AUG 1 - 15, 2004

VOL. 2 ISSUE 15

"I observe women... carrying heavy burdens, and laboring with the hoe.  This is an unequivocal indication of extreme poverty.  Men, in a civilized country, never expose their wives... to labor above their force or sex, as long as their own labor can protect them from it."

-- Thomas Jefferson, commenting on what he saw in France on March 3, 1787.

"...a strong proof of the solidity of the primitive faith, is its restoration, as soon as a nation arises which vindicates itself the freedom of religious opinion, and its external divorce from the civil authority.  The pure and simple unity of the Creator of the universe, is now all but ascendant in the Eastern States; it is dawning in the West, and advancing towards the South; and I confidently expect that the present generation will see Unitarianism become the general religion of the United States.... I write with freedom, because while I claim a right to believe in one God, if so my reason tells me, I yield as freely to others that of believing in three.  Both religions, I find, make honest men, and that is the only point society has any right to look to."

-- Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to theological writer James Smith on December 8, 1822.

"We have seen, indeed, once within the records of history, a complete eclipse of the human mind continuing for centuries... and even should the cloud of barbarism and despotism again obscure the science and liberties... this country remains to preserve and restore light and liberty... In short, the flames kindled on the 4th of July, 1776, have spread over too much of the globe to be extinguished by the feeble engines of despotism; on the contrary, they will consume these engines and all who work them..."

-- Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to John Adams on September 12, 1821.

"Day after day we wasted on the most unimportant questions.  A member, one of those afflicted with the morbid rage of debate, of an ardent mind, prompt imagination, and copious flow of words, who heard with impatience any logic which was not his own, sitting near me on some occasion of a trifling but wordy debate, asked me how I could sit in silence, hearing so much false reasoning, which a word should refute?  I observed to him, that to refute indeed was easy, but to silence was impossible; that in measures brought forward by me, I took the laboring oar... but that in general, I was willing to listen; that if every sound argument or objection was used by some one or other of the numerous debaters, it was enough; if not, I thought it sufficient to suggest the omission, without going into repetition of what had already been said by others... I served with General Washington in the legislature of Virginia, before the revolution, and during it, with Dr. Franklin in Congress.  I never heard either of them speak ten minutes at a time, nor to any but the main point, which is to decide the question."

-- Thomas Jefferson, explaining in his autobiography The Moderate Independent's philosophy and the reason we only serve to fill in the media void as necessary, not to daily compete with the conversation when it is adequate or there is no important point to settle.

and lastly...

For those of you confused or misled about Jefferson's views on slavery, this was in the original version of the Declaration of Independence he penned as one of the grievances resulting in our demand for freedom:

"(The King of England) has waged a cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of distant people who never offended him, captivating and carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation hither..."

Ah, what a difference one less edit (demanded by the reps from the South) could have made.