What do you think about Jefferson's quote: The tree of liberty must be

refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants.

On edit: here's more of the quote: I suspect it's been shortened.

"God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion.
The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is
wrong will be discontented, in proportion to the importance of the facts
they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions,
it is lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. ...
And what country can preserve its liberties, if it's rulers are not
warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of
resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as
to the facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost
in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from
time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
It is its natural manure."

but let's define "time to time" This doesn't mean that you kill people when you don't get your way. However, there are situations worth dying for (blood of patriots) and tyrany worth killing over (WWII, for exmple).

That quote, and many similar things he said over the years horrified his contemporaries. He looked relatively favorably on certain events like Shay's rebellion. His affection for pure democracy occasionally could reach scarey proportions. He had all manner of conflicting points of views on things. He is a darling of the radical right these days, which his strange since his political lineage traces to the democrats. He was an anti-federalist and probably would have been horrified by what FDR chose to do. Although he would have understood FDR's troubles with the Supreme Court.

And I'll tell you one thing I am rock solid on...Sean Hannity is not a fucking "patriot".

and blood needs to be spilled.

American colonists before the Revolution hated corporations as well. Many already knew the danger of unchecked capitalism and several of the founders spoke out against allowing business entities too much sway over public affairs.

now, they are legally required to consider shareholder profit above ALL else- even the common good.

execs? blowing up the factories?


It takes a lot of careful research to determine how to control corporations. For example, corporations are now bound by labor law and environmental rules. It will take work to reach a consensus as to whether corporations have a responsibility to local communities or even the US. It will take more work to enforce that consensus with laws.

Much easier to spout off with macho rhetoric.

and that's one of the problems with corporate personhood- there is no 'body' to incarcerate or execute- so no reason for the corporation to fear it.

when the tyrant is an immortal entity- you've got problems.

needs to be re-examined. I've seen corporations that were basically mindless - no one was really in charge and the corporation bumbled its way from disaster to disaster, actually killing people along the way because the suits in the office had no idea what was going on on the floor. Who is responsible when no one is in control?

Still - rhetoric can be dangerous. What is mere metaphor to you can be heard as literal orders by someone else.

However, most conservatives ignore the fact that all of today's tyrants are all on Wall Street.

Jefferson spoke those words at a time when both sides had front-loading, single-round flintlocks.

The substance of the quote is entirely obsolete to the extent it endorses armed rebellion.

Been there, done that. It was called the Civil War. Never again.

n/t

Alexander Hamilton was right on virtually everything. Jefferson had a tendency to write sanctimonious emotional blather, Hamilton was a realist and the true father of the country.

Hamilton was conservative

Jefferson was quite liberal/progressive.

given the differences between their time and our own.

I guess government-finance of faith-based initiatives isn't such a bad idea, then. :sarcasm:

I have several problems:

1. Jefferson assumes that the rulers and the people are in opposition.

2. Altogether, it's odd. I read it to suggest that people will be angry because they are misinformed, that they will take up arms and be killed, that the authorities (armed forces, not actual politicians?) will also take casualties but in the end everything will be fine because the people will learn the facts and the authorties will be afraid of the people.

3. The high faulutin' language of tree of liberty and blood of patriots reveals a sore lack of knowledge. Jefferson never saw battle. He had no idea what happens when people start shooting at each other, especially to the innocents caught in the cross fire. Like the arm chair rebels of the 60's, I'm not sure he would have cared if someone had tried to explain to him that women, children and the elderly tend to take the brunt of any rebellion.

so was FDR. Social Security was an anathema to many, but it changed our country.

Ask women 50 and older how their lives changed between 1960 and today. There was certainly some sort of revolution if it wasn't exactly a rebellion. I'd say the GLBT Rights Revolution is being accomplished with a minimum of bloodshed on the side of the people demanding their rights.

We have at least two people that think TJ was a bloodthirsty fool. Simply stunning.
:kick: & R

other subjects. He got some things right and other things wrong. For example, we always hear about how Jefferson experimented with plants and tried new methods of agriculture. What is rare is to hear a discussion of how he bankrupted himself by mortgaging his land, then ruined the land planting tobacco. (You might say he invented the American tradition of the upside-down mortgage. The people who paid for his lack of farming skills were the slaves who were sold upon his death to pay off his debts.

