Thomas Jefferson and Anti-America Bias

Article by Alex Martin. Edited by Liam Geoghegan. Additional Research by Alice Ferguson.

Anti-America Bias 

The statement that ‘America is an unpopular nation’ is not a terribly contentious one. I often get the impression that popular feeling of the American people is that the vast majority are fat, vulgar, avaricious, dim, pushy and ignorant. And popular feeling of the American nation is that it is imperialistic, inherently conservative, moribund, decadent, un-free and overly religious. George Galloway who, until very recently, was an MP for this country, openly and publicly suggested that America was responsible for the actions of the 9/11 bombers. George Bush has become the replacement overly simple simpleton for the stupid Irishmen in jokes. I am more than certain that this impression is oceans away from the truth. This is the nation with the world’s best academic institutions, 13 out of the top 20. This is also the nation that has produced more Nobel Prize winners than any other nation. America was the first nation to have an explicit legal separation of church and state. Its distribution of income is fairer than the United Kingdom, Sweden and the E.U. taken as a whole. Its constitution, something which this nation hasn’t quite bothered to write down yet, guarantees freedom of speech and print, trial by jury, and women’s suffrage; as well as the prohibition of slavery, cruel and unusual punishments and poll taxes. How is it then that American detractors such as Michael Moore and George Galloway enjoy support in the majority of the western world? Whilst the unpopularity of the Iraq War and George Bush’s fantastically incurious personality account for this I believe there is a more deep seated historical explanation. An explanation which is almost perfectly demonstrated by one of America’s most debated and well known figures, Thomas Jefferson. 

The ever shifting image of Thomas Jefferson 

The characters of those who are present at the birth of countries become ‘historical forces in themselves.’ This is doubly true for the American founders. As no other nation has been formed so much by the written word, hence its authors come under intense historical scrutiny.  

However, these individuals are warped to suit the needs and beliefs of the historian, and more often than not what is left is a canvas on which consecutive agendas are painted. This process happens the most often and the most deeply to the life and Works of Thomas Jefferson. Often he, and his character, is both scorned and exalted. Leaving aside the negative/positive politicisation of his character, historians are left with the mystery that was Thomas Jefferson. What can be said of his character that we are certain of suggests that we are looking at a creature of great energy, skill and conviction. His election as vice presidency overlapped with his election as president of the American Philosophical Society. The editors of the Jefferson Papers have located 19,000 letters written by him on subjects as wide ranging as carriage springs, international law, David Hume and palaeontology. However it is the uncertainty of Jefferson that ought to intrigue the historian. The man who was friends with abolitionists and proponents of women’s suffrage, such as Thomas Paine and Benjamin Rush, once declared that ‘the appointment of a woman to office is an innovation for which the public is not prepared, nor am I’. Also, Thomas Jefferson famously said 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,’ but he held slaves. He argued forcefully for freedom of speech and of the press, eloquently asserting that lies, propaganda and errors cease ‘to be dangerous when it is permitted freely to contradict them’; however, he designed the University of Virginia’s law curriculum to include exclusively his views. Among other contradictions he suspended Habeas Corpus, broke the fourth amendment of the constitution and ‘placed blacks somewhere between apes and men.’ 

America’s First Foray into the Middle East and Jefferson’s Greatest Contradiction 

The most interesting double standard which Jefferson set was his position on slavery. Thomas Jefferson was not only the egalitarian slaveholder, he was also an abolitionist of sorts. Whilst it is true that Jefferson encouraged the system of Southern slavery to expand, he actually slowed it down in two ways. Firstly, he prevented its spread in the north west of America and he outright ended its trade abroad. If you were to ask the layman what was America’s first military excursion into the Middle East you would most likely be told that it was the first Gulf War, but this answer would be 189 years off the mark. In 1881, Jefferson built and organised the American navy to war with the Barbary States of the Ottoman Empire, which eventually resulted in the end of the latter’s enslavement of sailors and merchants. Thomas Jefferson was a great many things but most of all he was a great contradiction. I believe this is where the distaste for the American nation begins, these historical contradictions at the very heart of the United States. Its constitution is something to admire, however it would be a lot more admirable if the eighth amendment (prohibition against cruel and unusual punishments) extended to Jefferson’s enslaved workforce and Guantanamo bay; or if any of the other confusing double standards that America seems to exist within were somehow sorted out. This is not meant to be a call against the American people or their nation. My intention is quite the opposite. We judge America by the standards it sets itself, the standards it cares enough about to set down in ink. Its standards are so high, so close to the ideals that modern Europe and Britain espouse that we are quick to criticise when it fails to meet them. If the great ‘politician, diplomat, architect, draftsman, connoisseur of painting, anthropologist, bibliophile, classicist, musician, lawyer, educator, oenologist, farm manager, agronomist, theologian (or rather, anti-theologian), and amateur of almost every branch of science from astronomy to zoology, with special emphasis on palaeontology’ and author of these standards couldn’t meet these lofty demands, how can the mere mortals of today?

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