Was at my mother’s house this weekend and I noticed an open copy of the Weekly Standard with a picture of Thomas Jefferson within the text of an article. I picked it up I saw this:
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/016/407mrzem.asp
Frankly, I am not surprised the posthoumous trashing of Jefferson hasn’t come earlier. Earlier statist historians tried to re-event him as a proto-New Dealer. Slowly, they seem to have waken up that Jefferson wasn’t one of them.
I think they have been trashing people from the enlightment for years now, certainly all the founding fathers have been through the ringer. They usually however attack the person and not the ideas. I personally have no concern with such issues as to what thinker owned slaves/ was a racist and which one wore boxers and not briefs. All that really matters are the ideas they put forth, not the personal lives they lived.
Yeah, its more about the ideas. Jefferson had some good ideas, but became a hypocrite when he was in charge. I hate quoting any founding father because of the extra stigma attached to them-especially Jefferson for banks and shit. He led a horrible example in his real life and did nothing to stop the FBUS during his presidential tenure. Not to mention all of his other blunders, such as overriding the Constitution and the Embargo act. Same thing goes for Andrew Jackson and his fight againist the SBUS. I won’t argue the fact that he was a badass (some of his quotes are kick ass), but the man didn’t care much for the whole “free market” thing and fought anyone who dared disagreed with him. Threatened the army aganist Calhoun, and attacked Biddle because he had a thing going againist him.
Almost every single likeable libertarian president has their little tidbits, and one must be careful when using them as examples in case the statists find out. 