Free Republic

Thomas Jefferson acquired 530 million acres for $15 million and, under the Constitution, relinquished the vast majority of it to newly created states and their people- and changed the world. Outgoing President Barack Obama has now locked up 553 million acres as national monuments, in disregard of the Constitution and the equal protection of law, leaving western states and their people with burning forests, polluted air, devastated water supplies, blocked off access, underfunded schools and dead communities- and also changed the world.

When Thomas Jefferson crafted the Declaration of Independence, he pointed to “certain unalienable rights” with which we were endowed by our “Creator.” What did he mean when he wrote the phrase “unalienable rights,” and what rights are “unalienable”? Jefferson understood “unalienable rights” as fixed rights given to us by our Creator rather than by government. The emphasis on our Creator is crucial, because it shows that the rights are permanent just as the Creator is permanent. Jefferson’s thought on the source of these rights was impacted by Oxford’s William Blackstone, who described “unalienable rights” as “absolute” rights–showing that they were...

Hundreds of students and faculty at the University of Virginia have asked the school’s president to stop quoting President Thomas Jefferson, the university’s founder, because of his slave-owning past. The letter garnered 469 signatures before being sent to University President Teresa Sullivan on Friday, The Cavalier Daily reported. It was prompted by an email sent last week by Ms. Sullivan promoting unity in light of Donald Trump’s presidential victory.  “Thomas Jefferson wrote to a friend that University of Virginia students ‘are not of ordinary significance only: they are exactly the persons who are to succeed to the government of our country, and...

In 1786, Thomas Jefferson, then a minister to the French government of Louis XVI, had a concern more intimidating than anything else he’d faced before: the threat of pirates off the coast of North Africa, a region known as the Barbary Coast. These pirates had already taken over two American ships, the Dauphin and the Maria, plundering their goods and taking their crews hostage. Unfortunately, this was a common fate for ships venturing near the area, where the Sahara’s arid coast was divided into four Islamic nation-states. Running west to east were the Barbary nations Morocco, Algiers, Tunis, and...

In the first draft of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson wrote the following: he has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating it's most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating and carrying them into slavery in another hemispere, or to incure miserable death in their transportation hither. this piratical warfare, the opprobium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the Christian king of Great Britain. [determined to keep open a market where MEN should be bought and sold,] he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every...

It pays to check those musty old boxes in your attic. An unidentified family in the Deep South made the discovery of a lifetime when they found a letter written by Founding Father Thomas Jefferson in which the third president extols the virtues of American independence and hails victory in the War of 1812. “As in the Revolutionary War, [the British] conquests were never more than of the spot on which their army stood, never extended beyond the range of their cannon shot,” Jefferson wrote in the letter, penned at his Monticello home on Valentine's Day, 1815. "We owe to...

I once admired Jefferson, seeing him as an essentially good, no, great man with one tragic flaw: The writer of the inspiring words “all men are created equal” owned slaves. Now, I see Jefferson as an egregious hypocrite, who willfully betrayed the ideals he espoused. I reached this conclusion only after visiting Monticello, Jefferson’s famous Virginia estate, last month. Previously, I didn't realize the extent of Jefferson’s slave ownership, and I lazily—and ignorantly--excused it as a common ethical blind spot of his time. *Jefferson often denounced slavery. He wrote in 1774, "The abolition of domestic slavery is the great object...

Our contemporary American experience seems often Orwellian. We have a Congress that denies our Rights in the name of security. We have a president who not only writes laws with his pen, but is also in the habit of rewriting history to serve his political purposes. Many patriots have expended a great deal of energy this year in the fight to see our Liberty protected and America’s greatness restored. We are all well aware that there are still many struggles ahead and mountains yet to be conquered. But let us be reminded of a hope that is rooted firmly in...

Thomas Jefferson famously adapted key passages of John Locke’s Second Treatise in his draft Declaration of Independence. An 18th century gentleman could hardly regard himself as learned without the ability to quote a few Lockean passages from memory. Yet, what of the average colonial? Books were expensive imports. How were the yeomanry educated well enough in Lockean concepts to readily understand and accept this radical document, the Declaration of Independence? Through newspapers. Like modern Americans, our colonial forebears were also political junkies. Freewheeling editorials, letters to the editor that criticized parliamentary and colonial governments were standing features of public life....

27 Things That Every American Should Know About The National Debt The U.S. government has stolen $15,876,457,645,132.66 from future generations of Americans, and we continue to add well over a hundred million dollars to that total every single day day. The 15 trillion dollar binge that we have been on over the past 30 years has fueled the greatest standard of living the world has ever seen, but this wonderful prosperity that we have been enjoying has been a lie. It isn't real. We have been living way above our means for so long that we do not have...

