Since I wrote last week about respect, I just couldn’t pass this up. A former student wrote me to say that he “had to make a video for one of my classes about the legacy of Thomas Jefferson.” He knows how I feel about our first Secretary of State…not very highly. So, I wrote back with this post. Just had to share it again today.
Well, that’s actually a neat thing to do—-
- focus on his being the first President to take us to war without asking Congress;
- teach about how he attacked Washington and Adams for loose construction but then did the same thing to complete the LA purchase;
- explain how he set the stage for the Civil War by teaching that a state could not only nullify any law of Congress but even secede if necessary;
- teach how he betrayed the man who really got him into the national picture in order to gain more power;
- show how he hypocritically kept his slaves even while he tried to act like he was opposed to slavery;
- explain how he (along with Aaron Burr) are really the reason we have the pitiful politicians and political parties today because he was determined to gain power no matter what;
- show how he he predated Nixon by secretly recording conversations in a private code so he could use the information later for private leverage,
- and um, hmm….explain how he loved to use propaganda (sort of early TV political ads) to claim he was a man of the people all the while living on a massive plantation on a mountain isolated from us regular folks all the while being served by slaves.
And we love to honor this guy…sheesh.