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

[Ethan Straffin]

> 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."

Ethan