>Failure to dismiss does not equal forgiveness.
>It's not even in the same dimension; dismiss goes
>to the social value of a person's thoughts and
>actions (emphasis plural); forgiveness is some
>kind of moral judgement. Bet you once considered
>the seminary.
Actually I did; Jesuit, of course. But that was a youthful indiscretion.
The point isn't whether TJ was a good guy or not. The point is why the hell is he so revered by people who should know better. His slaveowning and genocidal habits are inseparable from his ludicrous fantasy of a yeoman democracy. Appropriation of the land and labor of others are what made possible his hilltop hideaway and all his other gentlemanly pursuits. Those little details get effaced in the hero-making. And I speak as someone who spent three years in Charlottesville, listening to all the ancestor worshippers carrying on about Mr Jefferson. Even the (excellent) UVa radio station bore his stain - its call letters are WTJU, for Thomas Jefferson's University. The last of the southern state universities to desegregate, which I think is no accident.
Doug