What We Lose When We Lose Thomas Jefferson – By Samuel Goldman | Hacker News Reader

What We Lose When We Lose Thomas Jefferson – By Samuel Goldman

bariweiss.substack.com

41 pointshui-zheng35 comments

Jefferson created what is called the Jefferson Bible[0], it is the story of new testament without any magic or superstition. It primarily consists of the words of Jesus and his moral teachings over his worldly actions. I think it's best to read Jefferson in a similar way. As a paragon of virtue Jefferson fails, but he has some wisdom to share on the nature and design of large scale human organizations. I don't think Jefferson would've wanted to look over the New York City Council anyway, he's probably much more at home in a library or museum.

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jefferson_Bible

Jefferson more than just didn't live up to his ideals by owning slaves. His ideals themselves would be anathema today:

Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate than that these people [negros] are to be free. Nor is it less certain that the two races, equally free, cannot live in the same government. Nature, habit, opinion has drawn indelible lines of distinction between them. It is still in our power to direct the process of emancipation, and deportation, peaceably, and in such slow degrees, as that the evil will wear off insensibly; and their places be, pari passu, filled up by free white laborers. If, on the contrary, it is left to force itself on, human nature must shudder at the prospect held up. -https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Jefferson_and_slavery

Rather conflicts with the narrative that the US was founded as a melting pot nation.

It was a melting pot of the British, the Irish, the Dutch, the French etc. In the old world all nations lived relatively isolated, save them whose profession involved travel, that was expensive and painstaking.

The Irisih? You'd find many that would oppose the integration of their culture into American culture at the time. Let alone German culture.

Make no mistake, the USA at the outset was meant to be an Anglo nation, not a melting pot.

>> You'd find many that would oppose the integration of their culture into American culture at the time. Let alone German culture

Well the "many" failed in their opposition then. The default culture of the US is German, German is the largest self-reported ancestry group in the US.

They were actually very successful. German culture in the US was wiped out and the Anglo culture eventually dominated those of German ancestry.

He had six kids with one of his slaves. That slave was his wife's half-sister, because his father in law had six kids with his slave. The mother of the slave also had a white father and slave mother in turn.

Ignoring for a moment the question of whether someone you own as property can give consent to entering a child bearing arrangement in which the children will also be property, that's a whole lot of "melting" going on.

As uncomfortable as it is, this is all true. I'm not saying that means we need to 'cancel Jefferson' but maybe we should take notice of the ways in which standards of acceptability have changed throughout the ages. These changes in morals continue, one has to wonder what we do today that will be seen as barbaric in 100 years

> one has to wonder what we do today that will be seen as barbaric in 100 years

It's probably easy to come up with a list of dozens of common practices which cruelly mistreat the vulnerable, take away freedom, squander human potential, damage the environment (or the whole planet), and/or increase suffering while destroying things that are beautiful and beneficial.

Hopefully a more humane future will have long abandoned them as barbaric vestiges of the past.

It strikes me as pure arrogance that people think they are somehow morally superior because they have the benefit of looking back. Hindsight and all that. I hope they are judged with the same unreasonable severity that they judge others.

It’s also myopic to think that moral changes are only a function of “progress” in an abstract sense. Moral changes often accompany technological changes that significantly change circumstances.

For much of human history, human life was just a lot less valuable. The child mortality rate in 1800 was 46%. That means that one out of two children didn’t make it to their 5th birthday. A death of a child is a life altering experience for people today. Back then it happened to nearly everyone all the time. What did that do to people’s estimation of the value of life?

I think you can see this in other areas as well. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the legal and social equality between men and women has increased greatly alongside economic and technological developments that have diminished the advantages flowing from men’s greater strength and endurance. An economy built around heavy factory work and construction, like the early 20th century, is going to affect perception of social roles very differently than an economy built around office work.

Jefferson was a wealthy and powerful man who abandoned his own children to slavery. What kind of technological context might be relevant? The hindsight concern is valid in some cases but his was far from an "any one of us might be next" kind of failing.

The motivation for even attempting to excuse Jefferson is obviously to protect ideas about government and liberty from being contaminated. But they're at far more risk IMO when instead we say, well his own estate was medieval but xyz, or it's not pertinent, or won't we all be judged wanting, etc

The moral relationship between people and their children has changed a lot. People back then abandoned illegitimate children all the time. Studies show, for example, that childhood mortality rates for illegitimate children were often twice as high as for legitimate children. E.g. https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Infant-mortality-among-l....

Nobody is excusing Jefferson, because that’s not the purpose of this exercise. The history is what it is. But it’s important to understand and appreciate Jefferson. Many people have ideas about “government and liberty.” But Jefferson’s ideas produced one of the most prosperous societies in the history of the world.

I'm confused by why you'd point out that historically parents were more ambivalent, if not to excuse Jefferson having enslaved his own offspring (which was not actually happening to everyone all the time).

