Pondering Monticello and an insight on being American
Carla Axtman
I have been fascinated with Thomas Jefferson ever since I first learned of him as a girl. I'm in awe of his skill as a writer and the great intellectual force he brought with it. I'm also in awe of his ability to compartmentalize the incredible contradictions of his life.
A man who could write such soaring prose, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.." yet still hold hundreds humans as slaves demonstrates an immense capacity for selective moralization, even in the context of the times in which he lived.
But even with these incredible flaws was a man whose efforts were deeply influential in the creation of our national experiment. Much of the very fabric of our collective American being is due in no small part to the ideas and ideals that Jefferson espoused.
A few years ago, I visited his beloved Monticello in Virginia. Jefferson's enormous curiosity and intellect are on display in virtually every corner of the estate. From the gardens to the house itself, his ideas and experiments are left for us to ponder and appreciate.
The wonderful Maira Kalman at the New York Times has a superbly illustrated narrative of her own visit to Jefferson's home. Kalman's unique art captures her colorful and layered experience.
It's more than worth your time to view Kalman's work. I hope it inspires you to take your own journey to Monticello, or to the places that make you think about what it means to be American.
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Jun 26, '09
Carla Axtman:
A few years ago, I visited his beloved Monticello in Virginia. Jefferson's enormous curiosity and intellect are on display in virtually every corner of the estate. From the gardens to the house itself, his ideas and experiments are left for us to ponder and appreciate.
Bob T:
I visited in the mid-80s. It gave me ideas for a house I'd like to build someday, particularly the use of space (the bed that is lowered from the ceiling at night, etc.) If only everyone could design their own homes.
Bob Tiernan Portland
Jun 26, '09
I also visited his beloved Monticello in Virginia. haha
Jun 27, '09
Sad thing is that Alexander Hamilton (strong government in support of big finance) has a heck of a lot more to do with the reality of America than does anything from the brain of Thomas Jefferson.
4:39 p.m.
Jun 27, '09
Stephen:
I disagree. In fact, Jefferson's vision of America continued to transform as he aged and became more experienced. Especially after he became President, his notions of government and society shifted a lot.
I think what Jefferson embodies (at least for me) is an exercise on looking at our whole selves as a nation, warts and all. Not just government, but our society in general.
8:54 p.m.
Jun 27, '09
Stephen, Jefferson's vision, the better parts of it, were built on the economic autonomy of agrarian small-holder farmers who owned their own land, and to a lesser extent that of artisan workers in towns. Farmers today are less than 2% of the population, and small businesses probably not much larger.
His vision subsumed women, children, slaves and servants/ apprentices/ journeymen under male head of households' citizenship, and did not really have a clear place for free laborers who were not part of such households.
The question then seems to me to be, what can we identify about what we admire in that vision, and then what would sustain corresponding values in an overwhelmingly suburban/urban society that has become much more egalitarian in some good and important respects, but in which a majority of adults are employees at will working for someone else?
And, to take your observation about Hamilton -- "strong government in support of big finance" -- it seems that the predominant response these days is "less or weaker government," but that we need to look at the "finance" side of that alliance. Shrink corporations and give them fewer rights, or strengthen the capacity of employee classes to form their own corporate organizations, or both -- then perhaps government would not simply be "in support of big finance." What more even distribution of power in non-governmental parts of civil society might do to the scale of government is a nice question.
Today there is a tendency to anachronistically project a high capitalist vision of individualism onto Jefferson as well. But the Jeffersonian vision also depended very much on community and saw autonomous citizens embedded in communities with a sense of mutual responsibility. Nor is it an accident that in the Declaration he and Franklin wrote of equality, now almost a dirty word to some, before writing liberty, now exalted in a narrow way above all by some.
Jun 27, '09
Chris- you are right-on in your analysis.
Jefferson's Arcadian vision turned out to be an anachronism.
Of course, Jefferson authored seminal documents and also insisted on a Bill of Rights in the Constitution.
But I'd say what has really counted in America is the commercial side of things. The political philosophy is all well and good but there is a pattern of that being sacrificed if it gets in the way of large commercial interests.
So, in terms of influence, Hamilton beats Jefferson easily.
7:38 a.m.
