Jefferson was a genius and a patriot, but he was also a man of his time, preoccupied and focussed on his own age and country, and dealing with it with his experience and education, and the philsophies of his own time. His flaws and contradictions (like slavery) were also part of his context, and we should not judge him too harshly by our standards. Tmes do change.

But neither should we reach back in time to steal his reputation and enlist him to justify our own little partisan superstitions. If we could magically bring Jefferson, or Washington, or Franklin, or Adams, or any one of those dudes to our own time, I'm sure they would have a lot to say about how we are running things.

But before they could say anything, someone would have to take them aside and explain to them exactly what is going on now, because the 18th century mind simply would not be able to absorb the 21st century all at once, without some background and prep, and a catching up of all the history that has elapsed over the last 200 odd years.

Now just imagine, as a little thought experiment, how different Jefferson's thoughts on our modern era, and how different his criticism of it would be, if ER (or alternatively), TB, were in charge of the briefing.

So maybe this is why I get a little steamed when the founders are brought into our little discussions here, as if we could not only channel what they were, but what they would be if they were here now. So we say the magic words "Jefferson", or "Federalist Papers", and suddenly the conversation is over, and the patriot gets to bask in the glory of self-evident righteous virtue and his seditious opponent has to slink off muttering something like "Curses, foiled again."

Now maybe the Right Wing feels they have the right and authority to bring in the Founding Fucking Fathers to stamp all their self-serving arrogance with the imprimatur of constitutional righteousness. But I don't accept it and I don't accept their claim to them. And I certainly don't accept their pious patriotic humbug either. From what I know of these guys, they'd sell the whole damn country down the river for a tax cut.