Dead White Men 3 : Multiculturalism 2

This past Wednesday, June 22, the Bord of Directors of the Berkeley Unified School District voted 3 - 2 to retain the name of Jefferson Elementary by rejecting a petition to change the name of that school to Sequoia Elementary. The petition was motivated by widespread community resentment toward the Jefferson name arising from the historical fact that Thomas Jefferson was a holder of negro slaves. I do not, however, consider this modest victory to be of any significance when a great many people formulate their opinions of historical events without consideration for the context in which those events transpired.

It is undeniable that the history of our federation will be forever tainted with the stain of slavery as will the reputations of those of our founding fathers who where once the owners of slaves. The question is not if such men where terribly flawed, they were; the question is whether or not the glaring deficiencies in their character should be allowed to completely overshadow their indispensable contribution to the cause of liberty. These Dead White Men, the literal icons of American history, are now continually derided by an increasingly secular society that has embraced multiculturalism as a moral good, an almost religious truth.

The American Revolution and the instantiation of our federal government did not end slavery or oppression, but these events did have a profoundly beneficial and lasting impact on our history and the history of the world. These Dead White Men created the first modern republic which has been the model, the template for liberty, from which every subsequent liberal government, respecting the rights of individual people, has been inspired. It is not just hundreds of millions of Americans who have benefited from their passionate love of liberty, it is all the people of the world who now live within free societies. The American Revolution was that catalytic event, that essential action, which dramatically altered the course of history in a time when despotism, slavery and oppression where the norm.

That Dead White Man, in whose honor Jefferson Elementary is named, penned The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America which is arguably the single most important political document in all of modern history. His eloquent words are the most perfect expression of those core ideals from which all free peoples have derived and sustained their sacred liberty.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the consent of the governed, -- That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

When, in the name of multiculturalism, we ignore these words because they were written by a Dead White Man who once owned slaves, we hazard the very freedoms, our sacred liberties, that these words helped to create. Thomas Jefferson was born into a society in which slavery was routinely accepted. He was born into an affluent family and inherited his father's estate at a tender age, an estate that including a significant number of slaves. Thomas Jefferson was a flawed man living in a flawed time, just as I am a flawed man, but he left this world a far better place than when he entered it. Would that every American, every person of character regardless of race, nationality, gender or religion, could have as significant and as beneficial an impact on the future course of human events as did Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, James Madison or any of the other Dead White Men, our founding fathers, who first gave birth to the very flower of liberty that now flourishes on this Earth. If the cost of embracing multiculturalism is to be the rejection of the collective wisdom, the indispensable contributions, of these great men, then I have no choice but to decline to pay such a terrible price as I would rather spend my last breath and shed my last drop of blood defending the ideals of freedom and liberty that these great men gifted to the world then to accept a view of history distorted by an ugly desire to impose some modern standard of multicultural ethics on the events of the past.

Not since that day when the Christ Jesus redeemed man from the damnation of his sins has any man, or group of men, done more for the cause of liberty than those Dead White Men we know as our founding fathers.