In 1801, Thomas Jefferson (TJ) wrote a short letter to his fellow Democratic Party architect from Vermont, the Bernie Sanders of his day, Sen Moses Robinson (MR). In terms of global context, the French Revolution was searing the old world, Haiti was now demonstrating unequivocally that the arch of revolutionary justice was indifferent to the fantasy of European superiority, and Vice President TJ had just defeated Aaron Burr (AB) to become President of the recently formed United States (US).
Likely it was because both TJ and MR came from Appalachian Mountain States, that TJ chose mountain allegories to make plain his thoughts on the state of the country as they entered the final acts of the American Revolutionary period: — the battlefield for mental agency. Pitifully but still to the ultimate good with further revision, TJ and MR were focusing on the rights of white men to follow the dictates of science when it made more sense logically than the moral order of a church or state. Thus, TJ quipped, that when it came to the debate over Church and State and the laggard Forefathers lack of belief in the advances of science: “…he hopes their good sense will dictate to them, that since the mountain will not come to them, they had better go to the mountain…”.
Now tell me this, in this moment do we cancel TJ? Sure we have the privilege to do so now, ironically because we had imperfect TJ as a forefather who helped shape our laws. We are at liberty to cancel any former president or even God (sadly) that made us the USA because the architects of our republic established a common sense legal order that upholds the constitutional rights of ordinary old citizens.
Now imagine if Trump and his Supreme Court minions had authored our laws instead of TJ and MR? How much better would we be today if we still had a King 224 years ago? Fortunately we stopped giving despots control over life and liberty here. That’s why I am still thankful for TJ, especially in a time when the noose of a perpetual Climate Change Emergency is not quite on our neck, but surely will be after 4 more years of a 🇺🇸 presidency by a Climate Change Emergency denier?
Thus, even though I want to cancel Biden for exposing through his senescence our precious liberty to a Trump ending, I won’t because in this TJ was right. Our individual feelings matter far less than our collective freedoms, and that’s what I will defend to my last dying breath.