Posted on 07/13/2005 3:14:50 PM PDT by Sam Gamgee
Biography Channel had an hour on Jefferson. Being Canadian I never learned anything about this great man. Some one on this site lamented that they would never want to listen to a thing he said because he was a slave owner. Yet Jefferson tried in the state legislature and the colonial legislature to end slavery. It didn't happen in his time. And no, he only freed those slaves that he felt had the skills to survive. But maybe he worried that they would be marginalized in the white man's world and end up in shanty towns?
What really impressed me is that he and Washington gave themselves self-imposed term limits. These men saw political power as so distasteful they actually refused to keep power longer than what they saw as prudent.
Not many men today are in this class.
Jefferson was absolutely brilliant. 2nd only to Benjamin Franklin in the genius department. A great man, a good president, and a patriot.
Fortunately he reconciled with his long time rival John Adams late in life, making for one of the greatest human interest stories ever recorded!
Thomas Jefferson kicked ass.
Thomas Jefferson, in my opinion, was more of a great thinker, than he was a great doer. If one really gets into learning about our Founding Fathers they would find that all of them had warts just as any other human did. No doubt they were intelligent men, but be careful throwing words like "genius" around.
Patrick Henry , (my personal favorite of the 'Founders'), refused to attend the Constitutional Convention.
I personally think that in terms of vision, leadership and spirit, not a single one of our Founders matched Ronald Wilson Reagan...save Patrick Henry.
When you think about the fact that we are still on James Madison's basic plan for our government I think genius might fit for him.
I would say Franklin, having read three biograhies as well as his autobiography was no only a genius, but a practical man. That is the rarest of all birds.
Jefferson was brilliant, but not the wisest politician. Madison was brilliant. Hamilton is near the top of my list as well. George Washington was perhaps the wisest.
I agree Reagan was an absolute gem in our history. But I assure you, he revered the founders even more than you or I.
Cheers!
Ummm, The Constitution? Granted most on here wouldn't say college is the place to find truth in our history, but in a class I took on the Constitution, the professor made it very clear that Madison was running the show. He came in prepared to scrap the confederation, and had been studying every book he could get his hands on to do so. The original plan (Virginia?) was his although it was introduced by someone else, and he directed most of the discussion at the convention.
So are you telling me that you believe we today are, more or less, living according to the Constitution as envisioned by Madison?
If you want to understand Jefferson and Adams get a copy of their letters to each other.
Not totally but he held it all together.
We are more or less following it in that we haven't abandoned it. Has each branch over reached their powers yes, but have they done so to the point where I would say we aren't still under the Constitution? No. But to think that we have even made it this long using a document that is 4000 odd words long is flat out amazing to me.
Well said.
I personally think that in terms of vision, leadership and spirit, not a single one of our Founders matched Ronald Wilson Reagan...save Patrick Henry.
That's probably going too far. George Washington was clearly a noble, public-spirited and far-sighted political leader. The others, including Henry so far as I can tell, became partisan or factional leaders, while Washington tried to stand above parties and politics. A party or factional leader can be great, but so much of his energy goes into supporting one side against the other, while Washington was there for the whole country.
How so? I'm always left scratching my head as to why folks don't think a contemporary figure could possibly outshine Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, et al
It is sad that Adams became a federalist.
All you need to know about the difference between Canada and the US. Canadians voted their greatest Canadian to be Tommy Douglas - the Father of Socialism in Canada! All our truly great men left and went to America.
I noticed that as well. That he was not a participant in the revolution - really a thinker - like John Locke. I don't know much about Samuel Adams but I love some of his famous quotes.
Wasn't Alexander Hamilton a proponent of big government?
So what. And you have never sinned?
Even Churchill was somewhat racist. He loved to call the German huns. Yet, I am sure most German Americans don't fault him for it.
I'll gladly trade both the GOP and the Dems in for the Federalists of yesteryear.
Not big government. But strong federal government limited in scope by the constitution. Read the Federalist Papers. He was one of the architects of our country! I highly admire him.
Yes, but the Federalists still wanted to take America back to where it came, right? They wanted a strong, large central and intrusive government. Isn't that what the colonists fought against?
Don't get me wrong. The United States is the envy of the world. States have amazing powers that provinces in Canada could only dream about.
