Everyone is flawed. Thomas Jefferson, a great thinker and statesman, was no exception. But some people work to be their best selves, to see beyond their own pettiness and smallness, to push us all toward greatness as they strive for it themselves.
We should want better for ourselves, our fellow citizens, and our country than hate, division, cruelty, greed, and intolerance. When we are told and modeled to fear and hate and mock and bully, when we see it being institutionalized, even, and the most fragile among us targeted, then for our love of country, we must dissent. They knew this in 1776. We must remember it in 2018.