The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:

[Crafty_Dog]

Did Thomas Jefferson get stoned?

"1806 July "I remember seeing in your greenhouse a plant of a couple of feet
height in a pot the fragrance of which (from its gummy bud if I recollect
rightly) was peculiarly agreeable to me..." (Jefferson to W.Hamilton,
Betts, Garden Book, 323)"

[Crafty_Dog]

"A constitution founded on these principles introduces knowledge among the people, and inspires them with a conscious dignity becoming  freemen; a general emulation takes place, which causes good humor, sociability, good manners, and good morals to be general. That elevation of sentiment inspired by such a government, makes the common people brave and enterprising. That ambition which is inspired by it makes them sober, industrious, and frugal." --John Adams, Thoughts on Government, 1776


All things Thomas Jefferson
http://guides.lib.virginia.edu/content.php?pid=77323

[Crafty_Dog]

"Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God. I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!" --Patrick Henry, Speech to the Virginia Convention, March 23, 1775

[Crafty_Dog]

"I trust that the proposed Constitution afford a genuine specimen of representative government and republican government; and that it will  answer, in an eminent degree, all the beneficial purposes of society." --Alexander Hamilton, speech to the New York Ratifying Convention, 1788

[Crafty_Dog]

"Constitutions of civil government are not to be framed upon a calculation of existing exigencies, but upon a combination of these with the probable exigencies of ages, according to the natural and tried course of human affairs. Nothing, therefore, can be more fallacious than to infer the extent of any power, proper to be lodged in the national government, from an estimate of its immediate necessities." --Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 34

[Crafty_Dog]

"The aim of every political constitution is, or ought to be, first to obtain for rulers men who possess most wisdom to discern, and most virtue to pursue, the common good of the society; and in the next place, to take the most effectual precautions for keeping them virtuous whilst they continue to hold their public trust." --James Madison, Federalist No. 57

[Crafty_Dog]

"You give me a credit to which I have no claim in calling me 'the writer of the Constitution of the United States.' This was not, like the fabled Goddess of Wisdom, the offspring of a single brain. It ought to be regarded as the work of many heads and many hands." --James Madison, letter to William Cogswell, 1834

[Crafty_Dog]

"Whatever may be the judgement pronounced on the competency of the architects of the Constitution, or whatever may be the destiny of the  edifice prepared by them, I feel it a duty to express my profound and solemn conviction ... that there never was an assembly of men, charged with a great and arduous trust, who were more pure in their motives, or more exclusively or anxiously devoted to the object committed to them." --James Madison

[Crafty_Dog]

"No morn ever dawned more favorable than ours did; and no day was every more clouded than the present! Wisdom, and good examples are necessary at this time to rescue the political machine from the impending storm." --George Washington, letter to James Madison, 1786

[Freki]

I thought this PJTV Video: " The Blood of Patriots & Tyrants: The Tea Party's Founders" was interesting and hope you do too.

http://www.pjtv.com/v/3353

[Crafty_Dog]

Good one Freki.

Happy Birthday Thomas Jefferson!

"Jealousy, and local policy mix too much in all our public councils for the good government of the Union. In a words, the confederation appears to me to be little more than a shadow without the substance...." --George Washington, letter to James Warren, 1785

"A local spirit will infallibly prevail much more in the members of Congress than a national spirit will prevail in the legislatures of the particular States." --James Madison, Federalist No. 46

"Next Monday the Convention in Virginia will assemble; we have still good hopes of its adoption here: though by no great plurality of votes. South Carolina has probably decided favourably before this time. The plot thickens fast. A few short weeks will determine the political fate of America for the present generation, and probably produce no small influence on the happiness of society through a long succession of ages to come." --George Washington, letter to Marquis de Lafayette, 1788

"[G]iving [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." --Thomas Jefferson

"The battle, sir, is not to the strong alone; it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave. ... t is now too late to retire from the contest. There is no retreat but in submission and slavery! Our chains are forged! Their clanking may be heard on the plains of Boston! The war is inevitable -- and let it come! I repeat it, sir, let it come!" --Patrick Henry

"Honor, justice, and humanity, forbid us tamely to surrender that freedom which we received from our gallant ancestors, and which our innocent posterity have a right to receive from us. We cannot endure the infamy and guilt of resigning succeeding generations to that wretchedness which inevitably awaits them if we basely entail hereditary bondage on them." --Thomas Jefferson

