Kinda weird to write this given Pro Palestine speech is more censored, they are more rejected from speaking, the government, law companies went after them, online blacklists circulated to get them fired
FIRE has extensively covered and criticized censorship from both sides on this issue. After 10/7 you had blacklists and doxxing trucks. But I think the situation is different now. The last time I checked most campus cancellations are of the pro-Israel side. In any case FIRE stood up for the free speech rights of the people doxxed after 10/7, including the more extreme ones, pointing out that even literal support of Hamas is protected free speech.
Nope,most campus cancellations are of the pro Palestine side especially since IHRA was adopted. I know FIRE spoke up against a lot of those. My comment was in reply to this opinion piece that framed it as some pro-israel centric issue and basically ignores the most of the other side of more censorship
I mean, this piece opposes the IHRA definition on the grounds that the IHRA definition would lead to censorship of people critical of Israel, so I don't think it's fair to say that it ignores the censorship on the other side.
As far as the claim about cancellations go, here is data from FIRE:
Combing the FIRE database, GPT-pro said disruptions of speakers on Israel-Palestine were 11-1 in 2025 and 10-1 in 2026 so far, so the anti-Israel side is responsible for about ten times as many cancellations.
I can think of more than 10 disruption of Hasan Piker alone, not to talk of entire Palestine stuff. That is not accurate. And that's nit even counting that IHRA means the school more easily rejects the anti Israel speakers before they come at all in the first place.
I don't think that not inviting a speaker because of political sensitivities is a "campus cancellation". This is unmeasurable and so anything you say is unfalsifiable, and doubtlessly happens to people on both sides. Max Abrahms complains that pro-Israel people have a hard time getting hired in Middle East studies and so on.
It told me for 2026 that 27 are from the left and 17 are from the right. For 2025 it's 36 from the right and 26 from the left. So actually for 2025 and 2026 total it's balanced, but now in 2026 is' more from the left.
Nope from the left includes the lib-prog zionists, who are a lot. And pro Israel side uses mostly progressive language for censoring too! Also searching Israel is a bad way to judge this cause it lumps both the anti Palestine and anti Israel censorship together in that table cause most of the stuff is related to the conflict.
Combing the FIRE database, GPT-pro said disruptions of speakers on Israel-Palestine were 11-1 in 2025 and 10-1 in 2026 so far, so the anti-Israel side is responsible for about ten times as many cancellations.
What is from the left then? You are saying that liberal and progressive Zionists are cancelling right-wing Zionists? That's what "from the left" would mean in this context. I don't think there are many such incidents.
I do think that searching "Israel" is reasonable as these things are tagged with "Israeli-Palestinian conflict". You can also search "Palestine".
They do mention the IHRA stuff, which is significant. But I do suspect that FIRE is essentially sympathetic to Zionism. Right now Zionist attempts to control speech is quite outrageous, but the resources FIRE uses to combat it doesn’t seem to match the threat.
Bullshit. I doubt Fire believes that anyone and everyone should be allowed to use the slur that begins with N on any college campus. You know, that word which is so bad, that it is known as the N word. If that prohibition is allowable, the same can go for the Z word as a slur.
If they disagree - I would love to see them have the courage of their convictions and use it on this website. Come to think of it - did they ever come to Charlie Hebdo's defense and print the cartoons in solidarity?
I'm not moving the goal post, I'm just showing like similar stuff to speaker rejection that you said couldn't be measured. They are similar, as in the way we can measure them is similar.
I don't know if FIRE has a database for the speaker rejections thing but FIRE has reported extensively on it especially pre Trump 2.
Yes I know not everything gets reported to FIRE and not everything seems to make if there, and that's part of the whole point i was making.
“As Justice Louis Brandeis famously wrote in Whitney v. California, “Those who won our independence by revolution were not cowards. They did not fear political change. They did not exalt order at the cost of liberty.”
Tell that to Benjamin Franklin’s son. Or for that matter, to Jefferson’s slaves.
