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| Thomas Jefferson designed this building for the University of Virginia which he founded in his 81st year. |
THOMAS JEFFERSON
PART ONE
Thomas Jefferson was an extraordinary man who began learning very early in life and never stopped.
At 5, began studying under his cousin's tutor.
At 9, studied Latin, Greek and French.
At 14, studied classical literature and additional languages.
At 16, entered the College of William and Mary.
At 19, studied Law for 5 years starting under George Wythe.
At 23, started his own law practice.
At 25, was elected to the Virginia House of Burgesses.
At 31, wrote the widely circulated "Summary View of the Rights of British America ? And retired from his law practice.
At 32, was a Delegate to the Second Continental Congress.
At 33, wrote the Declaration of Independence .
At 33, took three years to revise Virginia 's legal code and wrote a Public Education bill and a statute for Religious Freedom.
At 36, was elected the second Governor of Virginia succeeding Patrick Henry.
At 40, served in Congress for two years.
At 41, was the American minister to France and negotiated commercial treaties with European nations along with Ben Franklin and John Adams.
At 46, served as the first Secretary of State under George Washington.
At 53, served as Vice President and was elected president of the American Philosophical Society.
At 55, drafted the Kentucky Resolutions and became the active head of Republican Party.
At 57, was elected the third president of the United States .
At 60, obtained the Louisiana Purchase doubling the nation's size.
At 61, was elected to a second term as President.
At 65, retired to Monticello .
At 80, helped President Monroe shape the Monroe Doctrine.
At 81, almost single-handedly created the University of Virginia and served as its first president.
At 83, died on the 50th anniversary of the Signing of the Declaration of Independence along with John Adams.
Thomas Jefferson knew because he himself studied the previous failed attempts at government. He understood actual history, the nature of God, his laws and the nature of man. That happens to be way more than what most understand today. Jefferson really knew his stuff. A voice from the past to lead us in the future:
John F. Kennedy held a dinner in the white House for a group of the brightest minds in the nation at that time. He made this statement: "This is perhaps the assembly of the most intelligence ever to gather at one time in the White House with the exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone."
PART TWO
"When we get piled upon one another in large cities, as in Europe, we shall become as corrupt as Europe ."
~ Thomas Jefferson
"The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government."
~ Thomas Jefferson
"The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not."
~ Thomas Jefferson
"It is incumbent on every generation to pay its own debts as it goes. A principle which if acted on would save one-half the wars of the world."
~ Thomas Jefferson
"I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them."
~ Thomas Jefferson
"My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government."
~ Thomas Jefferson
"No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms."
~ Thomas Jefferson
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is is natural manure."
~ Thomas Jefferson
"To compel a man to subsidize with his taxes the propagation of ideas which he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical."
~ Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson said in 1802:
"I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations sure to grow up around the banks will deprive the people of all property - until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered."
I wish everyone in our country could see this and appreciate its wisdom. If it were taught in our schools, it would be a big help, but it no longer is, so we must do what we can, ourselves, while we are still American Citizens and no yet subjects to a dictatorship that installed itself by stealth right under our noses.
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| University of Virginia campus designed by Mr. Jefferson |
Facts are a good remedy for blind founding oligarchs worship
ReplyDeleteAt 9, studied Latin, Greek and French.
ReplyDeleteThe early study of foreign languages that require following logical steps and protocol to translate that language, particularly into one's native tongue, rewires the brain to create pathways for critical thinking.
This phenomenon can be explained by neurology -- particularly the repeated crossing of the corpus collosum.
The EARLY study of Latin and Greek is particularly useful because one cannot translate from or to those languages via intuition.
To Ducky and the dictatorial progressives, Jefferson is a dangerous and radical subversive. Must tear him down.
ReplyDeleteSo Ducky, stop holding us in suspense. Which quotes are apocryphal?
And why do we end up with such quotes that someone never said? Because usually such apocrypha sums up neatly the person's thoughts and beliefs as evinced by their writing.
Although it seems the myths of Weems
ReplyDeleteAnd Bowdler's thoughts were nasty,
The finest seams sewn up in dreams
Tear with iconoclasty.
Construction sought begins as naught
But someone's fondest wish.
We'd better praise uplifting Thought
Than treat it like spoilt fish!
Ducky,
ReplyDeleteJefferson owned slaves and he was a bastard to his once good friend John Adams, but that doesn't mean that his accomplishments or words mean any less.
Joseph Ellis, himself a flawed man, said it best when he said something to the effect that it's time we, as Americans, adopt a more mature view of the Founding Fathers.
