Posted on 08/07/2012 7:30:21 AM PDT by ProgressingAmerica
In a letter to Samuel Kercheval (June 12, 1816), Jefferson wrote the following:
And to preserve their independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude. If we run into such debts, as that we must be taxed in our meat and in our drink, in our necessaries and our comforts, in our labors and our amusements, for our callings and our creeds, as the people of England are, our people, like them, must come to labor sixteen hours in the twenty-four, give the earnings of fifteen of these to the government for their debts and daily expenses; and the sixteenth being insufficient to afford us bread, we must live, as they now do, on oatmeal and potatoes; have no time to think, no means of calling the mismanagers to account; but be glad to obtain subsistence by hiring ourselves to rivet their chains on the necks of our fellow-sufferers. Our landholders, too, like theirs, retaining indeed the title and stewardship of estates called theirs, but held really in trust for the treasury, must wander, like theirs, in foreign countries, and be contented with penury, obscurity, exile, and the glory of the nation. This example reads to us the salutary lesson, that private fortunes are destroyed by public as well as by private extravagance. And this is the tendency of all human governments. A departure from principle in one instance becomes a precedent for a second; that second for a third; and so on, till the bulk of the society is reduced to be mere automatons of misery, and to have no sensibilities left but for sinning and suffering. Then begins, indeed, the bellum omnium in omnia, which some philosophers observing to be so general in this world, have mistaken it for the natural, instead of the abusive state of man. And the fore horse of this frightful team is public debt. Taxation follows that, and in its train wretchedness and oppression.
One necessarily follows the other; excessive spending inevitably brings taxes and oppression. In a word: tyranny.
Like so many of the other things I make note of, this could have been written today, by any one of us. It is being written today, by my fellow tea partiers far and wide.
This is the kind of thing they keep out of schools.
You and I can, but then...we value logic and facts. We challenge, question, doubt and research information on our own.
Young people do not. THEY swallow everything whole which is presented to them in their schools, textbooks and most poisonously in the MSM.
After generations of THIS kind of conditioning, Thomas Jefferson is a dead letter to them.
No doubt he also had the unfolding situation in France in mind.
I am seeing more and more parallels with regards to our current state and that of France before their bloody revolution (i.e an out of tough government piling burgeoning debt laid on the backs of the the working men).
They say the only thing that saved England from a similar revolution was a Christian revival brought about by the preaching of Wesley & Whitfield.
Divide the counties into wards of such size as that every citizen can attend, when called on, and act in person. Ascribe to them the government of their wards in all things relating to themselves exclusively. A justice, chosen by themselves, in each, a constable, a military company, a patrol, a school, the care of their own poor, their own portion of the public roads, the choice of one or more jurors to serve in some court, and the delivery, within their own wards, of their own votes for all elective officers of higher sphere, will relieve the county administration of nearly all its business, will have it better done, and by making every citizen an acting member of the government, and in the offices nearest and most interesting to him, will attach him by his strongest feelings to the independence of his country, and its republican constitution.
Our Founders were given to us by our CREATOR!We have strayed and have only ourselves to blame!!
Thanks for this quote from the First Democrat - - - .
The French revolution that came later seem to have much more a spirit of revenge than liberation. We had the advantage of being a good distance from England. However I wonder if the spiritual condition of the nation didn't play in as well.
America's revolution came on the heels of a revival. If we could only bring back Jonathan Edwards, Patrick Henry, and Thomas Jefferson.
Of course, one way we know he was the First Democrat was that he was a consummate hypocrite. The man was in personal debt up to his eyeballs till his death to maintain that Monticello lifestyle, was an outspoken champion of freedom and wrote of the evils of slavery while keeping human chattel himself, and tried to always appear above the political fray while undermining opponents like Adams and even Washington in secret. Yep, he was definitely a Democrat.
Jefferson was the most contemptible of the founders, in my opinion.
This should be read at the GOP Convention during the time of maximum TV viewership.
Even though the RAT’s claim him as the founder of their oranization, Jefferson knew them for what they are before they came into being.
Was it or was it not illegal for Jefferson to free his chattel?
Over the past few decades, in reading the entire selection of Jeffersonian wisdom you quoted, and despite the increasing size of our government at all levels, the significance of the particular section reposted above escaped the attention my attention. Now, however, the Obama Administration has provided context for understanding Jefferson's analysis and conclusions about what eventually happens when "the People" yield their constitutional power to coercive tyrants in government.
Using "hope and change" as a weapon, the so-called "progressive" Administration spent "the People's" earnings wildly, borrowed and printed fiat money, piled up deficits and debt, and destroyed prospects for private investors to create productivity and jobs, increased the appeal of dependency on government for millions, and increased the ranks of government employees to service that dependency.
Desperate for income for their families, unemployed private workers saw "opportunities" in "civil service."
Those citizens found themselves accepting jobs in an ever-increasing pool of government workers whose pay and excessive benefits must be "taken" directly from the earnings of their fellow citizens in productive private enterprise, while the combined power of government and SEIU force earnings that far exceed those of their counterparts in the declining "private" sector. As a result, they find themselves to be unwittingly "rivet(ing) their chains on the necks of our (their) fellow citizens."
California, are you listening?
America, are you listening?
Oh, please, seriously, what lib is going to pay attention to anything that was written in a private letter? Like they’d ever glom onto some catchprase and run with it.
Washington faced very similar issues and had similar sentiments about the "peculiar institution" but did will that his slaves would be freed upon the death of his wife, Martha. She actually freed them about one year after George died (i.e. about 26 years before Jefferson expired).
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