"In matters of principle, stand like a rock.... The principles on which we engaged, of which the charter of our independence is the record, were sanctioned by the laws of our being… Man [is] a rational animal, endowed by nature with rights… A free people [claim] their rights as derived from the laws of nature…” -- Thomas Jefferson
Jeffersonian - http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/jeffersonian?o=100074
–adjective: pertaining to or advocating the political principles and doctrines of Thomas Jefferson
–noun: a supporter of Thomas Jefferson or Jeffersonianism.
Origin: 1790–1800, Americanism ; Jefferson + -ian
THE WRITINGS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON
Definitive Edition
CONTAINING HIS AUTOBIOGRAPHY, NOTES ON VIRGINIA, PARLIAMENTARY MANUAL, OFFICIAL PAPERS, MESSAGES AND ADDRESSES, AND OTHER WRITINGS, OFFICIAL AND PRIVATE, NOW COLLECTED AND PUBLISHED IN THEIR ENTIRETY FOR THE FIRST TIME INCLUDNG ALL OF THE ORIGINAL MANUSCRIPTS, DEPOSITED IN THE DEPARTMENT OF STATE AND PUBLISHED IN 1853 BY ORDER OF THE JOINT COMMITTEE OF CONGRESS
http://www.constitution.org/tj/jeff01.txt
A JEFFERSONIAN adheres to the philosophy of Thomas Jefferson:
Metaphysics – Thomas Jefferson adhered to the laws of nature.
“A free people [claim] their rights as derived from the laws of nature.”
“… to assume among the powers of the earth the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them…”
“It is not only vain, but wicked, in a legislator to frame laws in opposition to the laws of nature, and to arm them with the terrors of death. This is truly creating crimes in order to punish them. The law of nature impels every one to escape from confinement; it should not, therefore, be subjected to punishment.”
Epistemology – "Your own reason is the only oracle given you by heaven."
"Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear."
“I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.”
Ethics – Every individual’s right to the preservation of Life, & liberty, & the Pursuit of Happiness
“We hold these truths to be sacred & undeniable;
That all men are created equal & independent,
That from that equal creation
They derive rights inherent & inalienable,
Among which are the preservation of
Life, & liberty, & the pursuit of happiness…”
"Under the law of nature, all men are born free, every one comes into the world with a right to his own person, which includes the liberty of moving and using it at his own will. This is what is called personal liberty, and is given him by the Author of nature, because necessary for his own sustenance."
Politics – Wall of separation between government, the entity that holds the monopoly on coercive power, and all non-force realms
Thomas Jefferson’s Republicanism:
1) That there exists a right independent of force;
2) That a right to property is founded in our natural wants, in the means with which we are endowed to satisfy these wants, and the right to what we acquire by those means without violating the similar rights of other sensible beings;
3) That NO ONE HAS A RIGHT TO OBSTRUCT ANOTHER exercising his faculties innocently for the relief of sensibilities made a part of his nature;
4) That justice is the fundamental law of society;
5) That the majority, oppressing an individual, is guilty of a crime, abuses its strength, and by acting on the law of the strongest, breaks up the foundations of society;
6) That action by the citizens in person, in affairs within their reach and competence, and in all others by representatives chosen immediately and removable by themselves.
I pledge allegiance to Thomas Jefferson’s Republicanism...
http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=457347032083&id=1346466773
"Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add 'within the limits of the law' because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual."
The ONLY function of law and of government:
"… the preservation of
Life, & liberty, & the pursuit of happiness;
That to secure these ends,
Governments are instituted among men,
Deriving their just powers
From the consent of the governed..."
"Natural rights [are] the objects for the protection of which society is formed and municipal laws established."
"The freedom and happiness of man... [are] the sole objects of all legitimate government."
"Persons and property make the sum of the objects of government."
“No man has a natural right to commit aggression on the equal rights of another, and this is all from which the laws ought to restrain him."
“A wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government.”
Justice -
"The most sacred of the duties of a government [is] to do equal and impartial justice to all its citizens."
“Equal rights for all, special privileges for none.”
On the Constitution and the Bill of Rights -
"The two enemies of the people are criminals and government, so let us tie the second down with the chains of the Constitution so the second will not become the legalized version of the first."
"A bill of rights is what the people are entitled to against every government on earth, general or particular; and what no just government should refuse, or rest on inferences." -- Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1787
American Government -
"A government of reason is better than one of force…. In a republican nation whose citizens are to be led by reason and persuasion and not by force, the art of reasoning becomes of first importance."
“An elective despotism was not the government we fought for…. A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine.”
“I am not a friend to a very energetic government. It is always oppressive…. When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty…. I think myself that we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious.”
"[It is a] great truth that industry, commerce and security are the surest roads to the happiness and prosperity of [a] people."
Anarchy –
"[The] voluntary support of laws, formed by persons of their own choice, distinguishes peculiarly the minds capable of self-government. The contrary spirit is anarchy, which of necessity produces despotism."
“… In modern times we might say with truth, that in France, anarchy had done more harm in one night, than all the despotism of their Kings had ever done in twenty or thirty years.”
General Welfare -
"[The Constitution authorizes Congress] to lay taxes to provide for the general welfare of the United States, that is to say, 'to lay taxes for the purpose of providing for the general welfare.' For the laying of taxes is the power, and the general welfare the purpose for which the power is to be exercised. They are not to lay taxes ad libitum for any purpose they please; but only to pay the debts or provide for the welfare of the union."
“7. Resolved, That the construction applied by the General Government (as is evidenced by sundry of their proceedings) to those parts of the Constitution of the United States which delegate to Congress a power “to lay and collect taxes, duties, imports, and excises, to pay the debts, and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States,” and “to make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution, the powers vested by the Constitution in the government of the United States, or in any department or officer thereof,” goes to the destruction of all limits prescribed to their powers by the Constitution: that words meant by the instrument to be subsidiary only to the execution of limited powers, ought not to be so construed as themselves to give unlimited powers, nor a part to be so taken as to destroy the whole residue of that instrument…” -- The Kentucky Resolutions of 1798 by Thomas Jefferson, http://www.constitution.org/cons/kent1798.htm
Property rights -
"I have a right to nothing which another has a right to take away."
"The true foundation of republican government is the equal right of every citizen in his person and property and in their management."
"A right to property is founded in our natural wants, in the means with which we are endowed to satisfy these wants, and the right to what we acquire by those means without violating the similar rights of other sensible beings."
"The first principle of association: the guarantee to every one of a free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it."
"[If government have] a right of demanding ad libitum and of taxing us themselves to the full amount of their demand if we do not comply with it, [this would leave] us without anything we can call property."
