Current Events — HabitableZone

Current Events » in reply to "If you had told Jefferson that someday the government would be telling us....."

If the Founding Fathers saw who was running the country today
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They'd demand a new revolution for a new government, at the least.

"God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion... We have had thirteen States independent for eleven years. There has been one rebellion. That comes to one rebellion in a century and a half, for each State. What country before ever existed a century and a half without a rebellion?" --Thomas Jefferson to William S. Smith, 1787. ME 6:372

"The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it to be always kept alive. It will often be exercised when wrong, but better so than not to be exercised at all. I like a little rebellion now and then. It is like a storm in the atmosphere." --Thomas Jefferson to Abigail Adams, 1787.

"The government of a nation may be usurped by the forcible intrusion of an individual into the throne. But to conquer its will so as to rest the right on that, the only legitimate basis, requires long acquiescence and cessation of all opposition." --Thomas Jefferson to ----, 1825. ME 16:127

"[It is] the people, to whom all authority belongs." --Thomas Jefferson to Spencer Roane, 1821. ME 15:328

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