Wonderful rhetoric.
How do you feel about the military? Because Jefferson seems to have had a different opinion than all but the most radical liberal...
Thomas Jefferson: “I do not like [in the new Federal Constitution] the omission of a Bill of Rights providing clearly and without the aid of sophisms for… protection against standing armies.” –Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1787. ME 6:387
Thomas Jefferson: “Nor is it conceived needful or safe that a standing army should be kept up in time of peace for [defense against invasion].” –Thomas Jefferson: 1st Annual Message, 1801. ME 3:334
Thomas Jefferson: “The spirit of this country is totally adverse to a large military force.” –Thomas Jefferson to Chandler Price, 1807. ME 11:160
Thomas Jefferson: “The Greeks and Romans had no standing armies, yet they defended themselves. The Greeks by their laws, and the Romans by the spirit of their people, took care to put into the hands of their rulers no such engine of oppression as a standing army. Their system was to make every man a soldier and oblige him to repair to the standard of his country whenever that was reared. This made them invincible; and the same remedy will make us so.” –Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Cooper, 1814. ME 14:184
Thomas Jefferson: “Bonaparte… transferred the destinies of the republic from the civil to the military arm. Some will use this as a lesson against the practicability of republican government. I read it as a lesson against the danger of standing armies.” –Thomas Jefferson to Samuel Adams, 1800. ME 10:154
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"Including non-DOD expenditures, defense spending was approximately 25–29% of budgeted expenditures and 38–44% of estimated tax revenues. According to the Congressional Budget Office, defense spending grew 9% annually on average from fiscal year 2000–2009.[19]"
Out total expenditures on the militaty and global military adventures is more than the rest of the world spends - combined!
How might Jefferson have felt about taking money from the rich to provide for the needs of the poor - as in Health Care?
"Our revenues liberated by the discharge of the
public debt, and its surplus applied to canals,
roads, schools, &c., the farmer will see his
government supported, his children educated,
and the face of his country made a paradise
by the contributions of the rich alone, without
his being called on to spend a cent from his
earnings. "
Jefferson To General Kosciusko. Washington ed. v, 586.
(M. 1811)
As a veteran, I don't asvocate gutting the US military. I disagree with Jefferson's opinion, but we have gone too far the direction of Bonaparte - to the degree we neglect the dire needs of our own people. Moving to a balance is not heresy.
Likewise with taxes. A balance is proper. I quote Teddy Roosevelt from a century ago. (Teddy was a Republican.)
"It is important to this people to grapple with the problems connected with the amassing of enormous fortunes, and the use of those fortunes, both corporate and individual, in business. We should discriminate in the sharpest way between fortunes well-won and fortunes ill-won; between those gained as an incident to performing great services to the community as a whole, and those gained in evil fashion by keeping just within the limits of mere law-honesty.
Of course no amount of charity in spending such fortunes in any way compensates for misconduct in making them. As a matter of personal conviction, and without pretending to discuss the details or formulate the system, I feel that we shall ultimately have to consider the adoption of some such scheme as that of a progressive tax on all fortunes, beyond a certain amount either given in life or devised or bequeathed upon death to any individual — a tax so framed as to put it out of the power of the owner of one of these enormous fortunes to hand on more than a certain amount to any one individual; the tax, of course, to be imposed by the National and not the State Government.
Such taxation should, of course, be aimed merely at the inheritance or transmission in their entirety of those fortunes swollen beyond all healthy limits. "
It's a fact - not an opinion - the rihcest 10% in ths country own 70% of the countries net worth. Or to phrase that in reverse - the poorest 90% own less than 30% of the nations net worth. You start to understand why there is a move to undo the concept of America as a democracy, and substitute the limits of the constitution AS INTERPRETED BY THE RICH for their benefit.
