Quoth James Landrith: > The point being made earlier in this thread is that this clear > and egregious inconsistency is not a good reason to invalidate his > significant contributions in the realm of liberty advocacy. In short, his > ownership of slaves was wrong - really, really wrong and inexcusable - but > it doesn't make his more libertarian views invalid.
Precisely. I don't know if Jefferson bought any slaves or not, but he did sell them (one account book page of his that I've seen in the national archives includes the record of the sale of a slave), so there's no point in pretending that he just exercised "friendship" rather than asserting "ownership." Jefferson urged Americans to "bind government down with the chains of the Constitution" -- then rammed through the Louisiana Purchase even though he believed it was unconstitutional. Jefferson ran against John Adams and decried his imprisonment of critics -- but when a New York publication ran articles which pointed out some of his less-than-good-PR aspects, he leaned on state prosecutors to press criminal libel charges, and to argue (after the manner of English monarchs) that making "defamatory" statements about presidents, even if they were true, should be a crime. Jefferson wrote in a letter in response to the Burr situation that it was okay for the military to arrest American citizens without a warrant and to detain them without charge -- as long as the President's heart was in the right place. In action, Jefferson was often quite simply anti-libertarian. However, the fact he did not always live up to the principles he so ably articulated doesn't invalidate those principles. Tom Knapp ForumWebSiteAt http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Libertarian Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Libertarian/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
