Even before the French Revolution -- and even before the American Constitution -- Jefferson had approved keeping the spirit of armed rebellion alive in America and elsewhere. In the context of Shays's Rebellion in Massachusetts, in 1787, Jefferson wrote, "God forbid we should ever be 20 years without such a rebellion. . . . The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure."
That is something very like a Jeffersonian charter for the most militant segment of the modern American militias, is it not?
fortunately, or unfortunately, our homegrown militias are too tame for the man who admired the acts of the French Revolution.
Conor Cruise O'Brian brings us the real Jefferson, not the cardboard cut-out of popular myth. Read Thomas Jefferson Radical and Racist.
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