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Yoo Besmirches Legacy of Jefferson
Initially I was shocked at the thought of the University of Virginia welcoming former Justice Department lawyer John Yoo to the "Academical Village" founded by Thomas Jefferson.
There was something very wrong about that picture. Was it not Mr. Jefferson who condemned tyrannical acts-including ones that fell far short of waterboarding-in the Declaration of Independence?
But I have come around to the view that Yoo's visit on Friday could present a rich teaching moment for those of us Virginians who believe passionately in the highest ideals that Mr. Jefferson articulated so eloquently.
Yoo's visit presents a unique opportunity for my own children - four of them UVA alumni - to convey the essence of The University to those of our eight grandchildren who already aspire to study there.
A teaching moment like this does require us to look through the eyes and the spectacles of Mr. Jefferson and our country's other gutsy Founders who pledged to each other "our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor" to rid tyranny from America's shores. We tend to forget that the outcome of that brazen battle for liberty was far from assured when that vow was attached as the closing line of the Declaration of Independence in July 1776.
To King George III, the words and deeds of the Founders spelled treason, and it was altogether predictable that he would order his formidable army to pursue and hang those upstart insurgents if his troops could get hold of them.
I will admit that I still get goose bumps reflecting on their commitment, their courage, and the responsibility we share as their successors.
After eight long years of war, the insurgents led by George Washington finally defeated the army of the English king and secured independence for the 13 colonies. Then, other Virginians, together with statesmen from sister colonies, succeeded in replacing one man's dictates with a Constitution that divided power among three co-equal branches of government and made the rule of law supreme.
That is the historical background against which, 225 years later, John Yoo and other government lawyers of easy conscience decided they would "opinion away" the checks and balances etched into the Constitution by the blood of early patriots.
Virginia Roots
We Virginians take understandable pride in Mr. Jefferson and the university in Charlottesville that he considered his signal achievement. Equally deserving of praise, though, are two other Virginia patriots hailing from nearer to where I live - George Mason of Fairfax and Patrick Henry of Hanover County.
"Of the first order of greatness," that's the way Mr. Jefferson described George Mason. And small wonder. For it is largely thanks to him that all - including Yoo, you, and me - enjoy a constitutional right to "freedom of speech."
Together with fellow Virginian James Madison, Mason had drafted the Constitution, which defined the relationships between the three branches of government. But Mason then shocked Madison and shattered their friendship, when Mason announced in 1787 that he would not support ratification as the document stood.
Mason, one of the most self-effacing persons ever to serve the American people, put his reasoning succinctly: "There is no Declaration of Rights."
That being the case, it was not an option to give up. Together with Patrick Henry, Mason launched a relentless political campaign and in 1791 won approval of a Bill of Rights - the first ten amendments to the Constitution - which immediately became a model for other countries concerned with protecting individual freedoms.
Hence, John Yoo's First Amendment right to speak and be heard is beyond dispute. At the same time, I believe we would betray the Founders, were we to leave him unchallenged by glossing over his gymnastic twisting of logic and law - not only in places like Iraq and Guantanamo, but closer to home, as well.
Sadly, the guarantees embodied in five of those first ten amendments - and in the Constitution itself - have been eroded by dubious theories promoted by Yoo, like his concept of an all-powerful "unitary executive" who can do whatever he wants to anyone unlucky enough to be judged an "enemy" by the leader during "wartime," even an open-ended, ill-defined conflict like the "war on terror."
Not even the Great Writ of habeas corpus escaped Yoo's sophistry - the fundamental right, wrested from King John of England in 1215, to seek judicial relief from unlawful detention. Even King George III was constrained by habeas corpus, and Madison and Mason were careful to include that basic guarantee in the Constitution itself (Article One, Section 9).
But Yoo and some fellow lawyers saw the ancient legal right as impinging on President George W. Bush's unlimited powers.
All Powerful
After the 9/11 attacks, Yoo propounded theories that elevated Bush beyond the bounds of federal or international law. As Yoo has acknowledged, his opinions could allow the President to crush a child's testicles to get his father to talk, or to willfully annihilate a village of civilians.
"Sure," Yoo responded when a Justice Department investigator posed the latter hypothetical.
