The Jefferson Jackson Bailey dinners are famous events for the state Democratic Party in Connecticut. However, as part of the backlash against historical figures who owned slaves, the NAACP demanded that both names be stripped away from the dinner and the state Democratic Party agreed.
Nick Balletto, the party’s first-year chairman, said that he hoped other states would follow suit and do “the right thing.” Some may disagree with that assessment.
First, I have been a long critic of Jackson who is legitimately blamed for the Trail of Tears and other atrocities against Native Americans. He is also viewed as the father of the patronage system. He also openly challenged the authority of the Supreme Court to restrain him. It has always astonished me that Democratic Party embraced such an abusive figure as Jackson. However, Jefferson is a founding father who is credited not only with the Declaration of Independence but key rights like those of religious freedoms.
Second, stripping away references to all slave owners would wipe out many if not most of the framers. Slavery was a tremendous evil at the time and those framers with slaves are legitimately criticized for calling for political and social rights while enslaving other human beings. They were flawed figures but they were also the creators of a system that allowed for not only the evolution of rights but the ultimate rejection of slavery.
Scot X. Esdaile, the head of Connecticut’s NAACP, insisted that only stripping away such names can heal the wounds of racism and that the move of the Democratic Party was “making the symbolic first step and striving to right the wrongs of the past . . . You can’t right all the wrongs, but I think it’s a symbolic gesture of our support for their party.”
Ironically, Jefferson was one of the most active in seeking to curtail slavery. In the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson originally sought to criticize England for forcing the slave trade on the colonies but it was taken out of the draft. In 1778, Jefferson led the effort to ban the importation of slaves into Virginia and as President fought against the slave trade. In 1784 Jefferson unsuccessfully proposed federal legislation banning slavery in the New Territories of the North and South after 1800. He wrote about the corrupting influence of slavery. In other words, his story is a complex one and captures a generation that was moving at least in part toward the emancipation of slaves.
What do you think?
Churchill was the Trump of his day, sans a few billion, and a title. Oh, and a cigar.
Are there not many other icons in the history of race relations in America that can be eradicated before we ever get to Thomas Jefferson? Are we not now coming to realize we are getting too far beyond ourselves hating gun toting mentally deranged racists waving confederate battle flags?
All right. I won’t hijack the thread. I could argue all day about Churchill. In the end, what did he save? England was finished at the end of the war and reduced to an also-ran. And they still pretty much take their marching orders from Berlin now anyway. Plus, we may have not even have had American involvement in WWI if it wasn’t for him. We were his go-to kind-hearted dope of a big brother. I’ll admit, he got things done though. I can’t put up much more of an argument without resorting to things like, “well… he was fat…”
I. Annie
Rick, the problem is you make too many assumptions and have a penchant for entirely missing my point.
There is literally no assumption in my comment, and I get your points just fine. You criticize with exaggeration but rather than accept the response in kind you pretend exaggeration is unacceptable. And you do this because you’d rather get into back and forth bickering than defend the substance of your initial comment.
It’s quite easy to see which is closer to the truth [that the left wants to teach only the warts or the right wants to excise them] given the subject of the thread which is the appropriateness of reducing the author of the Declaration of Independence to the sole role of slave-owner.
Randyjet
Churchill is the perfect example of a great leader with great flaws. He is the greatest leader of the 20th Century. If Great Britain had given up, if Churchill had not laid down the ultimatum of surrender to the French fleet and then followed through by destroying it when the French refused, the US would have sat by and sold stuff to both sides. Instead the US transferred over 50 Destroyers which made all the difference against the U boats in the Battle of the North Atlantic. Great Britain would have made a treaty with Germany and perhaps we would be speaking German as a second language. Germany had two sinks that absorbed its might, Great Britain and more importantly the USSR. One has only to look at the potential for economics to dictate world policy by understanding that British, French, and American bankers funded Germany’s rebuilding after WW1 and some economic interests worked with Germany economically well into 1942. Look up the bank on whose board of directors the little cowboy’s grandpa sat. It was only after the government well into the war against the Nazis in October of 1942 seized the Nazi assets of the Union Banking Company of which Prescott Bush was a director, that American bankers stopped dealing with the Nazis.
