The American Revolution Redux

Here is Thomas Jefferson on Rights, Liberty and Government:

"It is to secure our rights that we resort to government at all."
--Thomas Jefferson to Francois D'Ivernois, 1795.

"The idea is quite unfounded that on entering into society we give up any natural rights." --Thomas Jefferson to Francis Gilmer, 1816.

"Our rulers can have authority over such natural rights only as we have submitted to them." --Thomas Jefferson: Notes on Virginia, 1782.

"Laws abridging the natural right of the citizen should be restrained by rigorous constructions within their narrowest limits." --Thomas Jefferson to Isaac McPherson, 1813.

"A free people [claim] their rights as derived from the laws of nature, and not as the gift of their chief magistrate." --Thomas Jefferson: Rights of British America, 1774.

"The God who gave us life gave us liberty at the same time; the hand of force may destroy, but cannot disjoin them." --Thomas Jefferson: Rights of British America, 1774.

"Nothing... is unchangeable but the inherent and inalienable rights of man." --Thomas Jefferson to John Cartwright, 1824.

"That liberty [is pure] which is to go to all, and not to the few or the rich alone."--Thomas Jefferson to Horatio Gates, 1798.

"I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it." --Thomas Jefferson to Archibald Stuart, 1791.

"No one has a right to obstruct another exercising his faculties innocently for the relief of sensibilities made a part of his nature." --Thomas Jefferson to Pierre Samuel Dupont de Nemours,1816.

"No man has a natural right to commit aggression on the equal rights of another, and this is all from which the laws ought to restrain him." --Thomas Jefferson to Francis Gilmer, 1816.


"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with inherent and inalienable rights; that among these, are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness."
--Declaration of Independence as originally written by Thomas Jefferson, 1776.

How is YOUR government stacking up?

Mine either.

The question is, "What are we going to DO about it?"

The Gunslinger