Thomas Jefferson was the original neocon

[HillGoose]

After reading about Thomas Jefferson, I think if he was alive today, he would be a filthy rich, atheistic republican neocon married to a black woman and in support of people being as god damn fabulously gay as they want, as well as arming the hell out of Ukraine.

Am I right or what?

[TPIG]

No...

This quote should tell you all you need to know:

"I am for free commerce with all nations, political connection with none, and little or no diplomatic establishment. And I am not for linking ourselves by new treaties with the quarrels of Europe, entering that field of slaughter to preserve their balance, or joining in the confederacy of Kings to war against the principles of liberty." --Thomas Jefferson

Jefferson would not support our involvement in various global alliances and would definitely be against America engaging in regime change/nation-building. However, he wasn't a complete isolationist and was/would be today a large proponent of increasing free trade with other nations. Obviously your post wasn't serious, but why not respond with evidence anyway

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

Jefferson turned out very different as a President than his ideals he wrote about before power, so god knows.

One could argue that manifest destiny was something that could easily transition into imperialism or whatever.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Based on his presidency, he'd clearly be an advocate of the use of soft power, not hard power. To the extent he would get involved in the Russian aggression against Ukraine, he'd limit our reaction to sanctions and embargoes.

As for Sally Hemings, it's doubtful he'd have married her and far likelier he'd have gotten caught up in the #MeToo wave.

[America's Sweetheart ❤/𝕿𝖍𝖊 𝕭𝖔𝖔𝖙𝖞 𝖂𝖆𝖗𝖗𝖎𝖔𝖗]

Based on his presidency, he'd clearly be an advocate of the use of soft power, not hard power. To the extent he would get involved in the Russian aggression against Ukraine, he'd limit our reaction to sanctions and embargoes.

As for Sally Hemings, it's doubtful he'd have married her and far likelier he'd have gotten caught up in the #MeToo wave.

if Jefferson were alive today and in a relationship with Sally Hemings, I don't see why he wouldn't marry her. firstly, virtually no one has any problems with interracial marriage now, and secondly, she wasn't even black - she was mixed.

[All Along The Watchtower]

Jefferson turned out very different as a President than his ideals he wrote about before power, so god knows.

Well since Washington and Hamilton had already set the precedent for the Presidency being an office with real, substantial power; and since political parties (or what would very obviously soon become political parties, at least) had pretty quickly started to form in the 1790s, it's not surprising in the slightest that Jefferson "betrayed" his ideals.

And I'd absolutely make the argument that Jefferson's Presidency paved the way for Andrew Jackson to use the office as a means of aggressively defending uh, "states rights" republicanism (more accurately, the independent, "self-made" Common (White) Men of the country) against the elitist, anti-democratic US Congress and the "special interests" who thwarted the Common Good and the Will of The People.

You can see updated versions of this in the 20th century with Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, and even more so with Franklin Roosevelt and every President since, to one extent or another. Wilson himself explicitly justified a powerful Presidency on the basis that (paraphrased) "the entire country is his constituency - he represents everyone", as opposed to all the individual Congressmen and Senators with their narrow, local and parochial interests. It's not a huge leap from that to not just FDR's expansive view of presidential and executive powers, but also the ideology of the Unitary Executive as defined by conservatives in the Nixon-Ford and Reagan-Bush I administrations, and especially the second Bush administration.

Obviously Dick Cheney was among the most aggressive and effective proponents of extraordinarily expansive presidential powers throughout this period- particularly in national security and foreign policy matters. There's your connection to the neo-cons. And both Obama and Trump have more or less expanded on and consolidated these trends in unchecked, unilateral presidential power.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Based on his presidency, he'd clearly be an advocate of the use of soft power, not hard power. To the extent he would get involved in the Russian aggression against Ukraine, he'd limit our reaction to sanctions and embargoes.

As for Sally Hemings, it's doubtful he'd have married her and far likelier he'd have gotten caught up in the #MeToo wave.

if Jefferson were alive today and in a relationship with Sally Hemings, I don't see why he wouldn't marry her. firstly, virtually no one has any problems with interracial marriage now, and secondly, she wasn't even black - she was mixed.

If he'd wanted a wife, Jefferson could have easily gotten one.  Jefferson wanted a concubine, not a wife; he got what he wanted.

[Storebought]

Jefferson turned out very different as a President than his ideals he wrote about before power, so god knows.

