21st Century Jeffersonianism

21st Century Jeffersonianism vis-a-vis Libertarianism

2010-10-25T07:28:00.000-05:00

The libertarian ideal is that the individual should have the maximum amount of freedom, tempered only by an absolutely minimal amount of interference from government. Some libertarians go so far as to favor the abolition of the state entirely, while others believe that the only legitimate governmental institution is a minimalist judiciary to arbitrate disputes between citizens. Libertarians generally feel that the state has no business regulating the activities of citizens and that everything should be left to the free market.

In some ways, Thomas Jefferson leaned towards libertarianism. Intellectually, at least, he favored a minimalist state that interfered in the lives of its citizens as little as possible. As President, he shrank the government. In his struggles with Alexander Hamilton, Jefferson was the champion of local control against those who sought to increase and expand the power of the central government.

So, it is clear that there was a streak of libertarianism that ran through Jefferson's political philosophy. The same is true of 21st Century Jeffersonianism. We believe with the libertarians that the telos, the end towards which we strive, should be for every individual to have the greatest amount of freedom possible. To this end, we believe in a small government that intervenes in the personal lives of the people as little as possible.

But Jefferson, despite efforts by libertarians to claim him as one of their own, would never have gone nearly so far as modern libertarians do. Jefferson understood that, in addition to being a large number of individuals, society is also a collective whole that possessed collective interests, and that government is sometimes the only means to further those collective interests. As a state legislator in Virginia, Jefferson authored laws to regulate those activities of citizens which he thought needed regulation (smallpox inoculations, for example), and while he was certainly a small-government oresident, he would have seen any suggestion that the government be abolished as ludicrous.

The problem with today's libertarians is that they are, by and large, devotees of pure theory, rather than practical men and women who are willing to adjust their beliefs to the realities of the modern world. Some of them are indistinguishable from the most rabid religious fundamentalists, holding up the collected works of Ayn Rand as their Bible. And one of the lessons of history is that when devotees of pure theory are actually handed the reins of power, the results are usually disastrous. One can look at the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution, and the economic meltdowns that have resulted in innumerable countries from religiously-strict adherence to either socialist or capitalist economic philosophies.

If you want a real-world example of what happens to a society without a government, take a look at Somalia.

And then there's the fact that strict adherence to libertarian ideas of individual freedom result in the exploitation of individuals. Consider the case of Michael Clauer of Frisco, Texas. While serving as a National Guard officer in Iraq, bravely fighting for his country, his paid-for home back in Texas was foreclosed on and sold because his wife had accidentally missed a few payments to their local home owners association. She had been suffering from depression due to her husband's absence and had allowed the mail to pile up.

In the libertarian world, this is all a matter of property rights and the sanctity of contracts, and therefore it is quite fitting and proper for Clauer and his family to be kicked out of their home. But the conscience of every decent human being finds this revolting and, more to the point, feels that the rights of the Clauer family have been grossly violated. Surely, one of the roles of government is to protect citizens from being victimized by such exploitation.

Jefferson was, above all else, a man of the Enlightenment, who believed that human reason was the ultimate guide. This freed him from blind adherence to strict ideologies and gave him the ability to adjust his beliefs as to the best courses of action in light of actual circumstances. In this, 21st Century Jeffersonians follow their namesake. While libertarianism has many useful ideas that should be warmly embraced, following its theories to their ultimate conclusions would simply drive us off a cliff. For that matter, the same is true for modern liberalism and modern conservatism.

Legalizing Marijuana Is Basic Common Sense

2010-10-11T07:23:00.000-05:00

Sometimes, a public policy issue has an answer that is so ridiculously obvious that it astonishes a rational person that the question is even being debated. One of these issues is whether or not marijuana should be decriminalized. For 21st Century Jeffersonians, the arguments in favor of legalization are so overwhelming, and the arguments against legalization so weak, that soundness of the decriminalization is crystal clear. Policy-makers in Washington and the various states could immediately do the entire country a big favor by decriminalizing marijuana. This does not imply any particular endorsement of people using marijuana, but is merely a concession to reality and common sense.

The growth, possession, and use of marijuana was gradually made illegal in the United States via several pieces of legislation over the course of the 20th Century, culminating in the Controlled Substances Act of 1970. Since then, innumerable political battles have been waged over the issue of making it legal once again, often focusing on its potential medical uses. Federalism has also been an issue in the debate, with many questioning if the federal government has any right to regulate such matters, as there it is given no authority in the Constitution for doing so. All these disputes could be easily resolved if we took the simple step of legalizing marijuana altogether and just being done with the issue.

From a rational point of view, using marijuana is not much different than using alcohol. Although the potential for serious misuse obviously exists, most people who use marijuana or drink alcohol do so in a responsible manner that presents no threat to other citizens. Jefferson reminds us that the powers of the government "extend only to such acts only as are injurious to others." If a person wants to drink himself to death, that's very unfortunate but no business of the state; if a person drinks heavily and then get behind the wheel of a car, the act presents a threat to other citizens and the power of the state must then intervene. The use of marijuana should only be illegal when it presents a threat or causes damage to another citizen, and there are few cases where this occurs.

That's the constitutional and philosophical argument, and for many it is sufficient justification on its own for marijuana legalization. But even without it, we can clearly see that keeping marijuana illegal has so many negative consequences for our society that it's decriminalization should be made an urgent priority.

The so-called "War on Drugs" was declared by President Nixon in 1971. Forty years later, anyone can see that it has been an utter failure, for drug use in America has barely changed. Instead, we annually waste something like fifty billion dollars of both federal and state money and have effectively militarized many segments of our law enforcement institutions. If these financial and manpower resources were devoted to other tasks, which could easily be accomplished by decriminalizing marijuana, society would be much better off.

Even worse, roughly three-quarters of a million people are arrested every year for the nonviolent crime of merely possessing marijuana, significantly more than the number of people arrested for violent crimes. Of those arrested, tens of thousands are thrown in jail. Think of it. Tens of thousands of our fellow citizens, who have done nothing to hurt anyone at all, are languishing in prison because they committed an act that is, when you get right down to it, no more serious than holding a beer. It's something you might expect from Stalin's Russia, but not the United States of America. The moral conscience of every citizen should be outraged by this, and demand that the laws be overturned.

Beyond the moral argument is the fiscal one. It costs something like $60,000 annually to keep a single inmate in jail. We do easily do the math and discover that keeping incarcerated the nonviolent marijuana users that have already been arrested costs taxpayers something like $2.4 billion a year. Add onto that the savings marijuana decriminalization would generate from our law enforcement and criminal justice systems, and we are looking at tens of billions of dollars a year.

For that matter, if marijuana were decriminalized, it could be subject to an excise tax, just like those we already place on alcohol and tobacco products, and sellers of marijuana would have to pay income taxes on their earnings once the industry emerged from the black market. Billions of dollars a year could be raised through these means. All told, the revenue generated by a marijuana excise tax combined with easing the prison, law enforcement and criminal justice budgets would greatly ease the fiscal strain being placed on the federal government and all of the fifty state governments.

It's worth pointing out that, so long as marijuana remains illegal, the profits from its sale largely flow into the pockets of drug dealers and organized crime. Decriminalizing marijuana would not only be of great fiscal benefit to the public, but would strike a severe financial blow at such criminal elements.

To summarize, decriminalizing the use of marijuana (which, in and of itself, harms no one) would right the great moral wrong of having so many of our fellow citizens in prison from nonviolent, victimless crimes, as well as saving taxpayers massive amounts of money and generating additional revenue to ease the national fiscal crisis, while cutting off a vital source of revenue for organized crime. As far as public policy is concerned, decriminalizing marijuana is a slam dunk.

Congress should immediately pass legislation reclassifying marijuana as a non-scheduled controlled substance, putting it in the same category at alcohol and tobacco, while the various state governments pass companion legislation making it legal. The federal government and the state governments should then establish a reasonable excise tax on it. At the same time, the President should pass a blanket pardon to all prison inmates who had been incarcerated for marijuana possession. All this could be done within a matter of months, and it would make our society a much better place.

Senatos McCain and Coburn Release List of Ridiculous Uses of Stimulus Money

2010-09-27T07:30:00.000-05:00

Ever since President Obama and the Democratic Congress attempted to jump start the economy with their stimulus package early in 2009, Republicans have launched attack after attack on the measure. In doing so, they tend to overlook the fact that the majority of the stimulus consisted of tax cuts (long a Republican priority) and focus instead on the vast injection of federal money into the economy in the form of various infrastructure projects.

21st Century Jeffersonians are not Kenysians and generally distrust any government effort to guide the economy aside from enacting common sense regulations for certain economic activities. Whether the stimulus plan was successful or not depends on which economist you talk to, but there can be no denying the Republican point that a great deal of stimulus money went to projects whose utility is dubious at best and completely nonexistent at worst.

Senator John McCain (R-AZ) and Senator John Coburn (R-OK), perhaps the two biggest enemies of pork barrel spending in the entire Senate, have recently released a fasctinating report entitled Summertime Blues: 100 Stimulus Projects That Give Taxpayers the Blues. As the title suggests, it details 100 individual projects funded by stimulus dollars and raises quite obvious questions as to their usefulness for the country or their positive impact in revitalizing the economy.

Among the projects highlighted by the report:

$340,000 to plant plam trees in Fresno, California. If Fresno wants palm trees, shouldn't it pay for them itself?

$174,000 for researchers at UCLA to study whether retirement helps or hurts marriages, as if this is any business of the federal government.

$435,000 for MIT to develop a smartphone application designed to teach high school kids basic biology. Isn't that what biology teachers are for?

$1 million for artwork to be displayed at Los Angeles bus stops. We love art as much as anyone, but think there are perhaps better uses for a million dollars worth of taxpayer money.

$293,000 for Cornell University to study "dog domestication".

$713,000 for scientists at Northwestern University to invent a machine that tells jokes. If only it were a joke.

$1.2 million to market video games for the elderly, which isn't exactly a serious government priority.

And the list goes on...

Some of the projects are, in and of themselves, quite worthwhile and interesting. One item involved funding historical research on the legal structure of the Spanish Empire, which is certainly deserving of support but not the sort of thing that in which the federal government needs to be involved. After all, where federal money goes, federal control inevitably follows, and we should be very wary of placing our nation's humanities scholars in positions where the federal government gets to choose which research projects will get funded and which shall not.

Other projects, including various upkeep efforts at national historical sites (such as President Roosevelt's home at Hyde Park in New York) are also quite worthy of support. But shouldn't the funding for such projects be done through the regular channel of the National Park Service? Why make things more complicated than they have to be by dumping money on them through the stimulus? Similarly, there are some interesting scientific projects on the list, including one involving the study of weather patterns on Neptune. 21st Century Jeffersonians support, with certain qualifications, some government funding for scientific research projects. But again, why were these projects not funded through NASA or the National Science Foundation?

Truth be told, all this money may not amount to much more than a few drops of water in the vast ocean that is the federal budget. But that's not really the point. When we're facing a fiscal crisis that poses a far greater threat to America than any foreign enemy, every penny counts. Plus, the fact that every penny spent on these projects was either taken from a hard-working American taxpayer or, in effect, stolen from our great-grandchildren, there certainly is a moral imperative to justify its need.

Presidential War Powers Must be Clarified and Curtailed

2010-09-20T07:22:00.001-05:00

The 55 men who created the United States Constitution, for better or worse, left us with many provisions in the document that are ambiguous and therefore can be interpreted in a variety of different ways. In a few cases, however, there are rock solid declarations in the Constitution which are so clear and concise that they are not open for discussion. One such assertion is to be found in Article One, Section Eight: "Congress shall have the power. . . to declare war."

That's as clear as can be. Under the Constitution, Congress has the right to declare war. Not the President, not the Supreme Court, not the States, but Congress, and Congress alone. Of all the provisions of the Constitution, this one has been violated on the most systematic basis, and with the gravest consequences for the country.

Technically speaking, the United States has only declared war against other nations during five conflicts since the Constitution was ratified: the War of 1812, the Mexican War, the Spanish-American War, World War I, and World War II. Each of these, of course, were serious conflicts between the United States and either another nation or an alliance of other nations, and which were ended by the signing of a peace treaty with the state or states in question. These were wars that would have been recognizable by Napoleon.

Of course, between 1788 and 1945, there were literally hundreds of small-scale military actions, such as Jefferson's own naval campaign against the Barbary pirates in North Africa or the innumerable military operations (usually misguided and often entirely self-serving) to protect American "interests" in Latin American states. But none of these amounted to a full-scale war against another sovereign state, and Congress either voted their approval of the actions of the President or considered the actions to be generally beneath their notice. If an American warship sends a detachment of Marines ashore in a small country to protect the American consulate from a civil disturbance, it's not really something that Congress needs to get worked up over, provided that previously agreed-upon protocols are followed.

Since the end of the World War II, however, things have changed. On four occasions since 1945, the United States has fought full-scale wars against sovereign states: the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the 1991 Gulf War, and the 2003 Invasion of Iraq. The congressional resolutions authorizing military action in Vietnam in 1964 and Iraq in 2002 were based entirely on false pretenses (the alleged Gulf of Tonkin incident for Vietnam and the nonexistent weapons of mass destruction for Iraq). On two other occasions, in Grenada in 1983 and Panama in 1989, the President ordered the military to occupy small but independent nations. In 1999, a limited war was fought against Serbia. Each of these conflicts were initiated not by Congress, but by the President, with congressional approval only coming later and often only after a deceptive propaganda effort by the executive branch.

Since the end of World War II, the war powers of the federal government have steadily shifted away from the legislative branch and into the hands of the executive branch. We have entered an age when an American President has the power to launch the nation into a unilateral war. Such power effectively being in the hands of a single individual should chill the blood of all American citizens.

In the wake of the American defeat in the Vietnam War (which, lest we forget, cost the lives of 58,000 Americans), Congress passed the War Powers Resolution. This requires the President to notify Congress within two days of the beginning of any military action that such an action is taking place, and gives a 60 day window (with an additional 30 days for a withdrawal) for combat operations to last, after which Congress must approve of any further continuation o the operation. Most Presidents have paid little attention, and many scholars believe the resolution to be unconstitutional.