Constitutionality of the Bank of the US [Federal Reserve] -
“Giving [Congress] a distinct and independent power to do any act they please which may be good for the Union, would render all the preceding and subsequent enumerations of power completely useless. It would reduce the whole [Constitution] to a single phrase, that of instituting a Congress with power to do whatever would be for the good of the United States; and as sole judges of the good or evil, it would be also a power to do whatever evil they please. Certainly, no such universal power was meant to be given them."
"The Bank of the United States… is one of the most deadly hostility existing, against the principles and form of our Constitution… An institution like this, penetrating by its branches every part of the Union, acting by command and in phalanx, may, in a critical moment, upset the government. I deem no government safe which is under the vassalage of any self-constituted authorities, or any other authority than that of the nation, or its regular functionaries. What an obstruction could not this Bank of the United States, with all its branch banks, be in time of war! It might dictate to us the peace we should accept, or withdraw its aids. Ought we then to give further growth to an institution so powerful, so hostile?"
National Debt / Deficit Spending -
"The principle of spending money to be paid by posterity under the name of funding is but swindling futurity on a large scale."
"I, however, place economy among the first and most important republican virtues, and public debt as the greatest of the dangers to be feared.”
"The earth belongs to each of these generations during its course, fully and in its own right. The second generation receives it clear of the debts and incumbrances of the first, the third of the second, and so on. For if the first could charge it with a debt, then the earth would belong to the dead and not to the living generation. Then, no generation can contract debts greater than may be paid during the course of its own existence."
While abolishing ALL excise taxes
Including the whiskey tax
In the first year of his first presidency,
While engaging in the Barbary War
Within two months of his first presidency,
And then spending $15 million
In the Louisiana Purchase
To double the then size of the USA,
Jefferson reduced the national debt
From $83 million to $57 million.
All Honor to Thomas Jefferson - http://ilynross.blogspot.com/2010/09/all-honor-to-thomas-jefferson.html
Post Roads & Post Offices [EARMARKS] -
"Have you considered all the consequences of your proposition respecting post roads? I view it as a source of boundless patronage to the executive, jobbing to members of Congress and their friends, and a bottomless abyss of public money. You will begin by only appropriating the surplus of the post office revenues; but the other revenues will soon be called into their aid, and it will be a source of eternal scramble among the members, who can get the most money wasted in their state; and they will always get most who are meanest. We have thought, hitherto, that the roads of a state could not be so well administered even by the state legislature as by the magistracy of the county, on the spot. How will they be when a member of New Hampshire is to mark out a road for Georgia? Does the power to establish post roads, given by the Constitution, mean that you shall make the roads, or only select from those already made, those on which there shall be a post?" -1796, to James Madison, The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, edited by Albert Ellery Bergh
Socialism -
"We both consider the people as our children, and love them with parental affection. But you love them as infants whom you are afraid to trust without nurses; and I as adults whom I freely leave to self-government."
Economic Regulations -
"The policy of the American government is to leave their citizens free, neither restraining nor aiding them in their pursuits."
"To take from one because it is thought that his own industry and that of his father’s has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association -- the guarantee to every one of a free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it."
“Agriculture, manufactures, commerce and navigation, the four pillars of our prosperity, are the most thriving when left most free to individual enterprise.”
“Were we directed from Washington when to sow, and when to reap, we should soon want bread.”
"Were [a right] to be refused, or to be so shackled by REGULATIONS, not necessary for... peace and safety... as to render its use impracticable,... it would then be an injury, of which we should be entitled to demand redress."
"Some see private enterprise as a predatory target to be shot; others as a cow to be milked; but few are those who see it as a sturdy horse pulling the plow.”
"What is true of every member of the society, individually, is true of them all collectively; since the rights of the whole can be no more than the sum of the rights of the individuals."
“It is strangely absurd to suppose that a million of human beings, collected together, are not under the same moral laws which bind each of them separately.”
More on Capitalism [Separation of state and economics] -
"We believed that men, enjoying in ease and security the full fruits of their own industry, enlisted by all their interests on the side of law and order, habituated to think for themselves and to follow their reason as their guide, would be more easily and safely governed than with minds nourished in error and vitiated and debased... by ignorance, indigence and oppression."
“I received duly your [letter]...covering an offer of Mr. McDonald of an iron mine to the public.... But having always observed that public works are much less advantageously managed than the same are by private hands, I have thought it better for the public to go to market for whatever it wants which is to be found there; for there competition brings it down to the minimum of value. I have no doubt we can buy brass cannon at market cheaper than we could make iron ones."
Foreign Policy -Truth -
“It should be our endeavor to cultivate the peace and friendship of every nation.... Our interest will be to throw open the doors of commerce, and to knock off all its shackles, giving perfect freedom to all persons for the vent to whatever they may choose to bring into our ports, and asking the same in theirs.”
"I think all the world would gain by setting commerce at perfect liberty."
"I was bold in the pursuit of knowledge, never fearing to follow truth and reason to whatever results they led, and bearding every authority which stood in their way."
"I never submitted the whole system of my opinions to the creed of any party of men whatever in religion, in philosophy, in politics, or in anything else where I was capable of thinking for myself. Such an addiction is the last degradation of a free and moral agent."
"Reason and persuasion are the only practicable instruments. To make way for these, free inquiry must be indulged.”
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
"Educate and inform the whole mass of the people. They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty."
"Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppression of body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day."
"One of the amendments to the Constitution... expressly declares that 'Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press,' thereby guarding in the same sentence, and under the same words, the freedom of religion, of speech, and of the press; insomuch that whatever violates either throws down the sanctuary which covers the others."
”I am... against all violations of the Constitution to silence by force and not by reason the complaints or criticisms, just or unjust, of our citizens against the conduct of their agents…. error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it."
"No government ought to be without censors & where the press is free, no one ever will…. Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost."
"If virtuous, [the government] need not fear the fair operation of attack and defense. Nature has given to man no other means of sifting the truth, either in religion, law, or politics."
"[The] liberty of speaking and writing... guards our other liberties."
Religious Freedom -Power -
“The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg."
"Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should "make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," thus building a wall of separation between Church & State."
"I consider the Government of the United States as interdicted by the Constitution of the United States from meddling with religious institutions, their doctrines, discipline, or exercises.... Civil powers alone have been given to the President of the United States, and no authority to direct the religious exercises of his constituents."
"Say nothing of my religion. It is known to God and myself alone."
"I never will, by any word or act, bow to the shrine of intolerance or admit a right of inquiry into the religious opinions of others."
DARK-AGES WARRIORS - http://ilynross.blogspot.com/2011/01/dark-ages-warriors.html
"I have never been able to conceive how any rational being could propose happiness to himself from the exercise of power over others."
“An honest man can feel no pleasure in the exercise of power over his fellow citizens.... Power is not alluring to pure minds and is not with them the primary principle of contest."
Thomas Jefferson’s Heroes -Other Thomas Jefferson Gems -
Thomas Jefferson regarded John Locke, Francis Bacon, and Isaac Newton the "three greatest men the world had ever produced."
