Virginia Virtucon: Reclaiming Jefferson
Today is Thomas Jefferson's birthday, and the good folks at Virginia Virtucon touch on a subject that riles me up every time it's mentioned -- the Democrat-Republicans and the high-handed attempts by liberals to claim Jefferson as their own:U2 frontman Bono said of the song 'Helter Skelter,' 'This is a song Charles Manson stole from the Beatles. We're stealing it back.' It's time for us to do the same thing. 'This is a great political philospher the Democrats stole from American history. We're stealing him back.' Most Democrats would draw a line from Jefferson to Andrew Jackson, the most despicable president in American history.
It's an impossible line to draw. For starters, the Jeffersonians called themselves Republicans and were only labelled "Democrats" as a slur by their more Federalist-minded friends up north. To be a Democrat was to placate oneself to the mob, while to be a Federalist was to maintain the order of the old planter aristocracy.
Jefferson and his allies would have none of that. The defended the idea of the Republic, states rights, and a firm belief in emancipating the farmer from the yoke of old sentiments of English tyrrany and social order.
The Democrat-Republicans invariably dissolved in the 1820's after a succession of Whig victories. In many ways, their mission had been accomplished, but there has been no hasty beat to try to connect the Jeffersonians of 1800 and the Jacksonian Democrats of 1824, especially by liberals desperate for a Founding Father to epitomize.
I have a thought on this.
Consider the dynamics of the Election of 1800. Here you have a scenario familiar to most of us today - cities vs. towns. The Federalists in Boston wanted one thing, the Republicans in Virginia and in the Western Territories fought for another.
Let's review some pivotal elections:
Cities:
1800: Adams - Federalist
1824: Adams - Federalist
1860: Lincoln - Republican
1896: McKinley - Republican
1960: Kennedy - Democrat
1980: Carter - Democrat
1992: Clinton - Democrat
2000: Gore - Democrat
2004: Kerry - Democrat
Towns:
1800: Jefferson - Democratic/Republican
1824: Jackson - Democrat
1860: Breckinridge - Democrat
1896: Bryan - Democrat
1960: Nixon - Republican
1980: Reagan - Republican
1992: Bush - Republican
2000: Bush - Republican
2004: Bush - Republican
Now I show this not so much to draw a line between which political parties may or may not have the best interests of rural or urban communities at heart. But it was Jefferson himself who believed that cities held a destructive capacity on the human spirit.
Rather than draw those lines myself, I'd hypothesize that the people themselves know whom the heir to Jeffersonian ideas roughly are. To date, that mantle rests squarely with the Republican Party.
What's interesting to note is the turnover between Democrats and Republicans during the 1960's. What was the catalyst? The advent of the Baby Boomers and the free-wheeling 1960's? The end of segregation in the South? The "silent majority" that Nixon spoke about?
I don't have those answers, but I can say that rural America - the beating heart of Jeffersonian ideals - is consistently choosing one party over another. Given that, it's not terribly difficult to argue that Republicans hold Jeffersonian ideals closer to their hearts than our cousins on the left.
|
 |
Norman Leahy 
7 Comments:
Would Jeffersonian Republicans have approved the Medicare D program? Would they have fallen all over themselves to divert tens of millions of dollars in pork to their home districts through earmarks?
And for that matter, would they have approved something like the Patriot Act...especially given Jefferson's own opposition to the Alien & Sedition Acts?
I'd say that neither party holds Jefferson's ideals closely. They are merely different sides of the same coin -- one wedded to the primacy of the federal government and the expansion of its power, though at a slightly different pace.
Fire away!
Democrats on the whole would wholeheartedly support socialized medicine, while rank-and-file Republicans certainly would not.
Again, I'm certainly not arguing that either the Democratic or Republican Parties endorse the ideas of Jefferson.
But if one were looking for the imprimatur of rural values, the GOP has certainly received it.
Next step: making the GOP leadership reflect those values!
I also think tj would have had a heart attack if he heard half the things some in the GOP have said about France.
I think TJ would have had a heart attack hearing what France had to say about America and Americans...
Besides, Jefferson didn't think much of Napoleon anyway.
When we were going from normandy to paris there were american flags everywhere, literally, thousands of american flags on ever single house in the country side!
A found not a single frenchman who disliked america, as a matter of a fact i didnt find a single frenchman who didnt love american. In France they hate Bush as well as all Politicians, but that does not mean they hate America. Far from it, The French are truly the best friends we have in the world. Anyone who thinks the french do not love Americans has never been to france and met the people.
You visited Normandy.
During D-Day celebrations.
My parents almost had their car flipped when we stumbled into a French town while my father was based in Germany. The only thing that stopped them from doing it was the fact my brothers and I were in the car....
My experience has been a general rejection of all things American, and it is a sweeping generalization. We are uncivilized, brutish, prudish, arrogant, loud, obnoxious, naive, gullible, and everything you would caricature the "ugly American" to be (not to mention their treatment of American philosophy or philosophers) -- and they don't care if you are a Republican or Democrat. Rare is the Frenchman who remembers the former friendship, something I think disappeared after the Revolution of '68, I'm afraid.
Normandy is a far cry from knowing France, my friend.
Post a Comment
Home