In the nuclear age, it may be that old-fashioned declarations of war have become obsolete. At the very least, however, we need a much more concise and comprehensive legislative clarification of Presidential war powers, by a constitutional amendment if necessary. Firstly, except in rare cases of responded to some sort of surprise attack, the President must be absolutely prohibited from ordering the military into action without congressional approval, even under the authority of United Nations resolutions (for although treaties are part of the supreme law of the land, as specified in Article Six of the Constitution, they cannot override the congressional authority to declare war, which is enshrined in the Constitution itself).

Secondly, any congressional authorization for the use of military force must have a set time limit, after which another congressional vote would be necessary for the President to continue the operation. The alternative is an open-ended resolution that would allow the President to continue military operations indefinitely. The 1964 Gulf of Tonkin Resolution was ostensibly intended to allow the President to retaliate against North Vietnam for an attack on an American warship, but it eventually was twisted into authorization for the deployment of a massive American army of half a million men, fighting in Southeast Asia for years.

Congress must reclaim its constitutional role as the branch of government responsible for deciding whether or not America goes to war. Had it not abandoned its responsibilities after 1945, tens of thousands of Americans who died in the wars in Southeast Asia and the Middle East might never have perished. While this issue has been swept under the carpet after President George W. Bush left office, it is still festering within the constitutional framework, and it must be attended to as soon as possible.

Reasonable Government Regulation Is a Necessary Evil

2010-09-06T07:06:00.000-05:00

In Jefferson's time, the everyday lives of people more closely resembled that of the ancient Greeks and Romans that modern society. It didn't really occur to them that government, on any level, should regulate much activity aside from coordinating trade, handing relations with other nations, and making sure the postal system worked. But even in Jefferson's time, the advance of scientific knowledge was beginning to raise difficult questions which, on occasion, required government to intervene.

Between the time he wrote the Declaration of Independence in 1776 and was elected Governor of Virginia in 1779, Jefferson served as a member of the state legislature. In this capacity, he found himself authoring a bill that regulated the activities of people who were carrying out smallpox inoculations, a new and wonderful procedure that helped to greatly reduce the scourge of the dreaded disease.

The problem was that there were no rules governing who could perform smallpox inoculations or how the procedures should be done. Literally anyone could show up in a town, claim to be a doctor, and start performing the procedures, even if they had not the slightest idea of what were doing. It might be a reputable physician, it might be a well-meaning idiot, or it might be a fraudulent scoundrel who couldn't care less that his activities actually caused become to die of smallpox, so long as he got his money and left town fast.

In order for this kind of problem to be solved, society needed some sort of judge to determine who could and couldn't carry out smallpox inoculations, and how they had to be done. Ideally, individual citizens should do this themselves, but in practice this wouldn't work, because the average Virginian had not the slightest clue as to what smallpox inoculation worked or what it involved. There was only one conceivable answer, and that for the Virginia state government to regulate the practice.

Jefferson, of course, didn't like the idea of government intruding into people's lives, but in such cases as this there simply was no alternative. Failing to have the state government regulate smallpox inoculations would have allowed incompetent and fraudulent practitioners to run amok all over Virginia and cause misery. While it is obvious that the activities of government must always be carefully monitored and strictly limited, it is equally obvious that there are cases in which government intervention is both necessary and desirable.

This fact is even more true for us, as we live in a world vastly more complex than that which Jefferson inhabited. In a time of rapidly advancing science and technology, of instantaneous communications and swift transportation, we must face the question of whether to allow government to intervene much more often than Jefferson did. As the power of humanity expands to heights that would have appeared magical to people of the late 18th Century, we now have the ability to solve human problems that would have astonished our forebears. But with this power come difficult questions regarding the role of government in our lives.

In December of 2003, within less than a week, two equally powerful earthquakes, measuring roughly 6.6 on the Ritcher scale, struck on opposite sides of the world. One hit in California, where it caused some property damage and killed two people. The other struck in southern Iran, where it completely obliterated the town of Bam and killed more than 25,000 people. A major part of the reason for the difference in damage and casualties was that government regulations regarding building codes were in place in California, but were not in Iran.

Since the beginning of 2010, two events in the United States have highlighted the need for reasonable government regulation: the Upper Big Branch coal mine disaster in West Virginia and the Deep Water Horizon Oil Spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Both were tragedies that cost human lives, and the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has left the region environmentally devastated. In both cases, the disasters could have been avoided had the regulatory standards already in place been properly enforced.

The Deepwater Horizon oil spill also could have been rendered much less damaging had the United States adopted a common sense regulation used by our neighbors in Canada. By law, Canadian offshore oil drillers are required to simultaneously drill relief wells to a near-complete level as they drill their main well, so that in the event of a rupture of the main well, the relief well can quickly be used to stop the damage. Because there was no such regulation in the United States, BP didn't start drilling its relief well until after the leak had begun, resulting in months of uncontrolled erupting of oil into the ocean. Only the most dogmatic members of the Libertarian Party would sincerely assert that we would not be better off had the United States adopted the same rule as Canada before BP started drilling its well.

In a complex world, a reasonable level of government regulation is a necessary evil. The trick is to choose very carefully which areas should be open to government regulation, and then choose very carefully the level of government intervention to be allowed. Certain areas should be completely off-limits to government intervention altogether, and even when we make the decision to allow a role for goverment regulation, we should keep it to the absolute minimum necessary to achieve the required aims. Once the door to government regulation is open, it must citizens must monitor it like a hawk to ensure that the regulation in question does not expand past that point, and terminate it immediately when it is no longer necessary.

The current level of federal regulations is patently ridiculous and intrudes into far too much into the ordinary lives of citizens. In particular, it expands the power of the federal government into areas that are the proper responsibility of state and local governments. Rolling back this tide will be a major task for 21st Century Jeffersonians in the 21st Century.

It would be nice to go back to Jefferson's time in which there was so little need for government intervention that a person might live their entire life without encountering the federal government, or even the state government. But that's not possible, because we no longer live in Jefferson's world. Our task, therefore, is not to abolish government, but to make government the servant, rather than the master, of the people.

The Fair Elections Now Act

2010-08-30T07:24:00.000-05:00

Common Cause is one of the most Jeffersonian organizations in the United States today, laboring against heavy odds to reduce the influence of corporate money in elections and seeking to obtain fundamental reforms in the American electoral system in order to increase democracy. If Jefferson were alive today, he would undoubtedly be a card-carrying, dues-paying member of Common Cause.

Teaming up with another excellent organization, Public Campaign, Common Cause is now pushing a national effort to get a piece of legislation called the Fair Elections Now Act enacted into law. The Fair Elections Act would create a system of public financing for federal elections, similar to programs already working with great effectiveness in many of the states. Under the envisioned law, candidates for federal office who agree to accept only donations of $100 or less (therefore eliminating the influence of massive corporate contributions of thousands of dollars) would get $400 in federal matching grants for every $100 raised.

This bill is being sponsored in the House of Representatives by Congressman John Larson (D-CT) and Congressman Walter Jones (R-NC), and in the Senate by Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL). These legislators are to be congraulated for their Jeffersonian efforts to limit the influence of corporate money on our electoral process.

The influence of corporate money on federal elections is an acid eating away at American democracy, and it is only going to get worse in the wake of the disastrous Supreme Court decision in Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission, which this blog has already discussed. A Jeffersonian republic can only exist if the ideal of "one-citizen-one-vote" exists in actual fact, as opposed to being merely in theory. Technically-speaking, the richest citizen and the poorest citizen each have the same voting power on election day, but anyone who clains that the rich do not have a greater ability to influence the American political process as the poor are either deluding themselves or are outright lying (most likely the latter).

The Fair Elections Now Act would not be a silver bullet that would completely solve the problem, but it would be a big step in the right direction. All 21st Century Jeffersonians should rally around the legislation. They should communicate their strong support of it to their own representatives in the House and Senate, write letters to the editor, and do anything they can think of to help get it enacted into law.

Congress Considers Legalizing, and Taxing, Online Gambling

2010-08-16T07:55:00.000-05:00

This New York Times story makes for some interesting reading. Many members of Congress are pushing legislation that would overturn the 2006 ban on online gambling. A major rationale for this effort is the fact that legalizing online gambling would allow the federal government to implement a tax on the activity, thus helping to alleviate the fiscal crisis our country is currently facing.

There is considerable opposition to the move, however, particularly from Republicans that have ties to the Religious Right, which traditionally supports government efforts to ban gambling. It will likely be a difficult fight to get the legislation passed. Nevertheless, lifting the ban is sound public policy and should be done as soon as possible.

Government efforts to prohibit gambling stem from a personal belief among certain groups that gambling is inherently immoral. This ignores the obvious fact that it is not the government's job to enforce public morality. Citizens can hold a wide variety of opinions about the ethics of gambling, but it should not be the government's responsibility to police such activities. We might as well speak of the government passing laws to prohibit lying or the use of profanity.

Furthermore, the 2006 ban on online gambling has been completely ineffective. It prohibits American financial institutions from transferring funds to and from online gambling establishments, but this merely resulted in driving it into the underground economy and did little or nothing to actually stop Americans from using online gambling sites. According to the article, Americans annually spend upwards of $6 billion on online gambling sites. As with the efforts to ban alcohol during Prohibition, and modern efforts to ban to the use of marijuana, such government measures are always doomed to failure.

Indeed, the only real impact such government bans have had is to deny the excise tax revenue that would otherwise be obtained from such activities. Estimates suggest that the federal government could derive $42 billion over the next decade from taxes on online gambling. This may not be all that much when set against the magnitude of the fiscal crisis, but it's $42 billion closer to a solution.

Ultimately, the long-term solution to our budget problems will involve a massive downsizing of the federal government and a less intrusive taxation system than the one which currently exists. A major aspect of a truly Jeffersonian tax policy will be the use of excise taxes on specific products and activities. Online gambling is the kind of activity crying out for an excise tax, and the first step towards obtaining it is, obviously, legalizing it in the first place.

Leo Szilard's Question

2010-08-06T08:57:00.004-05:00

Today is the 65th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima. Fittingly, for the first time, the United States ambassador to Japan is participating in the memorial service being held in the city.

Leo Szilard was one of the great physicists of the 20th Century, and played a critical role in the Mahatten Project. But he strongly opposed the use of the atom bomb on Japanese cities, not only because he objected to the mass slaughter of civilians, but because he (quite correctly) predicted that the actual use of the weapon would lead to a nuclear arms race with Russia, raising the very real and disturbing possibility of the destruction of human civilization itself.

In a 1960 interview, Szilard put forward a question that every American should ask themselves whenever they consider the moral implications of our use of nuclear weapons against Japan in 1945.

"Suppose Germany had developed two bombs before we had any bombs. And suppose Germany had dropped one bomb on, say, Rochester and the other on Buffalo, and then having run out of bombs she would have lost the war. Can anyone doubt that we would have defined the dropping of atomic bombs on cities as a war crime, and that we would have sentenced the Germans who were guilty of this crime to death at Nurnberg and hanged them?"

It's a good question.

California's Proposition 8 Ruled Unconstitutional

2010-08-04T16:42:00.002-05:00

In a sweeping decision that could change the landscape of the gay marriage debate, a federal judged in California has ruled that Proposition 8, the controversial initiative that had banned same-sex marriage, is unconstitutional. Finding no clear reason for same-sex couples to be denied marriage rights, U.S. District Vaughn Walker ruled that the proposition violated the Equal Protection and Due Process clauses of the Constitution by denying gays and lesbians the same rights as other citizens.

This is a very good decision. It is true that Proposition 8 was, disappointingly, approved by a majority of the voters in California. But this is a classic case of the Enlightenment truth, which must be held sacred in a Jeffersonian republic, that the tyanny of the majority has no right under natural law to deny any minority group their basic human rights, including the right to marry whomever they want.

This decision is certain to be appealed, and may eventually go all the way to the Supreme Court. We're only in the opening stages of what will be a long and bloody judicial battle. But for now, it's time to celebrate a victory for equal rights.

New START Vote Delayed

2010-08-04T08:54:00.003-05:00

Senator John Kerry (D-MA), Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has delayed a committee vote on the New START nuclear reductions agreement with Russia, which was supposed to take place today. Although the votes were there to get the treaty out of committee, Kerry has said he wants to give his Republican colleagues more time to go over the agreement. This may help in winning skeptical Republicans over to the pro-ratification side of the table, but, it also moves the time table for the floor vote on the treaty dangerously close to the mid-terms elections, when senators are likely to be reluctant to stick their necks out.

The New START agreement is critically important. It will reduce the number of deployed American and Russian nuclear warheads by about 30% and institute a rigorous inspection and verification system. Because the last nuclear arms control treaty expired at the end of last year, there is currently no agreement legally in place between the United States and Russia governing nuclear weapons, and there won't be until this treaty is ratified.

The New START agreement is something that everyone needs to keep their eyes on for the next few months. It's a vital step in nuclear weapons reduction, and should be warmly supported by everyone.

Withdrawal From Iraq Proceeding According To Plan

2010-08-03T12:29:00.001-05:00

Yesterday, President Obama announced that the United States is on track to officially wrap up its combat mission in Iraq on August 31. When he took office, there were 144,000 American troops in Iraq. Now, a year-and-a-half later, there are only around 50,000. These remaining troops will serve as a transition force, continuing to train Iraqi forces and protecting American faciltiies until a final, complete withdrawal takes place sometime next year.

While declaring an end to the official combat mission is something of a semantical nuance in light of the fact that 50,000 American troops will remain in Iraq, there can be no denying that this is a significant foreign policy achievement. As this blog has pointed out in the past, the Iraq War was an enormous error on the part of the United States, and ending the war was a major part of Obama's presidential campaign platform. That he has thus far succeeded is greatly to his credit.

21st Century Jeffersonians believe, as a matter of principle, that the United States should have as little to do with the Middle East as possible. It is good that we are winding up this unncessary war, which should never have happened in the first place. What happens in Iraq now is up to the Iraqis.

Thoughts on the Proposed NYC Islamic Community Center Near Ground Zero

2010-08-02T07:41:00.007-05:00

One of the cornerstones of American life has always been religious liberty. In our country, everyone has to right to follow their own spiritual path (or none at all, if that it what they choose) and the government has absolutely no right whatsoever to interfere in the religious lives of citizens. America was the first society in the world to guarantee religious freedom for its people, and it has served as a beacon to other nations to follow in our example.

