Improving Upon Jefferson, and America

ALTHOUGH THOMAS JEFFERSON would probably not be considered an "atheist" today, in his own day,he widely was, because he rejected most Christian doctrine. And although Jefferson was not accused of being a 'socialist" in his day, he would be today, because today, he would be one. While he was in Europe, and saw crushing poverty and economic inequality, he formed radical ideas about the need for an activist state to redistribute wealth. "Enormous inequality", he said, produced "so much misery to the bulk of mankind", that "legislators cannot invent too many devices for subdividing property". One "means of silently lessening the inequality of property", he told James Madison, would be "to exempt from all taxation below a certain point, , and to tax the higher portions of property in geometrical progression as they rise." Such inequality, he further suggested, made it "clear that the laws of property have been so far extended as to violate natural rights." Jefferson was therefore not only an advocate of progression taxation, but also,like his secular hero Jesus, a strong believer in redistributing wealth. Over the years, more and more people, including prominent historians, have seen Jefferson as a hypocrite. Maybe we ought to see him as a complicated person, and about as hypocritical as the rest of us, and leave it at that. "One need only travel abroad to appreciate what one ha at home", said Goethe, another religious skeptic and inventor of his own religion. Goethe also sayeth: "when I realized that everyone invents his own religion, I decided to invent mine." Jefferson realized these truths about the same time Goethe did, Jefferson in France, Goethe in Germany. They never met, but truly should have. the ensuing conversation would have been intellectually spectacular. Jefferson understood how flawed his beloved America was in his day, what with slavery, and all. but he believed in its ultimate potential for improvement, redemption, and even perfection, as a a more enlightened version of European culture, with liberty and justice, including inequality in all its manifestations, for all. today we still have a long way to go, but at least we're still working on it.