As Instagram seeming tries to cancel a man dead for 213 years (Tom Paine – see the commentary), it reminds us here at TPOL of another similar evil deed.

It happened more than six weeks ago in Babylon on the Hudson, but I still find myself unable to be even close to civil when thinking about it – the entire affair sticks in my craw.

The best story, complete with pictures, is found in the New York Post. The New York City Council removed the statue of Founding Father and President Thomas Jefferson from their chambers on Monday 22 November 2021. It was relegated to the New York Historical Society.  Why?  Because Jefferson was a slaveholder – or so they say.

Frankly, I think that there are a lot  more reasons that the scum who rule – tyrannize – what many consider the most important city in all of these Fifty States – and the Americas – don’t want the image of Tom Jefferson looking over their evil plotting and actions.

Consider these quotes:

“I am not a friend to a very energetic government. It is always oppressive. It places the governors indeed more at their ease at the expense of the people. The late rebellion in Massachusetts has given much more alarm than I think it should have done. Calculate that one rebellion in thirteen States in the course of eleven years is but one for each State in a century and a half. No country should be so long without one. Nor will any degree of power in the hands of the government prevent insurrections. In England, where the hand of power is heavier than with us, there are seldom half a dozen years without an insurrection. In France, where it is still heavier but less despotic, as Montesquieu supposes, than in some other countries and where there are always two or three hundred thousand men ready to crush insurrections, there have been three in the course of the three years I have been here, in every one of which greater numbers were engaged than in Massachusetts.”
— Thomas Jefferson

“The true theory of our Constitution is surely the wisest and best, that the States are independent as to everything within themselves, and united as to everything respecting foreign affairs. Let the General Government be reduced to foreign concerns only, and let our affairs be disentangled from those of all other nations, except as to commerce, which the merchants will manage the better, the more they are left free to manage for themselves, and our General Government may be reduced to a very simple organization, and a very inexpensive one; a few plain duties to be performed by a few servants.”
— Thomas Jefferson

“I congratulate you, fellow-citizens, on the approach of the period at which you may interpose your authority constitutionally, to withdraw the citizens of the United States from all further participation in those violations of human rights which have been so long continued on the unoffending inhabitants of Africa, and which the morality, the reputation, and the best interests of our country, have long been eager to proscribe.”
— Thomas Jefferson, 1806 State of the Union address, speaking of the issue of slavery and the clause of the US Constitution outlawing the transatlantic slave trade.

Indeed, this quote by Jefferson is just a very short distance from the City Hall there on Manhattan: “Equal and exact justice to all men of whatever state or persuasion.”

We could go on to quote Jefferson more and more, and cite his (mostly) outstanding record of accomplishments in promoting and spreading liberty. Yes, he was flawed – as are we all. Yes, he made mistakes. But what seems to most worry the fat, smug burghers of New York City – those who tyrannize their own people on a daily basis – is that Jefferson’s very existence negates all they believe in and do.

But never fear: this is not ended yet. There have already been calls to remove the original of the statue banished from City Hall, from the Capitol in DC – as many other statues of now-deemed-evil men have been taken away. And calls for the Jefferson Memorial in DC to be demolished. Why? All the excuses aside, it is a simple idea: Everyone who does evil hates the light, and does not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed.

Like Tom Paine, Tom Jefferson’s words and works expose the evils of government and men, even when in the full context of their lives.

You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.