Jun 28, '09
Stephen and Chris:
Even Jefferson himself knew that his visions of a pastoral, simple country life for our nation weren't to be. He saw the birth of the Industrial Revolution and helped foster early transportation systems in the U.S. His vast expansion of the U.S. via the Louisiana Purchase (and then sending Lewis and Clark to essentially expand it as far as they could get away with) laid the groundwork for everything we have become.
It's not, in my view, about choosing the parts of Jefferson and his evolutionary visions that we admire. It's about looking at the man, his life, his beliefs and his actions as a whole. The good, the bad and the ugly. It's all worth knowing and it's all worth learning from.
It's also a symbol for the way we should look at ourselves. Our nation, like Jefferson, isn't a fixed figure. We are constantly and consistently evolving. Sometimes the way we do it is ugly and wrong. Other times it's fantastic and beautiful.
The point of all this isn't to say which of our founders had the most impact on our government or financial systems or even our way of life. It's about seeing something as it really is, or was..as a whole. And using that as a launching pad for seeing ourselves with that same lens.
Jun 28, '09
Carla- you know more about Jefferson than I do.
My reference is Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.'s classic book, "The Age of Jackson", which describes the differing and evolving ideologies of the Dem-Repub/Dems vs. the Federalist/Whigs.
So I interjected with the idea of Schlesinger, Jr.s quote: "We live in Hamilton's world".
Not to say there isn't a lot to learn from the way Jefferson analyzed things or other facts of his life. I didn't mean to imply that.
Jun 28, '09
Stephen Amy:
But I'd say what has really counted in America is the commercial side of things.
Bob T:
Not that this is incompatible with the political philosophy. It's empowering to individuals (even Lenin knew that, which is why he opposed the peasants' demand for the right to freely dispose of the fruits of their labor, which he temporarily agreed to to avoid a conflict, after which he was strong enough to order many of them executed), and the goal is make sure that everyone from the blacksmith, artist, farmer or factory owner could exercise such rights without infringing on the rights of others.
Stephen Amy:
The political philosophy is all well and good but there is a pattern of that being sacrificed if it gets in the way of large commercial interests.
Bob T:
Yes, it is true that commercial interests have often trumped the rights of others, but in most cases this was made possible with the help of government rather than by a commercial entity on its own (which is why so many business people disliked laissez-faire). Of course, business interests have often won when they shouldn't have (and everyone is to blame because too many of have accepted the watering down of so many protections), and I call your attention to the Kelo v. New London case in which the four Supreme Court justices who were hated the most by progressives sided with the property owners whose only "clout" was the wording of the 5th Amendment, against the commercial-government-industrial complex which sadly had the majority on its side (Stevens, Ginsburg, etc). Read the minority opinion in which it was clearly stated that the power of eminent domain had morphed (due to terrible precedents over years) into an anything goes power which runs roughshod over the least-empowered citizens. It didn't have to get to this point, but not enough people spoke up over the years when this started to get watered down. And of course many on the left, embarrassed by this decision because of it's partial role in paving the way to it, has often called the Kelo decision as "conservative" decision so they can try to avoid blame. But I digress.
Stephen Amy:
So, in terms of influence, Hamilton beats Jefferson easily.
Bob T:
Yes, I agree. But I don't know why so many people think it's impossible to like both Hamilton and Jefferson since far from one defeating the other, I see their views as complementing each other. Jefferson may have wished to more agriculture, but he wouldn't be interested in using force to prevent the growth of urban areas and all of the commerce associated with them. His solution was simply to not live in a city. Heck, even the progressives c. 1900 were urging people to get out of the cities (which many felt were not only unsafe, but places where you'd become more of a pawn of others).
In one of my comments under a Lents Stadium article, I replied to Ron Morgan's question to me regarding eminent domain and while I may have posted too late for anyone to see it, you can read it here by going to the very end of this comment section.
Bob Tiernan Portland
Jun 29, '09
wa haha
8:48 a.m.
Jun 29, '09
Carla,
Never advocated not looking at "the whole Jefferson," "warts & all" etc. Used to teach it at college level professionally.
So, what can we learn from the fact of the peculiar mix?
Well, first it's a warning against hubris.
Second, how much of it was necessary? E.g. There is a connection between aspects of Jefferson's racism & more particularly his systematic intellectual racialism, and his efforts at being scientifically informed and up to date, and deliberately trying to do his other thinking, including political thinking, in the light of science.
