pianogonzology: jefferson

Showing posts with label jefferson. Show all posts

Sunday, May 24, 2020

Democratic? . . .

https://www.google.com/search?q=image+of+democracy&tbm=i

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EQnEXuHYMNuJwbkPkvOumAw&bih=672&biw=1267#imgrc=W9PWqZsCBfsSgM

(from We Were Eight Years In Power by Ta-Nehisi Coates)

". . . And so the most powerful country in the world has handed over all of its affairs - the prosperity of an entire economy, the security of some 300 million citizens, the purity of its water, the viability of its air, the safety of its food, the future of its vast system of education, the soundness of its national highways, airways, and railways, the apocalyptic potential of its nuclear arsenal - to a carnival barker who introduced the phrase "grab 'em by the pussy" into the national lexicon. It is as if the white tribe united in demonstration to say, "If a black man can be president, then any white man - no matter how fallen - can be president." And in that perverse way the democratic dreams of Jefferson and Jackson were fulfilled. . . "

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The Hours
©2017 Raymond M. Jozwiak
(from the unreleased 'Phatso' collection of improvisations on Moog Phatty

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Saturday, October 26, 2019

Elections . . .

https://www.egr.msu.edu/swe/news/january-elections

(from 'and yet . . .' Christopher Hitchens Essays)

". . . Where would we be without the tradition of American populism, which adopted for itself the term hurled as an insult by Teddy Roosevelt - "muckraker"? What goes for muck should go for mud. Who would wish to be without that "used-car salesman" innuendo against Richard Nixon, or the broad hint that Barry Goldwater was itchy in the trigger finger? Just let's have no whining when the tables are turned. . . In the election that pitted Thomas Jefferson against John Adams, the somewhat more restricted and refined electorate had its choice between the president of the American Philosophical Society and the president of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. . . Yet it's worth looking up what was said, especially about Jefferson, in those days: he was called adulterer, whoremaster, atheist, even deserter in the face of the enemy. There's no doubt that the emergence of parties or "factions" after the retirement of George Washington gave voters a set of clear and often stark choices - and a good thing that was, too. . ."

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Sunday, May 12, 2019

Nothing . . .

. . . new . . .

(from Friends Divided: John Adams and Thomas Jefferson by Gordon S. Wood)
". . . But most despairing to Adams were the 'Personal hatreds and Party Animosities' that consumed the capital. . ."

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Thursday, May 2, 2019

Change. . .

. . . has either occurred in our inherent nature or the thinkers and philosophers of old were simply incorrect . . .

(from Friends Divided: John Adams and Thomas Jefferson by Gordon S. Wood)

". . . If only the natural tendencies of people to love and care for one another were allowed to flow freelh, unclogged by the artificial interference of government, particularly monarchical government, (Thomas) Paine and (Thomas) Jefferson both believed, society would prosper and hold itself together. . . This would occur because people were innately sociable; they possessed a social sense that naturally bound people together. . . As Jefferson said, "The Creator would indeed have been a bungling artist, had he intended man for a social animal, without planting in him social dispositions.". . . "

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Sunday, April 21, 2019

Character . . .

(from Friends Divided: John Adams and Thomas Jefferson by Gordon S. Wood)

". . . He was skeptical about the character of his fellow Americans as well. Even before he knew of the outbreak of the French Revolution, he had worked out a chilling assessment of the moral fiber of his own countrymen, one that prepared him to see the worst of people everywhere. . . Right from the beginning of his own American Revolution, Adams had deep misgivings about whether his fellow citizens had the proper moral character needed to sustain their republican governments. "The only foundation of a free Constitution," he said on the eve of America's declaring independence, "is pure Virtue, and if this cannot be inspired into our People, in a greater Measure, than they have it now, They may change their Rulers, and the forms of Government, but they will not obtain a lasting Liberty. . . "

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Friday, February 1, 2019

News. . .

. . . fake and otherwise . . .

(from Thomas Jefferson; The Art of Power by Jon Meacham)
". . . The basis of our governments being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter. But I should mean that every man should receive those papers and be capable of reading them....Do not be too severe upon [the people's] errors, but reclaim them by enlightening them. If once they become inattentive to the public affairs, you and I, and Congress, and Assemblies, judges and governors shall all become wolves. It seems to be the law of our general nature, in spite of individual exceptions; and experience declares that man is the only animal which devours his own kind. . . "

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Sunday, January 27, 2019

Ideal . . .

. . . and principled ?. . .

. . . you tell me honestly . . .

(from Thomas Jefferson; The Art of Power by Jon Meacham)
". . . He had defined an ideal in the declaration (of Independence), using words to transform principle into policy, and he and lived with the reality of managing both a war and a fledgling government. A politician's task was to bring reality and policy into the greatest possible. accord with the ideal and the principled. . ."

