Jefferson and the roots of the 'liberty movement'

If Democrats and Republicans were ever truly interested in finding common ground, a good place to start might be with Thomas Jefferson, who was the co-founder of the fortuitously named Democratic-Republican Party.

Today’s Democrats traditionally hold themselves to be the lineal descendants of Jefferson’s party, which was seen as the common man’s advocate as opposed to the Federalists, who favored consolidated power and a national bank.

Today’s Republicans, on the other hand, find themselves sympathetic to Jefferson’s defense of individual and states’ rights, even though it was their “founder” Lincoln who created the modern system of a centralized government where more and more power has been federalized.

It may be the Tea Party movement which encapsulates Jefferson’s philosophy best in the modern era. Like the Democrats, it sees itself as the advocate of the everyday American. Like the Republicans, it promotes individual rights above all. And unlike both of them, the Tea Party movement stands with Jefferson in opposition to big government and centralized control over individual decisions.

As Jefferson wrote in his autobiography, “I am for a government rigorously frugal and simple. Were we directed from Washington when to sow, when to reap, we should soon want bread.”

 Alas, the time may be short to renew Jefferson’s philosophy before our entire system of bloated government collapses. Washington, D.C., has indeed taken over control of more and more of our decision-making, down to the most intimate details of our health care. The common people don’t like it, but the people in power DO.

So “We the People” stand in need again of a clear declaration of principles that will hold us firm against the encroachments of a tyrannical government. The Declaration of Independence, penned by Jefferson, is one such document, but another — considerably less well-known — is President Jefferson’s second inaugural address.

I researched that speech for my recent column on a prayer that had been commonly (and apparently falsely) attributed to Jefferson, and came to realize that many of the concerns of the Tea Party today were already worrying Jefferson in 1805. Moreover, the political environment in which Jefferson struggled to lead was as fractious, foul and fierce as what we bemoan today.

It is particularly Jefferson’s assessment of the relationship between the people, the government and the press that is eerily familiar —  if not actually prophetic — of the complaints being lodged today by Tea Party supporters such as Sharron Angle in Nevada and Joe Miller in Alaska.

If we could get both Democrats and Republicans to read the words of Jefferson today, far from the current turmoil over “Obama this” and “Palin that,” we might be able to generally acknowledge that the Tea Party movement transcends any one ideology and instead encapsulates the “liberty movement” that Jefferson was part of in 1776.

In his 1805 speech, Jefferson acknowledges his re-election and begins his list of accomplishments at home by bragging that his administration’s “suppression of unnecessary offices [and] of useless establishments and expenses” had allowed him to eliminate the nation’s internal federal taxes.

Imagine that! Cutting existing government programs, cutting government spending, and cutting taxes! Those are the fundamental principles of the Tea Party movement, being espoused just a few years after the BOSTON Tea Party.

But, of course, those who vilify the modern Tea Party movement argue that shrinking the government is cruel and malicious. The mainstream media caricaturizes those who raise constitutional concerns as kooks and crackpots, and riles up opposition with emotional distortions. How can we NOT have a Department of Education? Or Social Security? Or a prescription drug benefit? Or mandatory government-ordered health insurance? What will the poor people do?

Well, Jefferson didn’t think that it was the role of the federal government to control people’s lives, but rather to stay out of the way. That’s why, within 15 years of the country’s founding, Jefferson was already bragging about ELIMINATING government programs that he said forced We the People to “open our doors to their intrusions.”

He noted that this “process of domiciliary vexation ... once entered in [was] scarcely to be restrained from reaching successively every article of property and produce.”

Amen to that. Both taxation and regulation have proceeded apace in the succeeding 205 years since Jefferson spoke, to the point where the federal government is far and away the largest vexation not just in our houses, but in our businesses and our schools. No doubt, our churches will be next.

And if the Tea Party movement really stands for Taxed Enough Already, as some people say, then Jefferson certainly ought to be acknowledged as the party’s patron saint. He bragged about whittling away everything except a tax on “consumption of foreign articles,” and noted that, “it may be the pleasure and pride of an American to ask, What farmer, what mechanic, what laborer ever sees a taxgatherer of the United States?”

It need not be emphasized that such a question would be impossible to ask today. Jefferson obviously lost his battle to put the people and states first, and the federal government second. But we really owe it to ourselves and our children to study what kind of government the Founding Fathers tried to bless us with, and what we got stuck with instead.

Jefferson noted that there was a REASON why so few taxes were needed by the federal government — because its expenses were limited to only a few specific areas enumberated by the Constitution. He envisioned a time when even the federal tax on imported items would not be needed by the U.S. government and could instead be passed on to the individual states so that it could be applied by them to “rivers, canals, roads, arts, manufactures, education and other great objects within each State.”

This is important. Notice that it is the individual states which are responsible for their own roads and their own educational needs. Yet today we have a federal Department of Transportation which spends billions of dollars on interstate highways. We have a Department of Education that spends billions of dollars on who-knows-what. We even have a National Endowment for the Arts, which spends millions of dollars on subsidizing art that most of us would never spend a dime on.

So to follow up on question raised earlier — ”How can we NOT have a Department of Education?” — the answer is simple: Return the country to what it was intended to be by Jefferson, James Madison and George Washington — a collection of states protected BY and FROM a federal government that was seen as a necessary evil, not a welcome addition.

There is much more in Jefferson’s second inaugural address that sounds like it comes directly out of the Tea Party playbook. Here is a sampling:

• On the national debt: The limited taxes levied “may meet within the year all the expenses of the year without encroaching on the rights of future generations by burdening them with the debts of the past.” Protecting our children’s heritage has been one of the main themes of the Tea Party movement, whereas those in favor of a massive federal government like Paul Krugman want to create even MORE debt.

• On keeping the federal government out of our churches: “On matters of religion I have considered that its free exercise is placed by the Constitution independent of the powers of the General Government. I have therefore undertaken on no occasion to prescribe the religious exercises suited to it, but have left them, as the Constitution found them, under the direction and discipline of the church or state authorities acknowledged by the several religious societies.”

Notice that Jefferson distinguishes here between what it is right and proper for the federal government to do and what is acceptable for a state government to do. Many of our early states were set up under a religious charter, and both Jefferson and the Constitution understood that. It was the purpose of the First Amendment to keep the federal government out of religion, not to keep religious people from influencing government. The role of religion in our lives and beliefs should not be restricted by federal policies, period.

• On the national media distorting the truth for its own political purposes: “The artillery of the press has been leveled against us, charged with whatsover its licentiousness could devise or dare. These abuses of an institution so important to freedom and science are deeply to be regretted.” As if he were taking note of the slanderous coverage of the Tea Party movement itself, Jefferson laments the wide divide between the “inestimable liberty of the press and its demoralizing licentiousness.”

However, Jefferson remained an optimist, despite the attacks which he had withstood for the previous four years. His confidence in the American people outweighed his disdain for the press, which sought to destroy him as enthusiastically as much of the press today persecutes the Tea Party. Despite the falsehoods that he said had been told about him, he saw “harmony and happiness” on the horizon and predicted that truth and reason would “at length prevail.”

Let us hope that we can indeed rally around the words of Jefferson once again. Let us remember that it is government of, for and BY the people, or as Jefferson said in his FIRST inaugural address:

“A wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government...”