Slim pickin’s on our issue again this week from political cartoonists. But here’s one on fiscal conservatism I thought was good, by Gary Varvel at Townhall.com. I checked, and Thomas Jefferson indeed made all these statements….
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Jill Stanek is a nurse turned speaker, columnist and blogger, a national figure in the effort to protect both preborn and postborn innocent human life.
Awesome!!! Someone should create a party based on these values!!! Would improve life in the US a great deal!
One other Jefferson quote you missed and I paraphrase:
“The primary responsibility of government is the protection of human life.”
Though Jefferson possessed a keen intellect sharpened by a classical education, his ego greatly deminished his ability to know God.
He chose analysis over intimacy.
In some ways TJ was the Bill Clinton of his time.
yor bro ken
prescient
Vita…Someone did. I am a member. The party is the Constitution party. It is not fake. It really exists. I have been a member since I turned 18 and registered to vote.
If Thomas Jefferson said it, I wouldn’t take it to heart.
Vannah, Thomas Jefferson was perhaps the biggest proponant of freedom of any or the founding fathers. His contribution to our country can not be understated.
“If Jefferson said it I wouldn’t take it to heart.”–Vannah
Those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it.”–George Santayana
Have you ever studied Jefferson? He was a southern plantation owner and member of the elite class who opposed just about every attempt to help the people of the South- he was part of the reason that the South got into the mindset that caused the Civil War. He was part of the reason that the pre-Civil War South was allowed to control the country for so long.
We studied him in class- I try to look at everyone through a realistic lense and when doing so it’s hard not to look at him as the biggest hypocrite of his day. Yes he accomplished good, but he was purely and simply a flaming hypocrite and much of what he did accomplish came with an alterior motive, one which usually benefited him.
Vannah, with all due respect, often what we are taught about various political agents is colored by the bias of whoever is doing the teaching.
He almost singlehandedly orchestrated the relocation of the captial to the D.C. area and the smooth transfer of debts between the states and federal government in Virginia’s benefit at a time when the could literally have been lost. He did so by orchestrating a deal between Madison and Hamilton, who at the time had become politically divided.
He joined with Madison in making sure that southern farmers were not unduly burdened with debt and championed the agricultural class over the finanical class.
In fact, he was often accused of being too reliant upon agriculture and of living in an idealistic utopian in which the rights of individuals and states were upheld at the expense of a strong federal government.
He epitomized anti-federalist ideals that, if followed, were intended to give keep any individual state or region from being marginalized or infringed upon to the point of wanting secession.
He was not a hypocrite, flaming or otherwise. In fact, following the death of his wife and his time in France, he had no desire to ever enter into politics again. He did so only at the request of George Washington. Even his staunch political opponant, Hamilton, supported him against Burr (though, the case could be made that Burr was so repugnant that Hamilton would have supported Satan himself over him).
I would be very hesitent to attack any of the founding fathers as self serving hypocrites, again with the exception of Burr. They all had faults, but they acted out of concern for our country at a time when success was anything but certain.
I would tell you to try to get ahold of the text American Political Thought. I like it because, for the most part, it is just source material from the time. The authors do little to interject their own politics into the book. I always prefer to read the writings of those involved rather than the interpertation of some later historian.
One more note, Jefferson was a huge opponent of Judicial Review. He would be turning in his grave over Roe.
Vannah and Lauren
Jefferson authored the Declaration of Independence.
Jefferson did want to include any references to god in the docuement but the other delegates refused to sign it unless he did.
Jefferson was forced to include the phrase ‘endowed by their Creator’. I am not sure if he objected to the mention of god and/or if he objected to the ‘self evident truth’ that black people could be equal to him.
The popular thought among many of even the abolitionists at the time was that though africans were humans they were not quite equal to other humans with paler skin.
Jefferson was a brilliant man. He was also a slave owner.
Jefferson inherited his slaves just as the nation inherited tne institution of slavery.
Jefferson sired a child by one of his female slaves. I believe Jefferson was still married at the time. The act constituted adultery and probably rape.
[Hey no one’s perfect or as the democRATS said when Bill Clinton was caught plaing hide the wienie with some of the hired help, “So what?!?! “Great leaders have great libidos.” Elenor Clift]
[Humans, even brillant humans like Thomas Jefferson are stupid.]
The only thing greater than Thomas Jefferson’s intellect was his ego.
yor bro ken
Ken,
He specifically wrote against slavery. The reason he did not free his slaves was that he could not legally do so as he died in deep debt and freeing the slaves would have caused him to default on that debt.
