Thread by @TheTattooedProf

Of course Prager misquotes Jefferson. The actual quote is "If we can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people, under the pretence of taking care of them, they must become happy."

Also, I doubt Prager sees the irony of deploying this bootstrapping language as uttered by someone like Jefferson who, as an enslaver, built an entire life by "wasting the labors" of people "under the pretense of caring for them."

And by "labor," one could also include the coerced sexual labor of Sally Hemings, given that Jefferson began raping her when she was 14 (carrying on a tradition of white Jefferson men raping enslaved Blackl women).

Yes, Jefferson was a polymath, a brilliant thinker who had a gift for rhetoric. He was also an enslaver, a rapist, and a hypocrite at the most fundamental level. All of these things can be true at the same time if you study history instead of treating it like dogma.

(also, he was a shitty president who basically checked out during his last year in office and went back to Monticello to putter around, leaving Madison out to dry while his embargo policies wreaked havoc)

PS-cite for the accurate TJ quote: founders.archives.gov/documents/Jeff…