Churchill held a lot of views and was a part of a few blunders but he was a true hero, a man who rose above it all, saw the point, and stuck to his guns. His tenure is far less hypocritical than any politician since. One can speculate on what would have become of the US but Europe would certainly be German today if it were not for Churchill.
To: Isaac: I agree with much of what you say. But I don’t think Britain would have given up. The War was against the British Empire and this had considerable clout at the time.
The defeat of the British Isles would have not made any difference to the ultimate defeat of Germany. The Russians had them beaten in 1942 after Stalingrad. They went on to absolutely crush the German Army which never recovered. We would have had a Communist Europe and maybe even a transient American Queen (whom FDR believed to be a German Agent) and potentially a restored King Edward VIII courtesy of the Nazis. There is a theory that Mrs Simpson had a sexual relationship with von Ribbentrop and that this is the real reason for her rejection by the British Parliament. They also thought she could have been a spy. She certainly had no time for the British. There is also a theory that Edward may have passed information to the Germans about French defences which he inspected circa 1939 and wrote a report for the war office. The house he rented in France was owned by a German sympathiser and possible spy. We shall probably never know the truth. But we do know that the Battle of France was over in 6 weeks and the German success was breathtaking. They must have had inside information.
The bulk of the fighting occurred on the Russian Front and Germany was a beaten Nation before 1944. If D Day had never happened, Germany would have eventually been defeated and Europe would be part of the strengthened Eastern Block, which might have changed the balance of power.
The USA would have still defeated Japan +/- allies from the British Empire maybe sooner and still developed Nuclear Weapons but the USA would have not been able to make the post war alliances of today and would be in a much weaker position than it is today.
The big winners of WWII were America and Russia and you are right that Churchill’s determination to make a stand, lost the Empire he was so determined to defend.
All Empires ultimately fall.
America is not excluded in this…..
The issue is can the fallen bounce back?
Our Constitutional amendments are a preservation of the history of the United States as it has moved towards the vision captured in the Declaration of Independence. We need to retain that history, warts and all, as proof that those original founding principles remain as relevant today as they were 239 years ago. Our greatest failure has been to allow a certain ideology to teach our citizens that those principles are flawed because the generation was flawed. That generation had the humility to design a form of government that could lead our culture to recognize the inalienable rights of man. They put the survival of the republic ahead of their own personal legacy. Who today can we point to that comes close to that benchmark?
To Olly: I would love to believe what you say.
But the truth is they were business men that wanted power and the ability to pay taxes for themselves. This is who runs America. Unelected Big Business.
None of what you say is true – but it should be true and therein lies the tragedy. The whole culture of American thinking is based on the almighty Dollar.
Laws are made, bent and broken at will.
And the really sad thing is that “right minded people” with a passion for truth freedom and liberty have been duped.
ninianpeckitt wrote: “But the truth is they [founding fathers] were business men that wanted power and the ability to pay taxes for themselves. This is who runs America. Unelected Big Business.”
The dynamics of business and government today is not like it was during this country’s founding. Thomas Jefferson certainly was not a businessman. Of the 55 delegates to the Constitutional Convention, only 13 of them were businessmen.
http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/constitution_founding_fathers_overview.html
Their emphasis was freedom for the people to such a degree that there was no direct taxation of the people. The primary revenue was in the form of tariffs and excise taxes. That means business supplied the money for government directly, and the better the engine of business did, the more revenue for government. The people did not pay taxes except in the cost of what they paid businesses for the products they purchased. In 1800, custom duties (tax on imports) comprised 84% of the federal revenue. As recently as 1900, 80% of the federal revenue was from alcohol and tobacco excise taxes. The passage of the 16th Amendment and World War I changed everything. With huge amounts of money being collected through direct taxation, the American government became dominated by the almighty dollar.
http://www.eoearth.org/view/article/153529/
bam is establishing herself as a smart, insightful woman w/ much to say. Some women have nothing to say but boilerplate nonsense.
The American Taliban err, liberal Dems, want to erase the Confederate soldiers carved in Stone Mountain, Ga. I watch as the Dem Queen implodes, the black base revolts, and wonder just how bad they will lose in 2016. And, then I wonder how much the Republicans will screw the pooch, thinking they won, when really the Dem party just imploded, like the Republican party did in 1964. If ever there were a chance for someone outside the duopoly, it is now.
