Thomas Jefferson’s 275th Celebration
Posted: April 16, 2018 Filed under: Education, History, Mediasphere, Think Tank | Tags: Bill of Rights, Declaration of Independence, Francis Bacon, Isaac Newton, John Locke, Liberalism, Self Government, Tacitus, Thomas Jefferson, US Constitution, Virginia Leave a comment
Studying Jefferson should be a guiding star.
Jamie Gass and Will Fitzhugh write: “Students of reading, writing, and common arithmetick . . . Graecian, Roman, English, and American history . . .,” Thomas Jefferson advised that democratic education “should be… able to guard the sacred deposit of the rights and liberties of their fellow citizens.”
Mid-April marks the 275th anniversary of Jefferson’s birthday. Given his world-changing achievements, this milestone is worthy of recognizing – and of being taught in our public schools. His contributions to the American civilization are incalculable; he was a revolutionary, statesman, diplomat, man-of-letters, scientist, architect, and apostle of liberty.
Rather than forcing a titan like Jefferson to conform to our era’s often Lilliputian-style narcissism, we should study history by entering the past with imagination and humility.
In drafting the Declaration of Independence, the most elegant and universally quoted political document in history, Jefferson displayed his greatest talents. He powerfully combined literary language and self-evident truths to shape the legal and political future of the United States.
The first member of his family to attend college, Jefferson loved books and classical learning. He could read six languages, including ancient Greek and Latin, while his 18th-century education taught him timeless principles.
Jefferson’s trinity of great thinkers – Francis Bacon, Isaac Newton, and John Locke – embodied what’s been called the Enlightenment’s “science of freedom.”
But his favorite writer was the ancient Roman historian Tacitus – a brilliant chronicler of warped, tyrannical emperors. Jefferson’s liberal-arts-centric education instilled in him a vigilance for liberty, which made him ever wary of threats to his republican experiment in ordered self-government.
Legal scholar David Mayer effectively summarized Jefferson’s strict federalism: “constitutions primarily [served] as devices by which governmental power would be limited and checked, to prevent its abuse through encroachments on individual rights…” Jefferson despised the corruptions of kings, standing armies, banks, and cities, which he identified with the Roman and British empires. Read the rest of this entry »
The Age of Outrage: What the Current Political Climate is Doing to Our Country and Our Universities
Posted: December 19, 2017 Filed under: Education, Mediasphere, Think Tank | Tags: Academia, Activism, Anti-American, Crisis, Global Panic, Hysteria, Jonathan Haidt, Manhattan Institute, Marxism, Microaggressions, Revolution, Thomas Jefferson, Trigger Warnings 1 Comment
Jonathan Haidt writes: Here is the fine-tuned liberal democracy hypothesis: as tribal primates, human beings are unsuited for life in large, diverse secular democracies, unless you get certain settings finely adjusted to make possible the development of stable political life. This seems to be what the Founding Fathers believed. Jefferson, Madison, and the rest of those eighteenth-century deists clearly did think that designing a constitution was like designing a giant clock, a clock that might run forever if they chose the right springs and gears.
Thankfully, our Founders were good psychologists. They knew that we are not angels; they knew that we are tribal creatures. As Madison wrote in Federalist 10: “the latent causes of faction are thus sown in the nature of man.” Our Founders were also good historians; they were well aware of Plato’s belief that democracy is the second worst form of government because it inevitably decays into tyranny. Madison wrote in Federalist 10 about pure or direct democracies, which he said are quickly consumed by the passions of the majority: “such democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention . . . and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths.”
So what did the Founders do? They built in safeguards against runaway factionalism, such as the division of powers among the three branches, and an elaborate series of checks and balances. But they also knew that they had to train future generations of clock mechanics. They were creating a new kind of republic, which would demand far more maturity from its citizens than was needed in nations ruled by a king or other Leviathan.
Here is the education expert E.D. Hirsch, on the founding of our nation:
The history of tribal and racial hatred is the history and prehistory of humankind. . . . The American experiment, which now seems so natural to us, is a thoroughly artificial device designed to counterbalance the natural impulses of group suspicions and hatreds. . . . This vast, artificial, trans-tribal construct is what our Founders aimed to achieve. And they understood that it can be achieved effectively only by intelligent schooling. (From The Making of Americans)
Thomas Jefferson wrote, in 1789, that “wherever the people are well informed they can be trusted with their own government;” he backed up that claim by founding the University of Virginia, about which he wrote, in 1820: “This institution will be based on the illimitable freedom of the human mind. For here we are not afraid to follow the truth wherever it may lead, nor to tolerate any error as long as reason is left free to combat it.”
[Read the full story here, at City Journal]
So, how are we doing, as the inheritors of the clock? Are we maintaining it well? If Madison visited Washington, D.C. today, he’d find that our government is divided into two all-consuming factions, which cut right down the middle of each of the three branches, uniting the three red half-branches against the three blue half-branches, with no branch serving the original function as he had envisioned.
And how are we doing at training clock mechanics? What would Jefferson say if he were to take a tour of America’s most prestigious universities in 2017? What would he think about safe spaces, microaggressions, trigger warnings, bias response teams, and the climate of fearfulness, intimidation, and conflict that is now so prevalent on campus? But first, let’s ask: How did we mess things up so badly? Read the rest of this entry »
[VIDEO] History: Ronald Reagan’s 1986 Independence Day Speech
Posted: July 5, 2017 Filed under: History, White House | Tags: Amazoncom, American Revolution, American Revolutionary War, Americans, Declaration of Independence, Fireworks, Independence Day (United States), Independence Hall, John Adams, Ronald Reagan, Thomas Jefferson, United States Leave a commentMy fellow Americans:
In a few moments the celebration will begin here in New York Harbor. It’s going to be quite a show. I was just looking over the preparations and thinking about a saying that we had back in Hollywood about never doing a scene with kids or animals because they’d steal the scene every time. So, you can rest assured I wouldn’t even think about trying to compete with a fireworks display, especially on the Fourth of July.
My remarks tonight will be brief, but it’s worth remembering that all the celebration of this day is rooted in history. It’s recorded that shortly after the Declaration of Independence was signed in Philadelphia celebrations took place throughout the land, and many of the former Colonists — they were just starting to call themselves Americans — set off cannons and marched in fife and drum parades.
What a contrast with the sober scene that had taken place a short time earlier in Independence Hall. Fifty-six men came forward to sign the parchment. It was noted at the time that they pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honors. And that was more than rhetoric; each of those men knew the penalty for high treason to the Crown. “We must all hang together,” Benjamin Franklin said, “or, assuredly, we will all hang separately.” And John Hancock, it is said, wrote his signature in large script so King George could see it without his spectacles. They were brave. They stayed brave through all the bloodshed of the coming years. Their courage created a nation built on a universal claim to human dignity, on the proposition that every man, woman, and child had a right to a future of freedom.
For just a moment, let us listen to the words again: “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.” Last night when we rededicated Miss Liberty and relit her torch, we reflected on all the millions who came here in search of the dream of freedom inaugurated in Independence Hall. We reflected, too, on their courage in coming great distances and settling in a foreign land and then passing on to their children and their children’s children the hope symbolized in this statue here just behind us: the hope that is America. It is a hope that someday every people and every nation of the world will know the blessings of liberty.
And it’s the hope of millions all around the world. In the last few years, I’ve spoken at Westminster to the mother of Parliaments; at Versailles, where French kings and world leaders have made war and peace. I’ve been to the Vatican in Rome, the Imperial Palace in Japan, and the ancient city of Beijing. I’ve seen the beaches of Normandy and stood again with those boys of Pointe du Hoc, who long ago scaled the heights, and with, at that time, Lisa Zanatta Henn, who was at Omaha Beach for the father she loved, the father who had once dreamed of seeing again the place where he and so many brave others had landed on D-day. But he had died before he could make that trip, and she made it for him. “And, Dad,” she had said, “I’ll always be proud.”
And I’ve seen the successors to these brave men, the young Americans in uniform all over the world, young Americans like you here tonight who man the mighty U.S.S. Kennedy and the Iowa and other ships of the line. I can assure you, you out there who are listening, that these young are like their fathers and their grandfathers, just as willing, just as brave. And we can be just as proud. But our prayer tonight is that the call for their courage will never come. And that it’s important for us, too, to be brave; not so much the bravery of the battlefield, I mean the bravery of brotherhood.
All through our history, our Presidents and leaders have spoken of national unity and warned us that the real obstacle to moving forward the boundaries of freedom, the only permanent danger to the hope that is America, comes from within. It’s easy enough to dismiss this as a kind of familiar exhortation. Yet the truth is that even two of our greatest Founding Fathers, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, once learned this lesson late in life. They’d worked so closely together in Philadelphia for independence. But once that was gained and a government was formed, something called partisan politics began to get in the way. After a bitter and divisive campaign, Jefferson defeated Adams for the Presidency in 1800. And the night before Jefferson’s inauguration, Adams slipped away to Boston, disappointed, brokenhearted, and bitter.
