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Rights, which according to American philosophy predate any government and are granted by the Universe, are not something to be taken lightly.

Thomas Jefferson:

Paris Nov. 13. 1787.
the people can not be all, & 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 a lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. we have had 13. states independant 11. years. there has been one rebellion. that comes to one rebellion in a century & a half for each state. what country before ever existed a century & half without a rebellion? & what country can preserve it’s liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? let them take arms. the remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon & 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 & tyrants. it is it’s natural manure.

As the old saying goes: "Give me liberty, or give me death!"

Oh, and where did these measles infections come from? Third-world immigrants imported by the leftists against the will of these very people who are being targeted now? And, why are you so worried about their lack of immunity? Haven't you gotten you and yours vaccinated? Sure, some people can't be vaccinated; well, they shouldn't live in one of the most diversely populated places on Earth.

And here we are, once again, reminded of the centuries-old wisdom: "That government is best which governs least." Ajit Pai et al did not rule on whether equal treatment of packets is a good or bad thing. They only decided, it is not up to them...

I just happen to side with the decision to implement NN rules

Still, you seem to agree, government should not have involved itself in it in the first place — or, at least, this follows from your skepticism over government officials' competence in such matters.

By abolishing net neutrality?

This is dumb. The abolition explicitly reduced the government's role in the Internet. Reduced — while the TFA argues for an increase: all of the analogies mentioned (speed-limits, prescription- and licensing-requirements) are enforced by government.

Like the early US, Internet was Libertarian — treating censorship as damage and routing around it, remember? The same unfortunate tendencies, which make the countries increasingly authoritarian, can now be observed online...

From the very foundation that manages the estate of Thomas Jefferson at the home he built, Monticello, including his descendants, both black and white:

“Though enslaved, Sally Hemings helped shape her life and the lives of her children, who got an almost 50-year head start on emancipation, escaping the system that had engulfed their ancestors and millions of others. Whatever we may feel about it today, this was important to her.”

Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Annette Gordon-Reed, 2017

I don't think Thomas Jefferson was quite as evil as you make him out to be. He seems to have been more interested in keeping his relationship with Sally Hemings secret, rather than in keeping anyone a slave. I also challenge you to produce a record of Jefferson selling any of his children with Sally Hemings, or a record of any of Sally's children being abused. Jefferson went out of his way to provide Sally with a private adjoining bedroom with his own. This woman had unfettered access to Jefferson. She could have easily killed him in his sleep, for decades, but she didn't. They also fell in love while in France, where mixed race relationships where no big deal.

It's also not fair to use modern values to judge those from a different culture and era. If you have references to paint a clear picture of Jefferson as someone who was truly evil, rather than someone who was trying to avoid persecution for a forbidden love, I'd love to see them.

Jefferson did leave clear instructions that all his slaves were to be freed, but I don't think this happened until after he died. I do love history, but I do not claim to be knowledgeable about Jefferson, although I have visited his home.

If you want an example of evil in the founding fathers of US history - look at Alexander Hamilton. That SOB used anonymous news articles and stories to libel and belittle Aaron Burr for decades, a rather competent military man who went on to become vice president. Both Burr and Jefferson were not terribly fond of Hamilton's Federalist agenda, which has issues reverberating in American politics to this day.

Burr eventually got tired of Hamilton's shit and challenged him to a duel, which was accepted. Hamilton, being inept with a pistol, his few competencies being running his mouth and flinging ink with his pen, lost the duel and died. A fitting end for an Anonymous Coward.

One of the most famous quotes of Thomas Jefferson directly alludes to it.

the people can not be all, & 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 a lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. we have had 13. states independant 11. years. there has been one rebellion. that comes to one rebellion in a century & a half for each state. what country before ever existed a century & half without a rebellion? & what country can preserve it’s liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? let them take arms. the remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon & 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 & tyrants. it is it’s natural manure.

Emphasis mine. http://tjrs.monticello.org/let...

It's entirely reasonable it doesn't defend the 2nd given the modern interpretation of that amendment isn't how it's traditionally been interpreted up until the mid-seventies.

Wait. What? You're saying the actually text of the law didn't change but the left have 'reinterpreted' it to mean the exact opposite of what it used to mean since the mid-seventies.

Gee. I wonder why American conservatives are so keen to get originalist judges on the SCOTUS and not ones appointed by the left who'll reinterpret the first and second amendments to be 'You're allowed to speak but not hate speech. And hate speech is anything a conservative says' and 'You're allowed to have a gun if you join the army. Otherwise you're not and we're sending the ATF round to kick your door down'.

