Tag: Declaration of Independence

Categories
general freedom individual achievement

Jefferson’s Achievements

Thomas Jefferson, birthday, slavery, freedom

In 1743, on April 2, Thomas Jefferson was born. But the old Julian calendar was superseded in 1752, so we now mark his birthday as April 13.

Thomas Jefferson wrote the first draft of the United States’ Declaration of Independence. He authored the State of Virginia’s Statue of Religious Freedom, which disestablished the Episcopalian Church, thus officially beginning the long process of what he referred to as “building a wall of separation between Church and State.”

He followed Patrick Henry as Governor of Virginia, and was in that position when it was attacked by British forces (led by Benedict Arnold and Gen. Cornwallis). He later served as the first Secretary of State of the new union, and then as its second Vice President and third President. He wrote one book, Notes on the State of Virginia (1785), and translated several others, including Volney’s Ruins of Empires (1802) and Destutt de Tracy’s A Treatise on Political Economy (1817). He designed the first campus of the University of Virginia, and managed its founding.

Thomas Jefferson was a man of achievement, yes; but mostly he is associated with the idea of freedom.

Yet, he was also a slave-owner. His several attempts to limit the severity and extent of slavery were mostly beaten back. And his personal involvement with slaves (he likely sired several children with his late wife’s half sister, a slave) was even more tangled.

Some people say this disqualifies Jefferson from current praise.

I’m not in that camp. It seems to me less than honest not to esteem him for helping us declare that “all men are created equal” . . . and outright foolish to ignore Mr. Jefferson’s lifelong agitation for a more equal freedom under law.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Thomas Jefferson, birthday, slavery, freedom

 

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Categories
general freedom ideological culture

The Reason for the “Treason”

The United States of America is exceptional in at least one way: it was founded by folks who made very clear that the reasons for breaking with past allegiance and alliance — indeed, subjugation — rested, finally, on an idea: liberty.

No doubt that was just an excuse for some founders. And no doubt Americans never kept liberty foremost in their minds for long. But the emphasis at the beginning on the moral principles altered not merely the American consciousness, but the conscience of the world.

The principles led a list of complaints, and were preceded by an explanation for their necessity: “a decent respect to the opinions of mankind” required the public statement.Declaration of Independence

The meat of the argument is this:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

You may write it a bit differently. (Too many, today, wouldn’t write it at all.) But whether you make minor edits for modernized style, or substantive edits for some paradigm shifts, the basic idea, that somehow government must rest on consent — not on mere accommodation to terrorizing force — remains one of the most potent ideas ever promoted.

A moral, informed consent binds government, or at least limits it: this is the notion that changed the world.

For the better.

Remember, though: the break with Great Britain was deemed, by King George III, treasonous.

But it was very reasonable.

We have a lot of reasons, today, to resist a lot of homegrown tyranny. As in 1776, the future hangs in the balance. Fortunately, our founders did a good enough job that what we do now requires less than their “treason.” Still, just like them, our lives, our liberties, and our sacred honor are on the line.

We’ve got some work to do.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
general freedom ideological culture political challengers

Opposites for Independence

Could any two men be more different than John Adams and Thomas Jefferson? And yet, I doubt if the United States would exist were it not for both. Somehow, they worked together when it counted. And worked against each other, when it seemed necessary.

Yet they respected each other (in their different ways), and before the end, after a long estrangement, became close friends.Thomas Jefferson

The story is well known: on his deathbed on July 4, 1826, Adams whispered, “Thomas Jefferson survives!” He was wrong. Jefferson had died earlier that day, on the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.

Adams was also wrong about Independence Day. On July 2, 1776, after the Lee Resolution for independence passed the Continental Congress, he wrote that “the second day of July” would become the day of “a great anniversary festival.” But “by 1777,” Steve Tally noted in Bland Ambition, his jovial history of the vice presidency, “people were already celebrating the Fourth of July.”

John AdamsBut give him his due: it was Adams who insisted that Jefferson write the Declaration, and it was indeed its words — especially that of its “mission statement” preamble — that resonate almost universally to this day. And gave birth to the annual festivities.

Adams, Tally tells us, was “short, round, peevish, a loudmouth, and frequently a bore.” Jefferson, on the other hand, was tall, handsome, polite, and much more popular. And a much better writer. Which is why he was given his great job, to produce the Declaration.

Great writer or no, it’s not as if the tall redhead’s initial draft was acceptable as it flowed from the pen. Adams, Franklin, and the whole congress got in on the editing job. “Jefferson liked to recall that his document survived further [extensive] editing,” Tally explains, “because of the meeting hall’s proximity to a livery stable.” Still, it’s obvious that Jefferson wasn’t the only genius in the room, and that without Adams’s tireless work, independence might not have gotten off the ground.Declaration of Independence

The later history of both men, in service to the country they helped found, is riddled with ambiguities and even horrible moral and political lapses. Adams was the kind of politician who not only opposed term limits, but opposed terms: he thought men raised to office should be kept there forever. Jefferson leaned not merely the other direction, but flirted with the notion of a revolution every generation.

