What the fuck was his problem?

the ideas he pushed where necessary.

>TJ died hopelessly in debt.
The tobacco business was a highly competitive one because tobacco can only be planted in one spot for so long before using up the nutrients in the soil, so every Virginian planter was also a highly active surveyor, or employed the hell out of them. The Virginian politicians like Washington and Jefferson were heavily mired into this system. Everyone protrays Washington as "the modern Cincinnatus", a humble farmer who simply wanted to return to a life of planting instead of this political drama all the damn time, but that's entirely incorrect. Washington was a businessman, and every day he was stuck at the White House his homestead was hemorrhaging money, and the same applies to Jefferson.

Thats all well and good, but it doesn't change the fact that TJ lived like a prince, spending lavishly on European-style home improvments, books, scientific equipment, etc... etc...while accusing those who practiced what he preached of being 'monarchists'. He was essentially the opposite of everything he claimed to love.

Building European style architectural houses means you support monarchy? What about speaking English?

>Building European style architectural houses means you support monarchy

I was referring more to his well-documented profligacy.

Upper middle class hypocrisy never changes. Except now its about gentrification and organic pickling or some faggot shit.

I'm not denying that.

I do know that spending lavishly on Euro architecture and such was a huge part of keeping up appearances with the very snobbish society of upper class Virginia. The House of Burgesses, the group that served as a state government for Virginia, was literally a country club where the rich planters sat around deciding state policy. Part of keeping up appearances, because you couldn't get fancy shit stateside, meant ordering stuff from Europe where the guys supplying it saw and exploited this demand with credit systems and exorbitant prices. By the way, quite a few of the more vocal pro-independence voices also happened to have insane bills from these exporters.

Check out Daniel Boorstin's The Americans, it offers a fascinating look into the bizarre transplanted version of the post-feudal 17th century British political system that Virginia ran on until the 19th century.

The most I saw about founding fathers and slavery was that it was just too inconvenient to live without them and that many of them couldn't justify having them while saying all men should be treated equal, it was mostly just Jefferson who decided to rape several slave girls over the years

I don't see the disconnect here. I mean his lifestyle isn't strictly speaking opposing his politics

>European-style home improvements
What the fuck does that even mean? Where do you think Americans originally came from? Do you think "European" and "fancy" are synonyms?

It was seen to be at the time. Culture came from Europe (most media and products made in the US were utilitarian forst and foremost, as could be expected of a young colonial nation) and America had a big "me too!" complex in terms of showing those snobs over there that we have culture too, dammit.

>while saying all men should be treated equal

they never said that you dumbass

>"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed"
My bad I guess?

go read Locke, the founding fathers directly lifted most of the declaration from his writings. "all men are created equal" isn't a declaration that "men should be treated equal' but that in the primal state of nature all men are equally wild therefore all governments man made social contracts who derive power form the governed, not the king. It's pretty much the beginning of a long line of reasoning on why the independent colonies should have legitimacy. It was only later politicians that reinterpreted it as some declaration of equality. FFS the Declaration refers to the indians as savages and accuses the british for causing slave revolts.

>while accusing those who practiced what he preached of being 'monarchists'.

He criticized their political beliefs, not the way they lived. If you look at Jefferson's arguments and the only thing you can muster against them is "hypocrite" and then dismiss his argument, you are retarded.

Have you paused to consider that perhaps the reason why he idealized the yeoman farmer was because he himself knew how absolutely shitty his situation was? Constantly trying to speculate for new land to increase tobacco yields, in order to draw down the debt needed to finance the operating costs of his rapidly devalued land. How a system built on the backs of men had conditioned both the masters and enslaved to complacency and servitude, where the master lost his compassion for his fellow human, and the slave lost his or her sense of self and worth.

Ever pause to consider that Jefferson preached yeomonism so much, despite being an aristocrat, because he knew exactly how absolutely shitty being an aristocrat was, and how it was poison to what he viewed as an ideal society?

This is a good post.

then why did he get upset when congress attempted to ban slavery in Missouri?