Many are aware of John Yoo's role in serving up legal "justification" for "enhanced interrogation techniques," including the near-drowning of waterboarding. But fewer know that the Convening Authority for the Military Commissions at Guantanamo, military judge Susan Crawford, has said that those techniques meet the "legal definition of torture."
Fewer still seem aware of Yoo's role in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, when he focused on how to avoid the constitutional requirement for a declaration of war by Congress and advocated views totally at variance with those he had expressed while working as a Congressional staffer just a few years before.
Under Yoo's theories, "wartime president" Bush could do whatever he wanted, even if that meant ignoring Congress, the United Nations Charter, and the post-World War II Nuremberg Tribunal. Bush simply could brush aside prohibitions against aggressive war as he did by invading Iraq.
At Nuremberg, chief U.S. prosecutor, Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson, called a war of aggression "not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole."
Nuremberg prosecutors also didn't let off Nazi lawyers who gave Adolf Hitler "legal advice" on how he could violate international law. The Nazi lawyers, too, were prosecuted at Nuremberg, and many served long prison sentences.
And Justice Jackson could not have been more explicit in insisting that the Nuremberg standard must apply equally to all.
War crimes, he said, are "crimes whether the United States does them or whether Germany does them, and we are not prepared to lay down a rule of criminal conduct against others which we would not be willing to have invoked against us."
Justifying Torture
Torture, then, can be regarded as a derivative crime-part of the "accumulated evil" springing from the "supreme international crime" of a war of aggression. It is not necessary here to describe Yoo's attempts to "justify" torture, since that role is detailed in the 289-page report of the Justice Department's own Office of Professional Responsibility.
Suffice it to say that OPR concluded, among other things, that:
"Yoo's legal analyses justified acts of outright torture." (p. 252)
"He therefore committed intentional professional misconduct." (p. 254)
The OPR report and other official documents are replete with descriptions of the despicable torture techniques themselves, for those with the stomach to read them. Sadly, they show how far we have come since Patrick Henry asserted that "the rack and the screw" should be left behind in the Old World.
These days, as bald eagles ride the March winds north along the Potomac from Mason Neck, they carry a ghost's lament. Someone is turning over in his grave downstream at Gunston Hall in Fairfax County. It is George Mason who is mourning, like Rachel of old, who would not be consoled.
I imagine that Mason's moaning will become even more pronounced as Friday draws near - not only because of Yoo's visit to Charlottesville, but also because Friday marks the seventh anniversary of the unprovoked invasion of Iraq.
It was the bizarre opinions of Yoo and his colleagues that subverted the intent of Madison, Mason, and other Founders who took great pains to give the power to declare war to the Congress - not to the President - in the Constitution.
Beyond even the great principles of the American Republic, however, there is the question of personal decency that applies to Yoo and his visit to the University of Virginia. Erstwhile UVA Writer-in-Residence, William Faulkner, summed this up nicely, saying:
"Some things you must always be unable to bear. Some things you must never stop refusing to bear. Injustice and outrage and dishonor and shame. No matter how young you are or how old you have got. Not for kudos and not for cash, your picture in the paper nor money in the bank, neither. Just refuse to bear them."
That is why I shall join others taking part in Friday's rally starting at 2:00 p.m. from "The Corner" of The Grounds at UVA, before Mr. Yoo speaks in Minor Hall at 3:30.
I view it as a mark of respect for Mr. Jefferson, who I feel certain would want present-day Virginians to bear witness in defense of the blessings of liberty that he and his contemporaries worked so hard to secure for ourselves and our posterity.
59 Comments so far
Show AllWe, all of us, have certain inalienable rights. For example, Mr. Yoo has the right to stand before the bar of justice and face disbarment.
McGovern's essay eloquently remindes us of the greatness of the founders of this nation and their willingness to pledge to "each other 'our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor' to rid tyranny from America's shores." The cynics among us might comment that they were simply one group of rich white men fighting another group of rich white men for control of their business interests. Perhaps, but at least they took a stand and then took direct action.
In contrast while our nation is usurped by the likes of Yoo, Bush, Cheney and now Obama and Emanuel, we sit comfortably in our homes and type notes on Common Dreams while we think about what we're going to buy at the shopping mall today.
