Tuesday, July 25th, 2006...6:59 pm
Further Proof of this Blog’s Growing Influence on Arizona Politics and, If I May Humbly Say, Western Civilization
Regular readers of this blog may remember a July 7th entry entitled “J. D. Hayworth Needs to Pick Better Heroes”
Check this out: on July 14th, the Jewish News of Greater Phoenix ran an editorial with the following sentence:
We’re not saying that Hayworth is anti-Semitic - only that he should choose his heroes more carefully.
Then today, E. J. Montini writes a column entitled, guess what, “Should Hayworth Choose His Heroes More Carefully?”
And do I get an ounce of credit? No.
Anyhow, the interesting thing for me is the comments of J. D. Hayworth’s co-author, Joseph J. Eule:
If Henry Ford is off limits on Americanization, Thomas Jefferson must likewise be off limits on liberty because he owned slaves. I hope we haven’t reached the point where Thomas Jefferson is no longer welcome in polite society.
Eule misunderstands the problem here. The problem wasn’t that Ford was being quoted as a buisnessman, or even as a plutocratic union buster. Ford was being praised for his views on “Americanization,” a term that Hayworth chooses to associate with Ford’s definition of that word. Ford’s “Americanization” was closely associated with his anti-semitism; they were in fact, inseparable in his mind. To borrow Eule’s metaphor, we can admire Jefferson’s stirring words on the liberty and dignity of the individual, but, like Ford’s anti-semetic views, his views on slavery are unwelcome in polite society.
By the way, instead of apologizing, or even clarifying his views on Ford, Hayworth chose to accuse the writers of the Jewish News article of a political hack job. Typical J. D.
4 Comments
July 25th, 2006 at 9:54 pm
Oh c’mon, tedski.
Don’t you know that having a lobotomy means never having to say you’re sorry?
July 25th, 2006 at 10:37 pm
Tedski - getting credit isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be - I was quoted in a Hayworth press release. Ugh.
July 26th, 2006 at 1:20 am
did he tell you that he had to agree to disagree?
July 26th, 2006 at 9:07 am
Actually, Jefferson’s views on slavery were surprisingly enlightened. As a representative of Virginia, he recognized both the hard fact that the southern economy was largely built on slavery, and that the matter of slavery was a major unsolved problem and with the rest of the founding fathers he wrestled with it, and they collectively made half steps towards abolition, such as banning the importation of slaves after 1808. The goal of course was a single union and they hoped that the problem of slavery could be put off and eventually solved at a later date (as it eventually was, because the superb system which they designed has failed exactly once– and ultimately over the matter of slavery).
Jefferson’s writings on the inherent contradiction of trying to build a better and more free society when slavery existed show a man who was perplexed with what he considered an unsolvable problem. He recognized that it was a moral wrong, and he had hoped to free his own slaves at his death but the debt which he died in prevented it.
However, Jefferson should not be considered as, for example, George Washington or Andrew Jackson, early Presidents who saw nothing wrong with slavery and believed that it would exist as a permanent institution.
Leave a Reply