Thomas Jefferson to John Cartwright – Demolishes Big Gubbmint Republican Nationalism

Mandeville, LA – Exclusive Transcript – In today’s transcript, Mike reads excerpts from Thomas Jefferson’s letter to John Cartwright from 1824 and provides his own exceptional commentary on it. In the letter Jefferson explains that the Bill of Rights was written specifically to limit the role of the general government. Jefferson even brags in the letter about how the STATE Constitutions guarantee freedom of the press and freedom of religion, so that the they can take care of themselves.  Jefferson also calls the states, such as Virginia, nations… NOT “One Nation Under God” as we are so apt to now days… Check out today’s transcript for more…

Begin Mike Church Show Transcript

[reading]

Our revolution commenced on more favorable ground.  It presented us an album on which we were free to write what we pleased.  We had no occasion to search into musty records, to hunt up royal parchments, or to investigate the laws and institutions of a semi-barbarous ancestry.  We appealed to those of nature, and found them engraved on our hearts.  We did not avail ourselves of all the advantages of our position.  We had never been permitted to exercise self-government.  When forced to assume it, we were novices in its science.  Its principles and forms had entered little into our former education.  We established however some, although not all its important principles.  The constitutions of most of our States assert, that all power is inherent in the people; that they may exercise it by themselves, in all cases to which they think themselves competent, (as in which any fact is involved), or they may act by representatives, freely and equally chosen; that it is their right and duty to be at all times armed; that they are entitled to freedom of person, freedom of religion, freedom of property, and freedom of the press.

[end reading]

Mike:  Ladies and gentlemen, right there, bam.  To all of you goons out there and all you naysayers and all of you that refuse to believe that the Bill of Rights was explicitly written to limit the general government had nothing to do with the states.  Do you now deny Thomas Jefferson?  Hmm?  Do you now, like Saint Peter before the cock crows three times, deny Jefferson?  Hmm?  I just read to you from Jefferson’s own hand where he’s writing and talking about and boasting and bragging about the wonders of the constitutions of the states, and how the state constitutions guarantee freedom of the press, freedom to be armed, responsibility to be armed, freedom of religion.  These are things that were guaranteed in state constitutions.

He didn’t say anything about, [mocking] “Thank God I had the foresight to get with Madison and write the Bill of Rights.”  This is what your John Birch Society members think.  This is how most of you were raised, that Jefferson and whoever got together and wrote the Bill of Rights to consecrate into law forever more that every living human being on the planet will have those first ten amendments as their rights and their rights alone, because they were sent down from on high from our creator.  Gee, Jefferson just contradicted all you incorporationistas out there.  What are you going to do about that?  How are we going to get rid of this inconvenient truth?  I am glad I continued to research the 18th Century.  Back to Jefferson’s letter:

[reading]

In the structure of our legislatures, we think experience has proved the benefit of subjecting questions to two separate bodies of deliberants; but in constituting these, natural right has been mistaken, some making one of these bodies, and some both, the representatives of property instead of persons . . .

[end reading]

Mike:  Boy, isn’t that a mouthful.  So in other words, Jefferson was lamenting that many questions that were being asked and deliberated about had to do with money, with economics, with property, and not with the liberties and protecting the liberties of the people.  When he says “persons,” he means people.  This Jefferson guy is quite the writer, isn’t he?  I think we should learn more about this Thomas Jefferson fellow.  What do you guys think?

[reading]

. . . whereas the double deliberation might be as well obtained without any violation of true principle, either by requiring a greater age in one of the bodies, or by electing a proper number of representatives of persons, dividing them by lots into two chambers, and renewing the division at frequent intervals, in order to break up all cabals.  Virginia, of which I am myself a native and resident, was not only the first of the States, but, I believe I may say, the first of the nations of the earth, which assembled its wise men peaceably together to form a fundamental constitution, to commit it to writing, and place it among their archives, where every one should be free to appeal to its text.

[end reading]

Mike:  Here’s another inconvenient fact for all you nationalists out there.  Thomas Jefferson just called Virginia a nation.  [mocking] “No, it’s not one nation Virginia under God.  Dammit, Church, you gotta stop this.  It’s the United States.  We’re all in this together.  We can win the war, you idiot!”  [laughing]  I amuse myself by imagining fits of rage borne by 50- to 40- to 30- to 20-plus years of indoctrination and lights and rays of truth finally shining upon people.

Then when they are confronted with the naked truth that they have been deprived of their whole life — by the way, this is me orating, not Jefferson writing — people get angry.  They’ll send me nasty letters.  [mocking] “You’re no Rush Limbaugh.  You don’t know what you’re talking about.  You’re no Mark Levin.  You don’t know anything about it.  No state is a nation.  We’re one nation, you idiot.  We’re under that damn flag.  You will sit there and you will honor and obey it.  You will pledge.”  This Jefferson letter is far more powerful than I had originally thought, ladies and gentlemen; therefore the gusto with which I am enjoying reading it to you.

By the by, don’t take my word for it.  Please read Jefferson’s letter to Cartwright for yourself.  Matter of fact, I will post the link for you, to make it easy, on the Facebook fan page, on Mike Church Show fan page on Facebook.  It’s in today’s Pile of Prep.  I will also link to it directly on the Twitter feed if you want to read it for yourself.  You will be in denial, I am certain.  Back to Jefferson’s letter, how he explains [r]epublicanism and why it matters.  So they wrote a Constitution.  They:

[reading]

. . . commit it to writing and placed it among their archives, where every one should be free to appeal to its text.  But this act was very imperfect.  The other States, as they proceeded successively to the same work, made successive improvements; and several of them, still further corrected by experience, have, by conventions, still further amended their first forms.  My own State has gone on so far with its premiere ebauche [Mike: That’s, I assume, French for its premier, it’s first document]; but it is now proposing to call a convention for amendment.  Among other improvements, I hope they will adopt the subdivision of our counties into wards.  The former may be estimated at an average of twenty-four miles square; the latter should be about six miles square each, and would answer to the hundreds of your Saxon Alfred.  In each of these might be . . .

[end reading]

Mike:  There are eight things Jefferson thought made up a beautiful, perfect commonwealth and a beautiful, perfect ward in a commonwealth.  In other words, a little enclave of republicanism, where you would govern yourself.  Listen up.  Here are the eight things:

[reading]
1st, an elementary school; 2nd, a company of militia, with its officers; 3d, a justice of the peace and constable; 4th, each ward should take care of their own poor; 5th, their own roads; 6th, their own police; 7th, elect within themselves one or more jurors to attend the courts of justice; and 8th, give in at their folk-house, their votes for all functionaries reserved to their election.  [Mike: In other words, they and they alone elect their representatives.]  Each ward would thus be a small republic within itself, and every man in the State would thus become an acting member of the common government, transacting in person a great portion of its rights and duties, subordinate indeed, yet important, and entirely within his competence. The wit of man cannot devise a more solid basis for a free, durable and well-administered republic.

[end reading]

End Mike Church Show Transcript