Once the left sets the precedent that the actual text of the law doesn't matter, only the interpretation, and that the left will appoint judges who'll interpret it in the way which most benefits the left and shafts the right, it's really game over for the notion that the US is a representative republic. What you've got is mob rule where the mob gets to decide what rights you've got. And the left's media sock puppets will mobilise the mob against anyone who sticks up for rights they disagree with.

Look at that disgraceful display on CNN where an hand picked audience of leftists hooted and booed Rubio and asked him questions like this

https://edition.cnn.com/2018/0...

KASKY: I'm sorry, I know I'm not supposed to do this, but I'm not going to listen to that. Senator Rubio, it's hard to look at you and not look down a barrel of an AR-15 and not look at Nicholas Cruz, but the point is you're here and there some people who are not.
And I need to ask two things of you. Number one, Chris Grady, can you stand up? This is my friend who is going to the military. I need you to tell him that he's going to live to make it to serve our country. And then we'll get to the other one.

Honestly looking at this I'd say the left need to be stopped. At all costs. The logic of what they're doing where laws mean exactly what they want them to mean regardless of what the actual words say and where it's all up to a mob handpicked to be 100% left is far more horrifying than some nutcase shooting a couple of dozen people.

And if that seems heartless consider Jefferson's attitude to violence

http://tjrs.monticello.org/let...

the people can not be all, & 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 a lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. we have had 13. states independant 11. years. there has been one rebellion. that comes to one rebellion in a century & a half for each state. what country before ever existed a century & half without a rebellion? & what country can preserve it's liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? let them take arms. the remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon & 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 & tyrants. it is it's natural manure.

And it's interesting how the left doesn't mobilise emotion when it's a crime that doesn't fit their agenda. E.g. illegal immigrants killing natives, Muslims shooting up a gay bar or committing a terror attack. It's not like they have a town hall in those cases where an angry crowd berates a Democrat Senator over immigration law.

Maybe the right *should* be doing that if the left are going to do it to push for their agenda.

Thomas Jefferson engaged in economic espionage against the Italians.
Which is pretty ballsy given that the Italians were rumored to assassinate your ass for that kind of behavior.

As Thomas Jefferson said: "When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty."

Good quote, but it's not Jefferson's.

To paraphrase Jefferson: "A government big enough to give you everything you want, is a government big enough to listen to your every word and track your every move."

Whether Jefferson said it or not, it's also important to note that, no matter how much power you foolishly cede to the government, you still don't get everything you want. To me, at least, it's not really clear that you get much of anything in exchange.

To paraphrase Jefferson: "A government big enough to give you everything you want, is a government big enough to listen to your every word and track your every move."

From TFA:

"Today’s professional Internet criminals work 9-to-5 days, pay taxes, and get weekends and holidays off. The companies they work for often have dozens to hundreds of employees, pay bribes to local law enforcement and politicians, and are often seen as the employer of choice in their region. Working for companies that break into companies in other countries is often proudly worn as a patriotic badge."

Tell me again why a submarine launched Tomahawk cruise missile doesn't suddenly strike that corporate HQ one day, killing everyone in the building and reducing it to rubble and ash? It seems that these people need to be reminded of who they're messing with when they declare war against our financial system.

The people who own the financial system are definitely not the people worthy of any sort of patriotic sentiment. There is a reason Jefferson warned us about this a long time ago, because even in his time, this system wasn't new.

Incidentally, two U.S. Presidents were killed by being shot in the head in public: Abraham Lincoln and JFK. What do they both have in common? They both tried to issue interest-free money directly through the Treasury department, outside of the control of private bankers. In Lincoln's case, they were called Greenbacks. In JFK's case, they were a representative currency (dollars backed by silver). I'm sure that's a total coincidence. After all, if someone tells you that a street thug might shoot you to take the $50 in your wallet, that person is reasonable; if someone else says that banksters would kill anyone to protect their trillions-of-dollars financial empires, well that guy's just a conspiracy nut, just like those guys who said several years ago that the NSA was spying on everyone, right? It's a good thing we're all above such tin-foil hattery!

Of course there's the more practical matter of whether it's really worthwhile to kill people and commit what foreign nations would call an act of war, merely because a few domestic corporations had shitty security since they failed to appreciate that the public Internet is a hostile network. Generally, we don't kill people for financial or other property crimes, and we aren't supposed to sanction them in any way at all without a trial (preceded by an extradition if necessary).

If you're going to pull an "America, FUCK YEAH!", please understand that "America" used to actually mean something, and in particular it meant we don't do certain things -- like punish people without due process -- just because more authoritarian nations might do such things. That was once the sort of thing we observed other nations doing, frowned upon, and considered ourselves better than. Believe it or not, the collective culture once valued the visceral satisfaction of swift vengeance less than it valued the sanctity of our founding principles. A good history book will talk about this, and the sad thing is, you would need one to hear about such things today.

the constitution is not sacred

It is not "sacred" because it was not handed down to us by a Deity. It is sacred in that every four years the incoming President repeats the same solemn oath to defend it.

