Jefferson and the Press
“Where the Press is free and every man able to read, all is safe.”
I think if Jefferson was writing that today,
he'd include women too,
and if he did, I'm still not sure
the rest of it would be true.
Can the Press be free if it takes sides?
And what if the reading material
is largely composed of lies?
So today, with all of our advances and automated technology,
there's still something special, romantic perhaps,
about the simple way things used to be.
Jefferson and the Courts
“Courts love the people always,
as wolves do the sheep.”
Is this a criticism or critique?
It passes judgement, not on justice, but on justices,
although it may be justice that you seek.
Maybe it means, you can die in a famine or plague,
you could die defending yourself in a fort,
but if you don't want to die in jail,
you'd better not go to court.
Jefferson and the Rope
“When you come to the end of your rope,
tie a knot and hang on.”
That quote is attributed to Jefferson too,
and it sounds like something we all might do;
try and hang on or hang in there.
“At the end of your rope”
Does that mean we see so much corruption
in our government that we really have no hope
to improve it, to make it run well again?
Or maybe the answer is “yes, it'll get better,”
but we're not sure how or when,
so we just need to hold on and wait,
just wait, crossing all of our fingers until then.
Jefferson and Ignorance
“Those who expect to be both ignorant and free expect what never was and never will be.”
You just need to look around to understand
what that quote means.
We are now, in the twenty-first century,
surrounded by ignorance, by people who
do not know or care who their elected officials are,
and who can't recognize graft and evil
if it stares them in the face.
They do not care for history and don't realize
that what happened one hundred years ago
or ten or one can affect what happens today,
so they themselves may play a part in taking
their own or someone else's freedom away.
Jefferson and the Poor
“Man is the only animal which devours his own kind, for I can apply no milder term to the general prey of the rich on the poor.”
What can we say?
It was true in Jefferson's time and it's still true today.
It's mostly rich people who are running the country,
and they all know how to lie. They know that
we're willing to elect whomever promises
us the biggest piece of the pie.
Promising things is something they're good at;
it may be what they do best,
but delivering those promises is something else indeed...
harder to pass that test.
So they set up an entitlement where they make us pay
for things we'll get later on.
When we start to collect it, they'll take it away.
It's a Congressional right...Congress giveth,
and Congress taketh away. And the entitlement is gone.
So how do we remedy this? What do we do?
The obvious solution, the same thing the government does,
is to rob someone who's poorer than you,
but that’s not something I want to do, do you?
Jefferson and Tyranny
“All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.”
Here's another Jefferson quote that's as applicable now
as it was in Jefferson's day.
If we remain silent and do nothing, it infers that
we agree with the actions, as if we're letting evil have its way.
If something seems wrong, it probably is, so we should speak up.
Better to speak up about nothing and appear a fool
than keep silent about serious matters
or let a tyrant rule.
Jefferson and the Press #2
“The only security for all is in a free press.”
Some more words of Jefferson that sound good to say,
but do we have a free press today?
If you watch a t-v station or an app on your phone
because it reports the news the way you want it to be,
and verifies your political party's views,
then it's not a free press at all;
you're enjoying political propaganda, not news.