Franklin's son was a counter-revolutionary who supported the old order against the forces of liberty.
Although Jefferson didn't free his slaves, Jefferson did work repeatedly to end slavery, in general. It's also well worth considering the following when we consider the meaning of "all men are created equal."
In 1774, in his Notes on the State of Virginia, Jefferson highlighted that slavery was "tyranny." "There must doubtless be an unhappy influence on the manners of our people produced by the existence of slavery among us. The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submissions on the other."
Jefferson even emphasized that society, culture, time and even God must be against the perpetrators of slavery:
"The man must be a prodigy who can retain his manners and morals undepraved by such circumstances. And with what execration should the statesman be loaded, who permitting one half the citizens thus to trample on the rights of the other, transforms those into despots, and these into enemies, destroys the morals of the one part, and the amor patriæ of the other. For if a slave can have a country in this world, it must be any other in preference to that in which he is born to live and labour for another: in which he must lock up the faculties of his nature, contribute as far as depends on his individual endeavours to the evanishment of the human race, or entail his own miserable condition on the endless generations proceeding from him. With the morals of the people, their industry also is destroyed. For in a warm climate, no man will labour for himself who can make another labour for him. This is so true, that of the proprietors of slaves a very small proportion indeed are even seen to labour. And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with his wrath? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep for ever: that considering numbers, nature and natural means only, a revolution of the wheel of fortune, an exchange of situation, is among possible events: that it may become probable by supernatural interference! The Almighty has no attribute which can take side with us in such a contest."
"I think a change already perceptible, since the origin of the present revolution. The spirit of the master is abating, that of the slave rising from the dust, his condition mollifying, the way I hope preparing, under the auspices of heaven, for a total emancipation, and that this is disposed, in the order of events, to be with the consent of the masters, rather than by their extirpation."
In 1776, Jefferson even tried to include harsh criticism of slavery and the slave trade in the Declaration of Independence. He excoriated the importation of slaves as "piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers" and "cruel war against human nature itself, violating it’s most sacred rights of life & liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended [their captors], captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither." Jefferson decried the "market where MEN should be bought & sold" as an "execrable commerce" and an "assemblage of horrors."
Haha “the forces of liberty.” You think it was necessary for Ben and his “forces of liberty” to place his son in solitary confinement where his teeth and hair fell out in order to ensure such “liberty.” Since when was torturing your own son important to save “liberty?” Oh wait, there is Christianity, lol. Ben had inspiration for sure.
As for Jefferson— he sure was a very talented hypocritical demagogue that could express the language of liberalism at the time. It is unfortunate that his concerns for “God’s justice” didn’t extend to living out the values he preached to acquire power. Regardless of what he preached, his actions — particularly violently holding innocent humans as chattel and never even releasing them on his death— preclude redemption in his time; maybe in another life. At least in my mind—apparently you have a soft spot for silver tongued slavers. He deserved punishment; the slaves who disobeyed him did not.
There are in fact “founders” who deserve overall respect, such as Thomas Paine. Jefferson? No. Overall he deserves contempt.
No, I'm just not impressed with facile condemnation of the people to whom we all--we all--owe our liberty. I'm not impressed with people now who rush to say everyone back then who didn't free their slaves "deserves contempt" when those same critics have done virtually nothing--and lost or risked virtually nothing--to help secure anyone's liberty. Talk is cheap. I value people of 1776 and of 2026 by what they actually have risked and accomplished.
I don't owe anyone my "liberty". Its like you didnt even read the shit that you are so enamored with. The theory of natural rights is that my liberty is not given by anyone. It is natural, because I am a human. How grotesque your worship of Jefferson is. Not only does Jefferson deserve contempt, you do, for promoting the notion that anyone naturally owes their "liberty" to a demagogic slaver. That is some seriously unamerican nonsense.
