Customer Reviews

What Would Jefferson Do?: A Return to Democracy

5 star:		(20)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

When I was first becoming politically active and living in Southern California, which was then an exciting if erratic "57 varieties" political stomping ground, I curiously visited the leading right wing bookstore in the area, located in Hollywood behind the insurance office of the man who ran it fervently with his wife. I often wondered how he could make any money in the insurance office due to its neglect in favor of concentrating on the activist bookstore.

There was a sign that always remained, while others, often posters concerning political campaigns that came and went, was one that read:

"If Jefferson and Franklin were living today they would be regular customers of this bookstore."

The right for years has sought to co-opt the Founding Fathers, particularly the great spokesman for liberty who penned America's Bill of Rights, Thomas Jefferson, as one of their own. If a liberal dared to quote Jefferson, a right-winger would smirk and say, "Have you ever read Jefferson? You liberals want big government. Jefferson stood for limited government. He wanted to extend individual liberty, not create a gigantic bureaucracy like you people do."

Thom Hartmann has done an adroit job of puncturing this right wing myth in his thoughtful and energetically researched work, "What Would Jefferson Have Done?" The principle launching point that draws the distinction between what the right has long proclaimed and the reality of Jefferson's beliefs is the period and circumstances under which Jefferson and the Founding Fathers who synergized with him, towering giants such as Benjamin Franklin and James Madison, lived and functioned.

It was Hartmann who authored the thoughtful work "Unequal Protection," and this book segues snugly into the same ideological framework. A major element of concern in the time of Jefferson and Franklin, which remains increasingly prevalent today, is the existence and robust operation of the corporation. In "Unequal Protection" Hartmann traced the road traveled in the post-Civil War nineteenth century to eventually succeed in legally constructing an important governing principle of the corporation as a fictitious person, investing it thereby with gargantuan powers unforeseen by the citizenry at the time of America's creation.

Hartmann reveals that Jefferson sought to expand rights of the average citizen, putting him thereby in the liberal or progressive ideological camp rather than that of the doctrinaire rightists who for so long have insisted that he was one of them. At the time of the country's beginnings Jefferson and other exponents of individual liberty were successful in fighting for limitations of time and scope on corporations, recognizing that they were, if unchecked, gigantic octopus-like instruments that would suffocate democracy.

Thom Hartmann fine-tunes his arguments by jumping back and forth between the America of Jefferson and the one emerging today. It was Jefferson, he notes, who opposed Alexander Hamilton's efforts to create a highly expansive national bank, which he saw as a dangerous instrument of control.

When he campaigned for the presidency the High Federalists who linked themselves to the early economic establishment fought Jefferson tenaciously, referring to him as "an atheist" and denouncing him for his suspected affair with his beautiful young slave Sally Hemings. It has been ultimately revealed through DNA evidence that Jefferson had fathered children by Hemings. Jefferson's bitter opponents sought to destroy him politically through his association with Hemings because they feared his steadfast opposition to their corporate designs.

When Hartmann moves the fight over corporate dominance and correlative diminution of the rights of average citizens he shows how the Alexander Hamiltons of yesteryear have become the Grover Norquists of today. He demonstrates how the fixation is the same, whether dealing with Hamilton's vision of a national bank or the so-called free trade agreements that high-powered lobbyists rush through Congress.

Hartmann's book provides readers with the best of both worlds. He gives us a picture of the battles fought by Jefferson and his allies in early America and reveals how these same issues are being tenaciously fought over today.

"What Would Jefferson Do?" reminds us once more of the validity of the old saying, "The more things change, the more they remain the same." Hartmann believes that with proper vigilance, Americans today can turn back the same challenges Jefferson fought to surmount in the nation's formative early period.

