MONTICELLO, VA. -- Joette Brown is not amused.

She stands, scowling, her face pressed to the iron fence surrounding the cemetery that holds the remains of the greatest thinker of the United States, and she wishes Thomas Jefferson could somehow speak for himself.

The 38-year-old software specialist from Virginia Beach has come here to Jefferson's magnificent hilltop retreat to find out more about her own heritage -- Afro-American slavery -- and she has been deeply disappointed that the tour guide has fudged the issue. For 200 years it has been said that the third president of the United States -- the founding father who wrote "all men are created equal" -- not only kept slaves but had children with his slave mistress, Sally Hemings; full Jefferson offspring who were not only treated unequally in life but also denied burial rights in the large family plot at Monticello.

It is no longer mere conjecture, she argues.

DNA testing has shown conclusively that the Jefferson blood flows freely through the Hemings family lines and yet the guide, Ms. Brown says, would concede only that this is what has been speculated about Jefferson's after-hours activities.

"And you can make up your own minds as to what the truth is."

This notion that people can pick and choose seems to have become the legacy of the man most closely tied to American democracy and individual liberties, the thinker so revered that John F. Kennedy once quipped to a state dinner of Nobel laureates that the event marked the greatest gathering of American minds "since Thomas Jefferson dined alone." His words from the Declaration of Independence are memorized by Americans -- "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" -- but they have also been twisted by those who would terrorize America.

When Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma bomber, fled from that federal building in 1995, he wore a T-shirt quoting Jefferson: "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."

Mr. McVeigh did not include the full quotation, which also says, "What signify a few lives lost in a century or two?" But then, he wasn't about to take a few: 168 Americans died in that blast, 19 of them children he later dismissed as "collateral damage."

Jefferson's words today seem capable of serving any side in the continuing American search for the right balance between individual freedom and protection from terrorism. He would not be surprised that both liberals and conservatives are claiming him for their own. It happened in the Civil War, when both North and South claimed him as a favourite son and, even in death, as a spokesman for their cause. Jefferson was himself a contradiction: the great champion of equality who, at the time of his death in 1826, had 129 slaves; the champion of small government who, as president, expanded the territory of the United States more than anyone before or since; the great advocate of civil rights who, as vice-president, oversaw passage of legislation that forced aliens to leave the country as security risks.

"Thomas Jefferson," Ms. Brown says, "was a total contradiction."

In fact, he may merely be the best symbol of the American ability to have things both ways, according to convenience.

Since Sept. 11, the balance between liberty and security has been fundamentally altered, the Patriot Act alone tipping the laws in the government's favour in 350 different areas.

Religious and political meetings can again be watched, lawyer-client conversations in federal prisons can now be monitored.

And the United States, it seems, approves.

A CNN-Gallup poll this week gives U.S. President George W. Bush a 66-per-cent approval rating, with most Americans saying he has achieved just the right balance between protecting their treasured civil liberties and fighting terrorism.

Dana Craig, an electrician from Flint, Mich., would count himself among them. "This is about the preservation of our nation," he says as he tours Jefferson's magnificent home.

"I don't see it as any plot to take away our rights or anything. Sometimes you have to back up, you know. I think Thomas Jefferson would understand."

Perhaps he would.

As another Jefferson quotation puts it, "I have great confidence in the common sense of mankind."

So, too, does Ms. Brown, though she has little confidence in the common sense of tour guides.

"Even though we may say different," she says as she leaves the little cemetery, "we all pretty much agree that there are times when these things are necessary.

"We all straddle that line as to how much we will sacrifice, but when it involves national security, we will give up what we feel we have to."