Talk *is cheap*, which is precisely why Jefferson's talk of how morally awful slavery was doesnt make up for the fact he enslaved people. Jefferson didnt even fight in the war. At least Paine fought, and he wrote. And he didnt own slaves. Paine was the real deal, Jefferson was a fraud.
There you go proving my point. You have the audacity and arrogance to say, "I don't owe anyone my liberty." You owe your liberties to a multitude of people, even if you don't know it or refuse to acknowledge it.
Do you really think your liberties were secured by the mere "theory of natural rights"? That theory was around long before the American Revolution, and it meant next to nothing compared to what it means to us today--because of all the many people to whom we owe our liberties.
Yours is the epitome of the facile condemnation that I condemn. Your condemnation is based on the mere "theory of natural rights." You show no knowledge of or appreciation for all the blood, sweat and tears that multitudes contributed to securing your liberties. You show no knowledge of or appreciation for all the efforts and steps that were necessary to secure the liberties that we all enjoy.
Jefferson also didn't lose nothing and wouldn't have lost nothing by freeing his slaves (absent some wealth of course). And it's a bit of a mark against him cause as you said 'he worked to end slavery", so if he knew it was bad, it makes participation even worse!.
See, you don't need to put people on some absolute scale of completely uncodemnable or only deserves condemnation.
Simply put, there are no heroes in the manner people seem to want them to be. Jefferson is a hero in a lot of the ideals he advocated for, but it is also legitimately hypocritical he didn't live a life of such ideals even when you can tell he knew better.
Various kings, nobles in Britain/England laid a lot of the precedents for Liberalism that directly inspired the founders, yet no one considers them above condemnation for any flaw of theirs.
It's fashionable to say that Jefferson was hypocritical, but I think that's not true. He and others, e.g., Madison, were practical, not hypocritical. Their primary concern was securing the survival of the United States. To that practical end, they were willing to sacrifice their principles and their honor.
The obvious truth is that the U.S. would not exist today if the people of the 1770's and 1780's divided themselves on the issue of slavery. The events of the 1860's proved that point conclusively. Some people had to suffer and bear the burdens of slavery, just as soldiers and their families in wartime also always have suffered disproportionately and borne disproportionate burdens for their nation. The people who are being hypocritical are those who pretend that the U.S. somehow could have been created and preserved without any human toll.
Its fashionable to be a pious mindless nationalist. The "survival of the United States" shouldn't take precedence over justice. Even the slaver hypocrite Thomas Jefferson realized that a government that was unjust had no right to exist. You sound like you have been reading Mussolini's doctrine of fascism too much: "die for the state!"
The U.S. didn't need to be created; something else could have theoretically been created. Something even better; if it weren't for slaver hypocrites like Jefferson. You lack an imagination.
He was advocating for anti slavery measures and passing bills to that regards if he thought it was so toxic as to destroy the state, he wouldn't have done that, there were instances of freeing slaves (in some parts due to some of his introduced measures), even in your case, it doesn't explain why he personally didn't free his own slaves knowing that it was bad.
I never said or implied anyone is "above condemnation for any flaw." I said "I'm not impressed with facile condemnation of the people to whom we all--we all--owe our liberty," especially by "critics [who] have done virtually nothing--and lost or risked virtually nothing--to help secure anyone's liberty."
As the Declaration of Independence concludes, the people of the 1770's and 1780's "pledge[d]" their "Lives," their "Fortunes," and their "sacred Honor." They fought and sacrificed and suffered much for our liberty. The liberty that they secured wasn't perfect. But it facilitated and led to our Constitution, Article VI and Amendment I (prohibiting discrimination based on religious opinions), Amendment XIII (prohibiting slavery and involuntary servitude), Amendment XIV (securing the privileges and immunities and equality of all citizens), Amendment XV (reversing discrimination "on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude"), Amendment XIX (reversing discrimination "on account of sex"), Amendment XXIV (reversing discrimination on account of wealth) and Amendment XXVI (reversing discrimination "on account of age").
So saying of Jefferson and people like him that "Overall he deserves contempt" is facile condemnation based on a view that misses the forest for the trees.