It's retarded to take either view that they should be deified or villified. They were men, flawed like any other. For most of them, their great deeds outweigh their flaws given that their accomplishments have done more to shape the American mind than have their personal shortcomings.
Say what you want about the Founding Fathers. Criticize them for not being poor enough, or for suffering from common human frailty. But the fact still stands that they put it all on the line for what they thought would be a better life, and you and I are arguing on the internet today because of their accomplishment.
"The EARLY study of Latin and Greek is particularly useful because one cannot translate from or to those languages via intuition."
ReplyDeleteThat's a most interesting observation, AOW, but it's also puzzling. I've never heard it articulated before.
Don't we learn nearly everything through intuition? We certainly don't learn our native language by sitting in a classroom, reading texts on grammar and selected bits of graded fiction all the while memorizing rules of proper usage and syntax, do we?
Hw we DO learn is still something of a mystery, I think, but we learn most of what we need to know in the first three to five years of life, don't we?
Ironic that all of that takes place before we ever set foot in a classroom, isn't it?
There WERE no "schools" such as we know them, when most of the greatest figures in History went through their formative years.
And what should that tell us about the intrinsic value of modern public education? ;-)
But why should anyone specifically earn LATIN or GREEK at any age early or late? Why not tackle Russian or Chinese or Sanskrit, et al., instead?
"[W]hy do we end up with ... quotes that someone never said? Because usually such apocrypha sums up neatly the person's thoughts and beliefs as evinced by their writing."
ReplyDeleteWOW! That's a great insight on your part, Kurt. I've long held the same view (and I really don;t give a damn who wrote Shakespeare, either by the way ;-), but I've never heard it put so succinctly.
It really doesn't matter WHO said WHAT. It's the QUALITY of the THOUGHT that counts NOT it's origin.
It might prove a useful academic exercise if some ingenious soul were to prepare a course -- or a series of such courses -- examining the insights, theories and literary expressions of a wide variety of significant authors WITHOUT telling anyone in the class who the authors were.
So often people are BLINDED by the "fame, "recognition," and critical analysis of iconic figures. If we were to be introduced to them deprived of the baggage affixed to them by fame, acclaim and defamation, we might have a chance at getting to know them much better on their OWN merits.
All this canned, pre-digested "knowledge' imbibed, ingested, inhaled and then regurgitated by "scholars" who like to believe they really KNOW something leaves me cold.
There's a lot more to being truly educated than having been subjected to endless Tell 'em 'n Test 'em procedures where memorizing reams of "information" the implications of which may not be understood passes for "Education."
As for Canardo, the poet must have had him -- or certainly his prototype -- in mind when she penned the following:
ReplyDeleteHe preached upon "Breadth" till it argued him narrow—
The Broad are too broad to define
And of "Truth" until it proclaimed him a Liar —
The Truth never flaunted a Sign —
Simplicity fled from his counterfeit presence
As Gold the Pyrites would shun —
What confusion would cover the innocent Jesus
To meet so enabled a Man!
I rest my case.
To meet so enabled a Man!
ReplyDeleteI wanna be an Obamacare enabled man!
Well Jack, I know he's the Libertarian darling but he comes up well short of his reputation.
ReplyDeleteHe was a slavish follower of Locke's cult of property and didn't have the vision to move the country out of the grip of slaveholders and the dying plantation economy. Hardly an achievement.
He feared standing armies and when he decided to invade Canada thought he could do it with irregular militias. How did that work out? But we can think him for the cult of morons who bray on about armed rebellion.
His idea that the state could trump the Federal government was eventually resolved at some cost.
His time is a past as his ideas. Whatever importance he had at the time a slavish reverence for his watered down understanding of the enlightenment is a modern impediment.
What's wrong with this picture? In the rabid minds of the frothing leftists, the Marxist acolytes, the ideals of America's Founding Fathers are nothing but self-serving racism that allowed the pigment-lacking white folks to lord it over their slaves. Yet if asked to identify another country in the history of the planet that raised the standard of living of all citizens, that extended life because of advances in science and technology, they couldn't do it.
ReplyDeleteIt's always skewing reality by seeking division either between races, classes or today, sexes and "sexual preference". Of course, something is lost in the translation, since reality and true existence are alien to those that promote division and hatred in the name of their diabolical heroes such as Karl Marx, the original hater of reality and existence, and himself a trained sock puppet of Zionism, a crypto-Zionist created by a Zionist whose own corpse was exhumed from its original burial place in France and given a heroes burial in Israel because of his "heroic" effort in advancing the cause of world communism (by indoctrinating Karl Marx, I believe).