I feel shame and frustration about not knowing what to do and how to motivate others to action. What happened to the greatness of those founders who risked everything to overthrow the forces of tyranny? How long can we blame the educational system, the corporations or the politicians while we refuse to act on our own? What will be the final straw that causes the people of this nation to rise and cast off the evils that now control the levers of power?
We've lost control of our government. I think revolution in Amerikkka is way past due. As Jefferson declared in his personal motto: "Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God."
". . . they were simply one group of rich white men fighting another group of rich white men for control of their business interests."
The history of western civilization in a nutshell.
q
Untrue quickstepper.
Most were Native North Americans, like Franklin, Jefferson and Washington. America was all they ever knew. The freedoms they proffered were available to any citizen, not just the elite like today.
The cause was the same as today's discontent. King George was nearly bankrupt from the "Seven Years War" so he decided to enforce the never before enforced Navigation Acts that taxed everything brought into the colony. To add insult to injury he dictated that everything be price fixed through one monopoly: the British East India Company. Since nearly everything was imported at the time, this was equal in devastation to the TARP bailouts that we just endured.
Which is A tax by any other name.
These were men of the Enlightenment, that erected the first secular government the world had ever seen. Jefferson built the University of Virginia because he didn't trust the "centers of despotism" as he put it at Harvard. Ever notice how Harvard and Yale resemble castles? It's not by accident. They believe in nobility and have forced tyrants down our throats all the way from the cutthroats on wall street to the Bush family dynasty that has destroyed our country.
And now a traitor to the Constitution, John Yoo, will defile that hallowed institution. Jefferson is indeed spinning in his grave.
Ray, one request: Hand out eggs. Really bad eggs.
TJ
"The freedoms they proffered were available to any citizen, not just the elite like today."
The "founding fathers" could never have raised a Continental Army unless they could promise the colonial citizenry something in return for fighting the British.
I am well aware of the dynamics of the American Revolution and nothing in your post serves to dispute the observation upon which I commented or my comment itself.
q
Jefferson's foibles notwithstanding. It seems to me that the men who created the government after they chased the British out were brilliant. Sure, they made some gigantic blunders, like saying in the Constitution that Blacks were equal 3/5 of a white person.
But overall, the government lasted nearly 200 years until the fascists Reagan, Gingrich et al got control. Our nation's freedoms took a nose-dive since then. Jefferson, Madison, Mason et al created a magnificient prototype for modern democracy. Too bad it failed.
Are you responding to the correct post or are you simply some kind of Heritage Foundation drone?
I said nothing about Jefferson and you ignored my point about the Continental Army.
Again, nothing in your posts disputes the point that virtually all violent conflicts serve the ends of a small group of people at the expense of the general populations.
q
You need to get back on your meds. And by the way, your points just aren't that important. That is why I ignored them.
I can't see what these two, quick and joad, are arguing about.
jlocke123 March 16th, 2010 1:26 pm -- Ditto.
That makes three!
quickstep -
You are absolutely correct about the significance of creating incentives for colonials to join the Continental Army. What sometimes gets overlooked is that years later, when the British had been driven out, the inadequacy of the Articles of Confederation had been exposed, and what is now the US Constitution was being drafted and circulated for a public ratification vote, the promises that had been made came back into the limelight as the Bill of Rights.
Back when the time came for each state to have a referendum on whether to ratify or not ratify the final work product of Jefferson, Madison, Mason, Hamilton, Patrick Henry, Ben Franklin, et. al., who was eligible to go to the polls? Answer: basically, it was exclusively adult Caucasian males who also owned private property. No women. No indentured servants. Certainly no slaves, and no indigenous native people.
A politically significant additional segment of the population was also enfranchised to vote upon ratifying the Constitution however: veterans of the Continental Army, regardless of their financial/social class status. And it was largely to appeal to the interests of that particular, potentially important voting constituency that caused the supporters of ratification to include a written Bill of Rights in the Constitution.
