Thomas Jefferson and the Foundations of our Government
Just for fun, I urge you all to look at this sometime in the near future. It is a collection of quotations from the writings of Thomas Jefferson concerning government and politics. Anyone who can come away from reading even a small fraction of these writings without having some profound feelings one way or another is probably a bureaucrat.
The eloquence and simplicity displayed by Jefferson in some of the finer quotations contained on those pages is astounding. It is said that once when John F Kennedy welcomed 49 Nobel laureates to the White House he quipped, “I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent and of human knowledge that has ever been gathered together at the White House—with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone.”
Unfortunately, we have strayed far away from the Jeffersonian vision of what our Republic should be.
While Jefferson did not believe in a standing army, a full half of our national budget goes toward past and present military spending.
While Jefferson believed that government was a natural threat to liberty and should be watched vigilantly and always limited, we steadliy give away our rights as citizens and allow the government virtually unchecked powers.
While Jefferson believed that the ideas of conquest and entanglement with foreign governments were antithetical to the American way of life and of government, we constantly meddle in the affairs of other nations to the detriment of our own people and to theirs.
Jefferson abhorred war, distrusted government and aristocracy, believed in the people, and understood that freedom of speech and of the press are the greatest assets and safeguards to a free society.
Today we have a virtual aristocracy of millionaires, a President who refers to himself as “The Commander in Chief” - not of the armed forces as prescribed by the Constitution, but of the entire country. We have “Free Speech Zones” and we jail members of the media for exercising their rights.
The situation is grim.
Luckily, Jefferson reminds us that the will of the people is the supreme authority, that this authority can never be taken away, and that the voice of the people can never be silenced as long as we refuse to lay down. Jefferson reminds us that governments don’t grant rights, they only limit them, and we must not allow them to limit ours any more.
Now is the time to reflect on Jefferson’s message and see if together we can make those ideals he described some two hundred years ago apply to, and make sense in, a modern society. We have to begin thinking about the future of this country, and of the ideals of individual liberty that a small minority of people would like us to forget.
It is time to reclaim our place and once again bring the government under our control instead of letting the government control us.