There They Go Again
Well, there they go again. One group or another is always claiming Jefferson for themselves, which is one of the reasons I want people to find their own TJ. Save him from the parties. After all, this is the guy who said if he could only go to heaven as part of a party or group, he would just as soon skip the trip. This time its a book called Radicals for Capitalism: A Freewheeling History of the Modern American Libertarian Movement by Brian Doherty(Public Affairs, 741 pages, $35). Now, I haven't read this book, nor do I intend to, but I did read a Commentary about it (Chicago Sun-Times, July 5, 2007--a popular time to mention TJ).
The commentator, himself the president of a libertarian think tank in Chicago called the Heartland Institute, said, "Doherty describes the lives and ideas of such notable libertarians of the past as Thomas Jefferson, Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill and Herbert Spencer: recent luminaries such as Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman, the most influential economists in the second half of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st: and the current libertarian superstars U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Alex Kozinski."
OK, I don't mind lumping TJ in with some historic figures, or even Milton Friedman, who always seemed to me to counter the argument that conservatives were heart-less.....but, superstar Clarence Thomas! That's going too far. Personally, I don't think TJ was a libertarian, in fact I don't think he would fit neatly into any political group, and if you keeping reading over time you will see why.
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Let us know what you think. Do you know anything about libertarianism? Do you have an opinion about it, or how TJ is portrayed in the media, or how political groups like to claim him?