The woman who he is alleged to have fathered children with was actually his late wife’s half sister. His wife died in childbirth, and he allegedly began a relationship with her half-sister (who was a slave) after her death. If true, their relationship lasted almost 40 years though they could, of course, never be legally married.
Jefferson wasn’t an atheist, but did oppose state sponsored religion. He specifically put “all men are created equal” in order to cause a “stumbling block” for later generations when it came to the issue of slavery. He very much wanted to see it abolished, but knew that it could not at the time of the writing of the declaration.
Jefferson has been the victim of much revisionist history and much public besmearchment, but looking at the writings of the time, it is very obvious that much of his reputation is undeserved.
Thomas Jefferson, like any man, had his failings as well as his strengths. Our Founding Fathers should not be deified, but certainly not demonized either.
While condemning our Founding Fathers for owning slaves, we don’t hear how Native American tribes and freed blacks also owned black slaves. Do they teach you that fact Vannah? How about the fact blacks and Native Americans fought for the Confederacy as well as the Union?
Slavery was never about race, but the preying of the strong on the weak.
Good point about Clinton, Ken. Didn’t our nation’s media and liberals fall all over themselves to excuse his behavior?
Be very wary of what you are taught Vannah and do your own research.
“Didn’t our nation’s media and liberals fall all over themselves to excuse his behavior?”
=============================================
SOunds like they’re doing the same thing for Obama…
Posted by: Lauren at April 18, 2010 7:46 PM
“The reason he did not free his slaves was that he could not legally do so as he died in deep debt and freeing the slaves would have caused him to default on that debt.”
—————————————————
Lauren,
I know that must have been reassuring to his slaves.
I mean how many slaves were fortunate enough to be ‘owned’ by a man who would rather keep them in bondage than default on his debts.
I wonder if Jefferson ever ‘acknowledged’ his child(ren) birthed by his slaves.
While Jefferson was serving as President he authored the ‘Jefferson Bible’ purposely omitting every reference to the miraculous or divine origin of Jesus.
“The estabishment of the innocent and genuine character of this benevolent moralist [Jefferson is writing about Jesus.] and the rescuing it from the imputation of imposture, which has resulted from artificial systems invented by ultra-Christian sects, e.g. the immaculate conception of Jesus, his deification, the creation of the world by him, his miraculous powers, his resurrection and visable ascension, his corporal presence in the Eucharist, the Trinity, original sin, atonement, regeneration, election, orders of hierarchy, etc.”
To an agnostic, who has no Redeemer, no Saviour, no Comforter, no source of grace or forgiveness or Providential intervention, the concept of the utter depravity of man is so depressing that he ‘has’ to believe in the basic goodness of man-or go into despair. A man like Jefferson blinds himself to the bankruptcy of his philosophy, and goes through life carefully avoiding a head on confrontation with reality, all the while affirming the nobility of “the brotherhood of man”.
Such a man as Jefferson, who was so blinded to the forces being unleashed by the French Revolution that in describing it in a letter from France, he would glowingly write: “The mass possesses such a degree of good sense as to enable them to decide well.”
In less than two years the French Revolution was to devolve into the Reign of Terror. The difference between the French Revolution and the American Revolution was the French was based on the Enlightened Age of Reason. The American Revoltution was based on a dependence on God and resulted in a constitutional republic.
The French Revolution resulted in a democracy to be sure, but one that which almost immediately subsided into rapaciousness and cruelty seldom seen in the history of man.
No one could have predicted the mob rule of the reign of terror, not even a man with an intellect as keen as Thomas Jefferson, but even when Jefferson became aware of the bloodletting in Fracnce, the kangaroo courts and the guiotine justice, he remained infatuated with it.
Jefferson was a vindictive man, a political animal, who did not forgive and who did forget, when someone resisted his agenda.
Thomas Jefferson and Bill Clinton had more in common than you would care to know.
That God used Jefferson, I cannot deny, but God used Pharoah too.
Give me Madison, give me Washington, give me Adams, give me Ben Franklin.
Franklin had the uncommon good sense and wisdom to recognize the many instances of divine providence intervening on their behalf during their struggle with Britain for independence and without whose aid they surely would not have been successful.
yor bro ken
I borrowed/plagarized heavily from ‘The Light and tne Glory by Peter Marshall and David Manuel
If you want to bring some balance to the humanist revision of American history you received in the government schools I recomend all three books by these two men.
From Sea to Shining Sea
Sounding Forth The Trumpet
Also ‘Christianity and the Constitution’ by John Eidsmoe
Here’s a link to David Bartons web site
http://www.wallbuilders.com/
Barton has about as good a grasp on our spiritual heritage as anyone I have read.