Whatever "sacred" means to you, it is the law of the land. But it can be amended. For example, when we still believed in limited government, one that could not just order people around willy-nilly for The Greater Good, the prohibition of alcohol was done as a constitutional amendment (the 18th — less than 100 years ago!).

However, only a few decades later the same same government banned marijuana with a simple law — without obtaining the national consent by ratification of an amendment. The 10th Amendment was thus nullified.

a brilliant collection of people, but they weren't prophets

Well, they were. For example, the prediction of the growth of Statism was scary:

The natural progress of things is for liberty to yeild, and government to gain ground.

— Thomas Jefferson

and the point about it concentrating in large cities — especially accurate:

When we get piled upon one another in large cities, as in Europe, we shall become as corrupt as Europe.

— Thomas Jefferson

you do know where the Internet came from, don't you?

Yes, it came out of a military research project. I also know, where electricity, telegraph, telephone, radio, TV and rail-roads came from. We didn't need the benevolent guidance of government's omniscient bureaucrats for any of those, we didn't need it for the Internet.

Madison was wrong.

Well, he was "only" the guy, who was writing down the items, as they were discussed during the convention. Surely, he had some insights. Maybe, you — in the 21st century — know more about the intent of those ancient legislators, but you aren't sharing... You just flatly say "wrong" — like a good little tyrant you secretly wish to be... Sigh, as they say, Statists gonna state.

Other founding fathers such as Hamilton understood the General Welfare provision very broadly.

Some citations would be useful here... As well as arguments for why we should be taking Hamilton's opinion over that of Madison and Jefferson.

But, if he was really so good, why are you proposing we "cherry-pick" Hamilton's ideas — instead of also electing the top executive ("national governor") for life — and have him appoint state governors?

I, for one, dread the thought of how this country would've looked, had that sort of tyranny prevailed — Russia, where the presudent's tenure is de-facto life-long and where he is appointing local governments even de-jure, is a very close example, actually.

Moreover, I suspect, you would've hated it too — had you even known about the man, whose opinion on "General Welfare" you advocate. You are wrong — the interpretation of "General Welfare" pushed by the Statists opens up a whole to drive a freight-train through. This was, of course, obvious for centuries. For example, that same Madison said later (1794):

The government of the United States is a definite government, confined to specified objects...If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the general welfare, the government is no longer a limited one possessing enumerated powers but an indefinite one..."

Indeed, whether it is to ban speech, confiscate guns, perform warrantless searches, seize funds and property without trials, eavesdrop on citizens' communications — the government would simply need to claim, those are done "for General Welfare". It would be a dreadfully depressing country to live in... Oh, wait...

The part of your argument that everyone else finds silly is that you think that the power to throw someone in jail or shoot them goes away if the government doesn't have it.

But it does have it — and ought to retain it. It just must be made to wield that power less — much less. That is the Libertarian argument.

We wrote the Constitution — and, in particular, the Bill of Rights — to limit the government's power, but (and this was predicted) the Statists have been eroding the limits since then. Even the right explicitly declared in the Second Amendment as such is now considered a mere privilege, for example.

violent government is the only solution to violent anarchy

Strawman.

The fundamental conceit of libertarianism is treating individual rights as being more powerful and having greater primacy than the rights dictated by collective force.

Yes. Because the Collectivism is the direct cause of Fascism and/or Communism. Once you subjugate the silly, selfish, cantankerous Individual to the Glorious Collective, any and all human rights abuses become immediately possible. From forcing you to pay for somebody else's education, to forcibly changing your opinion on what the word "marriage" means, to the outright killing fields. As long as it is done for The Greater Good (a.k.a. General Welfare, as the Statists like to intrerpret US Constitution), it all becomes justifiable.

In this world, there will always be some group of people with guns telling you what to do. Deal with it.

I am dealing with it — by arguing for the reduction of this group's size and power. Both have grown alarmingly since the inception of our Republic. But I see, that you have picked your side already.

Rule of Law vs. The End Justifies the Means

But there is no particularly deserving end in this case. Nothing to justify the means with... Torture, at least, was claimed to prevent some acts of terror and even capture bin Laden.

Welcome to Police State 2.0.

Contrary to the "not really" you began with, Statism is the problem:

"If your government is big enough to give you everything you want, it is big enough to take away everything you have."

— Thomas Jefferson

In other words, if you want Federal government to give you "free" public schools, you'll have to accept Department of Education Police — along with the (not-) SWAT teams.

Encryption is a weapon. Like other weapons, it can be used to defend one's own self or someone else, and to commit murder. Like other weapons, it is dangerous and governments hate it like they hate all weapons — they make governing harder.