Thomas Jefferson himself was perhaps the single most important individual in creating this pillar of American life, striking one of the decisive historical blows for religious freedom with his Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom. This ground-breaking piece of legislation separated church and state in Virginia and served as a model for similar efforts elsewhere. It also helped inspire James Madison when he wrote the Establishment Clause to the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, which separated church and state throughout the nation. Fittingly, Jefferson asked in his will that the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom be one of only three achievements listed on his tombstone.

Regrettably, many Americans in our time seem to believe that religious liberty should apply only to their own religion, and not to others. Many unscrupulous politicians, particularly those allied to the Religious Right, are always on the lookout for some otherwise innocuous event that they can exploit in an attempt to whip up such bigotry, and they have recently found one in the proposed construction of an Islamic community center (not a mosque, as has been frequently reported in the media) in southern New York City. Called the Cordoba House, it will not be very far from the where the World Trade Center stood before it was destroyed in the 9/11 attacks.

The Cordoba House sounds like exactly the kind of community center that southern Manhatten needs more of. It will have a performing arts center, a restaurant, a pool, and various other ammenities. All of its facilities will completely open to the public, regardless of religious affiliation (rather like a YMCA). The project's organizers have met all the construction criteria, have all the necessary licenses, have jumped through all the necessary regulatory hoops, and have received the unanimous support of the local neighborhood council.

For the past few months, several right-wing political figures, including potential presidential candidates Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich, have been viciously attacking the proposed Islamic community center and calling upon city authorities to block its construction (Palin, for her part, calls on people to "refudiate" the plan, even though "refudiate" is not a word). They argue that the Islamic center is somehow an attack on America. In Gingrich's words, "America is experiencing an Islamist cultural-political offensive designed to undermine and destroy civilization." This kind of pandering to religious prejudice in order to garner political support is the most immoral sort of demagoguery and should be rejected by all Americans.

Gingrich, who apparently doesn't care much for the religious freedoms enshrined in the First Amendment, has suggested that we not allow the Islamic community center to be built until Saudi Arabia allows churches to be built in its territory. Taking his logic to its obvious conclusion, we should not allow any mosques to be built anywhere in the United States, thus making a mockery of the American ideal of religious freedom. And suggesting that we become more like the most religiously repressive nation on the planet is simply insane. We are, after all, supposed to be better than they are.

In Houston, conservative talk radio host Michael Berry stated his opinion that if the Islamic community center is built, someone should blow it up. Had any talk radio personality in the nation advocated blowing up a church or a synagogue, he would have immediately been taken off the air. Michael Berry, however, has apparently not received even the slightest reprimand for his advocacy of violence. This is all the more disturbing when we consider the fact that someone set off a powerful pipe bomb at a mosque in Jacksonville, FL, on May 10, which exploded just before people were to arrive for evening prayer; local authorities say it was only sheer luck that no one was killed.

There are some who contend that the building of the community center is somehow an insult to those who died on 9/11. These people, whatever their motives, are allowing their emotions to get the better of them and are losing their sense of perspective. Only an ignorant person would see the terrorists who carried out the 9/11 attacks as genuinely representative of the world's one billion Muslim people. The Cordoba House project is a manifestation of the kind of moderate and inclusive Islam that stands against the terrorists and their ilk, and which we should encourage rather than reject. For what it's worth, the project will include a memorial to the people who died in the 9/11 attacks, which included, lest we forget, many innocent Muslims.

The blatant anti-Muslim bigotry the center's opponents display should have absolutely no place in America. It is a self-evident fact that religious freedom applies equally to all people without a single exception. This being the case, the construction of an Islamic community center should be no more a cause for controversy than the construction of a YMCA center or a JCC building. After all, there are well over half a million Muslims living in New York City, and they have as much right to create community centers as anybody else.

The Cordoba House (and the organization behind it, the Cordoba Initiative) is aptly-named. It is a reference to the Spanish city of Cordoba, which, during the Middle Ages, was an oasis of peace, tolerance and mutual understanding between Christians, Jews, and Muslims, each of which made up a significant portion of the city's population. At its height, which lasted centuries, Cordoba was one of the glories of human civilization, with extraordinary achievements in philosophy, science, medicine, poetry, music, architecture, and many other fields of human endeavour. The purpose of the Cordoba House seeks to reclaim this legacy of religious tolerance by encouraging understanding between Muslims and non-Muslims. By doing so, it hopes to improve inter-religious harmony in New York City and beyond.

As Imam Feisel Abdul Rauf, chairman of the Cordoba Initiative, stated in an op-ed piece he published in the New York Daily News to respond to the attacks on the project:

I have been the imam at a mosque in Tribeca for 27 years. I am as much a part of this community as anyone else. Our mosque is as much a part of the neighborhood as any church, synagogue, or surrounding business. My work is to make sure mosques are not recruiting grounds for radicals.
To do that, Muslims must feel they are welcome in New York. Alienated people are open to cynicism and radicalism. Any group that believes it is under attack will breed rebellion. The proposed center is an attempt to prevent the next 9/11.

Many opponents of the project have taken to launching ad hominem attacks on Imam Feisel Abdul Rauf himself, attempting to portray him as some sort of Al Qaeda sympathizer, when in truth he is the complete opposite. Such ad hominem attacks are not only unethical and unfair, and demonstrate a shocking ignorance about Islam, but also prove that the opponents of the project have no valid arguments on which to rest their case.

It is a shame that when moderate Muslims in America step forward in a spirit of brotherhood, they are greeted with scorn and hatred. Thankfully, the Cordoba House project has received considerable support from both Christian leaders and Jewish leaders, as well as New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. It is planned that the center's board of directors include Christian and Jewish representatives as well as Muslims. We can only hope that the project will soon receive the full and fair approval that it deserves. If the proposal is rejected, then anti-Muslim bigotry will have won, and religious liberty in America will have suffered a setback.

Thomas Jefferson, needless to say, would had absolutely no problem with the project and would have considered its opponents immoral demagogues. He was actually interested in Islamic culture and, out of intellectual curiosity, purchased a copy of the Koran as a young man. To Jefferson, reading the Koran was an obvious part of making himself more educated about the world in which he lived. Interestingly, it was on Jefferson's copy of the Koran, borrowed from the Library of Congress for the occasion, that Congressman Keith Ellison, the first Muslim elected to Congress, swore his oath of office when he took his seat in early 2007.

21st Century Jeffersonians should unhesitatingly support the Cordoba House project, and all others like it. Our vision of a Jeffersonian republic is one in which all people enjoy equal religious freedom, and where no one religious viewpoint enjoys any special privileges or advantages over other viewpoints. The bigots who try to exploit religious differences among citizens purely for political advantage should be decisively rejected, and all activities that encourage deeper understanding between peoples of different religious backgrounds and traditions should be encouraged. That, clearly, is what Jefferson would want.

Why Does the First Lady Have a Staff?

2010-08-01T19:16:00.003-05:00

Here's a very minor, almost completely unnoticed news story: Camile Johnston, the communications director for First Lady Michelle Obama, is leaving her position to pursue a job in the private sector. Johnston had also been Tipper Gore's communications director during her time as First Lady.

Not a big deal at all, but it begs a question: why does the First Lady have a communications director? For that matter, why does the First Lady need a staff of any kind? I'd have to double check, but I'm fairly certain that Abigail Adams didn't have a communications director, much less a full-time staff.

(Please note that I am not trying to pick on Michelle Obama in particular. I'm sure that Laura Bush and Nancy Reagan also had unnecessary staffs.)

As I pointed out in yesterday's post about the media circus surrounding Chelsea Clinton's wedding, it is wrong to think about the President as anything more than a public servant there to get a job done. The President's family should not be seen as any more important than any other family in the nation, and the spouse of the President should not have to fulfill any particular duties that would otherwise interefere with his or her professional or family life.

Furthermore, it doubtless costs a hefty amount of money for the annual upkeep of the First Lady's unnecessary staff, particularly in terms of the salaries of its members. While it's obviously a very small drop of water in the massive ocean that is the federal budget, in a time of fiscal crisis, every penny counts.

Cluster Munitions Treaty Enters Into Force, But America Still Not Signed On

2010-08-01T07:01:00.004-05:00

Today is a day for celebration among those who desire a more peaceful world. Having been ratified by the required number of nations, the international treaty known as the Convention on Cluster Munitions entered into force today, marking the culmination of years of effort by activists and diplomats across the planet. The treay, negotiated in Dublin in late 2008, bans signators from using, producing, or stockpiling cluster bombs. To date, it has been signed by 107 countries, adn the ratification process has been completed in 38 countries.

Cluster bombs have been a scourge on humanity ever since they were first developed. Because they scatter small bomblets over wide areas, it is difficult and in many cases impossible to avoid civilian casualties when using them, especially when they are deployed during fighting in urban areas. Furthermore, a surprisingly high proportion of the small bomblets fail to explode on impact, leaving a lethal danger to civilians that can persist for months and even years after the fighting has ended.

Used in conflicts such as Vietnam during the 1970s, Afghanistan in the 1980s, Kosovo in 1999, Iraq in 2003, and Lebanon in 2006, among many African conflicts, cluster bombs have killed thousands of innocent civilians over the years, and continued to do so today. Indeed, cluster bombs kill significantly more noncambatants than soldiers, and four out of ten people killed by cluster bombs are children. They are barbaric weapons by any moral standard.

This issues involved in the cluster bomb debate are very similar to those of the debate over whether to ban anti-personnel landmines, which this blog has touched on in the past. Thomas Jefferson, being a man of the Enlightenment, was always in favor of doing whatever was possible to alleviate the sufferings war inflicted upon innocent people, and would have have warmly approved of these international efforts to ban the use of weapons that cause unacceptable harm to civilians.

Conspicuous on the list of countries which have thus far refused to sign the Convention is the United States of America. This fact should outrage every American. It's time for our country to join with the rest of the world and sign the treaty as well.

Public Interest in Chelsea Clinton's Wedding Misplaced

2010-07-31T10:36:00.002-05:00

In many of the newspapers and on many of the cable news networks in recent weeks, the upcoming wedding of Chelsea Clinton has become a fairly large news story. Back in 2008, a similar minor media frenzy surrounded the wedding of Jenna Bush. This sort of thing is ridiculous and points to a decided lack of perspective in both the American media and the American public at large.

The personal lives of the President and his family are not the business of the American public, and citizens should be no more interested in the wedding of a President's daughter than they would be in the wedding of their mailman's daughter. The attention lavished on the personal lives and families of the President (which really got out of control during the Kennedy years in the early 1960s) seem more akin to monarchical sympathies one might expect to find in the United Kingdom, but should have no place in the United States. After all, we kicked out our last king in 1776.

Not only that, but there are an infinite number of other news stories that the media would be well-advised to turn bring to the attention of the public: the national debt, rampant corruption in the government, increasing corporate control over the lives of citizens, the fact that tens of thousands of children die around the world every day from preventable starvation and disease, to name just a few. The media's proper role is to educate the American people about the important issues of the day, not distract them with mindless drivel.

The American media really needs to wake up and start doing its job.

Massachusetts Legislatures Endorses National Popular Vote for President

2010-07-28T11:07:00.002-05:00

Very good news in the struggle to abolish the Electoral College. According to this story in the Boston Globe, the Massachusetts Legislature has passed legislation bringing the state into the National Popular Vote coalition. The bill will now go to the governor, who has long expressed his support for the measure. Masschusetts thus joins Hawaii, Washington, Illinois, Maryland, and New Jersey in supporting the right of the American people to select the President by a fair vote.

The legislation passed by Massachusetts and the other states is simple, requiring that the state's representatives sent to the Electoral College vote for the candidate who has won the majority of popular votes in the election. This neatly sidesteps the undemocratic and outmoded Electoral College system without even requiring the long and difficult road of obtaining a constituitional amendment. The legislation will only take effect when a sufficient number of states representing the majority of electoral votes have passed identical laws, thus creating an effective national popular vote for President.

As this blog has pointed out in the past, the Electoral College is blatantly undemocratic and should be done away with. Massachusetts has pushed us a little further in the right direction, and 21st Century Jeffersonians should do their best to persuade their own state legislatures to follow suit.

Alaska Voters Should Kick Congressman Don Young Out Of Office

2010-07-26T07:30:00.000-05:00

2010 is a mid-term election year, and even though we will not be choosing a President this time around, it is always vital for 21st Century Jeffersonians to follow genuine political news (as opposed to hack stories churned out by the noise machines of both the right and left) in order to best be able to make informed decisions when the time comes to cast one's ballot.

The general election isn't until November 2, but in the meantime, there are a number of primary elections that should be of interest to 21st Century Jeffersonians. One in particular will be the Republican primary for the Alaska At-Large House seat, which will take place on August 24. In this election, the voters of Alaska will have a chance to promote Jeffersonian values by removing an abjectly anti-Jeffersonian person from office.

The present incumbent in Alaska is Congressman Don Young, who is a case study for much that is currently wrong with Congress. Having held his seat since 1973, he has made a name for himself as one of the most adept representatives in funneling federal tax dollars to his state via pork barrel spending. Pork barrel spending has gotten completely out of control in Congress and is one of the reasons the federal government is in such a fiscal mess. It also undermines federalism by allowing the federal government to stick its nose into state and local issues, where it doesn't belong.

Congressman Young was one of two man (the other being disgraced former Senator Ted Stevens) behind perhaps the most infamous example of pork barrel spending in recent history, the so-called "Bridge to Nowhere". In 2005, Congressman Young attempted to insert an earmark allocating roughly a quarter of a billion dollars of taxpayer money to construct a bridge to Gravina Island in Alaska, which has a population of about fifty people. After massive public outcry against the earmark, Congress stripped it from the legislation, but only over Congressman Young's strident protests.

The Bridge to Nowhere may be Young's major claim to fame, but it is only the tip of the iceberg. In 2005, Young traveled to Florida and attended a fundraiser organized by a real estate developer named Daniel Aronoff, which raised about $40,000 for Young's campaign war chest. Almost immediately afterwards, Young inserted an earmark into a spending bill allocating $10 million for a highway extension project in Fort Meyer, Florida, from which Aronoff stood to reap handsome financial benefits. This because known as the Coconut Road scandal, and is a clear case of bribery, since there is no obviously legitimate reason for an Alaska congressman to seek to allocate money to a minor highway project in Florida. Consequently, the Justice Department has launched a bribery investigation against Young.

Young has also been the subject of corruption investigations due to his ties with the VECO Corporation, which builds oil drilling and gas pipeline equipment, and whose CEO pled guilty in 2007 for bribing members of the Alaska state legislature. VECO exectives have donated tens of thousands of dollars to Young's campaign war chest over the years, and Young inserted numerous earmarks into spending bills which directly benefited VECO Corporation. Coincidence? I think not.