Yes, this is a book about government, about history. Yet over and over again, I felt my heart touched, and on a few occassions, tears welling in my eyes. Thom Hartmann has, by a strange accident of fate, become an extraordinary Jefferson scholar. When you combine the visionary mind of Rennaisance man Thom Hartmann with the revolutionary genius of an earlier Tom-- Thomas Jefferson, you get a book that wakes you up and gets you thinking about what you can do, what the nation and the world need to do to stop the founders of America from turning in their graves and stop the nation's turn toward decreased rights, liberties and freedom.

If you read political books, this is one you don't want to miss. Hartmann may not be as recognizable a name as some, but his ideas stand at least as tall, with the added strength of a unique vision that spans the centuries past and the centuries to come. This is a book that will become a classic people will read 50, even 100 years from now.

Hartmann is also one of the smartest, most informed talk show hosts in America today. He's been ranked among the top 100 in the business. His show can be called liberal, progressive, yet it is civil without nastiness. He says it is aimed at the radical middle.

This book is a breath of fresh air in a cynical, ill-informed country. It renewed my absolute awe of the Founders -- what they were up against, the debates they had, the inevitable compromises, and the incredible, living document they came up with -- our Constitution. It makes me feel somewhat ashamed at how lazy and complacent the American electorate has become. Are we even up to the task of defending American democrary? Do people even know what it is? Or what it has become?

This book should be required reading for every citizen. We have a lot of work ahead if we are to regain our democracy. Even for a die-hard idealist, I did find some of his prescriptions to be overly optimistic. But vision is something we need right now!

I have got to believe Thomas Jefferson would be the first to laugh at the foreword he supposedly wrote for "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart Presents America: A Citizen's Guide to Democracy Inaction". Our third President purportedly asserts "You moderns have a tendency to worship at the altar of the Fathers," but "he" ends with a vital description of the Constitution as "a living document based on principles that transcended the times we lived in...a blueprint for a system to endure." Well put, as Jefferson was a true Renaissance man, a constant inventor and unequivocally a founding father in the history of democracy in this country. His ideal for the way this country should be run is as relevant now as it was back then, and I'm so glad Thom Hartmann's comprehensive and eminently readable book vouches for that fact in lucid terms. At a time when the Bush administration flagrantly disregards the Constitution and the ideals expressed in the Declaration of Independence, Hartmann reminds us that we were founded on noble and then innovative principles that once protected the civil rights of its citizenry.

More than coincidentally, Hartmann focuses on why we so clearly need to separate church and state and the reasons why Jefferson was so passionate about this issue from witnessing the ramifications of a tyrannical clergy in England. In his day, there was a powerful movement to make the Ten Commandments the basis of American law, but Jefferson recognized how easily the alliance between church and state in England has led to unprecedented fraud among the judges who were appointed to uphold it. Clearly, the conservative right has been amassing power in more subtle ways today but to the same inevitable conclusions. Jefferson's thoughts on freedom of speech turn out to be equally prophetic, as Hartmann explains that fairness and accuracy in reporting has been torpedoed by the major broadcasting companies more interested in their bottom line than upholding government regulations on speech. The author is particularly effective in responding to the ideals set forth by the conservative movement, as articulated, for example, in Russell Kirk's seminal work, "The Conservative Mind". One of Kirk's claims is that a right to property is a prerequisite to freedom, because without property other rights are meaningless. Hartmann rightfully claims property to be the result of other more basic rights since Kirk's logic builds in a financial value that produces inequity in its foundation. This is a terrific history book made relevant by Hartmann's intensive data collection and insightful observations. It will motivate you to do what you can to uphold the democratic principles that were meant to ensure us civil liberties and individual freedoms. Strongly recommended.

Thom Hartmann, with his impeccable research and unique insight, has brought to life the founders and framers of this fragile experiment in democracy called the United States of America, particularly Thomas Jefferson. Relying often on their own words, in both famous texts and little known letters, Hartmann reveals the intention of those who wrested freedom from tyranny and unmasks the myths of nationhood that we have too often accepted as truth.

Comparing and contrasting our history with the present political moment, Hartmann offers a stunning critique of the "new feudalism" foisted on us by corporate wealth and the illegitimate insinuation of religious dogma into our political life.

