“Self-denial means knowing only Christ, and no longer oneself. It means seeing only Christ, who goes ahead of us, and no longer the path that is too difficult for us . . . Self-denial is saying only: He goes ahead of us; hold fast to him.”
― Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Today is April Fool’s Day, a day whereby folks will play pranks and tell jokes, all in good fun. Holland Koontz has played many pranks on her Mother, some successfully, some, not so much.
One year, when Holland was 8 or 9, she ran into the bedroom in the morning, yelling, “Mom, Mom, Mom! Help, there’s a leak in my bathroom sink!” English hopped up, quite irritated and grumbling the whole way down the hall, as she went to help Holland. And when she got there, she found . . . a leek in the sink. I used it to flavor the pot roast I fixed for dinner that evening.
Today we offer 2 articles. One calls for a cessation of the baseless attacks by The American Taliban against our Founding Fathers, in this particular case, Thomas Jefferson. The other calls for erasing the legacy of Cesar Chavez, irrespective of the truth of recent allegations against him. Enjoy.
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Restoring The Legacy Of Thomas Jefferson
We should honor the architects of American liberty in an age of pernicious revisionism.
BY: Lars Moller, The American Thinker (March 27, 2026).
Thomas Jefferson stands as one of the colossal figures in the pantheon of America’s Founding Fathers, a classically inspired champion whose intellectual and legislative genius helped forge the United States as a beacon of Western civilization. Drawing upon the republican ideals of ancient Greece and Rome, the Enlightenment’s emphasis on reason, and the profound Christian conviction that every human soul bears the imprint of divine worth, Jefferson articulated a vision of a republic grounded in the inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
As the principal author of the Declaration of Independence and a tireless advocate for constitutional governance, Jefferson did not merely theorize freedom; he institutionalized it. His Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, his advocacy for public education, and his relentless correspondence on the nature of republican virtue established the intellectual scaffolding upon which the American experiment was built. In an era when monarchy and aristocracy still dominated much of the globe, he dared to proclaim that government derives its just powers from the consent of the governed, thereby elevating the dignity of the individual citizen above the claims of inherited power. This was no abstract philosophizing; it was heroic statesmanship that shaped a nation where liberty was not a privilege of the few but a birthright of the many.
Yet in recent years, revisionist voices—often self-styled as “woke” guardians of historical purity—have sought to diminish this towering legacy by fixating upon one undeniable fact: Jefferson was a slaveholder. The same charge has been leveled against George Washington and other founders. Critics portray this as an irredeemable hypocrisy that invalidates every word that he wrote and every institution that he helped create. Such attacks, however, betray a shallow historicism that ignores the profound paradox at the heart of Jefferson’s life while simultaneously refusing to situate that paradox within the inexorable march of historical time.
Yes, the contradiction exists: a man who penned the immortal sentence “all men are created equal” also owned human beings in bondage. To deny the moral tension would be intellectually dishonest. However, to reduce Jefferson’s entire contribution to this single failing is to commit a graver error—an anachronistic judgment that measures an eighteenth-century Virginian planter by the moral standards of a twenty-first-century activist rather than by the standards of his own revolutionary age.
History, properly understood, reveals that slavery was not an American invention but a tragic inheritance from the ancient world, perpetuated across continents and civilizations for millennia. By the time Jefferson entered public life, the institution was deeply entrenched in the economic and social fabric of the southern colonies. The constitutional framework that he helped design deliberately left the question of slavery to future generations precisely because the young republic lacked the political consensus and moral maturity to abolish it outright without risking dissolution. Only under the crucible of Abraham Lincoln’s leadership, amid the bloodiest conflict in American history, did the nation finally become ripe for the Thirteenth Amendment’s constitutional break with slavery in 1865.
It was, as Lincoln himself acknowledged, “high time.” Yet that achievement rested upon the foundation that Jefferson had laid: the Declaration’s assertion of universal human equality provided the moral language that Lincoln later invoked at Gettysburg. Without Jefferson’s articulation of “natural rights,” the intellectual ammunition for emancipation would have been far weaker. Thus, the paradox is not evidence of Jefferson’s moral failure but of the gradual, painful evolution of a nation towards its own highest ideals. To erase him from the national story because he did not single-handedly complete that evolution is to practice historical amputation rather than honest scholarship.
Far more essential to the nation’s self-understanding is a clear-eyed recognition of the enormous work that Jefferson performed in constructing a just society. He envisioned a republic where every citizen—regardless of station—possessed the opportunity to develop his faculties, to cultivate virtue, and to pursue happiness while respecting the equal rights of others. Through his advocacy for westward expansion, for the diffusion of knowledge via the University of Virginia, and for a yeoman farmer class independent of both aristocratic privilege and urban wage slavery, he sought to create conditions in which freedom could flourish organically.
Jefferson’s Bill for the More General Diffusion of Knowledge aimed to educate the citizenry so that tyranny could never again take root. His insistence on religious liberty protected the sacred space of conscience from state coercion. These were not the gestures of a man indifferent to justice; they were the deliberate labors of an intellectual legislator who understood that true liberty requires both institutional safeguards and a morally educated populace. In this light, Jefferson emerges not as a flawed relic to be canceled but as a heroic pioneer who planted the seeds of freedom in soil still tainted by the sins of earlier epochs.
