[free-sklyarov] Re: He's free....

[Michael Scottaline]

On Wed, 25 Jul 2001 16:09:51 -0700 (PDT)
Ethan Straffin <drumz at best.com> insightfully noted:

> > what a great paragraph!
> > 
> > --- Jimmy Alderson <jimmy at underthestairs.com> wrote:
> > >  "That ideas should spread from one to another over
> > > the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of
> > > man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have
> > > been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature,
> > > when she made them , like fire, expansible over all
> > > space, without lessening their density at any point,
> > > and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have
> > > our physical being, incapable of confinement or
> > > exclusive appropriation.  Inventions then cannot, in
> > > nature, be a subject of property."  -Thomas
> > > Jefferson
> 
> Jefferson channeling Hemingway.  Cool.
> 
> Jefferson is da man.  I can still read his words and feel how much he
> feared the kind of government we have today, and how violently he would
> have opposed it.  I've referred to myself as a libertarian, Libertarian,
> or independent, but usually these days I just call myself a
> Jeffersonian.
> 
> Some of my other favorites:
> 
> "Reading, reflection and time have convinced me that the interests of
> society require the observation of those moral precepts only in which
> all
> religions agree (for all forbid us to murder, steal, plunder, or bear
> false witness), and that we should not intermeddle with the particular
> dogmas in which all religions differ, and which are totally unconnected
> with morality."
> 
> "If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of
> civilization,
> it expects what never was and never will be."
> 
> "A wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring
> one
> another; shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits
> of
> industry and improvement."
> 
> "A society that will trade a little liberty for a little order will lose
> both, and deserve neither."
> 
> "If we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with
> a
> wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them but to
> inform
> their discretion by education."
> 
> "Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and
> mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day."
> 
> "A little rebellion now and then...is a medicine necessary for the sound
> health of government."
> 
> "The most important bill in our whole code is that for the diffusion of
> knowledge among the people.  No other sure foundation can be devised,
> for
> the preservation of freedom and happiness."
=========================================
It's writings such as these that would have landed Jefferson in the cell
right next to Sklyarov.  Hmmm.. perhaps not:  too dangerous to keep
together.  You know...., they might start actually exchanging ideas.
Mike
-- 
"One can search the brain with a microscope and not find the mind, and
can search the stars with a telescope and not find God."
         -- J. Gustav White