"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, fair copy of the drafts of the Kentucky Resolutions of 1798

"If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the General Welfare, the Government is no longer a limited one, possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one." --James Madison

"It is impossible for the man of pious reflection not to perceive in it [the Constitution] a finger of that Almighty hand which has been so frequently and signally extended to our relief in the critical stages of the revolution." --James Madison, Federalist No. 37

"If it be asked, What is the most sacred duty and the greatest source of our security in a Republic? The answer would be, An inviolable respect for the Constitution and Laws - the first growing out of the last." --Alexander Hamilton

"In the formation of our constitution the wisdom of all ages is collected -- the legislators are antiquity are consulted, as well as the opinions and interests of the millions who are concerned. It short, it is an empire of reason." --Noah Webster, An Examination into the Leading Principles of the Federal Constitution, 1787

"It is the duty of all Nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey his will, to be grateful for his benefits, and humbly to implore his protection and favors." --George Washington

"It has been said that all Government is an evil. It would be more proper to say that the necessity of any Government is a misfortune. This necessity however exists; and the problem to be solved is, not what form of Government is perfect, but which of the forms is least imperfect." --James Madison

"The example of changing a constitution by assembling the wise men of the state, instead of assembling armies, will be worth as much to the world as the former examples we had give them. The constitution, too, which was the result of our deliberation, is unquestionably the wisest ever yet presented to men." --Thomas Jefferson, letter to David Humphreys, 1789

"The deliberate union of so great and various a people in such a place, is without all partiality or prejudice, if not the greatest exertion of human understanding, the greatest single effort of national deliberation that the world has ever seen." --John Adams, quoted in a letter from Rufus King to Theophilus Parsons, 1788

"Whatever enables us to go to war, secures our peace." --Thomas Jefferson

[Crafty_Dog]

"An unlimited power to tax involves, necessarily, a power to destroy; because there is a limit beyond which no institution and no property can bear taxation." --Justice John Marshall, McCullough v. Maryland, 1819

[Crafty_Dog]

"Our peculiar security is in the possession of a written Constitution. Let us not make it a blank paper by construction." --Thomas Jefferson, letter to Wilson Nicholas, 1803

[Freki]

Dependence begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition.
Thomas Jefferson

Do not bite at the bait of pleasure, till you know there is no hook beneath it.
Thomas Jefferson

Do you want to know who you are? Don't ask. Act! Action will delineate and define you.
Thomas Jefferson

[Crafty_Dog]

"The spirit of encroachment tends to consolidate the powers of all the departments in one, and thus to create whatever the form of government, a real despotism. A just estimate of that love of power, and proneness to abuse it, which predominates in the human heart is sufficient to satisfy us of the truth of this position." --George Washington

[Freki]

“….To consider the judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions is a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy. Our judges are as honest as other men and not more so. They have with others the same passions for party, for power, and the privilege of their corps…and their power is more dangerous as they are in office for life and not responsible, as the other functionaries are, to the elective control. The Constitution has erected no such tribunal, knowing that to whatever hands confided, with the corruption of time and party, its members would become despots….”

[Crafty_Dog]

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"On every question of construction carry ourselves back to the time when the Constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit manifested in the debates and instead of trying what meaning may be squeezed out of the text or invented against it, conform to the probable one in which it was passed." --Thomas Jefferson, letter to William Johnson, 1823
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"[T]he true key for the construction of everything doubtful in a law is the intention of the law-makers. This is most safely gathered from the words, but may be sought also in extraneous circumstances provided they do not contradict the express words of the law." --Thomas Jefferson, letter to Albert Gallatin, 1808

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"The construction applied ... to those parts of the Constitution of the United States which delegate Congress a power ... ought not to be construed as themselves to give unlimited powers, nor a part to be so taken as to destroy the whole residue of that instrument." --Thomas Jefferson, Draft Kentucky Resolutions, 1798

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"[T]he Constitution ought to be the standard of construction for the laws, and that wherever there is an evident opposition, the laws ought to give place to the Constitution. But this doctrine is not deducible from any circumstance peculiar to the plan of convention, but from the general theory of a limited Constitution." --Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 81