For years their estrangement lasted. But then when both had retired, Jefferson at 68 to Monticello and Adams at 76 to Quincy, they began through their letters to speak again to each other. Letters that discussed almost every conceivable subject: gardening, horseback riding, even sneezing as a cure for hiccups; but other subjects as well: the loss of loved ones, the mystery of grief and sorrow, the importance of religion, and of course the last thoughts, the final hopes of two old men, two great patriarchs, for the country that they had helped to found and loved so deeply. “It carries me back,” Jefferson wrote about correspondence with his cosigner of the Declaration of Independence, “to the times when, beset with difficulties and dangers, we were fellow laborers in the same cause, struggling for what is most valuable to man, his right to self-government. Laboring always at the same oar, with some wave ever ahead threatening to overwhelm us and yet passing harmless . . . we rowed through the storm with heart and hand . . . .” It was their last gift to us, this lesson in brotherhood, in tolerance for each other, this insight into America’s strength as a nation. And when both died on the same day within hours of each other, that date was July 4th, 50 years exactly after that first gift to us, the Declaration of Independence. Read the rest of this entry »
[VIDEO] Ken Burns’ Thomas Jefferson Documentary , Parts 1 & 2
Posted: July 4, 2017 Filed under: History, Think Tank, White House | Tags: 1700s, America, American Revolution, Britain, Declaration of Independence, documentary, Film, Founding Fathers, July 4th, Ken Burns, Revolutionary war, Thomas Jefferson, United States, video Leave a comment
[VIDEO] Happy Birthday Thomas Jefferson: Ken Burns’ America Thomas Jefferson Documentary
Posted: April 13, 2017 Filed under: History, Mediasphere, White House | Tags: American Revolution, Declaration of Independence, Founding Fathers, Ken Burns, Thomas Jefferson, University of Virginia, video, Virginia Leave a comment
Our Cult-Like Education System: Stella Morabito on the Ideological Cold War
Posted: February 13, 2017 Filed under: Censorship, Education, Politics, Think Tank | Tags: Activism, Alternative school, American Humanist Association, Americans, college campus, Donald Trump, Left Wing, Marxism, propaganda, Radical Left, Riots, Supreme Court of the United States, Thomas Jefferson, United States, University, Violence 1 Comment
Riot-Prone Mobs Are A Product Of America’s Cult-Like Education System
‘If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.’
— Thomas Jefferson
Stella Morabito writes
…Those who are pushing for sustained street resistance seem to be banking on two things. First they are betting that mainstream Americans won’t realize until it’s too late that we are in the midst of a virtual civil war that could turn violent. Dennis Prager recently wrote of this Second Civil War, warning Americans to wake up to it. Second, agitators are also wagering that Americans will not have the stomach for the prolonged fight they intend to bring to the streets, a point noted by psychologist Tim Daughtry in his book “Waking the Sleeping Giant.”
“What brought us to this place where the losing side has so utterly and violently rejected the peaceful transfer of power from one president to another, and previously agreed-upon electoral process and rules?”
So is this some kind of a joke? Revolution in the streets of America that overturns the election results? So far it all sounds so goofy, at least where it doesn’t get violent. We can watch in wonder as a shrieking NYU professor verbally assaults numerous police officers with the sort of impunity only afforded to the far-left. We can assure ourselves that there aren’t that many irrational people. Even if true, however, that’s beside the point. Too many citizens are at sea in understanding what freedom even means.
“Let’s face it. Today’s street theater is the culmination of decades of radical education revision. The radical Left’s systematic attack on the study of Western Civilization has essentially been an attack against the study of any and all civil societies. It is an attack on the features that make a society civil and free.”
We need to ask ourselves: What brought us to this place where the losing side has so utterly and violently rejected the peaceful transfer of power from one president to another, and previously agreed-upon electoral process and rules? It’s past time to ponder the quote from Thomas Jefferson: “If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.”
Destroying Our Education System Got Us Here
Let’s face it. Today’s street theater is the culmination of decades of radical education revision. The radical Left’s systematic attack on the study of Western Civilization has essentially been an attack against the study of any and all civil societies. It is an attack on the features that make a society civil and free. Those features include freedom of expression, civil discourse, the Socratic method of figuring out truth, value of the individual, and a common knowledge of the classics of history and literature that help us understand what’s universal in the human experience. All of that had to go.
[Read the full story here, at thefederalist.com]
Now, as we see students marching to demonize as “fascists” proponents of free speech, their ignorance is in full view. This is really a full frontal attack on the rule of law, the Constitution, and a system of checks and balances that guards against the consolidation of centralized power.
“The last 50 years have produced a huge wave of kids who are functionally uneducated.” https://t.co/4r0v3Lv6tm
— Mollie (@MZHemingway) February 13, 2017
That’s the whole point of the education these students have been fed. In fact, a lot of 1960s agitators, including domestic terrorist Bill Ayers, decided to place their bets on radical education revision. For at least 40 years, Ayers has been devoted to transforming schools from places of actual education to places of coercive thought reform. As Andrew McCarthy recently pointed out in National Review: “It was a comfy fit for him and many of his confederates, once it dawned on them that indoctrination inside the schoolhouse was more effective than blowing up the schoolhouse.”
If you review the history of radical education reform, it’s clear these agitators have been committing mind arson on the children, undermining their ability to think independently and clearly. (For more on this, read Robin Eubanks’ book “Credentialed to Destroy.”)
How to Short-Circuit a Child’s Thinking
Radical education reformers have made a point of removing context from children’s education, and to squash their natural curiosity, undermining their capacity to think. Read the rest of this entry »
Most College Students Think America Invented Slavery
Posted: November 6, 2016 Filed under: Censorship, Education, Politics, Think Tank | Tags: A People's History of the United States, American Institutes for Research, American Revolution, College Board, History of the United States, Professor, Republican Party (United States), Thomas Jefferson, University of Tennessee at Martin, University of Wisconsin–Oshkosh, Ursinus College, Western culture 1 Comment
‘They are convinced that slavery was an American problem.’
Kate Hardiman – University of Notre Dame: For 11 years, Professor Duke Pesta gave quizzes to his students at the beginning of the school year to test their knowledge on basic facts about American history and Western culture.
“Most of my students could not tell me anything meaningful about slavery outside of America. They are convinced that slavery was an American problem that more or less ended with the Civil War, and they are very fuzzy about the history of slavery prior to the Colonial era. Their entire education about slavery was confined to America.”
The most surprising result from his 11-year experiment? Students’ overwhelming belief that slavery began in the United States and was almost exclusively an American phenomenon, he said.
“They cannot tell you many historical facts or relate anything meaningful about historical biographies, but they are, however, stridently vocal about the corrupt nature of the Republic, about the wickedness of the founding fathers, and about the evils of free markets.”
“Most of my students could not tell me anything meaningful about slavery outside of America,” Pesta told The College Fix. “They are convinced that slavery was an American problem that more or less ended with the Civil War, and they are very fuzzy about the history of slavery prior to the Colonial era. Their entire education about slavery was confined to America.”
“Most alarmingly, they know nothing about the fraught history of Marxist ideology and communist governments over the last century, but often reductively define socialism as ‘fairness.’”
— Professor Duke Pesta
Pesta, currently an associate professor of English at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh, has taught the gamut of Western literature—from the Classics to the modern—at seven different universities, ranging from large research institutions to small liberal arts colleges to branch campuses. He said he has given the quizzes to students at Purdue University, University of Tennessee Martin, Ursinus College, Oklahoma State University, and University of Wisconsin Oshkosh.
[Read the full story here, at The College Fix]
The origin of these quizzes, which Pesta calls “cultural literacy markers,” was his increasing discomfort with gaps in his students’ foundational knowledge.
“They came to college without the basic rudiments of American history or Western culture and their reading level was pretty low,” Pesta told The Fix.
[MORE: Black studies prof says slavery ‘white people thing’]
Before even distributing the syllabus for his courses, Pesta administered his short quizzes with basic questions about American history, economics and Western culture. For instance, the questions asked students to circle which of three historical figures was a president of the United States, or to name three slave-holding countries over the last 2,000 years, or define “capitalism” and “socialism” in one sentence each.
Often, more students connected Thomas Jefferson to slavery than could identify him as president, according to Pesta. On one quiz, 29 out of 32 students responding knew that Jefferson owned slaves, but only three out of the 32 correctly identified him as president. Interestingly, more students— six of 32—actually believed Ben Franklin had been president. Read the rest of this entry »
[BOOKS] David Harsanyi’s ‘The People Have Spoken (and They Are Wrong): The Case Against Democracy’
Posted: July 16, 2016 Filed under: Art & Culture, Education, History, Mediasphere, Think Tank | Tags: Alexander Hamilton, Aristotle, Books, Burke, David Harsanyi, Democracy, Founders, James Madison, Plato, Republic, Self Government, Thomas Jefferson, Tocqueville, US Constitution Leave a comment
Democracy may be one of the most admired ideas ever concocted, but what if it’s also one of the most harebrained? After many years of writing about democracy for a living, David Harsanyi has concluded that it’s the most overrated, overused, and 
misunderstood idea in political life. The less we have of it the better.