Isaac Newton, an English physicist, mathematician, astronomer, natural philosopher, and alchemist, set forth in mathematical terms the laws governing the course of the heavenly bodies. Thinkers marveled at the proportion, balance, harmony, and order resident in the natural tendencies of the world. They concluded that the order was consonant with human liberty, that the natural order provided means for man to use his faculties for his benefit, and that man has natural rights.
"All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride legitimately, by the grace of God."
"I tolerate with the utmost latitude the right of others to differ from me in opinion without imputing to them criminality."
"Persuasion, perseverance and patience are the best advocates on questions depending on the will of others."
"Nothing gives one person so great advantage over another as to remain always cool and unruffled under all circumstances."
"I have the consolation of having added nothing to my private fortune during my public service, and of retiring with hands clean as they are empty."
Articles on Thomas Jefferson:
Thomas Jefferson - The Mind of the American Revolution - http://ilynross.blogspot.com/2010/03/thomas-jefferson-mind-of-american.html
Revered Quotes - http://ilynross.blogspot.com/2010/01/revered-quotes.html
Are you a Jeffersonian or a Reaganite? - http://ilynross.blogspot.com/2010/01/are-you-jeffersonian-or-reaganite.html
Tea Partiers - http://ilynross.blogspot.com/2010/11/tea-partiers.html
77 comments:
Slavery was OBTRUDED on the Colonies by King George III. Thomas Jefferson INHERITED slaves. It was AGAINST THE LAW TO FREE THEM. When he was 26 years old, chosen for the first time to be a member of a legislature, he submitted a bill for the EMANCIPATION of ALL slaves. As a lawyer in 1770, age 27, Jefferson defended a slave, saying: "Under the law of nature, all men are born free."
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1346466773&ref=profile#!/note.php?note_id=448688452083&id=1346466773
Slavery was obtruded on the Colonies by King George III. Jefferson inherited slaves - it was against the law to free them. When it was permitted for the self-supporting, freed slaves must leave the State within a year, thus separating families. Other facts:
1769: Chosen for the first time to be a member of a legislature, Thomas Jefferson made one effort in the House of Burgesses for the permission of the emancipation of slaves, but was rejected.
1770: As a lawyer, Thomas Jefferson defended a slave, saying: "Under the law of nature, all men are born free."
1776: He strongly condemned slavery in his draft of the Declaration of Independence.
1778: The legislature passed a bill he proposed to ban further importation of slaves into Virginia.
1784: His draft of what became the Northwest Ordinance stipulated that "there shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude" in any of the new states admitted to the Union from the Northwest Territory.
1806: President Jefferson requested Congress to ban all slave importation to the US.
1807: As President, Jefferson signed a bill abolishing the slave trade: on March 3, 1807, as President of the USA, Thomas Jefferson signed a bill making slave importation illegal in the United States.
Jefferson wrote in his Declaration of Independence draft: "He (King George III) has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating and carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation hither. This piratical warfare, the opprobrium of INFIDEL powers, is the warfare of the CHRISTIAN king of Great Britain. Determined to keep open a market where MEN should be bought and sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce. And that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished die, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, by murdering the people on whom he also obtruded them: thus paying off former crimes committed against the LIBERTIES of one people, with crimes which he urges them to commit against the LIVES of another."
Jefferson successfully abolished primogeniture in Virginia, the rule by which the first born son inherited all the land.
When it was permitted to free the SELF-SUPPORTING, freed slaves must leave the State within a year. Aside from the safety concern, this separated families because children and seniors were not self-supporting.
"While Jefferson did not free all of his slaves on his death (as did Washington), a law passed in Virginia in 1806 required that the legislature pass a special bill that would attest to the exemplary behavior of each slave to be freed. If freed, THE SLAVE HAD TO LEAVE THE STATE WITHOUT HIS OR HER FAMILY.
Jefferson tried unsuccessfully to get this law changed. Further, Jefferson trained his slaves in skills that would be useful when they were free. He believed that to free them first would be irresponsible -- since they would be homeless and without family."
http://www.liberty1.org/defense.htm
Jefferson on gossips: 'I should have fancied myself half guilty had I condescended to put pen to paper in refutation of their falsehoods, or drawn them respect by any notice from myself.'
Facts about the Jefferson gossiper -
"One of the victims of the Sedition Act [enacted during John Adams' presidency] who was pardoned by President Jefferson in 1801 was James Thomson Callendar, a Republican journalist who had been an unrele......nting critic of the Federalists during the last presidential campaign. But Callendar wanted more than a pardon: later that year he plainly told James Madison, the new Secretary of State, that he hoped to be appointed postmaster in Richmond, Virginia."
"When it became clear that he was not going to be offered any government post, the embittered Callendar sought revenge by going to work for a Federalist newspaper in Richmond. In March 1802, he began publishing various charges against Republican leaders in Congress and certain members of the Cabinet. By autumn he was training his guns on the President [Thomas Jefferson]."
http://www.liberty1.org/defense.htm
"A fact that went largely unreported was that the DNA test did rule out Thomas Jefferson as the father of Thomas Woodson, the eldest of Hemings' sons..."
http://www.liberty1.org/defense.htm
Politics, the 4th branch of Philosophy -
http://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=127066320694076&id=1346466773#!/note.php?note_id=450084672083
From Royal Serf:
Picture a five-storey building. The fourth floor is politics, where how man should treat other men is determined. Politics, the fourth branch of philosophy, defines the principles of a proper social system. The politics floor rests on the third floor, ethics or morality, the code of values to guide man’s choices and actions in determining the purpose and the course of his life. The third floor rests on the second floor, epistemology, which is also called the reason-and-logic floor. In turn, the reason-and-logic floor rests on the first floor and the building’s foundations: metaphysics - the study of existence, nature, metaphysical reality.
A political principle that does not rest on ethics is like the fourth floor of a building floating on air. Ethics or a morality code without an epistemological and metaphysical base is like a table with no legs. The proper code of values is established by means of reason in accordance with logic and in consonance with man’s nature.
Thomas Jefferson's Philosophy -
Metaphysics – Thomas Jefferson adhered to the laws of nature (reality).
Epistemology – "Your own reason is the only oracle given you by heaven."
Ethics – Every individual’s right to the preservation of Life, & liberty, & the Pursuit of Happiness
Politics – Wall of separation between government, the entity that holds the monopoly on coercive power, and all non-force realms
http://www.facebook.com/note.php?created&¬e_id=164422946937527&id=186327141383420
Thomas Jefferson: On Republican Government
Where he wrote: "The principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale."
http://www.britannica.com/presidents/article-9116907
Jefferson's Opinion on the Constitutionality of a National Bank : 1791
http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/bank-tj.asp
"It would reduce the whole [Constitution] to a single phrase, that of instituting a Congress with power to do whatever would be for the good of the United States; and, as they would be the sole judges of the good or evil, it would be also a power to do whatever evil they please." -- Thomas Jefferson
http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/bank-tj.asp
"Some see private enterprise as a predatory target to be shot; others as a cow to be milked; but few are those who see it as a sturdy horse pulling the plow.”