All this is bad enough, but to add insult to injury, Congressman Young once had the gall to fraudulently assert in a radio ad that he had been given a "Hero of the Taxpayers" award from the organization Taxpayers for Common Sense. This came as something of a shock to Taxpayers for Common Sense, which had done no such thing and, indeed, has constantly lambasted Congressman Young for his pork barrel spending.

Congressman Young won the 2008 Republican primary by barely 300 votes, and much of the Republican establishment in Alaksa has turned against him. He is clearly vulnerable in the upcoming primary. His challenger for the Republican nomination, Sheldon Fisher, seems like a solid candidate who, refreshingly, is highlighting the national debt as a serious issue. At this point, anyone would be better than Young, who is basically a crook and exactly the kind of office-holder Jefferson would most despise. Alaska voters would do well to vote for Fisher in order to get Young kicked out of office, thereby striking a blow against corruption and for the restoration of fiscal sanity in the House of Representatives.

Daniel Schorr: 1916 - 2010

2010-07-23T12:38:00.002-05:00

The last of the giants from the Golden Age of Journalism has passed away. Daniel Schorr, the legendary newsman whose work spanned more than half a century, has died at the age of 93.

As a young man, Schorr worked as an Army intelligence officer in Europe during World War II. His time in the service proved useful to him when he began working as a news correspondent in Europe after the war was over, working for such respected periodicals as the Christian Science Monitor and the New York Times. Eventually, he went to work at CBS, being mentored by the great Edward R. Murrow himself.

Schorr covered such events as the Marshall Plan, the creation of NATO, the construction of the Berlin Wall, LBJ's Great Society program, illegal activities of the CIA, and the Watergate Scandal. In the last years of his life, Schorr remained active in journalism, becoming a commentator for NPR. In this capacity, he made full use of his vast knowledge and experience to put into perspective the great events taking place in America and the world in the early 21st Century.

Schorr, like all journalists worthy of the name, never allowed the powers-that-be dictate to him what he would report. He was expelled from the USSR by the Soviet authorities for defying their censorship, and his coverage of the Watergate scandal earned him a place on President Nixon's list of enemies. Schorr, fittingly, considered these to be badges of honor he was proud to wear.

Our day and age is sadly lacking journalists with the caliber of Daniel Schorr. During the years of the Bush Administration, we saw legions of journalists quietly accept made-up claims of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, making little or no effort to investigate the claims for themselves. And in the 2008 election, we saw legions of journalists effectively cheering on the Obama candidacy, making a mockery of journalistic ethics. The most important stories are all but ignored, and once-respected periodicals and media outlets focus on meaningless stories about entertainment celebrities.

Even in political coverage, true journalism has been replaced almost completely by a sick combination of entertainment and partisan editorializing. Whether we're talking about liberals like Keith Olbermann, conservatives like Rush Limbaugh, or simple idiots like Glenn Beck, these shows have higher numbers of viewers, but are virtually devoid of meaningful content, completely ignore critical issues, and are so partisan as to be indistinguishable from political party broadcasts. They do absolutely nothing to advance political discourse in this country, and achieve nothing but increasing partisanship and anger in this country, making it much more difficult to address the true threats to our republic.

Daniel Schorr was the last of his kind. We may not see his like again. Considering the sorry state of journalism in modern America, this is a fact to be much lamented. He will be truly missed.

Why is the United States Involved with Indonesian Special Forces?

2010-07-23T08:21:00.001-05:00

This story from the Associated Press is worth a quick read, not so much for what it says, as for what it doesn't say. A decade ago, the United States military severed its training relationship with the special forces of Indonesia over possible human rights abuses. Now, according to the story, the ties are being resumed. Some people are apparently objecting to this, and some sort of controversy has resulted.

The real question we should be asking is the very one the journalist apparently doesn't even think to ask: why is the American military involved with the Indonesian military at all? Indonesia is on the other side of the planet from the United States, so why is the United States involved in its defense? The national defense of Indonesia should be the responsibility of the Indonesians, and should be paid for by Indonesian taxpayers.

The United States has its military fingers in the pies of many nations. The vast majority of overseas American military deployments and training relationships with the militaries of other nations are of little or no importance to the defense of the United States, but are merely intended to expand American influence overseas.

If we are ever to realize the dream of becoming a truly Jeffersonian republic, we must abandon notions of expanding American "influence" and protecting "American interests" in parts of the world. If other countries want to trade with us, we can trade with them. We should encourage democracy, but never attempt to impose in. America is not, and should not be, an empire.

The media has been absent from this debate, which is among the most serious that should be taking place in the country today. Why did the journalist who wrote the story not question the rationale of the American assistance to Indonesian special forces? For that matter, why does it not question the rationale of keeping 80,000 American troops in Europe, which faces no conventional military threat? Why does it not question the rationale of keeping nearly 30,000 American troops in South Korea, which is perfectly capable of defending itself?

Let's bring our troops home and terminate our military's unnecessary relationships with the militaries of other nations. This will not only make our country safer by keeping us out of disputes that are no concern of ours, and vastly ease the danger of the fiscal crisis that poses a far greater threat to our country than any conceivable foreign enemy.

Hugo Chavez Seeks Control Over Last Independent Television Station in Venezeula

2010-07-22T07:40:00.000-05:00

Venezuelan President Huge Chavez has been in office now for more than a decade. Although he was legitimately elected to his office in free and fair elections in 1998, and reelected twice in elections generally deemed to be fair by international observers, he has gradually increased his personal control over the Venezuelan state. Today, he seems little different than a classic Latin American tin pot dictator.

In his latest effort to solidify his hold over the country, Chavez's government is now trying to purchase a minority share of Globovision. This is the last independent television station in Venezeula, and the only one which broadcasts meaningful criticism of his leadership. If this takes place, then some of the last flickers of true political discourse in Venezeula will go out.

Chavez once was the darling of the world's leftists, due to the educational and healthcare programs he implemented after he was first elected, and the dramatic manner in which he thwarted a right-wing coup in 2002. But since then, everything has gone downhill. He has demonstrated a contempt for democracy and sought relentlessly to stifle the voices of the opposition. He is simply not a friend of humanity and has become obsessed merely with maintaining his own hold on power.

Terrorist Threat Shouldn't Be Overestimated

2010-07-21T10:42:00.001-05:00

It is important to always keep in mind the seriousness of the terrorist threat. After all, on a single day less than a decade ago, they killed 3,000 people in New York and Washington. But it's even more important to avoid blowing the terrorist threat out of proportion. Since the purpose of terrorism is to terrorize, we can defeat the aims of terrorists most effectively by simply remaining calm and realizing that the genuine power of Al Qaeda and its allies is actually rather small.

Unlike the Nazis during World War II or the Soviets during the Cold War, Al Qaeda and its affiliates do not pose any threat to the survival of the American republic. Yes, they can inflict casualties and cause economic damage, but they are not the mortal danger to our country that many people, either out of paranoia or for political purposes, have made them out to be. Vastly more Americans have been killed in car accidents than by terrorists over the last decade, but you don't see the government declaring a War On Automobiles.

The greatest danger terrorism presents to America is through causing misguided leaders in Washington to make extremely illogical and damaging decisions because of their inability to keep things in perspective. The invasion of Iraq would never have happened without the attacks of 9/11, so every American life lost and taxpayer dollar wasted in that misadventure should be seen as an Al Qaeda success. Osama bin Laden was probably delighted when he heard of the American invasion of Iraq.

We've created an entirely new department of the federal government, the Department of Homeland Security, in response to the terrorist attacks of 9/11. Unsurprisingly, it has already emerged as a massive black hole into which billions of taxpayer dollars are being spent for little benefit to the average citizen. As Gene Healy of the Cato Institute points out in an excellent column, the subsequent attempts of Al Qaeda to launch terrorist attacks on the United States have failed not because of any outstanding work on the past of the American intelligence system, but through a combination of stupidity on the part of the terrorists and some astute observation and fast acting on the part of ordinary American citizens.

The Washington Post is currently running a series of articles, called Top Secret America, documenting the mass post-9/11 expansion of federal government entities designed to deal with the terrorist threat. It makes for disturbing reading. More than 1,200 government organizations and 1,900 private companies are involved in some way in counter-terrorism work, but no one seems to know exactly how much money is being spend, how many people are involved, or who is in charge of it all. This ridiculous situation was created directly by our collective overestimation of the terrorist threat.

Hyping up the terrorist threat allows politicians in Washington to cynically wrap themselves up in the American flag and look patriotic even as they push legislation that they know is not in the best interest of average American citizens. Rather than tackle problems that actually do pose a long-term threat to the American republic, like the national debt or the ever-increasing power of corporations over the lives of citizens, it better suits our so-called "leaders" in Washington to rant on and on about the evils of terrorism. This, in truth, suits the terrorists just fine, as it simply increases their power to terrorize. The fact of the matter is that, with or without intending to do so, the terrorists and the cynical politicians in Washington feed off of each other, and neither could survive without the other.

Terrorism is one problem among many faced by the United States in the modern age. We should approach it with the same logic and rationality with which we would approach any other problem, whether it's the fiscal crisis or finding a way to reduce deaths caused by traffic accidents. Unreasonably inflating the terrorist threat gives Al Qaeda and its allies a mystique they don't deserve, which simply increases the power of the terrorists and allows unscrupulous politicians in Washington to get off the hook for failing to address more important problems.

Recent Supreme Court Decisions a Mix of the Good, the Bad, and the Very Bad

2010-07-19T07:11:00.003-05:00

Looking back on the 2009 term of the Supreme Court (which, despite its name, took place mostly in 2010), we can look over a large number of decisions handed down by the Roberts Court. Some are good, some are bad, and one in particular is very, very bad.

First, the good.

In McDonald vs. Chicago, the Court ruled that the inability of the federal government to pass laws violating the right to bears arms, which the Court had recently solidified in the Columbia vs. Heller decision (which centered on the District of Columbia), also applied to state and local governments. This decision will greatly strengthen Second Amendment rights throughout the country, and it is something that 21st Century Jeffersonians should cheer about.

In a victory for both gay rights and the separation of church and state, the Court ruled in Christian Legal Society vs. Martinez that a Christian group at the University of California cannot deny the right of homosexual students the join their organization if it wishes to receive financial support from the university, which is supported by public funds. This decision reinforces the point that taxpayer dollars cannot be used for discriminatory purposes or to fund specifically religious activities.

In Graham vs. Florida, the Court laid down the opinion that giving juveniles life in prison without the possibility of parole for crimes other than homicide. If locking as child up in prison for the rest of their natural life is not cruel and unusual punishment (and hence prohibited by the Eighth Amendment), then nothing is.

Second, the bad.

In the Holder vs. Humanitarian Law Protect, the Court ruled that even speech can be considered a provision of material support for terrorism. This outrageous decision subverts the freedoms ensured by the First Amendment, and should have been much bigger news that it actually was. Bizarrely, even advising an organization designated as a terrorist group to renounce violence can now be considered as providing material support to terrorism. This was a nonsensical decision and one we will regret.

In Berghuis vs. Thompkins, the Court made the rather illogical ruling that a person under arrest has to specifically and vocally assert his or her right to remain silent. Citizens posses constitutional protections under natural law, and they do not need to vocally assert them in order to have them. This decision undermines Miranda rights and should concern all 21st Century Jeffersonians.

And finally, the very, very bad.

The best known decision of the term, Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission, was also the most disastrous. In yet another 5-4 ruling, the Court decided that laws limiting financial campaign contributions by corporations were an unconstitutional violation of free speech. In equating money with speech, the Court essentially opened the floodgates to unlimited masses of corporate dollars that will swamp elections across the country. Holding to the ideal of "one-citizen-one-vote" is critical if the dream of a truly Jeffersonian republic is ever to be achieved, and this decision was a body blow to that ideal.

Dealing with the nefarious influence of money on the American election process one of the greatest challenges our nation must deal with, through the enactment of comprehensive campaign finance reform and the implementation of a system of public financing. With this disastrous decision, the Supreme Court set back progress in that battle by decades, if not a century.

The sad truth, which has been recently reinforced by the confirmation hearings for Elena Kagan, is that the Supreme Court has long since evolved from being a constitutional judge to being a partisan tennis match. We even, without irony or outrage, refer to the Court's "liberal" wing and "conservative" wing, forgetting the fact that there should be only a single "constitutional" bloc. This term had a blend of good and bad decisions, but also highlighted continued problems with what the Supreme Court has become.

Obama's Nuclear Weapons Reduction Plan Doesn't Go Far Enough

2010-07-16T07:32:00.004-05:00

Nuclear weapons have been in the news lately, as the United States and Russia recently signed a new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START). The treaty will limit the number of deployed warheads to 1,550 each and the number of nuclear armed missiles and bombers to 700 each, as well as establishing a new system of inspections allowing both countries to verify that the other is fulfilling their treaty obligations. It's a good treaty, and its ratification by the Senate should be easier than the recent partisan votes on healthcare and financial reform.

However, the treaty makes no specific mention of nuclear warheads that would left left in storage rather than deployed on missiles or in bombers. This is not as major a flaw in the treaty as it may appear, since a nuclear warhead that has no missile or bomber is militarily useless, and you can't exactly build a nuclear missile or bomber overnight. But it does cost a fair amount to maintain these weapons, so it rationally makes sense to reduce the overall number of warheads.

According to this article from the Washington Post, President Obama has drawn up a plan that would reduce the total number of warheads from about 5,000 to between 3,000 and 3,500 over the course of twenty years. In and of itself, this is very good. After all, the fewer nuclear weapons, the better.

The problem is that Obama's plan does not go nearly far enough. There is no rational reason to maintain an arsenal of 3,000 warheads, as a force of only a few hundred would be more than sufficient to deter any enemy from attacking the United States, or to utterly destroy them if it came to that. This blog has previously proposed that the United States nuclear arsenal be unilaterally reduced to 300 warheads and abandon its land-based and bomber-based launch systems, relying exclusively on submarines. The arguments for this approach are as sound as ever: it would easily maintain the ability of the United States to defend itself, and save American taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars a year that would otherwise be uselessly expended on weapons of mass destruction.

So, why President Obama should be warmly congratulated for making the reduction of nuclear weapons a priority, he should have the courage to go further.