And, most importantly, Hartmann concludes by calling us to awaken and assume responsibility, once again, to pledge our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor to restore to America the democracy which is our natural state and cultural heritage.

Thom Hartmann is a genius. Our local Air America station doesn't pick up his programs, and I am just now learning about Thom Hartmann, hearing his own discussion of his newest book "Screwed" on C-Span, from Vox Pop Books in Brooklyn, NYC. Excellent, excellent. Is all I can think of to say about Thom Hartmann's insightful and thorough analysis of history, and what's happened to America, and the middle class, and democracy as we've known it. I intend to get every book Mr. Hartmann has published! A MAJOR PLAYER in today's unfolding world!

In 1816, Thomas Jefferson expressed the following: "If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."

Thom Hartmann's latest book, What Would Jefferson Do?, has followed in the finest tradition of this Jeffersonian statement. Mr. Hartmann has painted an extremely accurate and informative picture of contemporary American society. His writing has allowed us to step back in time to re-examine the democratic cradle from which our nation emerged and vividly see how many aspects of our 21st century culture are at odds with our nation's founding principles.

Mr. Hartman takes on the tough questions of today's America, jobs, education, healthcare, taxes, tariffs, the environment and a shrinking middle class. This list only scratches the surface.

Interwoven into Mr. Hartmann's commentary of our present day society are numerous quotes, thoughts and inspirations by the men that founded this nation and how their ideals can and still do apply to the model of American democracy presented to the world so long ago.

What Would Jefferson Do? asserts that democracy is truly man's natural political state, that men and women are capable of governing themselves through mutual cooperation, understanding and compassion.

Mr. Hartmann also asserts that democracy has been lost in the past and can be again unless we, the American people, remain on constant vigil against those that would rob us of our birth right as Americans.

Mr. Hartmann's book serves as a source of information, inspiration, warning and possible solutions to many of our current social problems. It is well worth the reading.

I have always believed that the finest tribute that could be paid to a book is to say that book opened my mind and made me think. Well, What Would Jefferson Do? sure got me thinking.

All in all, I give this book a good rating, as the bulk of the book contains interesting and useful content. His knowledge of Jefferson is broad, and he brings it to bear in particularly illuminating ways. In some respects, I find the left-wing politics presented in the book to be a little too knee-jerk for my tastes -- his hatred of large corporations poisons much of his discussion of economic issues. Overall, his other discussion, such as church-state relations and freedom of expression, are informative and insightful.

However, I want to jump all over the author for a gigantic blunder: Chapter 7, "Democracy, not Dominance, is the Way of Nature". This chapter offers the thesis that democratic approaches are the "natural" means of group decision-making. It certainly demonstrates the old saw that a little knowledge is dangerous. Mr. Hartmann parlays a small amount of knowledge of anthropology and animal behavior into a stunningly incorrect thesis.

Mr. Hartmann bases his thesis on a paper published in the journal Nature presenting a theoretical model for group behavior. The original paper does not attempt to prove that the model is correct: it instead offers a theoretical explanation of how decentralized decision-making could be beneficial to individual members of the species.

There is certainly plenty of empirical data to support the basic thesis. There are certainly SOME kinds of group decision-making in SOME species that are based on decentralized decision-making. For example, many herd grazers determine the direction in which they will move by an almost stochastic process in which the aggregated majority decision determines the behavior for the entire group. Bird flocking also shows this kind of behavior: without any central direction, the flock operates as a unit. Indeed, one can build a strong argument that social insects (ants and bees, for example) are democratic because so much of their decision-making is highly decentralized.

However, Mr. Hartmann takes this thesis and runs amok with it. He jumps to the completely unjustified conclusion that democracy is the "natural" way to run any society. He completely ignores the many cases of animal behavior that are undeniably tyrannical, especially in the crucial matters of food acquisition and mating. A huge array of species grant special status to a dominant male who "rules the roost", relegating all other males to genetic oblivion. Indeed, dominance behavior is much more common than decentralized cooperative decision-making. The reason why, 150 years after Darwin published, we are just now getting around to addressing the phenomenon of decentralized decision-making is because it is an outlier in the range of animal behavior. It is most certainly not the norm.