"facile condemnation" is cope, it doesn't actually engage anything, it it's so facile, it should be easy to dismiss while actually focusing on the condemnation instead of hand waving with "he did good things here". You are not actually engaging with the point as seen by your second paragraph. I did not miss the forest, in fact i specifically agreed more than ones of his role in anti slavery advocacy. That is not the issue he's being criticized. You don't just add "facile" to something to reject it without actually engaging. Let's say someone says "this man abused his wife" and you replied "but he made a lot of effort in making good policies in regards domestic violence", you are the one kinda not engaging the point here, and kinda making a "facile" counterargument. You are not actually engaging with that simple condemnation, you are just gesturing to a tangential point that is not debated by any member of this discussion.
If you were truly not interested in "facile condemnation", why make all these non-responsive argument in response to said "facile condemnation"..
Don't get why people get up in arms about defending historical figures, i don't care about spending my time condemning them either. But a lot of defense for historical figures always tend to try to make them seem inhuman and condemn any mention of their flaws (or their non-flaws for bad guys). Jefferson was human and this was one of his flaw and that's just fine, it's as nonsensical to try to paint him as an absolute demon as it is to try to dismiss condemnation of anything he did with 'he did good things" as if that's a good counterargument.
I always say, "If freedom of speech is the reason for violence; then we got a worst problem than freedom of speech."
Excellent article!
Kinda weird to write this given Pro Palestine speech is more censored, they are more rejected from speaking, the government, law companies went after them, online blacklists circulated to get them fired
FIRE has extensively covered and criticized censorship from both sides on this issue. After 10/7 you had blacklists and doxxing trucks. But I think the situation is different now. The last time I checked most campus cancellations are of the pro-Israel side. In any case FIRE stood up for the free speech rights of the people doxxed after 10/7, including the more extreme ones, pointing out that even literal support of Hamas is protected free speech.
Nope,most campus cancellations are of the pro Palestine side especially since IHRA was adopted. I know FIRE spoke up against a lot of those. My comment was in reply to this opinion piece that framed it as some pro-israel centric issue and basically ignores the most of the other side of more censorship
I mean, this piece opposes the IHRA definition on the grounds that the IHRA definition would lead to censorship of people critical of Israel, so I don't think it's fair to say that it ignores the censorship on the other side.
As far as the claim about cancellations go, here is data from FIRE:
https://www.fire.org/research-learn/campus-deplatforming-database?range=50&orderdir=desc&orderby=year&keyword=Israel
The ones from 2026 are literally all from the left, as are most of the ones from 2025.
IHRA mention (bare minimum imo) is why i said "most" not "entire" or "all"
Combing the FIRE database, GPT-pro said disruptions of speakers on Israel-Palestine were 11-1 in 2025 and 10-1 in 2026 so far, so the anti-Israel side is responsible for about ten times as many cancellations.
I can think of more than 10 disruption of Hasan Piker alone, not to talk of entire Palestine stuff. That is not accurate. And that's nit even counting that IHRA means the school more easily rejects the anti Israel speakers before they come at all in the first place.
I don't think that not inviting a speaker because of political sensitivities is a "campus cancellation". This is unmeasurable and so anything you say is unfalsifiable, and doubtlessly happens to people on both sides. Max Abrahms complains that pro-Israel people have a hard time getting hired in Middle East studies and so on.
You asked about campus cancellations. I asked AI:
> In the database here [https://www.fire.org/research-learn/campus-deplatforming-database](https://www.fire.org/research-learn/campus-deplatforming-database) of the ones that listed "Israeli-Palestinian Conflict" as a reason, for 2026 how many were from the right versus from the left? Same question for 2025
It told me for 2026 that 27 are from the left and 17 are from the right. For 2025 it's 36 from the right and 26 from the left. So actually for 2025 and 2026 total it's balanced, but now in 2026 is' more from the left.