Well since Washington and Hamilton had already set the precedent for the Presidency being an office with real, substantial power; and since political parties (or what would very obviously soon become political parties, at least) had pretty quickly started to form in the 1790s, it's not surprising in the slightest that Jefferson "betrayed" his ideals.

And I'd absolutely make the argument that Jefferson's Presidency paved the way for Andrew Jackson to use the office as a means of aggressively defending uh, "states rights" republicanism (more accurately, the independent, "self-made" Common (White) Men of the country) against the elitist, anti-democratic US Congress and the "special interests" who thwarted the Common Good and the Will of The People.

You can see updated versions of this in the 20th century with Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, and even more so with Franklin Roosevelt and every President since, to one extent or another. Wilson himself explicitly justified a powerful Presidency on the basis that (paraphrased) "the entire country is his constituency - he represents everyone", as opposed to all the individual Congressmen and Senators with their narrow, local and parochial interests. It's not a huge leap from that to not just FDR's expansive view of presidential and executive powers, but also the ideology of the Unitary Executive as defined by conservatives in the Nixon-Ford and Reagan-Bush I administrations, and especially the second Bush administration.

Obviously Dick Cheney was among the most aggressive and effective proponents of extraordinarily expansive presidential powers throughout this period- particularly in national security and foreign policy matters. There's your connection to the neo-cons. And both Obama and Trump have more or less expanded on and consolidated these trends in unchecked, unilateral presidential power.

I don't think that presidents so much "assumed power" but that Congress has increasingly abdicated theirs. Congress does less and less with every term as it concerns itself with re-election and committee gamesmanship. The fact that Congress was in the grips of Southern reactionaries for most of the 20th century did not help.

[RINO Tom]

No...

This quote should tell you all you need to know:

"I am for free commerce with all nations, political connection with none, and little or no diplomatic establishment. And I am not for linking ourselves by new treaties with the quarrels of Europe, entering that field of slaughter to preserve their balance, or joining in the confederacy of Kings to war against the principles of liberty." --Thomas Jefferson

Jefferson would not support our involvement in various global alliances and would definitely be against America engaging in regime change/nation-building. However, he wasn't a complete isolationist and was/would be today a large proponent of increasing free trade with other nations. Obviously your post wasn't serious, but why not respond with evidence anyway

I would be careful with this assumption.  Jefferson and his allies (and immediate political descendants) argued for free trade - more accurately, against protectionism - because they believed that a protective tariff was a tool in place solely (or at least mostly) to benefit the American business community/the wealthy, and they were incredibly skeptical that the economic benefit would ever, dare I say, "trickle down" to more working class Americans.  While he did indeed support free trade, his rhetoric and motives sound a lot more similar to someone who would likely support protectionism today.  The same policy can benefit TOTALLY different groups and be pursued for near opposite ideological reasons depending on the time/economic environment.

[TPIG]

No...

This quote should tell you all you need to know:

"I am for free commerce with all nations, political connection with none, and little or no diplomatic establishment. And I am not for linking ourselves by new treaties with the quarrels of Europe, entering that field of slaughter to preserve their balance, or joining in the confederacy of Kings to war against the principles of liberty." --Thomas Jefferson

Jefferson would not support our involvement in various global alliances and would definitely be against America engaging in regime change/nation-building. However, he wasn't a complete isolationist and was/would be today a large proponent of increasing free trade with other nations. Obviously your post wasn't serious, but why not respond with evidence anyway

I would be careful with this assumption.  Jefferson and his allies (and immediate political descendants) argued for free trade - more accurately, against protectionism - because they believed that a protective tariff was a tool in place solely (or at least mostly) to benefit the American business community/the wealthy, and they were incredibly skeptical that the economic benefit would ever, dare I say, "trickle down" to more working class Americans.  While he did indeed support free trade, his rhetoric and motives sound a lot more similar to someone who would likely support protectionism today.  The same policy can benefit TOTALLY different groups and be pursued for near opposite ideological reasons depending on the time/economic environment.

I agree with your assessment of Jefferson's views, but will say that I don't think it's much different than the rhetoric used my many today in arguing against protectionism. Economic conservatives/libertarians believe in pro-free market policies, not pro-business policies. Government should not take a proactive role in protecting business, giving them special favors/protections. etc. Government simply should get out of the way and let businesses succeed or FAIL on their own.

