While it may be tempting to call the police and report the kidnapping of a Founding Father, let+óGé¼Gäós instead take a deep breath and look at the facts. Was Jefferson truly a conservative, in the modern sense of the word?
In only one way might that label be properly applied: Jefferson did favor a small, unobtrusive government with low taxes. But in fact, this ideal is only what today+óGé¼Gäós conservatives say they want, not what they deliver. Government spending under George W. Bush and the Republican Congress has skyrocketed, as they throw hundreds of billions of dollars at Iraq, multinational corporations, and pork-barrel projects. That they match this record spending with record tax cuts for the wealthy, sticking our children and grandchildren with the bill, demonstrates their complete lack of any fiscal conscience.
Jeffersonian? Hardly +óGé¼GÇ£ Jefferson hated the national debt and did everything he could during his presidency to reduce it, including cutting defense. He also would strongly object to Republican efforts to invade our private lives, including snooping on our phone calls, interfering with our sexual and reproductive choices and whittling down such fundamental legal rights as habeas corpus. As a primary backer of the Bill of Rights, he would not look kindly upon the work of right-wingers like Bush and Allen to dismantle it.
In particular, Jefferson was a steadfast supporter of religious freedom, including the separation of church and state. As he famously stated in Notes on Virginia: +óGé¼+ôIt does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.+óGé¼-¥ In other words, he was the polar opposite of the intolerant religious right that has made George Allen their poster child. For this, Jefferson was attacked by the Falwells and Robertsons of his day in terms that sound eerily familiar. According to Joseph J. Ellis+óGé¼Gäó book "American Sphinx", Federalist newspapers attacked Jefferson as an +óGé¼+ôarch infidel+óGé¼-¥ and +óGé¼+ôa defiler of Christian virtue,+óGé¼-¥ and stated that Americans had to choose between +óGé¼+ôrenouncing their savior, or their president.+óGé¼-¥
So if George Allen is really going to run as a +óGé¼+ôJeffersonian conservative+óGé¼-¥, he better rename his campaign bus +óGé¼+ôThe Double-Talk Express.+óGé¼-¥ As far as I can tell, this man doesn+óGé¼Gäót have a Jeffersonian bone in his body.