If Jefferson Could Talk to Bush

The first bit of advice he would give to Bush would be to say, “… there is a natural aristocracy among men. The grounds of this are virtue and talent.” Jefferson would tell Bush that his lack of both virtue and talent puts him at the nadir of the natural aristocracy, and he must try to gain virtue and talent because his lack does no one any good service and accounts for Bush being, as the maverick president of Iran Ahmednejad calls him, “the most hated man in the world.” When is the last time anyone described an American president this way? Hugo Chavez, the president of Venezuela, said during his talk to the UN, “Yesterday Satan stood him where I am standing,” referring to Bush.

Jefferson would ask Bush why these two men so described him and Bush would concoct a lie that only he, Bush, would believe to contradict them. Jefferson would ask Bush how and why he secured his office and what he thinks he possesses and does that helps and ennobles his constituents. Bush would ignore this advice because he lacks talent and has no understanding of what virtue is. Jefferson would ask Bush what kind of religious beliefs allow his to indirectly kill 3,000 Americans and 700,000 Iraqis, and Bush would not understand the question being completely devoid of a moral sense or the law of the Prophets to love God completely and his neighbors as himself as any Christian would. Bush is the kind of person who would and has encouraged his supporters to display signs “Jesus Hate Fags” which is as far from Jesus’ teachings of love as anyone can get. Bush professes to be a born again Christian but no true Christian ever used his religion only for personal aggrandizement.

He would next tell Bush to “enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will banish like evil spirits at the dawn of day.” Bush would think Jefferson was speaking a foreign language and stare vacuously. Here, Bush would say tyranny and oppression are the vehicles that have kept him in power and that he has used them successfully for personal aggrandizement. Bush would not understand how Jefferson was ever elected. Why should Bush change what has worked for him?

Jefferson would finally say, “The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only legitimate object of good government.” Again, how is it that you caused the deaths of so many people? He would point out how wrong Bush was to have started the Oil Field Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and, more immorally, to currently advocate war with Iran, wars of human negation and destruction, and the continued killing of human beings.

This conversation would be like that between a human and a non-human, but it shows how far Bush has fallen from the level of integrity of one of our Founding Father.

Bush is a constant and painful reminder of the destructive nature of his regime in Washington with the support of his fellow robots, who only shout slogans in lock step to the detriment of the people. Jefferson would tell us we need to elect statesmen and rid our suffering government of demagogues and political hacks.

Finally, Jefferson would reflect on Bush and the neocons and conclude, “I hold it, that a little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical.” He would lead a revolution against the Bushites to free his beloved republic from the tentacles of Bush’s fascist regime and return American democracy to the people.