>Sadly, today we live under Jeffersonian democracy as you so eloquently stated. The plantation still exists.<
You are wrong. Jefferson would not recognize what our nation has become today. “Nation of yeoman farmers” that regulates and taxes our every breath, that meddles in the affairs of country after country?
How on earth do you defend that outrageous position?
By the way, that “plantation” is voluntary. Anyone can simply walk away easily, by paying attention in school.
“Jefferson would not recognize what our nation has become today”
Jefferson might well be at home with what our nation has become today; perhaps right with the Occupy Wall Street rabble rousers. It was Jefferson who said a country needs a revolution every 20 years. .
“The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure”
But I do agree that the rights of individual states would take precedence over a centralized federal power in a Jeffersonian democracy. Whether that would result in periodic tumults who is to say?
Then again, Jefferson put his trust in a better people than we are today.
I understand your appreciation of Jefferson. I just don’t have much faith in mob-democracy. Although Jefferson was dismayed at its excesses, he never renounced the French Revolution entirely.
http://chnm.gmu.edu/revolution/d/592/
Alexander Hamilton and George Washington were the hands that steadied this nation in its founding.
Jefferson didn’t distinguish himself during the Revolotionary War: From http://www.sparknotes.com/biography/jefferson/section7.rhtml
“Unhappily, Jefferson shared no large part of the glory at the time. In fact, he was roundly criticized in Virginia for his fumbling administration and for the near-debacles that had almost led to his capture. A formal inquiry into his conduct as governor ensued, and although he was later cleared of all suspicion, the resulting stain on his integrity was significant. Jefferson, convinced that the inquiry had been precipitated by a jealous Patrick Henry, cut all ties with his former ally and resolved to be forever done with the trials of public office.
Thus, at the age of thirty-eight, Jefferson retired to Monticello with the intention of leaving political life permanently behind.’