You don’t need to excuse anything to try and understand something. For example even in 2021, we have Afghans who refuse to send their girls to school. We can’t even comprehend that mindset here in America. We don’t need to excuse it to acknowledge that there may be more to it than us simply being better than Afghans. Pastoral societies are often strongly male dominated even compared to similarly undeveloped agricultural societies.

The point is that morality isn’t simply about “we are better than the ignorant people of the past.” That’s part of it obviously, but scientific and technological change often changes the context of how we think about things.

We already do! I grew up in Virginia in the 1990s when it was a red state. Even back then if you toured Monticello (which everyone did) you’d learn that part of the history.

QI style quiz question:

Which American president had children with his slave?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2015/08/13/wa...

As that notes, some of the claims haven't been proven with DNA, but that was also the case with Jefferson, until it wasn't.

I don't think an insignificant portion of Americans want to deport non-white people with cries of "go back to where you came from"

And, groups like BLM will tell you that the white government is still opressing free black citizens.

The only difference between that and your quote is optimism vs pessimism on whether the problems can be resolved. A lot of the current social justice views are that the injustice will always be there, but we can consistently reduce it over time

Jefferson's idea that whites and Blacks of his time could not come together is totally reasonable. To argue otherwise is to argue that early America was not too racist. It is only after great historical strife and trauma that we find ourselves in an increasingly blended society.

>...US was founded as a melting pot nation.

I've never heard "melting pot" refer to periods before the late 1800s.

Projecting contemporary morals backwards is fraught for many reasons, not least of which is the fact that we know scientific facts people in Jefferson’s time didn’t.

If you were a European in 1780, and you believed that all people were morally equal, would it necessarily follow that all people were factually equal in every capacity? Would you really look at London and New York on one hand, and virtually anywhere else on the other, and conclude that the people who built those respective places were fungible?

How much does scientific knowledge shape moral thinking? In particular, how much does contemporary knowledge of the minimal genetic differences between groups of humans—something that wouldn’t be discovered until 150+ years later—color the conclusions we draw from the obvious differences in civilizations land technological achievement between people of different nations?

> Rather conflicts with the narrative that the US was founded as a melting pot nation.

The narrative is that America is a melting pot, not that it was founded as such. The founders were virtually all of British heritage and the country was founded as England 2.0. But starting with German American immigration in the early 19th century it very quickly became an immigrant nation.

Do Lincoln next.

Judging people who lived in the distant past by modern standards is such an ignorant exercise of self-righteousness.

You are no better than Jefferson by virtue of opposing slavery in the modern day. You had the benefit of social norms that instructed you of its evils, and made it easy to denounce it.

Jefferson is a fascinating example of how contemporary historical revisionism is invoked in an extremely selective manner. Jefferson was a Francophile and was probably the founding father most closely aligned with continental European Enlightenment thinking. For example, he’s the source of the notion that the founding fathers were “deist.” Jefferson was, and maybe Franklin, but most of the others weren’t. He’s the main source for the notion of “wall of separation of church and state,” which is much closer to French secularism than what either the Constitution says or what the other founders likely intended. (At the time, several states had “established” churches, so the notion that the establishment clause required a wall of separation is quite odd: https://constitutioncenter.org/interactive-constitution/inte....) The Supreme Court ginned up the modern doctrine almost solely based on one of Jefferson’s letters. (To be fair, they properly understood what Jefferson meant.)

Today, there’s a lot of “guilt by association” attacks on various ideas Jefferson held. When critics attack Jefferson for being a slaveholder, they also attack notions like federalism or small government or gun rights as being conceived out of a desire to protect slavery. But they never attack his ideas of secularism, even though they could. Until the mid-20th century, “science” (or what passed for it at the time) was more aligned with things like slavery and eugenics. In the famous Cornerstone Speech, for example, the Vice President of the Confederacy declares the new rebel nation to be founded on the scientific truth that the races aren’t equal, and characterizes abolitionists as “zealots.” See: https://www.battlefields.org/learn/primary-sources/cornersto.... (Which they were—abolition among white Americans was driven mainly by Quakers and other religious fundamentalists. Lincoln’s Republican Party was a fusion of capitalists and religious nuts.)

I blame Lin-Manuel Miranda.

This author needs to check their premise.

>>The question, though, is whether everyone implicated in slavery is ipso facto ineligible for public celebration. That standard doesn’t only exclude Jefferson but virtually every major figure in American history before 1861.

Yes. And why is that so bad? I'd rather live in a society that truthfully acknowledges its history rather than one that clings to a false hero myth.

>> That’s why attacks on Columbus Day are as misplaced as removal of the Jefferson statue. The holiday and memorials in many cities aren’t really about the Genoese explorer who served a Spanish king. They are confirmations of the presence of Italian-Americans in public life, to say nothing of the courage and adventuresome spirit that led to the discovery of the New World.

