Democrats are Embarrassed by Former Heroes Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson

It’s truly amazing.  Democrats across the land have just discovered that party pillars and early 19^thcentury presidents Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson owned black slaves.  As a result, they want to disassociate their party from these former heroes.

Imagine, when recent historical research conclusively established that Thomas Jefferson fathered several children with slave Sally Hemmings, Democrats evidently didn’t realize that she was also the “property” of the author of the Declaration of Independence. 

 

Well, slow learners, (and often willfully obtuse) as liberals can be, have finally absorbed the fact that America’s founders and icons were typically racists. 

 

So what is to be done?  The first task is to re-label the annual Democratic event, traditionally known as Jefferson-Jackson dinners.  According to news reports, party leaders in various states have the re-naming project underway.

How silly all of this is – and illustrative of the lack of seriousness on the Left and, alas, on the Right as well (Donald Trump’s poll numbers come to mind.).

Where will the Democratic Party’s new awareness of its roots lead? 

 

Perhaps the Jefferson Memorial should be demolished, also the name Washington removed from the namesake’s memorial (our first president was a slave owner, too!), and the Lincoln Memorial moved from its place of honor on the mall.  (Although Abraham Lincoln is properly credited with ending slavery, he, repeatedly, made it clear that he considered blacks to be members of an inferior race.)

There is real meaning to the wise sentiment that all of us have feet of clay.  And always have.  But that fact does not disqualify a person from honor or respect.  

Thomas Jefferson wrote for the ages, with words that would always inspire lovers of freedom.  Apparent hypocrisy does not weaken the strength of his language.

Andrew Jackson won the 1814 battle of New Orleans and, as president, trumpeted the cause of the American yeoman against America’s well-to-do.  Those facts formerly won him favor among Democrats.

Consider the reality that, in the 19^th century, American blacks were disfavored, slave or free, by most whites.  That was the prevailing view.  Prior to the Civil War, it was only the radical abolitionists who thought otherwise. 

I suggest that the efforts to disassociate the Democratic Party from its founders is part of the Left’s disavowal of America’s past.  Are members of the Left truly proud to be Americans?  It’s fair to wonder.  

[Barack Obama seems to embody this attitude.  Think back to his 2009 Middle East apology tour and numerous actions since then that indicate a reluctance to assert American authority in the world.  Does his sense of his country’s historical guilt prevent him from doing so?]