- This quote could have been Winston Churchill's. I'm researching further.
Thomas Jefferson- A guide to the University of Virginia's collections related to Thomas Jefferson, with additional links to texts and information resources about Jefferson.
http://guides.lib.virginia.edu/TJ
The Kentucky Resolutions of 1798 - http://www.constitution.org/cons/kent1798.htm
Thomas Jefferson: The Rulers and the Ruled - http://www.britannica.com/presidents/article-9116915
Jeffersonians, please join us. Thank you.
http://www.facebook.com/pages/I-am-a-Jeffersonian/102951273112979?v=wall#!/pages/I-am-a-Jeffersonian/102951273112979?v=wall
Lincoln: The PRINCIPLES of JEFFERSON are the DEFINITIONS & AXIOMS of FREE SOCIETY.. All honor to Jefferson.., who.. had the coolness, forecast, & SAGACITY to introduce.. an ABSTRACT TRUTH, applicable to all men & all times, and so embalm it there that to-day & in all coming days it shall be a REBUKE & a STUMBLING-BLOCK to the very harbingers of reappearing tyranny & oppression.
http://www.facebook.com/pages/I-am-a-Jeffersonian/102951273112979?v=wall#!/pages/I-am-a-Jeffersonian/102951273112979?v=info
Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, George Washington and their kind are the proof that FREEDOM is achievable, and that the WALL of SEPARATION between FORCE/government and non-force realms is the DEFINITION of FREEDOM.
"The States can best govern our home concerns and the general government our foreign ones. I wish, therefore...never to see all offices transferred to Washington, where, further withdrawn from the eyes of the people, they may more secretly be bought and sold at market." - Thomas Jefferson
“Do you want to know who you are? Don't ask. Act! Action will delineate and define you.” -- Thomas Jefferson
Samuel Adams - (The Rights of the Colonists, 1772)
"It is the greatest absurdity to suppose it in the power of one, or any number of men, at the entering into society, to renounce their essential natural rights, or the means of preserving those rights; when the grand end of civil government, from the very nature of its institution, is for the support, protection, and defence of those very rights; the principal of which, as is before observed, are Life, Liberty, and Property. If men, through fear, fraud, or mistake, should in terms renounce or give up any essential natural right, the eternal law of reason and the grand end of society would absolutely vacate such renunciation. The right to freedom being the gift of God Almighty, it is not in the power of man to alienate this gift and voluntarily become a slave."
"I do not like... the omission of a bill of rights providing clearly and without the aid of sophisms for freedom of religion, freedom of the press, protection against standing armies, restriction against monopolies, the eternal and unremitting force of the habeas corpus laws, and trials by jury in all matters of fact t...riable by the laws of the land and not by the law of nations." -- TJ to JMadison, 1787
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110203/ap_on_re_us/us_madison_s_chess_pawns_2
Thomas Jefferson's granddaughter, Ellen Wayles Coolidge wrote that her grandfather was a very good chess player in his youth.
The article incorrectly says that Madison is the architect of the Bill of Rights.
"I do not like... the omission of a bill of rights providing clearly and without the aid of sophisms for freedom of religion, freedom of the press, protection against standing armies, restriction against monopolies, the eternal and unremitting force of the habeas corpus laws, and trials by jury in all matters of fact triable by the laws of the land and not by the law of nations." -- TJ to JMadison, 1787
"A bill of rights is what the people are entitled to against every government on earth, general or particular; and what no just government should refuse, or rest on inferences." -- Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1787
“It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself.... Honesty is the first chapter in the Book of Wisdom." - Thomas Jefferson
http://www.facebook.com/pages/We-The-People-America-In-Black-White/131667092027#!/note.php?note_id=453761902083
"Man once surrendering his reason, has no remaining guard against absurdities the most monstrous, and like a ship without rudder, is the sport of every wind." - Thomas Jefferson
"Jefferson killed a bank. Jackson killed a bank. Now it's our responsibility to untold generations to stand up and throw off the shackles of yet another criminal syndicate with the respectable sounding name: "Federal Reserve Bank.""
http://www.lewrockwell.com/huff/huff19.html
"We both consider the people as our children, and love them with parental affection. But you love them as infants whom you are afraid to trust without nurses; and I as adults whom I freely leave to self-government." - Thomas Jefferson
The essential Jefferson By Thomas Jefferson, Jean M. Yarbrough
http://books.google.com/books?id=iQGA8iIpZxQC&pg=PA230&lpg=PA230&dq=%22We+both+consider+the+people+as+our+children,+and+love+them+with+parental+affection.+But+you+love+them+as+infants+whom+you+are+afraid+to+trust+without+nurses;+and+I+as+adults+whom+I+freely+leave+to+self-government.%22&source=bl&ots=6BdZWTa51f&sig=LCLvqe2poi4tcogffYr_5JXEuf4&hl=en&ei=Z4K0Tf_hK5CftwfqsZnqDg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=8&ved=0CEEQ6AEwBw#v=onepage&q=%22We%20both%20consider%20the%20people%20as%20our%20children%2C%20and%20love%20them%20with%20parental%20affection.%20But%20you%20love%20them%20as%20infants%20whom%20you%20are%20afraid%20to%20trust%20without%20nurses%3B%20and%20I%20as%20adults%20whom%20I%20freely%20leave%20to%20self-government.%22&f=false
"The conservative does not object to coercion or arbitrary power so long as it is used for what he regards as the right purposes. Like the socialist, he is less concerned w/ the problem of how the powers of gov't shd be limited than w/ that of who wields them; &, like the socialist, he regards himself as entitled to force the value he holds on other people." - Hayek
The advocacy or sanction of coercion is the mark of evil. - Royal Serf
http://www.fahayek.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=46
“Conscience is the most sacred of all property.” - Madison
A gov't IN BED w/ religion/marriage/indoctrination is tyrannical. Opposing a military draft is not anti-military; it means one is for a volunteer army. Opposing theocracy is not anti-faith; it is pro-freedom.
"We are bound, you, I, & every one to make common cause, even w/ error itself, to maintain the common right of freedom of conscience." - TJ
"I wish it were possible to obtain a single amendment to our Constitution ... taking from the federal government their power of borrowing." -- Thomas Jefferson (Letter of November 26th, 1798)
http://www.facebook.com/pages/I-am-a-Jeffersonian/102951273112979?v=wall#!/photo.php?fbid=154867894587983&set=a.154767147931391.38379.102951273112979&type=1&theater
Anarchy - law of the strongest.