After all, who gave a rat's ass about cruel or unusual punishment, excessive bond, unreasonable searches and seizures, the right to indictment by a grand jury, a speedy, public trial by jury with the assistance of legal counsel, or for the right to peaceably assemble and seek redress of grievances than the class of people who had previously been denied such liberties even under the English common law? These guarantees - which many right wing pundits today disparage as "rights for criminals" - were largely promises being kept for the lower class grunts who answered the call and who toiled away in the lower ranks of George Washington's army.
There were also constitutional guarantees of things like freedom of speech, freedom of religion, the sanctity for private property, and prohibitions upon quartering soldiers in private homes without the consent of the homeowner that appealed to the middle class and to elites. But the most egalitarian and long lasting provisions of the Bill of Rights (at least where restraints upon operation of the criminal justice system are concerned) were the promises made good to Continental army veterans drawn from the lower economic strata of colonial American society.
Bill from Saginaw
So Bill, you are saying that the US government is reneging on a centuries old pledge to the descendants of the Continental army? Now that the non-elites are seemingly politically disposable? Since things like rights are of no use, and are indeed a hindrance to people that have something better, namely power?
Bill from Saginaw
"who was eligible to go to the polls? Answer: basically, it was exclusively adult Caucasian males who also owned private property"
I was about to comment on exactly this when your post caught my eye. Thanks.
It will be a comfort when both left and right again adhere to the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Obviously from what is going on in Congress now the left has no respect for the Constitution.
Having lived in both New Haven and Cambridge I can see why Yale may have some "Castle" Like features but the buildings at Harvard are primarily in the colonial, greek revival, federal and modern style. Maybe someone tweety birded the wrong information.
quickstepper
Change the color and you could use that quote for almost any civilization.
"We've lost control of our government?" I'm not American but it seems that a majority of you vote for rightwingnuts (including half the Democrats) and get exactly what you vote for. Not that we're much better in Australia.
The only way out is to shift popular attitudes to the left with clear arguments and celebrity power.
Po,
You've made my point. Most Amerikkkans vote for rightwingnuts that are in both the Democratic and Republican Parties. But it's more complicated than that. The two parties have gerrymandered the voting districts to assure that they hardly ever get defeated. Additionally, they have instituted laws that keep most third-party candidates off the ballots in many states.
As far as clear arguments go, the masses are too enthralled by the celebrities in Hollywood and sports to notice what the reactionary, fascist government is doing to them right under their noses.
My point was that nobody's going to join your revolution, judging by the way they vote. It would be cynical to believe that Kucinich had no support simply because he wasn't in the later debates last time around. The left have been failing because we don't know how to sell ourselves and it's so easy to sell anti-govt/tax positions.
If a district was organised they could get a progressives into congress. A cultural paradigm shift is the only way, good luck to all of you.
Unfortunately, it will take a profound personal shock to shake them awake. Even that, for some, will not be enough.
If I wasn't 350 miles away from DC, I'd be standing with Ray on Friday. As it is, I am aiming for the Mall Saturday for the AntiWar march and Sunday for the Immigration march.
I'm interested to see how the Obama Administration differs from the Bushies as far as Demonstrations and Security, et cetera.
And how the Media handles this.
During the BushCheney reign, we brought out between half and one million people several times, no one noticed because there wasn't a single camera truck there. No major media coverage AT ALL. Even NPR was co-opted, claiming that the huge crowd I'd just been in was "a few thousand". A few thousand people that filled a six lane street, wall to wall, for nearly half a mile.
I don't understand how Yoo can still be teaching/lecturing, how he still has not been disbarred.
Or simply disappeared.
Disbarring Yoo would be justice; disappearing the bastard would be poetic justice.
We have enough lawyers; we need more poets.
q
If Yoo is really serious about the powers of the President in a time of war, he would not be surprized if President Obama had him and Bybee (sic?) and the other lawyer invoved, who is now a federal judge, arrested, taken to Gitmo and left there for a few years, without being able to speak to an attorney.
"I still get goose bumps reflecting on their commitment, their courage, and the responsibility we share as their successors."
Enjoy the goose bumps, Mr McGovern. That's about all you'll get from the successors. There'll be no brave pledges involving any discomforts or inconvenience this time around, let alone "our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor."