Nice house, though.

intellect. He was, prior to the revisionist movement, inarguably one of this nation's greatest minds. His ideas were not popular in his time outside of the circles of other great thinkers, but that doesn't make him wrong either.

You seem to argue that his exceptionalism makes him less. Do I read that correctly?

without the common sense to come in out of the rain. A better understanding of these men has raised the reputations of John Adams and Alexander Hamilton and somewhat reduced Jefferson's.

thanks to his intolerance and lack of intellect and statesmanship. Alexander Hamilton was of the belief that people are chattel and must be controlled, ruled, or owned outright, by men like him.

These were better than Jefferson?!? I just don't know what to say, we are a TeeVee nation.

ETA; I just noticed that you are a woman, had these men got their way, you would neither be allowed access to the internet, nor even know how to write.

in our Revolution. Even at that, we nearly lost everything 80 years later in the Civil War. Just think where we'd be if Washington had allowed people to address him as Your excellency or had decided that a life time term sounded good. They kept each other in check and began something new.

They all had their strengths, they all had their flaws. they were men, not demi-gods.

is a near total lack of understanding surrounding the man, the times, and the reasons he said this. I know that history is ignored in school and what little is taught seems to promote loathing of knowledge as it's primary agenda, but this is unbelievable and inexcusable.

They were far from perfect (except Ben Franklin :D), but they risked all and paid a heavy price to give us a chance at something better, and now we have Russell's "cocksure" pretending understanding and scoffing at Thomas Jefferson!?

thought we should all be yeoman farmers.

How's that working out for you?

slaveholder in the 18th/19th century? His brilliance is irrelevant because he didn't conform to your contemporary sensibilities and therefore he's just wrong?

Being both of the parasite class and a revolutionary, I daresay he knew a little more about tyranny and patriotism than you do.

between what he said and what he did is glaring. He maintained a wealthy lifestyle for himself and his family by holding others in slavery, including his beloved wife's half sister. He was unwilling to risk poverty for the freedom of others, but here he blithely suggest that others should be willing (on a regular basis) to give up their lives.

Taking his behavior out of the context of his time is F-ing stupid.

Complex men, complex times with circumstances different than our own. As I said, no demi-gods among them, however many marble statues we make.


I'm certain Abigail Adams would question your assessment of John Adams' view of womens' rights. In any case, we are where we are because of what all these men started. Whereas Jefferson in this particular quote suggests that violent revolt is required on a regular basis,he and the others did manage to produce a Constitution flexible enough to function from their time to ours. It has grown as we have grown. For example, the Supreme Court found the right to abortion inherent in the Constitution.

it seems to me from reading their letters, was the main force behind John doing the right thing when he did. He was always rigid in his thinking and too quick to surrender to authority. Unlike most of the other instigators, he supported the rebellion more out of personal loss than to any belief in the greater good. He was after all, a loyal subject of the King.

The point I apparently failed to make regarding Jefferson's quote, was that he did not make it out of any desire for bloodshed or to to establish some mindless dogma for us to follow, rather out of an acceptance of the fact that the parasite class, of which he was a member, will always resort to violence to hold onto their privilege. There simply is no other way as they will not surrender what they have and will constantly seek more regardless of the level of deprivation it causes. It is therefore, inevitable that lives will be taken and spent to re-balance the scales from time to time, for nothing less will effect their unquenchable avarice.

...not having much common sense. ;-)

Somethings other than oneself.

Something as nebulous as "country", "freedom", "god", "ideology"?

Alas, coupled with the "dying for" usually entails "killing for".

BTW..Gandhi was an Anarchist.

floating around to be used as anyone pleases.

seem to be saying "when do the street riots start".

You know, the arm-chair anarchists who never get off their asses and start the revolution.

around tho starting a revolution. The ones that worry me start revolutions that get other people killed!

Health care reform is not a sufficiently grave topic to wage a revolution over.

Invading another country without cause and then lying about the reasons for doing so, on the other hand...

we are nowhere near that point.

We may be in the process of moving away from the greedy capitalism which treats citizens as feudal serfs to the controlling oligarchy. We may even be moving in the direction of God forbid socialism.