[Order David Harsanyi’s book “The People Have Spoken (and They Are Wrong): The Case Against Democracy
“Democracy” is not synonymous with “freedom.” It is not the opposite of tyranny. In fact, the Founding Fathers knew that democracy can lead to tyranny. That’s why they built so many safeguards against it into the Constitution.
Democracy, Harsanyi argues, has made our government irrational, irresponsible, and invasive. It has left the American people with only two options—domination by the majority or a government that can’t possibly work. The modern age has imbued democracy with the mystique of infallibility. But Harsanyi reminds us that the vast majority of political philosophers, including the founders, have thought that responsible, limited government based on direct majority rule over a large, let alone continental scale was a practical impossibility.
In The People Have Spoken, you’ll learn:
- Why the Framers of our Constitution were intent on establishing a republic, not a “democracy”
- How democracy undermines self-government
- How shockingly out of touch with reality most voters really are
- Why democracy is an economic wrecking ball—and an invitation to a politics of envy and corruption
- How the great political philosophers from Plato and Aristotle to Burke and Tocqueville predicted with uncanny accuracy that democracy could lead to tyranny
Harsanyi warns that if we don’t recover the Founders’ republican vision, “democracy” might very well spell the end of American liberty and prosperity.
[VIDEO] Drunk History: John Adams vs. Thomas Jefferson
Posted: July 4, 2016 Filed under: Art & Culture, Education, Entertainment, History, Humor, Mediasphere, Politics, White House | Tags: Drunk History, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, video Leave a comment
[VIDEO] REWIND 2006: Christopher Hitchens on Thomas Jefferson
Posted: July 4, 2016 Filed under: History, Mediasphere, Reading Room, Think Tank | Tags: Christopher Hitchens, Thomas Jefferson Leave a comment
[VIDEO] Norman Lear: Donald Trump is America’s ‘Middle Finger’ to Establishment
Posted: October 20, 2015 Filed under: Entertainment, Mediasphere, Politics | Tags: Bill of Rights, Donald Trump, Emmy Award, Hollywood, NBC, Norman Lear, Political Establishment, Republican Party (United States), Television program, Thomas Jefferson Leave a comment
Daniel Nussbaum writes:
…In an interview with Jeanne Wolf’s Hollywood blog, Lear told Wolf that it was “interesting” that she compared Trump to his character Archie Bunker from the hit 70s TV show All in the Family….
“I want to believe that the American people are holding up Donald Trump as they might their middle finger and they’re giving the middle finger to the establishment, to all of us – left and right – because they are badly served by the establishment…”
“At least he’s shaken up the conversation. He’s made everybody stop talking and stop accepting the idea that they can talk in these canned messages, yes?” Wolf pressed.
“…We are a culture of excess. That’s our biggest product: excess. In everything. He is excessively assholian. I think the American people understand that and this is their way of saying, ‘This is how you’re taking care of us? You leaders? Take this.’ Then they give us Donald Trump.”
— Television producer Norman Lear
…At the Television Critics Association press tour in August, the 93-year-old creator of hit shows like The Jeffersons and Good Times told reporters that he thinks of himself as a “bleeding-heart conservative,” despite decades of advocacy for progressive causes. Read the rest of this entry »
#Unfollowed: King George III
Posted: July 4, 2015 Filed under: Comics, History, Humor | Tags: 1700s, America, Declaration of Independence, England, George III of the United Kingdom, Independence Day, John Adams, July 4th, King George, Revolutionary war, Social media, Thomas Jefferson, United States 1 Comment
King George III (1738-1820), Reigned 1760-1820
Cameron McWhirter: To Quote Thomas Jefferson, ‘I Never Actually Said That’
Posted: June 12, 2015 Filed under: History, Think Tank | Tags: Abraham Lincoln, Azealia Banks, Black Belt Patriotism: How to Reawaken America, Boris Johnson, Cecilia Muñoz, Chuck Norris, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Jr., Martin Luther King, Memorial Day, Michael Gambon, Nelson Mandela, Texas, Thomas Jefferson, United States, Winston Churchill Leave a comment
Librarian Tracks Sayings Misattributed to Founding Father; ‘A Fine Spiced Pickle’
Cameron McWhirter writes: Thomas Jefferson once famously wrote, “All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.”
[Also see Aldous Huxley and the Mendacious Memes of the Internet Age at National Review Online, by Charles C.W. Cooke]
Or did he? Numerous social movements attribute the quote to him. “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to U.S. Government and Politics” cites it in a discussion of American democracy. Actor Chuck Norris‘s 2010 treatise “Black Belt Patriotism: How to Reawaken America” uses it to urge conservatives to 
become more involved in politics. It is even on T-shirts and decals.
“On a hot day in Virginia, I know nothing more comforting than a fine spiced pickle, brought up trout-like from the sparkling depths of the aromatic jar below the stairs of Aunt Sally’s cellar.”
–Never said by Thomas Jefferson
Yet the founding father and third U.S. president never wrote it or said it, insists Anna Berkes, a 33-year-old research librarian at the Jefferson Library at Monticello, his grand estate just outside Charlottesville, Va. Nor does he have any connection to many of the “Jeffersonian” quotes that politicians on both sides of the aisle have slung back and forth in recent years, she says.
“Winston Churchill had so many sayings misattributed to him that one academic gave the phenomenon a name: ‘Churchillian drift.'”
“People will see a quote and it appeals to an opinion that they have and if it has Jefferson’s name attached to it that gives it more weight,” she says. “He’s constantly being invoked by people when they are making arguments about politics and actually all sorts of topics.”
A spokeswoman for the Guide’s publisher said it was looking into the quote. Mr. Norris’s publicist didn’t respond to requests for comment.
The Thomas Jefferson Memorial in Washington, D.C. A website lists bogus quotes attributed to the founding father. Bloomberg News
To counter what she calls rampant misattribution, Ms. Berkes is fighting the Internet with the Internet. She has set up a “Spurious Quotations” page on the Monticello website listing bogus quotes attributed to the founding father, a prolific writer and rhetorician who was the principal author of the Declaration of Independence.
“It’s a hopeless task. You would need an army of secretaries to reply to all these tweets. Twitter and Facebook have made it worse, because people glom onto these things and pass it on and there it goes.”
The fake quotes posted and dissected on Monticello.org include “My reading of history convinces me that most bad government has grown out of too much government.” In detailed footnotes, Ms. Berkes says it resembles a line Jefferson wrote in an 1807 letter: “History, in general, only informs us what 
bad government is.” But she can’t find that exact quotation in any of his writings.
[Check out Chuck’s book “Black Belt Patriotism: How to Reawaken America
Another that graces many epicurean websites: “On a hot day in Virginia, I know nothing more comforting than a fine spiced pickle, brought up trout-like from the sparkling depths of the aromatic jar below the stairs of Aunt Sally’s cellar.”
Jefferson never said that either, says Ms. Berkes. The earliest reference to the quote comes from a 1922 speech by a man extolling the benefits of pickles, she says.
“People will see a quote and it appeals to an opinion that they have and if it has Jefferson’s name attached to it that gives it more weight. He’s constantly being invoked by people when they are making arguments about politics and actually all sorts of topics.”
Jefferson is a “flypaper figure,” like Abraham Lincoln, Mark Twain, Winston Churchill and baseball player and manager Yogi Berra—larger-than-life figures who have fake or misattributed quotes stick to them all the time, says Ralph Keyes, an author of books about quotes wrongly credited to famous or historical figures. Read the rest of this entry »
Barack Obama, Re-Founding Father
Posted: June 4, 2015 Filed under: History, Law & Justice, Politics, Think Tank, White House | Tags: Anna Chennault, Congress, Democratic Party (United States), Elizabeth Warren, Executive Power, George H.W. Bush, Hubert Humphrey, James Madison, Jimmy Carter, Lyndon B. Johnson, Progressivism, propaganda, Republican Party (United States), Richard Nixon, Separation of powers, Socialism, Thomas Jefferson Leave a comment
It isn’t just ‘Obama’s power grabs.’ It’s a redesign of the Founders’ original vision
Daniel Henninger writes: To the list of questions Hillary Clinton will never answer, add one more: Would a second Clinton presidency continue and expand Barack Obama’s revision of the American system of government that existed from 1789 until 2009?
The central feature of Mr. Obama’s rewrite of what one might call the Founding Fathers’ original vision has been to abolish Congress. Yes, the 535 men and women elected to Congress still show up at the old Capitol building, as they have since November 1800.
“If you put the president behind the wheel of a car in front of the White House to visit Congress, he’d probably get lost.”