So, it is not surprising to see governments agreeing here.

What is surprising is to find other Statists — those enablers of the governments' mission-creeps, the lovers of taxes (with which they are "happy" to "buy civilization") to suddenly disagree.

Governments worldwide that are marching to fascism want encryption banned.

Encryption is but a tiny side-show in the global march towards Collectivism — the coin, of which Fascism and Socialism are indistinguishable sides. As predicted long ago:

The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield, and government to gain ground.

— Thomas Jefferson to Edward Carrington, Paris, May 27, 1788

It starts with concern for the poor, that inevitably causes the government to undertake support of the downtrodden with various "War on Poverty" initiatives.

A few decades and trillion-dollars into it, there are not only millions of recipients of the dole, there are also tens of thousands of government officials involved in distributing it. The combination makes it impossible to stop the foolish undertaking — it may be reformed and rearranged, but it can not be ended.

And then comes the idea, that, if we must support the unsuccessful among us, we should try to prevent them from doing (what we consider to be) stupid things: take drugs, drive too fast, eat fat (no, not fat, sugar!). Right here on Slashdot, the idea that our self-imposed responsibility for others allows us to control their actions, is alive and well.

And then government types begin to deliberately rearrange things to be able to attach their own strings to various incentives you can not refuse. The first example of this was, probably, the imposition of federal speed-limit by mandating, that States receiving federal Federal highway funds implement them.

The most recent example here is the federal take-over of education loans, which allows the Administration to better control, what the colleges teach and what students do. Because it raises the tuition costs so much, fewer and fewer students will be able to forgo such federal aid and will be forced to accept it — with all of the strings attached to them and the colleges they attend.

Compared to these aspects of the Collective increasingly controlling the Individual's life, use of encryption is of little to no consequence. Maybe, a new Republic in Antarctica, on the Moon or Mars will take the lessons of our errors to heart — the way our Founding Fathers studied those of the Romans...

The word you are looking for is inventor. A discoverer is someone who finds something that was there all along.

While I agree with your definitions and word choice, there's really a vague area between the two terms: did Thomas Jefferson invent a better plough, or did he just discover a mathematical shape that offers the least resistant when passed thru a soil aggregate mixture? Did Thomas Edison invent the lightbulb, or did he just discover a filament that emits light when electrified (and then discovere a way to protect it from oils or direct contact with fabrics by housing it in glass... itself the result of a discovery that treating sand in such-and-such a way results in a convenient transparent solid)?

In one sense, every "invention" is merely a discovery about a mathematical truth of the universe... it may be a mathematics that reaches deep into chemistry or the human mind (far past our explicit understanding). You could probably turn it around too and say that every "discovery" is an "invention", which seems intuitively correct for (say) a complex image-compression algorithm, but very incorrect for something like Columbus's "invention" of America. :O

me: i don't trust government. i also don't trust corporations

You are framing the question wrong. I trust both to be self-serving and greedy.

The problem is, a self-serving and greedy government official will use his existing powers to expand his control over your life and money. As Thomas Jefferson observed back in 1788: "The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield, and government to gain ground."

On the other hand, for a corporation — operating in a reasonably free country — the best way to riches is through providing services and/or making goods, that people are willing to pay for.

This is why I want this country to remain "reasonably free" — where the above-stated means of enrichment remain competitive.

why is there this irrational tribalism at work in the world where expressing an opinion against something automatically means i am for something else

Because certain things are exclusive of certain other things. Liberty vs. expanding government control is one example.

I meant the same thing he did — even if it is not immediately obvious to some. The two meanings are two sides of the same coin.

The government's power to regulate in the "good" sense of the word (that statists like the AC above have in mind) inevitably means the abuses I am talking about.

As a wise man said long ago: "A government big enough to give you everything you want, is a government big enough to take away everything that you have.".

Private business performing the duties of cops using a privately run intelligence network with no oversight or rules but lots of personally identifiable information to track people whom the state isn't even legally interested in, in order to sieze their assets and then keep a piece of those assets and form a major portion of the business's profit stream?

Seriously? You find the fact, that it is a private business to be the most offensive? A private business can neither arrest nor prosecute — much less convict anybody. They can not even seize any assets themselves. Their personally identifiable information (PII) about us is unlikely to be any less regulated, than what Google or Slasdhdot collect. If anything, they are more cautious than NSA is likely to be.

That said, it is quite hilarious, how the big government types — who usually support its ever increasing role in our lives (because "corporations" are evil) — still get turned off by the police — as if the Department of Education and the FBI are not from the same government...

No, the only scandalously wrong thing described in the article is the ease, with law enforcement's can seize our assets... And the most offensive part is that the authors aren't even offended by this particular aspect.

Consensus is the business of politics.