Thomas Jefferson’s Republicanism item # 5: "That the majority, oppressing an individual, is guilty of a crime, abuses its strength, and by acting on the law of the strongest, breaks up the foundations of society."
"[The] voluntary support of laws, formed by persons of their own choice, distinguishes peculiarly the minds capable of self-government. The contrary spirit is anarchy, which of necessity produces despotism." - Thomas Jefferson
“… In modern times we might say with truth, that in France, anarchy had done more harm in one night, than all the despotism of their Kings had ever done in twenty or thirty years.” - Thomas Jefferson
http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=457347032083&id=1346466773
"If we are made in some degree for others, yet in a greater are we made for ourselves. It were contrary to feeling and indeed ridiculous to suppose that a man had less rights in himself than one of his neighbors, or all of them put together. This would be slavery, and not that liberty which the bill of rights has made inviolable, and for the preservation of which our government has been charged." --Thomas Jefferson to James Monroe, 1782. ME 4:196, Papers 6:185
http://www.facebook.com/pages/I-am-a-Jeffersonian/102951273112979?v=wall#!/photo.php?fbid=2300606958417&set=o.207875672581275&type=1&theater
To Senator, and former House Speaker, Nathaniel Macon, Jefferson wrote in 1821, "There does not exist an engine so demoralizing of the nation as a public debt. It will bring on us more ruin at home than all the enemies from abroad against whom this army and navy are to protect us."
Jefferson thought a perpetual public debt was so injurious to liberty that he theorized a way of preventing one generation from passing a debt on to the next. In a letter to John Eppes in 1813, he wrote, "What is to hinder (the government) from creating a perpetual debt? The laws of nature, I answer." Each generation would be limited to accumulating only the debt that it could pay off before it died, he theorized.
http://spectator.org/archives/2011/08/05/thomas-jefferson-warned-us
http://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=183033081762624&id=1346466773#!/photo.php?fbid=2319682555295&set=a.1268872285695.139307.1346466773&type=1&theater
“Conscience is the most sacred of all property.” - James Madison
Government is FORCE. A gov't IN BED w/ religion/marriage/indoctrination is tyrannical. Opposing a military draft is not anti-military; it means one is for a volunteer army. Opposing THEOCRACY is not anti-faith; it is pro-freedom. Opposing the injection of FORCE/GOVERNMENT into non-force realms is upholding rights.
"We are bound, you, I, & every one to make common cause, even with error itself, to maintain the common right of freedom of conscience." - Thomas Jefferson
"I think all the world would gain by setting commerce at perfect liberty." - TJ to John Adams, July 1785
"Our interest will be to throw open the doors of commerce, and to knock off all its shackles, giving perfect freedom to all persons for the vent of whatever they may choose to bring into our ports, and asking the same in tehirs." - TJ, Notes on Virginia
http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=F00710FB3B5D12738DDDA80894D1405B808CF1D3
"I think all the world would gain by setting commerce at perfect liberty." - Thomas Jefferson
“Perfect Freedom is as necessary to the health and vigor of commerce as it is to the health and vigor of citizenship.” – Patrick Henry
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=168394126568693&set=a.154767147931391.38379.102951273112979&type=1
"It is a principle incorporated into the settled policy of America, that as peace is better than war, war is better than tribute." -- James Madison, letter to the Dey of Algiers, 1816
"An elective despotism was not the government we fought for; but one which should not only be founded on free principles, but in which the powers of government should be so divided and balanced among several bodies of magistracy, as that no one could transcend their legal limits, without being effectually checked and restrained by the others." - Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia
http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/v1ch10s9.html
http://www.facebook.com/pages/I-am-a-Jeffersonian/102951273112979?v=wall#!/photo.php?fbid=180124068729032&set=a.154767147931391.38379.102951273112979&type=1&theater
Thomas Jefferson's Philosophy
Metaphysics - REALITY
Epistemology - REASON
Ethics - EACH INDIVIDUAL's PURSUIT of HAPPINESS
Politics - INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS and REPUBLICANISM
METAPHYSICS QUOTES:
"In matters of principle, stand like a rock.... The principles on which we engaged, of which the charter of our independence is the record, were sanctioned by the laws of our being… Man [is] a rational animal, endowed by nature with rights… A free people [claim] their rights as derived from the laws of nature…” - http://ilynross.blogspot.com/2011/01/jeffersonian.html
"Under the law of nature, all men are born free; every one comes into the world with a right to his own person, which includes the liberty of moving and using it at his own will. This is what is called personal liberty, and is given him by the Author of nature, because necessary for his own sustenance." - http://ilynross.blogspot.com/2011/02/under-law-of-nature-all-men-are-born.html
“It is not only vain, but wicked, in a legislator to frame laws in opposition to the laws of nature, and to arm them with the terrors of death. This is truly creating crimes in order to punish them. The law of nature impels every one to escape from confinement; it should not, therefore, be subjected to punishment.”
EPISTEMOLOGY QUOTES:
"Shake off all the fears & servile prejudices, under w/c weak minds are servilely crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat, & call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear.... Your own reason is the only oracle given you by heaven." - http://www.stephenjaygould.org/ctrl/jefferson_carr.html
“I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.”
ETHICS-POLITICS QUOTES:
"We hold these truths to be sacred & undeniable;
That all men are created equal & independent,
That from that equal creation
They derive rights inherent & inalienable,
Among which are the preservation of
Life, & liberty, & the pursuit of happiness;
That to secure these ends,
Governments are instituted among men,
Deriving their just powers
From the consent of the governed..."
POLITICS QUOTES:
"Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add 'within the limits of the law' because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual."
“That there exists a right independent of force;
That a RIGHT to PROPERTY is FOUNDED in our NATURAL WANTS, in the means with which we are endowed to satisfy these wants, and the right to what we acquire by those means without violating the similar rights of other sensible beings;
That NO ONE HAS A RIGHT TO OBSTRUCT ANOTHER exercising his faculties innocently for the relief of sensibilities made a part of his nature;
That justice is the fundamental law of society;
That the majority, oppressing an individual, is guilty of a crime, abuses its strength, and by acting on the law of the strongest, breaks up the foundations of society;
That action by the citizens in person, in affairs within their reach and competence, and in all others by representatives chosen immediately and removable by themselves
constitutes the essence of a republic...”
http://www.britannica.com/presidents/article-9116915
http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=453914247083
"We are NOT looters, nor thugs, nor envious, nor cannibals. We are UNCOMMON. We are Americans." - JEFFERSONIANS
Corporate America has been a slave for over a century. The successful and the affluent have rights equal to the rights of every other man.
http://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=276842372339501&id=1346466773&ref=notif¬if_t=like#!/photo.php?fbid=2185540112797&set=a.1164602149986.25410.1075845911&type=1&theater
"The Bank of the United States [like the Federal Reserve]… is one of the most deadly hostility existing, against the principles & form of our Constitution."