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

I agree with your assessment of Jefferson's views, but will say that I don't think it's much different than the rhetoric used my many today in arguing against protectionism. Economic conservatives/libertarians believe in pro-free market policies, not pro-business policies. Government should not take a proactive role in protecting business, giving them special favors/protections. etc. Government simply should get out of the way and let businesses succeed or FAIL on their own.

Such has not been the case historically, however. Opposition to government intervention in the economy as a matter of principle is a relatively new phenomenon; in Jefferson's day, the battle over the tariff was waged between manufacturers in one corner, who favored a strong tariff to protect their interests, and an alliance of farmers and southern planters in the other, who opposed the tariff for the same self-interested reason. The former represented the Hamiltonian faction who organized as the Federalist Party and later merged with Henry Clay's "National" Republicans to become the Whig Party in the 1830s—and by every meaningful standard, they represented the conservative element in the politics of their time. Jeffersonian support for free trade sprung from the same well of distrust for centralized power, whether political or financial, that inspired their admiration for the French Revolution. Theirs was not a principled support for the free market, but a reflexive opposition to the expanding power of big business, which they saw as an existential threat to the republican nature of the United States much in the same way progressives today talk about campaign finance reform.

[Ismail]

One could argue that manifest destiny was something that could easily transition into imperialism or whatever.

I recently scanned an English-language book from the USSR with a chapter on the Manifest Destiny, making that point. Obviously one can disagree, but there it is.

The former represented the Hamiltonian faction who organized as the Federalist Party and later merged with Henry Clay's "National" Republicans to become the Whig Party in the 1830s—and by every meaningful standard, they represented the conservative element in the politics of their time.

To help substantiate that we could quote Clay arguing against Van Buren's claim that people looked too much to the government for help: "We are all—people, States, Union, banks—bound up and interwoven together, united in fortune and destiny, and all, all entitled to the protecting care of a paternal government."

The American System of economics that Clay promoted clearly had more in common with modern "big government" investments in infrastructure as practiced by FDR and JFK.

And yet, as you note, Clay represented the forces of conservatism in his time. Even Soviet historians classed Jefferson and Jackson as belonging to the left-wing of American political life in their times, whereas the Federalists and Whigs represented the right-wing.

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

The former represented the Hamiltonian faction who organized as the Federalist Party and later merged with Henry Clay's "National" Republicans to become the Whig Party in the 1830s—and by every meaningful standard, they represented the conservative element in the politics of their time.

To help substantiate that we could quote Clay arguing against Van Buren's claim that people looked too much to the government for help: "We are all—people, States, Union, banks—bound up and interwoven together, united in fortune and destiny, and all, all entitled to the protecting care of a paternal government."

The American System of economics that Clay promoted clearly had more in common with modern "big government" investments in infrastructure as practiced by FDR and JFK.

And yet, as you note, Clay represented the forces of conservatism in his time. Even Soviet historians classed Jefferson and Jackson as belonging to the left-wing of American political life in their times, whereas the Federalists and Whigs represented the right-wing.

And therein lies the problem with equating conservatism with support for limited government—tactics are not synonymous with motives, and acting as if they are can lead one to some very dubious conclusions.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

One could argue that manifest destiny was something that could easily transition into imperialism or whatever.

I recently scanned an English-language book from the USSR with a chapter on the Manifest Destiny, making that point. Obviously one can disagree, but there it is.

The former represented the Hamiltonian faction who organized as the Federalist Party and later merged with Henry Clay's "National" Republicans to become the Whig Party in the 1830s—and by every meaningful standard, they represented the conservative element in the politics of their time.

To help substantiate that we could quote Clay arguing against Van Buren's claim that people looked too much to the government for help: "We are all—people, States, Union, banks—bound up and interwoven together, united in fortune and destiny, and all, all entitled to the protecting care of a paternal government."

The American System of economics that Clay promoted clearly had more in common with modern "big government" investments in infrastructure as practiced by FDR and JFK.

And yet, as you note, Clay represented the forces of conservatism in his time. Even Soviet historians classed Jefferson and Jackson as belonging to the left-wing of American political life in their times, whereas the Federalists and Whigs represented the right-wing.

For the time, conservatism was more about societal stability or national strength. It was very establishment oriented.

Conservatism was very much establishment minded until the mid 20th century and the process of the establishment being fundamentally reconstituted in the New Deal Era and reaction against it by emerging anti-establishment conservatism is a topic that Kevin Phillips discusses in The Emerging Republican Majority.