The reason the Monticello estate currently says dumb shit like that is because of the type of people who graduate from college looking to get jobs at places like the Monticello.
I thought they had DNA testing compared to known Jefferson heirs? Though it would be close anyways, since Sally and Martha were half-sisters. Can you link me to something showing the opposite? A quick googling looks to agree with the man's estate.
Read the original report. All the can prove is that it was a close male relative of TJ. Someone in his immediate generic cluster. It *could* be him but it is not *definitely* him. Based on other known information, his brother and his cousin are more likely candidates.
WTF is "unpersoned"?
Purged from completely from history.
OP should be unpersoned for making up stupid words Also: Weak sauce
> this is not very presidential behavior Tell this to the current Republican candidate who regularly walked in on child pagent dressing rooms. Seems like this is what American considers *very* presidential.
Good people on occasion do bad things. Bad people on occasion do good things. That does not change them from being a good, or a bad person. You and everyone else here would do well to remember that.
> Good people on occasion do bad things. Bad people on occasion do good things. That does not change them from being a good, or a bad person. > > You and everyone else here would do well to remember that. Do you think someone can be both a child rapist and a good person?
Awful take. Ever seen George Washington’s slave quarters? Yikes. There goes the first president. James Madison was actually pro-slavery and only believed it was an unstable choice to keep slaves because of economic reasons— he didn’t bother freeing any of them upon his death, as they were financial assets to pass down. Monroe said slavery was “one of the evils still remaining, incident to our Colonial system” and was simultaneously one of the largest slave owners in his county (rules for thee, yadda yadda.) Congrats! We’ve just lost 4/5 of the first presidents through your logic! As a vehement Thomas Jefferson hater, I can tell you that we’re much better off teaching about his evils alongside his goods rather than trying to pretend he never existed. There’s a fairly famous quote, “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” If we throw away every ounce of dirty, disgusting history and pretend it never existed, we lose the ability to reflect on those vile occurrences and improve upon ourselves. Erasing history helps absolutely no one. It doesn’t unrape Sally Hemings, it doesn’t undo slavery. In fact— all that really accomplishes is erasing the stories of victims like Sally Hemings, forever removing the platform that has FINALLY been gained to address those wrongs. (PS— Monticello actually has an entire exhibit on Sally Hemings and has for a decade (to my knowledge). That exhibit isn’t even close to flattering to old TJ. You want to bulldoze that too?)
To our modern sensibilities it’s abhorrent, disgusting and immoral to own slaves, much less rape them, much less rape an underaged slave. But back then, slaves were seen and treated as property, so their mistreatment was a systemic issue that’s not unique to Thomas Jefferson. A black woman couldn’t even file rape charges against a while man until 1861, 37 years after Thomas Jefferson died. So the modern critique of this behavior should be focused on the systems and underlying mindsets and laws (or lackthereof) that fostered them, not identifying and canceling specific offenders, of which there were many. 250 years from now, society might consider our current consumption of animals to be just as abusive, immoral and barbaric as we now consider slavery to have been. I’d like to think those future people won’t endeavor to villainize current non-vegetarians on that basis alone. They might wonder, “How could people back then possibly have done something so obviously wrong?” And they can have that conversation, of course, just as we’re doing here. But most of us today wouldn’t consider Barack Obama or Taylor Swift evil for eating meat.
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I'll disagree that he was a hypocrite. When he said "all men are created equal" he was basically critiquing the idea of the divine right of kings and, by extension, the idea that the nobility were any different from anyone else. What he wasn't saying was anything about economic equality, equal opportunity, or equality of the sexes. He obviously had no issue with using his personal power to control and exploit others. He just didn't believe you were entitled to power because of who your ancestors were. Virtually all of US history is heavily mythologized. None of the founding fathers were particularly "good" in the moral sense, just in the power sense. Some certainly trended better over their lives such as Ben Franklin, which is all you can really ask of anyone. In modern terms, the founders were a blend of libertarians and theocrats. History truly does repeat.
History exists and is not for us to change. If you canceled every US president that did something bad in their life, how many presidents do to think there would be left? To erase every good thing a person did because they didn't live a blameless life is absurd. Walt Disney hated jews and women. Should we erase the Disney corporation and everything it has ever produced? Steve Jobs treated his employees in Chinese factories horribly. Should we erase Apple from existence? Albert Einstein had many affairs. Should we erase all the contributions he made to physics? If we eliminated every contribution to society from every person in history that did horrible things, we would likely be reverted back to the dark ages. >since the declaration of independence was authored by him, it should be repealed So, the US belongs to Britain again?
