At 10:54 PM 7/22/96, hallam@Etna.ai.mit.edu wrote:

No, the argument is over whether a person should live by the ideals he preaches. I have more respect fot the likes of Kant and Russell who made rather more of an effort than Jefferson.

The observation that history is made by rich people and written by rich people is not a new one. Until this century there were few countries where politics were open to anyone but the very wealthy. In the USA that is still by and large the case.

Rather than attempting to excuse Jefferson it would be better to accept that not everything he said was valid when he said it and to try to engage ones brain rather than using his words as slogans.

I agree with much of what Phill says here. His original "throwaway line" about Jefferson's slave-owning did not fully make this point. (As I see it, this is a common danger with throwaway lines, which often look like dismissive insults.) The flaws of leaders and thinkers are well-known. From from what I've read, Voltaire was a real cad. And my favorite aphorist/philosopher, Nietzsche, had his share of bigoted views. And he was apparently not at all a "superman" specimen. But who cares? The ideas of a person are somewhat separable from their quirks as persons. If we demand perfection from all thinkers--assuming perfection could ever be defined and agreed upon--we'd likely have far fewer thinkers to study. (Phill also mentions Rand. She was about as deeply flawed an individual, especially in terms of treatment of her supporters, as one can imagine. She, for example, insisted that her followers smoke, as smoking is (she claimed) proof of Man's dominance over nature. However, many of her ideas were very influential.) I rather suspect the U.S. would have had a more consistent moral stance if a condition for a state joining the Union had been the freeing of all slaves. Of course, giving womyn the vote would have been too much to ask for. (And there were many violations of the rights of Indians, including land-use rights and treaties, which did little to polish the reputation of the U.S. for adhering to its own stated principles.) --Tim May Boycott "Big Brother Inside" software! We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, we know that that ain't allowed. ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay@got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Licensed Ontologist | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."