Nope from the left includes the lib-prog zionists, who are a lot. And pro Israel side uses mostly progressive language for censoring too! Also searching Israel is a bad way to judge this cause it lumps both the anti Palestine and anti Israel censorship together in that table cause most of the stuff is related to the conflict.
Combing the FIRE database, GPT-pro said disruptions of speakers on Israel-Palestine were 11-1 in 2025 and 10-1 in 2026 so far, so the anti-Israel side is responsible for about ten times as many cancellations.
What is from the left then? You are saying that liberal and progressive Zionists are cancelling right-wing Zionists? That's what "from the left" would mean in this context. I don't think there are many such incidents.
I do think that searching "Israel" is reasonable as these things are tagged with "Israeli-Palestinian conflict". You can also search "Palestine".
When i searched Palestine, it had the exact same count of issues and almost the exact same cases because like you said it is tagged Israel-Palestine.
They do mention the IHRA stuff, which is significant. But I do suspect that FIRE is essentially sympathetic to Zionism. Right now Zionist attempts to control speech is quite outrageous, but the resources FIRE uses to combat it doesn’t seem to match the threat.
Here are all the results for "Israel" from FIRE's deplatforming database.
https://www.fire.org/research-learn/campus-deplatforming-database?range=50&orderdir=desc&orderby=year&keyword=Israel
The ones from 2026 are literally all "from the left", i.e. the Israel-critical side. The ones from 2025 are mostly from the left.
Bullshit. I doubt Fire believes that anyone and everyone should be allowed to use the slur that begins with N on any college campus. You know, that word which is so bad, that it is known as the N word. If that prohibition is allowable, the same can go for the Z word as a slur.
If they disagree - I would love to see them have the courage of their convictions and use it on this website. Come to think of it - did they ever come to Charlie Hebdo's defense and print the cartoons in solidarity?
I'm not moving the goal post, I'm just showing like similar stuff to speaker rejection that you said couldn't be measured. They are similar, as in the way we can measure them is similar.
I don't know if FIRE has a database for the speaker rejections thing but FIRE has reported extensively on it especially pre Trump 2.
Yes I know not everything gets reported to FIRE and not everything seems to make if there, and that's part of the whole point i was making.
Bad move there, FIRE. Taking the side of ANYTHING ‘pro-Israel’ is unconscionable. You’re one virtue-signal away from being blocked.
Why? FIRE defends the speech of pro-Israel people and the speech of anti-Israel people alike.
“As Justice Louis Brandeis famously wrote in Whitney v. California, “Those who won our independence by revolution were not cowards. They did not fear political change. They did not exalt order at the cost of liberty.”
Tell that to Benjamin Franklin’s son. Or for that matter, to Jefferson’s slaves.
Franklin's son was a counter-revolutionary who supported the old order against the forces of liberty.
Although Jefferson didn't free his slaves, Jefferson did work repeatedly to end slavery, in general. It's also well worth considering the following when we consider the meaning of "all men are created equal."
In 1774, in his Notes on the State of Virginia, Jefferson highlighted that slavery was "tyranny." "There must doubtless be an unhappy influence on the manners of our people produced by the existence of slavery among us. The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submissions on the other."
Jefferson even emphasized that society, culture, time and even God must be against the perpetrators of slavery:
"The man must be a prodigy who can retain his manners and morals undepraved by such circumstances. And with what execration should the statesman be loaded, who permitting one half the citizens thus to trample on the rights of the other, transforms those into despots, and these into enemies, destroys the morals of the one part, and the amor patriæ of the other. For if a slave can have a country in this world, it must be any other in preference to that in which he is born to live and labour for another: in which he must lock up the faculties of his nature, contribute as far as depends on his individual endeavours to the evanishment of the human race, or entail his own miserable condition on the endless generations proceeding from him. With the morals of the people, their industry also is destroyed. For in a warm climate, no man will labour for himself who can make another labour for him. This is so true, that of the proprietors of slaves a very small proportion indeed are even seen to labour. And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with his wrath? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep for ever: that considering numbers, nature and natural means only, a revolution of the wheel of fortune, an exchange of situation, is among possible events: that it may become probable by supernatural interference! The Almighty has no attribute which can take side with us in such a contest."
