The Long Affair: Thomas Jefferson and the French Revolution, 1785-1800

Conor Cruise O'Brien, the distinguished Irish diplomat, constitutional historian and writer, has produced a typically vigorous and sweeping polemic against the reputation of the author of the Declaration of Independence Thomas Jefferson. O'Brien contends that liberals are mistaken in claiming Jefferson as one of their own; indeed he regards the right-wing militias as the true heirs to Jefferson's spirit. Contrasting Jefferson's position with that of his longtime hero, the anti-revolutionary Edmund Burke, O'Brien details the extreme edges of Jeffersonian political theory, in particular his commitment to the French Revolution even in the face of its excesses ("rather than it should have failed, I would have seen half the earth desolated"). For O'Brien, the American revolution is still a glorious achievement, but Jefferson is demoted to a mere "draughtsman" of the Declaration.