Devil's advocacy: About 300 years passed between the Gutenberg press and the "Founding Fathers" while about 250 years have passed between the "Founding Fathers" and us. When Jefferson cranks about Plato it's like us cranking about Jefferson. Which we do - but not the way we crank about, say, Karl Marx.

Additionally, the amount of information has positively exploded since the 18th century. The statistic used in those Shift Happens videos is that an average 1st world citizen today accounts more written information in a day than the average 1st world citizen in the 18th century encountered in his lifetime.

So "classics" for us are different from "classics" for Thomas Jefferson and John Adams. Our "classics" have stood against the tide of time for longer and through a much swifter current. Doesn't mean they're beyond reproach - far from it. It means a little perspective is in order.

For example, this is an author using Jefferson as an example of someone devoted to egalitarian liberty, who happened to own slaves. Doesn't make his arguments against Plato invalid but it's the sort of context that should probably have been included in the discussion. Yet we're putting Jefferson on a similar pedestal to what the author accuses modern politicians of doing to Plato.

knawhaamean?