The following is excerpted from the National Review. To read the full article, CLICK HERE.
Thomas Jefferson has become the Rodney Dangerfield of the Founding Fathers: He gets no respect, not even at his Monticello home near Charlottesville, Va.
Recent visitors say the mansion, which has adorned the U.S. nickel coin since 1938, has become a center of radically revisionist history. “The whole thing has the feel of propaganda and manipulation,” Jeffrey Tucker, a recent visitor from the libertarian Brownstone Institute, told the New York Post.
“The tour guides play ‘besmirchment derby,’ never missing a chance to defame this brilliant, complex man,” writes Stephen Owen, another visitor, on Facebook.
The victimization motif is everywhere at Monticello. The visitor center features a new painting of Jefferson’s weeping slaves. There is an “audiovisual immersive experience” on Sally Hemings, a slave who allegedly had a long affair with Jefferson. Guides begin their outdoor tours of Monticello’s gardens and grounds by discussing the injustices visited upon Native Americans who once lived there.
The changes are all because the Thomas Jefferson Foundation is now run by Democratic donors and former government appointees. Left-leaning philanthropist David Rubenstein, a Carter-administration official, donated $20 million to restore “the landscape of slavery” at Monticello. This validates O’Sullivan’s Law, named after former National Review editor John O’Sullivan: “All organizations that are not explicitly conservative will over time become left-wing.”
George Allen, a former Virginia GOP governor, says it’s time to take back Monticello and reverse “the politicization of a beautiful historic property.”
To read the full article, CLICK HERE.
MaryAJuly 24, 2022
Simply acknowledging the past for what it was isn't being "woke" nor is it wrong. Jefferson and Madison did great things, but also were involved in horrible and unjust things as well. It isn't right (or accurate) to pretend they were saints who never did wrong. We need to acknowledge both sides and stop throwing hissy fits when unpleasant facts are brought up about their lives. There is much to learn from their mistakes. As the saying goes, if we don't learn from the past we are doomed to repeat it. I wonder, if your ancestors were among those kept as slaves, would you still feel this information should be swept under the rug just so the leaders involved wouldn't look bad?