Jefferson Had Issues With His Generation Too

Every Generation Has It’s Problems

Mandeville, LA – Exclusive Transcript – “Remember, Russell Kirk, the great conservative author and the man many believe was correctly and aptly titled the father of modern-day conservatism, Kirk was fond of this phrase that he thought all conservatives should have in the back of their mind at all times.  It was okay, indeed it was advisable, to stand up on the shoulders of giants.”  Check out today’s transcript for the rest…

Begin Mike Church Show Transcript

Mike:  The letter that Jefferson wrote to Johnson is instructive.  In the letter we learn that Thomas Jefferson, near the end of his life — of course, he has no idea when he’s going to die.  He has no idea that he and John Adams are going to die about six hours apart on the 4^th of July 1826, precisely 50 years to the day after the Declaration of Independence is unanimously adopted by the Second Continental Congress.  How do you like that for serendipity?

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People remember Jefferson for the Declaration of Independence, which he wrote in 1776.  Few will remember that he served as president from 1801 to 1809, but aside from that, they know almost nothing of his life and work. In actual fact, he lived till 1826, when he died on July 4, fifty years to the day after the ratification of his Declaration.

During those fifty years, Jefferson’s intellectual life bloomed. He was an inventor, a horticulturist, and especially a philosopher. In fact, he was a brave and excellent philosopher.

As I wrote previously, Jefferson was convinced that he and the other “founders” had blown their shot at freedom.

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Mike:  Did you people hear me?  You can’t accentuate this point enough.  Jefferson and many of the other founders believed that they had blown their shot at freedom.  The author of this piece writes:

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That’s not something that a lot of Americans are comfortable learning, but it’s true just the same.

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Mike:  You know why many people don’t find comfort in hearing it or won’t find comfort in hearing that and will outright reject it or not want to read it to start with?  You know why?

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Because their ego will not allow it.  Well, did the Jeffersonians ever think that they had ruled the earth?  If they didn’t (and they didn’t) then what can we learn from that?  Remember, Russell Kirk, the great conservative author and the man many believe was correctly and aptly titled the father of modern-day conservatism, Kirk was fond of this phrase that he thought all conservatives should have in the back of their mind at all times.  It was okay, indeed it was advisable, to stand up on the shoulders of giants.  In other words, you would be the smartest guy or gal in the room if you knew what a giant or a titan in your field had said and you were willing to stand upon that, and you learned it and were humble in your learning of it and tried to glean from it what you thought you could apply to modern reality.  We’re also told all the time, by genius modern-day conservatives around us, that we have to accept reality for what it is today, and that we have to accept life and the way things are today for the way they are today.  Doing anything short of that, well, that’s just insanity.  You’re not going to be able to effect any change of any sort if you don’t deal with reality, as they like to say.

When I read you parts of Jefferson’s letter to Judge William Johnson, you’re going to hear Jefferson dealing with reality.  He’s dealing with reality in an admission to Johnson that: Look, I know we screwed up.  I know we should not have let this constitutional, extrajudicial monster out of the bag.  I don’t know that there’s any way we can put it back in.  What I find interesting about Jefferson’s letter is: All we can do is hope that in the future men of virtue, honor and integrity will be nominated to the Supreme Court.  That’s what Jefferson is going to write in this letter.  He couldn’t be more wrong if he set out to be wrong that day, but he doesn’t know that, which is why I think it’s fascinating to read some of these letters.  Back to the Free-Man’s Perspective piece:

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In his last years—after a lifetime of learning and experience, Jefferson had one thing preeminently on his mind: the principle of decentralization.

Rather than saying “centralization,” Jefferson used the word “consolidation,” but they mean the same thing.

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Mike:  That’s exactly correct.  That’s the word that Taylor used.  That’s the word that any of your great Virginians, your republicans of the day used, consolidation.  They were mortified over consolidation.  In other words, they would have been mortified over Mordor.  They would have looked at Mordor and they would have seen exactly what I see when I call it Mordor.  They would have seen a giant, black tower.  They wouldn’t see the Washington Monument as white and gleaming.  They’d see it as black with an evil red, blue and white Obama eye at the top of it.  Then they’d go to the Supreme Court building and say: No!  No!  Nooo!  They’d be like William Shatner in The Wrath of Khan.  Jefferson would kneel in front of the Supreme Court building — you know what he’d kneel in front of?  He’d kneel in front of the monument that was erected in his honor, the Jefferson Memorial.  From there he would yell “Khaaaan!”