Among Thomas Jefferson's objections were: "To give them the sole & exclusive right of banking under the national authority; & so far is against the laws of Monopoly. To communicate to them a power to make laws paramount to the laws of the States..."
Jefferson adjudged the Bank of the US, & hence the Federal Reserve, as UNCONSTITUTIONAL because: "It would reduce the whole [Constitution] to a single phrase, that of instituting a Congress with power to do whatever would be for the good of the United States; &, as they would be the sole judges of the good or evil, it would be also a power to do whatever evil they please."
END THE FED!
http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/bank-tj.asp
"Jefferson entered the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia at the age of 16 and spent two years there, from 1760 to 1762. He studied mathematics, metaphysics, and philosophy under Professor William Small, who introduced the enthusiastic Jefferson to the writings of the British Empiricists, including John Locke, Francis Bacon, and Sir Isaac Newton (Jefferson would later refer to them as the "three greatest men the world had ever produced" [2])."
http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Thomas_Jefferson
King-wannabe Newt maligns Thomas Jefferson.
http://millercenter.org/president/jefferson/essays/biography/4
http://millercenter.org/president/jefferson/essays/biography/4
Domestic Affairs
In Thomas Jefferson's mind, the first order of business for him as President was the establishment of a "wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another" but which would otherwise leave them alone to regulate their own affairs. He wanted a government that would respect the authority of individual states, operate with a smaller bureaucracy, and cut its debts. Jefferson also felt that the country should eliminate Hamilton's standing army by relying on a "disciplined militia" for national defense against invasion. Most importantly, he believed that good government would promote "the encouragement of agriculture." Commerce, in his mind, should be the "handmaiden" of agriculture rather than its driving force.
Accordingly, he reduced, though not substantially, the 316 employees subject to presidential appointment while leaving intact most of the nation's 700 clerks and 3,000 postal workers. The Army was cut to two regiments, one infantry and one artillery (3,500 total), with similar reductions in the Navy. He pressured Congress to abolish the direct tax of 1798 and to repeal the Alien and Sedition Acts, which were still in operation. To emphasize his opposition to the acts, Jefferson personally pardoned the ten victims of those laws who were still in prison. Even after paying $15 million in cash for the Louisiana Purchase (see Foreign Affairs section), the national debt fell from $80 million to $57 million during his two years of service.
Continuation -
War on the Judiciary: Federalists v. Republicans
Although Jefferson was no "blood-soaking" radical, as many of his Federalist opponents had charged, and no reign of terror occurred when he took office, a number of more radical Republicans pressured Jefferson and the Republican-dominated Congress to make war on the Federalist judiciary. Briefly told, the Federalist-controlled Congress under Washington and Adams had created a system of circuit courts that was presided over by the individual justices of the Supreme Court, all of whom were Federalists in 1800. Most of the lower judges on the circuit were also Federalists who had actively enforced the Alien and Sedition Acts, mainly against Jeffersonian-Republicans—by 1800, the terms "Democratic-Republican" and "Jeffersonian-Republican" had become interchangeable.
Continuation -
To make matters worse, just before Jefferson's inauguration, the lame-duck Federalist Congress passed the Judiciary Act of 1801. This piece of legislation reduced the number of Supreme Court justices from six to five, thus limiting Jefferson's ability to make Republican appointments. To further hinder the incoming Republican administration, the act created a new system of circuit courts with sixteen new judges and many more federal attorneys, clerks, federal marshals, and justices of the peace. On his last day in office, Adams worked until late in the night signing commissions for these judicial officers, all of whom were strong Federalists. However, the commissions remained in the government offices when Jefferson became President and Madison became secretary of state, and Madison refused to deliver the commissions, keeping some of the new Federalist judges off the bench.
Jefferson was powerless at first to dismiss the federal judges because they were appointed for life, but he did replace most of the marshals and other court officers with Republicans. Then, in 1802, the Republican-controlled Congress simply repealed the Judiciary Act of 1801, thus doing away with Adams's "midnight appointees." Still, the Federalist-dominated Supreme Court, with justices who were appointed for life and were led by the recently appointed Chief Justice John Marshall, greatly irritated most Jeffersonians.
Two impeachment proceedings were initiated to test the waters for removal of the Federalist justices by trial. According to the U.S. Constitution, a federal judge can be removed from office only for "high crimes and misdemeanors." In the first test, Justice John Pickering, a highly partisan Federalist who was also an alcoholic and undoubtedly insane, was tried by the Senate, based upon articles of impeachment drawn up by the House. Pickering was removed from office by a strict party vote. The other target for impeachment was Justice Samuel Chase, an able but nearly fanatic anti-Jeffersonian who frequently delivered streams of abuse from the bench. Fortunately for Chase, he had defenders among moderate Republicans in the Senate who feared overreaching their congressional authority. In the latter case, the Senate vote failed to carry the two-thirds majority in favor of conviction.
Chief Justice John Marshall was a loyal Federalist who demonstrated his commitment to a strong national government in the case of Marbury v. Madison in 1803. Jefferson's secretary of state, James Madison, had refused to deliver a last-minute justice of the peace commission to William Marbury, a wealthy land speculator in Washington, D.C., who was appointed in the final hours of the Adams administration. Marbury, claiming that his appointment could not be denied him, petitioned for a writ of mandamus, or a formal order of delivery, compelling delivery of the commission.
After hearing the case, the Supreme Court—without dissent—denied the writ although it agreed that the petitioners were entitled to their commissions. Chief Justice Marshall held that the Constitution did not give the Supreme Court the authority to issue writs of mandamus. In making this ruling, the Court declared unconstitutional that portion of the Judiciary Act of 1789 which gave the Court the power to issue such writs. This ruling established for the first time the principle that the Supreme Court can declare an act of Congress void if it is inconsistent with the Constitution. A landmark case, Marbury v. Madison established the basis for judicial review of congressional and executive actions on the grounds of their constitutionality. The Republican Congress repealed the Judiciary Act of 1801 rather than challenge Marshall head on. Jefferson, who admired Marshall's intelligence, agreed with those moderate Republicans who believed that Marshall's support of an independent judiciary posed no threat to republican liberties.
“The principles that made this nation a great…” - @ 0:41 shows Thomas Jefferson. Governor Romney is a Jeffersonian!
"The principles of Jefferson are the definitions & axioms of free society…” – Abe Lincoln
"In matters of principle, stand like a rock.... The principles on which we engaged, of which the charter of our independence is the record, were sanctioned by the laws of our being… Man [is] a rational animal, endowed by nature with rights… A free people [claim] their rights as derived from the laws of nature…” - Thomas Jefferson
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4ypqKig9_I&feature=player_embedded
Congress Again--and France
This first retirement was brief. In a year his wife died. Jefferson reentered Congress, throwing himself into the work of lawmaking, this time for the national government. Within two years he wrote some of the most meaningful state papers of the Continental Congress. Three reports were especially good:
1. On Government for the Western Territory, the basic document for the growth of the United States, in which Jefferson's effort to abolish slavery failed by one vote.
http://history-world.org/thomas_jefferson.htm
"In questions of power, then, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution." - Thomas Jefferson
Candidates so INCOMPETENT that they cannot get on the VA ballot cannot defeat Mr. Obama.