Ban on Broadcasting Profanity Struck Down

2010-07-15T07:04:00.000-05:00

This is not the most important issue facing the nation, but an appeals court has struck down as unconstitutional an FCC ban on the broadcasting of profanity, which has been in place since 2004. This is an appropriate ruling. It's not the government's responsibility to regulate public morality, and there is no way in which the broadcasting of profanity, however distasteful it might be, can endanger public safety.

If you don't want your children to hear profanity on the television, then watch stations and programs which you are sure will not have such content or, better yet, don't watch television at all. A good book or a walk in the park is a much better way to spend time than watching the idiot box anyway.

Republicans Right On Unemployment Benefits

2010-07-14T16:19:00.002-05:00

Next week, probably not long after the replacement for the late Senator Robert Byrd is sworn in, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) is likely to hold a critical vote on whether to extend federal unemployment benefits. This issue has become a fairly hot button topic in the last few weeks, especially as the economic news continues to be fairly negative, making it unlikely that job creation will accelerate much in the coming months.

With the support of a few Republicans, it is likely that Senator Reid has the 60 votes he needs to get the bill passed, which will extend unemployment benefits until November. From the Democratic point of view, this is not just about helping the unemployed, but injecting federal money into the economy in order to serve as additional stimulus. The total cost of the bill will be $33 billion.

The Republicans have put up a fight on this, which is only to be expected. But they have taken a stand not in total opposition to the extension of unemployment benefits in and of itself, but on the grounds that any extension should be paid for either by dipping into the still-unused cash from last year's stimulus package (which still amounts to something like $300 billion) or by cutting some other spending elsewhere. In other words, they're okay with extending unemployment benefits, so long as it is done in such a way as to not increase the deficit.

This is the right approach, and Senator Reid should have taken them up on their offer (assuming it wasn't a bluff). In an ideal world, of course, helping the unemployed would be the purview of state and local government, or perhaps no government at all, but until we reform our society into the Jeffersonian republic it should be, we have to deal with the world as it is. The economy remains bad, and unemployed people are in trouble. No one denies that. But if the federal government is going to help, it should be done in a way that doesn't increase the deficit.

The unused stimulus money is still just sitting there. The Democrats themselves are saying that extending unemployment benefits would be great way to stimulate the economy. If they truly believe this, then why don't they dip into the unused stimulus funds? It would be a way to help the unemployed and stimulate the economy, while avoiding having to steal money from our grandchildren in the process. And the sight of Republicans and Democrats working together for a change would probably be refreshing for the American people, too.

American Attack on Iran Would Be Madness

2010-07-14T07:44:00.004-05:00

Last week, Senator Joe Lieberman (I-CT), Senator John McCain (R-AZ), and Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) visited Israel. During their trip, all three made statements regarding the suspected covert Iranian program to develop nuclear weapons, indicating that an American military strike on Iran as a distinct possibility.

Such an attack would not only be unwise. It would be insane.

It is highly probable that Iran is, indeed, engaging in a covert nuclear weapons program, and no one can deny that Iranian nuclear capability would be a matter of grave concern both to the nations of the Persian Gulf, the United States, and the world as a whole. America should work with its allies and partners, using every diplomatic and economic means at its disposal (carrots as well as sticks) to prevent Iran from gaining nuclear weapons. But an actual military strike would lead to consequences potentially far worse than a nuclear-armed Iran.

First, there is no way of being sure that an American strike would be able to destroy Iran's nuclear program. The Iranians aren't stupid, and have doubtless studied with great interest the American air campaigns that have been waged against Iraq and Serbia in the last decade or so. Whatever nuclear facilities exist in the country are undoubtedly deep underground, dispersed over wide areas, with heavy redundancy built in. It's extremely unlikely that even the most successful air campaign would be able to destroy them all.

Second, an American attack on Iran would shatter the domestic opposition to the ruling Iranian regime and cause wavering Iranians to rally around their government. Last year, the domestic opposition within Iran came close to toppling the Iranian regime, and they are surely the best hope for those who dream of a free and democratic Iran. If America were to attack Iran, the ruling regime will be able to crush its domestic opponents by painting them as American cronies, and the reform movement's potential for ultimate success would be all but ended. The ruling Iranian regime is far more afraid of its domestic opponents than it is of the United States. If America launched a military strike, it would effectively be doing the Iranian regime a huge favor.

Third, any attack of Iran could not be limited to a mere air strike, but would immediately result in a full-scale war in the Middle East which the United State can ill afford to wage. Every Iranian missile would be fired at every American base within range, and Iranian special forces troops would doubtless be unleashed against us in Iraq and perhaps Afghanistan as well. Our present military operations leave us with few available forces to deploy against Iran, and the present fiscal crisis means that we would be unable to pay for a war that would likely be far bloodier and more costly than either the war in Iraq or the war in Afghanistan.

Fourth, all the progress America has made in extracting itself from the Iraqi morass and in defeating the Taliban in Afghanistan would immediately be thrown away. The Shia elements within Iraq would side with the Iranians, who have long been their allies and friends, and we could expect a massive uprising against American forces in response to the attack on Iran. Such a scenario would make the dark days of the Iraqi insurgency from 2004 to 2006 look like a picnic, and we could easily see thousands of American casualties within a very short time. Even worse, a direct attack on Iran would possibly make the Iranians ally themselves with the Taliban, with whom they have previously been on very dubious terms. The Taliban continue to resist American forces in Iran with surprising effectiveness; imagine how much more effective they might become if they began receiving shipments of Iranian money and weapons.

Fifth, an attack on Iran would instantly throw the global economy into a tailspin, as Iran can easily stop all oil shipments out of the Persian Gulf by blocking the Straits of Hormuz. Iran is well-equipped with self-produced Silkworm anti-ship missiles, which are easily transported and hard to find. With the ease of flipping a switch, Iran can cut the world off from one-third of its oil supply. It's not hard to imagine what this would do to oil prices around the world, or what effect it would have on already jittery global markets. Even the threat of this happening would be a disaster. Considering the still-fragile nature of the global economic recovery, such a disaster might be enough to plunge the world into an outright depression.

Sixth, such an attack would be a violation of both international law and American law. Article Two of the United Nations Charter, which was signed by President Truman and ratified by the Senate, clearly states that no state can attack another state except in clear cases of self-defense. Article Six of the Constitution makes it clear that treaties signed and ratified by the United States are part of the supreme law of the land. Therefore, an attack on Iran would be illegal. You can't just throw away international treaties, much less the Constitution itself, whenever you feel like it.

While America should not openly declare that military action is off the table, so as to lend necessary weight to our diplomatic efforts, it must be obvious to any rational person that attacking Iran would be the act of a madman. Another solution to the Iranian nuclear issue must be found.

I think it's also worth pointing out that American concern over this issue would be greatly reduced, it not made wholly unnecessary, if our nation adopted common sense energy policies that eliminated our dependence on foreign oil. If we did that, then we could simply say good riddance to the Middle East, leaving it to solve its own problems. From the standpoint of 21st Century Jeffersonianism, the less we have to do with the Middle East, the better. But that's a subject for another blog post.

Despite Its Flaws, the Financial Bill Should Be Passed by Congress

2010-07-13T08:19:00.000-05:00

Second only to the much-debated healthcare bill that became law in March, the financial reform bill known as the Dood-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, now in the final stages of the legislative process in Washington, is the most significant piece of legislation to have appeared on the floor of Congress since President Obama took office. As with the healthcare bill, this legislation is ambiguous at best, with some excellent aspects side-by-side with deeply troubling ones. But despite its flaws, the proposed financial reform package is something that 21st Century Jeffersonians should get behind.

Thomas Jefferson deeply distrusted the centralizing tendancies of the federal government in Washington, and he worked tirelessly throughout his career to keep political power as localized as possible. But more than anything else, he feared the power of uncontrollable financial institutions, lead by Alexander Hamilton and his "stockjobbing" minions, which threatened the prosperity and the very way of life of the yeoman farmers whom Jefferson loved so well. If Jefferson could speak to us today, he would talk as much, if not more, about the threat posed by the unchecked greed of Wall Street executives as of the threat posed by an over-zealous government in Washington.

The economic crisis of the past few years, which continues to fester in the form of stubbornly high unemployment, was directly caused by the callous and cynical greed of a very few men and women on Wall Street, and it is imperative that the government take steps to ensure that such a travesty cannot happen again. 21st Century Jeffersonianism strictly believes in small government, but also maintains that it is the government's responsibility to intervene in certain cases where it is necessary to protect citizens from being exploited. In the case of Wall Street reform, this is certainly one of those cases.

As summarized by a write-up on the bill by the Los Angeles Times:

Its major provisions include a new council of regulators charged with protecting the financial system against large-scale threats such as the one posed by the last housing bubble; new authority for regulators to take over and dismantle financial institutions that are failing; more safeguards and transparency for financial derivatives; strict limits on how much a bank with insured deposits can invest in hedge funds and private-equity firms; and a new, independent group of regulators to protect consumers against predatory or misleading financial products.

It is undeniable that the bill will expand the power of the federal government over the financial sector of the country, and as such should give 21st Century Jeffersonians pause. But the lack of legislative action will simply give Wall Street a blank slate to continue the same activities which lead to the recent economic crisis in the first place, thus presenting the disquieting possibility that a similar situation could happen again in a few years. Weighing the question in the balance, the good provisions of this bill outweigh the bad ones. An imperfect bill is better than no bill at all.

Two of the most important provisions of this bill are the limitations placed on banks in terms of their ability to invest in hedge funds and private-equity firms and the regulations against predatory and misleading financial products. These measures will help prevent citizens from being exploited by unscrupulous Hamiltonian stockjobbers, who have been making fortunes off the backs of hard-working Americans.

The provisions of the bill will expand the power of the Federal Reserve, which is far from desirable. It is an unelected institution, which was not sanctioned by the Constitution, that wields far too much influence over the American economy and, consequently, the lives of ordinary American citizens. An unlikely alliance between two members of Congress, libertarian Ron Paul (R-TX) and liberal Alan Grayson (D-FL) was able to insert a provision into the bill that would initiate a one-time audit of the Fed, but while this is welcome, it is far from the ideal of having the Fed's books open to public scrutiny at all times.

This bill is nowhere near as good as it could have been. But the alternative to passing it would be to do nothing, and therefore to let the Wall Street villains continue lining their pockets at the expense of ordinary Americans. Politics is the art of the possible, and we often have to settle for less than what we want. 21st Century Jeffersonians should support the passage of this legislation, while readying themselves for more battles further down the road.

Korean Tensions Unnecessarily Endanger American Lives

2010-07-12T07:18:00.002-05:00

On March 26, the South Korean warship Cheonan was sunk of the western coast of the Korean peninsula, almost certainly by a torpedo fired by a North Korean submarine. Unsurprisingly, there has since been a sharp escalation in tension between South Korea and North Korea, who have been glaring at one another across the most heavily militarized border on the planet ever since the 1953 armistice that brought an end to the Korean War. Although tensions between the two enemies are a fairly routine matter, this is undoubtedly one of the most serious flare-ups on the Korean Peninsula since the end of the war.

American military personnel have been permanently stationed in South Korea since the armistice of 1953. Presently, something like 28,000 American troops remain deployed along the Korean Demilitarized Zone, and substantial American air and naval forces are also stationed in South Korea. These are part of America's security guarantee to South Korea, and would certainly be immediately drawn into any military conflict between North and South Korea.

The question is: why are American troops there at all? As Doug Bandow of the Cato Institute pointed out in a recent article on the subject, South Korea has forty times the GDP and twice the population of North Korea. Its military is qualitatively superior to that of North Korea in every category, and if its ready reserve troops are included, fully a match in terms of numbers as well. The South Koreans are perfectly capable of defending themselves in the event of a North Korean attack without American help.

As this blog has previously stated, the United States should withdraw its military forces from South Korea. The defense of South Korea is the responsibility of the South Koreans, and it should be paid for by South Korean taxpayers. There is no more reason for American troops to defend the South Korean border than there is for South Korean border guards to patrol the Rio Grande. And considering the current fiscal crisis, the billions of dollars we would annually save by withdrawing our troops from South Korea would certainly come in handy.

Indeed, North Korea would probably be very disappointed to see the American troops leave. So long as a large force of Americans remains deployed on the Korean peninsula, they present an attractive target for North Korean nuclear weapons. This gives North orea an unacceptable amount of leverage over the United States, which North Korea has often sought to use through its cosntant brinkmanship, essentially offering to back down from threat after threat if the United States buys them off. Such an intolerable situation cannot be allowed to continue.

Some will look at the Cheonan incident and the subsequent increase in tensions and claim that they are evidence that American military forces should remain in South Korea. In fact, the opposite is the case. Indeed, the very presence of American troops probably makes an ultimate peace settlement less likely, rather than more likely. While America should always be willing to use its good offices to help resolve international disputes, putting American soldiers in situations where they might get killed in disputes that have nothing to do with the United States is not only absurd, but criminally negligent.

The Founding Fathers warned us about the dangers of permanent entanging alliances. With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the consequent end of the global Communist threat, there is no compelling reason for American troops to remain in South Korea, as North Korea does not pose any sort of threat to the United States and South Korea is fully capable of defending itself. The current tensions on the peninsula merely reinforce this point. Let's bring our people home.

Federal Judge Rules So-Called "Defense of Marriage Act" Unconstitutional

2010-07-09T08:22:00.004-05:00

Yesterday, in a decision sure to shake up the gay marriage debate, U.S. District Judge Joseph Tauro, ruled that the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) is unconstitutional. The law, wich was passed by Congress and signed by President Clinton in 1996, defined marriage as between one man and one woman as it related to the status of married couples who receive federal benefits from programs like Social Security.

The suit had been brought by married gay couples in Massachusetts, which is one of the five states to recognize gay marriage. Because gay marriage is legal in Massachusetts, the plantiffs claimed that the federal government, in denying them the same benefits given to other married couples, was discriminating against them based on sexual orientation. Judge Tauro, who has been on the bench in Massachusetts since he was appointed by President Nixon in 1972, ruled that it was a clear case of discrimination, and therefore a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.

Interestingly, Judge Tauro also ruled that the ban was unconstitutional on the grounds of federalism, ruling that the federal law violated the rights of individual states to define marriage as they saw fit. While 21st Century Jeffersonians are strongly supportive of state's rights, this particular case may prove problematic. The right to marriage is a natural right enjoyed by all, and a state government has no more right to interfere with it than does the federal government.

