Around the interior of the Jefferson Memorial is a quote, originally attributed from a September 23, 1800 letter Jefferson wrote to Dr. Benjamin Rush. He wrote:
“I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.”
The line in the Memorial is a smidge shorter and omits “upon the altar of God”.
At the time, he was talking about how freedom of thought should never be under the sway or control of the government or religion. Over time it’s evolved to illicit thoughts about intellectual liberty and opposition to censorship or authoritarian controls.
Now, in 2025, I was thinking about this quote (I am a fun person, I swear), and how Jefferson would likely abhor the notion of social media today, our media landscape in general, and the general state of things. If you could re-animate him and somehow get him up to speed on all that’s happened, I’m convinced that after being a huge fan of indoor plumbing more than anything, (“Who cares about airplanes and the Internet. You guys can pee inside!”), he’d look at Mark Zuckerberg and think, “We need a couple of new amendments.”
Jefferson was a flawed person. This is the caveat I have to say because of his ownership of slaves. It is also true he was human, not a god. And it can also be true that he was a genius, certainly for his time, and, I think, even by today’s standards.
There is no universe where Thomas Jefferson would have looked at any social media service or algorithmically-generated timeline of material and thought, “Yes, let’s have more of that. This is good for me.” He would have revolted over that idea as much as he revolted over the notion that the King could dictate his writing. The difference is slight: what difference does it make if what you write is dictated by the King or an algorithm? Is it somehow okay that one is a private company and one is a chosen or even elected sovereign? Is a line crossed when a platform owned by a private company is so big that it’s basically a ruler over minds?
We’d all do well to consider what forms tyranny over our minds and how best to resist that eternal hostility. Because Jefferson knew that it was up to him and him alone to hold the line against that control over his own mind. Sure, a government could be reconstituted here and there, but what ultimately matters is how you excise tyrannical, malicious, foul, disturbing, unhealthy, borderline psychotic and sociopathic behavior from your own life.
