Almost always, the posts on this site will analyze whether or not somebody is a hypocrite.
Not this time.
Thomas Jefferson is nearly universally recognized as a hypocrite on the slavery issue.
From his earliest writings, through the documents relating to the establishment of the United States, through his Presidency and his post Presidency, Thomas Jefferson denounced slavery on moral and ethical grounds.
Yet, not only did he have slaves, he also put advertisements in the newspaper to have run away slaves returned, he hired overseers to minimize unruly slave behavior knowing these overseers were inclined to violence, etc.
The historical question is "Why?". There have been three or four hypotheses for this. The one most favorable to Jefferson is that he sincerely believed that emancipation should be gradual to avoid problems for slaveowners, free farmers, slaves, etc. The least favorable to Jefferson is that he compartmentalized his moral position into a very small part of his thinking.
The book, whose cover is above, seems to propose that Jefferson was seduced or overwhelmed by his economic interests. Per the books reviews, Jefferson had a number of major business problems as well as many cost overruns developing Monticello. His slaves provided the economic basis for a steady income (including income from selling slaves) and without that he couldn't have continued to build out the estate.
The amazon site for the book is here.
I haven't had a lot of comments about the 2012 Presidential election because there is so much material that its actually depressing. But this time it was worth doing because of an oddity.
Back in 2007, then Senator Obama was addressing a mostly black audience in SE Virginia. During the speech, he implied that the Bush administration's refusal to submit a waiver of the Stafford Act (a requirement for a local contribution) to Congress, was racist. This referred to the case of the the salvage and reconstruction of New Orleans, after Hurricane Katrina. Some people, in 2012, are accusing then Senator of using racially provocative language and racially provocative slang in the course of that speech.
The racist issue doesn't concern this post. What concerns the post is that, a short time before the speech (about a week before in fact), the Stafford issue had come up in the Senate and, then Senator Obama had voted against granting a Stafford Act waiver. The waiver was approved anyway.
Sounds like hypocrisy.
But its not.
The reason it is not hypocrisy is because of the complexity of legislation. The bill that contained the Stafford Act waiver also contained funding for Operation Iraqi Freedom (which Obama and about a dozen Democrats opposed enough to vote against the combined bill).
CSMonitor story on the reappearance of the 2007 speech is here.
A discussion of the 2007 legislation, including the complexity is here.
A listing of the vote on the 2007 legislation is here.