Mr. Hartmann's mangling of evolutionary theory is matched by his abuse of anthropology. Harkening back to Rousseau's notion of "The Noble Savage", Mr. Hartmann advances the completely discredited notion that low-density hunter-gatherer societies are benign democracies that eschew violence. This notion has been pulverized by countless studies. Yes, there are some interesting examples from history of cultures that minimized reliance on violence in their relations with their neighbors. But in many of these cases, we learned that there was some special oddity at work behind the scenes that resulted in such behavior. History is populated with more Attilas than Christs. The canvas of all human history, not just Western history, is overwhelmingly colored blood-red. The reason why most of the hunter-gatherer cultures we have studied in modern times are peaceable is simple: violent hunter-gatherer societies were exterminated by Westerners before the anthropologists got to them. And any anthropologist who attempted to study a violent hunter-gatherer society probably never made it home to publish.

Mr. Hartmann's argument is further compromised by his reliance on simplistic notions of dominance and hierarchy. He approaches the problem as a black-and-white distinction between despotism and democracy. But there has never in history been any absolute distinction; all societies have varying degrees of hierarchical structure. The most civilized democracies still have lots of powerful males who throw their weight around to make things happen. While I will not offer American democracy as an example of an "advanced democracy", it's still well ahead of most other governments in its adherence to democratic principles. But consider how consistently those principles are abused by politicians throwing their weight around. That's hierarchical behavior, not democracy. And even the most brutal totalitarian regimes are unable to exert control over the most private aspects of their citizen's lives.

When you think of the history of civilization in terms of "degree of hierarchical control" instead of Mr. Hartmann's simplistic "despotism versus democracy", you can see a steady erosion of hierarchical control and its replacement by the rule of law. We still have a considerable ways to go down this path, of course.

The most unsettling aspect of Mr. Hartmann's thesis is its denial of the very idea of human progress. Mr. Hartmann would have us believe that building democracy is like falling out of bed -- something so obvious and natural that the only reason for our failure to achieve democratic paradise on earth is the intervention of evil people who deny us our birthright. This puts Mr. Hartmann in same camp with Mr. Bush and the neoconservatives who expected to snap their fingers and make democracy sprout in Iraq. The collapse of Iraqi society demonstrates just how hard a thing it is to build democracy.

Democracy is like the Internet, modern medicine, great literature, or any of the other noble products of civilization: it is NOT natural, it doesn't come easily, it has taken the efforts of millions of people over many centuries to develop, and it should be cherished precisely because it is such a huge forward leap from the old way of doing things. Mr. Hartmann manages, in a single chapter, to grossly misunderstand and foully minimize what is perhaps the noblest achievement of civilization.

This is an amazing book that could possibly be wrongly titled. It's a great title for the last chapter, and may have been the inspiration for the book, but not really the best suited title. This book encompasses so many truly democratic issues. It redefines our history and relates it with our country today. It touches on a vast number of topics that help define a truly worthy cause to be an active American citizen. This is a inspirational read for any patriot. Learn from the past and gain a clearer perspective of today and tomorrow with this book from Thom Hartmann.

Thom Hartmann always has new information to share. This book
is full of useful and optimistic ideas. It's as though he is channeling Jefferson for us. His ideas are refreshing and new.
The book builds to a final conclusion with practical plans to
preserve our Democracy. He draws upon a broad experience from
different aspects of his life as historian, businessman, radio commentator, author and world traveler. Thom conveys his compassion for the working and middle class and warns us about
the schizophrenic rise of the corporation as it claims to be
a "human entity". He cautions against ideologues who obscure
important issues by their rhetoric. He draws valid historical comparisons that shed light on our own times. I find this book
necessary reading for anyone who cares about our nation and loves Democracy.