_______________WHAT DO JEFFERSON AND CLINTON HAVE IN _______________COMMON (BESIDES RANDINESS)? BY CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS (11/18/98)
	I have long admired and appreciated Christopher Hitchens' writing. In this case however, he is grotesquely unfair to Sean Wilentz. You would not know from the excerpt Hitchens quoted, which he suggests was an example of moral cowardice and progressive evasiveness, that Wilentz in his New Republic review thought that a Jefferson-Hemings relationship was fairly probable. Nor has Wilentz written anything about the Lewinsky affair until he was asked to submit an admittedly uninspiring piece for the Nation after the August testimony. And as for the sneer against Arthur Schlesinger, I can't help but note a strange irony, at Hitchens' expense. As a socialist, and as an admirer of George Orwell, Hitchens feels the need to be fair to his conservative opponents. He would not deny the label "historian" to Richard Pipes or Gertrude Himmelfarb or Lord Dacre, no matter how much he disagrees with their work. He has even gone some way to find some merit in the sinister David Irving, finding more merit in his critique of Nuremberg than he does in the opponents of Kenneth Starr. Yet he is simply abusive to Schlesinger and Wilentz. Is it because Schlesinger is a liberal, and that Hitchens really can't stand the Kennedys? For the record, Schlesinger is the author of a perfectly competent trilogy on the New Deal, two collections of perfectly reasonable essays and a still useful volume on Andrew Jackson. And as for his vaunted opinion that Robert Kennedy was an admirable and inspiring person, does Hitchens really believe that is qualitatively less plausible than Richard Pipes' view that every socialist in 1917 Russia was a fool and a knave, or Gertrude Himmelfarb's scientifically ignorant critique of Darwin? (Let alone David Irving's suggestion that Hitler was completely unaware of the outbreak of the Holocaust?) Describing doubters of the Jefferson-Hemings liaison as gullible fools would be more just if Hitchens did not have the advantage of 20-20 hindsight. It would also be better if he recognized that Joseph Ellis is in fact a fierce critic of Jefferson and not a gullible apologist. But consider the facts. Several decades after Jefferson's death, his white and black relations offer differing accounts of who was the father of Sally Hemings' children. Given the almost complete absence of contemporary evidence, most historians find the white relatives more credible. Taking aside obvious racial prejudice, it has to be said that Jefferson's white descendants knew Jefferson personally and his black ones did not. And historians like Dumas Malone did have the opportunity to read Jefferson's correspondence and that of his friends. Was it really so dilatory of him to say an affair did not happen? Hitchens seems to be unaware of the irony that of all the founding fathers it is the most radical one who has been the scapegoat for the spread of slavery, while Washington, Adams, Hamilton and Madison get off unscathed. In his book "Race and Revolution," Gary Nash points out that the best time for slavery to have been abolished was not in 1801, but in 1789, but it was circumvented by federalist horse-trading and a guiding concern for property rights. A better sense of historical judgment, and reading the works of actually existing historians, would do Hitchens' column a world of good. -- Paul Notley What is Christopher Hitchens' point? Toni Morrison did say "Clinton is our first black President, the first to come from a broken home, the alcoholic mother, the under-the-bridge shadows of our ranking systems" (in the New Yorker). Why does he condemn Arthur Miller for repeating it? Does Hitchens not want to understand? Moreover, it was perfectly reasonable to doubt the Sally Hemings story. After all, there is more than one African-American family with a long, convincing, oral tradition of being descended from Jefferson, and these other oral traditions are now proven untrue by the same DNA methods. It is interesting and amazing that one of them is true. But to pretend that we are not surprised to have it verified is hypocritical, I think. -- Dr. Robert M. Johnson Detroit
_______________HISTORIOGRAPHIC REVISIONISM BY CHRISTOPHER SHEA (11/18/98)
	Great article by Christopher Shea. The Jefferson "experts" sit on a pedestal as most "experts" do. At the end of the day, they are just as motivated by prejudice and subjective thinking as everyone else. No, they're not going to admit it. They enjoy safe comfortable lives. Let's see, there were experts on Vietnam. Experts on China. Experts on the Asian miracle. Experts on why Japan would take over the world economy. Why should these Jefferson experts be any different? -- Harris Gaffin Although Eugene Foster himself recognizes that his tests do not absolutely resolve the issue, much is made of the fact that DNA evidence now seems to confirm the stories of Thomas Jefferson's relationship with Sally Hemings. But let's just say it's all true, that Jefferson did have a long relationship her, and fathered children. What exactly does this prove? I keep hearing the word "hypocrisy" thrown around, but to what effect? Say he was a hypocrite. Does that mean that we are not all entitled to equal rights? That a government which violates rights actually is legitimate? That the university he founded should be dissolved? The whole thing is so childish. All the Jefferson-bashers sound like gloating children saying, "Toldja so!" But so what? The hypocrisy charge is a textbook ad hominem fallacy. Even if he didn't live up to the standards he wrote about, they're good standards! But perhaps these people are actually more interested in a fashionable trashing of enlightenment dogmas like individual rights. Calling someone a hypocrite is not evidence that his work is flawed. Jefferson's critics cannot use this sort of fallacious ad hominem to rebut his work, whether the charge is true or false. The rebellion against Great Britain was justified for all the reasons Jefferson articulated, and he articulated them very eloquently and persuasively. No character flaw which might be discovered can change that. -- Dr. A.J. Skoble West Point, N.Y. N E X T+P A G E+| Clinton, Starr and perjury