Jeffersonian Democracy

All of the below qoutations are completely verifiable. None of these quotations are spurious or of questionable attribution.



Jefferson's Quotes:

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.
Notes on Virginia (1782)


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 approve the homage of reason rather than of blind-folded fear. Do not be frightened from this inquiry by any fear of its consequences.... If it end in a belief that there is no god, you will find incitements to virtue in the comfort and pleasantness you feel in its exercise and in the love of others it will procure for you.
Jefferson's letter from Paris to his nephew Peter Carr (August 10, 1787)


What country before ever existed a century & half without a rebellion? & what country can preserve it's liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon & pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots & tyrants. It is its natural manure.
Letter to William Stephens Smith (November 13, 1787)


I am for freedom of religion, & against all maneuvres to bring about a legal ascendancy of one sect over another.
Lletter to Elbridge Gerry (1799)


They [the clergy] believe that any portion of power confided to me, will be exerted in opposition to their schemes. And they believe rightly; for I have sworn upon the altar of god, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man. But this is all they have to fear from me: and enough, too, in their opinion.
Letter to Dr. Benjamin Rush (Sept. 23, 1800)


Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and 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 and State.
Letter to Danbury Baptist Association, CT. (Jan. 1, 1802) This statement is the origin of the often used phrase "separation of Church and State".


Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle.
Letter to John Norvell (June 11, 1807)


He who steadily observes the moral precepts in which all religions concur, will never be questioned at the gates of heaven as to the dogmas in which they all differ.
Letter to William Canby (September 18, 1813)


Of all the systems of morality, ancient or modern, which have come under my observation, none appear to me so pure as that of Jesus. He who follows this steadily need not, I think, be uneasy, although he cannot comprehend the subtleties and mysteries erected on his doctrines by those who, calling themselves his special followers and favorites, would make him come into the world to lay snares for all understandings but theirs. These metaphysical heads, usurping the judgment seat of God, denounce as his enemies all who cannot perceive the Geometrical logic of Euclid in the demonstrations of St. Athanasius, that three are one, and one is three; and yet that the one is not three nor the three one.
Letter to William Canby (September 18, 1813)


Religion is a subject on which I have ever been most scrupulously reserved. I have considered it as a matter between every man and his Maker in which no other, and far less the public, had a right to intermeddle.
Letter to Richard Rush (1813)


History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance of which their civil as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purposes.
Letter to Alexander von Humboldt (Dec. 6, 1813)


The whole history of these books is so defective and doubtful that it seems vain to attempt minute enquiry into it: and such tricks have been played with their text, and with the texts of other books relating to them, that we have a right, from that cause, to entertain much doubt what parts of them are genuine. In the New Testament there is internal evidence that parts of it have proceeded from an extraordinary man; and that other parts are of the fabric of very inferior minds. It is as easy to separate those parts, as to pick out diamonds from dunghills.
On Christian scriptures, in a letter to John Adams (January 24, 1814)


Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law.
Letter to Dr. Thomas Cooper (February 10, 1814)


No nation has ever yet existed or been governed without religion. Nor can be. The Christian religion is the best religion that has ever been given to man and I, as chief Magistrate of this nation, am bound to give it the sanction of my example. Good morning Sir.
Reportedly overheard by Rev. Ethan Allen (1797-1879) when Jefferson's friend asked "You going to church, Mr. J.? You do not believe a word in it." (Allen was only 12 when Jefferson retired the presidency.)


In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own.
Letter to Horatio G. Spafford (March 17, 1814)


Self-interest, or rather self-love, or egoism, has been more plausibly substituted as the basis of morality. But I consider our relations with others as constituting the boundaries of morality. With ourselves, we stand on the ground of identity, not of relation, which last, requiring two subjects, excludes self-love confined to a single one. To ourselves, in strict language, we can owe no duties, obligation requiring also two parties. Self-love, therefore, is no part of morality. Indeed, it is exactly its counterpart.
Letter to Thomas Law (1814)


Our particular principles of religion are a subject of accountability to our god alone. I enquire after no man's and trouble none with mine; nor is it given to us in this life to know whether yours or mine, our friend's or our foe's, are exactly the right.
Letter to Miles King (September 26, 1814)


If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.
Letter to Colonel Charles Yancey (January 6, 1816)


Bigotry is the disease of ignorance, of morbid minds; enthusiasm of the free and buoyant. Education & free discussion are the antidotes of both.
Letter to John Adams, (August 1, 1816)

I hope we shall take warning from the example [of England] and crush in it's [sic] birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws our country.
Letter to George Logan, (November 12, 1816)


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.
Letter to Isaac H. Tiffany (1819)


You say you are a Calvinist. I am not. I am of a sect by myself, as far as I know.
Letter to Ezra Stiles Ely (June 25, 1819)


As you say of yourself, I too am an Epicurian. I consider the genuine (not the imputed) doctrines of Epicurus as containing everything rational in moral philosophy which Greece and Rome have left us.
Letter to William Short (Oct. 31, 1819) on his admiration of the principles of Epicurus.