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Thursday, January 24, 2019

Eerily. . .

. . . similar . . .

(from Thomas Jefferson; The Art of Power by Jon Meacham)
". . . authorities were now reaching ever more deeply into the lives and fortunes of Americans-Americans who watched such assertions of power warily, fearful that despotism was at hand. . ."

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Friday, October 5, 2018

Judging . . .

(https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/07/judge-brett-kavanaughs-impeccable-record-of-constitutional-conservatism/)
". . . Judge Kavanaugh in 2010 wrote a lengthy concurrence drawing on American historical tradition and the original meaning of the Constitution to defend the invocation of God and the practice of prayer at official government ceremonies, such as the presidential inauguration and Supreme Court sittings. The Supreme Court adopted a similar approach several years later in upholding prayer before a town meeting in New York. . ."

(from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Separation_of_church_and_state_in_the_United_States)
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof...". . . (and in a) letter by Thomas Jefferson, addressed to the Danbury Baptist Association in Connecticut, and published in a Massachusetts newspaper. Jefferson wrote, "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 wall of separation between Church & State. . . "

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Sunday, July 15, 2018

Water . . .

(https://www.nrdc.org/onearth/water-human-right)

". . . The United States and 40 other countries abstained from the U.N. vote to recognize access to water as a human right (in 2016). . . Human rights come in many forms; they aren’t all prohibitions hammered into the stone tablet of the Bill of Rights. Americans tend to talk about only this kind of right, though. For this, I blame Thomas Jefferson. . . We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. . . Jefferson’s passage is so beautifully clear that it has come to define the word right in the American mind. But he is describing just one kind of right: the preexisting negative right. Preexisting because it doesn’t need a government to create it, and negative because it describes something the government cannot do: It cannot take the right away. Leave us alone to pursue happiness, Jefferson says, and we’ll be fine. Most of the rights in the Bill of Rights are corollaries to Jefferson’s description, but the Bill doesn’t ever claim to be a complete and exclusive list of human rights. . ."

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Wednesday, November 1, 2017

Reflecting . . .

(Thomas Jefferson declining the invitation to attend festivities celebrating the the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence [from John Adams, by David McCullough])
". . . May it be to the world, what I believe it will be (to some parts sooner, to others later, but finally to all) the signal of arousing men to burst the chains under which monkish ignorance and superstition had persuaded them to bind themselves, and to assume the blessings and security of self-government. . . . All eyes are opened or opening to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few, booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately by the grace of God. These are the grounds of hope for others; for ourselves, let the annual return to this day forever refresh our recollections of these rights, and an undiminished devotion to them. . . "

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Thursday, February 16, 2017

Some Things . . .

. . . never change . . .

(from James Madison; A Biography by Ralph Ketcham) as Alexander Hamilton, the Secretary of Treasury promotes his plan for a national debt. . .

". . . Hamilton's candid admission that he intended the concentration in order to bring to the federal government a self-interested support he thought is desperately needed to become an effective means of government only increased Madison's apprehensions. Though the secretary expressed regret at the misfortunes of those whose interests suffered under his plans, he saw them as a small price to pay for the vital strengthening of the Union he thought made them necessary. As Madison observed the Hamiltonian "phalanx" in Congress, the eager support given the program in New York financial circles, the often arrogant comments by men of wealth about their superior capacity to lead and govern the country, and the tendency of backers of the secretary's report to exalt the executive over the legislative department, his concern for the survival of republican principles grew rapidly. Jefferson's famous charges, made in old age, that "Hamilton's financial system . . . had two objects; 1st, as a puzzle, to exclude popular understanding and inquiry; 2nd, as a machine for the corruption of the legislature," and that "men thus enriched by the dexterity of a leader [Hamilton], would follow of course the chief who was leading them to fortune. . . "

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Monday, July 4, 2016

Why . . .

. . . NOT???!!! (with some modifications)

(from Thomas Jefferson; Author of America by Christopher Hitchens)
". . . At that date, the Electoral College was determined by each state's presidential electors, themselves chosen by state legislatures, each of whom could cast two votes. One such vote had to be for a candidate from another state. The two candidates receiving the most votes became, regardless of party, president and vice president respectively. . ."

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Friday, May 6, 2016

A Note . . .

. . . to fans of 'He who speaks yet says nothing' . . .

(from http://famguardian.org/Subjects/Politics/thomasjefferson/jeff1350.htm)
". . . An enlightened citizenry is indispensable for the proper functioning of a republic. Self-government is not possible unless the citizens are educated sufficiently to enable them to exercise oversight. It is therefore imperative that the nation see to it that a suitable education be provided for all its citizens. . . " - Thomas Jefferson

. . . and if I may ad, a serious candidate for government office must also be 'educated sufficiently'. . .

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