WASHINGTON, D.C. Aug. 18 (DPI) – Democratic organizations across the U.S., in an effort to placate women and minority constituents, are distancing themselves from the historical shadows of Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson, according to a NY Times report last week. And readers, whatever their motivation and orientation, excoriated the political party for what they see as ham-handed and petty political correctness.
Virtually all of the highly recommended reader comments linked to the report called the desire to “erase ties to Jefferson and Jackson” an Orwellian move by narrow-minded party hacks. Readers rightly pointed out that such historical figures were the creators and definers of today’s republic.
The pro-left NY Times to its credit reported on the development, but it also removed the post from its index page after only a few hours.
The highest recommended post (422 recommendations):
Isn’t this throwing out the baby with the bath water? If inclusion is what is wanted why throw out the leaders just because of their warts and thereby forget their contributions. Our history, as is every history, is a complicated story with many contradictions, wrong turns and bad decisions. We need to remember it all or be doomed to repeat what we repress.
The five next top-recommended reader posts:
Wow- This is like Mao’s cultural revolution. When we disown Jefferson, we have truly lost our way. Impressing our modern sensibilities on people who lived 200 years ago is just silly and completely distorts the greatness of who he was at that time.
I’m appalled. Where would the world be if Jefferson hadn’t written the immortal words of the Declaration? Our society, with its dedication to civil liberty, is the product of the changes set in motion by the nation’s founders. When history is written 250 years hence, how many of us will want to be judged by the standards of that time, which will no doubt be as different from our own as ours is from 1776? How many of us can say that we will have set in motion changes that continue to reshape the world? How easy it is to condemn from our easy chairs the men who risked their lives in an almost hopeless struggle against the might of the British Empire and chose to establish, rather than a monarchy, the first modern democracy. Ms. Abrams would have us believe that we are anchored by a history that diminished our fellow citizens, but if that is the case, then none of us will ever sail, because humanity has yet to achieve perfection.
This is political correctness run amok.And I say this as a person who was a non-white immigrant (and is now a citizen) of this great country.
Thomas Jefferson was a founder of this country. Yes, he had slaves, but he was also a creature of his time, and it is simply wrong to hold him to the same ideals that we have 200+ years later. This is in very different to the Confederate flag, a former battle flag which was re-introduced for the sole purpose of oppression.Congratulations, fellow Democrats. We are now officially the party of Orwell.
I believe that America is a country that has slowly but surely become a better country over time and will continue to do so. With the clarity afforded by hindsight, we can see that none of our sainted founding fathers or their successors were without sins of character. Nevertheless, while some may have slowed or impeded the achievement of “liberty & justice for all”, progress has been and will continue to be made. I for one am willing to embrace rather than erase the memory of these men and their roles in the history of this country if for no other reason that they are an example of the potential for improvement in all of us.
This is silly political correctness, as they are taking historical figures out of their context. This one is bizarre even for the PC crowd, since Jefferson largely wrote the Declaration of Independence. And you can do this for many important American figures. For example, FDR refused to allow Jewish refugees from Germany and Austria to enter the U.S. in the 1930s, even refusing asylum to children and the 900 passengers of the S.S. St. Louis, docked off the coast of Florida, returned to Europe to be gassed by the Nazis. So is FDR no longer a “true Democrat”?