Among the sayings and discourses imputed to him [Jesus] by his biographers, I find many passages of fine imagination, correct morality, and of the most lovely benevolence; and others again of so much ignorance, so much absurdity, so much untruth, charlatanism, and imposture, as to pronounce it impossible that such contradictions should have proceeded from the same being.
Letter to William Short (April 13, 1820)


My aim in that was, to justify the character of Jesus against the fictions of his pseudo-followers, which have exposed him to the inference of being an impostor. For if we could believe that he really countenanced the follies, the falsehoods and the charlatanisms which his biographers father on him, and admit the misconstructions, interpolations and theorizations of the fathers of the early, and fanatics of the latter ages, the conclusion would be irresistible by every sound mind, that he was an impostor. I give no credit to their falsifications of his actions and doctrines, and to rescue his character, the postulate in my letter asked only what is granted in reading every other historian... I say, that this free exercise of reason is all I ask for the vindication of the character of Jesus. We find in the writings of his biographers matter of two distinct descriptions. First, a groundwork of vulgar ignorance, of things impossible, of superstitions, fanaticisms and fabrications. Intermixed with these, again, are sublime ideas of the Supreme Being, aphorisms and precepts of the purest morality and benevolence, sanctioned by a life of humility, innocence and simplicity of manners, neglect of riches, absence of worldly ambition and honors, with an eloquence and persuasiveness which have not been surpassed. These could not be inventions of the groveling authors who relate them. They are far beyond the powers of their feeble minds. They shew that there was a character, the subject of their history, whose splendid conceptions were above all suspicion of being interpolations from their hands... That Jesus did not mean to impose himself on mankind as the son of God, physically speaking, I have been convinced by the writings of men more learned than myself in that lore. But that he might conscientiously believe himself inspired from above, is very possible... Excusing, therefore, on these considerations, those passages in the gospels which seem to bear marks of weakness in Jesus, ascribing to him what alone is consistent with the great and pure character of which the same writings furnish proofs, and to their proper authors their own trivialities and imbecilities, I think myself authorised to conclude the purity and distinction of his character, in opposition to the impostures which those authors would fix upon him; and that the postulate of my former letter is no more than is granted in all other historical works.
Letter to William Short (August 4, 1820) on his reason for composing a Syllabus of an Estimate of the Merit of the Doctrines of Jesus and referring to Jesus’ biographers, the Gospel writers


To talk of immaterial existences is to talk of nothings. To say that the human soul, angels, god, are immaterial, is to say they are nothings, or that there is no god, no angels, no soul. I cannot reason otherwise: but I believe I am supported in my creed of materialism by Locke, Tracy, and Stewart. At what age of the Christian church this heresy of immaterialism, this masked atheism, crept in, I do not know. But heresy it certainly is.
[Of all these quotes, only in this one does the creator of this thread strongly differ in beliefs with Jefferson; the inclusion of this quote is to show (This is my opinion.) that Jefferson, in this instance of exhibiting a clear-cut dogmatism, was fallible.].
Letter to John Adams (Aug. 15, 1820)


Where the preamble declares, that coercion is a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, an amendment was proposed by inserting "Jesus Christ," so that it would read "A departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion;" the insertion was rejected by the great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mohammedan, the Hindoo and Infidel of every denomination.
Autobiography (1821), in reference to the Virginia Act for Religious Freedom


I can never join Calvin in addressing his god. He was indeed an Atheist, which I can never be; or rather his religion was Daemonism. If ever man worshipped a false god, he did.
Letter to John Adams (April 11, 1823)


The truth is, that the greatest enemies of the doctrine of Jesus are those, calling themselves the expositors of them, who have perverted them to the structure of a system of fancy absolutely incomprehensible, and without any foundation in his genuine words. And the day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter... But may we hope that the dawn of reason and freedom of thought in these United States will do away with this artificial scaffolding, and restore to us the primitive and genuine doctrines of this most venerated reformer of human errors.
Letter to John Adams (April 11, 1823)


