Thomas Jefferson has kinda fallen from grace in light of the BLM thing, and while his failings and contradictions have to be acknowledged (he often spoke as an enlightened progressive but behaved like a regenerately racist asshole), I have to see him at once as a flawed man of his time and as a man who wanted all of us to evolve beyond the brutality of those times.
"I am not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and constitutions, but laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change, with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as a civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors."
- letter to Samuel Kercheval, July 12, 1816.
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