Rhetorical Gestures (was Re: Spivak sez...)

William S. Lear rael at zopyra.com
Tue Oct 19 07:20:45 PDT 1999


On Monday, October 18, 1999 at 16:52:14 (-0400) Doug Henwood writes:
>Charles Brown wrote:
>
>>What I mean is that Kant was no more progressive than Franklin and Jefferson.
>
>Jefferson? Whose vision of paradise was one of yeoman farmers and
>slaveowning gentry? And who wrote these lovely words: "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." That Jefferson?

But Jefferson ideas were a tad more mingled than that, particularly toward the end of his life. Chomsky makes the following broadly important point:

... if you look at the *ideology* of the

founding fathers -- not what they actually *believed* -- but

at the doctrines that they professed, which is something

quite different, they were opposed to centers of power and

authority. In the 18th century that meant they were opposed

to the feudal system, and the absolutist state and the

church and so on.

Chomsky elsewhere gives a good example of Jefferson's "dark side":

The doctrine of seditious libel was also upheld in the American

colonies. The intolerance of dissent during the revolutionary

period is notorious. The leading American libertarian, Thomas

Jefferson, agreed that punishment was proper for "a traitor in

thought, but not in deed," and authorized internment of political

suspects. He and the other Founders agreed that "traitorous or

disrespectful words" against the authority of the national state

or any of its component states was criminal. "During the

revolution," Leonard Levy observes, "Jefferson, like Washington,

the Adamses, and Paine, believed that there could be no

toleration for serious differences of political opinion on the

issue of independence, no acceptable alternative to complete

submission to the patriot cause. Everywhere there was unlimited

liberty to praise it, none to criticize it." At the outset of the

Revolution, the Continental Congress urged the states to enact

legislation to prevent the people from being "deceived and drawn

into erroneous opinion." It was not until the Jeffersonians were

themselves subjected to repressive measures in the late 1790s

that they developed a body of more libertarian thought for

self-protection --- reversing course, however, when they gained

power themselves.

---Noam Chomsky, "Force and Opinion", *Z*, July/August

1991, p. 23-24

Another example of Jefferson's elitism:

After the American revolution, rebellious and independent farmers

had to be taught by force that the ideals expressed in the

pamphlets of 1776 were not to be taken seriously. The common

people were not to be represented by countrymen like themselves,

that know the people's sores, but by gentry, merchants, lawyers,

and others who hold or serve private power. Jefferson and Madison

believed that power should be in the hands of the "natural

aristocracy," Edmund Morgan comments, "men like themselves" who

would defend property rights against Hamilton's "paper

aristocracy" and from the poor; they "regarded slaves, paupers,

and destitute laborers as an ever-present danger to liberty as

well as property." The reigning doctrine, expressed by the

Founding Fathers, is that "the people who own the country ought

to govern it" (John Jay). The rise of corporations in the 19th

century, and the legal structures devised to grant them dominance

over private and public life, established the victory of the

Federalist opponents of popular democracy in a new and powerful

form.

---Noam Chomsky, *Deterring Democracy*, Chapter 12.

but then:

For working people, David Montgomery observes, the most important

part of the Jeffersonian legacy was the shelter it provided to

free association, diversity of beliefs and behavior, and defiance

of alleged social superiors in society. The structures of civil

society obstructed bourgeois control of American life at every

turn. Hence, the unremitting campaigns to demolish the

independent press and eliminate effective forms of community

solidarity, from trade unions to political clubs and

organizations. They have been conducted with passionate intensity

and considerable success.

---Noam Chomsky, letter to *CAQ*, 09/01/1995

Jefferson was strongly opposed to the growing banking interests and corporate dominance, and very late in his life admitted that the people themselves were though perhaps not the "wisest", were the "best" ones to determine the conduct of public policy.

Bill



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