But once past passage of ObamaCare and Dodd-Frank, the 44th president effectively retired Congress from its historic function. If you put the president behind the wheel of a car in front of the White House to visit Congress, he’d probably get lost.
This is not a joke if you are one of the many million Americans the Re-Founding Father has commanded, via vast executive power, to do what he wants you to do. He did it again last week.
“This is not the Democratic Party of Lyndon Johnson, Hubert Humphrey, Jimmy Carter or even Bill Clinton. It is the progressive left wing, which won party control by defeating the Clinton machine in 2008. As a matter of ideology, it is ‘impatient’ with the pace of change possible under the pre-2009 system of checks and balances.”
EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy, whose neo-constitutional function is to serve as a primary executor of Mr. Obama’s re-dos, waved into existence a massive expansion of the Clean Water Act. Landowners across America woke up to discover that the EPA has designated ponds, creeks, rivulets, ditches, catch basins and water-filled potholes as subject to what the Clean Water Act originally called “navigable waters.”
From somewhere on Capitol Hill, a plaintive Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, a Democrat North Dakota’s voters bothered to elect in 2012, said: “It’s frustrating that after so much time, the EPA today decided to finalize this rule instead of . . . releasing a revised rule as our legislation would require.” Legislation?
“With Congress rendered moribund, the new branch of the American political system is the federal enforcement bureaucracy.”
Conservatives by now are numb to Mr. Obama’s expansions of executive power. They call it an “abuse” of authority, and no doubt it is. “Abuse,” however, makes it sound like the whim of one politician, a Huey Long-like convulsion. This isn’t a one-off. This is how the modern Democratic Party governs. It is how a Clinton presidency would govern every day of the week.
[Read the full text here, at WSJ]
This is not the Democratic Party of Lyndon Johnson, Hubert Humphrey,Jimmy Carter or even Bill Clinton. It is the progressive left wing, which won party control by defeating the Clinton machine in 2008. As a matter of ideology, it is “impatient” with the pace of change possible under the pre-2009 system of checks and balances. Former law professor Elizabeth Warren could teach seminars on the progressive Re-Founding of America.
“Former law professor Elizabeth Warren could teach seminars on the progressive Re-Founding of America.”
Barack Obama, channeling decades of theory, says constantly that the traditional system has failed. He said it in his 2011 Osawatomie, Kan., speech: “It doesn’t work. It has never worked.” He has attacked Congress repeatedly as a failed institution, teeing it up for mass revulsion just as he did the 1%.
“This is not a joke if you are one of the many million Americans the Re-Founding Father has commanded, via vast executive power, to do what he wants you to do. He did it again last week…Landowners across America woke up to discover that the EPA has designated ponds, creeks, rivulets, ditches, catch basins and water-filled potholes as subject to what the Clean Water Act originally called ‘navigable waters.'”
With Congress rendered moribund, the new branch of the American political system is the federal enforcement bureaucracy. Read the rest of this entry »
FREEDOM OF THOUGHT: Religious Freedom More Important Founding Achievement than Being President of the United States
Posted: April 3, 2015 Filed under: History, Law & Justice, White House | Tags: Adam Smith, Americans, Arkansas, Bill Clinton, Charlottesville, College of William & Mary, Continental Congress, Declaration of Independence, Divine right of kings, Indiana, Ludwig Von Mises Institute, Natural and legal rights, Thomas Jefferson, United States, University of Virginia, Virginia 1 Comment
“Whereas Almighty God hath created the mind free; that all attempts to influence it by temporal punishment or burthens, or by civil incapacitations, tend only to beget habits of hypocrisy and meanness…”
From Monticello.org
Before his death, Thomas Jefferson left explicit instructions regarding the monument to be erected over his grave. In this document (undated), Jefferson supplied a sketch of the shape of the marker, and the epitaph with which he wanted it to be inscribed:
“…on the faces of the Obelisk the following inscription, & not a word more:
Here was buried
Thomas Jefferson
Author of the Declaration of American Independence
of the Statute of Virginia for religious freedom
& Father of the University of Virginia
What’s missing here? Jefferson declined to include, among his most treasured achievements, his own ascent to the highest office in the land. Thomas Jefferson was elected twice, served two terms as president of the United States. Why did Jefferson consider his own presidency to be unimportant, or not important enough to include in his list of achievements? Much as been written about this, including by Jefferson himself, but my own summary is this: A free people govern themselves. A self-governing society doesn’t celebrate its leaders, or rulers, it celebrates its own freedom.
The most important of these freedoms being freedom of thought. Freedom to think, or not think, whatever the hell you want. To worship, or not worship, whatever deity you want, it’s your business. The freedom to subscribe to–or reject–whatever philosophy you want. The freedom to participate, or refrain from participating in, whatever way of life you chose. An individual is free to worship as he pleases with no discrimination. And has the inherent (not state-given) freedom to not be compelled by another to do otherwise.
Without this, the “habits of hypocrisy and meanness” undermine pluralism, and threaten the foundations of the civil society that his generation fought so hard to build.
Do Jefferson’s successors understand this?
From VAHistorical.org:
Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) was prevented by illness from attending the Virginia Convention of 1774 that met to discuss what to do in the aftermath of the Boston Tea Party and the closing of the port of Boston by the British. But Jefferson sent a paper to the convention, later published as A Summary View of the Rights of British America. The force of its arguments and its literary quality led the Convention to elect Jefferson to serve in the Continental Congress.
He was too anti-British to be made use of until a total break with Great Britain had become inevitable. Then he was entrusted with drafting the Declaration of Independence. This assignment, and what he made of it, ensured Jefferson’s place as an apostle of liberty. In the Declaration, and in his other writings, Jefferson was perhaps the best spokesman we have had for the American ideals of liberty, equality, faith in education, and in the wisdom of the common man. But what Jefferson wanted to be remembered for, besides writing the Declaration of Independence, was writing the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom and founding the University of Virginia.
Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom
(annotated transcript)
The Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom is a statement about both freedom of conscience and the principle of separation of church and state. Written by Thomas Jefferson and passed by the Virginia General Assembly on January 16, 1786, it is the forerunner of the first amendment protections for religious freedom. Divided into three paragraphs, the statute is rooted in Jefferson’s philosophy. It could be passed in Virginia because Dissenting sects there (particularly Baptists, Presbyterians, and Methodists) had petitioned strongly during the preceding decade for religious liberty, including the separation of church and state.
Jefferson had argued in the Declaration of Independence that “the laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle [man]….” The first paragraph of the religious statute proclaims one of those entitlements, freedom of thought. To Jefferson, “Nature’s God,” who is undeniably visible in the workings of the universe, gives man the freedom to choose his religious beliefs. This is the divinity whom deists of the time accepted—a God who created the world and is the final judge of man, but who does not intervene in the affairs of man. This God who gives man the freedom to believe or not to believe is also the God of the Christian sects.
I. Whereas Almighty God hath created the mind free; that all attempts to influence it by temporal punishment or burthens, or by civil incapacitations, tend only to beget habits of hypocrisy and meanness, and are a departure from the plan of the Holy author of our religion, who being Lord both of body and mind, yet chose not to propagate it by coercions on either, as was his Almighty power to do . . .
The second paragraph is the act itself, which states that no person can be compelled to attend any church or support it with his taxes. It says that an individual is free to worship as he pleases with no discrimination. Read the rest of this entry »
David Boaz: Things to Be Thankful For
Posted: November 27, 2014 Filed under: Law & Justice, Think Tank | Tags: Abraham Lincoln, Alexander Hamilton, Barack Obama, Benjamin Franklin, equality, Freedom of speech, Liberty, Rule of Law, Self Government, Slavery, Thomas Jefferson, United States, United States Declaration of Independence 2 Comments
David Boaz
writes: Not long ago a journalist asked me what freedoms we take for granted in America. Now, I spend most of my time sounding the alarm about the freedoms we’re losing. But this was a good opportunity to step back and consider how America is different from much of world history — and why immigrants still flock here.
If we ask how life in the United States is different from life in most of the history of the world — and still different from much of the world — a few key elements come to mind.
[Check out David Boaz‘s book “The Politics of Freedom: Taking on The Left, The Right and Threats to Our Liberties” at Amazon]
Rule of law. Perhaps the greatest achievement in history is the subordination of power to law. That is, in modern America we have created structures that limit and control the arbitrary power of government. No longer can one man — a king, a priest, a communist party boss — take another person’s life or property at the ruler’s whim. Citizens can go about their business, generally confident that they won’t be dragged off the streets to disappear forever, and confident that their hard-earned property won’t be confiscated without warning. We may take the rule of law for granted, but immigrants from China, Haiti, Syria, and other parts of the world know how rare it is.
Equality. For most of history people were firmly assigned to a particular status — clergy, nobility, and peasants. Kings and lords and serfs. Brahmans, other castes, and untouchables in India. If your father was a noble or a peasant, so would you be. The American Revolution swept away such distinctions. In America all men were created equal. Thomas Jefferson declared “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.” In America some people may be smarter, richer, stronger, or more beautiful than others, but “I’m as good as you” is our national creed. We are all citizens, equal before the law, free to rise as far as our talents will take us.
