"The Actual Truth Is, I Was a Racist."
http://www.motherjones.com/media/2015/02/thomas-jefferson-hour-clay-jenkinson
MJ: Realizing that we can't turn back the clock, how do you think everyday Americans can incorporate Jeffersonian principles into their lives?
TJ: I think that people need to be self-reliant and self-governing in the fullest possible way, given the circumstances in which they find themselves. If everyone internalizes civility and tolerance and the respect for other people's rights and everybody enlightens himself to his or her capacity, then we won't need much government. In theory I was anarchist—no government at all. But that requires a high level of education, including public education, and it requires people to live close enough to the earth so that we can hear natural law at its source. The more people are enlightened, the less government they need. But it's not as simple as believing that that government is best which governs least. It's that government is best which governs least, given the circumstances of your time.
MJ: You owned more than 600 slaves in your lifetime, and yet some historians have depicted you as a would-be abolitionist.
TJ: You're asking me to show a level of candor and introspection which no human ever shows. I'll speak more honestly than I probably would have in my own lifetime. I don't think that I should be given much of a pass on this question. I owned at any given time a couple of hundred slaves and I bought and sold slaves, I bred slaves. I only freed seven slaves: two during my lifetime and five at the time of my death. That's pretty pitiful for a would-be abolitionist. It's not as if I were a lonely abolitionist stuck in a world where this couldn't happen. I was complacent about slavery because I grew up in that world, and the actual truth is, I was a racist.
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