“President Obama says that he wants to 'fundamentally transform' America,” Mr. Romney said. “I don't want to transform America … I want to restore the founding principles that made America great.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11OhmY1obS4
Thomas Jefferson regarded John Locke, Francis Bacon, and Isaac Newton, "the three greatest men that have ever lived, without any exception."
Isaac Newton, an English physicist, mathematician, astronomer, natural philosopher, and alchemist, set forth in mathematical terms the laws governing the course of the heavenly bodies. Thinkers marveled at the proportion, balance, harmony, and order resident in the natural tendencies of the world. They concluded that the order was consonant with human liberty, that the natural order provided means for man to use his faculties for his benefit, and that MAN HAS NATURAL RIGHTS.
http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/treasures/trm033.html
"The first excise tax adopted by the United States government-indeed, the first federal tax of any kind-was the excise tax on whiskey adopted in 1791. Following the suppression of the Whiskey Tax Rebellion in 1794, where farmers had refused to pay the tax, additional taxes were imposed on carriages (1794), and later liquor, snuff, sugar refining, auction sales, and salt.[17]
Mostly repealed by the Jefferson Administration, federal excise taxes were readopted and expanded in scope during the War of 1812, the Civil War, the Spanish-American War, World War I, the Great Depression, World War II, and the Korean War, leaving the federal system primarily with major excise taxes on liquor, tobacco, and gasoline, and minor ones on other items (such as transportation facilities). These taxes are recognized, in light of the above history and understanding, to be excise taxes, even though they often tax the producer of the product directly, and therefore the consumer, indirectly."
http://www.taxfoundation.org/news/show/25402.html
""I consider the fortunes of our republic," [Jefferson] wrote, "as depending, in an eminent degree, on the extinguishment of the public debt." As president, his party abolished all of Hamilton's (and the Federalists') excise taxes and reduced the government debt from $83 million to $57 million."
http://www.lewrockwell.com/dilorenzo/dilorenzo137.html
"Nevertheless, Jefferson abolished all internal taxes, including the whiskey excise tax and the land tax. Meanwhile, the Napoleonic Wars in Europe, though a diplomatic minefield for American statesmen, proved a significant stimulus to the economy of the United States. Vigorous commerce enriched merchants while customs duties swelled the federal Treasury. By 1808 the national debt had been reduced from $80 million to $57 million, even though the Louisiana purchase had added an $11 million liability. By 1806, duties proved so lucrative that Gallatin and Jefferson fretted about what to do with the surplus above that required for debt retirement. Treasury reserves increased from $3 million to $14 million between 1801 and 1808."
http://www.taxhistory.org/www/website.nsf/Web/THM1777?OpenDocument
“The principles that made this nation a great…” - @ 0:41 shows Thomas Jefferson. Governor Romney is a Jeffersonian!
"The principles of Jefferson are the definitions & axioms of free society…” – Abe Lincoln
“We hold these truths to be sacred & undeniable;
That all men are created equal & independent,
That from that equal creation
They derive rights inherent & inalienable,
Among which are the preservation of
Life, & liberty, & the pursuit of happiness…”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4ypqKig9_I&feature=player_embedded
I am not a Conservative, nor a Liberal, nor a Libertarian, nor a Progressive. I am a Jeffersonian.
The Republican Party passed the EVIL Antitrust laws. The EVIL 1913 creations: the Fed and the Income Tax, and the New Deal, are of the Democratic Party. The US is under a BIPARTISAN DICTATORSHIP. The 2008 Republican VP nominee, like Santorum, is a THEOCRACY warrior. Obama is a US-BASHING LYING THUG and LOOTER.
The founding principle of the Libertarian Party is anarchism. Antitrust enforcer Theodore Roosevelt, the founder of the Progressive Party, was the first POTUS to endorse the income tax and the inheritance tax, who also endorsed socialized medicine.
By his actions, e.g. being a serial deficit eradicator and surplus creator, Romney is a Jeffersonian.
http://ilynross.blogspot.com/2011/01/jeffersonian.html
Our REPUBLIC shall not be lost on our watch. We will vote out Obama.
"The ground of liberty is to be gained by inches, [and] we must be contented to secure what we can get from time to time and eternally press forward for what is yet to get. It takes time to persuade men to do even what is for their own good." - Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson’s REPUBLICANISM:
1) That there exists a RIGHT independent of force;
2) That a RIGHT to PROPERTY is founded in our natural wants, in the means with which we are endowed to satisfy these wants, and the right to what we acquire by those means without violating the similar rights of other sensible beings;
3) That NO ONE HAS A RIGHT TO OBSTRUCT ANOTHER exercising his faculties innocently for the relief of sensibilities made a part of his nature;
4) That JUSTICE is the fundamental law of society;
5) That the majority, oppressing an INDIVIDUAL, is guilty of a crime, abuses its strength, and by acting on the law of the strongest, breaks up the foundations of society;
6) That action by the citizens in person, in affairs within their reach and competence, and in all others by representatives chosen immediately and removable by themselves.
http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=457347032083&id=1346466773
Tom & Abe
http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2009/03/dayintech_0310
"The principles of Jefferson are the definitions and axioms of free society... This is a world of compensation; and he who would be no slave must consent to have no slave. Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves, and, under a just God, cannot long retain it. All honor to Jefferson -- to the man, who in the concrete pressure of a struggle for national independence by a single people, had the coolness, forecaste, and sagacity to introduce into a merely revolutionary document an abstract truth, applicable to all men and all times, and so embalm it there that to-day and in all coming days it shall be a rebuke and a stumbling-block to the very harbingers of reappearing tyranny and oppression."
http://www.kingsbenchletter.com/library/lincoln-tribute/
I disagree with the following from Pope John Paul II: "When there is question of defending the rights of individuals, the defenceless and the poor have a claim to special consideration. The richer class has many ways of shielding itself, and stands less in need of help from the State; whereas the mass of the poor have no resources of their own to fall back on, and must chiefly depend on the assistance of the State. It is for this reason that wage-earners, since they mostly belong to the latter class, should be specially cared for and protected by the Government."
I am with the Declaration of Independence that all men are created equal. I am with its author, Thomas Jefferson, who said, "The most sacred of the duties of a government [is] to do equal and impartial justice to all its citizens."