Jack: Well said.
ReplyDeleteDucky's view of the founders is as infantile as those he criticizes on the other side.
And when latte liberals (who all own property) spout inanities about "cult of property," it should be accompanied by a mandatory laugh track.
And if those same people didn't have a slavish admiration for Marx, racist Woody Wilson, white supremacist Margaret Sanger and neo-dictators FDR and LBJ, they might be taken seriously sometimes.
... a slavish follower of Locke's cult of property and didn't have the vision to move the country out of the grip of slaveholders and the dying plantation economy.
ReplyDelete----
Obviously this just isn't a pretty image which you try to project, Ducky. But to pretend that the principle of private ownership of property becomes a "cult" in the fevered frothing of your "thought" process really says more about your state of mind and grasp of reality than it does about the idea you think you debunk by denigrating it by name-calling and attaching a label that may mean something to rabid followers of Marx, such as you.
What would you advocate in place of private ownership of real property? Communal ownership? How would that work out? Any better than any failed societies of the past? Personally, I'm beginning to think you just like to see your name in print, Ducky, and of course, the more ridiculous your comment the more you must sit back and chortle when others respond to your idiocy.
Who Said this?
ReplyDelete"
Conservative pols and bloggers are as high as glue-sniffers, bingeing on thoughts of driving Mr. Obama from office, gleeful and giddy with visions of impeachment dancing in their heads.
Will Republicans Screw Up Again? Some Are Already."
I'm guessing it was some Progressive IDIOT
We've seen America elect the most profoundly arrogant moron and his racist wife. The evidence is overwhelming, but the blind can’t see it.
ReplyDeleteThe nation couldn't have done worse. Now we must spend four years batting down everything this administration of thieves and liars tries to insult, embarrass, and erase our freedoms. What a waste.
Found you by accident.
Great Blog...I'll be back.
No Silverfiddle, my view is mature. There were serious flaws in their thinking and those must be understood,
ReplyDeleteGiven the standard worship it is more necessary to dwell on the flaws such as Jefferson's acceptance of Locke's theory of infinite wealth which becomes a very shaky justification for greed.
I don't believe Jefferson had a theory of value but let us know once you leave High School civics.
The immodesty of hubris is possibly the most insufferable of all of mankind's many flaws.
ReplyDeleteIs it any wonder the ancients simply had their more transparent adversaries killed?
It's been obvious for many years that America's enemies aren't only those portrayed as enemies outside of the country, far more damage has been done on the home front by enemies from within, especially those operating in high places within the government. Today everybody rants and raves about the economic hardship caused by the unfair trade with China since China uses slave labour at a fraction of the cost paid to other workers in other countries, especially Western countries.
ReplyDeleteHere's some interesting insights into how this all came about since Nixon's trade expedition to China with Henry Kissinger. That was followed up within a few years by President James Carter and his chief adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski falling over themselves accommodating the overtures of the Chinese leadership ...
"Thirty-five years ago, in the November 1978 and April 1979 issues of Trilateral Observer, Antony C. Sutton and myself wrote the following analysis on China. We warned of the disastrous effects that would result if these policies moved forward, and we thoroughly exposed the members of the Trilateral Commission who were almost solely responsible for China’s ascendent rise as a world power. That no one listened at the time is self-evident, because nothing changed and no one resisted. (For clarification, names of Trilateral Commission members are in bold type.)
The policy of “normalization” of relations with Communist China – in effect a program to build China technologically into a super power – was implemented by Zbigniew Brzezinski.
A high ranking Administration source is reported as saying: “This was Zbig’s baby more than anyone else’s.:
From outside the White House (from a top policy maker who generally sides with Cyrus Vance):
“Zbig is really riding high now. He had the central role behind the scenes, and he was all alone in the press play. I’m told the President thinks Zbig did 99 percent of the work on China.”
More likely, however, the China policy was formulated and implemented by a Trilateralist troika: Jimmy Carter, Cyrus Vance and Brzezinski. And this policy was only a continuation of a policy begun under a “Republican” Administration, that of Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger, another Trilateralist.