The same Enlightenment that lies behind the architecture and design and construction of Monticello lies behind the systematic intellectual justifications for the slavery that sustained it. (Jefferson himself was theoretically an abolitionist, btw, sort of like the people who support single payer in principle ;-> , but not publicly after an effort he made to put gradual abolition into Virginia law or possibly the new state constitution during the Revolution was defeated).
Of course lots of other things lay behind Jefferson's racism and his slave-holding, not least debt. Washington emancipated "his" slaves upon his death, except for some personal servants of Martha's, to be freed on hers. Jefferson didn't. By 1826 rather than 1799 Virginia law may have made it less possible, but mainly Jefferson was up to his eyeballs in debt, and his "property in humans" was mortgaged and the enslaved persons had liens on them.
So, does that mean that the connection between the proto-biology & proto-physical anthropology of Jefferson's day was merely overdetermining for Jefferson's racism and racialism, and no longer something that we need worry about?
Or does it involve a fundamental intellectual category error, that "race" in any commonly understood sense of the term can be a scientific subject, a proper object of science? Was Jefferson's error that he did bad racial science, or that the tried to do racial science at all, when the latter is impossible and inherently intellectually incoherent. I strongly think the latter.
Thus my interest in taking apart different aspects of Jefferson's thought is not to wish away the parts I don't like or excuse them as simply "products of the times" -- he after all was someone who famously contributed to changing his times -- but to understand the whole as something more than an impressionistic gestalt, in order to think about whether and in what ways we may have inherited the contradictions.
Nothing against impressionistic gestalts. They have their place too.
And then there is the question of how political ideals relate to social structures. It makes no sense to me at all to say that we should somehow "learn from" Jefferson, and not any more "as a whole" than from parts, without considering what it means to translate the values and ideals into entirely different social circumstance.
And while he was involved in industrial development & related connections of science & engineering, and transport development, and so on, I very much doubt that he envisioned a U.S. in which less than 2% of the population were farmers and only 20% were rural.
Likewise I would be quite keen, if I could, to hear what he would have thought if someone had proposed to him granting organizations the legal status of individuals. Even limitations of shareholder liability, i.e. moving beyond partnership models of investing, really only developed after his lifetime. But in many respects liberal political philosophy based on individualist theory gets turned on its head, or turned inside out, or fun-house mirror distorted, when you start pretending that an organization of many individuals, whose internal relationships are deeply authoritarian and coercive or at least free to be those ways, are the same thing before the law as an actual individual human being.
So sure, we want to learn from Jefferson, and look at all parts of his actions and thoughts in doing so. But to really do that, beyond a certain point, you have to look at the relationships among the ideas and actions, which means distinguishing them from one another, and grouping them together in different ways, to think about how they were connected, whether inherently, or strongly, or merely coincident, or something in between.
Jun 30, '09
Bob Tiernan: It's true in the Kelo v. New London case it was the liberals on the Court who sided with moneyed interests in trashing the Fifth Amendment.
We could say both Jefferson and Hamilton woul've been opposed to such a violation.
Hamilton, in his Report on Manufactures, advocated tariffs on trade in order to protect domestic industry. Therefore, on this issue, Hamilton is to the Left of most of today's Dem Party.
And, as Carla wrote, Jefferson, in the office of president, pretty quickly (over the span of a few years) did a 180 on the question of whether or not industrialization would be good for America.
The title of Carla's piece asks us what it means to be an American, in the context of Jefferson's ideas. Of course, the Bill of Rights (which he strongly advocated but did not author) and the Virginia Statute on Religious Freedom are his legacies. And, maybe, the excerpt from the Declaration of Independence about overthrowing an unjust, tyrannical government as the need arises.
Hamilton wanted only the propertied class to have the franchise. And, he was the main advocate for the First Bank of The United States, which was the beginning of the Federalist/Whig "American System", wherein the U.S. Treasury was beholden to the elites for credit, thereby paving the way for a moneyed aristocracy.
Of course, Hamilton early on did see that industrialization was something to be embraced.
I like Jefferson a lot more than I do Hamilton. And maybe we could do with less industrialization as we consider the ecological conditions nowadays.
But we do live in Hamilton's world, much more so than Jefferson's. We have the Treasury/Fed Reserve/FHA doling out untold TRILLIONS to finanial institutions of questionable leadership. Not structurally like Hamilton's Bank, but the moneyed elite do very much still get first consideration.
