On Keeping Our Heroes Orthodox
Murphy, William C. Jr.
THE proposal emanating from Athens that the courts of Greece grant a new trial to the late Mr. Socrates suggests the desirability of a periodic revision of lists of national heroes. Some such...
...This reformation, however, will require time...
...It is barely possible that—as a last resort, of course—recourse may be had to the courts...
...So Mr...
...Mr, Jefferson did not change his attitude toward the rights of woman with the passing of years...
...Jefferson after the foregoing is called to the attention of the proper officials, there can be no doubt that the Anti-Saloon League will order his deportation when its leaders read what he wrote to M. de Neuville in 1818 : I rejoice, as a moralist, at the prospect of a reduction of the duties on wine, by our national legislature...
...Jefferson wrote: The best [tenants] are foreigners who do not speak the language...
...and none sober, where the dearness of the wine substitutes ardent spirits as the common beverage...
...that is his attitude toward the rights of women...
...Jefferson, there was no White House spokesman in those days...
...It is a prohibition of its use to the middling class of our citizens, and a condemnation of them to the poison of whisky, which is desolating their houses...
...However, the most damning of his utterances, in the light of present practice and policy, was contained in a letter written from Paris in 1787 to Colonel Richard Claiborne...
...Fortunately, for Mr...
...It is an error to view a tax on that liquor as merely a tax on the rich...
...Jefferson is obviously out of step with the national ideals, or he would never have written in his autobiography: Were we directed from Washington when to sow, and when to reap, we should soon want bread...
...Unable to communicate with the people of the country, they confine themselves to their farms and famihes, compare their present state to what it was in Europe, and find great reason to be contented...
...The specterphobe administration of the Department of State, which took part in the Saklatvala and Karolyi incidents, would undoubtedly consider the sentence just quoted as sufficient cause for Mr...
...and who will not prefer it...
...In 1824 he wrote from Monticello, discussing proposals to modify the Virginia franchise laws: However nature may by mental or physical disqualifications have marked infants and the weaker sex for the protection, rather than the direction of government, yet among the men who either pay or fight for their country, no line of right can be drawn...
...Everyone in easy circumstances (as the bulk of our citizens are) will prefer it to the poison to which they are now driven by their government...
...So Mr...
...The advocates of prohibition have consistently maintained that their cause is a great religious issue and, with characteristic logic, have insisted that the civil power step in and enforce their side of it...
...It is axiomatic among present-day leaders of the minorities which direct the destiny of the nation, that the remedy for every human ill is legislation by Congress— with an appropriation...
...and the benevolence of this practice, as well as its salutary effects, renders it worthy of being continued in future times...
...Jefferson's deportation without the taking of more evidence...
...Can these be the sentiments of a 100 percent American...
...It may be regarded as axiomatic that a national hero embodies in his actions and words the nation's principles of government and behavior...
...He wrote to President Washington from Paris in 1789: No government ought to be without censors...
...Jefferson wrote to Citizen Genet: Our country is open to all men, to come and go peaceably, when they choose...
...Since deportation is proposed, the logical place to begin the indictment is with a discussion of Mr...
...As the first step toward a thorough clearing out of obsolete heroes, it is hereby suggested that deportation proceedings be instituted forthwith against the Honorable Thomas Jefferson of Virginia...
...On this subject it may be alleged with truth that in November, 1793, while Secretary of State, Mr...
...It is, in truth, the only antidote to the bane of whisky...
...They are the easiest got, the best for their landlords, and do best for themselves...
...No nation is drunken where wine is cheap...
...and where the press is free, no one ever will...
...In 1781, while he was Governor of Virginia, Mr...
...Its extended use will carry health and comfort to a much enlarged circle...
...Why, the Honorable Thomas Jefferson was actually advocating moderation...
...If there is any doctrine now firmly entrenched in usage it is that the ancient American theory of separation of church and state was all wrong...
...Fix but the duty at the rate of other merchandise, and we can drink wine here as cheap as we do grog...
...Jefferson was decidedly unAmerican in the purview of present-day practice in high places...
...Jefferson would, undoubtedly, receive rough treatment at the hands of the churchly politicians if he were to say publicly today what he wrote in 1776 in his Notes on Religion: If the magistracy had vouchsafed to interpose in other sciences, we should have as bad logic, mathematics, and philosophy as we have divinity in countries where the law settles orthodoxy...
...Jefferson's attitude on the admission or exclusion of persons desiring to enter or leave the United States...
...Quite obviously the doctrines enunciated by certain of the more sacrosanct of our national heroes are fundamentally opposed to the theory and practice of current exponents of the art of government...
...And to express a preference for Germans...
...Our militant feminists, boastful of woman's ability in any conceivable human activity save the one for which she was specifically designed and in which alone she can excel man, would be horrified if the President of the United States were to write: The appointment of a woman to office is an innovation for which the public is not prepared, nor am I. That is what President Jefferson wrote in 1807 to Albert Gallatin, then Secretary of the Treasury...
...Hence, when the nation's principles change, the hero should be deposed...
...If the Department of Labor or the Department of State should not deport Mr...
...Of all foreigners, I should prefer Germans...
...There is another important count in the proposed indictment against Mr...
...Some such revision is badly needed in the United States today...
...Because of Mr...
...But more is available...
...Jefferson in a formal proclamation over the Great Seal of the Old Dominion declared: It has been the wise policy of these states to extend the protection of their laws to all those who should settle among them, of whatsoever nation or religion they might be, and to admit them to a participation or the benefits of civil and religious freedom...
...On the question of the right of citizens to criticize their government, Mr...
...Jefferson's social standing, and inasmuch as he was born in America, it may not be practicable to deport him summarily upon the order of some clerk in the Department of Labor...
...If such should be the case, perhaps what follows may be of value as the basis of an indictment against the author of the Declaration of Independence...
...The correspondence had to do with a proposal to obtain foreign tenants for the western lands— on the theory that a barrier would thus be raised against the Indians, who would not discriminate between foreign and native scalps...
...Jefferson...
...And the Treasury itself will find that a penny apiece from a dozen is more than a groat from a single one...
Vol. 6 • July 1927 • No. 9
