New in PJ Media:
“Who controls the past controls the future,” writes George Orwell in 1984. “Who controls the present controls the past.” Were he with us today, Orwell would be getting tired of being right all the time, but he has just been proven right again: Thomas Jefferson’s famed mansion Monticello has been turned into a fount of woke propaganda that denigrates Jefferson and treats unsuspecting visitors to an over-the-top orgy of victimhood and white guilt regarding slavery. The Left hates America and wants very much for you to hate it, too.
Jeffrey Tucker of the libertarian Brownstone Institute said Saturday that “the whole thing has the feel of propaganda and manipulation. People on my tour seemed sad and demoralized.” That’s exactly the goal, Mr. Tucker: make Americans sad and demoralized and vulnerable to those who would have them believe that this nation has been evil from the beginning and is in drastic need of a thorough overhauling of its political system and society in general. Tucker added that when he was at Monticello, his guide was “surly and dismissive” of Jefferson’s remarkable achievements.
Monticello is no longer about Mr. Jefferson’s achievements. According to the New York Post, Monticello’s “new emphasis is the culmination of a 10-year effort to balance the historical record, officials of the Thomas Jefferson Foundation, the nonprofit that owns the estate, have said.” “Balance the historical record”: that’s a calculated and clever way of saying “Do everything we can to denigrate Thomas Jefferson and make those who admire him enough to visit his home come out hating him.”
Accordingly, the Post reports, “visitors complain that employees go out of their way to belittle Jefferson and his life.” One visitor wrote on Facebook that “the tour guides play ‘besmirchment derby,’ never missing a chance to defame this brilliant, complex man.” Another wrote: “Always enjoyed visiting Monticello in the past. The workers are super friendly and helpful. Unfortunately on this guided tour, we were lectured more on slaves and Sally Hemmings than the man himself. Half of the comments on Jefferson were critical. I expected for, the price, to have enjoyed it more. Even my 11 yr old daughter noticed the bias. We all are aware of the tragedy of slavery during the early part of this country’s history. Please center your presentations on the man and his accomplishments rather than promoting guilt.” Not a chance.
A third visitor said: “Visited a few years ago and had a great experience and got to learn a lot about Thomas Jefferson. This time every video slandered his name and the entire focus was on his mistress. Very disappointing and shocking to see how they are trying to rewrite history to make it seem like the founding fathers were terrible immoral creatures that happened to start a country.” Ah yes, now you’re getting the idea.
There is more. Read the rest here.
Egor says
This is simply a microcosm of what has happened with the bureaucracies in the USA. Yet when the Republican’s get into power they do nothing about it. So maybe Tucker Carlson made a good point in the Ben Smith interview. Until you remove them from these positions nothing will change.
Andrew Blackadder says
Caucasians, or if you prefer, people of European Heritage, are a very small Minority among the peoples of Planet Earth and yet it is to those countries controlled, built, and currently populated by such people that the rest of the peoples of the World wish to move too, and even though the modern world we live in today was created, invented, discovered, by such people as those of European Heritage, and most being men with a Penis, it seems that certain people wish to denigrate these same people by calling them racists,slave owners, fascists and all the other word salad nonsense they throw out on a daily basis, and many who do so are also those of European Heritage so where does this hate for your own Tribe come from… Do we see such guilt and shame from the Japanese, Chinese, Cambodians or any other Race that have had their take on power trips that resulted in mass deaths…
A French woman told me some years ago that Race was a social construct and when I mentioned that to an old Indian friend, from India, he almost fell off his seat laughing saying.. ”Sometimes you Europeans say some of the most stupid things”…I had to agree with him on that.
