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Finally, It’s Come to Attacking Party Icons

I see the New York Times has started an attack [1] on Thomas Jefferson. Well, not started, realy since they’ve been attacking our foundational documents and ideas for generations, now.

 

But why would this come up as a meme NOW, I wonder?
I’ve often said that it was a wonder to me that the Democrat party to this day holds Jefferson as an icon of the party., given his writings would seem to run directly afoul of the party and it’s positions on matters of freedom. Ponder these, as offhanded examples:

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.

Was the government to prescribe to us our medicine and diet, our bodies would be in such keeping as our souls are now.

“Laws that forbid the carrying of arms…disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes… Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man.” (Quoting Cesare Beccaria)

The beauty of the Second Amendment is that it will not be needed until they try to take it.

The policy of the American government is to leave their citizens free, neither restraining nor aiding them in their pursuits.

[2]

Thomas Jefferson

To take from one because it is thought that his own industry and that of his father’s has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers, have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association—the guarantee to every one of a free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it.

I think myself that we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious. (Back then!)

When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.

I am not a friend to a very energetic government. It is always oppressive.

What country can preserve its liberties if its rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance?

Were we directed from Washington when to sow and when to reap, we should soon want bread.

The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.

God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion. The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented, in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions, it is lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty…. And what country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to the facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.

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.

The two enemies of the people are criminals and government, so let us tie the second down with the chains of the Constitution so the second will not become the legalized version of the first.

The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not.

The question of “why now” seems fairly simple and straightforward to answer. Or should I say, “lean forward”? One can hardly institute foundational change as Obama’s been saying, if we’re bound to the ideas and ideals of the founders such as Jefferson.

Given the Obama agenda, such a man who would write such things, needs be vilified… lest someone start using a party icon’s writings as opposition to current polices and agendas. Our history, and the words and thoughts and deeds… and the ideas… of our founders has been systematically stripped from us for decades, now… one bit at a time. Increasingly, our government schools have abandoned the teaching of the principles our country was founded on.

I see this attack on Jefferson as merely one more step down that road toward serfdom.