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Rayelan, I understand your annoyance that a posting about Thomas Jefferson's alleged dalliance with a slave named Sally Hemmings triggered a thread that quickly departed from the subject. The time it takes his portrait to load on your front page (sigh) is a measure of how important you felt it was.
But in a serendipitous fashion that annoying thread turned into a reasoned and well-mannered dialog about freedom of speech versus responsibility for one's words. So if the lead post was about Thomas Jefferson, the thread quickly bypassed what some of us thought was ethno-hatred, and centered on a topic quite dear to the man regarded as the Father of or Bill of Rights.
We also discovered that Zapper is not that jug-eared bouncer in your neighborhood dive, beady eyes moving everywhere, brass knuckles in his pocket. Z revealed himself through this dialog as one who takes his job with military seriousness, but who also modulates it with sensitivity, and with a deep reluctance to interfere with free expression. Someone it was once fashionable to call a "good American." I think even Mark would agree.
So I don't think it was a total "Off Topic" thread at all. Sure, it detracted from the question of whether Tom was a mescegenating philanderer (I for one do not care; but I can see the dark propaganda value in asserting he slept with black women). Yet in the end it was in perfect harmony with the spirit of the man.
When you share a dream with others, you have to let them run with it, and they will sometimes take it places you never imagined, so you will hardly recognize it.
Love,
oliver
BTW, it's a very handsome portrait!
Serving Freedom
and Liberty Worldwide since 1996
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