More Wisdom from Thomas Jefferson

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How is it that the words of Thomas Jefferson apply to us as if he had written them today?

Was he a sorcerer? A soothsayer? A futurist? Did he posses a time machine?

No. He stood on the shoulders of giants to see the past as well as the future.

To quote Mr. Spock from the classic Star Trek: “If I stand on a planet with a positive gravity and drop a hammer, i need not see the hammer fall to know it reached the ground.”

And so this leads to what Jefferson wrote:

“We must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty or profusion and servitude.

If we run into such debt, as that we must be taxed in our meat and in our drink, in our necessaries and our comforts, in our labors and our amusements, for our calling and our creeds…[we will] have no time to think, no means of calling our miss-managers to account but be glad to obtain subsistence by hiring ourselves to rivet their chains on the necks of our fellow-sufferers…

And this is the tendency of all human governments. A departure from principle in one instance becomes a precedent for[ another]… till the bulk of society is reduced to be mere automatons of misery…

And the fore-horse of this frightful team is public debt. Taxation follows that, and in its train wretchedness and oppression.”

– Thomas Jefferson

Category: Tony Rollo Blog