Some Common Ground

First of all, let me be clear: The current corporate oligarchy represented by today's "Republican" party (as well as many of the "Democrats") is a danger to the free world. That said, I like the following article, as would other REAL democratic-republicans:

http://www.friesian.com/errors.htm#note-2

The Left, of course, has every reason to turn against Jefferson. He would have
absolutely despised modern Big Government social welfare "liberals" and
all their works. It is also obvious that the present federal government
would retain no legitimacy whatsoever in his eyes, and that he would never
regard anyone as morally bound to obey the decrees of the sort of dictatorial bureaucracy, with pseudo-legislative and pseudo-judicial authority, that has been spawned in government at all levels. As Jefferson did say [Notes on
Virginia, 1784]: "An elective despotism was not the
government we fought for..."

Since most people don't know or care what Jefferson, or any
other architect of American government, actually said or thought, it is
easy for the Left to ignore the reality of his sentiments (just as the
Right can ignore his Unitarianism and Epicureanism) -- fraudulently
speaking in his name when the fraud is unlikely to be uncovered.
Nevertheless, the more knowledgeable and honest are liable to be
uneasy. A sign of how this can occur comes in a new book, The Long
Affair, Thomas Jefferson and the French Revolution, 1785-1800, by
Conor Cruise O'Brien [U of Chicago Press, 1996].

O'Brien seems to have suddenly realized how far "progressive"
opinion has drifted from Jefferson's ideals. The basic attack, of
course, must be from the nuclear arsenal of leftist rhetoric:
Jefferson's racism discredits everything about him. This kind of attack is usually enough to dispose of contemporary political enemies. Its grotesque anachronism alone would not disqualify it. But the target is rather too large even for this weapon, so more substantive and revealing arguments must be
used. These seem to be along the lines that, were Jefferson alive
today, he would probably side with "extremists" and the "Militia"
movement, i.e. all those (who are probably racists anyway) who are
willing to use force against governmental Authority, even as Jefferson
sympathized with Shays' Rebellion (1786-87) and remarked that something
of the sort could be hoped for every 20 years or so.

Such a complaint is far more revealing about people like
O'Brien than about Jefferson. The American institutional Left, having
achieved so many of its political goals, has clearly come to advocate
the sort of blind obedience to Established Authority that used to be
associated more with the Catholic Church. This is the crowd willing to
chant, "We are the government," even while we are mercilessly
jerked around by every unaccountable and megalomaniacal bureaucrat and
judge in the country. Thus, anyone who, belatedly enough, comes to
perceive that the Constitution has been grotesquely twisted into
justifying just the sort of government that it was intended to prohibit,
and that this development, together with the practice of courts,
legislators, and executives, actually contradicts the purpose of
government as stated to justify the American Revolution in the
Declaration of Independence, now may be seen as "extremists" who simply
put themselves beyond the pale of reason and good will, whether or not
they think that armed resistance is called for.

This is an all too familiar leftist rhetorical strategy: What
they have gained is off limits, but what we retain is open to
negotiation. Thus, a centralized government of arbitrary and nearly
absolute powers is a fait accompli, while there is still a
problem with my remaining property rights and personal liberties.

O'Brien's book, then, is at least honest in the sense that it
mercilessly applies all the politically correct sophistries of current
debate to Jefferson. This would be salutary if it disillusioned
Americans with the faithfulness of current politics and practices to
the ideals of the Founding Fathers. Were the United States to be
explicitly transformed into a People's Republic, and the Constitution
discarded, then at least people could see that a rupture had taken
place. As it is, "moderate" opinion is suspicious of O'Brien's book,
perhaps because the policy of deception and misdirection, intentional
or not, has been so successful.

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http://www.friesian.com/errors.htm#note-2