Exactly, darn it...

And yet, we are constantly bombarded with assertions that, though there are still perfectly valid debates in almost any other branch of science (dieting, economics, pedagogy, biology, and even computers — you name it — it is all in flux), the science of climate is "settled" and anybody doubting the line pushed by the governments must also believe, the Earth is flat.

And, for some reason, all measures proposed (and mandated) to solve the problems require the industrialized West to slow down, to not produce as much stuff, and to not enjoy themselves as much. And, for another mystery, all of the propositions lead to increased government control of both the industries and the individual lives.

Is it just, as Thomas Jefferson put it, "the natural process" of liberty yielding and government gaining ground? Or is there some foreign "help" leaning on Western academics to "settle" the branches of science, that would slow the West down and otherwise help the competing cultures prove, they aren't as inefficient as the history suggests?

Now imagine how many people could own a home and be out of poverty

redistribute their wealth and every poor person in the country would be set for life.

I'm sorry, I laughed so hard that Dr. Pepper came out my nose! Really? REALLY? Errrm, no.

Without discipline (and some help), they'd never make it. Go look up the "normal" people who instantly got millions -- almost half lost it all within 5 years. ALL. (And half didn't.) (*1)

Here are some fitting lines from (*2):

they believe success comes entirely from luck and chance. So [when] "set for life," they still don't understand success and end up losing it all

[Being given money] might put more money in your pocket, but it doesn't make you smart.

Unearned success rarely lasts.

I agree wholeheartedly with that last one. If you didn't earn it, you won't guard or appreciate it, and you won't be able to keep it going long-term.

Finally, take it forcibly from the 0.01%? Why just them? They're all mean, greedy, uncaring, smart, or lucky? Then take it from the 0.1% as well. But then why not the 1.0%? Or the 10%. Or, pushing it, the 100%? Who decides? You?

Yes, YOU. Individually. Don't rely on "someone else and their resources" to do it, YOU do it. I've been handing out small amounts of cash to people who beg for things, and then stopped. Why? I felt like I was being taken advantage of. So I started listened to what they were asking for and then immediately went and gave it to them. No government, no tax write-offs, no church. I don't do it all of the time, and I don't do to to everyone (I've given to whites, blacks, Hispanics, and Asians, if you must know. But they have to ask nicely, and they have to speak English.) Don't wait on a nebulous "them" to solve the problem; help directly yourself when you can. (*3)

Oh, it's a bigger problem? Then start a local group and give your personal resources and coordinate with other out-of-state local groups if necessary. Don't just gripe and take money away from the top 13% because you're the 14% and "that's where it makes 'sense' to stop." It's theirs to give away, not your to take away. And the Feds? They're trying to normalize everything and everybody, but the top of Mt. Everest does not have the same requirements as the middle of Death Valley.

After all, "A government big enough to give you everything you want, is a government big enough to take away everything that you have." -- Thomas Jefferson

1: Reference

2: Reference

3: I *know* I helped (just) at least one person get a job. He asked for some money to clean up for an interview the next day. I got him a shaving cream, razor, tower, toothbrush and toothpaste, mouthwash, and a brush at a nearby Dollar Store. It was all of $10. A month later I bumped into the guy again; he had gotten a (that?) job and was doing better

Malo periculosam, libertatem quam quietam servitutem

You're still perfectly able to not use cash, but why do you insist that the rest of us follow along?

What you THINK Jefferson meant doesn't amount to a hill of beans. It's quite clear from the entire quotation - in context, that he wasn't talking about guns.
http://www.monticello.org/site...

Riiight.

"Let them take arms" isn't referring, to, well, arms. Otherwise known as guns. Sure it isn't. I mean, really, it's got to be referring to people ripping the upper limbs off others and brandishing said arms. One wonders if they should hold such arms by the hand end or by the shoulder end. And if they should return any watches, rings, bracelets or other jewelry to the original owners of those arms. I mean, the original owners had their arms taken from them, so they wouldn't have a use for any such items any more.

ROTFLMAO.

What color is the sky on your planet?

What you THINK Jefferson meant doesn't amount to a hill of beans. It's quite clear from the entire quotation - in context, that he wasn't talking about guns. http://www.monticello.org/site...

Yeah, because a little killing is necessary, like a little eating.

Your argument by metaphor totally lacks any crucial flaws that reflect a complete lack of understanding. Good job.

Thomas Jefferson agrees it is necessary::

And what country can preserve it's liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to 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.

http://www.monticello.org/site...

"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." -Thomas Jefferson.

> You are basically advocating violent overthrown of the government, a.k.a. treason -

You do realize that Jefferson said this right?

  "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."

