LOLs regarding the Louisiana Purchase as TJ's best attribute. r e a l l y .... that's the best? But let's put that aside. I'm not talking about breaking down his "Best Contributions" I'm talking about what he said vs what he did. Dude basically helped lay out the plans for Libertarianism, then did a 180 when he got to the House. He could have cemented his words. But no....He is the one who started the entire process of Presidents lying to get into office. TJ was a brilliant man...
Why does going to war impact anything? You're history is terrible. We bought it from the French. New Orleans was part of the war against Britain. That's like saying acquiring Hawaii was bad because we had to defend it when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. You're just being silly.
Lol, I didn't say that was his best attribute. I said it was enough of a good thing that it would outweigh your (until then unasserted) defect. The LP swamps your "oh no, like every other person on the planet he was a hypocrite." I purposely picked one of his great achievements as a full list of them is unnecessary to turn your attack, as vague as it is. Guess what, Washington took an oath to God to obey his King and then betrayed that oath. How is that for hypocrisy? Your turn, chum. He didn't have to lie to get into office and I'm pretty sure you're still reading history wrong. Get specific and then let's go.
Jefferson is not overrated. He's America. He lived so long and wrote so much that he contradicted himself on many issues. Many of those contradictions were a reflection of society then and many we live with today. Historian William Lee Miller: We are all Jeffersonians, even when we disagree. (Unless you use deliberately false quotes attributed to him.) Most underrated: Albert Gallatin and Anthony Wayne
The founding fathers are overrated. There are plenty of countries which have a nice founding governance framework that go largely ignored. The founding fathers provided that framework, like many others in many countries, but really it's the masses that held the government more accountable to those standards than other countries. Give the founding fathers their due, but be sure to pat yourselves on the back for how it ended up.
Washington might be #1 on the list of Presidents because he willingly stepped down and set a precedent for peaceful, non-hereditary transfers of power in Western countries. Some of the most legitimate and meaningful revolutions in history are rendered worthless because great generals turn out to be bloodthirsty assholes with ethnic or political axes to grind, and lingering class resentment coupled with no real education or insight into how institutions or economies should be run. However, Washington wouldn't have been able or possibly even inclined to do this without a well-structured government apparatus and anti-imperial political philosophy in place, nether of which he had the intellect, literacy or vision to have had any hand in creating. Possibly blinded by his own popularity, he was as obtuse about partisan politics, and the fully legitimate issues necessitating their permanent role in America; as Eisenhower was about Civil and Women's Rights and non-Western sovereignty, which in both cases stained their legacy by causing unnecessary strife and divisiveness shortly after their own departure. Jefferson is not overrated; because he provided the Republican philosophy that was as intrinsic to the United States as Christianity was to Europe. Someone else mentioned that he said one thing and did another. In elective government, that's actually very best precedent to set. Tempering one's actions by marginalizing personal biases and philosophies out of a sense of responsibility for the public good is exactly what executive leadership is about. Jefferson set a precedent for Western expansion and U.S. primacy in the hemisphere; it could very plausibly still be run by UK, France and Spain otherwise. If anyone's underrated it's probably Madison; I don't think any of us are fully taught that he influenced the Constitution and drafted the Bill of Rights.
I'm no Libertarian....but what you just said says..."our govt is good." no? HayesStreet, You ask for sources. The sources are Letters. There are books you read in college that reference Letters. You can then go read the letters. Or you can just argue with your professor. The letters are like reading emails. Have you read the references in the books that you hold so dear. TJ established the world of presidents lying to get into office. Tell me what he said prior to office then what he did.
Comprehensively wrong, especially considering that America wasn't democratic enough for the people to have had any influence in it's founding or preservation to begin with. Yet another one of your incoherent attempts to slur modern Western civilization falls flat. You also have to be awestruck by the fact that despite the Fathers consisting of such a heavy concentration of the wealthiest and most powerful people in an entire continent, not a single one of them ever had personal designs on leading a monarchy or staking out any kind of enduring, hereditary power for themselves, their families or even their native states. And no religious or ethnic crap either. Honestly, we really just lucked out getting all these guys in a room together.
He coined a word using his name. Pretty baller. Also one of TJ's descendants is Al Jefferson. So he's not completely overrated. Additionally, without him we wouldn't have Spoiler
Good for you, yes. Just saying that's mostly the result of the founding population with specific attributes/history, rather than a set of founding "fathers". Disagree. Your founding fathers IMO are more or less on par with the average founding fathers of any country, but the "founding population" is distinct and I think played a far more prominent role in shaping the future of the country than would otherwise be the case. Not sure how you see that as a slur of modern Western civilization. As stated above, I'm saying the result is good. I'm just disputing why that is the case - and I'm saying it's because of the nature of all the people who formed the basis of the country, and also the layers of people who joined after. America was built by people running away from oppression and looking for a better life - this is what is unique to them. A nation of immigrants fed up with monarchial rule of their time. The fact that it wasn't democratic enough to begin with is negligble - democracy is achieved through the will of the population and the progress of governance standards, and not by the nominal title of "democratic" state. The idea that they were not seeking a monrachy is disputable. The fact that GW sought a global monarchy rather than purely a domestic one doesn't make it special at all IMO. You're not going to find centuries of noble people who don't want to seize power, but what you may find is a population that is so diametrically opposed to the notion of hereditary rule that the leadership would never dare suggest it.
btw I agree Thomas Paine is underrated That is not what TJ said. TJ had the opportunity based on his previous word to insure the United State of America is governed by the people...but the dude went 180 against his words. TJ set in motion everything we hate about government. He lied to us. And we were suckers back then because the rich could rule and we didn't have the internets to fact check and **** TJ was a rich *******. Read what he wrote in Letters when he wanted Jay, Hamilton and Adam's approval vs what he did.
