Posted on 08/20/2008 5:10:29 PM PDT by Loud Mime
Founders’ Quotes PING
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Wahoowah! from UVA.
Add me to the ping list, please.
Great stuff! Thanks!
As the following quotes will attest, Mr. Jefferson feared the growth of large cities here and believed, as YOUR quotation proves, we would prosper under an agrarian regime. While he was spot on, he sadly never heard the term “agribusiness” which has — with the help of the banksters — run most of the small and family farmers off the land.
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An astute student of history and human nature, Thomas Jefferson, predicted what we see happening here in America. As ambassador in France, he witnessed the run up to the FIRST socialist/communist revolution there. He penned the following observations concerning what would happen HERE should that socialism come to the United States. He CORRECTLY predicted that we would become an increasingly contentious and litigious people as we shouldered one another out of the way to get OURS from the public trough and the trough would soon be empty.
He also knew where the bulk of the problem would originate.
That whirring noise you may hear coming from that mountain in Charlottesville, Virginia is Mr. Jefferson getting up to around 3600 RPM.
(A 6 minute video with this information may be seen at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ypLu49pq3bI)
“The mobs of the great cities add just so much to the support of pure government as sores do to the strength of the human body. It is the manners and spirit of a people which preserve a republic in vigor. A degeneracy in these is a canker which soon eats to the heart of its laws and constitution.” —Thomas Jefferson: Notes on Virginia Q.XIX, 1782. ME 2:230
“I think our governments will remain virtuous for many centuries as long as they are chiefly agricultural; and this will be as long as there shall be vacant lands in any part of America. When they get piled upon one another in large cities as in Europe, they will become corrupt as in Europe.” —Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1787. Papers 12:442
“I view great cities as pestilential to the morals, the health and the liberties of man. True, they nourish some of the elegant arts; but the useful ones can thrive elsewhere; and less perfection in the others, with more health, virtue and freedom, would be my choice.” —Thomas Jefferson to Benjamin Rush, 1800. ME 10:173
“Our cities... exhibit specimens of London only; our country is a different nation.” —Thomas Jefferson to Andre de Daschkoff, 1809. ME 12:304
“Everyone, by his property or by his satisfactory situation, is interested in the support of law and order. And such men may safely and advantageously reserve to themselves a wholesome control over their public affairs and a degree of freedom which, in the hands of the canaille of the cities of Europe, would be instantly perverted to the demolition and destruction of everything public and private.” —Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, 1813. ME 13:401
“An insurrection... of science, talents, and courage, against rank and birth... has failed in its first effort, because the mobs of the cities, the instrument used for its accomplishment, debased by ignorance, poverty, and vice, could not be restrained to rational action. But the world will recover from the panic of this first catastrophe.” —Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, 1813. ME 13:402
“I fear nothing for our liberty from the assaults of force; but I have seen and felt much, and fear more from English books, English prejudices, English manners, and the apes, the dupes, and designs among our professional crafts. When I look around me for security against these seductions, I find it in the wide spread of our agricultural citizens, in their unsophisticated minds, their independence and their power, if called on, to crush the Humists of our cities, and to maintain the principles which severed us from England.” —Thomas Jefferson to Horatio G. Spafford, 1814. ME 14:120
Absolutely.
Obama believes Thurgood Marshall was a greater mind than Clarence Thomas. Marshall was documented as saying the Founders had no special intelligence. Silly pathetic fools.
Start pinging me please i can’t get enough of these truths and wisdom !
ping
But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
Really enjoyed that YouTube video. Thanks for posting the link. Jefferson had a lively and adventerous mind. I daresay I don’t always agree with him. But I found his condemnation of cities fascinating, and I can’t say I disagree. I could never live in a city. Wouldn’t want to. Made me start thinking of an America where cities were obsolete. THAT would be a greener America.
50 years to the day and all they could think about was each other. They knew that they had done an outstanding job and the rest was passed on to US!
Great list - count me in. Please!
GG
“Now who are these people up Hurrrr” I remember that, lol.
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Steve
LMime
If I was there I would have asked the tour guide who the robot was......Al Gore..
I'm waiting for the next "free for UVA students" day. They do it every year; it's only a matter of when.
Thank You for the link to the video; it’s well worth the small investment of time to contemplate its message.
Darn, these great men really studied governments!
Whenever subjected to criticism, its source must be considered. Despite that, I still shake my head in disgust.
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