Citizen
Founder's Club Member
Its a little quiet around here. Since we're generally about liberty and freedom around here, I figured I would kick off another discussion.
You can skip the commentary and go straight to indented excerpts below of a letter from Jefferson to James Madison if you don't want to read the commentary. Do follow the link and read the whole letter; its pretty impressive.
Thomas Jefferson was no angel.
During the revolution, he urged a Bill of Attainder against a Brit accused of raiding in VA. (A bill of attainder is a legislative declaration of outlawry: the victim is not only pushed outside the protection of the law, he was to be killed by whoever found him. Such is an utter violation of the right to due process and jury trial. Used in England, they often included "corruption of blood"--heirs could not inherit the property after the victim was killed. Bills of Attainder were so hated, they are expressly prohibited in the constitution.)
He made the Louisiana Purchase without a shred of constitutional authority. He also forced northern ports to observe an embargo, almost bankrupting them, and failing in his goal to put economic pressure on (England? France?).
He held slaves.
But, among the Founders he was about the most liberty-minded of all. Although a member of the aristocracy, he sided for the common man.
He did believe in the necessity of compulsory government. And, I kinda wondered about his commitment to liberty in light of being a slave holder (some real contradictions in that area of his life which are not easily explained away). Until I read the letter excerpted below.
English political history until 1776 is one long story of the people getting government under control. That history can be viewed as rising toward more and more freedom across twelve or thirteen centuries. It was John Locke's ideas written in 1689 about unalienable rights and consent of the governed that Jefferson used in the Declaration of Independence. But, if you're rising toward more and more freedom, why stop there? Why not make consent of the governed genuine? What rational basis is there for one equal to just up and govern another without his actual genuine consent?
Well, Thomas Jefferson didn't stop at the Declaration of Independence's basis for political authority after all. He explored the question further. In a letter to James Madison in 1789.
There is a word in that letter: usufruct. It means the right to enjoy the use and profits of property belonging to another.
Below are some excerpts from the letter. I included them really just to spark your interest; I'm thinking you will actually need to read the whole letter for things to make sense. That is to say, to get the whole context:
"The question Whether one generation of men has a right to bind another, seems never to have been started either on this or our side of the water...
...What is true of every member of the society individually, is true of them all collectively, since the rights of the whole can be no more than the sum of the rights of the individuals...
...On similar ground it may be proved that no society can make a perpetual constitution, or even a perpetual law. The earth belongs always to the living generation..."
http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/v1ch2s23.html
Its almost as though Jefferson knew or suspected that consent to be governed had to be genuine for government to be truly legitimate. You can't ask the questions he's asking without quickly arriving there--it only takes a little more looking or questioning at the premises. You can't undermine the authority of the US constitution as he does in the letter without missing that point by much in your own mind.
Was Jefferson trying to inject some food for thought to Madison on something Jefferson already knew or suspected went deeper, perhaps to prompt Madison to work hard on the national debt issue? Why did he mention it at all to Madison? Rather than just ask Madison to work hard on the national debt question?
You can skip the commentary and go straight to indented excerpts below of a letter from Jefferson to James Madison if you don't want to read the commentary. Do follow the link and read the whole letter; its pretty impressive.
Thomas Jefferson was no angel.
During the revolution, he urged a Bill of Attainder against a Brit accused of raiding in VA. (A bill of attainder is a legislative declaration of outlawry: the victim is not only pushed outside the protection of the law, he was to be killed by whoever found him. Such is an utter violation of the right to due process and jury trial. Used in England, they often included "corruption of blood"--heirs could not inherit the property after the victim was killed. Bills of Attainder were so hated, they are expressly prohibited in the constitution.)
He made the Louisiana Purchase without a shred of constitutional authority. He also forced northern ports to observe an embargo, almost bankrupting them, and failing in his goal to put economic pressure on (England? France?).
He held slaves.
But, among the Founders he was about the most liberty-minded of all. Although a member of the aristocracy, he sided for the common man.
He did believe in the necessity of compulsory government. And, I kinda wondered about his commitment to liberty in light of being a slave holder (some real contradictions in that area of his life which are not easily explained away). Until I read the letter excerpted below.
English political history until 1776 is one long story of the people getting government under control. That history can be viewed as rising toward more and more freedom across twelve or thirteen centuries. It was John Locke's ideas written in 1689 about unalienable rights and consent of the governed that Jefferson used in the Declaration of Independence. But, if you're rising toward more and more freedom, why stop there? Why not make consent of the governed genuine? What rational basis is there for one equal to just up and govern another without his actual genuine consent?
Well, Thomas Jefferson didn't stop at the Declaration of Independence's basis for political authority after all. He explored the question further. In a letter to James Madison in 1789.
There is a word in that letter: usufruct. It means the right to enjoy the use and profits of property belonging to another.
Below are some excerpts from the letter. I included them really just to spark your interest; I'm thinking you will actually need to read the whole letter for things to make sense. That is to say, to get the whole context:
"The question Whether one generation of men has a right to bind another, seems never to have been started either on this or our side of the water...
...What is true of every member of the society individually, is true of them all collectively, since the rights of the whole can be no more than the sum of the rights of the individuals...
...On similar ground it may be proved that no society can make a perpetual constitution, or even a perpetual law. The earth belongs always to the living generation..."
http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/v1ch2s23.html
Its almost as though Jefferson knew or suspected that consent to be governed had to be genuine for government to be truly legitimate. You can't ask the questions he's asking without quickly arriving there--it only takes a little more looking or questioning at the premises. You can't undermine the authority of the US constitution as he does in the letter without missing that point by much in your own mind.
Was Jefferson trying to inject some food for thought to Madison on something Jefferson already knew or suspected went deeper, perhaps to prompt Madison to work hard on the national debt issue? Why did he mention it at all to Madison? Rather than just ask Madison to work hard on the national debt question?
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