Which was interpreted to mean a revolution every generation:

  "God forbid we should ever be 20. years without such a rebellion"

Here is the full context:

"I do not know whether it is to yourself or Mr. Adams I am to give my thanks for the copy of the new constitution. I beg leave through you to place them where due. It will be yet three weeks before I shall receive them from America. There are very good articles in it: and very bad. I do not know which preponderate. What we have lately read in the history of Holland, in the chapter on the Stadtholder, would have sufficed to set me against a Chief magistrate eligible for a long duration, if I had ever been disposed towards one: and what we have always read of the elections of Polish kings should have forever excluded the idea of one continuable for life. Wonderful is the effect of impudent and persevering lying. The British ministry have so long hired their gazetteers to repeat and model into every form lies about our being in anarchy, that the world has at length believed them, the English nation has believed them, the ministers themselves have come to believe them, and what is more wonderful, we have believed them ourselves. Yet where does this anarchy exist? Where did it ever exist, except in the single instance of Massachusets? And can history produce an instance of a rebellion so honourably conducted? I say nothing of it's motives. They were founded in ignorance, not wickedness. God forbid we should ever be 20. years without such a rebellion.[1] The people can not 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 a lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. We have had 13. states independant 11. years. There has been one rebellion. That comes to one rebellion in a century and a half for each state. What country ever existed a century and a half without a rebellion? And what country can preserve it's liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to 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 it's natural manure. Our Convention has been too much impressed by the insurrection of Massachusets: and in the spur of the moment they are setting up a kite to keep the hen yard in order. I hope in god this article will be rectified before the new constitution is accepted."

[1] This sentence has possibly been misquoted as "every generation needs a new revolution."

* http://wiki.monticello.org/med...

You are on record as being rather firmly against private ownership of firearms. Frankly, I thought this extremity of anti-gun zealotry was a Republican myth, a straw man used to rile the rabble. I understand that people in less civilized territories will on rare occasion use guns for murder and atrocity, I am not aware of this impulse being a general hazard of gun ownership.

I'm from Alaska. All the people that I know who have guns have only ever used them for hunting. I'm less sympathetic to those who can acquire an alternate hobby besides shooting, but there are yet many places where hunting is a means of subsistence. I've known many people to bow-hunt, but I suspect if your dinner depended on your marksmanship you might prefer the more effective instrument. Does your plan involve screwing hunters as well as the millions of other lawful citizens?

Originally we are a revolutionary state, and I believe the People yet preserve the right to revolution. Furthermore, Mao was right about the origins of political power: violence is the defining characteristic of government. Do you believe that the 'tree of liberty' is no longer hematophagic? Else, by what means are we intended to obtain and keep self-governance?

Sucks you can't give references.

http://www.monticello.org/site...

The fourth Jefferson quote:

"To take from one, because it is thought that his own industry and that of his fathers has acquired too much, ..."

may not be one. It is found in a prospectus for a translation of Destutt de Tracy's 'Treatise on Political Economy' and may well be a statement of Tracy's views. If it does express the opinion of Mr. Jefferson, I'd be interested to know how Mr. Jefferson squared it with his unabashed support for progressive taxation, inheritance taxes, and other redistributive measures. From a 1785 letter to James Madison:

" I am conscious that an equal division of property is impracticable. But the consequences of this enormous inequality producing so much misery to the bulk of mankind, legislators cannot invent too many devices for subdividing property, only taking care to let their subdivisions go hand in hand with the natural affections of the human mind."

"Whenever there is in any country, uncultivated lands and unemployed poor, it is clear that the laws of property have been so far extended as to violate natural right."

And Jefferson talked about state's rights and free speech and limiting the power of the central government, but he bought Louisiana on his own authority and started prosecuting journalists:

Callendar's numerous exposes caused one of the most avid supporters of the First Amendment to secretly metamorphose into a prosecutor of the freedom of the press. Jefferson, the foremost advocate of man's right to freedom of speech and press, gradually transformed into its private enemy, urging state officials to accuse members of the press of sedition by the end of his second term.

http://www.monticello.org/library/pdfs/Elon2005Keough.pdf

fictional zombie problem

Well of course. I'm sorry, movies and games having people shooting and using a crowbar on threatening live people just wouldn't go over. That'd be like "anarchy of the strongest" or something.

It's not a person you're shooting, just a zombie who happens to just _LOOK_ like a person. And besides, he's the one attacking me, I'm just an innocent bystander who would just happily just ignore them -- they're the ones that started it.

And besides, zombies with all of their bleeding and moaning and shuffling and all look Nothing Like Us, forget about skin color or religion or anything else. They're dumb, offensive, illogical, not human, and they deserve to die. Again if necessary.


