Tuesday, March 6, 2018

Thomas Jefferson; A Complete Statement

The Jefferson Memorial bears only half of one of his sentences.
Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate than that these people are to be free.
This immoral truncation would imply that "these people" will become Americans in a culturally assimilated ethnic sense, purely by relieving them of their slave status.

Here is Jefferson's full paragraph:

“The bill on the subject of slaves was a mere digest of the existing laws respecting them, without any intimation of a plan for a future & general emancipation. It was thought better that this should be kept back, and attempted only by way of amendment whenever the bill should be brought on. [Note 1 Cf. post, with Notes on Virginia in this edition.] The principles of the amendment however were agreed on, that is to say, the freedom of all born after a certain day, and deportation at a proper age. But it was found that the public mind would not yet bear the proposition, nor will it bear it even at this day. Yet the day is not distant when it must bear and adopt it, or worse will follow. Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate than that these people are to be free. Nor is it less certain that the two races, equally free, cannot live in the same government. Nature, habit, opinion has drawn indelible lines of distinction between them. It is still in our power to direct the process of emancipation and deportation peaceably and in such slow degree as that the evil will wear off insensibly, and their place be pari passu filled up by free white laborers. If on the contrary it is left to force itself on, human nature must shudder at the prospect held up. We should in vain look for an example in the Spanish deportation or deletion of the Moors. This precedent would fall far short of our case.”
Because people exist in distributions rather than unitary coherences, many have and will assimilate. Jefferson, however, lists three reasons that some, even many at the opposite side of the distribution, cannot assimilate: nature, habit, and opinion.

Assimilate into what? The white population has the same issue: Leftists cannot assimilate into the principles of individualism, liberty, common decency, or lawfully living under the US Constitution.
[Triggered by Brimelow at VDare]

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