If the revolution was, in fact, intended to rid America's shores of tyranny, it certainly isn't reflected in ANY aspect of current U.S. governance. Republican sovereignty of the people? Ya gotta be kidding! Constitutional protections? Hell, the U.S. has cast aside even such fundamental pre-revolutionary rule of law concepts as Magna Carta, habeas corpus and the presumption of innocence. As for the monarchy, poor old porphyric George III of England could only dream of the absolute, arbitrary, life and death powers now invested in a "unitary executive" that combines head-of-state, head-of government and commander-in-chief authority in a single imperial office.
If poor old George III had only given up those silly notions about honoring treaties with the North American native population that pissed off the westward land speculators, his successors could have fit right into today's America with scarcely a noticeable distinction other than some modest parliamentary accountability. Of course, refusing George Washington his much sought-after king's commission in the regular British army didn't help either.
I was just doing some research on the US gov't's treatment of Native Americans and President Thomas Jefferson's intentions and actions came to light.
Those intensions were so horrible - to Native Americans - that what was written in the first half dozen paragraphs of this article made my jaw drop.
When the land grab by means of 'treaties' was in full swing and the gov't was exhaulting at their success at 'legally' getting full title to 10s of millions of acres, thanks in no small part to William Harrison (later to become a president, his campaign loaded with bragging about his Indian killing and expulsion exploits), President Thomas Jefferson (in 1803) went all out - he gave Harrison the authority, on behalf of the US gov't, to negotiate and sign treaties with the savages. He was 'the man'. The criminally illegal 1804 Treaty of St Louis was something that Harrison pulled off, as was the 1809 Treaty of Fort Wayne. President Jefferson, who may have been a wonderful husband and father, an 'enlightened thinker' and a great early proponent of Empire America, was also quite gung-ho about removing the native population (killing however many men, women and children resisted - the Bad Axe Massacre being one example) and selling off the land quite inexpensively to any brave and perservering white folk who wanted to live in freedom and prosperity on that very beautiful land, now vacated.
Or as Firesign Theatre put it in "Temporarily Humboldt County":
...
WAGON BOSS: My fellow settlers! We stand here at the Edge O' Civilization, on the banks of the Mississippi River, lookin' West, at Our Destiny!
PIONEER: You can say that again!
WAGON BOSS: What may appear to the fainthearted as a limitless expanse of Godforsaken wilderness...
THIRD PIONEER: Sure is!
WAGON BOSS: ...is, in reality, a Golden Opportunity for humble, God-fearin' people like ourselves, an' our families, an' our children, an' the generations a-comin', to carve a new life - outta the American Indian!
...
I really hope the students can mount a vigorous disobiedient protest against Yoo. But unfortunately, as a former resident, I can attest that Virginia is charcterized by high levels of conservasism and apathy. Hopefully, the young people are waking up.
I think a few people have beat me to the punch, so I'll just say it. If I hear from any more liberals how we need people like our "heroic founders" I'm going to scream. The founding fathers (and the slave owning Jefferson may have been the best of them)were the elite that wanted full power instead of a British elite. "Checks and balances," meant "checking" the people in making sure they did not have political power that would make the country a democracy. The only reason we worship the founding fathers is because we were told to in school. This is no different than any cult, where we are supposed to follow blindly without thinking.
I agree with you. The founders were little better than the King and his men.
It is and always has been class warfare.
Socialist you can scream all you want to, but the praise of the author of the Declaration of independence is well merited.
Jefferson was born into a colonial slave plantation society. You can't blame him for the existence of that pre-industrial atrocity. Slavery at that time in the world was common. He knew it was wrong and tried repeatedly to abolish it. Who better than the slave-driver to appreciate the evils of that hated institution? When Jefferson tried to stop the slave trade, The whole South walked out in 1776 vowing not to return until the references to illegal kidnapping and slavery by "The Christian King of Europe" starting the slave trade were removed from Jefferson's first draft of the Declaration of Independence.
One man can not change society by himself, so it is disingenuous for us to pretend he designed the yoke for the African. As well, it is wrong to claim he wanted power. His desire was farming, and he was strong-armed into accepting the nomination by a very assertive James Madison, who repeatedly visited his home pleading for him to run against the Federalist John Adams who was bankrupting the treasury on a huge Navy (Sound familiar?) Jefferson's acquiescence ultimately lead to the neglect and bankruptcy of his farm.
