On the one hand, in Jefferson, you have a highly intelligent polyglot who spoke 7 languages, practiced as a lawyer fighting for religious freedom, authored a book about Virginia, served as ambassador to France and then Secretary of State in Washington’s cabinet, all while he worked self-taught in architecture designing one of only 2 UNESCO world heritage sites in continual use since inception, who went on daily horse rides, and in his free time self-taught himself to become an accomplished violinist while he simultaneously invented plows and carriages on his plantation where he experimented with new crops as a farmer, and last but not least served 2 terms as president after penning the Declaration of Independence which set out the philosophical framework for the American revolution... on the other hand you have a bankrupt, fiscally irresponsible, pedophilic, racist, child predator/rapist, slave owner, and overseer of child nail manufacturing sweatshops. Jefferson embodied the best and worst of America. To understand Jefferson is to understand why America is so convoluted. A land which can develop premiere covid vaccines in record time yet lead the world with 550,000 plus covid deaths. A nation that can vaporize foes with thermonuclear warheads yet suffer endless mass school shootings with military grade assault rifles.
I believe the main source of confusion about American meaning stems from strict constructionist reading of the texts of its founding fathers. (i.e., constitutional rights to bear arms shall not be impinged —> current day school shooter’s rights to arm themselves with efficient semi-automatic AR-15s weapon). Read between the lines of Jefferson’s famous Declaration of Independence and it makes complete sense. By modifying the Declaration to what Jefferson meant, believed, and said in other texts, i hope to provide a more logical holistic understanding of the underpinnings of American society.
"Declaration of inDependence"
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary to keep all your slaves in human
bondage cause you went bankrupt buying too many books, bottles of
expensive French wine, and making never ending construction changes to
your Palladian style home on a hill, you do all that is possible to
preserve the political bands which have granted you slaves as sellable property
and assume among the powers of the earth, the separate Laws of Nature and of
Nature's God that entitle the white man to a healthy disrespect of the opinions
of mankind that requires that they should declare the causes which impel them
to the slave state.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all
men are created unequal. That white men have a certain unalienable Rights
endowed by their Creator that allows them to pursue Life, Liberty and the
pursuit of Happiness. By happiness, I mean raping and impregnating my slave
Sally Hemings starting from when she was a ripe pubescent age of 15 and keeping our
6 children enslaved for 21 years. By life, I mean taking the time each day
to visit the slave cabin to calculate the productiveness of 10-12 year old black boys making nails from dawn
to dusk 6 days a week. By happiness I mean designing underground passages,
fancy dumb waiters and pivoting doors with shelving so I may be served courses
of French meals without being interrupted by slaves’ physical presence.
That to secure these slave owner rights,
Governments are instituted among white Men, deriving their unjust powers via
whipping and silencing the governed, -- (As a compassionate slave owner, i
personally tell my overseer to keep the whipping to the extremities of slaves’
bodies.) That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these
slave plantation ends, it is the Right of the slave owners to reaffirm
its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to
them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
Prudence, indeed, will dictate that the institution of slavery should survive a couple more generations before tearing our nation apart. But in the
meantime Because Governments long established should not be changed for light
and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that lazy
mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right
themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed, we can rest
assured the slave plantation system will last through at least my lifetime. So
let’s party like it’s 1776.
But when a long train of abuses and usurpations,
pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce slave owner
rights under absolute Despotism known as overreaching federalism, it is the plantation
owner’s right, it is their duty, to throw off such attempts of social equity,
and to provide new Guards for their future slave owning lifestyle.-- if not, I
predict a civil war in about 80 years into the founding of our nation will end
up with 620,000 american men dying over the right to own slaves.(more than the casualties accrued in WWI and WW2 combined)
Such has been the patient sufferance of the slave
owners; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to bolster their former
Systems of Government by suppressing black literacy, voter rights.
The history of slave ownership in Virginia is a
history of white man’s power, all having in direct object the establishment of
an absolute rightful Tyranny over the black man. To prove this, let Facts be
submitted to a candid world that blacks are inferior to whites. The following
quotes in orange are taken verbatim from my 1785 book “The Notes on the State of Virginia” .
The blacks secrete less by the kidneys, and more
by the glands of the skin, which gives them a very strong and disagreeable odor.
(2021 translation = they smell, especially after spending all day in the sun sweating and harvesting wheat)
The blacks seem to require less sleep. A black, after hard
labor through the day, will be induced by the slightest amusements to sit up
till midnight, or later, though knowing he must be out with the first dawn of
the morning. (2021 translation = they like to party after working 12 hour shifts for no pay)
They are more ardent after their female: but love seems with
them to be more an eager desire, than a tender delicate mixture of sentiment
and sensation.(2021 translation = like animals they lust but don’t love)
Their griefs are transient. (2021 translation so it’s okay to break apart black families by selling slaves of the same family to different owners because their grief is fleeting)
Comparing them by their faculties of memory, reason, and
imagination, it appears to me, that in memory they are equal to the whites; in
reason much inferior, as I think one could scarcely be found capable of tracing
and comprehending the investigations of Euclid; and that in imagination they
are dull, tasteless, and anomalous. (2021 translation – they prefer to ponder hyperbolic or elliptical geometry while they harvest tobacco)
But never yet could I find that a black had uttered a
thought above the level of plain narration; never see even an elementary trait
of painting or sculpture. (2021 translation - they can’t tell complicated
stories or make art)
In music they are more generally gifted than the whites with
accurate ears for tune and time, and they have been found capable of imagining
a small catch. Whether they will be equal to the composition of a more
extensive run of melody, or of complicated harmony, is yet to be proved. (2021
translation - they got rhythm and can rap but not
sure if they can compose like Mozart)
Misery is often the parent of the most affecting touches in
poetry. – Among the blacks is misery enough, God knows, but no poetry. (2021 translation
– forget that's what happens when you withhold literacy from blacks to control them).
The improvement of the blacks in body and mind, in the first
instance of their mixture with the whites, has been observed by every one, and
proves that their inferiority is not the effect merely of their condition of
life. (2021 translation – when interbred with whites, their offspring improve genetically)
The slave, when made free, might mix with, without staining
the blood of his master. But with us a second is necessary, unknown to history.
When freed, he is to be removed beyond the reach of mixture. (2021 translation –
while I can enjoy watering down my genes with my romps with Sally, the result of
our offspring will be inferior slave beings)
And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance
on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our
Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor for racial inequity, human bondage,
and slavery.
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