Vexing the Ghost of Thomas Jefferson by Daniel Hannan
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
The FUND for AMERICAN STUDIES TEACHINGTEACHINGa series of speeches and lectures honoring the virtuesFREEDOMFREEDOM of a free and democratic society Vexing the Ghost of Thomas Jefferson By Daniel Hannan British journalist and European Parliament member Daniel Hannan delivered the following remarks to TFAS supporters and alumni attending the 46th Anniversary Annual Conference in Charlottesville, Va. Following an afternoon visit to Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello, Hannan spoke to conference attendees of his admiration for Jeffersonian principles and what he calls a shared inheritance. Hannan rose to international acclaim in 2009 when he delivered a speech Daniel Hannan is a writer and in the European Parliament criticizing Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s blogger, and has been a conservative response to the global financial crisis. The speech titled, “The devalued Member of European Parliament for South East England since 1999. Prime Minister of a devalued Government,” has close to 3 million views on YouTube. He is secretary-general of the Alliance of European Conservatives No man is an island the poet tells us, tradition, and with that heritage comes and Reformists, the league of anti- and as no man, so no generation exists the duty to keep fast the freedoms that you federalist Centre-Right parties in sundered from its past for its posterity. A inherited from your parents and pass them Europe. He attended Marlborough nation is much more than an aggregation on intact to your children. and Oriel College, Oxford where he studied modern history. of individuals who happen to live under the same jurisdiction. What is that American heritage? This is He speaks French and Spanish and after all The Fund for American Studies, loves Europe, but believes the EU Over dinner last night, TFAS President not the Armenian or Angolan or Albanian is making its constituent nations Roger Ream made a remark that was of studies. Well, it was the creation of poorer, less democratic and less the kind that often goes in one ear and out some far sighted and patriotic men in free. the other. He said, “It’s the duty of every Philadelphia who saw ancient roots for it, generation to prepare the next one for roots that stretched deep into the soggy, Hannan has written eight books, leadership.” It’s one of those things that cold earth of medieval England. including “The New Road to because we’ve heard it before, because it’s Serfdom,” which was a New true to the point of almost being a truism, They traced them. Jefferson traced the York Times best seller. His most we don’t stop and think about what it roots of American liberty back a very long recent publication is “A Doomed Marriage: Britain and the EU.” He is means. way, back through the glorious revolution, currently writing a book about the back even before the great charter to the Anglosphere. Ponder what’s behind Roger’s sentiment. folk right of Anglo-Saxon freedoms that What is a nation? Americans are not a had existed medievally. If you were looking His blog at www.hannan.co.uk random set of individuals who happen to be intently in Jefferson’s book room today typically attracts 200,000 hits a born to another random set of individuals. behind his bedroom, you will have seen week from 80,000 unique users. You are inheritors of a unique and sublime some of the histories that told the same The FUND for AMERICAN STUDIES / www.TFAS.org / 202-986-0384 2 minded to endure the degradations of the others. Possessing a chosen country with room enough for our descendants to the thousandth and thousandth generation. Entertaining a sense of our equal right to the use of our own faculties, to the acquisition of our own industry to honor, and confidence from our fellow citizens resulting not from birth but from our actions and their sense of them.” “Enlightened by a benign religion, professed indeed and practiced in various forms, yet all of them inculcating honesty, truth, temperance, gratitude, and the love of man. Hannan takes questions and meets with TFAS supporters after delivering his remarks. Acknowledging and adoring an overruling providence which by all its dispensations proves that it delights Americans are not a random set of individuals in the happiness of man here and his greater happiness hereafter.” who happen to be born to another random set of “With all these blessings, what more individuals. You are inheritors of a unique and is necessary to make us a happy and prosperous people? Still one thing sublime tradition, and with that heritage comes more, fellow citizens. A wise and frugal government which shall restrain the duty to keep fast the freedoms men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate that you inherited from your parents and pass their own pursuits of industry and “ improvement, and shall not take them on intact to your children.” from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good story of how a free people in England the third president’s words tonight. I government.” had lost their liberties at the time of the could fill the whole speech, actually. Norman conquest. He’s one of those figures whose words If only every one of your successors in apply with uncanny aptness to our the White House had kept faith with He saw himself very much as not a present discontents and our precise those principles. If only they had had revolutionary but a conservative in the circumstances. the modesty to recognize that they were sense that he wanted to restore the passing through institutions bigger than rights he believed he had been born with But I’m going to give you one longish they were. as a freeborn Englishman. Or rather, quote. Bear with me. This is from his he was using the word revolution in its first inauguration address in 1801. Here’s a little paradox. This idea of one literal sense, to mean a complete turn But again, as with Roger’s eloquent generation holding in trust freedoms of the wheel, a turning upright of that summary of what it is that TFAS does, for the next, is one which your third which had been set on its head. think about what he’s saying. This is president had very little time for. You how he describes America’s dream and won’t find a bigger Jeffersonian than Thomas Jefferson distilled those ideas America’s task. this one on either side of the Atlantic, in the old courthouse in Philadelphia but he wasn’t perfect. to that purest and most potent form. “Kindly separated by nature and a wide What is your birthright as Americans? ocean from the exterminating havoc Man has fallen. Perfection is not for Well, look, we’ve heard an awful lot of of one quarter of the globe. Too high- this life, and Thomas Jefferson had The FUND for AMERICAN STUDIES / www.TFAS.org / 202-986-0384 3 his flaws. There was one thing that Jeffersonian vision. It’s human nature In a letter he wrote in 1800 to Gideon he was wrong about, and that was the to take things for granted. I often find Granger of Connecticut, “Our country French Revolution and the ideology talking to American friends that people is too large to have all its affairs directed that it inspired. And he particularly don’t appreciate how unusual the by a single government. Public servants believed that there was no obligation defining characteristics and attributes at such a distance and from under the laid on one generation by the hand of its of American democracy are - from term eye of their constituents must be invited predecessors. limits and balanced budget amendments to corruption, plunder and waste.” through to the direct election of In a letter to Madison at the time, he everyone from the school board to An incredibly good description of the talked about it. He said, “It is self- the sheriff, the dispersal of power, European Union, and by the way, what evident to me that this generation state’s rights, ballot and referendum an incredibly good description of the holds the earth in usufruct that one mechanisms. direction in which your present leaders generation has the right to do as it seem bent on taking you. pleases.” That sentiment horrified his contemporary, perhaps the greatest of Your Constitution I said before that Jefferson was not all conservative philosophers, Edmond perfect. His actions didn’t always match Burke. Burke famously put forward the didn’t only serve its his words. I suppose that’s another way idea that there is a partnership between of saying he was a human being. He the generations. There is a partnership purpose in the sense occasionally comported himself in a between the dead, the living and those rancorous and fractional way. He was yet to come. of keeping you free unsupportive, to put it neutrally, first to George Washington and then to Adams. I’m delighted that in this regard, at and prosperous, it also least The Fund for American Studies is So, there was a mismatch between Burkean rather than Jeffersonian. It’s an drove your fathers these sublime ideals and the way he extraordinary thing that you get to pass “to carry the promise sometimes behaved in office. Let’s be on. It’s a unique, sublime privilege that honest about that. Now, I’m guessing I you’ve had from the past. It’s a lot more don’t completely understand your party fun than being The Fund for Albanian or of freedom to other system, but I’m guessing that it’s for Armenian Studies.