There is a great article at the Smithsonian discussing our premier Founding Father.

I found it remarkable.

I think it is fair for me to make that appraisal with all of the reading I have done on this subject over the decades and with five or six hours of reading on line every single day—in addition to my bedside book reading.

In ten pages or so Henry Weincek is able to distil a national consciousness by interpreting a side of Thomas Jefferson that is so glossed over.

Glenn Beck and Michele Bachmann and scores of other right wing pretenders to the art of history wish to gloss over the birth of our nation.

I mean look over the fun times in Moscow over the last thousand years; review some pages chronicling the events in London over the last thousand years; and I think that if you examine the record France also has a number of recorded sinners.

Let any nation without sin cast the first stone.

Sometime by the fifth grade, even for those born during the great propaganda years (1941-1964?) we who are now senior citizens realized that the phrase: ALL MEN ARE CREATED EQUAL was written by a slave owner.

Weincek underlines the fact that Jefferson 'evolved' over the years. I have written before of the fact that Jefferson submitted some 22 bills in the Virginia legislature as a youngster that attempted to deal with our National Sin.

By the 1790's Thomas the Emancipator became Thomas the Economist—although he slowly but steadily wasted his inheritance until his death in 1826 when he was within an inch from bankruptcy.

I have read this line of reasoning for decades.

But in this short essay Weincek points out some things that are very deep—depth related to context and opposing views in the 18^th century.

With five simple words in the Declaration of Independence—“all men are created equal”—Thomas Jefferson undid Aristotle’s ancient formula, which had governed human affairs until 1776: “From the hour of their birth, some men are marked out for subjection, others for rule.”

Read more: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/The-Little-Known-Dark-Side-of-Thomas-Jefferson-169780996.html#ixzz27XsHCLbw

You see, there was once upon a time, a man named Aristotle who happened to tutor one of those ancients who conquered the world (which is why we read Aristotle) and he had a perspective.

Now we can get into the philosophies of the Calvins and hundreds of other cults to find people who agreed with Aristotle’s perspective. Hell, those cults still exist today.

But our 'National Belief System', even in this age of discontent among our masses, begins with the belief that:

ALL MEN ARE CREATED EQUAL

And there are many many reasons to worship Thomas J, but this man of the country gentry not only sparked a revolution in this country but most probably in France as well a couple of decades later and most probably is responsible for hundreds of revolutions initiated over the last two and a half centuries, globally.

I am not that sure that I have a solid belief in this maxim taken from our most treasured national document; but I have faith in its aim!

We must perceive that baby in the cradle as having promise; we must perceive that baby in the cradle as capable of great things; and we must perceive that baby in the cradle as being equal to all other babies in their cradles.

Supposedly the aristocracy is gone; supposedly the guilds are gone; and supposedly the son of a single mother with little means can become President of the United States of America or a Senator or the head of a grand capitalistic enterprise.

We as a nation have had to amend this sentiment written by the Learned Virginian; I mean how can you rewrite Shakespeare for chrissakes and how can you rewrite Jefferson?

But our national sentiment has now been rewritten as:

ALL PEOPLE ARE CREATED EQUAL

I think it was Pitt the Younger who addressed the House of Lords during the American Revolution scoffing at this sentiment while noting that the people in charge of that Revolution were slave holders.

To paraphrase that great orator:

HOW IN THE HELL MIGHT THESE SLAVE-HOLDERS CLAIM LIBERTY AND EQUALITY AS THE BASIS FOR THEIR TREACHERY?

There are still those in their gated communities whilst hurrying to get their 3 year old into pre-pre-daycare facilities who scoff at the worth of members of the lower classes.

There are race-baiters and white supremacists and closet aristocrats who scoff at this sentiment; that much is clear.

But...

In his original draft of the Declaration, in soaring, damning, fiery prose, Jefferson denounced the slave trade as an “execrable commerce ...this assemblage of horrors,” a “cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life & liberties.” As historian John Chester Miller put it, “The inclusion of Jefferson’s strictures on slavery and the slave trade would have committed the United States to the abolition of slavery.”

Read more: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/The-Little-Known-Dark-Side-of-Thomas-Jefferson-169780996.html#ixzz27Y10CdFf

And...

The meaning of “all men” sounded equally clear, and so disturbing to the authors of the constitutions of six Southern states that they emended Jefferson’s wording. “All freemen,” they wrote in their founding documents, “are equal.” The authors of those state constitutions knew what Jefferson meant, and could not accept it.

Read more: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/The-Little-Known-Dark-Side-of-Thomas-Jefferson-169780996.html#ixzz27Y1Ra9NF

Our third President knew damn well what he was stating in his youth before any real political power came to him.

As he aged he changed.