"The conclusion then, is, that neither the representatives of a nation, nor the whole nation itself assembled, can validly engage debts beyond what they may pay in their own time." --Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1789. ME 7:457, Papers 15:398n "Then I say, the earth belongs to each of these generations during its course, fully and in its own right. The second generation receives it clear of the debts and incumbrances of the first, the third of the second, and so on. For if the first could charge it with a debt, then the earth would belong to the dead...

We must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. Thomas Jefferson 1816 - letter to Samuel Kercheval There is not a more important and fundamental principle in legislation, than that the ways and means ought always to face the public engagements; that our appropriations should ever go hand in hand with our promises. To say that the United States should be answerable for twenty-five millions of dollars without knowing whether the ways and means can be provided, and without knowing whether those who are to succeed us will think with us on the subject, would be rash and...

No pecuniary consideration is more urgent, than the regular redemption and discharge of the public debt: on none can delay be more injurious, or an economy of time more valuable. George Washington (Message to the House of Representatives, 3 December 1793) A national debt, if it is not excessive, will be to us a national blessing.” Alexander Hamilton “The budget should be balanced, the Treasury should be refilled, public debt should be reduced, the arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled, and the assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed lest Rome become bankrupt. People must again learn to...

Libertarian Solutions: How to solve the United States' $6,736,489,356,420 problem by Bill Winter LP News Editor If you had visited the online National Debt Clock at 12:00 noon on August 1, you would have seen this figure: $6,736,489,356,420.66. That's the amount of money owed by the federal government. (Over $6.7 trillion dollars.) But if you visited it again just 30 seconds later, you would have seen a different, bigger number: $6,736,489,954,145.59. That's an increase of about $590,000 -- a half-million dollars -- in 30 seconds. It's a stark reminder of just how quickly the politicians in Washington, DC are...

WOULD THOMAS JEFFERSON THINK WE ARE FREE? By Steven L. Hayes and Charles Adams What if Jefferson were to revisit America today? Thomas Jefferson was born on April 13, 1743. In his lifetime he saw his country transformed from an English colony to a country ruled by its own citizens. Remembered by many as the author of the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson also served as President and guided the young nation through eight turbulent years. When Jefferson died on July 4, 1826 at the age of 83, he left a country and a people whose commitment to the ideas of ...

Nowhere is it written that America will always remain free. In fact, Thomas Jefferson and other Founders warned about threats to our freedom. Jefferson noted that the price of freedom is eternal vigilance. Liberty does not exist in a vacuum. Signs of the erosion of freedom in our time surround us: *Political correctness muzzles the free expression of ideas if they contravene liberal orthodoxy. *God, the source of freedom, is not allowed in public schools and pity the teacher who references Jesus, even as an historical figure. This is brought home powerfully in the new movie, “God's Not Dead 2.”...

Thousands of columns have been written that attack the Republican candidates.  And I daresay, Free Republic has probably excerpted several thousand of them. As a Trumpster, I'd certainly rank RedState as the most outrageous liar and most vicious attacker of all the blogazines that seem to be dedicated to sinking Donald Trump.  National Review comes in a close second. And if you're a Cruzer, you probably wouldn't shed a single tear to discover the National Enquirer had been accidentally torpedoed and sent to Davy Jones' locker. But slander is actually as old as the Republic! Have a listen to...

Recently I wrote about Jefferson's Koran, primarily focusing in on the Koran written in 1647 by Sieur du Ryer. Problem is, that wasn't Jefferson's Koran. Had I taken the time to look into Keith Ellison, I probably would've figured that out by lifting all the rocks to see what was underneath them. Since I have absolutely no interest in Ellison, certain questions went unanswered. They now get answered. At least, to the best of my ability. First, let's clear up what I mistakenly wrote at the time. Jefferson did not own Sieur du Ryer's Koran. Jefferson owned George Sale's translation.(which...

What kind of criticism would prompt a major publisher to withdraw from circulation a New York Times bestseller by a recognized scholar? One would think the objections would have to be weighty and the critics unquestioned experts in the particular field. In the case of "The Jefferson Lies", one would be mistaken to make those assumptions. In 2012, David Barton's popular analysis of Thomas Jefferson was pulled by the book's publisher, Thomas Nelson, based on what appears to have been an academic putsch designed to protect the now popular view of the third president as a secular deist and hypocritical...

In 1804 an Ursuline nun in New Orleans asked Thomas Jefferson to clarify in writing her religious community’s right to retain their property and to continue their ministries without government interference following the Louisiana Purchase. As French Catholic Louisiana was being incorporated into the Anglo-Protestant United States, the nuns were concerned about the status of their institutions under U.S. law. President Jefferson assured her that the government would not interfere with the sisters’ property, ministries, and way of life. In a letter dated May 15, 1804, he wrote: “I have received, holy sisters, the letter you have written me wherein...