pianogonzology: thomas jefferson

Showing posts with label thomas jefferson. Show all posts

Saturday, May 11, 2019

Celebrate . . .

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

". . . Adams thought the really important decision for independence had been taken on Julh 2, when the Congress voted to break away from the British empire. "The Second Day of July," he told Abigail, "will be the most memorable Epocha in the History of America." He believed that it "would be celebrated, by succeeding Generations, as the great Anniversary Festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the Day of Deliverance by Solemn Acts of Devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more.". . . "

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Wednesday, April 24, 2019

Preoccupation . . .

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

". . . This American aristocracy, however, was very different from that of Europe. European nobles, said Adams, had more pride, "that kind of pride which looks down on commerce and manufacturing as degrading." Perhaps this contempt for commerce, he said, played a useful role in Europ. Maybe it helped prevent the European nobility from becoming too rich and inhibited its acquiring too large a proportion of landed property. Or the aristocracy's valuing honor over money might have saved the European nations from being completely consumed by avarice. . . The American aristocracy's preoccupation with money distinguished it from the European aristocracy and was one of its weaknesses. . . "

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Sunday, April 7, 2019

Nothing . . .

. . . new

(from Friends Divided: John Adams and Thomas Jefferson by Gordon S. Wood)
". . . since the Middle Ages the people had struggled to wrest their rights from the twin tyrannies of power - monarchs and the church. For centuries the great had exploited the ignorance and timidity of ordinary people in order to dominate and oppress them. When government was properly restrained by respect for the people's rights, it could be a useful force for good. "But when such restraints are taken off, it becomes an incroaching (sic), grasping, restless and ungovernable power.". . . "

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Sunday, February 24, 2019

Old Days?. . .

. . . food for constitutionalist thought . . .

(from Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power by Jon Meacham)

". . . Jefferson wrote Adams in 1816. Jefferson took the broadest of views: "I steer my bark with hope in the head, leaving fear astern. My hopes, indeed, sometimes fail; but not oftener than the forebodings of the gloomy." . . . Adams was always less sanguine. "I dare not look beyond my nose into futurity," he wrote Jefferson. "Our money, our commerce, our religion, our national and state constitutions, even our arts and sciences, are so many seedpots of division, faction, sedition and rebellion. Everything is transmuted into an instrument of electioneering.". . . The past, he (Jefferson) thought, should hold no magical, unexamined claim over the present. "Some men look at Constitutions with sanctimonious reverence, and deem them, like the ark of the covenant, too sacred to be touched," he wrote in 1816 . . . "They ascribe to the men of the preceding age a wisdom more than human, and suppose what they did to be beyond amendment. I knew that age well: I belonged to it, and labored with it. It deserved well of its country. It was very like the present, but without the experience of the present: and 40 years of experience in government is worth a century of book-reading: and this they would say themselves, were they to rise from the dead. I am certainly not an advocate for frequent and untried changes in laws and constitutions...but I know also that the laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind....We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy, as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors.". . . "

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Tuesday, February 19, 2019

Evolved ?. . .

(from Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power by Jon Meacham)
". . . If we can keep the vessel of state as steadily in her course for another four years, my earthly purposes will be accomplished.
-Thomas Jefferson

I think you ought to get a damn kicking, you red-headed son of a bitch. You are a pretty fellow to be President of the United States of America, you dirty scoundrel.
-Anonymous. . . "

. . . evidently not in politics . . .

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Wednesday, February 6, 2019

Different . . .

. . . but the same . . .

(from Thomas Jefferson; The Art of Power by Jon Meacham)
". . . Both Federalists and Republicans believed the fate of the United States could turn on the confrontation of the hour. In the broad public discourse, driven by partisan editors publishing partisan newspapers, there seemed no middle ground, only extremes of opinion or of outcome . . . "

Unique
rough demo Sept 2017

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Tuesday, February 5, 2019

Not Quite . . .

. . . a shutdown . . .

. . . but history CAN teach a lesson . . .

(from Thomas Jefferson; The Art of Power by Jon Meacham)
". . . the beginning of wisdom, Jefferson thought, might lie in a meeting of the principals out of the public eye. Se he convened a dinner. Jefferson believed things could be worked out, he said, for :men of sound heads and honest views needed nothing more than explanation and mutual understanding to enable them to unite in some measures which might enable us to get along. . . No deal meant disaster. It was clear, Jefferson wrote, "that if everyone retains inflexibly his present opinion, there will be no bill passed at all for funding the public debts, and ... without funding there is an end of the government . . ."

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Tuesday, August 8, 2017

Freedom . . .

(from John Adams by David McCullough. . . on Thomas Jefferson's writing of 'the declaration' in 1776)

". . . He borrowed readily from his own previous writing, particularly from a recent draft for a new Virginia constitution, but also from a declaration of rights for Virginia, which appeared in the Pennsylvania Evening Post on June 12. It had been drawn up by George Mason, who wrote that "all men are born equally free and independent, and have certain inherent natural rights. . . among which are the enjoyment of life and liberty." And there was a pamphlet written by the Pennsylvania delegate James Wilson, published in Philadelphia in 1774, that declared, "All men are, by nature equal and free: no one has a right to any authority over another without his consent: all lawful government if founded on the consent of those who are subject to It.". . . (John Adams commenting)I was delighted with its high tone and flights of oratory with which it abounded, especially that concerning Negro slavery, which, though I knew his southern brethren would never suffer to pass in Congress, I certainly would never oppose. . ."

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Wednesday, February 6, 2013

Thought. . .

. . . so? Or not? . . .

(from "Thomas Jefferson; Author of America" by Christopher Hitchens)
". . . As his days began to wane, Jefferson more than once wrote to friends that he faced the approaching end without either hope or fear. This was as much as to say, in the most unmistakable terms, that he was not a Christian. As to whether he was an atheist, we must reserve judgment if only because of the prudence he was compelled to observe during his political life. But as he had written to his nephew Peter Carr as early as 1787, one must not "be frightened from this inquiry by any fear of its consequences. If it ends in a belief that there is no God, you will find incitements to virtue in the comfort and pleasantness you fell in its exercise, and the love of others which it will procure you.". . . "

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