Dear editor,
I have no wish to insult former U.S. Congressman Jay Kim, but I must say that, in his misrepresentation of facts about Democrat presidents as he does in his Nov. 23 column "Why did I choose the Republican Party?" he reveals in himself the most typical of Republican attributes.
It is more than a little annoying that in a piece so-titled, he would first invoke Jefferson right in the beginning, and by the time he's finished, mischaracterize Jefferson, and mangle the "view of history" on the third U.S. president.
Jefferson was by no means a devout Christian, and anyone would be hard-pressed to find overt expressions of belief in the doctrines of that faith.
Perhaps the mistake comes from a distorted reading of the fact that Jefferson penned the religious freedom statements that underlie the First Amendment, but more than a few scholars have opined that Jefferson is as likely to, in doing so, have intended to preserve the right to "freedom from religion" out of consternation over the excesses of that day's Christian zealots, whose ideological descendents are still pretending to all and sundry that it was his intention that the U.S. be regarded by all as a Christian nation. It was not.
The final straw in Kim's piece is little more than a bit of thinly-veiled racism. To claim that his relationship with Sally Hemmings was a "stain on him in the judgment of history" is simply wrong, and wrongheaded.
Only those who find it in themselves to judge the accomplishments of others on the grounds of historical irrelevancies would regard the Hemmings affair to be a stain on anything, except possibly the Monticello linen.
Kim owes the descendants of Thomas and Sally an apology. As for me, I don't require one, when there are a hundred Republicans still holding office who are daily offenders of taste and intelligence, and to a far greater degree. There are also Democrat offenders, but that's not Kim's party of choice.
Jack Large