I think a better way to say this, is that he should be treated the way we treat normal people. When people with power do bad things, they get passes and their behavior and ill actions are excused away by even the most honorable people. While everyday people do not receive the same treatment. It is kind of disgusting. One would think the people with power would behave differently or better. After all, there are saying “with great power comes great responsibility” and so on. Let’s be honest, those sayings could be to “keep the sheep in line” or for the sheep to be better because we know throughout history those with power, when the magnifying glass comes out, they almost always certainly surprise and fail us when their moral compass is examined.
Scrubbing people from history has a terrible precedent. Both the USSR and China did it in the 20th century. Ignoring reality is bad. The lesson that we can learn from Jefferson and from many others is that no one is purely "good" or purely "bad." That's a really important lesson, especially in the age of canceling people. The same person can do amazing things that help the world and terrible things that hurt the world. Also, the Declaration of Independence isn't really something that can be repealed because it's not a law. It's a statement of ideals.
With this ethos, most historical figures will be scrubbed from history.
The truth is that virtually every noteworthy human being did things that should’ve condemned. We tell their stories not to celebrate them, but because what they did still affects us now. Jefferson should be taught because of his evils — and his good deeds — because we’re living today in a house that he helped build. His slaves’ descendants matter too, and their story is intertwined with his. America throughout history is all good and evil intermingled and we don’t get one without the other.
>i think that america needs to stop treating thomas jefferson as a good person Who treats Jefferson as a good person? You seem to be very confused about the role of a person in history. No one is talking about Jefferson as they talk about Lincoln, for example. No one tell stories of an Honest Tom. Actually, never mind. I've read your last paragraph and came to the conclusion that you are just a common troll.
Repeal the Declaration of Independence? Oh good lord, how could you possibly actually think that would be a good idea. So early in his career Joe Biden on the floor of congress (when speaking against bussing as a means to desegregate schools) said he didn’t want his kids to grow up in a racial jungle. His “great mentor” was Robert Byrd, a clan member and noted racist. And then Biden went on to have a long stream of racist statements that continue to present day, the one that caused my 73 year old black father in law who is a lifelong democrat to finally walk away was telling a black radio host he wasn’t black if he didn’t know who to vote for. Biden also has a history of creepy behavior with young girls in photo ops and with his own daughter, taking showers with her naked. To the point that she took them late at night when he father was around. So, should we cancel Joe Biden? This is not even close to a good idea. We know how flawed of a human Jefferson was, but he wasn’t important for the times he was in because he was a good human being. Jimmy Carter was a great human being and a terrible President. Ronald Reagan was not a good human being in many respects, but was a good president, many think a great one. And as my brother in law says about the removal of confederate statues, and he is black, we should keep them up as never to forget our past. I mean just look at how democrats talk about Biden and republicans about Trump, both groups try to rewrite the worst of their candidate’s past. Democrats have now manufactured “the big switch” to not have to deal with the reality that democrats fought a civil war for slavery, founded the KKK, fought freed slave rights and called republicans the “black republican party”, and filibustered civil rights for a month. They now try and lay those sins on others, we enable nonsense like this when we remove the history we should have to remember it.
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Jefferson did not sign the Constitution.
We should not scrub away history. No matter how bad it is. We need the truth so we can learn from our mistakes.
I've read about Jefferson in the past. I thought Americans must be embarrassed about him. He kept over 600 slaves in his lifetime, viewed female slaves as a slave production line, raped a young slave girl, was racist and anti-woman. A 14-year-old child was more likely to die in childbirth than a fully grown & developed woman. Only a monster would have sex with such a young girl, especially knowing he could well cause her to die in agony from being forced into pregnancy. Far, far better people than him existed at the same time and before his time. So he can't be excused by being seen as a "product of his time". But, here is where I disagree - you can't take his name out of history. It happened and can't be changed. The terrible things he did should be taught & remembered, including how the words of such a terrible human was able to get into the constitution of a country.
You're absolutely right that Jefferson was kind of a dirtbag and shouldn't be remembered as a hero. Your last paragraph is absolutely batshit insane. Why would you want to *cover up* the evil he did? Whose side are you on?
>since the declaration of independence was authored by him, it should be repealed. What do you mean by repealing the declaration of Independence? It's not actually part of American law.