The activists who today labor to rewrite the nation’s history are, in many cases, the very same forces that actively sow division and discourage genuine reconciliation. Their narrative is selective, punitive, and ultimately corrosive to the civic bonds that hold a diverse republic together. Not all political forces in the United States work for democracy and freedom. For some ideological strategists, the historically just cause of opposing slavery has been repurposed as a propagandistic instrument of manipulation. Justice is not their ultimate goal; power is.
This pattern recurs throughout history: every call for revolution cloaks itself in moral rhetoric while pursuing control. The revisionist project does not seek to perfect the American experiment; it seeks to delegitimize it entirely, replacing the founders’ imperfect but aspirational framework with an alternative vision that privileges grievance over gratitude, identity over individual agency, and state-directed equity over constitutional liberty. In doing so, these voices undermine the very principles that enabled the slow but real progress towards a more perfect union. They forget—or deliberately obscure—that the abolitionist movement itself drew its moral authority from the Declaration that Jefferson authored.
A sobering contrast illuminates the magnitude of Jefferson’s achievement. While North America has evolved into a society where individuals of any background—whether white or dark-skinned—can, through talent, effort, and character, pursue their dreams, much of Africa remains mired in conditions that mock the very concept of liberty. Slavery, though formally abolished in international law, persists in various forms across regions north and south of the Sahara: forced labor, child trafficking, and hereditary servitude continue in parts of Mauritania, Sudan, Libya, and the Sahel. Political chaos, tribal conflict, and authoritarian oppression have characterized too many post-colonial states, where the promise of independence devolved into kleptocracy and civil war.
This is not to indict an entire continent but to underscore a historical reality: the institutions and ideals that Jefferson helped embed in the American republic—limited government, rule of law, protection of property, and the right to personal initiative—produced a society capable of self-correction and upward mobility. The descendants of those once enslaved in America have, within the framework that he helped create, risen to positions of leadership, wealth, and cultural influence that remain unattainable in many of the lands from which their ancestors were taken. This outcome is not accidental; it is, among other things, the enduring merit of Thomas Jefferson as a Christian and intellectual legislator who believed that divine providence had entrusted America with a unique mission.
Jefferson’s Christian faith, though sometimes characterized as “deistic” by modern scholars, was in fact profoundly informed by the ethical teachings of the Gospels. He compiled his own “Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth,” extracting the moral core of Christianity as a guide for virtuous citizenship. This faith reinforced his conviction that every human being possesses inherent dignity bestowed by the Creator. Far from excusing slavery, this belief fueled his private condemnations of the institution and his public efforts to restrict its expansion. He understood, as few of his contemporaries did, that slavery corrupted both master and slave, violating the natural order established by God. His legislative attempts—however imperfect—to mitigate its worst effects and to prepare the ground for its eventual extinction reflect the heroic tension of a statesman operating within the constraints of his time while pointing towards a higher moral horizon.
In conclusion, to diminish Thomas Jefferson is to diminish the very source of American exceptionalism. His colossal merits—intellectual clarity, legislative foresight, and moral courage—far outweigh the failures inseparable from his historical moment. The revisionist assault is not scholarship; it is ideological warfare dressed in the language of justice. True patriotism requires neither blind veneration nor reflexive condemnation but a mature appreciation of how imperfect men in an imperfect age laid the foundations for a nation that has continually strived towards its founding promise.
In honoring Jefferson, we honor the ongoing American project: a republic where liberty is both inheritance and aspiration, where every citizen is called to rise above the sins of the past, and where the pursuit of happiness remains open to all who embrace its responsibilities. His legacy endures not because he was flawless, but because he was visionary—intelligently heroic in the service of truths that transcend any single generation.
The United States of today, with all its diversity and opportunity, stands as living testimony to that vision. To forget this is to risk losing the very freedom that Jefferson helped secure for posterity.
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Cancel Cesar Chavez, Whether the Allegations Are True or Not
He was a self-serving leftist activist. There’s no reason America as a whole should ever have honored him.
BY: Arthur Schaper, The American Thinker (March 27, 2026).
Cancel culture is back in the news, this time over long-gone United Farm Workers founder and leader Cesar Chavez.
He survived and thrived among leftist thought leaders and liberal politicians because he was an icon of the organized farm labor movement for decades. He even received his own holiday in California, Barack Obama created a national monument in his name, and the Navy plastered his name on a WWII Liberty ship.
Now, all of that has come crashing down.
A massive bombshell report from the New York Times has cast a pall on that legacy. After months of research, investigative work, interviews, and massive corroboration (if we take the reporting as accurate), the public learned that Chavez was hardly the scintillating labor and civil rights icon that the left dressed him up to be.
Instead, the report claims, he was a groomer, a predator, a child molester, an all-around creep who took advantage of his power and preeminence to bring in little girls, cozy up to them, then take away as much good and innocence from them.