Pope John Paul II wrote the linked encyclical in 1991. Did he not care about Mike Milken and his kind who were gestapoed? From March to August 1991, the US Second District Court of Appeals in New York consecutively voided or reversed a slew of Giuliani convictions. Consequently, the Wall Street Journal ran an editorial headlined: “The Greed Decade Reversed”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centesimus_Annus
"Jefferson even went so far as to ban the teaching of Theology altogether. In a letter to Thomas Cooper in October 1814, Jefferson stated, "a professorship of theology should have no place in our institution" and, true to form, the University never had a Divinity school or department, and was established independent of any religious sect. Replacing the then-standard specialization in Religion, the University undertook groundbreaking specializations in scientific subjects such as Astronomy and Botany. (However, today the University does maintain one of the highest-rated Religious Studies departments in the U.S. and a non-denominational chapel, notably absent from Jefferson's original plans, was constructed in 1890 near the Rotunda.)"
http://www.universityvisitorsnetwork.com/colleges/University-of-Virginia
Thomas Jefferson regarded John Locke, Francis Bacon, and Isaac Newton the "three greatest men the world had ever produced." Isaac Newton, an English physicist, mathematician, astronomer, natural philosopher, and alchemist, set forth in mathematical terms the laws governing the course of the heavenly bodies. Thinkers marveled at the proportion, balance, harmony, and order resident in the natural tendencies of the world. They concluded that the order was consonant with human liberty, that the natural order provided means for man to use his faculties for his benefit, and that man has natural rights.
"In matters of principle, stand like a rock.... The principles on which we engaged, of which the charter of our independence is the record, were sanctioned by the laws of our being… Man [is] a rational animal, endowed by nature with rights… A free people [claim] their rights as derived from the laws of nature…” -- Thomas Jefferson
Rational animal means that man possesses a rational tool. Whether or not a particular human uses it, since man has volition, or whether or not a particular human has neurological defects, such human has rights by virtue of belonging to the rational animal species.
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=4153494079437&set=a.1268872285695.139307.1346466773&type=1¬if_t=like#!/photo.php?fbid=493870387294239&set=a.412950002052945.114337.412645312083414&type=1&theater
“Were we directed from Washington when to sow, and when to reap, we should soon want bread.” - TGMWEL [The greatest man who ever lived]
http://ilynross.blogspot.com/2011/01/jeffersonian.html
Jefferson dedicated his entire life to freedom, education, and SCIENCE. He did not patent any of his inventions.
The UVA is the 1st educational institution to offer astronomy, botany, & philosophy. Its School of Engineering & Applied Science was the 1st engineering school in the US to be part of a comprehensive university.
Thomas Jefferson's design for a plow, ca. 1794.
President Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), one of Virginia's largest planters, considered agriculture to be "a science of the very first order," and he studied it with great zeal and commitment. Jefferson introduced numerous plants to the United States, and he frequently exchanged farming advice and seeds with like-minded correspondents. Of particular interest to the innovative Jefferson was farm machinery, especially the development of a plow which would delve deeper than the two to three inches achieved by a standard wooden plow. Jefferson needed a plow and method of cultivation that would help prevent the soil erosion that plagued Virginia's Piedmont farms. To this end, he and his son-in-law, Thomas Mann Randolph (1768-1828), who managed much of Jefferson's land, worked together to develop iron and mould board plows, like the one shown here, that were specifically designed for hillside plowing, in that they turned the furrow to the downhill side. As the calculations on the sketch show, Jefferson's plows were often based on mathematical formulas, which helped facilitate their duplication and improvement.
JC, if your loved one was killed, and you do not know who did it, how do you administer justice under anarchism?
How do the weak protect themselves against criminals under anarchism?
If a husband and wife disagree as to the terms of their divorce and the custody of their children, how do they settle their disputes under anarchism?
If two good people have different interpretations of a contract they entered into, how do they settle their disputes under anarchism?
How are crimes prevented, repelled, and punished under anarchism? How are foreign terrorists/invaders repelled?
"The law would be provided by private courts, law firms, and mediation firms, etc."
How do you ensure there are no conflicting laws? How do you fund your courts and firms?
You want force to be WIELDED by different firms, like different Mafia lords.
In anarchism, where there would be Muslims, Jews, Christians, and the like, what if the firms of Muslims support Muslim terrorists, and the firms of Christians impose theocracy, and the firms of Jews quarrels with the Muslim and Christian firms?
What if one who cannot afford to have a private law firm and security firm is raped? Who will she/he turn to for justice?
Organized religion is fair game, but as to faith held by private individuals, I am with Thomas Jefferson: "I never will, by any word or act, bow to the shrine of intolerance or admit a right of inquiry into the religious opinions of others."
http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/jefferson/jefffed.html
Check this first before using it -
“Our greatest happiness does not depend on the condition of life in which chance has placed us, but is always the result of a good conscience, good health, occupation, and freedom in all just pursuits.”
― Thomas Jefferson
"The two enemies of the people are criminals and government, so let us tie the second down with the chains of the Constitution so the second will not become the legalized version of the first." - Thomas Jefferson
http://books.google.com/books?id=5bRaCtLJTVAC&pg=PA13&lpg=PA13&dq=the+two+enemies+of+the+people+thomas+jefferson&source=bl&ots=lobkGoHU-4&sig=VQDEvzNFTn9IDYdiiDp4f04A-qg&hl=en&sa=X&ei=pB6EUrOCLvbj4AOfj4CADg&ved=0CE0Q6AEwBDgU#v=onepage&q=the%20two%20enemies%20of%20the%20people%20thomas%20jefferson&f=false
“No man has a natural right to commit aggression on the equal rights of another, and this is all from which the laws ought to restrain him." - Thomas Jefferson
Another difference between public and government: "Error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it." -> Where there is no coercion (e.g. no government interference), reason is left free to combat the irrational. But where there's government/legal-coercion in the realms of conscience, bedroom, uterus, science, economics, education, art..., there are only slaves and masters.
1) Under anarchy, how do you identify those who initiate force? Say, someone is murdered: how do you know when a witness is telling the truth or not, or when a DNA report has been tampered with or not? Who will pay those who will administer justice, if the family of the murdered has no money? How do you ensure they are just?
2) When a couple with minor kids divorce, and they do not agree with the living arrangements with the kids, who decides what should be done?
3) When a husband is beating his wife, and the wife cannot afford to pay someone to defend her, what do anarchists do?
4) If 9/11 happens under anarchy, what do anarchists do?
http://millercenter.org/president/jefferson/essays/biography/4
"Indeed, the national debt was paid off twice in American history, the first time by Thomas Jefferson and the second, and undoubtedly the last time, by Andrew Jackson." - Murray N. Rothbard
http://www.lewrockwell.com/2013/10/murray-n-rothbard/repudiate-the-national-debt-3
Even after paying $15 million in cash for the Louisiana Purchase (see Foreign Affairs section), the national debt fell from $80 million to $57 million during his two years of service.
http://millercenter.org/president/jefferson/essays/biography/4
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