Gee, if you have severely limited food stocks with some controlled depot concentrations, you can replace "zombie infection" with "hunger" (you can be infected if you share too much food), the "survivors" with the "ones in control of the local food depots" (?the rich?), and the panic, fear, angst and suffering that the infected deal with along with the power, control, and angst feelings that the survivors deal with, and you've got a uncivilized, more violent Soylent Green

Oh, look: it's the news:
Zero
One
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Don't worry though -- remember, the ones in control over government are here to help YOU -- once they finish helping themselves.

And that's just human nature, that's pretty much what you can expect from everyone -- they take care of themselves and their friends, because -- they're friends. And the sad part is, I'm NOT against government at all -- especially ours -- I'm just again people in government with unlimited power and zero responsibility.

"A government big enough to give you everything you want, is a government big enough to take away everything that you have." ...and I'm only anonymous here because I'm too lazy to figure out my password -- I'll claim this accidental article shortly.

It's nice to be watched, why do you think so many religions around the world support the notion of an all knowing personal deity?

Christianity is the greatest surveillance state possible, a god that knows everything about you, everything you do online and off, past present and future, and has the power to make freak accidents and random yet not improbable events happen to you such that you will perceive them as signs of his blessing or that you've angered him. Yet despite this massive intrusion of privacy and personal security this god is the beloved object of affection for nearly a third of the population of earth, 2.2 billion people.

If the nanny state were the Orwellian nightmare that everyone pretends it is then people would be fighting it, but they're not because it's not. Crime is at record lows despite high unemployment, technology makes life comfortable for all classes and conditions of people, and quality of life is vastly superior today than even as short as 10 years ago. It's not that people are sheeple, as parent put it, but rather that people actually like the way things are. Take congress as an example, everyone loves their congressmen but congress as a whole is despised at historically low approval ratings.

This is not a flaw, but a feature. This is America working as designed. It just so happens that America was not designed for the massively large population of today. We need to revisit some of those 18th century concepts and ideals, we need to write better rules for how many representatives each state gets, maybe bring in a mathematician this time so everyone is represented proportionally instead of Montana's citizenry having multiple times the representation per person that a citizen of California has.

You wouldn't drive a 50 year old car to work each day in all weather, why would you govern a nation with a 200 year outdated rule book? The writer of the constitution, Thomas Jefferson, only meant for the constitution to last 20 years if you take him at his word in Jefferson's "Tree of Liberty" quote.

Status: This quotation has not been found in any of the writings of Thomas Jefferson.

He's thinking of this. Which contains the quote "God forbid we should ever be 20 years without such a rebellion". I'll leave the parsing and larger context of the quote up to you.

One you missed:

"Tyranny is defined as that which is legal for the government but illegal for the citizenry." -- Thomas Jefferson

That doesn't really make any sense. I don't think any reasonable... make that any sane person would claim that individual citizens should be able to own nuclear weapons, nor for that matter arrest people and hold them for questioning. I'm not going to call that tyranny.

The "quote" is almost certainly apocryphal even if it is popular in certain political spheres.

Quotation: "Tyranny is defined as that which is legal for the government but illegal for the citizenry."

Variations: None known.

Earliest known appearance in print: No known appearances in print.[1]

Other attributions: None known.

Status: This quotation has not been found in any of the writings of Thomas Jefferson.

"If the citizens are not vigilant, I fear we shall be frequently misquoted" --George Washington

And what country can preserve it's liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to 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 it's natural manure.

- Thomas Jefferson to William Stephens Smith, Paris, 13 Nov. 1787

How's Thomas Jefferson for you?
And before anyone claims I misquoted him:
http://www.monticello.org/site/jefferson/tree-liberty-quotation

The 2nd amendments is there so we can fight the government, not each other.
There are many other examples of this, and in some early versions of the constitution it actually spells out that the amendment is for defense from the government. But you can look all that up, I'm not here to do what you should have learned in highschool. Again, this stuff is cut and dry, obvious, everyone should know this. There is no real debate about what they meant as there are hundreds of letters they sent back and forth from each other while the writing was going on to discuss what should be in the constitution. If you want to change our guns laws, you have to change the constitution. Period.

Most bad government has grown out of too much government. - Thomas Jefferson

Whenever I see a quote like that attributed to Thomas Jefferson, I always [use a popular internet search tool] to find more often than not that it's simple right wing fantasy. Why am I not surprised, that it's fake?.

Here are some more things to chew on:

• All of our founding fathers spent their entire lives as politicians both during the colonial era and after the revolution. The idea that they were somehow 'afraid of government' is ludicrous.
• The idea that revolution was 'a bunch of farmers with their personal guns' is ridiculous, it was funded by state governments (Continental Congress) and supported by the French crown.
• Thomas Jefferson didn't write the Constitution, nor the bill of rights, as he was minister to France that entire time, he wasn't even on the committees. Was he really even a 'Framer'? Also, for all his views, when given the chance as a President he governed with an expansive view of both executive and federal power.