Adding to these horrific discoveries, the Mother (or Madre? Or Mamacita?) of the farm labor movement, Dolores Huerta, also came forward. At the ripe old age of 96, she finally admitted that there is far more to the horrid story, declaring that she had been holding onto this horrible secret trauma for a decade, that Chavez sexually assaulted her, as well. He fathered two children with her, and she gave up both children for adoption so that they could live peacefully without further trauma or harm.
Why did she keep all this abuse secret? Such a long-standing secret suddenly revealed certainly raises doubts. In her press release, she explained that her silence resulted from her full commitment to the farm workers. She didn’t want a sex scandal to distract, delay, or destroy the greater effort of achieving workers’ freedoms on farm and field.
Let’s confront the obvious question right away: Are the allegations against Chavez true? Just because the New York Times states that they “did the research” doesn’t mean we should go along with it. They’ve employed bad reporters before who lied about plenty before!
For now, I am willing to take the reporting at its word. First, the article references a letter from the Chavez archives, written by one of the thirteen-year-old girls whom he groomed and molested. Even without the horrid background, the letter’s language is fawning, off-putting, and inappropriate for a child to use with an adult. If Chavez had had any integrity, he would have ended that relationship. The numerous interviews and testimonies also support the allegations.
As expected, conservatives argue that we should not condemn so swiftly after a series of allegations have only recently emerged. The #MeToo movement ignored male victims of abuse, and many men were unfairly and wrongly abused by the social media lynch mob.
Then again, the left started that pattern of vigilante justice, so it serves them right to take down one of their own icons. Besides, reports from former leaders in the farmers’ union movement suggest that they always knew about Chavez’s predatory ways and looked the other way anyway.
Conservatives are also pushing back by claiming that the whole groomer-molester allegation storm stems from the fact that Chavez was a vocal opponent of illegal immigration (they undermined union efforts by taking jobs for less pay and pricing out the legal workers). In other words, leftists are cynically destroying Chavez so nobody notices his stance on open borders.
But here the real point: Conservatives have had this penchant for promoting and championing liberals who have held otherwise conservative issues on key, contentious matters. Thus, when Democrats championed the “value” of open borders, conservatives would often retort: “One of you left-wing heroes, Cesar Chavez, opposed illegal immigration!” He even called the invaders the un-PC term ‘wetbacks’ to vent his outrage.
However, that “Own the Libs” thinking has never helped us. For decades, Big Labor and Big Progressive movements had no problem celebrating the guy, despite his aggressive take on border security. Why? Because at heart, he was still a leftist agitator, an aggressive social justice warrior who frustrated free markets, free enterprise, and free people. He lined up with the progressive-leftist platform on all the other issues. That’s why he remained a big hero of the Left for so long.
And for those reasons, I see no problem with pulling the plug on this self-serving anti-hero.
He’s not an icon for American anything. He was a leftist organizer who felt no compunction about frustrating farmers and hindering their yields. We should have never allowed his day, his work, or his legacy to be celebrated—long before all these heinous sexual abuse allegations surfaced!
Cancel Chavez, even if somehow, someway, all the nasty charges against him turn out to be false! He was a progressive leftist, an ally of liberal Democrats, and a blunt contrarian who undermined the natural rights of Americans. His example as a labor leader does not deserve praise or sympathy.
And now a few other comments …
Assuming that the horrendous allegations are true, I give no quarter to Dolores Huerta. She claims that she kept things quiet to preserve the farm labor movement’s power and cohesion. So what?! How many more women and girls ended up getting assaulted, abused, and molested because of her ideological fanaticism? Let’s face a bigger, more odious reality: she put her presence, power, and prestige ahead of truth, justice, and integrity. The farmers’ union’s efforts would have survived without Chavez if he had been exposed, expelled, and subsequently arrested. The power of collective action should rise above the failures of its initial leadership, right?
Or could it?
I believe that Huerta didn’t want to come clean because the whole United Farm Workers movement, at its core, is a sham. The power of collective action in general deserves more scrutiny and criticism than it currently receives.
Property owners have a right to hire as they see fit. Labor unions in general do not help workers get better wages. Sadly, their actions can hasten job losses as business owners flee to better labor markets, mechanize their operations, or simply close down entirely (read The Theory of Collective Bargaining by Economist William Hutt for more information).
If the movement had been only as strong as the charismatic leader the workers put their faith in, it would never have lasted on its own to begin with.
The cancellations are rolling in fast and furious, whether because politicians want to right wrongs, or because they want to support a left-wing civil rights icon who might have agreed with President Trump on one signature issue, or because politicians want to stay one step ahead of the latest #MeToo tidal wave, it doesn’t matter.
Getting rid of Chavez and all the hagiography/iconography surrounding him is a welcome move. It should have happened sooner. No American, if he did not provide a service that affirms the well-being of all citizens or our country, should have received such excessive praise to begin with. Perhaps this country is ready for tougher discussions, such as focusing only on celebrating Americans who have actually benefited all of us, rather than just those who served a specific interest or political movement.
GFK
Observations From The Fifth Estate 