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Self in Society Roundup 71
Jefferson against slavery, prayer and Bible reading in schools, Trump's corruption, gay marriage, and more.
by Ari Armstrong, Copyright © 2026
Jefferson Against Slavery
Yes, Jefferson was a slave holder. Yes, Jefferson repeatedly raped and impregnated one of his slaves. Yes, that's all horrible. Nevertheless, at some level Jefferson raged against slavery. Unfortunately, the part of Jefferson's Declaration against slavery was cut. Here is that language:
He [the king] has waged 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 him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. This piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the Christian king of Great Britain. determined to keep open a market where men should be bought & sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce: and that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished die, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, by murdering the people upon whom he also obtruded them; thus paying off former crimes committed against the liberties of one people, with crimes which he urges them to commit against the lives of another.
Jefferson here neglects to mention that the American colonists held the black slaves in question by force. Offering black people their freedom if they fought for the Crown might have been partly cynical, but at least the British government, in fact, freed the people in question, insofar as it could. The American colonists could have offered to free their slaves, they just didn't.
Yet, at least, here we have Jefferson recognizing the horrific evil of slavery. This does not buy him absolution—if anything, the text reinforces that Jefferson knew bloody well that what he was doing was very wrong—but he does get some credit for at least recognizing a great evil. It's a shame the leaders of the young nation-in-progress did not fully take their own principles seriously.
And at least the general principle was preserved, if less directly, in the famous final language of the Declaration. In the end, Jefferson's text played a large role in the abolition of slavery.
The Constitution Center has out a collection of essays on the Declaration, recorded to video based on a book. Jane Kamensky discusses Jefferson's cut passage.
Education Updates
Gifted Education: I have long disliked the term "gifted" to refer to academically adept students, as I prefer to find a person's unique gifts, whatever those may be. But let's ignore the terminology and grant that some students are "naturally" much more comfortable with academic and intellectual pursuits. Matthew Yglesias's concern with "gifted education" is that it often doesn't much help gifted students.
Teacher Merit Pay: Matt Barnum: It seems to work at least sometimes, "particularly when paired with additional resources."
AI and Motivation: Jenny Anderson and Mike Goldstein: "Khanmigo, like so many other ed-tech tools, has floundered because it hasn’t solved the challenge at the center of education: How do you motivate students to experience the discomfort of learning something new?"
Standardized Tests: Idrees Kahloon: "Actually, the SAT Was Necessary After All." Meagan O'Rourke: "More Than 1,000 University of California Professors Want Standardized Tests Back."
Prayer in Schools: Pew via Mehta: Although at the top level Americans oppose prayer in schools 53-46%, if you dig down 53% say "teachers should be allowed to lead their classes in prayer but only if students are NOT required to participate," while an additional 8% say students should be required to participate in prayer. Of course this is ridiculous; will any prayer do, say, a prayer to Satan? Also, a slim majority favors posting the 10 Commandments in classrooms. Now, in a free market, individual schools would be able to decide such policies. But, in today's context, such poll results indicate a dangerous indulgence of religious ideology by force.
Bible Reading in Texas Schools: Also: "Texas just made Bible reading mandatory in public schools." Although there's nothing wrong per se with students reading historically important religious texts, the Texas effort obviously was about promoting Protestant Christianity. That said, a few passages of the Bible appear on a lengthy list that also includes many other works. It's hard to argue that the Bible passages in question are inappropriate in an educational setting.
Bad Teachers: ProPublica: "California Teacher Previously Fired for Sexual Harassment Is No Longer in the Classroom After New Complaints."
Homeschool Results: Brian D. Ray: The bulk of the evidence suggests homeschooled students have at least as good of academic outcomes. However, there are a lot of limits to the research.
Quick Takes
$2 Billion: NYT: Trump has "pulled in" at least that much in his second term, especially from his "crypto businesses." "Unprecedented profiteering." I don't think Trump is the most morally repugnant president of all time—Andrew Jackson at least probably would beat him—but he may be the most corrupt.
Birthright Citizenship: Ilya Somin opines. In a sane world Somin would sit on the Supreme Court.
Thompson's Betrayal of Legal Equality: How embarrassing for the Objectivist movement. Not only does historian C. Bradley Thompson pepper his newsletter with unreliable links to conspiracy-mongering sites, now he has condemned gay marriage on the ridiculous grounds that it's somehow akin to "inter-species" marriage and is not "metaphysical," proving only that some Objectivists at their worst throw around Objectivist-sounding language without having a clue what it means.
MRNA Vaccines: Safe and effective. (Which we already knew.) What's more: "Covid vaccination cut risk of adverse heart events." Also: "The Shingles Vaccine Reduces Dementia." The shingles vaccine absolutely sucked for me, but I'm glad I got it, as shingles can be horrible.
Sunscreen: The U.S. finally is getting new types.
The Venezuelans: Some of us get lucky in life, others not so much. Gisela Salomon: "More than 100 people just deported from the United States were being held in a hotel when earthquakes struck Venezuela, setting off a scramble to find survivors and bodies buried in the rubble, according to survivors." Heartbreaking. Of course this is not only about luck; I think the U.S. should have allowed in many more people from Venezuela.
Magness on Slobodian on Mises: Phillip Magness convincingly argues that, in Hayek's Bastards, Quinn Slobodian substantially misquotes Mises. But ChatGPT notices, "The article addresses only one component of [the work]. The book's broader argument about later libertarian figures such as Murray Rothbard, Hans-Hermann Hoppe, and others is largely untouched." Undoubtedly much of the modern "libertarian" movement has associated itself with alt-right politics; this is no secret.
Adalja on Disease: In discussing Ebola, measles, and avian flu, Amesh Adalja writes, "Three of the biggest stories this week share the same shape: an outbreak outrunning the response because the people who would have caught it early were cut, a disease returning not by any act of nature but by bad human choices, and public health institutions being rebuilt in a way that will make the next outbreak harder to handle." More on measles.
Reason and the Declaration: This summer's Reasons Papeers focuses on the declaration.
National Socialists: Yep, Nazi Germany "embraced extreme socialist policies." Bryan Caplan brings receipts.
Rent Control: It didn't work in Norway either.
Supersonic Flights: Cowen: The feds are opening the door to more supersonic flights by moving to noise-based rather than speed-based regulations.