Rick, the problem is you make too many assumptions and have a penchant for entirely missing my point.
I. Annie
We should just admit that we Americans aren’t perfect and don’t try to erase, ignore or whitewash history. It should be visible, warts and all.
I. Annie
Rick, the entire AP course didn’t consist of teaching ONLY the “bad parts”. They were included, as they should be.
Note the change in standard between the two assertions. In the first you assume the change in emphasis is completely eliminating the undesired subject, but in the second you claim this practice is ridiculous. Why are you like this, and on every subject?
Bam Bam . . . . since their purging our history, can that please include slavery, then we can put it to rest. Slavery has become a gratuitous profession in a century with no slaves.
I came across this German love song “Erika” which became a WWII marching song.
Notice how the video of artillery is perfectly synchronized to the drums. What does this have to do with this thread? Play it a few times.
The most brilliant man ever to hold the Presidency and the President most responsible for changing the nation away from a republic run only by a small group of the elite. Great choices for making anathema! The same logic as putting noble but purely historical footnote people on US currency because of their race or color. (If the proposal was to put some Black woman on the penny rather than booting that useless hack Alexander Hamilton do you think it would be protested as demeaning, rather than seen as an honor?)
The next logical step in this idiocy is to strip away anything named for Jefferson and Jackson. Then does this moron movement go right for our first President, or knock off some other American figures before moving to strike Washington from American history?
Interesting that David defends slavery against the charge of being a tremendous evil.
But, like Rick pointed out, I do not believe we should push back against the entire contribution of a historical figure for their shortcomings. Except for Churchill.
slhrrss, While Churchill’s crimes and stands are really gross and greater than most of his contemporaries with the exception of Stalin Mao, Hitler, Mussolini, and the like, his accomplishments are also far greater too. He is without question the greatest Englishman up to now in history. I also have a personal interest since without Churchill, it would have been ME fighting a world war on far less favorable terms, instead of my father and his cohorts. So for the great leadership in WWII and saving Western civilization, and saving countless millions from fascism, I am quite willing to overlook and forgive his crimes and less savory political actions. The sum of his life is an overall PLUS for history Even centuries later, I doubt his well deserved statue will ever come down.
Randyjet is right.
Churchill did some dreadful things especially to the Irish and India – and his career was finished until he was in his sixties, after the Gallipoli fiasco which was his fault entirely.
He repeated his mistakes with the same concept repeated in WWII with the soft underbelly of Italy. He had a thing about soft underbellies and mercilessly used the American Army in North Africa to defend the British Empire by preventing the loss of Suez when the American rightly felt the war had to be won by landing in France.
But he wasn’t English, he was half American, who thought he was English. And he wasn’t really a Churchill. He was a Spencer but the name was changed to foster closer ties with John Churchill the 1st Duke of Marlborough of whom he had a fixation.
Rick, the entire AP course didn’t consist of teaching ONLY the “bad parts”. They were included, as they should be.
I. Annie
We should just admit that we Americans aren’t perfect and don’t try to erase, ignore or whitewash history. It should be visible, warts and all.
In truth the objection is to teaching only the warts – just as Jefferson’s life is reduced to the single fact of slave owner.
It is ridiculous the way our current culture overreacts lately to very narrow issues. The battle flag must be removed, now a fundraiser must distance itself from slave owners. Are they going to change the name of Washington D.C. too, or change the name of Washington State? Do we need to remove Washington’s picture from the dollar bill? The Democratic Party has sunk to a new low with this one. All they do by this is manifest to everyone how limited their powers of intellect are.
Part of the problem, though, is from people making extreme absolute statements like claiming that “Slavery was a tremendous evil at the time…” Such statements lead people to think that slavery per se was an absolute evil, and because almost everybody living in our country has no first hand experience with slavery, it is so easy to condemn others and make ourselves feel superior in the process. The rational mind yields to the premise that slavery is a tremendous evil, and every other perspective must line up with this premise. As a result, a full and complete understanding is lost, and we end up with what we see here whereby the Democratic Party eliminates Thomas Jefferson from their fundraiser.
