> Max Sawicky wrote:
>
> >Quite right. The specifics of this case aside, we
> >could just as easily dismiss Marx for being a sexist
> >or overly fond of hamburgers, or any other figure from
> >the past for some deviation for contemporary left mores.
>
> Yes, by all means let's forgive Jefferson for this, too - an excerpt from a
> Sep 23 1800 letter to Dr Benjamin Rush regarding yellow fever epidemic in
> Philadelphia:
>
> "Providence has in fact so established the order of things that most evils
> are the means of producing some good. The yellow fever will discourage the
> growth of great cities in our nation; & I view great cities as pestilential
> to the morals, the health, and the liberties of man. True, they nourish
> some of the elegant arts; but the useful ones can thrive elsewhere, and
> less perfection in others, with more health, virtue, and freedom would be
> my choice."
>
> If we could all be slaveowning rural squires, what a paradise America would be!
Jefferson's revulsion toward great cities is well-known, and this particular letter is oft-quoted, or so it seems to me -- I'm hardly a Jefferson scholar, but I've seen this passage quoted half a dozen times at least in past year or so. But Doug completely misses the point. I'm not defending Jefferson, I'm trying to understand him. If you pile all this blame on Jefferson, then you're implicitly absolving the system he was embedded in. Bad men made a bad world. This is hardly Marxist.
I must admit, I point out all these ugly things about Jefferson when I encounter libertarians all set on cannonizing him. But I don't expect them to be able to grasp Marxist concepts. I answer them on a level they can understand. The willingness to demonize Jefferson hereabouts does not speak well of our collective abilities to keep the eye on the ball.
Conservatives moralize by demonizing live black women. Leftists moralize by demonizing dead white men. The profound difference seems to escape me. We're supposed to be BETTER than them. Smarter, too.
-- Paul Rosenberg Reason and Democracy rad at gte.net
"Let's put the information BACK into the information age!"