I prefer a weak Federal Government at the mercy of the States. Again I come from Canada, where we are fed up with intrusive federal governments.
No, the Federalists just wanted to make sure the federal gov't supeseded the states in the areas enumerated by the constituion. They would all be considered radical states rights advocates by today's standards. I have very little heartburn with the early Federalists.
I prefer a strong federal government limited by the very short document known as the constitution. That means no medicare, welfare, social security, etc, etc. The one non-constitutional thing I do like is the National Park system.
OK. Guess I had the wrong idea of what a federalist was.
National parks are a good idea within limits. Not to be used as a tool to stop oil exploration or to appease enviro-socialists.
Agree 100% with that sentiment. Good thread, BTW.
Have a good nite!
Being that Madison came up with the 9th amendment I think it is easy to say how he feels about individual rights.
When it come to the various Depts. of the government it is harder to say because in his time we didn't have the infrastructure for those things to even be feasible really.
I would have a hard time believing anyone who helped create the system of government that helped a country become the foremost superpower in the world in less than 200 years could feel anything but pride about that country.
Did I really nead a sarcasm tag???
Got yah.
Nite.
Thats why I said he was the alter ego, yes he was truely a bad man. Not many understood that until after he shot Hamilton. He was that charming bad guy with flare that todays women keep dating after they keep getting beaten up.
That's the piety that keeps us from tearing up the Constitution every generation and replacing it with something worse, as they do in some countries. It's worked pretty well for America, and on the whole it's a good thing.
Sometimes we overdo it, though. A history of the early years of the country will show corruption, manipulation, and political hysteria. I guess it's possible that a leader like Reagan could outshine the founders.
But A) whatever their difficulties with practical politics the founders were better educated in political philosophy and deeper political thinkers than any politician is likely to be today. Right now politicians outsource their thinking, as they delegate their speechwriting. Reagan was to some extent an exception, but once he took office the time he could devote to theory was limited.
The founders could be creative and come up with good ideas. They came first. Today, original "new ideas" are very often bad ones. I doubt we really want modern intellectuals trying to "refound" the country or rewrite the Constitution.
And B) Washington really was an exception. No politician today is likely to have done and sacrificed so much for his country as Washington did. Great challenges make great leaders and no President today is likely to face trials as harrowing as Washington did in the Revolution. To mention Valley Forge ought to be enough.
Washington kept the country a republic, rather than a monarchy or a military dictatorship. And he stood apart from all the political manouevering and struggles for power. Adams and Jefferson, Hamilton and Madison look smaller because of their partisan tricks and passions. Washington remains above all that and committed to the nation, rather than to one party or another.
It's true that there's something romanticized about the way countries look back on their founders. Those days are always made out to be epic or heroic ages. But they did face great trials in those days. Setting up a country on the right foundation is a difficult thing. Look at how many new countries around the world have failed, and you can see how great an achievement our founding was.
It's certainly possible that a leader today might be quite great (though contemporary politics does tend to discriminate against those who have such glimmerings of greatness in them), but we won't really be able to measure their greatness until after their gone. The past is largely dead and we can see it in context. Living figures can still screw up something awful. The older generation of Britons can take pride in Winston Churchill, but in 1940 or 1930 or 1920 it wasn't at all clear what history would make of him.
Madison worked closely with Washington on some key occasions. There's a recent book out about their relationship. But it looks to me like Madison fell too much under Jefferson's influence as time went on. Madison had the better intellect (if intellect is to be praised for its realism, rather than its romanticism or idealism), but wasn't as confident, certain, determined, or charismatic as Jefferson was.
Madison was a "behind the scenes" sort of person who shunned the limelight, but Jefferson was the dominant personality and true animating spirit in their relationship. For a long time Madison apparently came to feel that to be a Virginian meant following Jefferson, rather than Washington or Marshall.
You are joking, I presume?!
Yes, heavy sarcasm. But I'm sure most liftists would agree w/ the comment.
I don't believe that I made any comment on his slaveholding. Or on any hate, only that he had previously written a proposed constitution for Virginia and noted that Madison had access to it before the Constitutional Convention. The majority of the Virginia aristocracy were slaveowners and descended from slaveowners. Jefferson repeatedly tried to abolish slavery without success.
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