Jefferson's copy of the Koran in translation now at the Library of Congress

On July 20, 2010, the New York Times published a thoughtful essay on Jefferson’s lessons for relating to the Middle East Ted Widmer of the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University.  Says Widmer, “More than most founders, Thomas Jefferson has a way of returning to the news cycle.”

• Read Widmer’s Op-Ed piece at NYTimes.com »

No related posts.

30-second spot on Jefferson and Monticello being shown at the World Expo in Shanghai. Click image to enlarge.

Monticello has a 30-second film spot running six times daily on the huge outdoor screen at the U.S. Pavilion of the Expo 2010 in Shanghai, China.  The video runs daily through October and can seen by millions of Expo visitors.  The 30-second message was made with images from Monticello’s acclaimed introductory film. Subtitles in Mandarin Chinese include information about Jefferson, the Declaration of Independence, and a direct translation of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

Related

• Watch the 30-second spot on Monticello’s Facebook page

No related posts.

Jefferson’s brief infatuation with nullification was ignited by what he saw as a dagger to the very heart of the young republican government: The Alien and Sedition Acts.  To Jefferson, the acts were rank violations of the rights of individuals and of individual states.  They appeared as a “rod of iron” that must be “arrested at the threshold” before corrupted Federalists could destroy the fragile constitutional foundation of the young republic and reconstruct on its ruins a despotic monarchy with themselves at the helm.  Jefferson’s response, with James Madison’s help, was to call on the people of Kentucky and Virginia in 1798 to rise up against a national government that had clearly forfeited its legitimacy by threatening its fundamental constitutional forms.  Jefferson therefore saw nullification as the best way to reestablish the “beautiful equilibrium on which our constitution is founded” by restoring some semblance of balance in the complex system of interlocking levels of government that American state-builders concocted in 1787.

Modern would-be nullifiers appear to stand on less certain historical footing.  Officials such as Georgia’s insurance commissioner, a Republican who just happens to be in the midst of a race for governor, base their arguments on articulated opposition to the expansion of federal power and the prospective financial commitment of states to provide health care for their citizens.  Leaving aside Jefferson’s insistence that health is a more “desirable” and “lovely” possession than even knowledge, the arguments proffered by today’s states’ rights advocates–which seem to be based primarily on a distasteful blend of bureaucratic inconvenience and partisan posturing–hardly rise to the standard set by Jefferson in the Kentucky Resolutions.  To Jefferson, nullification was a resolutely necessary means of redeeming and defending America’s experiment in a republican empire of liberty, rather than a way to gain short-term political advantage and sidestep the cost of caring for the health of fellow citizens.  Far from being the heirs to Jefferson’s constitutional principles, the new nullifiers seem more like apostates from them.

Taylor Stoermer is an Invited Research Scholar at the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University.

No related posts.

… it is important to strengthen the State governments; and as this cannot be done by any change in the Federal Constitution (for the preservation of that is all we need contend for), it must be done by the States themselves …

No related posts.

the increase of [federal] revenue … hastens the moment of liberating our revenue, and of permitting us to begin upon canals, roads, colleges, &c.

No related posts.

As one of America’s most prominent critics of corporations, he would have welcomed the legislation’s curtailment of the insurance industry’s most egregious abuses, though he would also have worried about requiring citizens to purchase insurance from those same corporations.

But Jefferson may have supported using the federal government to increase access to health care. Jefferson is often mislabeled as hostile to government. In fact, he believed in active government at the state and federal levels when government activity promoted citizens’ abilities to enjoy the freedoms their rights protected.

Let’s take the economy. Jefferson famously celebrated the yeoman farmer but he did not expect farmers to be self-sufficient. Economic freedom required economic opportunity, and this took government. Government, after all, had to secure the land. This meant, first, buying the Louisiana Purchase from France in what might have been the largest government action in the nation’s formative years. Government then supported the diplomats and military that cleared the land of Native American and European powers. Government then redistributed the land to poorer Americans. But land alone was not enough. Throughout his career Jefferson advocated using federal monies to build the internal improvements-such as turnpikes and canals-necessary for farmers to bring their produce to market. In these myriad ways, Jefferson believed government could enhance individual economic freedom.

Jefferson would have applied the same test to health care reform as he did to other government policies. Does it threaten liberty? If so, Jefferson would oppose it. But if it better enabled citizens to pursue their happiness, Jefferson might have been its strongest proponent.

Johann Neem is associate professor of history at Western Washington University and author of Creating a Nation of Joiners: Democracy and Civil Society in Early National Massachusetts (2008).

No related posts.

National Public Radio reported yesterday on the adoption of the yellow “Don’t Tread On Me” flag by Tea Party activists.  They spoke to historian (and former ICJS research fellow and advisory board member) Joseph Ellis about the history of that flag and its symbolism:

• Text of and audio link to the NPR story.
• Bill Barker, portraying Thomas Jefferson, reads the famous 1787 letter to William Stephens Smith in which Thomas Jefferson suggests “the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”

No related posts.

• Coverage of the Texas Board of Education decision in the New York Times
• Jefferson on John Calvin from a talk at Monticello on Jefferson and Religion
• February 11, 2010, New York Times Magazine article How Christian Were the Founders?

Adding insult to injury the board inserted John Calvin, whose teachings and legacy Jefferson said “has introduced into the Christian religion more new obscenities than its leader had purged it of old ones.”

No related posts.

• Full text of Gov. McDonnell’s response
• Full text of Jefferson’s First Inaugural Address

No related posts.

Read more about the survey and its results.

No related posts.