Want to know what Jefferson REALLY thought about government?

You won't hear it from the Tea Party "patriots"... but the author of this article gives Jefferson quotes that tell what he truly thought about this country's government and its possibilities.  He would not find in the right wing today any of the principles he so strongly believed in and upheld.

READING THE TEA LEAVES OF HISTORY
By Stephen Pizzo

Tea Party "patriots" -- they're a lot like Christian born-agains who've decided that Jesus, and everything He is alleged to have said, represent the Way -- the ONLY way.

Tea Partiers are our 1776-Born Agains and, like those holier than everyone Christian Born Agains, these self-minted neo-patriots claim nothing less than rabid adherence to what our original founders set forth 235 years ago.

Never mind that 99.999% of today's Tea Party activists have not read much of the original thoughts and writings of America's founders. And those who may have tried discover it all written in an ancient formal english syntax, long buried (and never deeper than in todays world of texting shorthand, BTW.)

So I doubt they understood much of what they read, if anything at all. But most of them, I suspect, have not even tried. After all, American's reading comprehension has been on a steady decline since the inception of television, and that's for comprehending modern english text. Put old-world formal english in front of them and I suspect they find it more unsettling than informative. After all, what kind of guys use such flowery language.. if you get my drift.

Having said that the Tea Party folk are right about our founders; they were brilliant, forward thinking, revolutionaries. Unfortunately for our born-again revolutionaries, our founders didn't say, write or believe the kind of things the Tea Party "patriots" now claim America has abandoned.

Nevertheless, they've succeeded in so polluting our stream of history that, from time to time, I have dig out my old copy of Presidential Papers and Speeches just to clear away the growing clutter of misconceptions and downright untruths they've toss into the mix.

Yesterday I was reading the text of Thomas Jefferson's inaugural address. Here's a short excerpt. Read it and then ask yourself, does this really sound like the foaming-at-the-mouth "government is bad," bunch claiming to carry Jefferson's banner today?

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Thomas Jefferson: (emphasis mine)

"During the contest of opinion through which we have passed the animation of discussions and of exertions has sometimes worn an aspect which might impose on strangers unused to think freely and to speak and to write what they think; but this being now decided by the voice of the nation, announced according to the rules of the Constitution, all will, of course, arrange themselves under the will of the law, and unite in common efforts for the common good.

All, too, will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will to be rightful must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression.

Let us, then, fellow-citizens, unite with one heart and one mind. Let us restore to social intercourse that harmony and affection without which liberty and even life itself are but dreary things. And let us reflect that, having banished from our land that religious intolerance under which mankind so long bled and suffered, we have yet gained little if we countenance a political intolerance as despotic, as wicked, and capable of as bitter and bloody persecutions.

During the throes and convulsions of the ancient world, during the agonizing spasms of infuriated man, seeking through blood and slaughter his long-lost liberty, it was not wonderful that the agitation of the billows should reach even this distant and peaceful shore; that this should be more felt and feared by some and less by others, and should divide opinions as to measures of safety.

But every difference of opinion is not a difference of principle. We have called by different names brethren of the same principle. We are all Republicans, we are all Federalists. If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this Union or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it.

I know, indeed, that some honest men fear that a republican government can not be strong, that this Government is not strong enough; but would the honest patriot, in the full tide of successful experiment, abandon a government which has so far kept us free and firm on the theoretic and visionary fear that this Government, the world's best hope, may by possibility want energy to preserve itself?

I trust not. I believe this, on the contrary, the strongest Government on earth. I believe it the only one where every man, at the call of the law, would fly to the standard of the law, and would meet invasions of the public order as his own personal concern.

Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the forms of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question. "