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 them legitimately, by the grace of God. These are grounds of hope for others. For ourselves, let the annual return of this day forever refresh our recollections of these rights, and an undiminished devotion to them.
Letter to Roger C. Weightman declining to attend July 4th ceremonies in Washington D.C. celebrating the 50th anniversary of Indepencence, because of his health. This was Jefferson's last letter. (June 24, 1826)


This is the fourth?
Last words (Jefferson died on July 4, 1826, the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence)
A few accounts declare that he asked on the night of the third: "Is it the fourth?" Most accounts declare the cited words were his last, and that he died a few hours before John Adams, whose last words are recorded as having been: "Thomas.. Jefferson.. still surv.." or "Thomas Jefferson still survives."

Nobles Need Not Pay Taxes
   
by Thom Hartmann
   
   
A new aristocracy is taking over not just the United States of America but also the world. Proof of how far along it has come was in an article by Glenn R. Simpson in the January 28, 2005 edition of The Wall Street Journal.

"European countries have been steadily slashing corporate tax rates," wrote Simpson, adding, "...between 2000 and 2003, one nation after another has moved toward lower corporate rates with fewer loopholes."

On January 31, 2005, the Journal followed up with another story ("Tax
Showdown Promised by EU Chief") pointing out that "...the new president of the European Commission launched a blunt attack on French and German efforts to end tax competition among European Union countries."

Ironically, EU leader José Manuel Barroso is also quoted in the Journal as saying: "Corporatist vested interests are the most important problem, be they from the left or the right."

This is more than just a tax cut story. It's about a fundamental shift in
power and wealth from average people and the governments they had formed to represent them, to the capture of those governments and economic enslavement of their people by corporate aristocracies.

In it, Europe is simply following the lead set out by the United States,
starting with the Reagan/Bush administration, when, in 1983, corporate taxes revenues were slashed to a low not seen since 1929.

This isn't the first time this has happened. Marc Bloch is one of the great 20th Century scholars of the feudal history of Europe. In his book "Feudal Society" he points out that feudalism is a fracturing of one authoritarian hierarchical structure into another: the state disintegrates, as local power brokers take over.

In almost every case, both with European feudalism and feudalism in China, South America, and Japan, "feudalism coincided with a profound weakening of the State, particularly in its protective capacity."

Whether the power and wealth agent that takes the place of government is a local baron, lord, king, or corporation, if it has greater power in the lives of individuals than does a representative government, the culture has dissolved into feudalism.

Bluntly, Bloch states: "The feudal system meant the rigorous economic
subjection of a host of humble folk to a few powerful men."

This doesn’t mean the end of government, but, instead the subordination of government to the interests of the feudal lords. Interestingly, even in Feudal Europe, Bloch points out, "The concept of the State never absolutely disappeared, and where it retained the most vitality men continued to call themselves ‘free’."

The transition from a governmental society to a feudal one is marked by the rapid accumulation of power and wealth in a few hands, with a corresponding reduction in the power and responsibilities of governments that represent the people.

Once the rich and powerful gain control of the government, they turn it upon itself, usually first eliminating its taxation process as it applies to themselves. Says Bloch: "Nobles need not pay taille [taxes]."

Or, as Glenn Simpson noted in the Wall Street Journal, "General Electric Co., for example, reported paying an effective tax rate of 19% last year on world-wide income, compared with 26% in 2003."

Corporations are taxed because they use public services, and are therefore expected to help pay for them - the same as citizens.

Corporations make use of a work force educated in public schools paid for
with tax dollars. They use roads and highways paid for with tax dollars. They use water, sewer, and power and communications rights-of-way paid for with taxes. They demand the same protection from fire and police departments as everybody else, and enjoy the benefits of national sovereignty and the stability provided by the military and institutions like NATO and the United Nations, the same as all residents of democratic nations.

In fact, corporations are heavier users of taxpayer-provided services and
institutions than are average citizens. Taxes pay for our court systems, which are most heavily used by corporations to enforce contracts. Taxes pay for our Treasury Department and other governmental institutions which maintain a stable currency essential to corporate activity. Taxes pay for our regulation of corporate activity, from assuring safety in the workplace to a pure food and drug supply to limiting toxic emissions.

Under George W. Bush, the burden of cleaning up toxic wastes produced by
corporate activity has largely shifted from polluter-funded Superfund and other programs to taxpayer-funded cleanups (as he did in Texas as governor there before becoming President).