Never read Thomas Jefferson, eh? The man had it clocked from jump street.

We have no power to defend ourselves against the most dangerous criminal organization in the world, the US government.

The founding fathers actually provided us with such power. They enshrined it in the Constitution as the 2nd Amendment.

  "The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government." - Thomas Jefferson

Stay vigilant. Sounds cool. I'll bet you could work that up into a slogan or something! How about this: "Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty!" Catchy enough? ;)

http://www.monticello.org/site/blog-and-community/posts/eternal-vigilance

Wait a second...in light of Google's recent patent award of guilt by association, does this mean that as /.ers we're all guilty of conspiracy to incite a revolution (I mean, I'm no lawyer, but that sounds like it could be a crime).

Oh, wait, that shouldn't be a crime...at least not according to Thomas Jefferson.

``Laws that forbid the carrying of arms disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes. Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man.'' --- Thomas Jefferson

I'm all for the Second Amendment (I almost agree with the talk.politics.guns poster who opined that handguns should be sold in vending machines next to the cigarettes and booze), but that quote is pretty obviously spurious; the language is all wrong for the early 19th century. Hmm, a little searching reveals that it's not completely spurious; Jefferson did copy it down, but the words aren't his; they're from Cesare Beccaria's "Essay on Crimes and Punishments" (in Italian).

But you must explain why the south wanted slaves to count as 1 vote but would not have allowed them to vote. The founders were against slavery but knew they needed the south to remain in the Union. The document was specifically designed such that slavery would not survive and they knew this was the best that they would be able to do.

You are wrong 'they thought of their slaves as people when it came to being represented, but not people when deciding on their representation', this ignores the realitty of the time. I suggest you do some reading.

http://www.monticello.org/site/jefferson/quotations-slavery-and-emancipation

Oh and by the way, which party has supported more slavery than the other?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6iWmmTI8kY

Bwahahahahaha

The patent system was used by the King of England to reward his friends with monopolies

And so the founders included it in the constitution, because they were total fans of the King of England and his was of doing things.

Powerful people helping powerful friends is of all times. And e.g. Thomas Jefferson wasn't exactly a big fan of the concept of patents initially. That changed somewhat later on, but even then he never saw it as "little vs big guy" but rather as "help the interest of society".

> I mean, just look at the arguments of patent system fans. Half the time they'll say
> > Patents are required, because otherwise everyone will keep everything secret and all knowledge will be lost.
> The other half of the time they say
> > Patents are required, because otherwise everyone will immediately duplicate every innovation without the original
> > inventor being able to get any money out of it.
> While both statements can't be right at the same time, they sure can be wrong at the same time.

Sure, because everything written in absolutes is always intended as such.

And every statement can be qualified in a way that makes it potentially true. What people try or not is not the issue, it's what the actual situation is. It's simply not true in the digital economy that in general innovators cannot make money off of their innovation because other people immediately duplicate it. Just like they don't work in a vacuum, and should they have to pay a royalty to every single patent owner whose "innovations" they are "stealing" pretty much no one would be able to sell software at a profit except for the behemoths out there. There have been plenty of surveys and economic studies on these topics, a bunch of which I once summarised.

At the same time, given that pretty much no software developer ever looks at patents (and if they look at them, they're more likely to get a headache than inspiration), their disclosure value is not that great either. Let's not even talk about business method patents, many of which are disclosed by simply putting them into operation (it's hard to keep one click a secret). And then there's the point of network effects, where overall value and efficiency increases exponentially as more people/computers use the same standard to communicate and exchange information. Patents would have to offer really massive benefits to offset all of this overhead.

So by not writing these statement as absolute rules that somehow must govern behavior, but rather as expected strategies people will follow we can see not only how they can both be true, but how they are actually both accurate as they are already partially in play today (see trade secrets and GPL issues). The only difference is that we presently have an additional strategy of 'get a patent' which changes the game.

It adds red tape and leads to a tragedy of the anti-commons (because a patent does not guarantee that you, or anyone else for that matter, can make use of whatever you monopolised; it only allows you to forbid others from making use of that knowledge). Thereby it naturally leads to concentration of power, which in fact is readily acknowledged by and even seen as a positive evolution by certain people in charge of forming IP policy.

http://www.monticello.org/site/research-and-collections/vegetarianism says it was one pound.

At any event, pound or half pound, your implicit assumption that one cannot sustain a life of labor on a vegetarian or low-meat diet is classic English/American bullshit; somehow places without a beef steak as a national emblem do just fine with much less meat in their diet.

Pedometer I think is self-explanatory.

Hemp brake (for breaking hemp)
Moldboard plow (a better plow)
Sulky (a lighteight horse-drawn two-wheeled cart)