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"What a glorious morning this is!" --Samuel Adams, to John Hancock at the Battle of Lexington, Massachusetts, 1775
============
"The first and governing maxim in the interpretation of a statute is to discover the meaning of those who made it." --James Wilson, Of the Study of Law in the United States, 1790

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"The plain import of the clause is, that congress shall have all the incidental and instrumental powers, necessary and proper to carry into execution all the express powers. It neither enlarges any power specifically granted; nor is it a grant of any new power to congress. But it is merely a declaration for the removal of all uncertainty, that the means of carrying into execution those, otherwise granted, are included in the grant." --Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution, 1833

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"All of us who were engaged in the struggle must have observed frequent instances of superintending providence in our favor. To that kind providence we owe this happy opportunity of consulting in peace on the means of establishing our future national felicity. And have we now forgotten that powerful friend? Or do we imagine that we no longer need his assistance? I have lived, Sir, a long time, and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth-that God governs in the affairs of men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the Ground without his Notice, is it probable that an Empire can rise without his Aid?" --Benjamin Franklin, To Colleagues at the Constitutional Convention

[Crafty_Dog]

"These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman." --Thomas Paine, The American Crisis, No. 1, 1776

"The battle, sir, is not to the strong alone; it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave. ... t is now too late to retire from the contest. There is no retreat but in submission and slavery! Our chains are forged! Their clanking may be heard on the plains of Boston! The war is inevitable -- and let it come! I repeat it, sir, let it come!" --Patrick Henry

"If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the General Welfare, the Government is no longer a limited one, possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one." --James Madison

"By exclusive property, the productions of the earth and the means of subsistence are secured and preserved, as well as multiplied. What belongs to no one is wasted by every one. What belongs to one man in particular is the object of his economy and care." --James Wilson

"I think we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious." --Thomas Jefferson

"It has been said that all Government is an evil. It would be more proper to say that the necessity of any Government is a misfortune. This necessity however exists; and the problem to be solved is, not what form of Government is perfect, but which of the forms is least imperfect." --James Madison

"On every unauthoritative exercise of power by the legislature must the people rise in rebellion or their silence be construed into a surrender of that power to them? If so, how many rebellions should we have had already?" --Thomas Jefferson

"An unlimited power to tax involves, necessarily, a power to destroy; because there is a limit beyond which no institution and no property can bear taxation." --John Marshall

"Whatever enables us to go to war, secures our peace." --Thomas Jefferson

"There are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations." --James Madison

[Crafty_Dog]

"With hearts fortified with these animating reflections, we most solemnly, before God and the world, declare, that, exerting the utmost energy of those powers, which our beneficent Creator hath graciously bestowed upon us, the arms we have compelled by our enemies to assume, we will, in defiance of every hazard, with unabating firmness and perseverance employ for the preservation of our liberties; being with one mind resolved to die freemen rather than to live as slaves." --John Dickinson and Thomas Jefferson, Declaration of the Cause and Necessity of Taking up Arms, 1775

[Crafty_Dog]

"The battle, sir, is not to the strong alone; it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave." --Patrick Henry, speech at the Virginia Convention, 1775

[Freki]

Not a founder but a good quote

"Feudalism, serfdom, slavery, all tyrannical institutions, are merely the most vigorous kind to rule, springing out of, and necessarily to, a bad state of man. The progress from these is the same in all cases -- less government." --British author and philosopher Herbert Spencer (1820-1903)

[Crafty_Dog]

Washington

"We have therefore to resolve to conquer or die: Our won Country's Honor, all call upon us for vigorous and manly exertion, and if we now  shamefully fail, we shall become infamous to the whole world. Let us therefore rely upon the goodness of the Cause, and the aid of the supreme Being, in whose hands Victory is, to animate and encourage us to great and noble Actions." --George Washington, General Orders, 1776

[Freki]

"I wish to have no connection with any ship that does not sail fast; for I intend to go in harm's way." --John Paul Jones, letter to M. Le Ray de Chaumont, 1778

[Freki]

so far as we approve of monarchy, that in America the law is king.  For as in absolute governments the king is law, so in free countries the law ought to be king; and there ought to be no other.