Of the Indians, Washington and Jefferson did negotiate and give the Indian nations foreign country status and a treaty for their lands. Where Washington and Jefferson went wrong was failure to contain the tidal wave of illegal settlers from Georgia into Indian lands. (Just like what's happening today in Gaza and the West and East Bank of Israel.) This failure along with Shay's Rebellion and The Whiskey Rebellions is most unfortunate for us here today as citizens of the USA because it gave fuel to the Federalist's argument for a strong oppressive Federal Government instead of the weak confederation that served American well until 1789 under the Articles of Confederation.
If you read his writings and recent books about how human and fallible the man was, instead of condemning him on today's standards, you might be chagrined to find you might actually border on a feeling of admiration in stead of hate for the president who consistently stood up for the common man instead of the elite.
If Jefferson was guilty of anything, it was in believing in Utopia. Everything he did from the Libraries to the Universities he built to the farmland purchased for his citizens was available for, and open to, the common citizen.
TJ
The three branches of government are not co-equal. The House and Senate hold the most power and responsibility. Then the Executive, and lastly, the Judicial. The rest of the essay, though, is spot on. The political condition we are now suffering under began around 12:30 pm on 22 November of '63. Few decisive events before, and many since, were not coincidental.
Sorry, but the supreme court now has more power than the exec and legis put together. They gave themselves the power to overide the law, constituion.
The House and Senate do hold the most power and responsibility on paper, but the legislative branch collectively cannot get its act together (think health care reform, regulatory control of Wall Street banksters, immigration, fairly conducted vote counting in national elections, progressive taxation, control of Pentagon spending and military/paramilitary adventurism abroad), all courtesy of the wealth and corrupting influence of big corporations. Similarly, in theory the Supreme Court could be considered the most powerful branch (think Bush versus Gore, the recent decision on corporate personhood, and past decisions like the Dred Scott case), but judicial decrees are not self-enforcing.
Consequently, I think in the 21st Century the executive branch of the federal government has become by far the most powerful branch in terms of the things that really matter most in the day-to-day lives of the citizenry - things like war or peace, who defines and decides basic social justice issues, and where public money gets spent, pissed away, or gets stolen in broad daylight. Worst of all, ever since enactment of the 1947 National Security Act, the military and civilian "national intelligence" establishment has become a policy making force all its own within the executive branch, operating behind a wall of classified information secrecy.
All in all, I think the drafters would be most appalled by the preeminence of the office of the President and the vast federal executive bureaucracy that has arisen. The separation of powers/checks and balances model that was conjured up and cobbled together broke down long ago largely due to the fragmented vulnerabilities of the legislative branch, with the executive branch filling the void and taunting catch-me-if-you-can.
Bill from Saginaw
pjd412: "But unfortunately, as a former resident, I can attest that Virginia is charcterized by high levels of conserva[t]ism and apathy."
Is Virginia better or worse than Georgia, which is characterized by high levels of conservatism and stupidity?
q
It would be helpful to know just who invited Yoo and why.
It is absolutely beyond outrage that an enabling legal bureaucrat (a Dubya, Cheney, & Co. Justice Department Adolph Eichmann, if you will) is still free. That he is treated as someone who actually accomplished something while being a facilitator of torture is even worse.
-"The Nazi lawyers, too, were prosecuted at Nuremberg, and many served long prison sentences."
Is the author chastising Yoo for not prosecuting himself? Imagine a common burgler, who is pardoned by the president. Do we blame the burgler for trampling on the legacy of Mr. Jefferson?
Take a common murderer who Obama decides to not prosecute, do we blame the murderer for bringing back tyranny?
In the American system, there is one man ultimately responsible for the enforcement of justice in the nation. It isn't Yoo.
*Comment deleted by site administrators for violating our Comment Policy*
see: http://www.commondreams.org/comment-policy
You sir, are correct.
Sorry, but Mr. Jefferson was a founding member of the ruling elite. He was a slave owner who promised his slaves that he would set them free upon his death.
But, because he had debts to some of his fellow ruling elite at his death, he did not carry through with his emancipation promise.
