The conventional way to look at Jefferson is to look at individual rights and his classical literal legacy. The Declaration of Independence was clearly concerned with rights and liberties. But it is also concerned with geopolitics, national self-determination, an emphasis on the community. It tracks directly to modern conceptions of America.

The latter is of contemporary interest because of the extension of American power overseas. Self government of the people was absolutely central to Jefferson's thinking. However, the imperial imposition of self-government, as is happening in Iraq, is an absolute oxymoron. Jefferson was an expansionist, but he wouldn't see [expansion] as a projection of imposing rule. It would be a natural progression — the result of the tremendous power that is potentially mobilized by overthrowing the old regime.

Today we take the United States for granted. But Jefferson believed the republican experiment was very fragile. That's why he believed that the only just war is a war to defend your own principles of self-government. When you mobilize the kind of forces you need to launch an offensive war, you encroach on civil liberties. That's true of every major war America has been involved in. Jefferson's first Inaugural Address refers to the U.S. as the strongest nation on earth. He had faith that if there were another great war, Americans would rise up as one in defense of the nation, as they had done during the revolution. He couldn't possibly comprehend the idea of a large army like we have today.

Susan Dunn is a professor of humanities at Williams College in Williamstown, Mass. Her new book, Jefferson's Second Revolution: The Election Crisis of 1800 and the Triumph of Republicanism, will be published by Houghton Mifflin in September.
What captivates me about Jefferson and his great contributions to American democracy is his belief in ideas. He believed in the free circulation of ideas and was against people having ownership of ideas. Even when he goes off the deep end with his ideas, he's willing to discuss them. For example, he believed the Constitution should be reworked every 19 years — once a generation — so that the ideas in it stayed fresh. That freaked Madison out, but it showed his openness to change, whereas today we are loath to change the Constitution.

Jefferson believed in the transparency of government. He was the only one of the Founding Fathers who thought that the Constitutional Convention of 1787 should have been open to the public. He believed that ideas should circulate, not be discussed in secrecy.

Some of Jefferson's ideas should resonate today more than they do — for example, the separation of church and state, which is constantly being chipped away at. Jefferson would say he was a deist or a rationalist. He had contempt for supernatural beliefs. He definitely didn't believe in the divinity of Jesus Christ. He thought that was an elaboration of ancient Greek myths. In fact, I think people would be surprised at how anti-religion all of the Founding Fathers except Adams were.

Jefferson believed in the Bill of Rights much more so than the Constitution. The Constitution was only an organization of institutions. The Bill of Rights gave citizens protections against intrusive government power, and he saw them as sacred. That was stated very clearly: "Government shall not…." Jefferson would have been appalled at the ways in which those individual rights are being infringed upon today.

Jefferson would [also] be very upset about the gigantically high tuitions, and surely would be against charter schools and voucher systems, which drain money from public schools. He believed the purpose of a good education was to teach good citizenship, which in turn would lead to good self-government.

Jefferson was the first to say that a president could be both a party leader and a national leader. The election of 1800 was the first with a party system. And it was the first time that power was transferred to the opposite party. [But it was also] a crisis election because Jefferson and Burr tied. It was settled as the Constitution stipulates, by the House of Representatives. And they had to wait until February 1801, when the new Congress met. Bush vs. Gore, on the other hand, was decided by the Supreme Court. Since Jefferson was opposed to the Supreme Court taking on more power than was outlined in the Constitution, I think he would have said the Bush election was a coup d'état by the Court.

Dr. Judith Jackson Fossett, Associate Professor, Department of English Program in American Studies & Ethnicity and Director, African-American Studies, University of Southern California
Thomas Jefferson as private citizen and public intellectual embodied a wide spectrum of contradictions in his opinions and behavior. He drafted the Declaration of Independence, served as an foreign Ambassador, was elected President of the United States, founded a major university among many other luminous achievements even as he inherited, owned, bought and sold slaves, wrote and spoke in contradictory ways about the "problem" of slavery, solutions to it, and the irrefutable inferiority of blacks, was constantly in debt, likely maintained a decades-long concubinage with his slave Sally Hemings, fathered several illegitimate children with her who consequently became his property, and ultimately failed in his promise to free the vast majority of his slaves.

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