Thomas Paine, Common Sense


“It is certain that the most natural and human government is that of consent, for that binds freely, … when men hold their liberty by true obedience to rules of their own making.”, William Penn

Kentucky Resolutions of 1798, where Thomas Jefferson wrote, “whensoever the general government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force”

The Declaration of Independence, our foundational document says,
    We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.


The Constitution is the "King" of the land by the consent of the people.  It is the people who ultimately determine the constitutionality of a law, and when the Federal Gov't oversteps its bounds we withhold our consent.  This is guaranteed in the 10th Amendment.  Freki 2010

[Freki]

"I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection. 'Tis the business of little minds to shrink; but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles unto death." --Thomas Paine, The Crisis, No. 1, 1776

[Freki]

"[T]he opinion which gives to the judges the right to decide what laws are constitutional and what not ... would make the judiciary a despotic branch. ... [T]he germ of dissolution of our federal government is ... the federal Judiciary ... working like gravity by night and by day, gaining a little today and a little tomorrow, and advancing its noiseless step like a thief, over the field of jurisdiction, until all shall be usurped. ... They are construing our constitution from a co-ordination of a general and special government to a general and supreme one alone." --Thomas Jefferson

[G M]

TJ's rant would carry a bit more weight if he hadn't written this in between trips to the slaves' quarters. Where does fcuking your slaves fall into the continuum of despotism?

[Freki]

What?, you are going to use a typical liberal tactic?  If you want a bigger government which controls your life then say so, but to attack a founding father's reputation in an attempt to tear down his statement because you disagree with his stance doesn't do you credit.

Just FYI the Jefferson Foundation did the DNA test and concluded Jefferson did father Heming's children, but they failed to publish the doctor's report, who was in charge of verifying the DNA evidence, which stated the evidence was to circumstantial to draw a conclusion. Further the Jefferson Heritage Society which has more academic clout than the Foundation has looked at the evidence and concluded the charges are almost certainly false. Jefferson's overseer Edmund Bacon is on record stating Jefferson did not father Sally's children but had seen another white man leave Sally's bedchamber on many a morning.   These charges were originally leveled by James T Callender in 1802.  He had an axe to grind with Jefferson, who passed him over for the appointment to postmaster of Richmond, Virgina.  Callender was a noted political hatchet journalist of the period.

[G M]

It's not a liberal tactic to point out the flaws in individuals such as the slave owning founding fathers. So then if TJ wasn't screwing his slaves, then the slavery bit isn't that big of a deal?

[G M]

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/jefferson/true/

[Freki]

It is a liberal tactic to attack the messenger and not the message.  What does slavery have to do with the judiciary whittling away the constitution?  You are attacking the messenger.

[G M]

No, I am placing ideas expressed by TJ in the proper context. He was a flesh and blood human with flaws and a lack of insight demonstrated by his ownership of slaves while advocating ideals of freedom. The constitution wasn't delivered on tablets from a burning bush, and no matter how much hemp might have been consumed by the founding fathers, I doubt very much they could envision issues related to search and seizure for the US in 2010.

This does not mean that I endorse that the constitution means what ever the agenda is for a left wing jurist's personal political viewpoints at any given moment. Rather than worshipping idols with feet of clay, understand that the big picture is the balance between the greater good and individual freedoms based on pragmatic realism, not ivory tower dreams of a golden past that never was.

[Crafty_Dog]

Well, that was unexpected

Feet of clay or not, we are a Republic and the Supreme Law is our Consitution.

[G M]

I don't dispute that point, I just disagree with citing quotes from the founders as if they are holy verses. I doubt they intended them to be taken as such.

[Crafty_Dog]

Well, I do confess that for me that taken in their totality they are holy verses; I think our FF were divinely inspired.

[Freki]

"There is a time for all things, a time to preach and a time to pray, but those times have passed away. There is a time to fight, and that time has now come." --Peter Muhlenberg, from a Lutheran sermon read at Woodstock, Virginia, 1776

[Freki]

"[D]emocracy will soon degenerate into an anarchy, such an anarchy that every man will do what is right in his own eyes and no man's life or property or reputation or liberty will be secure, and every one of these will soon mould itself into a system of subordination of all the  moral virtues and intellectual abilities, all the powers of wealth, beauty, wit and science, to the wanton pleasures, the capricious will, and the execrable cruelty of one or a very few." --John Adams, An Essay on Man's Lust for Power, 1763

[G M]

Well, I do confess that for me that taken in their totality they are holy verses; I think our FF were divinely inspired.

