Progress is a process, not an immediate end point. The establishment of a democracy, even a limited one, even one that still tolerated slavery and denied the rights of women, natives, and the poor, was a radical experiment in the 18th Century. The founders understood that the declaration and the constitution were only beginnings, and built in a mechanism to change and improve the constitution, and proceeded to modify it with the Bill of Rights almost before the ink was dry on the original document. Slavery is deplorable, Jefferson had slaves, but he and Washington prepared the ground for Abraham Lincoln and emancipation. The American experiment made possible Theodore Roosevelt’s battles with big business to protect the rights of working people, and protection of natural areas. These four made the New Deal, civil rights legislation, labor protection, women’s rights, and environment regulations possible.
Your feelings about Jefferson might soften, just a little, if you stop to think what the Americans in 150 years will think of the way we lived; the consumerism, the lack of resource management, economic disparities, and the environmental disasters we can see all around us, but which we just deal with as part of the world we want to change but we also have to live with.
Feedback: blather@progpatriots.com. Sorry if that sounds sarcastic, and I don’t have much time to review it, but I can always hope someone cares enough to say something insightful and interesting!