From 1980 through 2001, I visited Monticello four times. I never failed to gain new insights and appreciation each time. The true Renaissance genius of the Sage shines through in every facet.

Jefferson is doubtlessly one of the most complex of the framers (I loathe the term 'Founding Father' - it's much too quasi-religious and paternalistic) and probably inspires more intense feelings both positive and negative than any of them, as this thread bears out. He had the same effect in his lifetime, as evidenced by his bitter rivalry with Alexander Hamilton and mutual distrust of Aaron Burr. He is often the projection of our greatest hopes and fears about how we see America, and how we want to see America, for good or ill.

Much is rightfully made of his abilities as a statesman and interpretive philosopher. He distilled Montesquieu and Locke for the masses. His skills at architecture and invention put him among the elite of his time. He could very well be contradictory, and even hypocritical. He was a visionary, and he was a schemer. He was a politician. He was... human. With all the flaws and virtues of us and then some. Then projected at large by us, because after all, he penned the document that made us these United States. Naturally, he will always have history's sharpest scrutiny placed upon him.

Read his "Notes on Virginia" and witness him grapple with his ambivalence towards slavery, predicting its inevitable demise. His musings on the characteristics of slaves can make one wince, but there is no malice, just the sore limitations of his own time, even as he struggled to transcend it. Being a firm student of the scientific method, he left the door open to be wrong about his conclusions, and that were he alive today, he would see that science had indeed proven him wrong about African Americans and many other subjects of interest. His faith in reason to combat error was one of his redeeming virtues, even as his flaws were naked and many.

The "Statute on Religious Freedom in Virginia" is one of the essential founding documents of our nation. Its principles are under assualt today by the very people he warned about in these writings. We owe his letter to the Danbury Baptist Association for his immortal term "wall of separation between church and state". This inspired his friend James Madison to include this concept (no matter how it was worded differently, to you theocrats out there) in Article 1 of the Bill of Rights years later.

As governor of Virginia, Jefferson enacted laws which broke up large tracts of land held by aristocrats upon their deaths (who saw him as a traitor to his class, much like their descendants did with FDR), prohibiting their heirs from completely taking them over. This was in accordance with his philosophy, romantic as it was, that the small independent yeoman farmer is the future of the land. Jefferson's romanticism was perhaps his greatest virtue and flaw all at once.

Analyzing Jefferson and reaching sharp and strongly held conclusions about his character is an exercise one must approach with a healthy sense of perspective and self-confidence in the face of his formidable achievements. Be careful of what you may find, for you see much of yourself. He is not so much the American Sphinx as he is the American Mirror.