I adhere to the anti-federalist slogan of their day, “that where annual elections end, tyranny begins.”

Between the two extremes of these two great men, somehow, the republic survived. And thrived. Their correspondence is a mine of great wisdom, their biographies well worth reading.

Most of all, their legacy — of July 2 and July 4, 1776, and the universal rights of man — remains worth fighting for.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Common Sense general freedom

The Price of Liberty

Happy Independence Day!

Though I understand if you are not feeling all that exultant, today.

Last week’s Supreme Court decision allowing the unconstitutional 2,700-page monstrosity known as Obamacare to stand was, well, bracing. We can soberly see how far our great country has fallen from the Republic our Founders envisioned. And how long and hard the battle will be to restore our country.

Let’s face it: We’re headed in the wrong direction. Unless we change course, our children and grandchildren will never know the freedom and opportunity and security that we have known. Can we accept such a fate? Can we live with it? Can we even bear to go to our graves with it?

On this day 236 years ago, not only did the United States of America break away from the monarchical and mercantilist British Empire, but we did so with a Declaration of Independence that spoke to “a candid world,” firing up the hearts and minds of people everywhere.

The Declaration served, in its day, as the most eloquent expression of the equality and dignity of each individual human being . . . of our inviolate right to freedom. It continues to do so today.

Freedom fighters worldwide have long been inspired by the simple words of our Founders . . . speaking truth to power:

We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness — That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute a new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

It falls to us, today, to restore some semblance of this precious freedom.

The enemies of freedom are powerful and entrenched — but remember, they were at the founding, too.

Of course, today’s situation has a somewhat different complexion. The public employee unions (basically, the government itself) are now the biggest spending and most powerful special interests in our politics. Crony phony-capitalists (Solyndra and many more) join them to feed at the federal trough, gorging on our tax dollars, wallowing in the borrowed money that threatens collapse and catastrophe. They push ever more power into the hands of politicians and their special-interest clients.

Though whopping majorities of citizens favor balanced budgets, limited government, and common-sense checks on power — term limits and the right to initiative, referendum and recall — our so-called representatives ignore the will of the people. Their spending and debt and nanny-statism know no bounds. They sue to overturn our votes and fashion a maze of unconstitutional rules to block our political participation.

Today’s warning isn’t “the redcoats are coming!” it’s “the turncoats are in charge!”

We can’t count on politicians or judges to save us. We can only count on each other.

Benjamin Franklin said, “We must hang together or we shall surely all hang separately.”

This Common Sense program, in the spirit of Tom Paine’s famous pamphlet that inspired our revolution, is my effort to educate, to excite citizens to action, to entertain at times, and to unite us in our common cause.

From highlighting today’s grassroots freedom-fighters to lambasting the mindless nanny-state busybodies in high places, Common Sense is a daily shot heard ’round the world.

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“Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it,” Paine wrote to “the inhabitants of America.”

My goal in these commentaries is to add punch and verve to the movement, vanquishing fatigue so we can fight on.

Freedom is worth it. The only way to beat the odds is to fight.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

P.S. Just as in Paine’s day, and in his words, “These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.”

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Categories
judiciary Ninth Amendment rights U.S. Constitution

Rights Retained by All But Kagan

When grilled by the Senate Judiciary Committee, Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan didn’t have to go out on a limb to dismiss the rights affirmed in the Declaration of Independence. Most liberals and conservatives share the view that a judge’s job is to interpret the law, not defend “natural rights.”

Yet, our Founders regarded natural rights as an important restraint on government.

Not so with progressives today and yesterday. As scholar Jim Powell noted in The Daily Caller, progressives don’t like natural rights, or the function they serve. Powell quotes Teddy Roosevelt: “I don’t think any harm comes from the concentration of power in one man’s hands.”

TR was wrong. Progress depends not on unlimited power for leaders and bureaus, but on limiting those powers so voluntary co-operation can work its wonders.

Progressives from TR to Kagan oppose natural rights because they run dead against progressivism.

Even the enumerated rights in the Bill of Rights limits government too much for progressives, so they twist words to get rid of their practicality.

The idea of natural, basic rights find their most concise defense in the Ninth Amendment: “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.” The question to ask Supreme Court candidates — indeed, any person who must swear to “uphold the Constitution” — is how “the people” can retain their unenumerated rights.

The question is almost never asked.

To our detriment.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.