Today is Thomas Jefferson’s birthday, and the good folks at Virginia Virtucon touch on a subject that riles me up every time it’s mentioned — the Democrat-Republicans and the high-handed attempts by liberals to claim Jefferson as their own:
U2 frontman Bono said of the song ‘Helter Skelter,’ ‘This is a song Charles Manson stole from the Beatles. We’re stealing it back.’ It’s time for us to do the same thing. ‘This is a great political philospher the Democrats stole from American history. We’re stealing him back.’
Most Democrats would draw a line from Jefferson to Andrew Jackson, the most despicable president in American history.
It’s an impossible line to draw. For starters, the Jeffersonians called themselves Republicans and were only labelled “Democrats” as a slur by their more Federalist-minded friends up north. To be a Democrat was to placate oneself to the mob, while to be a Federalist was to maintain the order of the old planter aristocracy.
Jefferson and his allies would have none of that. The defended the idea of the Republic, states rights, and a firm belief in emancipating the farmer from the yoke of old sentiments of English tyrrany and social order.
The Democrat-Republicans invariably dissolved in the 1820’s after a succession of Whig victories. In many ways, their mission had been accomplished, but there has been no hasty beat to try to connect the Jeffersonians of 1800 and the Jacksonian Democrats of 1824, especially by liberals desperate for a Founding Father to epitomize.
I have a thought on this.
Consider the dynamics of the Election of 1800. Here you have a scenario familiar to most of us today – cities vs. towns. The Federalists in Boston wanted one thing, the Republicans in Virginia and in the Western Territories fought for another.
Let’s review some pivotal elections:
Cities:
1800: Adams – Federalist
1824: Adams – Federalist
1860: Lincoln – Republican
1896: McKinley – Republican
1960: Kennedy – Democrat
1980: Carter – Democrat
1992: Clinton – Democrat
2000: Gore – Democrat
2004: Kerry – Democrat
Towns:
1800: Jefferson – Democratic/Republican
1824: Jackson – Democrat
1860: Breckinridge – Democrat
1896: Bryan – Democrat
1960: Nixon – Republican
1980: Reagan – Republican
1992: Bush – Republican
2000: Bush – Republican
2004: Bush – Republican
Now I show this not so much to draw a line between which political parties may or may not have the best interests of rural or urban communities at heart. But it was Jefferson himself who believed that cities held a destructive capacity on the human spirit.
Rather than draw those lines myself, I’d hypothesize that the people themselves know whom the heir to Jeffersonian ideas roughly are. To date, that mantle rests squarely with the Republican Party.
What’s interesting to note is the turnover between Democrats and Republicans during the 1960’s. What was the catalyst? The advent of the Baby Boomers and the free-wheeling 1960’s? The end of segregation in the South? The “silent majority” that Nixon spoke about?
I don’t have those answers, but I can say that rural America – the beating heart of Jeffersonian ideals – is consistently choosing one party over another. Given that, it’s not terribly difficult to argue that Republicans hold Jeffersonian ideals closer to their hearts than our cousins on the left.