I think if they had stood up and freed their slaves against their own economic best interest, you'd have a stronger arguement for divine inspiration.

[Crafty_Dog]

1) Many were against slavery, but had to compromise politically

2) Even those hypocritical on this point were divinely inspired-- they just didn't live up to it.
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"Nothing so strongly impels a man to regard the interest of his constituents, as the certainty of returning to the general mass of the people, from whence he was taken, where he must participate in their burdens." --George Mason

[Freki]

"Remember democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide." --John Adams, letter to John Taylor, 1814

[Freki]

Argument for a republic

"[D]emocracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security, or the rights of property; and have, in general, been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths." --James Madison, Federalist No. 10, 1787

Nature of the republic

"A wise and frugal government, which shall leave men 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."- Thomas Jefferson

[Body-by-Guinness]

Nothing is so essential to the preservation of our republican government as a periodical rotation. Nothing so strongly impels a man to regard the interest of his constituents, as the certainty of returning to the general mass of the people, from whence he was taken, where he must participate in their burdens.” –George Mason

[Crafty_Dog]

"Children should be educated and instructed in the principles of freedom." --John Adams, Defense of Constitutions, 1787

[Freki]

"Law and liberty cannot rationally become the objects of our love, unless they first become the objects of our knowledge." --James Wilson, Of the Study of the Law in the United States, 1790

[Crafty_Dog]

"[D]emocracy will soon degenerate into an anarchy, such an anarchy that every man will do what is right in his own eyes and no man's life or property or reputation or liberty will be secure, and every one of these will soon mould itself into a system of subordination of all the  moral virtues and intellectual abilities, all the powers of wealth, beauty, wit and science, to the wanton pleasures, the capricious will, and the execrable cruelty of one or a very few." --John Adams, An Essay on Man's Lust for Power, 1763

"The known propensity of a democracy is to licentiousness which the ambitious call, and ignorant believe to be liberty." --Fisher Ames, speech in the Massachusetts Ratifying Convention, 1788


"No one more sincerely wishes the spread of information among mankind than I do, and none has greater confidence in its effect towards supporting free and good government." --Thomas Jefferson, letter to Trustees for the Lottery of East Tennessee College, 1810


"To all of which is added a selection from the elementary schools of subjects of the most promising genius, whose parents are too poor to give them further education, to be carried at the public expense through the college and university. The object is to bring into action that mass of talents which lies buried in poverty in every country, for want of the means of development, and thus give activity to a mass of mind, which, in proportion to our population, shall be double or treble of what it is in most countries." --Thomas Jefferson, letter to Jose Correa de Serra, 1817


"Knowledge is, in every country, the surest basis of public happiness." --George Washington, First Annual Message, 1790

[Freki]

"With hearts fortified with these animating reflections, we most solemnly, before God and the world, declare, that, exerting the utmost energy of those powers, which our beneficent Creator hath graciously bestowed upon us, the arms we have compelled by our enemies to assume, we will, in defiance of every hazard, with unabating firmness and perseverance employ for the preservation of our liberties; being with one mind resolved to die freemen rather than to live as slaves." --Declaration of the Cause and Necessity of Taking up Arms, July 6, 1775

[Freki]

"Honor, justice, and humanity, forbid us tamely to surrender that freedom which we received from our gallant ancestors, and which our innocent posterity have a right to receive from us. We cannot endure the infamy and guilt of resigning succeeding generations to that wretchedness which inevitably awaits them if we basely entail hereditary bondage on them."
Thomas Jefferson

[G M]

TJ railing against hereditary bondage....

Wow.

[Freki]

"It should be your care, therefore, and mine, to elevate the minds of our children and exalt their courage; to accelerate and animate their industry and activity; to excite in them an habitual contempt of meanness, abhorrence of injustice and inhumanity, and an ambition to excel in every capacity, faculty, and virtue. If we suffer their minds to grovel and creep in infancy, they will grovel all their lives." --John Adams, Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law, 1756

[Freki]

Heston on the 2nd and the founders

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wp8Q7biFHoY[/youtube]