Equality for women. Throughout much of history women were the property of their fathers or their husbands. They were often barred from owning property, testifying in court, signing contracts, or participating in government. Equality for women took longer than equality for men, but today in America and other civilized parts of the world women have the same legal rights as men. Read the rest of this entry »
Analysis: What Happens When Police Officers Wear Body Cameras
Posted: August 24, 2014 Filed under: Crime & Corruption, Mediasphere, Self Defense, U.S. News | Tags: Calif, California, Camera, Police, Police officer, Rialto, Rialto California, Thomas Jefferson, Wall Street Journal 1 CommentWhen officers in one California town wore body cameras, complaints against police fell 88%. http://t.co/L9CzmzIsmO pic.twitter.com/I8AVOmwUmm
— Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) August 24, 2014
Use of force by police officers declined 60% in first year since introduction of cameras in Rialto, California
With all eyes on Ferguson, Mo., in the wake of the death of Michael Brown, a renewed focus is being put on police 
transparency. Is the solution body-mounted cameras for police officers?
“Thomas Jefferson once advised that ‘whenever you do a thing, act as if all the world were watching.'”
Sometimes, like the moments leading up to when a police officer decides to shoot someone, transparency is an unalloyed good. And especially lately, technology has progressed to a point that it makes this kind of transparency not just possible, but routine.
“One problem with the cameras, however, has been cost.”
So it is in Rialto, Calif., where an entire police force is wearing so-called body-mounted cameras, no bigger than pagers, that record everything that transpires between officers and citizens.
“Unfortunately, one place where expenses can mount is in the storage and management of the data they generate.”
In the first year after the cameras’ introduction, the use of force by officers declined 60%, and citizen complaints against police fell 88%.
Sign on support of Officer Darren Wilson, Barney’s Sports Pub, South City MO pic.twitter.com/vBY0bFGNbR
— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) August 24, 2014
It isn’t known how many police departments are making regular use of cameras, though it is being considered as a way of perhaps altering the course of events in places such as Ferguson, Mo., where an officer shot and killed an unarmed black teenager. Read the rest of this entry »
The 20th Anniversary of the Castro Regime’s ’13 de Marzo’ Tugboat Massacre
Posted: July 13, 2014 Filed under: History, Mediasphere, War Room | Tags: American Revolution, Capital punishment, Caribbean, Cuba, Fidel Castro, History, People, Politics, Slavery, Thomas Jefferson, Tugboat massacre, United States 1 Comment
All they wanted was to escape tyranny and slavery and give their children and themselves a chance to live in freedom. For Cuba’s Castro dictatorship, however, such yearning for liberty is a sin against the revolution. In fact, it is a sin so grave and so heinous that it is punishable by death….(read more)
The Sadness of King George
Posted: July 4, 2014 Filed under: History, Humor, U.S. News | Tags: Declaration of Independence, Independence Day, July 4th, King George, Revolutionary war, Thomas Jefferson 1 Comment
Iraq: The Cost of Building a Failed State
Posted: June 18, 2014 Filed under: Think Tank, War Room | Tags: George Akerlof, Hossein Askari, Iraq, Iraq War, Palgrave MacMillan, Thomas Jefferson 1 Comment
“Governments constantly choose between telling lies and fighting wars, with the end result always being the same. One will always lead to the other.”
– Thomas Jefferson
Nobel Laureate George Akerlof uses this edifying quote from Thomas Jefferson to good effect in his foreword of Hossein Askari’s excellent read, Conflicts and Wars: Their Fallout and Prevention (Palgrave MacMillan, New York, 2012). Indeed, Prof. Akerlof has this to say about Askari’s work:
“Professor Askari begins by surveying the burden of military expenditures and of conflicts and wars. Their dollar expenditures, which are close to 15 percent of global GNP, exceed the cost of our financial crisis, of global warming, and what would be required for worldwide poverty reduction.
….
He bases his approach on three interrelated propositions: aggressors do not pay the full price of their aggression; 
governments will do nothing to change this state of affairs on their own; and, as a result, the process of reducing conflicts must originate in the private sector.”
[Check out Hossein Askari’s book “Conflicts and Wars: Their Fallout and Prevention” at Amazon.com
The U.S. shouldered a heavy load in the Iraq War, to the tune of $2.4 trillion from 2003-2011. As depicted in the chart below, the $2.4 trillion U.S. tab accounted for over 75% of global expenditures in the Iraq War…(read more)
Don’t Know Much About History: Senator Schumer Credits Jefferson for Bill of Rights
Posted: June 4, 2014 Filed under: Education, History, Politics, U.S. News | Tags: Bill of Rights, Chuck Schumer, Constitution, George Mason, James Madison, Jefferson, Thomas Jefferson, Washington Times 6 Comments
For Washington Times, Stephen Dinan reports: Sen. Charles E. Schumer, New York Democrat, stumbled Tuesday over basic American history, crediting Thomas Jefferson for authorship of the Bill of Rights during a debate over the First Amendment and campaign finance.
“I think if Thomas Jefferson were looking down, the author of the Bill of Rights, on what’s being proposed here, he’d agree with it. He would agree that the First Amendment cannot be absolute.”
– Harvard graduate, Senator Charles E. Schumer
While Jefferson is deemed the principal author of the Declaration of Independence, he was not intimately involved in the writing of the Constitution or the Bill of Rights, which is the first 10 amendments to that founding document.
Indeed, Jefferson was out of the country, serving as minister to France at the time of both the Constitution convention and the congressional debate over the Bill of Rights. Read the rest of this entry »
This Day in History : Library of Congress Established April 24th, 1800, by President John Adams for $5000
Posted: April 24, 2014 Filed under: History, Mediasphere, Reading Room | Tags: George Watterston, John Adams, Library of Congress, London, Thomas Jefferson, United States, United States Capitol, Washington Leave a comment
President John Adams approves legislation to appropriate $5,000 to purchase “such books as may be necessary for the use of Congress,” thus establishing the Library of Congress. The first books, 
ordered from London, arrived in 1801 and were stored in the U.S. Capitol, the library’s first home. The first library catalog, dated April 1802, listed 964 volumes and nine maps. Twelve years later, the British army invaded the city of Washington and burned the Capitol, including the then 3,000-volume Library of Congress.
Former president Thomas Jefferson, who advocated the expansion of the library during his two terms in office, responded to the loss by selling his personal library, the largest and finest in the country, to Congress to “recommence” the library. The purchase of Jefferson’s 6,487 volumes was approved in the next year, and a professional librarian, George Watterston, was hired to replace the House clerks in the administration of the library. In 1851, a second major fire at the library destroyed about two-thirds of its 55,000 volumes, including two-thirds of the Thomas Jefferson library. Congress responded quickly and generously to the disaster, and within a few years a majority of the lost books were replaced. Read the rest of this entry »
Bone-Chilling Threat: FCC Exploring Plans to Place ‘Government Monitors’ in Newsrooms
Posted: February 19, 2014 Filed under: Censorship, Mediasphere | Tags: American Center for Law & Justice, FCC, Federal Communications Commission, Free speech, Freedom of the press, Obama administration, Tea Party, Thomas Jefferson, Wall Street Journal 5 Comments
The American Center for Law and Justice‘s Matthew Clark reports: The Obama Administration’s Federal Communication Commission (FCC) is poised to place government monitors in newsrooms across the country in an absurdly draconian attempt to intimidate and control the media.
Peter Doocy reports from Washington, D.C.
Before you dismiss this assertion as utterly preposterous (we all know how that turned out when the Tea Party complained that it was being targeted by the IRS), this bombshell of an accusation comes from an actual FCC Commissioner.
FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai reveals a brand new Obama Administration program that he fears could be used in “pressuring media organizations into covering certain stories.”
As Commissioner Pai explains in the Wall Street Journal:
Last May the FCC proposed an initiative to thrust the federal government into newsrooms across the country. With its “Multi-Market Study of Critical Information Needs,” or CIN, the agency plans to send researchers to grill reporters, editors and station owners about how they decide which stories to run. A field test in Columbia, S.C., is scheduled to begin this spring.
The purpose of the CIN, according to the FCC, is to ferret out information from television and radio broadcasters about “the process by which stories are selected” and how often stations cover “critical information needs,” along with “perceived station bias” and “perceived responsiveness to underserved populations.”
In fact, the FCC is now expanding the bounds of regulatory powers to include newspapers, which it has absolutely no authority over, in its new government monitoring program.