mgoldberg says
from ‘The Rage and the Pride’- Oriana Fallaci
From ‘the Rage and the Pride’ – Oriana Fallaci
…The fact is that America is a very special country, my dear. A country to really envy, yes, a country to really be jealous of And for reasons which have nothing to do with her richness, her immense power, her military supremacy. Do you know why? Because America is a nation that arose from a need of the soul, the need for a Patria, and from the most sublime idea ever conceived in the West: the idea of Liberty married to the idea of Equality. It is a special country also because this happened when the idea of Liberty was not in fashion. The idea of Equality, even less. Only certain philosophers called Muminists or Enlighteners spoke about these things, at that time. Only an enormous and expensive book in seventeen volumes (which with the eighteen Tables-volumes would become thirty-five) published in France under the direction of a certain Diderot and of a certain
D’Alernbert, (the one called Encyclopedie, Universal Dictionary of Art and Science), explained those concepts. And apart from the intellectuals, apart from the aristocrats who had the money to buy the seventeen then thirty-five volumes of the Big Expensive Book or the books which had inspired it, who knew about Illuminism or Enlightenment at that time?
Who fought for the sublime idea? Not even the revolutionaries of the French Revolution, given the fact that the French Revolution started in 1789. Meaning, fifteen years after the American Revolution which started in 1776 but had blossomed in 1774. (A detail that the anti-American leftists always seem to forget or pretend to forget).
But, above all, America is a special country because the idea of Liberty married to the idea of Equality was understood by peasants who were mostly illiterate or anyway uneducated. Ile peasants of the thirteen American colonies. And because it materialized thanks to extraordinary leaders, men of great culture and great quality and great imagination: the Founding Fathers.
For Christsake, does anybody remember the names Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, John Adams, George Washington, etcetera, etcetera, amen? Nothing in common with the pettifogging lawyers, that is, the <> (as Vittorio Alfieri contemptuously used to call them) of the French Revolution. Nothing to do with the gloomy and perfidious executioners of its Terror: the various Marat, Danton, Desmoulins, Saint-just, Robespierre and so on.
They were men, the Founding Fathers, who knew Greek and Latin as our teachers of Greek and Latin never will. Men who used to read Archirnedes; and Aristotle and Plato in Greek, Seneca and Cicero and Vergil in Latin. Men who studied the principles of Greek democracy as not even the Marxists of my time used to study the Theory of Plusvalue. (Provided that the Marxists of my time really did).
Jefferson even knew Italian. (He called it Tuscan). In Italian he spoke and wrote and read with considerable ease. In fact, along with the two thousand vine cuttings and the one thousand olive bedders and the music sheets that in Virginia could not be easily found, in 1774 the Florentine doctor Filippo Mazzei brought him five copies of a certain book written by a certain Cesare Beccaria: Dei Delitti e delle Pene (<>).
As for the self-taught Benjamin Franklin, he was a genius. A scientist, a typographer, a writer, an editor, a journalist, a politician, an inventor. He discovered the electrical nature of lightning, for instance. He invented the lightningrod, and the piped stove to warm up the rooms without a fireplace. (In fact the Granduke of Tuscany, Pietro Leopoldo, bought two of them for his studio at Pitti Palace in Florence). And it was with these extraordinary leaders, these men of great culture and great quality and great imagination, that in 1776 the mostly illiterate or uneducated peasants of the thirteen American colonies rebelled against England and fought the War for Independence. The American Revolution.
They fought it, in spite of the blood that every war costs, without the French Revolution’s abominations. Without the guillotine’s horror, without Toulon’s and Lyon’s and Bordeaux’s massacres, without Vandee’s carnages. They fought it thanks to a piece of paper which along with the need of the soul, the need for a Patria, concretized the sublime idea of Liberty married to Equality: the Declaration of Independence. <
And this paper that from the French Revolution on the whole West has copied, from which each of us has drawn inspiration, still constitutes the backbone of America. Her vital lymph. Know why? Because it transforms the subjects into citizens. Because it turns the plebes into people. Because it invites, no, it orders the plebes turned into citizens to rebel against tyranny and to govern themselves. To express their individualities, to search for their own happiness. (Something that for the poor, for the plebes, means to get rich).
The exact contrary, in short of what the Communists used to do with their practice of forbidding people to govern themselves, to express themselves, to get rich. With their practice of installing His Majesty the State on the throne. <> my intelligent father used to say. <>. He also used to say that instead of rescuing the plebes, Communism turns everybody into plebes. It makes everybody die of poverty and starvation, it prevents the plebes from being rescued.