It's a darn big jump from Jefferson to Columbus. In fact, this paragraph feels like it reveals the author's real intentions - lead with Jefferson to create sympathy with the reader, then redirect to Columbus. As I've stated publicly in my own community (in which Italians were a significant early immigrant group) do you really want to be represented by such a monster? Even in his own lifetime he was charged criminally. Plenty of better ways to celebrate the contributions of Italian-Americans.

> Yes. And why is that so bad? I'd rather live in a society that truthfully acknowledges its history rather than one that clings to a false hero myth.

You’re creating a false dichotomy. We already truthfully acknowledge the history. We learned about Sally Hemings when we toured Monticello (which most Virginia public school students did at some point) back in the 1990s.

But Jefferson is still a hero. He was a key founder of the most successful democracy on earth. He was born into a time where slavery had always existed. (It’s acknowledged in both the Bible and the Quran, and neither demands it’s abolition.) But he played a key role in creating the framework that ultimately dismantled an institution that had existed since antiquity.

The reason erasing Jefferson is bad is because it robs us of understanding how we got here. I come from a poor country (Bangladesh). And what drives me nuts about this debate over Jefferson is that Americans are so myopic about the fragile nature of prosperity. Americans are like fish in a tank—they assume the world is just a hospitable place with filtered water and food that rains down periodically. Fish-like, they don’t wonder why things are so good for them. But Jefferson is, in part, why. Ideas are a dime a dozen, but Jefferson’s ideas have been proven empirically because they produced this country. And that makes him infinitely more worthy of honor than virtually anyone else you might consider building a statute for.

Statues are all about symbolism.

Invading soldiers removed the statue of the Iraqi leader:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jul/08/toppling-sadda...

The statues of communist heroes are removed by law in Ukraine.

Societies change and evolve with time, either endogenously or exogenously (they are invaded), and thus the symbols change. Todays hero is tomorrows zero.

Clearly Thomas Jefferson is anathema to enough people in New York City to be taken down. Among the reasons they cite is that he was a slaveowner. By that benchmark they will have to take down a lot of statues and rename a number of bridges and schools.

Eventually the fight will come to the pictures on cash currency.

The irony is this is published by Bari Weiss. She has a history of being a cancel culture advocate herself:

https://theintercept.com/2018/03/08/the-nyts-bari-weiss-fals...

And using accusatory words and ad hominem that she does not herself know the meaning of:

https://twitter.com/turncoatd/status/1268691071342501888

Good point with symbolism.

I could be wrong, but to your last part - the sense I've gotten from her recent writing as of the last two years is she's changed her mindset regarding cancel culture (if not in whole, then a large part). not that i'd call it atonement outright, but that she's focused a lot more lately on those who've been "cancelled" and talking with them 1-on-1 and showcasing what they have to say.

> Statues are all about symbolism.

Statues, and monuments, are way more than symbolism. Their purpose is to shape the public opinion regarding specific values and look up to the ideas that the statues and monuments represent, so that they become an ever-present reminder to everyone of what values the ruling regime wants to be adopted and followed by the populace.

It’s amazing that the same two links always get repeated as if they diminish an impressive career as a journalist and editor. Greenwald has done important work, but his slander against Weiss is not one of them. David French was involved at the time of the events as the head of FIRE, here’s his recounting

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/03/the-sliming-of-bari-w...

French:

> In fact, if you read Bari’s own writing at the time, you won’t find a call to terminate professors. Instead, you’ll find a critique of a department that she had good reason to believe had lost its way. That’s free speech. That’s an exercise of her own academic freedom. It’s not a shout-down. It’s not a threat. It’s a debate.

Regardless, it’s sad that our culture today makes it so normal to attack a 37-year-old with a strong record of free speech advocacy during her actual career over something she’s accused of doing while in college. Accusations of hypocrisy require a statue of limitations.

>Clearly Thomas Jefferson is anathema to enough people in New York City to be taken down.

Don't mistake the will of the people of New York City with the will of the bureaucrats who made this decision. For a variety of reasons they have very little, if anything, in common.

That's why I used enough people as opposed to more definitive words like a majority or plurality. You oftentimes only need a strong energized minority to push through many changes in the government. But what might have been a small minority in NYC calling for changes in the 1990s is clearly a bigger community now. These change advocates will go all the way to changing holidays as well.

I think reducing Weiss to a cancel culture advocate is the same kind of mistake as the one puritan statue-topplers are making.

"The question, though, is whether everyone implicated in slavery is ipso facto ineligible for public celebration."

The answer is yes. You can celebrate him privately. We can criticize publicly his incredible hypocrisy. Or just note that his document said men and everyone knows it meant white men, a dishonest omission.

No one is going to put up statues of Bari Weiss. Her "voice" is just outrage pushing.

I assume there must be some actual thing that Weiss does, but I have seen nothing from her on HN except being outraged about various supposed abuses.

What is it that's supposed to make her relevant here?

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