Finally: Free From ‘Constitution-Lock’
Posted: February 12, 2014 Filed under: Law & Justice, U.S. News, White House | Tags: Barack Obama, Congress, Jonathan H. Adler, Obama, Obamacare, Thomas Jefferson, United States Congress, White House 4 Comments
Free at last…free at last…the chains of the constitution must be broken in order for us to be free
Obama Frees America From the Tyranny of Law
Charles C. W. Cooke writes: ‘That’s the good thing as president,” President Obama half-joked yesterday at Thomas Jefferson’s home in Monticello, Virginia. “I can do what I want.” And, as if signaling that he had finally transcended all of those antediluvian “I’m not a king/emperor/dictator” reassurances, a few hours later the news broke that he had, once again, done what he wanted — this time delaying part of Obamacare’s employer mandate until 2016.
“Now,” ventured the Volokh Conspiracy’s Eugene Kontorovich, “Obama really is bypassing Congress”:
Manipulating large-scale legislative policies, duly enacted, around election schedules goes beyond the parameters of executive discretion. Nor can this be justified by the dubious claim of “transition relief” from tax obligations. The employers are not being relieved just from taxes, but from direct primary legal obligations to provide insurance. Every year the administration delays large portions of ObamaCare, it says it is no big deal, because it is “temporary.” But a few temporary fixes in a row becomes a new permanent form of executive lawmaking.
“Executive lawmaking” sounds so harsh, don’t you think? Perhaps conceive of it instead as the executive branch’s “liberating“ itself from that pesky “Constitution-lock” we’ve heard so much about. After all, the alternative is just too depressing: “Whatever the stated reason for the new delay,” Kontorovich’s colleague at Volokh, Jonathan H. Adler, adjudged candidly, “it is illegal,” and “the increasing brazenness with which the Administration is disregarding inconvenient or ill-conceived portions of its signature legislative achievement lowers the bar to a disturbing degree.” Fair enough. But how rich and how various have been those reasons! “Why do you care: you like the outcome?” the president’s critics have been asked, just one among a host of unconvincing defenses that have included, “well, I don’t like Congress,” “think of it more as that the White House is improving the law,” “this is too important for the rules,” “look, Obama won,” and, perhaps my all-time favorite, “what are you going to do about it anyway?”
Thomas Jefferson and the Burr in Obama’s Kill List
Posted: February 11, 2014 Filed under: History, War Room, White House | Tags: Aaron Burr, Anthony Merry, Burr, Burr Conspiracy, James Wilkinson, Mike Church, Thomas Jefferson 2 Comments
Mike Church writes: President Obama’s kill-list memo, detailing the legal rationale for the extrajudicial killing of American citizens, reveals a world of tyrannical political power that used to be the sort of thing Jack Ryan would be dispatched to deal with, but usually to some Baltic republic ruled by an evil tyrant with only one name. The memo is so brazen in its own declaration of universal supremacy I have to wonder if the unnamed authors used a computer for the composition or just let God etch the words on the screen with lightning bolts.
[American Emperor: Aaron Burr’s Challenge to Jefferson’s America at Amazon]
This is what our empire has evolved to: a messianic state with all the fine ornaments of a cult including temples, ministers, and now a prosecutor, judge, and executioner masquerading as an executive branch. Viewing this perversion of a formerly federal system, a citizen of the old republic now stands at a similar vantage point to where Edmund Burke saw the mobs of the French General Assembly. ”That assembly, since the destruction of the orders, has no fundamental law, no strict convention, no respected usage to restrain it. Instead of finding themselves obliged to conform to a fixed constitution, they have a power to make a constitution which shall conform to their designs. Nothing in heaven or upon earth can serve as a control on them.”
Thomas Jefferson Rolls in his Grave as Liberty-Crushing 21st Century Socialist Presidential Pretenders Invade His House, Part 2
Posted: February 11, 2014 Filed under: Diplomacy, Politics, U.S. News, White House | Tags: Barack Obama, Freedom fries, George W. Bush, Hollande, Jefferson, Marxism, Monticello, Nicolas Sarkozy, Obama, Socialism, Thomas Jefferson, United States 2 Comments
Washington Post reports: Obama and Hollande visited Monticello, the historic estate of Francophile and onetime envoy to France Thomas Jefferson — an act of bonhomie aimed at putting aside the political troubles dogging both men…
From this morning’s HotAir:
If you had to name one American President who put up the most resistance to an imperial presidency, which comes to mind first? For most, it would be Thomas Jefferson, the third American President under the Constitution that Jefferson influenced with his ideals, based ultimately on the rejection of monarchical power Jefferson co-wrote in the Declaration of Independence….
The Weekly Standard has the clip of yesterday’s gaffe from Barack Obama:
At 4:45 POTUS and president Hollande walked out from a portico and strolled…with Leslie Bowman, president of the Monticello Foundation… POTUS said that he’d like to take a look and seemed delighted to “break the protocol”.
“That’s the good thing as a President, I can do whatever I want” he quipped…
…precisely the opposite of the example set by Jefferson…
More from Washington Post:
For much of the past decade, relations between France and the United States were tense…Both American officials and French diplomats say many of those divisions have since been closed because of Obama’s positive relationships with former French president Nicolas Sarkozy and with Hollande, who has governed much in the mold of Obama despite an early socialist platform.
Excuse me? “…governed much in the ‘mold of Obama in spite of an early socialist platform..? The Obama administration has moved U.S. policy further left than many countries in western Europe, including France.
Thomas Jefferson Rolls in his Grave as Liberty-Crushing 21st Century Socialist Presidential Pretenders Invade His House…
Posted: February 10, 2014 Filed under: Art & Culture, Diplomacy, U.S. News, White House | Tags: Barack Obama, Charlottesville Albemarle Airport, France, Monticello, President of France, Thomas Jefferson, United States, Washington Monument 3 Comments
Sacré Bleu! Obama and François Hollande to Celebrate ‘Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness’ in Monticello
Daniel Halper writes:
President Obama and French President François Hollande will visit Monticello tomorrow afternoon, according to the official White House schedule. It’s in the spirit of “the shared values we hold dear: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” says the White House.
“Later in the afternoon, as part of the State Visit of President François Hollande to the United States, President Obama and President Hollande will travel to Charlottesville, Virginia. There will be in-town travel pool coverage of the departure from the West Slope of the Washington Monument, and the arrival at Charlottesville Albemarle Airport is open to pre-credentialed media,” reads Obama’s schedule.
The Left Doesn’t Believe in Dr. King’s Colorblind Dream
Posted: January 22, 2014 Filed under: History, Politics, U.S. News | Tags: Daily Caller, discrimination, Gratz v. Bollinger, Martin Luther King, martin luther king day, race, Thomas Jefferson, United States 4 Comments
Jennifer Gratz writes: Martin Luther King is an American icon whose legacy has become part of the American ethos – the guiding beliefs that characterize our national identity.
Just as Thomas Jefferson is best known for authoring the Declaration of Independence, King’s contribution to this ethos is inseparable from his “I Have A Dream” speech, which articulated a future to which America continues to aspire. King’s portrait of a nation where individuals are judged on their actions and character without regard to their race remains the ideal for the vast majority of Americans.
Celebrating Martin Luther King Day, we honor his condemnation of racism, we commemorate his stand against government-sponsored discrimination, and we look forward to a day when colorblind society is a reality.
Besides Founding a Nation, Collecting Books, and French Wine, Thomas Jefferson also Designed a Pasta Machine
Posted: January 15, 2014 Filed under: Art & Culture, Food & Drink, History, White House | Tags: Declaration of Independence, France, History, Jefferson, Macaroni and cheese, Monticello, President, Thomas Jefferson, United States 1 Comment
This document is in the public domain of the United States of America
Drawing of a macaroni machine, with a sectional view showing holes through which dough could be extruded, by Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson became interested in pasta and other exotic foodstuffs as a result of his travels…
Holy Macaroni, what didn’t this guy do?
Drawing: Wikimedia Commons
Amazon has this fine book: Dining at Monticello: In Good Taste and Abundance (Distributed for the Thomas Jefferson Foundation)
For a more involved take on this, with sources, references, and even a Jefferson macaroni recipe, there’s a wonderful blog post at acenewsservices.com – “Thomas Jefferson the President and the Cook”:
“Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), principal author of the Declaration of Independence and third president of the United states, acquired a taste for continental cooking while serving as American minister to France in the 1780′s. When he returned to the United States in 1790 he brought with him a French cook and many recipes for French, Italian, and other au courant cookery. Jefferson not only served his guests the best European wines, but he liked to dazzle them with delights such as ice cream, peach flambe, macaroni, and macaroons. This drawing of a macaroni machine, with the sectional view showing holes from which dough could be extruded, reflects Jefferson’s curious mind and his interest and aptitude in mechanical matters…”
STRIKING BACK: ‘Compassionate Conservatives’ vs. Tea Party Insurgents
Posted: January 10, 2014 Filed under: Politics, U.S. News | Tags: Articles of Confederation, Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Gerson, Michael Gerson, Tea Party, Thomas Jefferson, United States 2 Comments
Thomas Jefferson, in his first inaugural address, called for “a wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned.” (Photo: Thinkstock)
Philip Klein writes: When the Tea Party movement emerged to challenge President Obama in 2009, it also posed a counterweight to the “compassionate conservative” wing of the Republican Party, which was defined by the expansionist policies of President George W. Bush.
