The Real Thomas Jefferson

The aim of this channel, The Real Thomas Jefferson, is to get real about Thomas Jefferson: to revisit and revise the revisionists, who are ever in the business of “deconstructing” Jefferson’s prose: that is, his letters, addresses, memos, etc. Nearly all Jeffersonian biographers today take it upon themselves to write of Jefferson’s two-facedness. What Jefferson says most often cannot be understood literally. His prose must be deconstructed, and so intuitiveness and knack are needed in preference to logical acumen. It is commonplace to call the man a hypocrite and even a “contradiction.” This channel, then, aims to dispel that myth. Jefferson can be known, and logic, not intuitive and discretionary deconstruction, is the method.