The Founder?

                *“The policy of the American government is to leave their citizens free, neither restraining nor aiding them in their pursuits.”- (would be laughed out of both parties now).

                *”Taxes on consumption, like those on capital or income, to be just, must be uniform.”- (would be laughed out of both parties today).

                *”If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.”- (huh? Dude, pass the Doritos!).

                *”What country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms.”…”The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of tyrants. It is its natural manure.”- (scary, violent right-winger!!!).

                *”I have sworn, on the altar of God, eternal hostility to all forms of tyranny over the minds of man.”- (take that ‘political correctness’!).

                *”The future inhabitants of the Atlantic and Mississippi states will be our sons. We leave them in distinct but bordering establishments. We think we see their happiness in their union, and we wish it. Events may prove it otherwise; and if they see their interest in separation, why should we take side with our Atlantic rather than our Mississippi descendants? It is the elder and the younger son differing. God bless them both, and keep them in union if it be for their good, but separate them if it be better.”- (Words fail me, I don’t even know how to express the staggering foresight, historical significance, and intelligence in this, one of the most stupefying and underrated quotes… of all time. Also, it is possible we here in the U.S. are approaching another defining conflict now, that would benefit from just such a studied, moral and reasoned response as this).

                What nut-job, right-wing, extremist, “Tea-Bagger” issued all these quotes?

                The man who is almost universally trotted out as the founder of the  Democratic Party! That's right, Thomas Jefferson. What a great scam! You can’t possibly get farther away from what the modern-day Democratic party believes. Jefferson thought the ‘Articles of Confederation’ gave the central government too much power!! His distrust of big and concentrated government was such that Ronald Reagan would’ve appeared a statist in comparison.

                That said, in the last days of his presidency, Ronald Reagan went to Jefferson’s University of Virginia to speak to students. Saluting Jefferson’s ‘transforming genius’, Reagan said, “The pursuit of science, the study of the great works, the value of free inquiry, in short the very idea of living the life of the mind-yes, these formative and abiding principles of higher education in America had their first and firmest advocate, and their greatest embodiment, in a tall, fair-headed, friendly man who watched this university take form from the mountainside where he lived, the university whose founding he called a crowning achievement to a long and well-spent life. Presidents know about this, too. Directly down the lawn and across the Ellipse from the White House are those ordered, classic lines of the Jefferson Memorial and the eyes of the 19-foot statue that gaze directly into the White House, a reminder to any of us who might occupy that mansion of the quality of mind and generosity of heart that once abided there…and has been so rarely seen there again. He knew how disorderly a place the world could be. Indeed, as a leader of a rebellion, he was himself an architect, if you will, of disorder. But he also believed that man had received from God a precious gift of enlightenment-the gift of reason, a gift that could extract from the chaos of life meaning, truth, order."

              Jefferson would abhor  the Democratic Party as it is presently constituted, with its big- government- is -the- answer- to -everything ethos.