Thomas Jefferson or Maximilien de Robespierre?

[buritobr]

18th century revolutionaries

[PSOL]

The non-slaver and real revolutionary that embodies the true movement of the enlightenment.

[OSR stands with Israel]

Jefferson Easily(Sane)

[Antonio the Sixth]

As a person? Robespierre by far honestly. While his actions are inexcusable, it's far easier to see the sincere motivations behind them than with Jefferson's willingness to own people and exploit them for economic gain and, um, other purposes.

In terms of political outcomes, Jefferson was far more successful and had a far more positive impact on his country, obviously.

[PSOL]

As a person? Robespierre by far honestly. While his actions are inexcusable, it's far easier to see the sincere motivations behind them than with Jefferson's willingness to own people and exploit them for economic gain and, um, other purposes.

In terms of political outcomes, Jefferson was far more successful and had a far more positive impact on his country, obviously.

I doubt the last part is true. The work of Robbespiere, among others, ended the age of rule by nobility and monarchy to various variants towards liberal democracy, much more impactful there than the American influence in government models in its own backyard. Furthermore, the dechristianization effort led Europe to be the grounds for LGBTQ+ and women’s rights far earlier.

There is, you know, that Thomas Jefferson’s actions defending the status quo of slavery led to broken governance and marginalization of huge swaths of people since 1865, and continued de facto further till the 1920s and 1960s for women and different, non-European ethnic groups respectively. France at least became a more ideal liberal democracy by the middle-1870’s.

[Yellowhammer]

Most everyone in this forum is on crack

[PSOL]

Most everyone in this forum is on crack

Are you posting while looking purely at a mirror?

[Beet]

As a person? Robespierre by far honestly. While his actions are inexcusable, it's far easier to see the sincere motivations behind them than with Jefferson's willingness to own people and exploit them for economic gain and, um, other purposes.

In terms of political outcomes, Jefferson was far more successful and had a far more positive impact on his country, obviously.

I doubt the last part is true. The work of Robbespiere, among others, ended the age of rule by nobility and monarchy to various variants towards liberal democracy, much more impactful there than the American influence in government models in its own backyard. Furthermore, the dechristianization effort led Europe to be the grounds for LGBTQ+ and women’s rights far earlier.

There is, you know, that Thomas Jefferson’s actions defending the status quo of slavery led to broken governance and marginalization of huge swaths of people since 1865, and continued de facto further till the 1920s and 1960s for women and different, non-European ethnic groups respectively. France at least became a more ideal liberal democracy by the middle-1870’s.

France didn't have a large African-American slave population in the late 18th century. France did, however, imperialize Algeria until 1962. And Robbespiere didn't "end the rule by nobility and monarchy", that was a gradual process not completed in Europe until about 1920.

[PSOL]

As a person? Robespierre by far honestly. While his actions are inexcusable, it's far easier to see the sincere motivations behind them than with Jefferson's willingness to own people and exploit them for economic gain and, um, other purposes.

In terms of political outcomes, Jefferson was far more successful and had a far more positive impact on his country, obviously.

I doubt the last part is true. The work of Robbespiere, among others, ended the age of rule by nobility and monarchy to various variants towards liberal democracy, much more impactful there than the American influence in government models in its own backyard. Furthermore, the dechristianization effort led Europe to be the grounds for LGBTQ+ and women’s rights far earlier.

There is, you know, that Thomas Jefferson’s actions defending the status quo of slavery led to broken governance and marginalization of huge swaths of people since 1865, and continued de facto further till the 1920s and 1960s for women and different, non-European ethnic groups respectively. France at least became a more ideal liberal democracy by the middle-1870’s.

France didn't have a large African-American slave population in the late 18th century. France did, however, imperialize Algeria until 1962. And Robbespiere didn't "end the rule by nobility and monarchy", that was a gradual process not completed in Europe until about 1920.

I said “much”, not all. I also wasn’t saying that France became perfect, just better run and a better democracy in the long run after the revolutions.

[John Dule]

Up next: Who do you prefer, Martin Luther King or Joseph Stalin?

[PSOL]

Up next: Who do you prefer, Martin Luther King or Joseph Stalin?

Thomas Jefferson and Joseph Stalin both agree that forced labor is moral, y’know.

