Commonplaces from Liberty, State & Union: The Political Theory of Thomas Jefferson by Luigi Marco Bassani
Posted on January 26th, 2014
Chapter 1
"'Thomas Jefferson survives,' [John Adams] to be understood as 'The spirit of the Revolution is not dead'" p. 3
"Roosevelt's New Deal--the period in which federal government policy underwent the most radical transformation of American history, ditching for good a laissez-faire economic policy in favor of massive interventionism, affecting social groups in all walks of life" p. 6
"Jefferson and Hamilton, or liberty and coercion" p. 7
"Dumas Malone and Merrill Peterson, two of the greatest Jefferson scholars" p. 8
"The typical historiographical formula of the 'Progressive Era,' namely, the opposition between human rights (stated in the declaration) and 'property rights' (upheld by the Constitution)." p. 10
The idea of an "opposition between human rights (stated in the declaration) and "property rights" (upheld by the Constitution)" reminded me of Galt’s speech:
"Just as man can’t exist without his body, so no rights can exist without the right to translate one’s rights into reality—to think, to work and to keep the results—which means: the right of property. The modern mystics of muscle who offer you the fraudulent alternative of 'human rights' versus 'property rights,' as if one could exist without the other, are making a last, grotesque attempt to revive the doctrine of soul versus body. Only a ghost can exist without material property; only a slave can work with no right to the product of his effort. The doctrine that "human rights" are superior to "property rights" simply means that some human beings have the right to make property out of others; since the competent have nothing to gain from the incompetent, it means the right of the incompetent to own their betters and to use them as productive cattle. Whoever regards this as human and right, has no right to the title of ‘human.'
"The source of property rights is the law of causality. All property and all forms of wealth are produced by man’s mind and labor. As you cannot have effects without causes, so you cannot have wealth without its source: without intelligence. You cannot force intelligence to work: those who’re able to think, will not work under compulsion; those who will, won’t produce much more than the price of the whip needed to keep them enslaved. You cannot obtain the products of a mind except on the owner’s terms, by trade and by volitional consent. Any other policy of men toward man’s property is the policy of criminals, no matter what their numbers. Criminals are savages who play it short-range and starve when their prey runs out—just as you’re starving today, you who believed that crime could be ‘practical' if your government decreed that robbery was legal and resistance to robbery illegal."
Galt's Speech, For the New Intellectual, 182
I acquired the above referenced tome from Ken Sanders Rare Books in Salt Lake City along with Rousseau's Confessions over Christmas break with money Alysia gave me for Christmas.
"Jefferson was a 'Girondist'" p. 13, endnote 50 (p. 227)
"'That government is best that governs least" (actually not his own saying but adopted from the masthead of the United States Magazine and Democratic Review)" p. 13
"Jefferson was a liberal firmly rooted in the Whig tradition and also, from time to time, a forerunner of later views, such as Herbert Spencer's 'law of equal freedom.'" p. 14
"'Jefferson's idea of liberty was, in fact, very much in the tradition of what the English philosopher, Sir Isaiah Berlin, has called "negative" freedom. In this formulation the individual is free when he's completely exempt from the core version of other mental institutions.' [J. W. Cooke] Further, the author also takes Jefferson to task for some alleged gaps in his understanding of liberty, particularly the fact that 'men can become truly free only as a result of deliberate, self-induced effort to change the nature of their desires and aspirations.' Of course, such opinions may have a certain validity only if it is clearly understood that the terms 'positive' and 'negative' freedom are perhaps useful as a mental reference, but they by no means correspond to the theoretical framework of an eighteenth-century American Whig." p. 14
"The present work is, therefore, a sort of 'revision of revisers' and seeks to restore Jefferson to that foremost place among the classical liberal "philosopher-kings" that America bequeathed to the world in the birth throes of the Republic." pp. 14-15
"The aim of this work is a reconstruction of Jefferson's political views in the twofold articulation-the rights of man and states rights-that represents the core of all his ideas." p. 15
"Jefferson's real mentor was John Locke" p. 15
"[1]The work will start with the critical survey of the most recent paradigms of the historiography of the American founding era, in particular those spawned by the 'republican school,' which inevitably reverberate through Jeffersonian studies. [2] The argument will then move to natural law, property, the idea of civil society, and consensus building in order to demonstrate that Jefferson's thought was perfectly in tune with the ideas of Locke on every important doctrinal issue. [3] The last two chapters will place Jefferson within the political circumstances of his day, delving into his constitutional and doctrinal considerations on federalism and political representation." p. 15
"My thesis is that far from being a radical democratic theorist who made some concessions in the sphere of the rights of the individual, Jefferson was a classical liberal who believed that individuals were the best guardians of their own liberties and natural rights." p. 15
"Jefferson's theory bears all the marks of the liberal theory of government is necessary evil." (Michael P. Zuchert) p. 15
"the Whig political tradition ... Was understood by Jefferson as a body of doctrinal precepts that were to be found in the writings of thinkers ranging from Edward Coke to John Locke, but it was also felt to be enshrined in the Cato's Letters by John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon." p. 16
"Jefferson advanced a sort of radicalization of Lockean thought." p. 16
"a radicalization, in the classical liberal and libertarian sense-antistatist and individualist" p. 16
"'I shall not die without a hope that light and liberty are in steady advance. We have seen, indeed, once within the records of history, a complete eclipse of the human mind continuing for centuries.... Even should the cloud of barbarism and despotism again obscure the science and liberties of Europe, this country remains to preserve and restore light and liberty to them. In short, the flames kindled on the 4th July, 1776, have spread over too much of the globe to be extinguished by the feeble engines of despotism; on the contrary, they will consume these engines and all who work them.'" (John Adams, 1821) p. 17
"'We can no longer say there is nothing new under the sun. For this whole chapter in the history of man is new. The great extent of our republic is new. It's sparse habitation is new. The mighty wave of public opinion which is rolled over it is near.'" (Thomas Jefferson to Joseph Priestly, 21 March 1801) p. 17
