Free Republic

Quill pen in hand, Thomas Jefferson invited the King's noose when he set out to write what his fellow founders at first thought would be a mundane legal document: a declaration of independence from the British crown. But despite a preamble that became a paean to individual liberty that has rivaled the Magna Carta in the breadth of its global impact, Mr. Jefferson apparently committed a slip of the pen. To usher in the Fourth of July weekend, the Library of Congress revealed hard evidence from high-resolution spectral imaging that Jefferson, on the third page of a "rough draught," wiped...

SPRINGFIELD, Mo. - Earl Taylor has spent 31 years teaching that "the Founding Fathers have answers to nearly every problem we have in America today." Only in recent months has he found so many eager students. On a recent Saturday, he held the rapt attention of 70 of them. The eight-hour seminar held at a roadside inn here was one of half a dozen "Making of America" sessions nationwide that day, all sponsored by a little-known organization based in Idaho. Two years ago, Taylor, president of the National Center for Constitutional Studies, made about 35 trips to speak to small...

"Resolved, That the several States composing the United States of America, are not united on the principle of unlimited submission to their General Government . . . . and that whensoever the General Government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force. . . . that the government created by this compact [the Constitution for the United States] was not made the exclusive or final judge of the extent of the powers delegated to itself; since that would have made its discretion, and not the Constitution, the measure of its powers; . . . . that...

Free Speech: President Obama, while addressing college graduates, condemns our access to new media as a subversion of democracy. Is the iPad a threat to democracy or exactly what Thomas Jefferson had in mind? At Hampton University in Virginia on Sunday, the president lamented that in an age of text messaging, the Internet and the iPad, information and its unfettered exchange had become a diversion that was putting a strain on democracy. We are not making this up. The "24/7 media environment," he told the students, "bombards us with all kinds of comments and exposes us to all kinds of...

AUTHORS' NOTE: Recently, a federal judge ruled that the National Day of Prayer is unconstitutional. The following article was written over a decade ago, after months of research. The essay details how the term "separation of church and state" has been intentionally misinterpreted by judicial activists. This has led to the false conception of the constitutional framers' intent regarding religion's role in government and, for proof, the authors voluminously quote from the Founding Fathers themselves, including a reference to a private letter then-President Thomas Jefferson wrote using that phrase. Since the 1940's, the term "separation of church and state" has...

AUSTIN, Tex. — After three days of turbulent meetings, the Texas Board of Education on Friday approved a social studies curriculum that will put a conservative stamp on history and economics textbooks, stressing the superiority of American capitalism,

To William Branch Giles, Governor of Virginia Monticello, December 26, 1825 Dear Sir, I wrote you a letter yesterday, of which you will be free to make what use you please. This will contain matters not intended for the public eye. I see, as you do, and with the deepest affliction, the rapid strides with which the federal branch of our government is advancing towards the usurpation of all the rights reserved to the States, and the consolidation in itself of all powers, foreign and domestic; and that, too, by constructions which, if legitimate, leave no limits to their power....

(March 12) -- Widely regarded as one of the most important of all the founding fathers of the United States, Thomas Jefferson received a demotion of sorts Friday thanks to the Texas Board of Education. The board voted to enact new teaching standards for history and social studies that will alter which material gets included in school textbooks. It decided to drop Jefferson from a world history section devoted to great political thinkers. According to Texas Freedom Network, a group that opposes many of the changes put in place by the Board of Education, the original curriculum asked students to...

Last week we were all introduced to the “Slaughter Solution;” a procedural method that could be used to get around the requirements of the Constitution to pass a bill without actually voting on it. I have read a number or articles both defending and condemning the move. For me any attack on the Constitution needs to met with a swift and overwhelming response. Most of us picked up the phone and called our representatives, and expressed our deep concerns to some nameless staffer who took down our information and promised to relay our frustrations to our congressman or congresswoman. I...

Over the course of American history, there has been no greater conflict of visions than that between Thomas Jefferson’s voluntary republic, founded on the natural right of peaceful secession, and Abraham Lincoln’s permanent empire, founded on the violent denial of that same right. That these two men somehow shared a common commitment to liberty is a lie so monstrous and so absurd that its pervasiveness in popular culture utterly defies logic. After all, Jefferson stated unequivocally in the Declaration of Independence that, at any point, it may become necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected...

