You couldn't make it up dept. no.75: Washington DC cops and Thomas Jefferson

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http://freethejefferson1.wordpress.com/

Comments

[fpb.livejournal.com]

"Tyrant" is Jefferson's word, true, in a piece of writing which, however sublime its opening - and I have stated repeatedly that I rank it only a couple of steps below the Gospels - is, one must remember, a piece of war propaganda. By the time Jefferson and his allies put their names to the Declaration, they knew that they were, under British law, liable to be hanged (not even shot) for high treason. The element of propaganda is clear in the insistence on the person of poor old George, when even Patrick Henry's great speech spoke always of "the British government" and never of the King. It is a rhetorical convenience - it is easier to rouse anger against a figurehead than against two chambers full of rich aristocrats. And if you read Cobbett's History of the Protestant Reformation, you will find that the twelve points in which George's "tyranny" was set out are clearly imitated on the manifesto of the Dutch invader William III in 1688, so there is an element of turning Parliamentary propaganda against itself ("if you have the right to turn out the legitimate king James II Stuart, we have the right to turn out the far less legitimate king George III of Hannover"). As for George's mental illness, which had no effect on governance, it only became permanent in 1808, by which time Jefferson had himself been President for a while. And that it had no effect on governance may easily be seen by the fact that England's policy of enduring opposition to Napoleon remained unchanged from 1804 - when the treaty of 1802 collapsed - to 1815. Were the unfortunate George at all important to the government of Britain, the collapse of his mind in the midst of a life-and-death struggle with the mightiest enemy Britain had fought in a century would have been a catastrophe to the kingdom, but as a matter of fact everything passed off smoothly; because the true masters were the nobles assembled in Parliament.

Incidentally, George himself was so little of a tyrant that, when told, in 1783, that Washington, having won the war, would probably just want to retire to private life, exclaimed: "Why, if he does that, he will be the greatest man in all the world!" A believer in tyranny would never have said that: indeed, if he were serious about his belief, he would have berated Washington for refusing to fulfil his historical destiny.

[headnoises.livejournal.com]

*grin* So you're saying he wasn't insane, and if he was it didn't matter?

Reminds me of an old lawyer joke....
A lawyer borrows a bucket from his neighbor. When he returns it, there's a hole in the bottom. Well, it went to court, and the lawyer's defense was thus: he'd never borrowed the bucket, the bucket had a hole in it when he borrowed it, and the bucket was whole when he returned it....

On a serious note, porphyria is what they think he had, and he had a dire attack in 1765. So it is very possible that he had what they charitably call "personality changes" for almost his entire rein. Honestly, he was could've been pretty normal for most of it-- but random bouts of huge psychological change generally gets referred to as insanity. (This could also be applied as an argument to either side about your quote, honestly--"he was nuts" is pretty general purpose!)

[fpb.livejournal.com]

The important point is that he didn't matter. Jefferson used him as a rhetorical convenience, knowing full well - as Patrick Henry knew - that it was "the British Government" that was the real enemy. He also consciously intended to raise the shadow of the still existent Stuart claim, using Parliament's own claims against them. England/ Britain has, through most of its history, an aristocratic republic disguised as a monarchy.

[headnoises.livejournal.com]

Which was the seeds of the revolution, in most figuring I've seen.