Maybe I'm wrong to not expect a witch hunt of our elders in this modern age.
i am glad you took the opportunity to reply to my question, since it makes your position much clearer for those who might have misunderstood you.
i quoted you above though, because i wanted to say you aren't (in my opinion) *wrong* to expect this, but perhaps people expect things to get better over time (like people being less prejudiced and so on) but we are kind of blind to the ways we do that. our society started this whole political correctness thing so we wouldn't offend blacks, women, fatties, shorties, people of any ethnic origin other than our own and people with any kind of disability and so on, and political correctness has worked to a point, but now political correctness, and positive discrimination and so on is in danger of becoming (sometimes, in other cases, it's still very much required) an area of resentment for some people, either renewing old prejudices or creating new ones.
recently in these forums (and this is quite a good example i think) somebody said somebody else's delivery of information was similar to that of hitler. the point was fairly well made and referred to hitler's oratory skills, compared with the poster's literary skills, however some people did not see this far, because they expect any phrase with the word "hitler" in it, to be some sort of insult, rather than the comparison of styles that i believe it was intended to be.
just like the misuse of the word "nazi" on the internet nowadays. when a discussion board administrator applies the editorial scissors liberally, he or she is referred to as a "nazi", while nazi is actually short for "National Socialist", somebody who wants to expand their country and level the field for the people who live in it (my view of this is irelevant, the point is, this definition doesn't apply to censorship). a better phrase might be "fascist", but a proper phrase would be "totalitarian". nobody says "totalitarian" though, they say "nazi" because when our grandparents were risking their lives in their youths, they weren't fighting the "totalitarians", they were fighting the "nazis"!. and so the modern meaning of "nazi" is completely emotional, and has no basis in reality.
and this is what is happening with jefferson and the slaves. it's like saying having a president who is an adulterer is wrong (although they've had a couple of those in the USA, and they haven't had any woman presidents yet, so i wonder which it is wronger to be...).
and basically while i have waffled a lot about this, i agree with you, the world runs on bullshit and it would be nice to clean it off and see some sense underneath sometimes.