[Antonio the Sixth]

I doubt the last part is true. The work of Robbespiere, among others, ended the age of rule by nobility and monarchy to various variants towards liberal democracy, much more impactful there than the American influence in government models in its own backyard. Furthermore, the dechristianization effort led Europe to be the grounds for LGBTQ+ and women’s rights far earlier.

See, this something that keeps bothering me every time the French Revolution is brought up. I had to point it out to you just a few days ago when you made that post about Napoleon. The French Revolution is not one single regime or one single set of ideas/policies, let alone one single person. The idea that of chalking up all its accomplishments (which are indeed considerable and changed not just France but the entire world for the better) to Robespierre is ludicrous. Robespierre was barely a side character for the first few years of the revolution: he wasn't a leader of the Third Estate when it first defied the King, he didn't contribute to the insurrection that led to the fall of the Bastille, he had no hand in the abolition of feudal privileges or the declaration of human rights. His first major stances in 1791 and 1792 were typically on the losing side, often in a Cassandra-esque fashion (most notably his opposition to war with Austria). In the early days of the Republic, he becomes a prominent leader, but far from the only or even the most prominent one. It's only after July 1793 that he really becomes the driving force (so, in all, for almost exactly a year). Even then, we shouldn't think of him as a tyrant in the way that Stalin and Mao would become - even in its most tyrannical forms, the revolutionary government remained collegial to its core. For example, dechristianization, which you directly cite, was fiercely opposed by Robespierre, and it took him half a year to amass the power he needed to put an end to it (and, eventually, recreate his own bargain-bin version of Christianity, the cult of the Supreme Being).

There are certainly good things you can attribute to Robespierre. He took a country that was teetering on the verge of anarchy and provided the decisive leadership that it needed to beat back the challenges it faced from all sides. He wasn't alone in that of course, and Carnot's military leadership was if anything a more decisive factor. And yes, even in the middle of the Terror some important and much-needed policies came out (such as, appropriately enough the abolition of slavery). But again, legislating during the revolutionary era was a decentralized process in a way that's hard to envision today, so just because something happened during the Terror doesn't mean Robespierre gets all or even most of the credit for it.

[John Dule]

Up next: Who do you prefer, Martin Luther King or Joseph Stalin?

Thomas Jefferson and Joseph Stalin both agree that forced labor is moral, y’know.

And unlike Stalin and Robespierre, Jefferson also had positive accomplishments which are worth noting.

[GeneralMacArthur]

Is this a joke?  Jefferson was an average politically-savvy 18th-century aristocrat.  He wasn't the monster everyone desperately wants him to be.  Not only was he devoted to enlightenment ideals, he built a system based on those ideals and followed-through on implementing them with the power he was given.

Robespierre, on the other hand, was a monster who took the French Revolution and turned it into a monstrous terror-state where he just went around killing everyone.  As soon as he died, his revolutionary government fell apart and France spent the next 70 years ruled by either a Napoleon or a King.

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

Up next: Who do you prefer, Martin Luther King or Joseph Stalin?

Thomas Jefferson and Joseph Stalin both agree that forced labor is moral, y’know.

Um, no? Jefferson was a racist and a hypocrite, but he never suggested slavery was moral —quite the contrary. Comparing him to Stalin (who unlike Jefferson, was himself personally primarily responsible for the existence of forced labor in his country) is very silly, albeit characteristically so.

He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither.  This piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the Christian King of Great Britain.  Determined to keep open a market where Men should be bought & sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or restrain this execrable commerce.  And that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished die, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, by murdering the people on whom he has obtruded them: thus paying off former crimes committed again the Liberties of one people, with crimes which he urges them to commit against the lives of another.

The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, of the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submission on the other. The parent storms, the child looks on, catches the lineament of wrath, puts on the same airs in the circle of smaller slaves, gives loose to the worst of passions; and thus nursed, educated, and daily exercised, can not but be stamped with its odious peculiarities

[PSOL]

Up next: Who do you prefer, Martin Luther King or Joseph Stalin?

Thomas Jefferson and Joseph Stalin both agree that forced labor is moral, y’know.

Um, no? Jefferson was a racist and a hypocrite, but he never suggested slavery was moral —quite the contrary. Comparing him to Stalin (who unlike Jefferson, was himself personally primarily responsible for the existence of forced labor in his country) is very silly, albeit characteristically so.

