It would seem likely that both Jefferson and Washington would have disputed the idea of monuments being built to them. Not that they were any less subject to the vanities of life. But it was their thoughts and action not their physical presence which set them apart in human history.
We live in a moment there there are forces attacking these two men and their non-slave owning peers for establishing a nation built on what the attackers deem to be unjust. The rioters, the pampered academics, and the corrupt politicians who engage in this attack do so by attacking the persons of Washington and Jefferson and studiously avoid their examples and ideas.
Why?
Because it was the action of Washington who deliberately released the reins of power when throughout human history, he should have rightfully been proclaimed king or emperor that sets him apart. Many a soldier has won great battles and many a leader has inspired his troops but never had anyone, who had defeated a king, not been proclaimed king in his stead.
With Thomas Jefferson it was the ideas that he marshaled and put to paper that matter.
“We hold the truth to be self-evident” is as thunderous a statement as “In the beginning God” to the course of human history. Jefferson took the instruction of his Scottish enlightenment professors and declared that no man is naturally born booted and spurred to rule over any other man.
But he further stated the defining characteristic of the Scottish Enlightenment, over the more familiar ideology of the French Enlightenment, that truth can only be accurately discerned when it is buttressed with self-evidence and common sense.
Both Washington and Jefferson lived within the social construct of the 18th century. Their detractors say because they lived and prospered within one of the most objectionable of these social constructs (slavery) their examples as well as our right to live in a Constitutional republic is somehow forfeit?
But why stop with slavery since in our own 21st century construct it is clearly wrong for a man to enslave another?
Let us go further and say its wrong for a man to deceive another. Its wrong for a man to intimidate another. Its wrong for a man to attack and kill another. Its wrong for a man to burn and loot what belongs to another. Its wrong for a man to deliberately misuse another for his own political or economic gain.
Its incredible easy to point the bony finger of righteous indignation at ANTIFA, BLM, the crooked politicians and the glittering manipulative class for being as thoroughly corrupt and hypocritical within the social constructs of the 21st century as they accuse others within the constructs of the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries.
For Instance:
Take your average millennial trained to be a “medic” within the BLM movement or any one of the beta males within ANTIFA and use a time machine to transport them to the early 19th century. What skill set would they have to survive? Would the female medic seek out the dangerous life of the early abolitionist? Would the ANTIFA male resort to crime or worse to survive in an era far more brutal then the one he left?
This is why the attacks on the Founders and the intimidation our fellow citizens is based on a corrupt and self-centered worldview.
The fact that few of the nations detractors could succeed, let alone do what right in the eras that they busily disparage (where at the same time if Thomas Jefferson were transported to the 21st century he would still speak four languages and have a breath taking grasp of various subjects) shows how little this ideology and its proponents really have to offer to the world.
To win this war we must employ truth against the nonsensical thinking of those engaged in what can rightly be called The Rebellion.
You must fight bad ideas with good ideas and to know the good from the bad you need to employ self-evidence and common sense.
It is self-evident that the United States as a Constitutional republic has produced the greatest freedom and prosperity for the most people of any nation in all of human history.
It is self-evident that communism and militant socialism in any of its deceiving configurations has produced the greatest corruption, self-inflicted misery, and bondage equal to any empire built upon tyranny and abuse of the recent or distant past.
To understand why a percentage of the population trudges longingly towards such a dismal future you must remember how to discern truth.
A male cannot be transformed into a biological woman, an un-aborted fetus is always a human being, hate never produces love and vandals, thieves and rioters cannot build anything of lasting value.
Perhaps for the freedom instilled into the foundation of America to survive the monuments to the person hood of the Founders need to be deemphasized? We, as their spiritual descendants need to understand it is their core ideas that must be emphasized and carefully passed from generation to generation.
Do not put your trust in princes, in human beings, who cannot save.
When their spirit departs, they return to the ground; on that very day, their plans come to nothing. Blessed are those whose help is the God of Jacob; whose hope is in the Lord their God. Psalm 146
The monuments cannot save us any more than an all-powerful socialist state, but only the clear ideas of self-evident human freedom birthed and perpetuated in the minds of men and women made in the image of God, can and do have the power to prevail over all others.