One of his best friends in his old age was John C. Calhoun; one of the worst monsters to ever hold a place in the Senate of the United States of America.

Take a look at this eulogy for Strom Thurmond, the 20^th century version of the great John C. Calhoun:

Impact and Legacy

The impact of Thurmond's articulation of states' rights during the civil rights struggle of the mid-twentieth century was dramatic. Thurmond formulated a strategy of southern resistance to the claimed federal power to introduce and enforce civil rights legislation protecting minorities and their rights over states' rights, which often threatened them. He based his modern theory of states' rights on the theories of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison established in the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions, which were responses to what the authors deemed tyrannical powers of the federal government. Thurmond also refined John C. Calhoun's theory of state nullification of federal legislation into what he described in the Southern Manifesto as legitimate interposition over the Brown decision, opposing the “judicial usurpation” of “the rights reserved to the States and to the people, contrary to established law, and to the Constitution.” Thurmond and the allied...

http://www.milestonedocuments.com/people/view/strom-thurmond/impact

I recall seeing a young man give a eulogy at Thurmond's funeral in 2003 brag about the fact that no single politician in the history of South Carolina duplicated the power and magnificence of John C. Calhoun than Strom.

I know we have this theory of duplicate universes, but damn! I could no better discuss the weather with one of these morons than I could discuss climate change, evolution, the value of the United Nations, the importance of caring for the poorer amongst us (did you ever notice that the poorest amongst us live in the South for chrissakes?), the value of progressive taxation, the value of equality in education, the value of regulation of our most powerful capitalistic corporations.....

Unless something decisive is done, I again ask, What is to stop this agitation before the great and final object at which it aims--the abolition of slavery in the States--is consummated? Is it, then, not certain that if something is not done to arrest it, the South will be forced to choose between abolition and secession? Indeed, as events are now moving, it will not require the South to secede in order to dissolve the Union. Agitation will of itself effect it, of which its past history furnishes abundant proof--as I shall next proceed to show.

It is a great mistake to suppose that disunion can be effected by a single blow. The cords which bind these States together in one common Union are far too numerous and powerful for that. Disunion must be the work of time. It is only through a long process, and successively, that the cords can be snapped until the whole fabric falls asunder. Already the agitation of the slavery question has snapped some of the most important, and has greatly weakened all the others.

If the agitation goes on, the same force, acting with increased intensity, as has been shown, will finally snap every cord, when nothing will be left to hold the States together except force. But surely that can with no propriety of language be called a Union when the only means by which the weaker is held connected with the stronger portion is force. It may, indeed, keep them connected; but the connection will partake much more of the character of subjugation on the part of the weaker to the stronger than the union of free, independent, and sovereign States in one confederation, as they stood in the early stages of the government, and which only is worthy of the sacred name of Union.

http://www.nationalcenter.org/CalhounClayCompromise.html

Now John C certainly sounded worse than he did in this little ditty attacking the Missouri Compromise.

Get into ole John C sometime and read some of his speeches where he he cherishes slavery, where he claims that the White Man is there to help the Negro just as God put the White Man in charge of the flora and fauna on this planet per Genesis 1. We must control our domesticated animals and amongst these we must include the Negro.

Have we suddenly found ourselves in a new century where such abominable views have been discarded?

HELL NO!

Enough of that, but this freaked me out:

I am not going to apologize for Barack the Magic Negro...we am going to play that freakin song again today!

http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/201108030024

Our nation aged as Jefferson did until the most senile amongst us fired the shots heard around the world on Fort Sumter.

We were reborn by 1865 and the placenta we left was full of blood; the blood of a significant portion of our citizenry.

We grew old once again by the 1890's; rewriting our history in order to serve the purposes of the new aristocracy born on the backs of the hardest workers in the world.

http://dagblog.com/reader-blogs/rosewood-badge-slavery-8494

We were reborn by 1965; once again allying ourselves with that maxim:

ALL PEOPLE ARE CREATED EQUAL

Then, all of a sudden, November of 2008 came along and an African-American was elected President of the United States of America.

I am writing this simply from the perspective that a second term will underline this new birth of a nation.

A new birth of a national spirit that tells me that all people are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights and that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

We succeed in electing a woman in 2016, and the dream shall be realized.

Thomas Jefferson was a genius; an architect; a biologist; a meteorologist; an explorer (per Lewis & Clark); a philosopher; a President and a professor.

Like Jefferson, our nation has accomplished wondrous things.

And like Jefferson, our nation has sinned exceedingly in thought, word and deed.

I embrace our legacy; warts and all.

Compare this legacy to any other nation in the world.

Those among us much engage in a continual battle for truth, justice and the American Way!

The battle shall never be over.

Anyway, check out this fine essay on Thomas Jefferson and embrace our real heritage as a nation!

The end.