This change in course should an improvement to the lives of the citizens in our country. Occasionally we have moved in this direction throughout our history. Franklin Roosevelt, for example, started Social Security and many of his New Deal policies were and still are considered socialistic. Lyndon Johnson's Great Society was also considered socialistic.

Unregulated and uncontrolled capitalism have often hurt the middle class in our country. Consider the history of robber barons and monopolies. Also consider the activities of unions in combating and improving conditions for workers.

Just because the rich and elite are opposed to the programs suggested by the Obama administration is no reason to refresh the tree of liberty with blood.

But what scares me is that this ruling elite may attempt to inflame citizens to protect their wealth and power. They control the media and own the people we elect. They view us as uneducated and basically illiterate sheep that they can easily herd in any direction they choose.

The truly scary part to me is that they just might be right.

. . . when America was governed by tyrants in the executive branch and congressional leaders refused to remove them.

I'm all for civil disobedience, but to ASSUME that only violence can maintain freedom is a very pessimistic attitude, and contrary to observation. Violence does not lead to freedom anymore than fucking leads to virginity.

Sex and abstinence are opposites.

Violence has a long history with freedom, sometimes it is used to take it away and other times it is used to restore it.

The only shallow drivel I see is your poor analogy.

The notion that it commonly leads to freedom is fatuous drivel. Thoughout most of human history violence has been used primarily for two reasons, to enforce the rule of one class over another, and to settle disputes among the ruling classes. This is not to say that violence has never been used by one people to throw off the rule of another, or by an individual in the attempt to right a wrong, but that is not the rule, and in any case the usual result of violence is oppression and death. You have to be sort of a dimwit to think that having to carry a gun around all the time to protect yourself is "freedom".

That it is inevitable, that we humans can do no better than that in organizing our affairs.

Jefferson may well have been right within the context of the end of the 18th century, when there were essentially no democracies, virtually all countries were ruled by despots, and there was no way of getting rid of them *except* by revolution or similar. America was probably the first country to establish a form of real democracy (just for white males, of course!) and there was slow progress toward democracy and peaceful forms of resistance during the next century. Where there are alternatives to armed revolution, they are preferable. Better to deprive politicians of their seats at the ballot-box than of their heads at the guillotine; better the strike and the protest march than the rush to arms. (And by the same token, leaders anywhere, who will not allow the fair election or peaceful demonstration, are inevitably increasing their own risk of being deposed by far more violent means.)

Nowadays those who, in a country like the USA or Britain, wish for armed revolt, tend to be the right-wingers, not the left-wingers. Even in the 19th century, the most serious armed revolt against the American government - that which initiated the Civil War - came from the supporters of slavery.

Tim McVeigh of Jeffersons time might have killed a dozen folk to refresh the tree of liberty in his eyes. Our McVeigh killed many many more.

"Can be" or even "should be" is ok. But mandating revolution is a very bad idea.

one person's "liberty" may be many others' oppression. If King George were a Libertarian he would have said that with his wealth and power he should be able to run the Americas any way he sees fit. The Family would have called him one of the Chosen of God. Ayn Rand would have called him a Prime Mover.

One can not have unlimited freedom, there comes a point when you cannot give someone more freedom without impinging on the freedom of others. One should aim for that point as much as is practical WITHOUT going past it, or at least that's what this LEFT-Libertarian thinks.

nt

where were those fuckwads like Kostric during the reign of Bush* and did they spout the same swill?

But those days have long passed. In Jefferson's time there was an alternative, moving west. Your "individual freedom" cranks who could not get along in a community setting could simply pack up the wagon and stake out another 5 or 10 acres somewhere. It don't work like that anymore. We are all pretty much stuck with one another these days.

Further, the notion that the people with their puny weapons pose even a modest threat to those in power is simply nuts. They do not want your weapons, they don't even care about your weapons. If they did, you would not be able to get them. They already own your labor and your 401K pittance. As recent events have proven, they can take it all away with a few mouse clicks, and your silly second ammendment weapons are quite useless to protect it.

Carry one if you care to, it will not help. If the much touted "revolution" comes, (which I highly doubt), be comforted in knowing that you will die early on.

The only power we have is the power to withold work and cooperation en-masse, and Americans so far, have been markedly uninclined to use it. It would have been cool to have seen a general strike in 2000 or over torture, what happened?

And that provision of the Constitution got ignored right quick. People don't like change as much as they like talking about it.