The Federal Reserve is unconstitutional and must be abolished, returning the powers it has usurped to the Legislative Branch where those powers irrevocably were granted by the People of the United States. ...Any argument that the Federal Reserve was created under the "necessary and proper" clause is absurd. The entire bleat of the Federal Reserve against being audited is to preserve its "independence" in monetary policy! That is a blatant admission that it is a law unto itself, a sovereign that has usurped control of, stolen, the entire wealth of this nation.

MASSACHUSETTS FACED a crisis in 1778. In the midst of the Revolutionary War, some 4,000 British and Hessian prisoners were living in miserable conditions in camps around Boston. Rumors surged that a British force would try to free them by force. The cry went up: get these prisoners out of Massachusetts. Enter Thomas Jefferson and his Virginia neighbors. Thinking like a current-day congressman, Jefferson regarded the prisoners as an economic opportunity for the remote valley near his home at Monticello. The prison camp would pump money into his hometown of Charlottesville, along with much-needed craftsmen and laborers. It would be...

"It has been said the greatest volume of sheer brainpower in one place occurred when Jefferson dined alone..." John Kennedy HOW DID JEFFERSON KNOW?????? Especially read the last quote from 1802. And pass these on to your children and grandchildren!! When we get piled upon one another in large cities, as in Europe, we shall become as corrupt as Europe. Thomas Jefferson The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not. Thomas Jefferson It is incumbent on every generation to pay its own debts as...

Thomas Jefferson said a number of memorable things about the young country of America and what it truly meant to be an American, but the above sentiment holds a special meaning. It speaks not to our laws or freedoms, but to the noble character and human spirit that lies at the heart of our laws and freedoms. Jefferson is telling us that morality and honor should be cherished and preserved, for without them all else is lost. Sadly, today Jefferson’s words fall on deaf ears in our halls of power, and the key to turning this country around lies in...

The First Amendment of our Constitution states not the words “separation of church and state,” but rather the following: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof… How did this become construed to mean “separation of church and state”? By a letter from Thomas Jefferson to the Danbury Baptist Association of Danbury, Connecticut, in which he states: I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should "make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," thus building a...

'It is to me a new and consolatory proof that wherever the people are well-informed they can be trusted with their own government; that whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice, they may be relied on to set them to rights." —Thomas Jefferson to Richard Price, January 8, 1789. Two hundred and twenty-one years later, the sage of Monticello has been proven right again. Aroused and well-informed by a year of watching a liberal majority go very far wrong, Massachusetts voters handed a Senate seat held by Ted Kennedy for 47 years to Republican Scott Brown,...

In 1775, with “The shot heard ’round the world,” it was the colonists of Massachusetts who led the Revolutionary War against tyranny and oppression from England. So it seems appropriate that it is you who have the chance to lead a new revolution against another government who are equally indifferent to our will and, if not confronted, would lead us back to tyranny and oppression. Unbelievably, that government is, once again, our own. The difference this time is that you can fire that first shot using the ballot of democracy… perhaps the greatest gift of our forefathers...

Annapolis has experience with climate scares. For its first 150 years, the world's greatest scientists declared that the Western Hemisphere's climate was harmful to all living creatures. They said animal species and natives were underdeveloped . . . Just like today, almost anything bad was blamed on the harmful climate of the New World. In other words, the 1700s' scientific facts and forecast make today's worst climate predictions seem cheery. The leading naysayer was Thomas Jefferson, who, for years, vehemently challenged the accuracy of the sources and qualifications of the collectors of data. In fact, the only book Jefferson ever...

CHARLOTTESVILLE -- More than 200 years after they were written, about 5,000 previously unpublished documents of the founders of the United States -- including Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and James Madison -- are now available to the public at no cost. The Documents Compass group of the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities at the University of Virginia has spent much of the past year proofreading and transcribing thousands of pages of letters and other papers. The documents are available online for free at the University of Virginia Press' digital imprint called Rotunda. "It's an exciting project," said Penelope Kaiserlian, director...