Trashing Jefferson
Chicago Sun-Times – Where’s the dissent about source of quote? BY MARK STEYN
What does it mean when so many senior Democrats take refuge in an obvious bit of hooey? Thomas Jefferson would never have said anything half so witless. There is no virtue in dissent per se. When John F. Kennedy said, “We shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty” — and, believe it or not, that’s a real quote, though it’s hard to imagine any Massachusetts Democrat saying such a thing today…
But the high holiness of dissent for its own sake is now the core belief of the Democratic Party: It’s not what you’re for, it’s what you’re against. …
Dissent for its own sake is like the Democrats’ energy policy: We’re opposed to any kind of energy; we prefer to be mired in enervated passivity. If the right is full of armchair generals, the left is full of armchair generalities: Nothing can be done, any course is futile, everything’s a quagmire. All we can say for certain is that saying so for certain is the highest form of patriotism.
It’s truer to say that these days patriotism is the highest form of dissent — against a culture where the media award each other Pulitzers for damaging national security, and the only way a soldier’s mom can become a household name is if she’s a Bush-is-the-real-terrorist kook like Cindy Sheehan, and our grade schools’ claims to teach our children about America, “warts and all,” has dwindled down into teaching them all the warts and nothing else. Or as the Capital Times of Madison, Wis., concluded its ringing editorial on the subject:
“Thomas Jefferson got it right: ‘Dissent is the highest form of patriotism.’ And teaching children how to be thoughtful and effective dissenters is the highest form of education.”
Teaching them authentic Jefferson quotes would be a better approach.
What amazes me is that so many of these people (“patriots” after all, who supposedly would claim to know a thing or two on the subject, and maybe harbour some kind of fondness for it all) would all think it is an authentic Jefferson quote. I mean, it makes no sense, besides being so incredibly unlikely coming from anyone much less a man like that in that day in age.
Although what’s really amazing, and probably the only good to come of the whole quote: before 9/11 we were naming Jefferson High Schools after Cesar Chavez because Jefferson was a slave owner! and now suddenly the left thinks he’s an okay guy worth quoting.
May 1st, 2006 at 2:55 am
“Where else should we find shelter for joy, or mere content When little was left standing but the suburb of dissent?” WH Auden
Anyone read Conor Cruise O’Brien on Jefferson? He comes over as being a Jacobinesque power maniac with some odd ideas about the role of bloodshed in the revolutionary tradition. Think IRA bloke with a nice big house. One hums and haws about this for a bit, and then one realises that Jeffersonian democracy is in essence no more than that blend of toxic arcadianism favoured by De Valera (and later of course Pol Pot among others). So in that sense the Left’s only reclaiming its own.
May 1st, 2006 at 3:21 am
Doesn’t surprise me. Those American founding fathers were a mixed bag.
In contrast, I just finished a little book on Washington by your own Paul Johnson. It’s hard to imagine someone who was a natural leader, became a General and a President and who was yet so uninterested in exercising power over others – The antithesis of the totalitarian personality that motivates the modern left.
May 1st, 2006 at 4:40 am
Got it in one, Brett! True nobility. Even with those teeth.
May 1st, 2006 at 8:46 am
“Thomas Jefferson would never have said anything half so witless.” Surely it’s because Jefferson espoused so much that was witless, that this false attribution sounds plausible? The Founding Fathers were a mixed bag mainly in the sense of being a bunch of blackguards plus Geo. Washington.
May 1st, 2006 at 9:21 am
Well, I’m in favour of him generally, but I’m rather down on him since for the past 60 years or so the Supreme Court whose job it is to uphold and interpret the Constitution has been busily upholding and interpreting a single phrase from his personal correspondence (since he was in France when the Constitution was written, they had to get the “wall dividing church and state” line from somewhere).
May 1st, 2006 at 3:56 pm
I like to think my main man Nathiel Greene wasn’t a blackguard. A failed Quaker, but not a blackguard.
May 2nd, 2006 at 3:38 am
Blackguards take care not to be where the fighting is, so Greene can’t be. I must say that Benedict Arnold was the most terrifically brave soldier until he, er, wasn’t. Captured the US Navy’s first ever prize, which he named the “Enterprise”.
May 2nd, 2006 at 3:43 am
Nice piece of trivia there Mr. Red. There’s been an Enterprise in commission in the US Navy ever since.
May 2nd, 2006 at 5:03 am
It all depends on how productive criticism is and whether it is expressed in good faith. I agree with Steyn in the sense that dissent for its own sake is useless and unpatriotic. As a Fulbright Alumnus I like Senator Fulbright’s understanding of patriotism. He described criticism as a compliment and a “higher form of patriotism, I believe, than the familiar rituals and national adulation”.
Better misquoting Jefferson than misreading intelligence.
May 2nd, 2006 at 5:36 am
Even as the uncle of a Fulbright scholar I have to say that, through his self-promoting Senate hearings, Sen. Fulbright (or “Halfbright” as LBJ used to refer to him) made the most terrific contribution to the communist war effort in Vietnam, thereby helping consign tens of millions to tyranny and the “re-education” camps. As a committed supporter of racial segregation in the South, Senator Fulbright always voted his state ie against Civil Rights, until relieved of the need to do so by LBJ’s legislation. At this distance in time he now looks like the sort of liberal who’d rather feel good about himself by a claiming a spurious moral superiority than to act in the interests of freedom and democracy if it might cost him his seat in the Senate. A political blackguard, as it were.
May 2nd, 2006 at 1:46 pm
Senator Fulbright always voted his state ie against Civil Rights, until relieved of the need to do so by LBJ’s legislation.
Yes indeedy, don’t recall an I only did it for the state masses apology either.
May 2nd, 2006 at 1:54 pm
Read or re-read The Natural Superiority of Southern Politicians: A Revisionist Historyitn by Mr. David Leon Chandler out of print – but 1 copy was available at amazon. I’m frantically searching for mine now…
May 3rd, 2006 at 1:56 am
Oooh that sounds like one I must read. Even its title’s a continuing thread in American public life since about Jefferson. I read Fulbright’s “The Price of Empire” and as far as I can remember he made no mention of his position on Civil Rights, which is odd because otherwise he would have been JFK’s Secretary of State without any doubt at all. It defined his career. To attack Fulbright on his civil rights record is of course in another sense crude anachronism – in the 40s and 50s his record was unremarkable – but since Lefties can’t resist anachronistic attacks on the Right I just thought I’d have a pop at ole’ Halfbright.