What Would Jefferson Do? Does it Matter?

Some of the Disney faithful have a mantra, "What would Walt do?" Based on a religious slogan that surfaced several years back, WWWD? pits observed and perceived attitudes of Walt Disney--pro creativity, pro innovation, pro quality, no matter what the bean-counters say--against Michael Eisner's almost completely antithetical attitudes.  If you don't think Disney as a company has gone downhill in recent years, you probably don't know about the three recent accidents of Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, the Rocket Rods debacle, the failed movies, the split with Pixar, the closing of Disney's Florida animation studio and on and on.  Check out www.SaveDisney.com  for details. Even so, it's easy to forget that Walt had his frailties, too, most notably the mishandling of a strike at his studio many years ago, and possibly mild racism (which is no justification for keeping Song of the South off DVD). Walt Disney was a great man in many ways, but he was a a man of his time, and he was not perfect.

That's not what this journal entry is about. Not exactly

 When John Scalzi posted his "Hanging with the Founders" challenge over the Fourth of July weekend, I got re-interested in Thomas Jefferson, John, Abigail and Samuel Adams, and Dolley and James Madison, and wrote a couple of entries about them. Some of my research was from a Time cover story, some from the Internet, and some from my memories of junior high school social studies.  I didn't have a single book of American history in the house, or a biography of any of the country's founders.  After perusing recent biographies of J. Adams, A. Hamilton, T. Jefferson and B. Franklin, I settled on a slightly shorter book with a broader focus: Don't Know Much About History by Kenneth C. Davis.  It's a fun book. When I can't stand to work on my accounting homework another second, I turn to it for considerably more pleasant reading than Accounting for Governmental and Non-Profit Entities. The latter is a PDF download with tiny print, so even if the subject matter were fascinating, it would be a pain to read. But that's another rant for another time.

So far in my reading, I've finished the Revolution and am just starting on the Constitutional Convention. It turns out that not all the guests at my picnic were alive by 1814, the year I picked up the Madisons in my fictitious time machine, but that's okay.  Samuel  Adams will just have to catch his ride in a different year. Still, the Madisons should have mentioned to "Karen," the time traveler, that he was dead.

Other than dates, the main thing that I've discovered in my reading so far is that Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and others didn't always live up to their lofty ideals. I suppose that shouldn't shock me, but it does bother me. John Adams supposedly tried to defeat Jefferson for the presidency by hiring riders to go around telling people that Jefferson was dead.  Samuel Adams favored locking people up without trial for fighting the state of Massachusetts after they were both heavily taxed and disenfranchised from voting. (What happened to "no taxation without representation," hmm?) Jefferson, who hated big government more than Reagan did, expanded the federal government's clout almost as much as he increased the country's physical size with the Louisiana Purchase. And let's not even get into the irony of the slaveholder who wrote that "all men are created equal," went on to father Sally Hemmings' children, and felt threatened by the U.S.-inspired revolution in Haiti.

On NPR today, there was a discussion about whether the Republican Party or the Democratic Party has a monopoly on traditional family values, or American values, or whatever.  Personally, I side with the Democrat values of social and religious tolerance, equal rights for everyone, making up your own mind about things, helping people when they need it, and not favoring the rich at the expense of everyone else.  No, the government can't take care of all the people all of the time, nor should it; but there's a lot in the traditional Democratic values that resonates with me.

On the other side of things, the federal government shouldn't be worrying about who is allowed to marry whom. Nobody has ever explained to my satisfaction how a gay married couple makes my marriage to John mean an iota less than it did before, or threatens it in any way. Nor should the government be deporting a New York pizza guy--a legal immigrant on a valid visa--for helping a couple of his countrymen find an apartment. Nor should it be imprisoning people for years without trial in Cuba and elsewhere. As an Epicopalian who is very active at my church, I also frankly resent the notion that anyone who believes in Jesus should subscribe to George W.'s pro-war, anti-abortion, pro-death penalty, anti-stem cell brand of religion.

I don't know what Jefferson or either Adams would say to any of those things, or what they would do as politicians in today's world.  I suspect they would not be amused.  It doesn't matter, ultimately, because I know I am not amused.  A lot of these Republican policies come down to attempts to infringe on people's freedom.  Isn't freedom what this is all supposed to be about?

As Austin Powers put it, "Freedom AND responsibility! It's a groovy combination, man!" People should take responsibility for their own actions, and not try to impose their will on others except to enforce the social contract (your rights end where the next guy's rights begin).

If politicians fail to honor their own ideals or the ideals of others, ideals of major religions or the Constitution or a Tucson blogger, there's nothing new about that. If they misbehave in other ways--crassness tolerated on the Senate floor but not on tv or radio, hanky panky with female interns, hypocrisy, arrogance, attempts to abridge freedom in order to bolster security, the selling of political favors--well, it turns out there's nothing new about those behaviors, either.  Politicians are like people.  They're not perfect.

Ask John and Tom.

Karen

P.S. No gullywasher yet.  I think the monsoon got shy when I grabbed the camera at lunchtime.

Holiday Picnic with Tom and Abby and Friends
The Madisons Receive an Invitation