Jefferson is a fascinating example of how contemporary historical revisionism is invoked in an extremely selective manner. Jefferson was a Francophile and was probably the founding father most closely aligned with continental European Enlightenment thinking. For example, he’s the source of the notion that the founding fathers were “deist.” Jefferson was, and maybe Franklin, but most of the others weren’t. He’s the main source for the notion of “wall of separation of church and state,” which is much closer to French secularism than what either the Constitution says or what the other founders likely intended. (At the time, several states had “established” churches, so the notion that the establishment clause required a wall of separation is quite odd: <a href="https://constitutioncenter.org/interactive-constitution/interpretation/amendment-i/interps/264" rel="nofollow">https://constitutioncenter.org/interactive-constitution/inte...</a>.) The Supreme Court ginned up the modern doctrine almost solely based on one of Jefferson’s letters. (To be fair, they properly understood what <i>Jefferson</i> meant.)<p>Today, there’s a lot of “guilt by association” attacks on various ideas Jefferson held. When critics attack Jefferson for being a slaveholder, they also attack notions like federalism or small government or gun rights as being conceived out of a desire to protect slavery. But they never attack his ideas of secularism, even though they could. Until the mid-20th century, “science” (or what passed for it at the time) was more aligned with things like slavery and eugenics. In the famous Cornerstone Speech, for example, the Vice President of the Confederacy declares the new rebel nation to be founded on the scientific truth that the races aren’t equal, and characterizes abolitionists as “zealots.” See: <a href="https://www.battlefields.org/learn/primary-sources/cornerstone-speech" rel="nofollow">https://www.battlefields.org/learn/primary-sources/cornersto...</a>. (Which they were—abolition among white Americans was driven mainly by Quakers and other religious fundamentalists. Lincoln’s Republican Party was a fusion of capitalists and religious nuts.)