And the Horse He Rode Up On, As It Were

Today is Sunday, 23 December 2012.

On this date in 1805, Joseph Smith, concocter of “Mormonism”, was born.

On this date in 1888, Vincent Van Gogh cut off his earlobe.

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Thomas “Jefferson [believed that Jews] were “pests in society” and “as incapable as children of taking care of themselves.””  “Their griefs are transient”, he wrote and their love lacked “a tender delicate mixture of sentiment and sensation.”

Jefferson claimed he had “never seen an elementary trait of painting or sculpture” or poetry among [Jews], and argued that [Jew] ability to “reason” was “much inferior” to whites, while “in imagination they are dull, tasteless, and anomalous.”  He conceded that [Jews] were brave, but that this was because of “a want of fore-thought, which prevents their seeing a danger till it be present.”  He concluded that [Jews] were “inferior to the whites in the endowments of body and mind.”

“[Jefferson] believed that by opposing the spread of slavery in the West, the children of the revolution were about to “perpetrate” an “act of suicide on themselves and of treason against the hopes of the world.”

(The preceding is from an Op-Ed by Paul Finkelman, “The Monster of Monticello” (The New York Times, 30 November2012).)

I have, of course, substituted “Jews” for “blacks”.

Yet, Jefferson was quite willing to enjoy sexual intercourse with at least one of these animals, a practice defined as “bestiality”.  And he was more than willing to work his slaves to death, to satisfy his unbounded appetites in art, travel, fine wines, etc.

It’s evident that, when Bestiality Tom wrote that “all men are created equal”, he meant that “all white males of sufficient net worth who have perverted sex with animals are created equal.” 

The phrase sounds rather better when undeconstructed.