Slavery was not a “tremendous” evil. In its original form, which included freeing slaves every 7 years, it actually was an economic and judicial answer to poverty. It also provided a means for many poor people to immigrate across the ocean to this nation by choice. Certainly slavery developed into an institution that protected evil men and so it needed to be changed, but slavery itself per se was not “a tremendous evil.” Nobody is looking at the bigger picture of why slavery developed in the first place, nor are they looking at the huge cultural differences between people from a civilized society like England and people from a savage uncivilized society like those found in West Africa at the time.
People forget that our Constitution does not even yet outlaw slavery completely. Suppose a State decided to completely abolish their prison system and opt instead for a system of restitution. If someone convicted of a crime could not repay what he owed from theft, that person could be sold. Our Constitution still allows for that, and that is exactly how slavery came about in the first place. Modern society instead opts for an evil prison system that everybody is forced to pay for. The average prisoner costs every taxpayer over $30,000 per year. Is this really better for that person than allowing him to serve a benevolent master who provides for him to build his own home on his land, and to marry and have children, and who educates him and prepares him with the virtues and character needed to succeed when he gives him his freedom? If enlightenment ever does take hold of the clouded minds of modern men, I can imagine some in the future looking back on our current system of a cold and heartless prison system and describing it as a tremendous evil. Maybe some of them would even own slaves.
Pretty good statement Issac, except I think you require too much qualifications on the part of the human beings. We are human beings. I think the push-back against the royal system of government (partially begun, but actually more “continued” by our founding fathers) was indeed very important, as demonstrated by our revolution, and the uprisings in Europe in 1830 and 1848. There was the link to religious authority that was finally broken through those struggles. Did the founding fathers have faults?? Yes… Were the founding fathers human?? Of course. Should we look at their mistakes? Of course, that should be the beauty of our system since our leaders don’t get that “divine wildcard” to use when things go wrong. But I do not think we should destroy theirs–and our legacy on the account of human failings. Buddha created an entire system of thought based on his failings and enlightenment, but he was not thrown under the bus for his previous failings. Bottom line, we should respect and revere our founding fathers, but discuss what they could have done better. If people are that insulted by the founders, maybe they could try living somewhere else first.
randyjet: LBJ sponsored and passed The Civil Rights Act of 1964. No other President, before or after, could have passed it.
I quite agree that LBJ did a lot of good as well, but his body count in Vietnam, the Dominican Republic, Cuba, and many other countries FAR exceeds the number of Jefferson, and Jackson combined. Plus the fact, that I had personal experience with such things thanks to him. I have to admit, after having read Caro’s masterful bio of him, I don’t hate the man, and I actually felt pity for his hardscrabble childhood.
The problem with history is that it is rarely viewed from an objective position. Great Britain policed the world for centuries is no more true than Great Britain plundered, pillaged, and enslaved millions for centuries. The founding fathers set America free is no more true than a group of middle and upper middle class privileged men saw the opportunity to take over and did so. John Wayne and his pals made the West a safe place by fighting off the ‘savages’ is no more true than the intention, execution, and accomplishment of the US government was to eradicate by any means necessary any indigenous persons that got in the way of the White Supremacists.
History is written by the victors to design scenarios that create a scenario to match the ideal. The result is often the slaughter of innocents. How else does a country raise an army to kill supposed enemies of the people along with scores in collateral damage if not by brainwashing its youth.
The founding fathers should be scrutinized and seen in their entirety but more importantly in their place and time. Power and corruption go hand in hand. However that does not negate the ideals. Jefferson, Washington, and the rest of America’s great men and women have morphed into super heroes or perhaps demigods. But, just as with those that populated the pantheon of Ancient Greece, they did have both sides of the coin. They were not only fallible but sometimes tragic. This is the most important aspect of history, to illustrate that power, leadership, and larger than life characters are flawed as well. People must look at their heroes in their history in a similar way as they view their present day leaders. This is the only way to improve.
One doesn’t remove these characters from their revered places in society. One strives to understand them, the place, and the time. The heroes with their flaws have committed crimes almost as bad if not worse than those of the enemies of freedom in vanquishing the opposition. Perhaps the text beneath the statue or portrait should include both sides of the story. It would be a move in the right direction of viewing both sides of our present day heroes.