Oh I'm aware it isn't an actual declaration, but it was IN the declaration
I don't think in my original post I said it was
But I do need to read Locke, eventually. Reading Rousseau and then Hobbes next I think

I think Jefferson was dead by the time of the Missouri controversy.

>From Thomas Jefferson to Albert Gallatin, 26 December 1820
>nothing has ever presented so threatening an aspect as what is called the Missouri question. the Federalists compleatly put down, and despairing of ever rising again under the old division of whig and tory, devised a new one, of slave-holding, & non-slave-holding states, which, while it had a semblance of being Moral, was at the same time Geographical, and calculated to give them ascendancy by debauching their old opponents to a coalition with them. Moral the question certainly is not, because the removal of slaves from one state to another, no more than their removal from one county to another, would never make a slave of one human being who would not be so without it. indeed if there were any morality in the question, it is on the other side; because by spreading them over a larger surface, their happiness would be increased, & the burthen of their future liberation lightened by bringing a greater number of shoulders under it. however it served to throw dust into the eyes of the people and to fanaticise them, while to the knowing ones it gave a geographical and preponderant line of the Patomac and Ohio, throwing 14. states to the North and East, & 10. to the South & West. with these therefore it is merely a question of power: but with this geographical minority it is a question of existence. for if Congress once goes out of the Constitution to arrogate a right of regulating the condition of the inhabitants of the states, it’s majority may, and probably will next declare that the condition of all men within the US. shall be that of freedom. in which case all the whites South of the Patomak and Ohio must evacuate their states; and most fortunate those who can do it first. and so far this crisis seems to be advancing.

saying men were created equal is a descriptive statement in line with the law of nature, it isn't attempting to make a value judgement that they should be treated equal. So no, the founding fathers did not say that nor was it in the declaration.

So basically he's arguing that having fewer slave holding states is a bad thing because the slave population would be more concentrated, therefore their quality of life would be worse and their eventual emancipation would be more burdensome? Also something about white flight.

I don't know if I agree, but it's an interesting argument, especially considering that the international slave trade had been banned by that point, so the only way to get new slaves would be through sexual reproduction.

pretty much, and that abolition would destroy slave states making them unlivable. However the cynic would say that he's just looking out for the best interests of the south. It was more or less the same argument the rest of the south made until the 1850's. I don't have a source on hand but I remember John Tyler making the same argument during the annexation of Texas..

...

Black person here. While Jefferson is ultimately wrong, context is important. Keep in mind that 6 years prior, the Haitian Revolution just happened. Whities got massacred and driven out of Haiti by the slaves and Mulattos (Mostly justifiable mind you, but still horrible). When putting that in perspective, you can understand his sentiment.

Jefferson is getting upset because he sees the question of slave holding and non slave holding as being perpetrated not by those of high moral belief and virtue, but instead by defeated politicians seeking to latch onto a new issue in order to find relevancy, and maintain stature in government.

The rest of his letter goes on to say why he thinks their moral arguments are actually just a load of bull sold to the people to win votes.

>says a white middle class hipster working at starbucks, whose college education was paid for by his parents, because he couldn't afford it on his own, who buys products made by slaves in china
wew lad

He was mad a short frustrated manlet was better at governing than he was

>John Adams
>Good at governing

An absentee President reviled not just by his opponents, but also by his own party and even his administration.

>reviled not just by his opponents, but also by his own party and even his administration.

Because he didn't go full retard and tried to maintain the original vision for president without giving in to partisan bullshit. His biggest mistake was the bill that basically removed government criticism( which he later regrets).

Much of the Rhetoric spouted by the founders was against the excesses of the 'old european values' America was supposed to be a new experiment of egalitarian, classless democracy. To put forth those ideas, while imitating the look and lifestyle of a Monarchist Aristocrat is a tad hypocritical.

I'm not shitting on Jefferson, I think he was incredibly smart and understood exactly what the north was doing in regards to their motives behind abolition. However I hate it when people try and whitewash him and other slave owning founding fathers like Washington or Madison. Morally, they were no different than the later confederates in my opinion. Yet there are tons of "academics" willing to forgive the former while reaming the latter.