Jefferson wrote in 1821:

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“It is not by the consolidation, or concentration, of powers, but by their distribution, that good government is effected.”

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Mike:  In other words, what you hear me talking about on a daily basis was what Thomas Jefferson took to bed with him every night, which is what he thought — I explain this — if you’re a Founders Pass member at MikeChurch.com, you can click on the Project ’76 tab — you know what?  I’ll play it for you next rejoin, part of it for you.  Listen to Jefferson’s explanation to Taylor of Caroline of what he thought a republican form of government was.  It wouldn’t be any larger than the size of a New England seaside township, not exceeding probably 10,000 souls.

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This statement put Jefferson at odds with the political leaders of his time and raised difficulties for him, as he writes in a letter to Judge William Johnson in 1823, [Mike: Which I’m going to share with you in just a moment here.]

In a letter to William T. Barry in 1822, Jefferson writes this:

“The foundations are already deeply laid by their [the Supreme Court Justices’] decisions for the annihilation of constitutional State rights, and the removal of every check, every counterpoise to the engulfing power of which themselves are to make a sovereign part.”

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Mike:  In other words, the federal judiciary desired back in the 1820s — that’s how far back this deceit goes — they desired to have all the federal power themselves, which they do wield today, by the bye.  Try to pass a law in your state legislature that does not comport with the views of the federal judiciary and see how long your law lasts on the books, See: Arizona, Kansas, Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, Louisiana.  We’ve had our laws stricken from our books by meddling federal judges.  Jefferson saw this coming.  He continues:

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“If ever this vast country is brought under a single government, it will be one of the most extensive corruption, indifferent and incapable of a wholesome care over so wide a spread of surface.”

Here is a fragment from Jefferson’s letter to C.W. Gooch in 1826:

“… I have little hope that the torrent of consolidation can be withstood….”

And a passage from his letter to William B. Giles, in 1825:

“I see… with the deepest affliction, the rapid strides with which the federal branch of our government is advancing towards the usurpation of all the rights reserved to the States, and the consolidation in itself of all powers, foreign and domestic; and that too, by constructions which, if legitimate, leave no limits to their power.”

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Mike:  Then the writer makes the correct statement, I think, that either we take Jefferson seriously or we don’t.

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If we take Jefferson seriously, we must flatly reject the now-consolidated US government as a corruption. [Mike: Gee, where have I heard that before?]

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If we reject Jefferson, we reject his Declaration too, and we also reject the foundations of liberty in America. [Mike: I wouldn’t put it that way, but you could put it that way.

A third choice is to put ourselves – purposely – into a sort of mental fog, hoping to avoid the responsibility of seeing and choosing. [Mike: That’s exactly right. Now he’s onto something.]

There is one final choice: to say that Jefferson was great until 1809, but then he went goofy. That theory, however, would be very difficult to support. The older Jefferson became, the better he became.

So, either we take him seriously, or we don’t.

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Mike:  Signed Paul Rosenberg at FreemansPerspective.com.  I agree with most of what Mr. Rosenberg has written here.  The problem is that we don’t take Jefferson seriously, nor do we take him literally.  When I say literally, I mean in the sense of the written word.  Read it.  When you read it, you can’t help but come to the conclusion that here’s a man that’s looking at what we think was the greatest governmental creation in the history of the stars, and he’s looking at it and looking at it with disgust.  He’s going, [mocking] “Oh, man, what did I do?  Oh, man, make it go away.  Make it go away.”  His fear was based on what, ladies and gentlemen?

This is where our current affliction and current obsession with our own egomania hampers us in proposing and arriving at any solutions.  We cannot deal with, as Professor Livingston called it two days ago in the letter I read to you that he read to me, he called it the nationalist Hobbesian grid.  We can’t deal with this, and most people refuse to deal with it.  We cannot fathom that there is life outside of all these 48 contiguous states being married together and lumped together as one blob of America.  We just can’t do it.  I say we.  Most people that we know can’t do it, won’t do it, not going to do it.  As long as they’re not going to, we’re always going to be stuck and we’ll always be blobbists.  How does a future as a blobbist sound to you people?

End Mike Church Show Transcript