"I think a change already perceptible, since the origin of the present revolution. The spirit of the master is abating, that of the slave rising from the dust, his condition mollifying, the way I hope preparing, under the auspices of heaven, for a total emancipation, and that this is disposed, in the order of events, to be with the consent of the masters, rather than by their extirpation."
In 1776, Jefferson even tried to include harsh criticism of slavery and the slave trade in the Declaration of Independence. He excoriated the importation of slaves as "piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers" and "cruel war against human nature itself, violating it’s most sacred rights of life & liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended [their captors], captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither." Jefferson decried the "market where MEN should be bought & sold" as an "execrable commerce" and an "assemblage of horrors."
Haha “the forces of liberty.” You think it was necessary for Ben and his “forces of liberty” to place his son in solitary confinement where his teeth and hair fell out in order to ensure such “liberty.” Since when was torturing your own son important to save “liberty?” Oh wait, there is Christianity, lol. Ben had inspiration for sure.
As for Jefferson— he sure was a very talented hypocritical demagogue that could express the language of liberalism at the time. It is unfortunate that his concerns for “God’s justice” didn’t extend to living out the values he preached to acquire power. Regardless of what he preached, his actions — particularly violently holding innocent humans as chattel and never even releasing them on his death— preclude redemption in his time; maybe in another life. At least in my mind—apparently you have a soft spot for silver tongued slavers. He deserved punishment; the slaves who disobeyed him did not.
There are in fact “founders” who deserve overall respect, such as Thomas Paine. Jefferson? No. Overall he deserves contempt.
No, I'm just not impressed with facile condemnation of the people to whom we all--we all--owe our liberty. I'm not impressed with people now who rush to say everyone back then who didn't free their slaves "deserves contempt" when those same critics have done virtually nothing--and lost or risked virtually nothing--to help secure anyone's liberty. Talk is cheap. I value people of 1776 and of 2026 by what they actually have risked and accomplished.
I don't owe anyone my "liberty". Its like you didnt even read the shit that you are so enamored with. The theory of natural rights is that my liberty is not given by anyone. It is natural, because I am a human. How grotesque your worship of Jefferson is. Not only does Jefferson deserve contempt, you do, for promoting the notion that anyone naturally owes their "liberty" to a demagogic slaver. That is some seriously unamerican nonsense.
Talk *is cheap*, which is precisely why Jefferson's talk of how morally awful slavery was doesnt make up for the fact he enslaved people. Jefferson didnt even fight in the war. At least Paine fought, and he wrote. And he didnt own slaves. Paine was the real deal, Jefferson was a fraud.
There you go proving my point. You have the audacity and arrogance to say, "I don't owe anyone my liberty." You owe your liberties to a multitude of people, even if you don't know it or refuse to acknowledge it.
Do you really think your liberties were secured by the mere "theory of natural rights"? That theory was around long before the American Revolution, and it meant next to nothing compared to what it means to us today--because of all the many people to whom we owe our liberties.
Yours is the epitome of the facile condemnation that I condemn. Your condemnation is based on the mere "theory of natural rights." You show no knowledge of or appreciation for all the blood, sweat and tears that multitudes contributed to securing your liberties. You show no knowledge of or appreciation for all the efforts and steps that were necessary to secure the liberties that we all enjoy.
Jefferson also didn't lose nothing and wouldn't have lost nothing by freeing his slaves (absent some wealth of course). And it's a bit of a mark against him cause as you said 'he worked to end slavery", so if he knew it was bad, it makes participation even worse!.
See, you don't need to put people on some absolute scale of completely uncodemnable or only deserves condemnation.
Simply put, there are no heroes in the manner people seem to want them to be. Jefferson is a hero in a lot of the ideals he advocated for, but it is also legitimately hypocritical he didn't live a life of such ideals even when you can tell he knew better.