All in all, this is an excellent ruling, increasing the rights of the people and rolling back the federal government's encroachment on an area where it should have no authority. 21st Century Jeffersonians can hold whatever views they please about the theological, moral, or philosophical aspects of homosexuality. But when it comes to the law and the Constitution, we believe that all citizens possess equal rights and that it's unacceptable to deny a particular group the same rights enjoyed by everyone else. We should do away with attempts to ban gay marriage for the very same reason we once did away with attempts to ban interracial marriage.

More importantly, the government has no business and no right interfering in the personal lives of its citizens. As Jefferson said, "The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others." If a man wants to marry a man or a woman wants to marry a woman, it inflicts absolutely no harm on anyone, and therefore the government has absolutely no business getting involved.

Continued Threat of Terrorism Emphasizes Need for International Cooperation

2010-07-08T13:54:00.003-05:00

News reports coming out today are revealing that a terrorist plot uncovered last year, which targeted the New York subway system, was larger than originally thought. Indeed, the plan also called for attacking targets in the United Kingdom as well as the United States. At the same time, other reports are surfacing of Al-Qaeda agents being detained in Norway, which has thus far escaped attacks by radical Islamists.

The threat of terrorism is often overblown, especially by people in the right-wing media. For all the damage and casualties they can cause, terrorists do not pose a threat to the continued survival of the American republic. The threat is certainly not sufficient to cause our nation to throw away the Bill of Rights or launch unprovoked invasions of sovereign states. But these terrorists are dangerous killers and reasonable steps need to be taken to protect ourselve from them.

The international nature of terrorism, especially loosely-organized networks like Al-Qaeda, require an international response. Only the law enforcement and intelligence agencies of many nations working together can effectively prevent terrorist acts, as the recent arrests demonstrate quite clearly.

Jefferson wisely advised us to stay out of permanent entangling alliances, but he also called for working together with other nations when they were confronted by a common threat. In the 1780s, during his tenure as one of American's chief diplomats in Europe, Jefferson attempted to organize a multi-national naval force, which would warships from France, the United Kingdom, the United States, and others, to launch a a punitive campaign against the Barbary Pirates of North Africa, who had been preying on merchant ships of many nations. Faced with the threat of international terrorism in the 21st Century, we should follow his advice and ensure a strong, unified response to terrorism, in which we act effectively with our allies.

National Debt Crisis Is Not Going Away

2010-07-01T08:05:00.004-05:00

This article in USA Today makes for some humbling reading. In spite of all the other, seemingly more immediate problems- the BP oil spill, the campaign in Afghanistan, continuing high unemployment- the massive federal deficit and the resulting gargantuan national debt continue to spiral out of the control, and this problem is going to get worse before it gets better.

President Obama's approach to the problem has so far been mostly symbolic. He has been bringing it up in his speeches more often. A few months ago, he appointed a high-profile special commission to study the debt and expects it to report back in December. In and of itself, that's fine, but it also gives the President cover to avoid taking serious measures on the problem right away. The Republicans have been ramping up their attacks on the President over the debt issue, which is also fine, but it overlooks the fact that they themselves, when in power, took a large federal budget surplus and transformed it into a massive debt. On this issue, neither the Republicans nor the Democrats have any credibility.

The problem will only get worse. As more and more Baby Boomers retire, the annual costs of Social Security, Medicare, and other legislatively-mandated programs is going to go through the roof, and massive cuts in spending or massive increases in taxes (or worse, both) will be necessary to meet these fiscal demands. This undeniable fact is bearing down on us like a freight train, but both Republicans and Democrats have their heads in the sand, pretending that the problem doesn't exist.

President Obama says that he wants to reduce the deficit "in a way that doesn't hurt the economy and doesn't hurt ordinary people." This might be an admirable sentiment, but it completely misses the point. The massive deficit and debt will require a fundamental transformation in the relationship between the federal government, the states, and the citizens of the country. We are going to have to go back to the ideals of Jefferson, where the federal government was simply not much of a presence in the lives of ordinary people. To the extent necessary, state and local governments will have to take over much of the role currently filled by the federal government, and many large departments of the federal government are simply going to have to be abolished, for there will simply not be enough money to run them.

But the most important fact is that ordinary people are going to have to regain the attitude of their ancestors, and restore the principle of self-sufficiency in their lives. The world is far too complex for us to go back entirely to the ways of the late 18th and early 19th Centuries, and one would be foolish to believe, as the modern Libertarian Party apparently does, that we can do without government altogether. But the undeniable fact is that government is going to have to be massively scaled back, and the sooner we get to grips with this fact, the better.

Elena Kagan Confirmation Hearings Should Focus on Constitutional Issues, Not Scoring Political Points

2010-06-27T15:51:00.003-05:00

The Senate is scheduled to begin confirmation hearings this week for Solicitor General Elena Kagan, who has been nominated by President Obama to fill the vacancy in the Supreme Court created by the impending retirement of Justice John Paul Stevens. Filling vacancies to the Supreme Court is one of the most influential acts a President can take, and the duty of the Senate to accept or reject their nominations is not something that should be taken lightly.

Unfortunately, if the present evidence is any indication, the members of the Senate Judiciary Committee are more likely going to focus on scoring political points and making headlines for themselves than properly investigating Ms. Kagan's genuine fitness for the position. So far, the statements by Republicans seem fixated only her actions related to military recruiters when she was dean of the Harvard School of Law, as opposed to any of her positions on constitutional issues.

The questions the Senators should be prepared to ask in these hearings should focus on Ms. Kagan's positions regarding such matters as the separation of church and state, federalism, the extent of executive power, the extent to which the 4th Amendment protects the privacy of citizens, whether or not the First Amendment covers campaign donations in addition to speech and writings, and so forth.

Sadly, we're likelyto see little or none of this. What we are likely to see is the Democratic half of the committee telling her how great she is and defending her from Republican attacks, while the Republican half of the committee dig up meritless criticisms for the sake of the television cameras, being intent more on embarrasing President Obama than doing the job they were sent to Washington to do. If there is going to be an exception to this otherwise dismal rule, it will probably be Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC), who often is the sole member of the Judiciary Committee who seems intent on actually doing his job rather than toeing the party line.

For all I know, Ms. Kagan could turn out to be an outstanding Supreme Court justice. But if the recent past is any indication, her confirmation hearings are going to be nothing more than a session of partisan bickering and a demonstration of everything that is currently wrong with representative goverment in America.

United States Should Ratify Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty

2010-05-24T07:24:00.000-05:00

The invention of nuclear weapons should have severely shaken Thomas Jefferson's optimistic view of the unlimited potential of humanity. The fact it was the United States which first created and deployed them would have perhaps caused him to despair. Jefferson was a scientific man, but he would have been dismayed to see the fruits of scientific knowledge bent towards the creation of weapons so powerful that they could easily destroy all of humanity. Had he lived to see the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it is likely Jefferson would have agreed with what the philosopher Albert Camus said a few days after the attacks:

Mechanized civilization has just reached the ultimate state of barbarism. In a near future, we will have to choose between mass suicide and intelligent use of scientific conquest. This can no longer be simply a prayer; it must become an order which goes upward from the peoples to the governments, an order to make a definitive choice between hell and reason.

If he lived in the 21st Century, Jefferson would have seen the American nuclear arsenal of more than 5,000 nuclear weapons as ridiculous and obscene, especially when less than one-tenth of that would be more than sufficient to deter any enemy. He would be a fierce proponent of strong nuclear controls, the long-term objective being the abolition of nuclear weapons altogether.

An important step in the cause of establishing proper nuclear controls would be for the United States to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), which was adopted by the United Nations back in 1996. The United States signed the treaty, but has never ratified it. As a result, it still lacks the force of international law.

The CTBT is very simple: all those nations who are party to the treaty are forbidden to carry out any nuclear explosions of any kind at any time. Needless to say, the entry of this traty into force would would greatly simplify efforts to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons to new states. It would also be a powerful symbolic statement by the nations of the world that humanity might one day achieve the dream of abolishing nuclear weapons altogether.

Advances in computer modeling mean that the United States does not require physical nuclear detonations to ensure the continued viability of its existing nuclear arsenal. The fact that our country has yet to ratify the treaty has been used by other non-ratifying states, including India, as a justification for their continued rejection of the treaty. The country has not tested a nuclear weapon for nearly two decades, which makes our continued refusal to ratify the treaty all the more inexplicable.

President Obama has been outspoken in his calls for greater nuclear controls and the eventual abolition of nuclear weapons. But he has yet to make a serious push in the Senate for the ratification of the treaty. This should be done without delay, especially as the chances for ratification may take a sharp turn for the worse after this year's mid-term elections.

21st Century Jeffersonians should ask: what is President Obama waiting for?

Turn Off the Television

2010-05-17T07:50:00.002-05:00

April 19-25 was TV Turnoff Week, during which all citizens are encouraged to keep their "idiot boxes" turned off. Originally organized by the anti-consumerist group Adbusters and now run by the nonprofit group Center for Screentime Awareness, the event has been held regularly since 1994.

Television could have proven to be the most Jeffersonian invention since the printing press. Had the powers-that-be in the network world upheld civic virtue rather than succumb to a mere profit motive, the programming on television could have been focused on quality drama and comedy, well-made intellectual documentaries, and news programs that fully explore complex issues. They could, in short, have made television into a great source of enlightenment, education, and uplifiting of the spirit.

Instead, we have the infamous "vast wasteland." Television was so described by Newton Minow, then chairman of the FCC, in a famous speech in 1961. Back then, there were only three networks in the country, and if the quality of the programming was not particularly good, at least there wasn't that much of it. Today, by contrast, we have a much vaster wasteland to deal with, literally hundreds of channels all peddling the same lowest-common-denominator drivel that is dissolving our national spirit like a steady dripping of acid.

What do we see when we look at the vast wasteland today? We see reality shows that follow the moronic antics of immoral people trying to achieve some useless or degraded objective. We see formulatic comedies, the vast majority of which focus almost exclusively on crude and sexual humor that no decent person would find amusing. We see game shows the message of which seems to be that Americans should be as stupid as possible. After fifteen minutes of watching standard American television, one feels the need to take a shower.

There remain a few programs of worthwile and intelligent content. Public television, funding directly by citizens and therefore not dependent on corporate advertising for its revenue, regularly features excellent documentaries and the last remaining news programs of any value in America. A few of the cable networks produce some excellent drama and comedy programs as well. But these diamonds in the dunghill are few and far between, and their numbers seem to dwindle with every passing year. Besides, reading a good book or taking a hike on a nature trail is preferable to even the highest quality television program.

Depending on which study you read, the average American spends between three and four hours a day watching television. That's more than 1,200 hours a year. Do they really see anything they needed to see, learn anything worth learning, or see anything remotely meaningful or even relevant to their lives? If they could wave a magic wand and get all those hours back, would it be make sense for them to spend that time in front of the television again?

The average American sees something like 30,000 commercials every year. Television is by far the most important medium for corporate propaganda to weasel its way into the minds of American citizens and American children. The latest psychological research is employed to persuade Americans to buy what they do not need using money they do not have. It spreads the insidious message that consumerism is the end-all-be-all of life, and that virtue and decency are quant relics of a bygone age.

The time we spend watching television breaks down the Jeffersonian pillars of our society. Every hour spent in front of the "idiot box" is one less hour for reading a book or newspaper, for gardening, for enjoying dinner parties with friends, for attending school board meetings, or for voluntering with local community groups. In effect, television simply plugs itself into our souls and gradually sucks out our Jeffersonian energies.

Turn it off. And, if you're wise, keep it off.

Separation of Church and State Must Be Protected

2010-05-10T07:41:00.000-05:00

Thomas Jefferson would have seen the Religious Right as perhaps the greatest threat to the continued freedom of the American people. Some pundits have asserted that the political power of the Religious Right has been on the decline in recent years, but 21st Century Jeffersonians shouldn't be fooled. They are not disappearing from the political scene anytime soon.

Well-organized and well-funded, activists of the Religious Right have been doggedly pursuing their vision of a Christian America for the past several years. It is a vision that most of the Founding Fathers, and Thomas Jefferson in particular, would have found horrifying and abhorrent. For they envisioned a completely secular government that had no power over the religious lives of its citizens. In the words of Jefferson himself:

[O]ur rulers can have authority over such natural rights only as we have submitted to them. But the rights of conscience we have never submitted, we could not submit. We are answerable for them to our God. The legitimate powers of government to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.

What the Religious Right wants is for the government to have the power to dictate to American citizens on matters of religious belief. They constantly attempt to use the power of the courthouse, the state legislatures, and Congress itself to advance their agenda. They seek to impose their views on sexual morality onto the rest of society, to block the teaching of perfectly sound scientific theories because they feel they violate their particular interpretation of Scripture, to subject judicial nominees to de facto religious tests (in violation of the principle of Article VI, Section 3 of the Constitution), and to divert taxpayer money to religious organizations.

In addition, the Religious Right seems to be generally in favor of high federal defense spending and a militaristic foreign policy, which is quite a contrast to the admonitions of Jesus to turn the other cheek and love our enemies. Oddly enough, these people claim to oppose "Big Government", but they seem more than happy to support a big government if it were to follow their orders and they clearly want a government big enough to interfere with the personal lives of its citizens.

Thomas Jefferson stood opposed. And so must 21st Century Jeffersonians.

Jefferson, more than any other figure in American history, is responsible for the establishment of the separation of church and state in our country. Indeed, he coined the phrase himself in his famous 1802 letter to the Danbury Baptist Association, in which he says:

Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should "make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," thus building a wall of separation between church and state.

Jefferson was referring, of course, to the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which clearly states that the government has no authority to act either on behalf of or in opposition to any religious opinion.

Jefferson had been working on behalf of religious freedom and the separation of church and state for some time before he wrote that letter. In 1779, he had authored the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, which separated church and state in Virginia. Jefferson thought his authorship of this bill so important that he included it as one of only three achievements he desired to be listed on his gravestone.

Separation of church and state is especially critical in the United States because we are one of the most religiously diverse nation in the world. If any one religious opinion in our country were allowed to gain traction as an officially favored faith, it would trigger the same kind of religious violence that has torn many countries apart throughout history (and which, in recent months, has been seen in Malaysia and Nigeria).