Hamilton was the only sane, pragmatic and somewhat non-hypocritical founding dude.

t. saw the musical

>the guy who called democracy a "poison" and "disease"

I like you 10/10 post.

You would've been a third world shithole without the economic foundations that he laid.

OH YES PLEASE MASTER

THANK YOU FOR OUR GLORIOUS BANKS

YOU ARE OUR FINANCIAL SUPERIORS

YOU KNOW BEST

GOD BLESS THE RICH AND THEIR BANKS

That's what a master politician does.

So you would've preferred that America would engage in free trade by using it's 'comparative advantage' of being a sweatshop for Britain instead of protecting it's infant industry?

t. president jackson

>sweatshop for Britain
The term is bread basket. And the real concern is the undue influence with which a publicly charted bank would have on the policy and governance of the nation. When the bank has the power and prestige to lobby the Congress for bills for which it believes in the public good, and 20% of the constituent dollars which compose the bank come from foreign BRITISH investors, it would not be a stretch of the imagination to say that there would come a time when the banks opinion of the "public good" would be in conflict with what should be the public good.

That is a real concern but in terms of developing the country into a superpower the federalists were undoubtedly in the right

I dunno why Federalists seem to see "land of liberty" and think being a super power is necessary.

Americans are far better entertainers, workers, merchants, tourists, writers, artists, and philanthropists than warriors and it's better that they stay that way or else we get the situation we have now with an unsustainable military presence and a crippling debt due to the welfare-warfare state.

>and think being a super power is necessary.
Because confederacy dose not work in a country as large as America.

I don't think the welfare state has much to do with your debt, nor do I think that debt is any real problem for you.

American tourists are also among the worst.

bad bitches

That's bullshit though, less centralization is better in larger countries because the different areas would be less similar to each other to make centralized authority inefficient at best and damagingly inappropriate at worst.

Social Security and our health programs make up almost 2/3s of our spending. The next largest is our military budget.

Also stop confusing our occupying soldiers for tourists.

This reminds me of this really interesting transcript I read about how the southern attitude towards slavery changed in the 1830s from one of mostly economic necessity to that of an unquestionable moral good

medium.com/@russroberts/munger-on-slavery-and-racism-658952d2ef08#.c2z9k57pg

>That's bullshit though, less centralization is better in larger countries because the different areas would be less similar to each other to make centralized authority inefficient at best and damagingly inappropriate at worst.

Exactly. Eventually each state would grow so different from each other they would have no reason to respect each others boarders or laws except in the pursuit of self-interest

autism

>That's bullshit though, less centralization is better in larger countries because the different areas would be less similar to each other to make centralized authority inefficient at best and damagingly inappropriate at worst.

America is really homogeneous due to the cleansing of Natives and Anglicization and American exceptionalism.

Are you American? Where i live we judge people from different suburbs let alone states (fuck Missouri)

>Exactly. Eventually each state would grow so different from each other they would have no reason to respect each others boarders or laws except in the pursuit of self-interest

The whole point of the Constitution was to have a set of ground rules based on universal ideals on which the entirety of the country could agree before each state could go on to determine policy according to their own local needs.

The dissolution of mutual respect you talk about is a fiction that is proven by history as the Constitution is still held in high regard across the country despite constant Marxist efforts to undermine it.

No. I have American relatives tho. Local pride, an urban-rural divide, regional stereotypes and local cultures and folklore exist in basically any state bigger than Andorra.

The US of course has all these things, but it's remarkable that it doesn't have it on a massive level considering the geographic size of the country.

He idolized Voltaire and thus pretty much became the American equivalent (especially the contradictory nature and tendency to always be in the spotlight).
He thought ancient Roman and Greek systems would be compatible to an already industrializing country
He outright plagiarized everything he was famous for

>Donald Trump

We forget that democracy is a corruption of polity and that polity is inferior to a true aristocracy.

it literally says "with certain inalienable rights" which means that, to some degree, they should be treated equal

women on the other hand....