The heady effect that these vast policy making exercises have on these men, almost an infantile reaction, is well reported in the Washington Post on February 8, 1979 with the headline, China Policy: A Born-Again Brzezinski, describing how Brzezinski excitedly describes his meeting with Teng [aka Deng Xiaoping]:
FEBURARY 1979 — The eyes sparkle with excitement even days later. The arms erupt in sudden sweeping gestures when he talks about it. And that causes the photos — about a dozen of them — to fly out of Zbigniew Brzezinski’s hands and scatter over the floor of his office as he is speaking.
”Here’s Cy… and here I am… and there is Teng right between us…. “
Brzezinski is talking in that quick. clipped, excited style that is his way, and he is pointing at one photo that remains in his hand while he bends to scoop up the rest, talking all the while.
”It’s amazing, when you think of it. The leader of a billion people — having dinner in my house just two hours after he arrived in this country!
”I mean, it really is rather amazing!”
http://www.augustforecast.com/2013/05/22/technocracy-and-the-making-of-china/
No one here said they were without flaw, or that their philosophies were 100% fool proof. I love John Adams to death, but he was way off on certain things.
ReplyDeleteAnd of course, democratic theory didn't end with them. It continued to evolve, and continues to do so today. But my point is that is that it's just as silly to villify them as it is to deify them.
The mature view is to look at them as men, flawed as you or myself, who did something extraordinary, and to understand their thinking both in the context of their time and ours.
You'll have to forgive me for taking your "watered down understanding of the enlightenment" statement with a huge block of salt. Those men, even Jefferson, were far better read than you or me.
Canardo, the pseudo-intellectual subversive creep, has nothing more to offer than the dubious gift of obduracy coupled with colossal effrontery.
ReplyDeleteOh do read about Critical Theory -- the most fiendish all the diabolical theories advanced by The Frankfurt School, -- IF you can still find any reliable information on it.
As print material is gradually, but relentlessly phased out of existence, and ALL we have LEFT to rely on is ELECTRONICALLY ENGINEERED "information" made available through Central Supply, the noose of absolute, unstoppable control will tighten relentlessly about the neck of Truth, till there is NOTHING left, but the LIES our would-be slave masters would have us accept.
Once all of us older folk, who KNOW the TRUTH, die off -- or get rounded up and euthanized -- the rest of you will never have a chance to be free. Not EVER.
In the eighteenth-century, you see, airplanes, helicopters, space travel, movies, radio, TV, computers, video cameras, and electronic monitoring systems did not exist to hamper the efforts of the determined few the throw off the shackles of oppression.
NOW, we are trapped, enmeshed in a place where no one can hide -- where no one can ever REALLY be ALONE ever again.
Very soon we will have TWO-WAY TV and COMPUTERS and AUTOMOBILES where our pursuits can be interrupted at will twenty-four hours a day, by lofty, condescending, dispiriting horseshit from the likes of Comrade Canardo.
TWO-WAY MONITORS will be installed EVERYWHERE -- shops, bars, restaurants, theaters, opera houses, offices, street corners, public parks, beaches --at lakeside and mountaintop resorts, hotel bedrooms, public toilets -- you name it. And in all these places Comrade Canardo will be able to observe YOU and hold you up to ridicule, and make acerbic, patronizing, threatening analysis and endless accusatory remarks whenever the mood strikes.
You won't even be able to fuck your wife without his having something to say about it, because HE will SEE you, ANALYSE you, MOCK and DEFLATE you, no matter WHAT you try to do or WHERE you try to go.
YOU -- and our formerly human kind will be reduced the status of LABORATORY RATS and forced to spend the remainder of your days trying to find your way out of an ever-more complex series of mazes prepared for the sheer purpose of allowing Comrade Canardo and his demonic successors to feel a Sexual Thrill at having you COMPLETELY at his mercy.
The REIGN of COMRADE CANARDO will make the excesses of Caligula seem like a Sunday School Picnic in comparison.
@ Quacky: "I don't believe Jefferson had a theory of value but let us know once you leave High School civics."
ReplyDeleteYou're right. He didn't, because he was not a marxist.
Great point about information disappearing after everything gets digitized. Yes. Controling what we can access is how they control us.
ReplyDeletedaniel
ReplyDelete"The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not."
Truer words were never uttered.
Hi, AA, I agree, but would they be ay LESS true if Jefferson was not the man who wrote them?
ReplyDeleteSome seem to think that kind of pettifogging "accuracy" is important.
Jefferson, my favorite President. If only the rEpublican party of today , aka; the circus tent, understood the genius of the man and actually held true to the principles he espoused.
ReplyDeleteBut alas, they do not. Jefferson was a liberal, indeed in his time a revolutionary. The furthest thing from a conservative.