Jefferson knew from history that mixing religion and government was always an insidious proposition. 21st Century Jeffersonians must always maintain eternal vigilance on this subject, and keep a wary eye on the Religious Right.

Grow a Vegetable Garden

2010-05-03T07:31:00.002-05:00

21st Century Jeffersonians strive to be as self-sufficient as possible, because it is only through self-sufficiency that we can be truly free. If we are dependent upon Big Government or Big Business for all of our basic needs, then we are not free citizens under any rational definition. Jefferson would look at the lack of self-sufficiency on the part of the average citizen as the one of the most profound challenges our society currently faces.

In Jefferson's time, more than nine out of ten Americans were self-sufficient farmers who relied only on themselves for their food. We live in a very different world today. Only 2% of Americans are farmers, and most of them work for giant multinational agribusiness corporations. The proportion of Americans who today produce even a small amount of their own food is probably a fraction of one percent.

Realistically, it is not possible or even desirable to go back to the state of things in Jefferson's time, with the vast majority of citizens growing all of their own food. But the number of backyard vegetable gardens has been increasing over the last few years, and people are beginning to realize that they can, in fact, produce a significant amount of the food they need. Theyneed not be utterly dependent on the corporate chain grocery store for every bite of their food.

During World War II, citizens were encouraged to plant "victory gardens" to supplement their food supply in the face of wartime rationing. These were small gardens planted in backyards or vacant lots, by individual families or small groups of citizens working together. Amazingly, upwards of 40% of the vegetables consumed in America during the war came from these gardens.

In the face of encroaching Big Government and ever-present Big Business, both of which sap American citizens of their self-sufficiency and therefore their freedom, we need to make a collective effort to restore a measure of independence in the production of our food. Every potato or tomato a citizen produces on his own makes him that much more free.

Starting a vegetable garden in your backyard, or a container garden on the porch of an apartment, is easy, enjoyable, and a fundamental way to increase your own self-sufficiency. Get started today.

School of the Americas Must Be Closed Immediately

2010-04-26T07:55:00.000-05:00

What would Thomas Jefferson have thought if he had been told that the United States would eventually establish a military academy to train agents of oppressive foreign governments in the most effective techniques of murder and torture, to be used against politically-active citizens who were only campaigning for their natural rights? The School of the Americas (renamed in 2001 as the "Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation", but still better known by its original name) is precisely such an institution. Its very existence is a national disgrace, and it should be closed down immediately.

Established in 1946, the School of the Americas has trained an estimated 60,000 members of the military and police forces of Latin American nations. In addition to basic military training, the academy provides instruction in specialized counter-insurgency tactics, interrogation techniques, and other such subjects. Whether intentionally or not, the School of the Americas has equipped the worst villains in Latin America with the knowledge to wage war on their own people, and it continues to do so.

A quick glance at some of the graduates of the School of the Americas should chill the blood of every decent American citizen. There is Efrain Montt, the military dictator who ruled Guatemala with an iron fist and conducted a campaign of genocide against the Mayan population of his country. There is Robert D'Aubuisson, the Salvadoran army officer and politician who tortured and killed thousands of his political opponents during the 1980s. There is Hugo Banzer, who was dictator of Bolivia in the 1970s; during his rule thousands of political enemies were tortured, killed, or simply vanished. Many of the underlings of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet were trained at the School of the Americas.

Perhaps the clearest example of the evil that has come out of the School for the Americas is the Atlacatl Battalion of the Salvadoran Army, which was organized by men trained at the academy. This unit was primarily responsible for the El Mozete Massacre of 1981, in which nearly a thousand civilians were brutally killed. They also were involved in the infamous murder of six Jesuit priests in 1989, an event which sparked widespread public condemnation of the School of the Americas.

This facility trains brutal agents of undemocratic regimes in the tactics of murder and torture, yet it is run by the American military and is funded by the American taxpayer. Its very existence is an outrage and violates the values on which our nation was founded. The School of the Americas must be eradicated root and branch.

Last May, Representative James McGovern (D-MA) introduced House Resolution 2567, which would abolish the School of the Americas and establish a commission to investigate human rights abuses committed at the institution. So far, 97 other members of the House of Representatives have signed on as co-sponsors of the legislation. Check the list of co-sponsors; if your representative in Congress is not among them, please contact them immediately and ask that they sign on as well.

To answer the question asked by the opening paragraph, Jefferson would lament for his country had he seen the School of the Americas. In our time, however, action should take the place of lamentation. 21st Century Jeffersonians should not tolerate the existence of the School of the Americas, and should use every means at their disposal to ensure that this stain on the honor of the American republic is removed forever.

21st Century Jeffersonians Must Fight the Big Box Retailers

2010-04-19T07:35:00.000-05:00

One of the clearest battles being waged today between 21st Century Jeffersonianism and the ever-present forces of Hamiltonianism is the constant struggle between local and independently-owned businesses and corporate big box retail establishments. In this struggle, the 21st Century Jeffersonians must be the ally of the former and the fervent enemy of the latter.

Every year, a larger percentage of America's economic activity is controlled by big box general merchandise stores like Walmart and Target, as well as more specialized establishments like Home Depot, Fry's, and Kohl's. Independent, local, and family-owned venues are under siege, their number declining every year. If we don't change our ways, these pillars of local communities will eventually vanish altogether, and every place in America will essentially look like every other place. Community identity, crucial to 21st Century Jeffersonianism, will be dealt a possibly fatal blow.

When the corporations try to muscle their way into local communities, usually against the express will of the citizens living there, they attempt to persuade local leaders that their big box establishments will actually be beneficial to the community. They claim they will create jobs, increase local tax revenue, and increase consumer choice by offering a wider variety of products. All these claims are false, as can be seen from the evidence.

Take the claim of increased numbers of jobs, for instance. A 2005 study conducted by economists from the University of California, Clark University, and Cornell University studied the impact of Walmart stores on more than 3,000 counties across the United States. The study revealed that each new Walmart resulted in the overall loss of 150 jobs in the community, because each new job at the Walmart store resulted in 1.4 jobs being lost at local stores.

And it's not just jobs. A 2004 study of the economic impact of independent and locally-owned stores vis-a-vis corporate chain stores in Chicago revealed some interesting facts. For every $100 spent at a locally-owned store, $68 dollars in additional economic activity was generated. By contrast, for every $100 spent at a corporate chain store, only $43 dollars in additional economic activity was created. Clearly, if a community wants to protect its local economy, it should post giant "Keep Out!" signs whenever Walmart of one of its imitators comes knocking.

Nor does the claim that big box retail boosts local tax revenue hold water. For one thing, big box retail establishments result in significant increases in public works costs, as new roads and water and sewage systems are required to accommodate them. The big box establishments are far less efficient in their use of such public works than traditional, more compact business districts, such as a "Main Street" with independent and family-owned businesses. Furthermore, the construction of big box retail results in a decline in nearby property values, thus reducing local tax revenue from those sources. Overall, the more a local economy is dominated by big box retail, the lower the municipal government's tax revenue is going to be.

But beyond the need of small towns and neighborhoods to protect their local economies, there are deeper issues involved in the fight against corporate big box retail. One need only wander through innumerable towns across America and see abandoned Main Streets, the windows of once-thriving family-owned businesses permanently shuttered, to see the massive social cost America pays for the alleged "convenience" of big box retail.

The story is the same in all of them: a Walmart or Target came to town, often after overcoming the organized opposition of the people by effectively bribing local town councils. They quickly reduced prices to such an extent that local and family-owned establishments were driven out of business, then raised prices back to where they were before. Some time later, the local economy effectively dead and sales therefore dropping, the big box corporation cut its losses and closed the shop. Having sucked away the wealth of the area like a giant vacuum cleaner, the big box corporations left a once prosperous community effectively destroyed. The barbarians who looted and destroyed the Roman Empire could scarcely have done a more effective job.

It is the small town and the neighborhood, with a strong sense of identity and a feeling of local pride, where the greatest strength of 21st Century Jeffersonianism is to be found. They must be defended, and nothing poses a greater danger to them than corporate big box retail. We must spend our money at the cherished independent and family-owned businesses, completely boycott chain big box retail establishments, and organize ourselves in order to prevent them from opening new big boxes. Unless we do, all our local communities across the country, the source for what makes our country unique, will eventually fade away into a postmodern morass of Walmarts, worse than the nightmares of the most fanciful dystopian science fiction writer.

Electoral College Must Be Abolished

2010-04-12T07:02:00.000-05:00

Every four years, Americans go to the polls to decide who shall be the President of the United States, which is clearly the most important office in the land. But because we continue to rely on the 18th Century administrative machinery of the Electoral College, our presidential elections are beset with two fundamental problems. First, the candidate who receives the most votes does not necessarily win. Second, the votes of certain citizens are worth more than those of other citizens. For these reasons, and many others, the Electoral College needs to be scrapped.

In the Electoral College, each state receives a number of votes equal to the number of representatives they have in both houses of Congress. However, because all but two states cast their votes on a winner-take-all basis, the candidate who actually gets the most votes does not necessarily win the election, for he or she might win several states by large margins and narrowly lose certain critical states, all of whose electoral votes will go to the other candidate.

We saw this clearly in the 2000 election. Democrat Al Gore won the popular vote handily, getting half a million more votes than Republican George W. Bush. But because of an infinitesimal Bush victory in the state of Florida (itself only the result of a flawed intervention by the Supreme Court), Bush received that state's electoral votes, which was just enough to allow him to win the Electoral College and thus to become the President. The candidate who was the clear choice of the American people was not the one who actually ascended to the office.

On four occasions in American history (1824, 1876, 1888, and 2000), the candidate who received the largest number of popular votes lost the Electoral College. In other words, in 1 out of 13.5 elections, the candidate who receives fewer votes actually wins. On five other occasions (1948, 1960, 1968, 1976, and 2004) a shift of a relatively tiny number of voters would have handed the victory to the candidate who lost the popular vote. Those who say that the Electoral College is not a problem because it usually reflects the popular will have not read their history books.

Beyond the fact that the Electoral College often allows candidates who lose the popular vote to still ascend to the Presidency, another major problem is that it gives an individual voter in a smaller state to have a disproportionately large influence on the outcome of the election than an individual voter in a large state. This violates the fundamental one-person-one-vote principle that should be at the heart of any representative republic.

For example, Wyoming has 544,270 and three electoral votes, or one electoral vote per 181,423 people. California, by contrast, has 36,961,644 people and 55 electoral votes, or one electoral vote per 672,030 people. Doing the basic math, we can see that a voter in Wyoming has 3.7 times the influence on the outcome of the presidential election as does a voter in California. It's not fair, it's not democratic, and it shouldn't be tolerated in a Jeffersonian republic.

These two problems would be sufficient by themselves to justify eliminating the Electoral College. But there are many other problems with it as well. One is that it causes presidential candidates to focus all their attention on a small number of "swing states", which are go conceivably go either way in the election, at the expense of those states which are considered reliably Republican or Democratic. As a result, the powers-that-be pay attention to the things that matter to voters in states like Ohio or Florida, while voters in Texas and New York are out of luck.

Consider this. There are roughly the same number of Cuban-Americans in the United States as Vietnamese-Americans. However, the issues important to the Cuban-American community get huge amounts of political attention, while the issues important to Vietnamese-Americans are largely ignored. Why is this? Well, Cuban-Americans tend to live in Florida, a key swing state, whereas Vietnamese-Americans tend to live in California and Texas, which are not swing states. Neither community is inherently more important than the other, but the Electoral College creates an artificial importance for one over the other.

The Electoral College also effectively disenfranchises millions of voters in every presidential election. Because nearly all the states use a winner-take-all system to allocate their electoral votes, it means the losing side in any given state may as well have not cast a ballot for president. A Republican in New York or a Democrat in Texas effectively has no say in who is elected President, and this goes against the ideals of a representative republic.

The Electoral College is an outmoded and obsolete piece of constitutional machinery, and it must be done away with. This could be achieved by a constitutional amendment, which would be very difficult. But because the Constitution allows the individual states to decide for themselves how to allocate Electoral votes, it can also be achieved more quickly and with greater ease by individual action by the various state legislatures.

The National Popular Vote movement provides a surprisingly easy way out of this morass. Legislation is being enacted by individual states, whereby their electoral votes shall go to the winner of the national popular vote, regardless of the outcome in the individual state, with the legislation taking effect as soon as the number of states equivalent to the winning number of electoral votes have enacted identical legislation. Thus far, five states have passed the legislation, representing 50 electoral votes (19% of the total necessary), and steady progress is being made in other states.

To be a truly Jeffersonian republic, the Electoral College must be cast into the ashheap of history. Let us hope that the success reformers have achieved in recent years continues to build until final success is achieved. When it is, it will be a great victory for 21st Century Jeffersonianism.

It's Time to Abolish the American Empire

2010-04-05T07:08:00.001-05:00

The Founding Fathers rarely agreed on much of anything, but aside from Alexander Hamilton they generally supported the idea that the United States should stay out of the affairs of other countries. Trade and exchanges of a cultural and scientific kind were to be encouraged, of course, but political or military involvement in other parts of the world was to be strictly avoided. They also believed (Hamilton again exempted) in a small or nonexistent military establishment except in time of war.

Keeping this in mind, imagine how disappointed the Founders would be if they could see the vast network of American military bases which today encircles the globe, and which might rightfully be termed the American Empire.

We have an army of 56,000 men permanently deployed in Germany. We also maintain nearly 10,000 men each in Italy and the United Kingdom, and another 10,000 scattered about the rest of Europe. We have 33,000 men in Japan and 28,000 men in South Korea. These are just the biggest deployments; thousands of other service personnel are based in scores of other countries. All told, America has nearly a thousand American military bases around the world.

The expense of maintaining this "empire of bases" is truly astounding. A vast fleet of enormous transport aircraft provides the logistical blood of these bases. The cost of construction and maintaining these bases is huge, and all the more upsetting because the construction contracts usually go to politically well-connected corporations. The upkeep of these bases by itself costs American taxpayers roughly $100 billion a year, about one-eighth of the entire military budget.

Many of these overseas bases are small American worlds unto themselves, with multiple bus lines for transportation and the whole array of American fast food restaurants. Recreational facilities, including everything from movie theaters to golf courses to health spas, are part of many of these establishments. A huge American school system exists within these overseas bases to provide education for the children of servicemen. If we do send our sons and daughters to serve overseas, we have a moral duty to provide for their needs. But it's far from free, and one can ask whether the golf courses are really necessary.

