The Tree of Liberty
Popular political quotes often turn out to be fabricated, misattributed, or at very least taken out of context. But the people quoting Thomas Jefferson's famous "tree of liberty" seem to have his words and intent entirely correct. Thomas Jefferson's famous quote, originally written to William Stevens Smith on 13 November 1787, seems to be even more
( Read more... )
I read him as proposing, from a statistical standpoint, that its unlikely that a state can be run so completely without tyranny that rational people won't be correctly motivated to test the social contract of their governance. He's simultaneously arguing it is unlikely that a population will be so wise, intelligent, and emotionally stable that they won't falsely perceive tyranny worthy of social contract violation where none properly exists. His argument is flippant and poorly supported, but I think at worst plausible.
He's further proposing that occasional uprising is an expensive but necessary way for citizens with heavy complaints to seek attention and redress. Once uprising takes place it focuses attention and concern on the perceived complaint. If the complaint does in fact have merit the tyrants responsible will be identified and thereby weakened, and if the complaint does not have merit the revolting citizens will be shown as misguided fools and handled harshly. Both are, in Jefferson's view, completely reasonable resolutions to inevitable exceptional situations.
Given that the nation's response to Shay's Rebellion was in fact to strengthen central control in the hopes of suppressing this sort of armed expression, his words seem to me an argument for permissiveness. A proposal that the cure (strong preemptive control that strives to make such extreme expression impossible) is worse than the disease (a pattern of occasional violet uprising).
His famous blood as water metaphor seems to me a hyperbolic attempt to draw a guiding principle from emergent statistical properties of a complex non-linear system.
I'd go on to say I think he might have a point. At present we have a large contingent of would be revolters who lack conviction, a solid complaint, or an honorable approach to their rebellion. History will view them harshly as all reasonable, informed, and learned citizens today. It's a particularly dishonorable feature of their discontented expression that it can serve as motivation for people with actual mental illness to go on actual rampages. They compound this dishonor by denying any ties between their expression and random truly senseless bloodshed. Jefferson's statement is trying to speak to the learned and wise, saying "some people suck, always will, and good people will die as a result; don't be a wimp and get your panties in a bunch, let concentrations of idiocy dissipate with time and ridicule".
It's illustrative to consider other uprisings that are viewed so positively that we don't consider them uprisings today. Examples include:
The MLK wing of the African-American Civil Rights movement of the 50's and 60's.
The Labor movement of the early 20th Century
The 60's anti-war movement
The Underground Railroad
Quiet, peaceful, cultured, effective users of illegal mind altering substances
One might observe the list is light on really violent movements, but I'd point out that there were violent elements to all of the items on the list, but that the underlying concerns were valid enough that history writers were motivated to separate the violent from the non violent and to side with the people who were (more) peaceful. Even if one considers the Black Panters and other really violent actors from the African American Civil Rights movement to be pure bads, it's hard to argue the movement could have been conducted in a way that violent off shoots could have been avoided, or that the cost of the violence was too high a price for the progress the overal movement brought to our culture. Dido with every other item on the list.
I propose to edit Jefferson's catchphrase to something a bit more balanced:
The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots, tyrants, innocents, and fools.
Reply
Reply
Reply
Leave a comment