After years of being marginalized, compassionate conservatives – emboldened by the overreach of Tea Party conservatives during last fall’s government shutdown fight – are attempting to reassert control over the party.
In the winter 2014 issue of National Affairs, Michael Gerson and Peter Wehner – two former speechwriters and advisers to Bush – propose “A Conservative Vision of Government,” in which they advance many of the arguments that were used 15 years ago to sideline small-government conservatives and lay the groundwork for the Bush-era spending binge.
Remembering Christopher Hitchens, 1949 – 2011
Posted: December 15, 2013 Filed under: History, Mediasphere, Reading Room, Think Tank | Tags: Christopher Hitchens, Communist Manifesto, Labour Party, Martin Luther King, Nation, Nick Gillespie, Ronald Reagan, Thomas Jefferson 1 Comment
Nick Gillespie writes: Christopher Hitchens died on this date two years ago. Hitchens was the model of a public intellectual. He was certainly public in his positions and arguments, which allows for anyone interested to assess a person’s arguments. And he was intellectually honest in a way that is uncommon, with many (most?) thinkers curtailing their views if they threaten a broader ideological identity. Though definitely a man of the left, Hitchens was never orthodox and ran into trouble given his positions on issues such as abortion (he was against it), foreign interventionism (he was for it), free speech deemed offensive to certain groups (he was for it), and more. While he rarely missed opportunities to offend right-wing sensibilities (he once joked about Ronald Reagan’s Alzheimer’s clearly having started with the president was still in office), he didn’t hold back against the left, either. He had few kind words about Martin Luther King, Jr. and he dismissed Gandhi as a “poverty pimp.”
He admitted to Reason in a wide-ranging 2001 Reason interview conducted a few months before the 9/11 attacks that his connection to the left was fraying (he would break definitively with The Nation magazine shortly after the attacks). Part of the reason stemmed from his realization that the forces of creative destruction unleashed by capitalism were remaking the world in a way that he – along with Marx and Engels in the Communist Manifesto – could appreciate:
The thing I’ve often tried to point out to people from the early days of the Thatcher revolution in Britain was that the political consensus had been broken, and from the right. The revolutionary, radical forces in British life were being led by the conservatives. That was something that almost nobody, with the very slight exception of myself, had foreseen.
The Triumph of the Maternalists
Posted: December 12, 2013 Filed under: Reading Room, Think Tank | Tags: Age of Enlightenment, Francis Fukuyama, Grammatical gender, Hanna Rosin, Nancy McDermott, Paternalism, Rosin, Thomas Jefferson, Western culture 3 CommentsThe new paternalism is so nonconfrontational, anti-ideological, and unwilling to claim moral authority that it can hardly be called “paternal.” Let’s call it “maternalism”…
Nancy McDermott looks at the cultural assault on masculinity
‘Nanny and Sammy followed their mother’s instructions without a murmur; indeed, they were overawed. There is a certain uncanny and superhuman quality about all such purely original undertakings as their mother’s was to them. Nanny went back and forth with her light loads, and Sammy tugged with sober energy.’ (From ‘The Revolt of Mother’ by Mary E Wilkins (1)).
“…what we are seeing today is the dismantling of the historic gains of the Enlightenment in the name of The Mother”
The idea for this essay began percolating about a year ago, when I reviewed Hanna Rosin’s The End of Men. She made the case that women are achieving parity with men and even surpassing them in a number of important ways. Although I didn’t quite buy all her explanations, I liked Rosin’s book and was sorry to see so many reviewers dismiss it in what seemed like a rush to reiterate the persistence of women’s oppression. I thought her observations were reasonable, but more importantly they seemed to throw the contours of something else into relief, something beyond gender roles. It was only when I began to look at the question of paternalism that it dawned on me what this might be.
Paternalism has emerged as the dominant form of authoritarianism in our society. Across the world, policymakers are quietly working behind the scenes to save us from ourselves, nudging us towards Jerusalem with smaller fast-food cups, architecture intended to make us climb more stairs, and maternity wards that encourage bonding and breastfeeding. These policies are seldom debated or even noticed. When they are, the routine argument is not whether they are a good idea but how ‘hard’ or openly coercive should they be. Why value autonomy at all when people, left to their own devices, continually make poor choices that foil their aspirations and create a social burden in the process?
Out in the Cold: Vanity Fair Turns on The Messiah’s ‘Closed-Off Attitude”
Posted: November 9, 2013 Filed under: Mediasphere, Politics, White House | Tags: Barack Obama, David Axelrod, George W. Bush, Obama, Thomas Jefferson, Vanity Fair, White House 2 Comments
The Lonely Guy
He’s a community organizer who works alone. What was once his greatest strength—he kept his cool and didn’t need feedback—is now a liability
Todd S. Purdum writes: When Barack Obama arrived in Washington almost five years ago, the universal assumption was that the young president—who had, after all, won office by exploiting every connective tool of the national social and electoral network—would run his White House in sharp contrast to the bunkered, hunkered-down George W. Bush.
Like so much conventional wisdom, that impression has proved dead wrong. In fact, Obama’s resolute solitude—his isolation and alienation from the other players and power centers of Washington, be they rivals or friends—has emerged as the defining trait of his time in office. He may be the biggest presidential paradox since Thomas Jefferson, the slaveholder who wrote the Declaration of Independence: a community organizer who works alone.
Rewarding Excellence: Tammany Hall Becomes a New York City Landmark
Posted: October 29, 2013 Filed under: History, Politics, U.S. News | Tags: International Ladies Garment Workers Union, New York, New York City, New York Film Academy, Tammany Hall, Thomas Jefferson Leave a comment
President Obama nominated to present the Civic Achievement Award?
New Yorkers are eagerly awaiting the outcome of the mayoral election that will write the city’s next (hopefully bright) chapter of political history, but today, the Landmarks Preservation Commission revisited one of its most infamous—bestowing a landmark designation on the former home of Tammany Hall.
The Democratic political machine’s headquarters at 100 East 17th Street was completed in 1929, when the pay-to-play, corrupt political machine was at the height of its powers. A few short years later, Tammany Hall would lose its stranglehold on city and state politics, when the extent of its corruption was uncovered, leading to mayor Jimmy Walker’s resignation. FDR, among other influential politicians, distanced themselves from the group and Fiorello LaGuardia became the first anti-Tammany candidate to be elected in decades. Read the rest of this entry »
The Phrase ‘Signature Achievement’
Posted: October 29, 2013 Filed under: The Butcher's Notebook, Think Tank, White House | Tags: Alien and Sedition Acts, Barack Obama, Civil service, Louisiana Purchase, Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, President, Secret Service, Thomas Jefferson, White House 2 CommentsIt’s not only Undemocratic, it’s Un-American
Am I the only one bothered by this? Not the overuse of the phrase, but the phrase itself. ‘Signature’ legislation. ‘Signature’ achievement. The arrogance, the vanity associated with it–okay, yes, that bothers me, and well get to that, but–they’re the things that bother me least about it.
It’s that it’s got everything exactly backwards.
It implies a Ruler, and subjects. The Ruler, or Monarch, would endeavor to preserve a “signature achievement”. Like a Master Chef guarding the secret sauce in his ‘signature dish’. The purpose of this tradition is the opposite of serving the interests of the public. It’s to serve the interests of the Ruler. To bestow honor upon his Majesty’s historic legacy. While the scribes and poets and servants and subjects weigh the fortunes and perils of legislative achievements of the Great One in power. I don’t just mean the current president, either. Any president.
Since when is it our job–as citizens–or the media’s job–or the job of historians–to facilitate the White House occupant’s ego-gratifcation? We’re supposed to invest in preserving the ‘historic legacy’ of an elected official? A public servant?
We already pay for the house. The plane. The Secret Service detail. The vacations. The library. The whole thing.
Are we actually enduring the catastrophe of The Patient Care and Affordable Care Act‘s spectacular, epic, cascading failures primarily to protect president’s vanity? A chief executive unwilling to compromise, and a governing party dedicated–not to doing the least harm to citizens, but to minimizing harm–to the ruling party? To help insure a signature stack of 11,000 pages of regulations’ special place in history’?
In a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, we are not required to be burdened with bad law because we’re afraid of hurting the lawmakers’–or the president’s–feelings.
I try to imagine Thomas Jefferson consulting with his advisors, concerned about how the pamphleteers would regard the controversial debts incurred in order to produce Jefferson’s “signature achievement”, the Louisiana Purchase. Or John Adams’ allies in the Senate fretting over his’ ‘signature legislation’, the Alien and Sedition Acts, rightly concerned for how it might negatively impact president Adams’ ‘historic legacy’. Did legislators boast, in 1919, about the ratification of the doomed 18th Amendment? Did president Wilson entertain the notion of preserving his signature legislative achievement? Did such conversations take place? Perhaps they did. If so, it was a bad idea then, too.
