If you of the revolutionary-Left persuasion are not too busy trashing Thomas Jefferson, or toppling his statue, you might take time to ponder his words. In the end, he’ll drive you crazy and into uncontrollable bouts of more rage. Check out these words.
In the wake of Shays’ Rebellion of 1786-7, Jefferson saw something benign in it. In a letter to Abigail Adams, later to James Madison, he wrote, “I like a little rebellion now and then. It is like a storm in the atmosphere”.
In a letter to John Adams’s son-in-law, “God forbid that we should ever be 20 years without such a rebellion”. If the people remained quiet for too long, he claimed, “… it is a lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty”. Jefferson wrote that if it should cost some lives it was still worth it: “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time by the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is it’s natural manure”.
Could these words be appropriated by Antifa or BLM? Well, they could if you possessed the mental sophistication of a child, which Antifa, BLM, race hustlers, and the barkers in the Democratic Party exhibit daily. Shays wasn’t fighting to create the collectivist tyranny of a Green New Deal, racial reparations, racial political exhibitionism, and a Constitutional order to keep themselves in power for a generation or more. He wanted relief from government.
There’s good reason, if you think about it, for the halfwits in The Squad, BLM, and Antifa to target Jefferson. He was a slaveholder, an identity that caused anguish for the rest of his life. He was also a proud exponent of liberty: the freedom of the individual to live a life of virtue and choose their own path of reward. The radical Left in whatever guise – socialism, communism, Antifa, BLM, the Democratic Party platform, etc. – is a movement to shackle one population through a powerful government of commissars to allegedly deliver benefits to another. The reality is a shackle for everybody. They’d be better off quoting Marx, not Jefferson.
I’m reminded of Jefferson’s words as I watched Wednesday’s mob storm the capitol. Honestly, I have as much trouble with his words pre-riot as I do post. But the event presents a clear warning for today’s power-hungry collectivists: the ghost of Daniel Shays is buried deep in the American psyche. Pushed too far, people will march on DC as they did on Springfield, Mass., in 1787.
Once again, I’m not advocating it. I’m predicting it. Pray to God that cooler heads prevail.
RogerG