Welcome to Blogging the Presidents: A Voting While Intoxicated™ Almost Original Series. We will be taking a serious look at the 42 men who have led our country and hopefully finding a few laughable details.
PART III
Thomas Jefferson certainly doesn’t lack for recognition. He is after all one of the four Presidents on Mount Rushmore. Yet, I feel like he is often less understood than the other major Presidents. Jefferson was the embodiment of a very coherent and wonderful political philosophy that could do with more attention and praise in modern times. While Madison may be mostly responsible for the mind of the country (The Constitution), Jefferson provided its heart (The Declaration).
I do feel that one compliment to how important Jefferson was is that so many attempt to claim his thoughts as a foundation of their modern philosophy. This is certainly true of libertarians. Curiously, I once had a staunch libertarian commend me for naming Jefferson as my choice for the greatest President, while largely considering me a socialist. I certainly see aspects of libertarianism in Jefferson’s philosophy, but there are important signs that they would not be pleased by the full extent of his philosophy.
Jefferson was an anti-Federalist*, standing strongly for the Bill of Rights that would limit government and for states rights. As much as this seems to be an anti-government statement, it is more correctly a statement about federal power. After all, Jefferson also opposed Madison’s Federalists in their attempts to frustrate majorities. Madison’s checks and balances were as much structured to prevent the anti-elite tendencies of the masses as to prevent the tyranny of the leaders. Jefferson’s philosophy would not only oppose this check on majority rule, but he also opposed judicial review, which has proved to be the only way the Bill of Rights can resist majority tyranny (and thus is one area I disagree with Jefferson).
Jefferson was strong in his admiration of the yeoman farmer, the common man (though one could hardly call Jefferson that). He despised the power of industry to corrupt man with greed and create dire inequality. This all sounds more like Marx than Smith. Though our present inequality may not be as rigid as that of the Europe of his day, it certainly is more dramatic than the Europe of our day, and Jefferson may well be horrified at how things developed were he to see it.
Indeed, Jefferson was responsible for the founding of the University of Virginia, the first public university. That Jefferson supported publicly financed higher education in a time when it was unheard of does not fit easily with modern Libertarian opposition to public higher education now that it is widespread. It just does not seem accurate to suggest that Jefferson opposed taxation and social spending as is libertarian dogma. Indeed, his anti-federalist standing does seem more like a states’ rights issue. And even that may be an element of a time when one was a Virginian first and an American second. Who knows if he would struggle against the federal government so strongly now that America is distinctly one nation.
In a more concrete sense, Jefferson deserves a lot of credit for the Louisiana Purchase. Separate issues with how we interacted with the Native Americans aside, manifest destiny was extremely good policy for the long term security and prosperity of America. Jefferson’s additions included the areas where both my parents were born, where I was born, and where I grew up.
Thomas Jefferson rewrote the Bible, his version known as the Jefferson Bible or more officially, The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth. This took the four gospels of the New Testament and stripped out anything that demanded faith (virgin birth, miracles, resurrection, etc) leaving just the life of a man and the philosophy he discussed. To do such a thing that would be considered blasphemous today would be electoral poison. And indeed, it may well have been then; he worked on this after his time in office and it was only allowed to be made public after his death. Still, it takes a lot of gumption to edit the alleged word of God.
*Jefferson was abroad in diplomatic service during the Constitutional Convention so much of this is based less around Jefferson’s direct arguments and more on those with whom he is considered like-minded and likely had some influence over.
