Liberalism and Terror

FOR American liberals, Thomas Jefferson is the cultural hero par excellence, cherished for his positions on freedom of expression and on separation of Church and State and for his populistic rhetoric. (That this was a populism for whites only is a fact which American liberals have managed not to address.)

Of course Jefferson is a hero to many Americans apart from liberals, and his admirers include, as we now know, some white rightwing terrorists. On July 3, 1995, the Washington Post published Serge Kovaleski’s profile of Terry Lynn Nichols, the second man charged in the Oklahoma City bombing. According to Kovaleski, Nichols read the works of Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine and was particularly inspired by Jefferson’s maxim, “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”

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Conor Cruise O'Brien

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FOR American liberals, Thomas Jefferson is the cultural hero par excellence, cherished for his positions on freedom of expression and on separation of Church and State and for his populistic rhetoric. (That this was a populism for whites only is a fact which American liberals have managed not to address.)

Of course Jefferson is a hero to many Americans apart from liberals, and his admirers include, as we now know, some white rightwing terrorists. On July 3, 1995, the Washington Post published Serge Kovaleski’s profile of Terry Lynn Nichols, the second man charged in the Oklahoma City bombing. According to Kovaleski, Nichols read the works of Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine and was particularly inspired by Jefferson’s maxim, “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”