It is the story of this nation, and others, that the ruling elite has its first allegiance to their own class.
So Mr. Jefferson, you can rot in Hell with the rest of your pig herd.
Jefferson tried to free his slaves but the Virginia legislature passed a law requiring a large cash contribution to every freed slave. I realise that not much thought goes into the average post but one should really understand the facts prior to commenting upon them.
So Mr. Jefferson can negate his promise because it would have cost him some coin? Thanks for the facts, but he made the promise to free those who he exploited throughout his life. If it would have cost him his whole estate, he should have done it.
Then I would call him a great man. But, as is, he is a lying pig of the ruling elite.
In the end, he did what was expedient for himself and his wealthy class. Not much has changed, huh?
Try being a bit mature and posting with intelligence rather than an overwhelming and rather ignorant scorn. Jefferson had not the funds to free his slaves while alive, though he did free many in his will.
I find the derision heaped upon a man who was a chief founder of this nation to be way the fuck over the line frankly, and demonstrative of the self centered and rather ineffective nature of those who call themselves leftists. This sort of sophomoric failure to use analysis and rationale dooms the left to minority status and an inability to persuade anyone of anything. Congratulations all of you.
It is a bit puzzling that, with an attempt by the radical right to write Jefferson out of the history books, especially in Texas presently, a state that has a large influence on texts everywhere, we now find such sentiment here in this supposed bastion of left wing politics. Are you all so easily led?
I only want to hear Yoo's name when it is in the context of a treason trial.
This is written in response to those who have disputed McGovern's praise for the icons of American History. While I don't claim to be a scholar on the subject, it seems to me there's something wrong in condemning Thomas Jefferson and others whom McGovern praises because they didn't abide by modern principles of justice, especially in their attitudes toward native Americans, slaves, women, etc. These men had no one to tell them that there was something wrong with their thinking. It's easy for us, looking back from the heights we've climbed through the adoption of the 14th Amendment and others after the first 10, civil rights advances, the U.N., the Geneva Conventions, the Nuremberg trials, etc., to find ignorance, cruelty, and hypocrisy. I certainly applaud holding up the Founders the standards that we now accept as just and right. But in doing so, to be fair, we should also look objectively at the world they lived in and ask whether we, if born into similar circumstances, would have had the courage and foresight they demonstrated. If there were people around in the early days who fully understood justice as we do, and whom the Founders ignored, we rightly could demote the Founders from their high status. One could, as has Hollywood, romanticize native Americans, slaves, and other oppressed groups, but is that realistic?
"These men had no one to tell them that there was something wrong with their thinking."
Were these men truly great, they should not have needed someone to tell them so.
q
Yes, as if they didn't understand the injustice of slavery, bigotry, and slaughter. I hate the "but in their time" argument.
I guess we could say, "But in my day and age, torture was ok, war admired and we accepted corporate rule."
” That is why I shall join others taking part in Friday’s rally starting at 2:00 p.m. from “The Corner” of The Grounds at UVA, before Mr. Yoo speaks in Minor Hall at 3:30.”
I wish your rally to be a success. I hope lots of people who live within driving distance will be there. To stand up for what is right is something that we as Americans must continue to do.
We must cry out against torture!!! We must cry out against the American Patriot Act which takes away many of our rights that are in our Constitution. We must cry out against anyone who by their actions and vision seek to destroy this country.
Reading over the above comments, it brings to mind one fact; Americans are amongst the most ethnocentric peoples on the earth. Devoid of empathy and compassion by decades of greed and power, they cannot look at anything in the past, or hopes for the future for that matter, except in relation to their current culture(?) and its mores.
The only way we should judge historical cultures and figures is in the context in which they lived, not current decisions and cultural analysis.
Our ethnocentrism judges everything that has ever happened by the standards we currently set as acceptable behavior. A year or decade from now, those standards may again change.
Think about the nickel and how the bush regime moved Jefferson to the far left. If left in power any longer they would have moved him completely off the nickel. This is how the ruling elite, yoo being a patsy of, view the Great Egalitarians. Continue spreading equality and peace for all to overtake the authoritarian ways of the bully ruling class.