It's a slur because you've had a hard on for depicting contemporary Western governments as more brutal and oppressive than any others on the globe. The passage in your linked footnote doesn't clearly state anywhere that Washington wanted a monarchy of any kind; that doesn't seem to be point of your cited article at all. Washington immediately resigned his military post after the War, which stripped him of any material political leverage or coercive power as the new country was being formed. His assumption of the Presidency only occurred after the initial government was deemed ineffective and he was called to preside over both the authoring convention and initial administration of the second political structure. And again, each of these conventions concentrated the wealthiest and most powerful people in the country, each of them intending to form a bureaucratic, collaborative, non-monarchical government. Really don't see anything substantive in your second paragraph, which essentially states that North America has lots of immigrants, not unlike separatist South Africa. America didn't have universal or even plural suffrage back then, so it wasn't a democracy, de jure or de facto. The enduring principles of legislative and judiciary checks and balances against the executive, abrogation of any heredity, religious or ethnic preferences in government appointment, legal protection of personal arms and property, were all conceived and validated by the Founding government, not the populace as a whole.
Regarding your off topic comment: Spoiler To be clear, it's not Western civilization I find brutal and oppressive to its non-citizens. For a contrasting hypothetical example, country X may treat it's own people like crap but not involve itself in the oppression of people outside its borders. My issue is directly with American empire. I know it would really make you feel more comfortable if I were racist, xenophobic, or irrationally hated half the world's population or some other non sense like that. My problem is with American foreign policy, and I also think American domestic policy is screwing most Americans. I don't like/dislike Americans or all of Western civilization. Why you felt the need to shift the discussion to this is beyond me. Seems you have a thing for worshipping the founding fathers. On topic: I'm just saying the founding fathers are nothing special (as with most countries and their founding fathers) and it's the people that are responsible for how the arbitrary visions of founding fathers play out. Civil society IMO is based on people's tolerance for BS from those who they choose to represent them. Americans have less tolerance for that BS, therefore the people who they choose to represent them have to behave a little bit better. There is nothing particularly unique about the founding fathers or founding documents. Case in point (if you had read the link): George Washington labelled America a nascent empire, which displays a will to have control over people who don't have a say in how things are run. This is at least as bad as wanting a domestic monarchy. Several of these guys were hypocritical slave owners. Many of them used their influence to hoard assets from regular people. A lot of them had the least respect for other races and the other gender. I don't give a damn about that because it fits within the context of when this all happened - but let's not go around acting like these guys are anything special. If anything, the people who built America with blood, sweat and tears are special for ensuring their representatives stayed closer to a democratic vision than would have been the case with the politics of a native population. I still can't understand why you are acting so butt hurt about me praising Americans but calling the founding fathers average. Their character is similar to the stories about any founding father of any country, and the ideas they espoused were widely in circulation at the time. What they had, which no one else had, was a nation built on immigrants who gave up trying to achieve the exact same thing in their own country. If you need any evidence to support that, how about a look at their first order of business: kick out the British empire. Or do you think the founding fathers formed an Avengers-style super team and kicked the British out? lol
Fake, phony distinction without a difference based on an underlying falsehood. Furthermore your previous repeated, irrelevant rants about Western countries provide perfectly valid context for scrutinizing yet another instance of your needless contrarianism. Seems you might have come from or been closely aligned with too backwards, misogynistic, blood-soaked and despotic a society to understand or appreciate another citizen's rational affinity for his country's leadership, institutions and the very clearly documented ideas, actions and individuals that ensured their development, enduring survival and positive influence. Inaccurate and still unfounded argument. Unique and original for their time, and fully cited and adopted by countries on every continent since then. I read a passage about Washington seeing America as one of several powerful nations, and a lot of other text about slavery, which itself seemed to have been the actual point of the article. Nothing at all in there about Washington or any other founders wanting a monarchy. False point and misleading, progressively hedged statements supported by a completely irrelevant source. You're insulting Americans for rationally venerating their successful institutions and the individuals who built it; and providing convoluted arguments about immigration to complement some tangential and ultimately non-relevant articles about your false claims of a monarchy. Wrong again, particularly in terms of the types of governments that were in power in the 18th and early 19th centuries. Yeah, if you're really too stupid to understand how generals and their client governments influence the structure, competency and campaign outcomes of their armies in military conflicts then it doesn't say much for the rest of your reasoning.
I'll say Washington is the most overrated. He was great, but to have a state, cities, and universities named after him? Come on, he was not THE founding father, but A founding father. He did not begin the revolution and certainly did not single handedly lead the country to victories. He was not Lebron of Heat but more like Parker of Spurs. John Adams has to be the most underrated. Maybe not so good as President, but he was a brilliant statesman who was busy in Europe forming alliances and asking for help with the war. Thomas Jefferson is not overrated. He was only 33 when he wrote the Declaration of Independence. Of course he expanded the country (we all should know this), but he also founded a university and designed his own crib. His talents were vast.
The Louisiana Purchase was absolutely one of the greatest things this nation has done and was vital for our nation to continue it's growth. At that time it was FASTER, SAFER and CHEAPER to get from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh by going to the Atlantic ocean, sailing down to the gulf of Mexico, then going up the Mississippi, rather than just going the short distance across PA. That's just within the state of PA. The Mississippi river was a huge way that allowed commerce to thrive and the nation to grow. The Louisiana purchase was vital.