Every year, millions of cases of cancer, emphysema, neurological disorders, and other conditions caused by corporate pollution are paid for in whole or in part by government funded programs from Medicare to Medicaid to government subsidies of hospitals, universities, and research institutions funded by tax dollars through the NIH and NIMH.

Because it's well understood that corporations use our tax-funded
institutions at least as heavily as do citizens, they've traditionally been taxed at similar rates. For example, the top corporate tax rate in the US was 48% during the Carter administration, down from the a peak of 53% during the Eisenhower and Kennedy years.

Today it stands at 35%, but in May of 2001 Bush administration Treasury
Secretary Paul O'Neill suggested there should be no corporate income tax
whatsoever. This was the opening salvo in a very real war to have working people bear all the costs of the commons and governance, while the wealthy corporate elite derive most of its benefits.

And, as George H.W. Bush pointed out when he was president, this isn't just an American phenomenon. It's a New World Order.

"The corporate tax-cutters of recent years stretch from Portugal, where the rate has dropped 10 points to about 17%," notes The Wall Street Journal's 28 January article, "to Austria, down nine points to about 25%."

A cornerstone of the conservative movement to consolidate power in the hands of a wealthy corporate elite, the campaign to end corporate income taxes altogether - and leave the rest of us to pick up the entire tab for corporate use of our institutions and corporation despoliation of our commons - first picked up steam when Reagan came to power in 1980.

As Cato Institute adjunct scholar Richard W. Rahn noted in Rev. Moon's
Washington Times, "The idea and practice of the corporate income tax has been dying slowly for the last two decades."

The December 1, 2004 Washington Times article, titled "End Corporate Income Tax," reflects a powerful and growing movement not just in the United States but across the world. So-called "free trade" agreements and supranational institutions like the WTO have given multinational corporations control of the economic lives of nations that were previously democracies. Holland, Ireland, Germany, Portugal, Belgium - the list goes on and on.

In a feudal state, as Bloch reminds us, the nobles need not pay taxes.

And as Mussolini told us, the newest form of feudalism has been reinvented and renamed. He called it "fascism" - a word that was defined by The American Heritage Dictionary (Houghton Mifflin Company, 1983) as "fas-cism (fash'iz'em)
n. A system of government that exercises a dictatorship of the extreme right, typically through the merging of state and business leadership, together with belligerent nationalism."

We are quickly shifting toward a corporate-run state in countries all over the world. It appears "free" and even allows elections, albeit they are only among candidates funded and approved by corporate powers, held on voting machines owned by those corporate powers, and marketed in media owned by those corporate powers.

But this bears little resemblance to the democratic republic envisioned by our nation's Founders.

If our elected representatives - and those of other "free" nations - don't quickly wake up and reverse course, we will soon again be in a feudal world. And it's up to us - We the People - to help them awaken.

Thom Hartmann (thom at thomhartmann.com) is a Project Censored Award-winning best-selling author and host of a nationally syndicated daily progressive talk show. www.thomhartmann.com His most recent books are "The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight," "Unequal Protection," "We The People," "The Edison Gene", and "What Would Jefferson Do?."

Please discuss.

tl;dr
>>4
no

Jefferson was a commie pinko librul!

And that's the way I like it.

Most Americans wouldn't recognize these quotes, and that's a shame.  Americans, both on the right and on the left, are today very uncomfortable with the radicalism of the Founding Fathers.  I personally think that as a society we'd do well to get back in touch with our radical roots.

>>7
if you want to draw historical parallels to our current capitalist cast system, in the financial sense, read about the robber barrons..

its nice to be radical when youre declaring revolution against england...

its harder to be radical when you have since built a system you now wish to protect and maintain... status quo forces, lets say

i wouldnt go so far as police state... but a free population must be watched to achieve any sort of effective enforcement controls  against possible sleeper cell terrorists in this age

>>7
Try getting somebody supporting the 10 Commandments displays in publicly owned land to quote the first Ammendment...

Jeffersonian Democracy wins!

bump

Why did this thread die? This is quality data.

____________________
Meanwhile:
Enforcing shampoo limits on flights = matter of national security.

Enforcing limitations and safety with deadly explosive material = meh, if you companies get around to it or whatever that's cool.

Seems like we have laser-like focus on the wrong stuff.

http://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/1cqmyi/texas_fertilizer_company_didnt_heed_disclosure/

>>12
How does reddit compare to 4chan?

>>13
Like comparing paint to a hot dog.

You act as if Texan corporations have always been maintained by incompetent morons who enjoy endangering the lives of their neighbors through negligence.