Can anybody out there channel the spirit of Thomas Jefferson?

[RiverStone]

I'd love to hear what he would say to Republican's intent on trampling the Constitution!

Ummmmmmm, what would Thomas say? :shrug:

[Mythsaje]

1. I am SO not going there...n/t

[Solly Mack]

2. Yes but it's 99 cents for the first minute and $3.75 for each additional minute

[rawtribe]

3. TJ Digital Archive

http://etext.virginia.edu/jefferson/

[rzemanfl]

4. Odds are that if there is, he or she is not a white person, n/t

[LiberalFighter]

5. Not Jefferson... James Madison is the go to guy on the Constitution

[RiverStone]

7. I defer to your knowledge of history...

Thanks LiberalFighter :)

I'd just be thrilled if those original architects of the 1st Amendment could see how BushCo has abused its intent and abused the separation of powers in general.

They sure as fuck don't listen to We The People!

[Chovexani]

6. Thomas says

The Republican Party is making a mockery of the judicial system, and all branches of government. They are a party drunk with power, decadent and quite possibly insane. Their actions over the past twenty years have proven they will not rest until this great Republic has been reduced to ashes, which are then sold at a profit to the highest bidder.

You kids really ought to have another revolution, but you're too busy watching American Idol.

[RiverStone]

9. You know history eh?

Or maybe just The Truth!

either way Chovexani, I believe you represented TJ's thoughts in a way he'd be proud!

Thanks :hi:

[Chovexani]

11. Well I'm probably related to him

:rofl:

Good thread. :hi:

[HeraldSquare212]

8. Reading Henry Adams

Jefferson was pretty strict about interpreting executive power under the Constitution...until he became the executive.

[IDemo]

10. I composed a "James Madison responds to the future" thread a while back

here it is ->

A note from the past

James Madison, upon having a copy of any of today's newspapers drop into his hands from the future, reads in amazement, and promptly returns a note to the future.


I stand here in disbelief that the weak willed citizens of this continent in just two centuries from now are the progeny of the founders. Have the documents establishing your freedom against foreign tyranny become dust, along with the principles they contained? What guides your thoughts and actions now, with the absence of the spirit of rebellion so evident even in the face of a tyrannical George the patriots never dreamt of? Plainly you now embrace that tyranny, believing with it comes the protection provided by a strong monarch against invaders from the sea, yet blinded to the treachery emanating from within the palace.

Do you believe your nation's founders were merely spinning children's fables when crafting the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, the Constitution? For even as fables will generally contain a moral for the child to learn and hold to in life, these documents can hold no further value than to light the evening fire if the principles contained therein are not seen as the bedrock upon which free people live.

Do your history books claim that we hastily scratched out the words "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated", for our safety alone, and damn the children? And that "In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial by an impartial jury" was meant for our generation, but not for our descendants two hundred years from now, yours after another two hundred, and theirs?

Unless citizens in your time recognize the danger of bowing to kings and kneeling to the fear they sow, and see that -- whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, then this republic will have existed like just another of Franklin's mad electrical experiments: something which could have killed a man in its pursuit, but didn't, instead dying away with the faint rumble of distant summer thunder.

Now is not the time for brave men to crouch in fear beneath the storm, but to come out and feel the rain on your face, and to embrace the fight. To keep the republic, if you can.