He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither.  This piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the Christian King of Great Britain.  Determined to keep open a market where Men should be bought & sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or restrain this execrable commerce.  And that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished die, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, by murdering the people on whom he has obtruded them: thus paying off former crimes committed again the Liberties of one people, with crimes which he urges them to commit against the lives of another.

The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, of the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submission on the other. The parent storms, the child looks on, catches the lineament of wrath, puts on the same airs in the circle of smaller slaves, gives loose to the worst of passions; and thus nursed, educated, and daily exercised, can not but be stamped with its odious peculiarities

Yet he still owned and bought slaves all his life, without care of freeing them. Personal feelings don’t exactly match his actions, or his support of marginalization of the African population in his pseudoscientific writings.

[Antonio the Sixth]

The name "Robespierre" ought to be every bit as synonymous with evil as the names "Hitler" and "Stalin."

This is obviously not a reasonable comparison from either a virtue-ethical or a consequentialist framework. If you want to say all murderous dictators are equally evil, that's all fair and good, but then I hope you're also putting Pinochet&co in the same box, unless you make a special exception for murderous dictators who promoted capitalism.

[Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers]

Jefferson as we know isnt a revolutionary, he was a Dixicrat and we should treat him as such. States rights Jeffersonians are conservative. FDR flipped D to Secular party and ended Jim crow he was the real revolutionary

[John Dule]

The name "Robespierre" ought to be every bit as synonymous with evil as the names "Hitler" and "Stalin."

This is obviously not a reasonable comparison from either a virtue-ethical or a consequentialist framework. If you want to say all murderous dictators are equally evil, that's all fair and good, but then I hope you're also putting Pinochet&co in the same box, unless you make a special exception for murderous dictators who promoted capitalism.

All murderous dictators are indeed evil. And for the record, I deleted that post because I didn't want to derail the thread, not because I decided that I didn't endorse its sentiment.

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

Up next: Who do you prefer, Martin Luther King or Joseph Stalin?

Thomas Jefferson and Joseph Stalin both agree that forced labor is moral, y’know.

Um, no? Jefferson was a racist and a hypocrite, but he never suggested slavery was moral —quite the contrary. Comparing him to Stalin (who unlike Jefferson, was himself personally primarily responsible for the existence of forced labor in his country) is very silly, albeit characteristically so.

He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither.  This piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the Christian King of Great Britain.  Determined to keep open a market where Men should be bought & sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or restrain this execrable commerce.  And that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished die, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, by murdering the people on whom he has obtruded them: thus paying off former crimes committed again the Liberties of one people, with crimes which he urges them to commit against the lives of another.

The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, of the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submission on the other. The parent storms, the child looks on, catches the lineament of wrath, puts on the same airs in the circle of smaller slaves, gives loose to the worst of passions; and thus nursed, educated, and daily exercised, can not but be stamped with its odious peculiarities

Yet he still owned and bought slaves all his life, without care of freeing them. Personal feelings don’t exactly match his actions, or his support of marginalization of the African population in his pseudoscientific writings.

Yes. Did you not see the part where I said Jefferson was a racist and a hypocrite? Your specific contention was that Jefferson believed slavery was "moral," which is demonstrably false.

[Wikipedia delenda est]

Even though I prefer the Girondins, Robespierre. Jefferson is so bad he makes the conservative party (Federalists) look good by comparison.

[HisGrace]

Jefferson wasn't a mass murderer and has actual positive accomplishments to balance out his faults.

[Starry Eyed Jagaloon]

Do you prefer flawed liberalism or despotic illiberalism?

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

Jefferson was not a great financial manager of his estate.  One can wonder whether he would have manumitted the slaves on his plantation if it wouldn't have put him even deeper in debt.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

probably Jefferson tbh; if we're talking slavery he did far more damage to its viability as an institution than Robespierre (given the Girondins had abolished it before him e.g. Sonthanax in Haiti, not to mention the efforts of the rebellious slaves themselves; and after he fell from power slavery would be reinstated and not be banned till the Second Republic.

Jefferson was not a great financial manager of his estate.  One can wonder whether he would have manumitted the slaves on his plantation if it wouldn't have put him even deeper in debt.

wasn't the excessive personal debt levels true about literally everybody in Virginia at the time?