The States can best govern our home concerns and the general government our foreign ones. I wish, therefore never to see all offices transferred to Washington, where, further withdrawn from the eyes of the people, they may more secretly be bought and sold at market.
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What Jefferson called the greatest commentary on Government ever written, organized by topic!
Jefferson knew exactly what would happen in D.C.! I don’t think he’d be surprised by anything in it today, except the extent………………..
^ Exactly. The only city to experience both population and job growth over the past two years has been Washington, DC … all government jobs.
Whoa, what a forward looking statement.
Amazing these men were so insightful for their age and time. Now they are bought and sold daily. Disperse DC out of DC – the Root of All Evil Today and Satan is alive and well!
Toooooo late Tom, the deed has been done. And if you try get rid of any of those offices, you’re for starving old people and children, dirty air and water.
THEY KNEW—AND WROTE THE US CONSTITUTION TO REFLECT THIER KNOWLEDGE N WHAT THEY WISHED FOR
No longer relevant with the advent of CSPAN. It’s the states that are harder to track and where ALEC has chosen to spread their national corporatist agenda.
Prophetic.
The year it was written was 1823.
Yes, Steve, it looks like that part got cut off.
As for the comments about the Founders prophetic abilities, no. These are overrated. What they had was a knowledge of history and of human nature. They had studied both were not into self-deception in order to beleive they could create a fantasy utopia. They were realists. They knew that the country they were going to create would be imperfect, but it would be the best that could be produced by human hands.
“I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty, than those attending too small a degree of it.”
~ Thomas Jefferson
Thank God, really mean that, there was no major sports to follow back then.
Let us remember, that these were intelligent and insightful men. They were brilliant of mind, motivated and had an equal purpose in forming a new Republic (they knew that throughout history, democracies failed). They had their own left and right, but neither were so extreme as we have today.
They had the same goal in mind, and it still took 11 years to accomplish that goal.
Just goes to show you what critical thinking, perserverance, sacrifice and patience will accomplish.
The Federal Government has been systematically usurping State powers for many decades. The Constitution was supposed to prevent the loss of individual freedoms and State powers.
The man was a prophet!
I have not seen any evidence that “…they may more secretly be bought and sold at market” is any more or less true at the local level. Corruption exists in all human endeavors in all fields and at all levels.
To a T !!
The 17th amendment made it more difficult for states to be represented because it changed their selection of Senators to a popular vote.
The lobbying that goes on in Washington by different factions is how leaders are bought and sold, many times behind closed doors. While corruption exists in every walks of life, it must not exist among our government leaders because their decisions effect outcomes that can limit or compromise our freedom.
Ole Thomas had it right. Our thieves in office are being bought and sold daily.
Jose Rosa, yes, corruption happens at all levels, but is more easily observed, confronted and dealt with at lower levels and the damage is more limited, contained and likely less consequential to our liberties.
Jefferson nailed it. Concisely, too. There is so much logic in the idea of the states handling what they can and the feds everything else. The farther the activity is from the people, the less control they have.
Sandi, not quite right, the feds handle the enumerated power (Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution) delegated to them by the states and the states and people, reserving all others (10th Amendment), handle everything else.
I know, Dennis. But that was not what I was saying. The Founders intended the states to handle what they can handle, which is most things. The feds were to take care of those things that were not practical for the states to deal with. That is what was left over. Do you like it better that way?
This is our government in a nutshell.
it is amazing how wise our forefathers were and still are relevant today!!!!!
Love-thank you, shared!
So the states could have built Hoover Dam or the freeway system or the long list of projects that have made this country the powerhouse that it is???
@ Dennis, The States did not delegate any power to the Federal Government, the People of the Several States (individually) delegated power when the Constitution was ratified. The exception to the People ratifying can only occur when an new amendment is passed:
“ratified by the Legislatures of three fourths of the several States, or by Conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other Mode of Ratification may be proposed by the Congress”
The People of the several States create the Federal Government, not the State Legislatures like under the Articles of Confederation.
Bottom line is that Constitutionally speaking, the Federal government as per the 10th Amendment isn’t supposed to exercise any power not specifically granted in the Constitution. The freeway system, Jose, was built with authority granted under the Commerce Clause. Ironically that would be one of the few times the Commerce Clause hasn’t been abused. You want a Hoover Dam? Pass a Constitutional Amendment authorizing one. Usurping the Constitution just to illegally shove your agenda down American’s throats is despicable.
Actually, I believe the national highway system was authorized as a military necessity. Eisenhower was impressed with how the German highways allowed for the swift movement of troops.
Yeah — I do not think that building a highway would be a regulation of interstate commerce. However, it is a power that I would support granting to Congress by amendment, if necessary.