Various kings, nobles in Britain/England laid a lot of the precedents for Liberalism that directly inspired the founders, yet no one considers them above condemnation for any flaw of theirs.
It's fashionable to say that Jefferson was hypocritical, but I think that's not true. He and others, e.g., Madison, were practical, not hypocritical. Their primary concern was securing the survival of the United States. To that practical end, they were willing to sacrifice their principles and their honor.
The obvious truth is that the U.S. would not exist today if the people of the 1770's and 1780's divided themselves on the issue of slavery. The events of the 1860's proved that point conclusively. Some people had to suffer and bear the burdens of slavery, just as soldiers and their families in wartime also always have suffered disproportionately and borne disproportionate burdens for their nation. The people who are being hypocritical are those who pretend that the U.S. somehow could have been created and preserved without any human toll.
Its fashionable to be a pious mindless nationalist. The "survival of the United States" shouldn't take precedence over justice. Even the slaver hypocrite Thomas Jefferson realized that a government that was unjust had no right to exist. You sound like you have been reading Mussolini's doctrine of fascism too much: "die for the state!"
The U.S. didn't need to be created; something else could have theoretically been created. Something even better; if it weren't for slaver hypocrites like Jefferson. You lack an imagination.
He was advocating for anti slavery measures and passing bills to that regards if he thought it was so toxic as to destroy the state, he wouldn't have done that, there were instances of freeing slaves (in some parts due to some of his introduced measures), even in your case, it doesn't explain why he personally didn't free his own slaves knowing that it was bad.
I never said or implied anyone is "above condemnation for any flaw." I said "I'm not impressed with facile condemnation of the people to whom we all--we all--owe our liberty," especially by "critics [who] have done virtually nothing--and lost or risked virtually nothing--to help secure anyone's liberty."
As the Declaration of Independence concludes, the people of the 1770's and 1780's "pledge[d]" their "Lives," their "Fortunes," and their "sacred Honor." They fought and sacrificed and suffered much for our liberty. The liberty that they secured wasn't perfect. But it facilitated and led to our Constitution, Article VI and Amendment I (prohibiting discrimination based on religious opinions), Amendment XIII (prohibiting slavery and involuntary servitude), Amendment XIV (securing the privileges and immunities and equality of all citizens), Amendment XV (reversing discrimination "on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude"), Amendment XIX (reversing discrimination "on account of sex"), Amendment XXIV (reversing discrimination on account of wealth) and Amendment XXVI (reversing discrimination "on account of age").
So saying of Jefferson and people like him that "Overall he deserves contempt" is facile condemnation based on a view that misses the forest for the trees.
"facile condemnation" is cope, it doesn't actually engage anything, it it's so facile, it should be easy to dismiss while actually focusing on the condemnation instead of hand waving with "he did good things here". You are not actually engaging with the point as seen by your second paragraph. I did not miss the forest, in fact i specifically agreed more than ones of his role in anti slavery advocacy. That is not the issue he's being criticized. You don't just add "facile" to something to reject it without actually engaging. Let's say someone says "this man abused his wife" and you replied "but he made a lot of effort in making good policies in regards domestic violence", you are the one kinda not engaging the point here, and kinda making a "facile" counterargument. You are not actually engaging with that simple condemnation, you are just gesturing to a tangential point that is not debated by any member of this discussion.
If you were truly not interested in "facile condemnation", why make all these non-responsive argument in response to said "facile condemnation"..
Don't get why people get up in arms about defending historical figures, i don't care about spending my time condemning them either. But a lot of defense for historical figures always tend to try to make them seem inhuman and condemn any mention of their flaws (or their non-flaws for bad guys). Jefferson was human and this was one of his flaw and that's just fine, it's as nonsensical to try to paint him as an absolute demon as it is to try to dismiss condemnation of anything he did with 'he did good things" as if that's a good counterargument.