>Everyone protrays Washington as "the modern Cincinnatus", a humble farmer who simply wanted to return to a life of planting instead of this political drama all the damn time, but that's entirely incorrect.
But that's exactly what the Roman idea of a patrician-farmer was! He and Jefferson were living, breathing examples of what it meant to be a Roman succes story - 2000 years into the future. The analogy holds up very well.

He was exactly what he wanted to be; an upper class patrician. Non-citizens need not apply.

>but in terms of developing the country into a superpower the federalists were undoubtedly in the right

On the matter of tariffs, they had a point. A point which even Jefferson conceded during his presidency, when it was one of the few taxes he left in place, despite being of the class it harmed most. The bank, though, and the power it wielded can never truly be justified, in any decentralized Republican nation. Not only is the matter of conflicting interest apparent when a not insignificant sum of its dollars comes from foreign investment, but the fact that it held the purse strings of the economy by its little fingers should abhor everyone.

>Are you American?
America is far more homogeneous than you give it credit for. Ever since the civil war, the National identity has reigned supreme over the local identity. In Spain, Italy, and Belgium, the local identity still has sway. The Catallans, Southern Italians, and Walloons, all view the national identity with distaste. Even our closest neighbor in Culture, the UK, had an election to determine continued union of its nation. Can you imagine any state, legitimately being able to call forth an election today to separate from the national union?

And they were treated equal and were created with certain inalienable rights. There's nothing immoral or wrong with enslaving an Englishmen due to his being an Englishmen rather than just the immorality of slavery, and there were far more Irishmen in bondage than there were Blacks. No one group gets any special rights when it comes to slavery. Some groups get special privileges when it comes to slavery, but we're not talking about privileges, we're talking about rights.

"Being a citizen of this country" is not, however, one of those inalienable rights all men are born with.

You do realize The Constitution was created for the very same federal government you hat so much? Also I am not a marxist, however I believe there must be a balance between states and larger government.

Stoned all the time, like all of them.

I don't hate the federal government as it was originally conceived. I hate the current federal government that has grown way beyond the scope of it's original intent and has diluted the individual citizen's ability to influence the policies that directly impact his life because they are enforced by a centralized authority that has imposed a greater degree of separation between him/her and it.

You must realize that the restraints intended for the federal government were not pointless abstractions but purposeful in order to ensure transparency and a neutral third party for resolution of matters pertaining to nationhood, and nothing more.

I concede that the federal government has grown far beyond what is intended. However to claim that it had no power over domestic policy is absurd. The reason the articles of confederation failed was because congress had no power to impose taxes and each state inevitably served their own self interest and put themselves before everyone else.

I agree that it has domestic responsibilities. The commerce clause alludes to this power of the fed, but even that again has had a liberal reading over the years that has justified massive federal regulation in markets that have tipped the scales of balance to ill effect.

My greater point is that most of the population does not even have the slightest clue as to these nuances we're discussing here because there is a cultural trend away from the principles of limited government that has been instilled slowly over time. It's a big problem.

While I see where you are coming and I aknowledge that federal regulation is often bureaucratic and stalling, America has shifted from a series of 13 colonies to a huge country with many imports, exports, and a stake in world politics. Remember back when The Jungle was written? The amount of contaminated food being produced because corporations didn't want to put in money to inspect it( which is fine, they're a corporation), but it lead to mass food contamination until the fed stepped in and regulated it. Of course In a small country of 13 states the fed wouldn't play a big role, but that isn't the world we live in.

The Jungle was pure science fiction, many of the health inspections implemented after that were unsanitary in their own right.

"The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers"

"I have given up newspapers in exchange for Tacitus and Thucydides, for Newton and Euclid; and I find myself much the happier."

As true then as it is now.

>hyping Cincinnatus and Washington over Phocion

Only one of the three lived a frugal virtuous life.

We looked at very different sources. Most of its reports were correct (dropping and dead rats put into meat). I don't know where you got that it was false

Poverty isn't a virtue.

>poverty is a virtue
>we need to eliminate poverty