Well: in my. opinion America rescues, redeemes, the plebes. Basically, they are all plebeian, in America. White and black, yellow and brown, stupid and intelligent, poor and rich. As a matter of fact, in many cases the most plebeian are just the rich…..
gravenimage says
Fine post, mgoldberg.
mgoldberg says
From ‘the Rage and the Pride’ – Oriana Fallaci
…The fact is that America is a very special country, my dear. A country to really envy, yes, a country to really be jealous of And for reasons which have nothing to do with her richness, her immense power, her military supremacy. Do you know why? Because America is a nation that arose from a need of the soul, the need for a Patria, and from the most sublime idea ever conceived in the West: the idea of Liberty married to the idea of Equality. It is a special country also because this happened when the idea of Liberty was not in fashion. The idea of Equality, even less. Only certain philosophers called Muminists or Enlighteners spoke about these things, at that time. Only an enormous and expensive book in seventeen volumes (which with the eighteen Tables-volumes would become thirty-five) published in France under the direction of a certain Diderot and of a certain
D’Alernbert, (the one called Encyclopedie, Universal Dictionary of Art and Science), explained those concepts. And apart from the intellectuals, apart from the aristocrats who had the money to buy the seventeen then thirty-five volumes of the Big Expensive Book or the books which had inspired it, who knew about Illuminism or Enlightenment at that time?
Who fought for the sublime idea? Not even the revolutionaries of the French Revolution, given the fact that the French Revolution started in 1789. Meaning, fifteen years after the American Revolution which started in 1776 but had blossomed in 1774. (A detail that the anti-American leftists always seem to forget or pretend to forget).
But, above all, America is a special country because the idea of Liberty married to the idea of Equality was understood by peasants who were mostly illiterate or anyway uneducated. Ile peasants of the thirteen American colonies. And because it materialized thanks to extraordinary leaders, men of great culture and great quality and great imagination: the Founding Fathers.
For Christsake, does anybody remember the names Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, John Adams, George Washington, etcetera, etcetera, amen? Nothing in common with the pettifogging lawyers, that is, the <> (as Vittorio Alfieri contemptuously used to call them) of the French Revolution. Nothing to do with the gloomy and perfidious executioners of its Terror: the various Marat, Danton, Desmoulins, Saint-just, Robespierre and so on.
They were men, the Founding Fathers, who knew Greek and Latin as our teachers of Greek and Latin never will. Men who used to read Archirnedes; and Aristotle and Plato in Greek, Seneca and Cicero and Vergil in Latin. Men who studied the principles of Greek democracy as not even the Marxists of my time used to study the Theory of Plusvalue. (Provided that the Marxists of my time really did).
Jefferson even knew Italian. (He called it Tuscan). In Italian he spoke and wrote and read with considerable ease. In fact, along with the two thousand vine cuttings and the one thousand olive bedders and the music sheets that in Virginia could not be easily found, in 1774 the Florentine doctor Filippo Mazzei brought him five copies of a certain book written by a certain Cesare Beccaria: Dei Delitti e delle Pene (<>).
As for the self-taught Benjamin Franklin, he was a genius. A scientist, a typographer, a writer, an editor, a journalist, a politician, an inventor. He discovered the electrical nature of lightning, for instance. He invented the lightningrod, and the piped stove to warm up the rooms without a fireplace. (In fact the Granduke of Tuscany, Pietro Leopoldo, bought two of them for his studio at Pitti Palace in Florence). And it was with these extraordinary leaders, these men of great culture and great quality and great imagination, that in 1776 the mostly illiterate or uneducated peasants of the thirteen American colonies rebelled against England and fought the War for Independence. The American Revolution.
They fought it, in spite of the blood that every war costs, without the French Revolution’s abominations. Without the guillotine’s horror, without Toulon’s and Lyon’s and Bordeaux’s massacres, without Vandee’s carnages. They fought it thanks to a piece of paper which along with the need of the soul, the need for a Patria, concretized the sublime idea of Liberty married to Equality: the Declaration of Independence. <
And this paper that from the French Revolution on the whole West has copied, from which each of us has drawn inspiration, still constitutes the backbone of America. Her vital lymph. Know why? Because it transforms the subjects into citizens. Because it turns the plebes into people. Because it invites, no, it orders the plebes turned into citizens to rebel against tyranny and to govern themselves. To express their individualities, to search for their own happiness. (Something that for the poor, for the plebes, means to get rich).