I can imagine Charles Manson reading books about the Tate LaBianca massacre and proudly discussing the historic significance of his “signature achievement” with his prison mates.
Google News brings up 9,780 hits on the phrase ‘signature achievement’. And 15,300 on the phrase ‘signature Legislation’.
Who is the master, and who is the servant?
It’s undemocratic. It’s un-American.
I vote to retire the phrase.
Five Things They Don’t Want You to Know About Conspiracy Theories
Posted: October 27, 2013 Filed under: Education, History, Politics, Think Tank | Tags: Barack Obama, Conspiracy theory, Jesse Walker, Kanye West, Ku Klux Klan, National Security Agency, Osama bin Laden, Thomas Jefferson, United States Leave a comment
Exploding the myths about the paranoid tales we tell
Jesse Walker writes: It might seem like we’re living at a uniquely rich moment for conspiracy theories. Over the last few years, we’ve seen it claimed that Osama bin Laden didn’t really die, that Barack Obama is covering up the true circumstances of his birth, that Kanye West and Kim Kardashian have encoded Illuminati symbolism in their baby’s name, that the National Security Agency has been secretly intercepting Americans’ phone calls and e-mails—oh, wait. That last one’s true.
It’s easy to write off conspiracy theories as the delusions of the political fringe, a minor nuisance fueled by the rise of the Internet. Easy—and inaccurate. Conspiracy stories have been a major part of American life since the colonial days. They are not just found in the political extremes, and they are not invariably wrong. And even when they are wrong, as is so often true, they still have lessons to teach us. To understand why conspiracies matter, it helps to clear away some myths that have attached themselves to the subject.
Myth #1: People today are uniquely prone to believing conspiracy theories
A 2011 article in the British newspaper The Independent flatly declared that “there are more conspiracy theories and more conspiracy theory believers than ever before.” This, the reporter continued, was largely “because the internet has made it easy to propagate rumour and supposition on a global scale.” As an example, he cited a story that the Ku Klux Klan secretly owned KFC and was lacing “the food with a drug that makes only black men impotent.”
But there has never been an age when conspiracy theories were not popular. From Puritan fears that Satan was commanding a conspiracy of Indians to Thomas Jefferson’s concern that the British had “a deliberate and systematical plan of reducing us to slavery,” from the assassination rumors that followed the death of President Zachary Taylor to the tales of subversion told during the Cold War, every significant event in American history has inspired conspiracy theories. And a lot of insignificant events have, too.
A Voice of Reason
Posted: October 2, 2013 Filed under: History, White House | Tags: Enlightenment, Founder, government, Liberty, Thomas Jefferson 2 Comments
‘When someone tells you that a Communist leader is Jeffersonian, watch your wallet, and watch the corpses’
Posted: September 18, 2013 Filed under: History, Politics, White House | Tags: Barack Obama, Castro, Chi Minh, Fidel Castro, Ho Chi Minh, Obama, Saul Landau, Thomas Jefferson, United States, United States Declaration of Independence Leave a comment
Ho Chi Minh, Fidel Castro, and Other Jeffersonians
Jay Nordlinger writes: “We discussed the fact that Ho Chi Minh was actually inspired by the U.S. Declaration of Independence and Constitution, and the words of Thomas Jefferson.” That’s what Barack Obama said after meeting with the Vietnamese president, Sang. One should really put “president” in quotation marks, though: These party bosses like to perfume themselves with words like that.
I go over some of this in Impromptus today, saying, “A certain kind of American has always claimed that Ho was really a Jeffersonian at heart. In truth, his heart belonged to Marx, Lenin, Mao, and the rest of the destroyers. He was in their image. Sure, there were little nods to Jefferson — for Western consumption, Western fools.” Read the rest of this entry »
Obama: Centralized Power Is the Source of Freedom
Posted: January 23, 2013 Filed under: Mediasphere, Reading Room | Tags: Americans, Barack Obama, Big Government, Natural and legal rights, New Deal, Obama, Thomas Jefferson, United States 1 Comment
Jeffrey H. Anderson
January 23, 2013 8:40 AM
In his second inaugural address, President Obama made every effort to tie his political philosophy to the ideals and principles of the American Founding, even as he made clear how little he understands those ideals and principles. The gist of Obama’s speech was that only government can grant freedom. Or as he put it, “[W]e have always understood…that preserving our individual freedoms ultimately requires collective action.”
To be clear, Obama doesn’t mean this in the sense of a limited government’s importance in securing certain unalienable rights. Rather, as his speech made clear, he means it in the sense of an activist government’s importance in consolidating power effectively, redistributing wealth liberally, taxing and spending prodigiously, and heavily regulating the possession of that portion of Americans’ property that it allows to remain in their hands.
Thomas Jefferson said, “The true foundation of republican government is the equal right of every citizen, in his person and property, and in their management.” In his second inaugural, Obama said very nearly the opposite.
Instead of emphasizing the importance and the nobility of individual Americans’ work, or of Americans coming together to form voluntary civil associations in their communities, Obama emphasized the need for collective action shepherded by the federal government. He said, “No single person can train all the math and science teachers we’ll need to equip our children for the future, or build the roads and networks and research labs that will bring new jobs and businesses to our shores. Now, more than ever, we must do these things together, as one nation and one people.” Rather than emphasizing the possibilities of being a free man or woman in a free land, he emphasized the individual American’s powerlessness in the absence of the centralized state.
Obama added, “We do not believe that in this country freedom is reserved for the lucky, or happiness for the few” — thereby suggesting that, in the absence of consolidated power in Washington, prosperity is available not to the enterprising, the industrious, or the frugal, but merely to the lucky, and that the same is true for freedom itself.
Tocqueville described an overreaching centralized government as being something that “hinders, compromises, enervates, extinguishes, dazes, and finally reduces each nation to being nothing more than a herd of timid and industrious animals of which the government is the shepherd.” In marked contrast, Obama says that Big Government’s biggest programs “free us to take the risks that make this country great.” This naïve assertion makes one wonder what freed Americans to take such risks in the 150 years between the Founding and the New Deal.
‘Unbiased’ Stories Do Not Exist
Posted: September 26, 2012 Filed under: Mediasphere | Tags: Americans, Horace Greeley, New York Tribune, Republicans, Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, Thomas Ritchie, United States Leave a commentThe First Amendment guarantees a free press, not a fair press
In the modern age, the general public expects their news to be “objective” and “unbiased.” We want the “facts” and believe that the talking head, newspaper reporter or cable news correspondent is interested in the same thing. The members of the mainstream media tell us they are unbiased, even when reporters engage in coordinated attacks against political figures they dislike.
Of course, most astute observers understand that the media leans left. Tim Groseclose wrote a book on the issue in 2011. Conservative media outlets consistently hammer their liberal counterparts on their bias, only to receive jabs from the president and other liberal politicians for their “venomous” behavior.
To those who have grown up with the fantasy that American media has, until recently, been the mecca for objectivity, it seems our media outlets are falling apart, warped by the same supposed partisanship that clouds the American political process. If only we could return to the glory days of early news reporting when we could trust the “facts” and receive the whole truth and nothing but the truth. They need a swift kick of reality. The First Amendment — and the 50 state amendments on the issue — guarantee a free press, but not a fair press. The press has always been a snake pit.
“…Americans will generally gravitate toward the news that suits their worldview…”
George Washington was savagely attacked in the press, with Thomas Paine, his one-time ally, publicly wishing for his death. The relentless attacks in the press against John Adams in 1800 were financed by his long-time friend Thomas Jefferson. In return, Jefferson was publicly roasted by James Callender, the man he paid to filet Adams. In the mid-nineteenth century, Thomas Ritchie, editor of the Richmond Enquirer, was a one-man wrecking ball against his political opponents. Horace Greeley used his New York Tribune as a sounding board for the Republican Party and his various social crusades in the ante and post bellum periods. Some of these newspapers were in fact financed by the members of Congress that their editors supported! Everyone knew it and no one expected an “unbiased” story, for as historians have understood for years, “unbiased” stories do not exist. Even reporters’ story selection shows bias.
“…The press has always been a snake pit…”
Yet, Americans like biased news. Historical data proves it, as do the current television cable news and talk-show ratings. We like to know what our “newsmen” think before they give us the scoop. People like to hear their own thoughts reaffirmed and echoed. As long as the press remains free — and the Internet is the key — then Americans will generally gravitate toward the news that suits their worldview. This should come as no surprise, and Americans should and do embrace it. Let the “mainstream” media tarnish its image by cozying up to the Obama administration. There are counterweights, and Americans have found them in large numbers. The founding generation and those that followed in the nineteenth century understood that only a free press mattered. Fair was subjective and unnecessary. ..
From Brion McClanahan Author, The Founding Fathers Guide to the Constitution >> More >>> via The Daily Caller.
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