And we have an unofficial litmus test of status as a Christian (with very few exceptions, very few) in order to stand for office.
And we have legal precedent for corporations to be entitled to First Amendment protections.
We live in Hamilton's world.
Jun 30, '09
Yes, it's very American to say something is the most important principle in life, then do something totally different, out of perceived economic necessity.
As it heats up in the next few, consider what you claim about the environment, and watch what you do when it gets hot. Hell, look at what you do on any given day vis a vis your claims.
And that's a lot worse than keeping slaves. Slavery existed throughout MOST human history. Fouling your nest for the sake of some esoteric quantity like 3% annual GDP growth should be easy to see as a danger without precedent and a moral outrage. You only see the contradiction in Jefferson, because you don't keep slaves. The idea of learning a lesson is that you're supposed to be able to generalize the principle...
What chutzpah!!! The only reason slavery still existed in the UK and US, and continued in the US long after the UK, was that the Democratic party couldn't get its act together, couldn't influence their southern colleagues. Centuries later, you're dithering on climate change, same players, and you really think we're going to leave you in power to wait until people start shooting each other, again.
Yeah, Jefferson is worth considering. He was a hypocrite, but definitely the high water mark in American character. He lived in a world where science thought the entire universe was only a few times bigger than the solar system, all contained in one little galaxy. Genes, evolution? Never heard 'o them! My god, do you know what we would be hearing about persons of color today, from the right, if there were no genetics or theory of evolution?!? You're not factoring that in. If you did, you would realize what empty minded, useless blanks the bulk of the population are. That is not a coincidence. Lower population density is why there were Jeffersons, and they had effect. Don't say, "oh, too bad those types aren't around anymore". Be honest and say, well, all our banal pointlessness was worth it to allow every American to breed whenever they felt like it, and why we subsidize it big time. Your children will not be Jeffersons. That isn't because they don't have the intellectual character. It is because they won't have the chance, and, if they did, it doesn't matter. Playing the numbers game means not having to get things right. You just throw more bodies at the problem. Jefferson didn't have that luxury.
Given the huge paradigm shifts since, just what do you think Jefferson would have to say back, today, about our conceptualization of the political issues? How much self-serving, primate bullshit does it take to advance, technically, that much, and still think the same political thoughts? Thinking they're such genius as to not need a radical overhaul, even though our version of Democracy is totally dysfunctional, even though every other version since has seen the need to introduce proportional representation?
Actually I do the nascent Congress a disservice. I submit that it would have been easier to discuss population control, religion and drug policy with them, than anyone in politics today!
Why go on? It's a waste. At least it kept me from tossing my breakfast.
Jun 30, '09
Oh, yeah: public education- that's Jefferson's other great legacy.
And that has been under attack.
Jun 30, '09
Stephen Amy:
Oh, yeah: public education- that's Jefferson's other great legacy.
And that has been under attack.
Bob T:
Hardly the same thing as the compulsory system. You might want to read more about the anti-liberal origins of that system -- fear of "strange" immigrants who weren't "American" enough, who had to be molded into cookie-cutter citizens (while the elites sent their kids to good private schools).
Doesn't sound like Jefferson to me. Not at all.
Bob Tiernan Portland
Jun 30, '09
Assegai Up Jacksey:
The only reason slavery still existed in the UK and US, and continued in the US long after the UK, was that the Democratic party...
Bob T:
I was listening to that nonsense the other week about the apology for slavery, or actually the sillier version passed bu the House of Reps last year. It was the kind of thing written by those who like to trash America by making it appear to be something it was not. In this case, the ignorant author of the House version said that America has a "unique" role in the creation of slavery, and other nonsense. It existed here because it existed already (not that this is an excuse), but what the PC people don't want to notice is that only 3 percent of slaves were sent to what became the United States, and about ten times that to British, Spanish and French colonies in the Caribbean, Central and South America (does that mean that all those countries down there shoud apologize for having countries "based on slavery"?), which means that the European nations kept their slaves elsewhere (mostly), and also that about half the slaves taken were sent to the Muslim nations of the Middle East (they were big slave traders and did most of the capturing, too). Anyone asking them to apologize? I guess not.
Bob Tiernan Portland
Jul 13, '09