The exact contrary, in short of what the Communists used to do with their practice of forbidding people to govern themselves, to express themselves, to get rich. With their practice of installing His Majesty the State on the throne. <> my intelligent father used to say. <>. He also used to say that instead of rescuing the plebes, Communism turns everybody into plebes. It makes everybody die of poverty and starvation, it prevents the plebes from being rescued.
Well: in my. opinion America rescues, redeemes, the plebes. Basically, they are all plebeian, in America. White and black, yellow and brown, stupid and intelligent, poor and rich. As a matter of fact, in many cases the most plebeian are just the rich…..
mgoldberg says
Sorry about the double post….. the point for me is that we have so little regard for the great gift that is our constitutional republic that we allow the small minds of the left to minimize all the accomplishments that make socialism and marxism the piddling tyranny’s and homicide factories that they so obviously have been. Only by erasing history, can they fertilize the cultures of the world and sell the utopian notions that continue to erase the accomplishments of such as Jefferson and the other founding fathers.
gravenimage says
+1
somehistory says
People are idiots and it shows. They use the Freedom of speech, which can be *expressed* by burning things, to silence those who support the idea and the goals of the Freedom.
So, Jefferson had slaves. Would anyone care to tell us all, just what would have happened to all those people brought over from Africa, if no man had taken them, given them work, given them food, given them housing?
After the war to end slavery in the South, but not the North, slaves were set free….to go wherever they could, or wanted to….but many desired to stay with their former owners, because they had been treated well, they had food, housing, work….and when freed, they were without all of these. They had freedom and nothing else.
It takes time for big changes to happen in a society. They couldn’t begin a new nation and make everyone fit into it without time and effort.
If Jefferson suddenly came to life today, he would be glad to see that there are no longer slaves…except for those enslaved by mozlums who came here to get rich…but disheartened by the expansion of hate for those who tried hard to set men free to enjoy “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” and their exercising their Freedoms to take them away from other Americans.
People who care about Truth, should not spend any more of their hard-earned dollars going to Jefferson’s home until those who are managing it, straighten up and fly right.
gravenimage says
Thomas Jefferson’s Home Has Been Taken Over by Leftist America-Haters
…………………………………
Sad and demoralizing indeed, but who can be surprised?
I checked out the Thomas Jefferson Foundation website on Monticello, and you come away from it with no clue as to why Jefferson is important and why anyone should learn about him. You learn about the center for historic plants, but nothing about Jefferson’s being a philosopher, a Founding Father, a great diplomat, and one of the first Presidents guiding the nation. This makes Monticello sound like nothing more than, say, Colonial Williamsburg.
But this is the least of it, of course. One would of course expect slavery to be touched on, and so it should be–but this is basically the whole focus of the tour, save for a few neutral points of interest about the house and grounds.
This, from the site:
Site of Conscience
The International Coalition of Sites of Conscience is a worldwide network of “Sites of Conscience” – historic sites, museums and memory initiatives – that activate the power of places of memory to engage the public with a deeper understanding of the past and inspire action to shape a just future…
https://www.monticello.org/thomas-jefferson-foundation/site-of-conscience/
Patriotliz says
The Democrats are Communists…pure and simple, but the Republicans and Conservatives are reluctant to declare it. They stay within the lines of acceptable terms like Leftists or Socialists or, occasionally get intellectually astute by referring to them as Marxists, Maoists or Bolsheviks. The Democrat Commies prefer the euphemisms of Liberals and Progressives. Just don’t call the anti-American Democrat Socialists, “Nazis,” “Fascists” or “Commies.” That’s too harsh. But at least Robert Spencer in his PJ media article referred to the “fascist” thugs of Antifa which is the appropriate labeling of a segment, i.e., the violent paramilitary force, of the Democrat FascistCommunist take-over of America.
Wellington says
I hate Islam and I hate Leftism. They’re both such downers.