Karl, “I do not think that building a highway would be a regulation of interstate commerce.” Even less for a dam.
Jose, maybe you should find and read an essay by Dean Russell titled Ownership in Common in 1951. He discusses exactly what you seem to think couldn’t be possible. He directly targets the presumption that projects like the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) and the Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) could be done by private initiative and to prove his point, directs us to the Wisconsin Valley Improvement Company (WVIC), a privately owned company that still exists today that built, starting in 1907, 25 hydroelectric dams on the Wisconsin river with private funds.
Read up on James J. Hill and his Great Northern Railway, completely funded by private capital, compared to every other transcontinental railroad company that received federal assistance.
Please don’t tell me that great people and companies cannot accomplish great things when we see magnificent skyscrapers in our larger cities, WVIC, GNR, etc., and do it more efficiently and cost-effectively than any government-controlled or assisted enterprise. The problem is lack of faith in people and instead placing it in the coercive forces of the government to mandate and control the productive capabilities of the people. That is not liberty, that is slavery.
Unfortunately, many have forgotten what America is all about as described by Patrick Henry when he said, “When the American spirit was in its youth, the language of America was different: Liberty, sir, was the primary object.” (June 5, 1788, Virginia Ratifying Convention)
As Samuel Adams said, “If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or your arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen.” (August 1, 1776, speech in the State House, Philadelphia)
I, for one, choose to believe in people, the individual initiative, blossoming from liberty and realized in a free market rather than the collective coercion of governmental mandates. So, my response to the notion that roads, dams, airports, trains, etc. couldn’t possibly be realized without the tax powers of the government is “What utter nonsense!”
“No matter how well-intentioned a federal program; no matter how honorable and patriotic the people who support and administer; no matter how big a majority of the citizens themselves may want the program — when our federal government does something which it has no constitutional grant of power to do, our government is a dictatorship. It may for a while seem a good dictatorship, but every government permitted to become a dictatorship must ultimately resort to the same brutal tactics that the Soviets use to maintain what they regard as their own ‘good’ dictatorship of the proletariat.” The Dan Smoot Report, Jan 6, 1964.
“The statesman who should attempt to direct private people in what manner they ought to employ their capital would not only load himself with a most unnecessary attention, but assume an authority which could safely be trusted, not only to no single person, but to no council or senate whatever, and which would nowhere be so dangerous as in the hands of a man who had folly and presumption enough to fancy himself fit to exercise it.” ~Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations.
There are those who had ulterior motives to the use of government to provide these projects for the citizenry, those with whom I am diametrically opposed to:
“Stalin advised the late William Foster that the American people would never accept socialism or communism and that the only hope of imposing a Red regime in the United States was ‘a consistent but gradual increase in local and federal public ownership projects’. Publicly-owned operations, he pointed out, paid little if any taxes and in the end ‘… result in a final acceptance of complete government ownership and operation.’ That, he explained, is communism.
‘Every new local or federal public ownership project,’ said Stalin, ‘is an added nail in the coffin that will finally contain capitalism. The tax burden will become greater every year for the American people, and each government-owned operation will throw an added burden on the private taxpayers. It is obvious that the camel’s back of capitalism will finally break under the unbearable burden.’ Stalin told Foster ‘… that the average left-wing American liberal, who would be insulted at being called a Socialist or a Communist, would enthusiastically use all of his influence to bring about more and more public ownership operations in the field of natural resources, transportation, and other commercial lines. That is the way we must enlist the left-wing liberals in all walks of life, not only in the United States, but in all Latin America as well.” ~Howard E. Kershner, Christian Economics, April, 17, 1962.
So, anytime the government wants to spend money on some project or program for the benefit of some group or even for the ‘general welfare’ of everyone that is not in Article I Section 8 plays right into the hands of those who want the subversion of the Constitution.
“I, for one, choose to believe in people”
Here, here! It is easy to see which ideology respects and esteems the people and which does not.
“I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power.”
~ Thomas Jefferson
Ken, a few more quotes to add to yours,
Thomas Jefferson,
“Dependence begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition.”
“Economy in the public expense, that labor may be lightly burthened”
“A wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicities.”
“If we can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people, under the pretense of taking care of them, they must become happy.”
“We are endeavoring, too, to reduce the government to the practice of a rigorous economy, to avoid burdening the people, and arming the magistrate with a patronage of money, which might be used to corrupt and undermine the principles of government.”
“The same prudence which in private life would forbid our paying our own money for unexplained projects, forbids it in the dispensation of the public moneys.”
“To preserve [the] independence [of the people,] we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude.”
“When the government tells you when to plant wheat, you will soon have no wheat.”