The very existence of these bases contributes to the rise of anti-Americanism around the world. With so many servicemen deployed overseas, it's inevitable that some will committ crimes, which discredit the entire American military in the eyes of the locals. In the last fifteen years, for example, assaults and rapes by Americans stationed on Okinawa has generated enormous anger towards America on the part of the Japanese people. The fact that the Americans involved in such incidents are often not tried by the justice system of the host country, but by the system of American military justice, only fuels the controversies.

Why, exactly, does the United States maintain more than 80,000 troops in Europe? There has been no conventional military threat to Europe since the end of the Cold War more than twenty years ago. And even if there was such a threat, isn't the defense of Europe the responsibility of the Europeans?

One can just as easily question the permanent deployments of American armies in Japan and South Korea. Those two countries have powerful militaries of their own, and their populations and economies are strong enough that they could easily increase their military power even more if they so chose. While they face the clear threat of North Korea and the potential threat of China, it seems obvious that these are matters for the nations of East Asia to resolve by themselves. There is no reason for America to be involved, and certainly not to spend untold billions of dollars on unecessary military bases in those countries.

And Although President Obama has declared his intention of withdrawing all American troops from Iraq, construction continues on several mammoth American bases in the country, revealing a desire to maintain a permanent military presence in that country. This would enable the American military to carry out military operations throughout the Middile East and Caspian Sea regions, which are still the world's most important sources of oil.

The overseas American military presence also contributes to unnecessary tensions between our country and others. The present Chinese military buildup is spreading alarm among many armchair strategists in America, but few point out the obvious fact that it is only taking place because of the powerful American military presence throughout East Asia. Russia is attempting to rebuild its former military power, but one wonders if it would be so determined to do so if the American military presence in Europe vanished. And so long as we continue to maintain a military presence in the Middle East, the struggle between the United States and radical Islam will continue to fester.

The powers-that-be would like us to believe that the "empire of bases" is necessary to maintain American security. In truth, by stoking tensions with other nations and contributing to anti-Americanism among foreign peoples, our overseas bases almost certainly put us at greater risk. And it must be remembered that these bases signficantly contribute the the country's national debt, which is a far greater threat to America than any possible foreign enemy.

America is supposed to be a republic, not an empire. Our "empire of bases" not only degrades our security and contributes to our debt, but they represent a disgraceful betrayal to our Jeffersonian ideals. We should begin an immediate reduction of our overseas military presence, with a view of its eventual elimination.

The Future of Food: A Documentary by Deborah Garcia

2010-03-29T07:20:00.000-05:00

If he could look at our modern society, the thing would would strike the most terror in Thomas Jefferson's heart would be the takeover of the world's food supply by large international corporations. If American citizens are dependent upon distant business entities for their supply of food, they are not free citizens. A community that does not control its own food is a community that can be enslaved.

But the agribusiness corporations aren't stopping there. As this well-made 2005 documentary, The Future of Food, makes clear, the agribusiness corporations are busy genetically modifying their crops and using the power the courts to gradually strip away the ability of any farmer to control their own crops or even reusing seeds from their own plants. One day we will wake up and the only food we will be allowed to eat will have been legally patented by a corporation. It makes for disturbing viewing, but view it we must.

Watch the video below. I apologize for the unfortunate occasional corporate advertisment and advise the viewer to mute their computer when they come on.

What one learns from this film should have every 21st Century Jeffersonian up in arms.

Thoughts of the Passage of the Healthcare Bill

2010-03-24T18:32:00.002-05:00

The ferocious debate over the future of the American healthcare system, which has dominated the political landscape for well over a year, effectively ended Sunday night with the historic vote in the House of Representatives to approve the Democratic healthcare bill. The finalizing actions in the Senate are just a few leftover details. Whatever one's point of view, one cannot deny that this represents a tremendous victory for President Barack Obama and the Democratic Party.

It's impossible to know what Thomas Jefferson would have thought about all this. On the one hand, he was always extremely suspicious of the federal government gaining too much power, and it might easily be thought that he would naturally oppose this bill because of the great power it delegates to the federal government. On the other hand, Jefferson was a ferocious enemy of moneyed interests that took advantage of ordinary citizens; he certainly would have cast modern health insurance companies into that category and sought to restrain their damaging activities by every means necessary, just as he did with the Hamiltonians.

The fact of the matter is that the notion of a "healthcare system" didn't even exist in Jefferson's time, and it would have been very alien to him. But he believed firmly in the Enlightenment ideal of progress made possible by human reason and rationality. He would have seen the advances of medical science as the common property of all humanity, and would have seen the denial of the benefits of medical science to poor people as a violation of their natural rights.

The healthcare bill that has now, at long last, become the law of the land, is very far from perfect. The Republicans choose not to behave as a responsible opposition party and therefore foolishly let the opportunity of playing a constructive role slip away from them. It fell to moderate Democrats to strip the bill of its more dangerous provisions, such as the now notorious public option and those parts of the bill that might have opened the way for federal funding of abortion.

But Jefferson would have smiled to know that all Americans, poor as well as rich, have now taken a giant step forward in the quest for equality, because equal access to medical care is such as basic human need that only the most cruel of people could claim that it was not a human right.

Five Simple Things You Can Do to Declare Independence from the Corporations

2010-03-22T07:17:00.000-05:00

Thomas Jefferson would not consider modern American citizens to be truly free until they had fully decoupled themselves from the power that the transnational corporations have over their lives. As we often often pointed out on this blog, Jefferson would probably consider the modern corporation to be a greater threat to the liberties of the people than the federal government itself.

In previous entries, we have discussed the need to decouple our communities from the corporate economic system by supporting independent businesses and to restore community control over local food supplies by purchasing as much of our food as possible from local farmer's markets. These two general measures are perhaps the most important to help the American people get back on their feet and give them back control of their own destinies.

The Jeffersonian fight against corporate power will last for decades. In the meantime, here are five very simple and easy steps that everyone can immediately take as a first measure.

1. Drive at 55 miles per hour. Although most highway speed limits are 65 or 70 miles per hour, the optimum speed for conserving gasoline is actually around 55 miles per hour. In fact, a car travelling at 65 mph burns 10% more gasoline to travel the same distance as a car travelling at 55 mph, and a car travelling at 75 mph burns 10% more fuel than a car travelling at 65 mph.

By driving at a maximum speed of 55 mph, a person not only saves money for himself, but denies that money to the oil companies. To put it another way, every iota of speed above 55 mph results in the oil companies taking money out of your pocket and putting it in theirs. Therefore, drive at 55 mph in order to keep your money in your own pocket and out of the pocket of the enemy.

2. Don't drink bottled water. This one is surprisingly simple, but a sophisticated public relations campaign in favor of bottled water obscures the reality. The truth is that bottled water is no more healthy to drink than the tap water that comes out of virtually every faucet in America. Indeed, despite the multi-million dollar ad campaign attempted to create the impression that bottled water comes from pristine mountain sources, it is mostly just regular tap water in a bottle. As a matter of fact, bottled water may actually be less healthy than tap water, due to toxic contamination of the water from the materials used in manufacturing the plastic bottle itself.

Tap water is virtually free, costing less than a penny for the equivalent of a bottle of bottled water. The same amount of bottled water, by contrast, costs around two dollars. In other words, drinking bottled water costs more than two hundred times the amount of drinking tap water, even though tap water is very likely to be healthier than bottled water. It scarcely needs to be pointed out that throwing away the bottles themselves damages the environment.

Bottled water is a corporate scam designed to separate you from your money to line their own pockets. Don't drink it.

3. Walk for thirty minutes a day. Of all the corporate entities trying to rob us of our freedom, perhaps the health service and pharmaceutical corporations are the most insidious. One can see their advertisements for products on the television, and feel their tentacles whenever we fill out an administrative form before going in to see the doctor.

The abuses the health services corporations have inflicted upon the American people are well known. They want us to be sick, because it is only when we are sick that they can reach their claws into our pocketbooks and steal our money. Therefore, the best thing we can do to thwart them is to stay as healthy as possible.

Nothing can better contribute to a person's health than a good dose of regular exercise, and nothing can achieve this better than a brisk thirty minute walk every day. Every time one does this, he or she puts himself slightly more out of reach of the tentacles of the health services corporations, who would rather have us being perpetual in ill health so that they could rob us blind.

4. Reduce your electricity usage. The majority of electricity in the United States is produced from coal, and the lobbying power of the coal industry is bent on hindering efforts to develop energy sources that would combat global climate change and create more democratic distributed energy networks (such as the Austin-based Pecan Street Project). The less energy w use in our homes, the less power the coal industry has over our lives.

The ways to do this are well known. Use more energy-efficient appliances and light bulbs (especially compact fluorescent light bulbs). Wrap your water heater with a water heater blanket. Use water-saving shower heads in your shower. Let the dishes in your dishwasher air dry rather than heat dry. Make sure your air filters are up-to-date. Make sure your windows are fully secure.

All these very basic steps keep money in your pocket and out of the pocket of the coal industry.

5. Avoid credit card debt. This is perhaps the most fundamental measure of all. In our consumer-driven society, when we are constantly bombarded by expertly-produced advertisements attempting to convince us that it is absolutely imperative that we purchase the latest gadget or gimmick, it may is often hard for some to resist the urge to spend money they do not have on the hyped-up product they do not need.

Don't do it. Making profits through charging interest on credit card debt is the most Hamiltonian activity that the big corporations engage in, and they delight in trapping vulnerable people into debt cycles from which it is extremely difficult to escape. The best way to fight back against the corporations is to live within our means, be as self-sufficient as possible, and avoid the debt trap at all costs.

Eight Reasons the Iraq War was a Mistake

2010-03-20T07:21:00.001-05:00

Today marks the seventh anniversary of the beginning of the Iraq War, and as such it's as good a time as any to examine the controversial conflict through the eyes of 21st Century Jeffersonianism.

During his tenure as President, which ran from 1801 to 1809, the central tenant of Thomas Jefferson's foreign policy was the need to avoid war. Like any rational human being, Jefferson had an abhorrence of war and all the death and destruction it causes. Even when faced with massive provocation by Great Britain in 1807, including the impressment of American sailors and a bloody and unprovoked attack on an American warship, Jefferson successfully avoided war and sought to resolve the disputes between the two countries by diplomacy and economic measures rather than by force.

Had he lived to see the invasion of Iraq in 2003, Jefferson would have been horrified by the decision of President George W. Bush to launch America into an unnecessary war of choice, as opposed to a war of necessity. Our country is still suffering the consequences.

Here are eight reasons that 21st Century Jeffersonians should consider the Iraq War to be an unmitigated disaster which never should have happened, and why we should strive to make sure that nothing like it ever happens again.

1. 4,400 Americans have been killed in the Iraq War. While some may point out that these losses are small in comparison to previous American wars (nearly 7,000 Americans died in the Battle of Iwo Jima alone), this doesn't change the fact that each one of these 4,400 lives was the totality of existence for the person in question, and that their loss was a source of infinite sorrow for their loved ones. And the loss of each one of these 4,400 American lives robbed the country of a person with as limitless a potential as any citizen. What might they have done with their lives, and how much might our country have gained. had they not been sacrificed?

And we would be remiss if we forgot the hundreds of British, Italian, Australian, and other troops who have died in Iraq since the commencement of the war.

2. At least 100,000 Iraqis, and possibly many more, have been killed as a direct result of the American invasion. Reread the above statement, and multiple it many times over.

3. The Iraq War has cost American taxpayers around $700 billion. While the financial cost of the war cannot be compared to the human cost, neither can it be ignored. Every single dollar poured into the conflict is taken from the pocket of a hard-working American, either alive today or yet to be born. The financial cost of the war is a significant contributing factor in the disastrous fiscal situation our country finds itself in. And when we factor in the cost America will continue paying for many decades in order to properly care for the tens of thousands of wounded soldiers, the financial price of the Iraq War will increase enormously.

4. The war was illegal under both American and international law. In 1945, the United States signed the Charter of the United Nations, perhaps the most important treaty in the history of international relations. Article 2 of the treaty clearly states that signatories are forbidden from taking military action against other nations except in self-defense, and Article 6 of the Constitution declares international treaties to which the United States is party are part of the supreme law of the land. By invading Iraq, which had not attacked the United States and had no plans to do so, our country was betraying the rule of law on which it was founded.

5. The war badly damaged the international standing of the United States. It may not matter much is the "usual suspects" in the Arab world or China are angry at the United States, but when we lose the respect of the people in countries like France, Germany, Japan, and Canada, we obviously have a very big problem. While President Obama is to be commended for his hard work at rebuilding America's international standing (his greatest achievement in office, from a Jeffersonian point of view), it is clear that the international standing of our nation is still much worse today than it was in the aftermath of 9/11. Unilaterally invading other nations is not the behavior of civilized nations.

6. The Iraq War distracted from the campaign in Afghanistan. The campaign in Afghanistan was undertaken in self-defense in response to a direct attack, and the need to eliminate the Taliban and Al-Qaeda was clear. But the invasion of Iraq robbed the campaign in Afghanistan of the necessary troops and resources required the finish the job there. As a result, American soldiers are still dying in the mountains of Afghanistan and Osama bin Laden still remains at large.

7. The Iraq War inflamed Muslim public opinion against the United States. Undertaken ostensibly to help rid the world of terrorism, the Iraq War only made it worse. Episodes like the prisoner torture in Abu Ghraib and the occasional killings of civilians by American servicemen certainly don't reflect the U.S. military as a whole, but try telling that to the Iraqis and the rest of the Muslim world. And even under the best of circumstances, a foreign occupation of one's country is a humiliating and angering trauma. Every eight-year-old boy who was awoken in the middle of the night by American soldiers breaking down his door and dragging off his father or older brother is a potential suicide bomber in the coming years.

8. There was simply no reason to invade Iraq. The claims of weapons of mass destruction, which the Bush administration trotted out using words like "proof" and "certainty", was revealed to be absolutely false, showing them to be either complete fools or deliberate liars. After all, Iraq had let the U.N. weapons inspectors back into the country months before the invasion, and they were still at work when forced to leave when it became clear that the United States was going to attack anyway.

And assertions that Saddam Hussein was simply a brutal dictator who needed to be removed from power certainly raise eyebrows in view of the fact that the world is filled with such people: Saudi Arabia, China, Belarus, Burma, Zimbabwe, North Korea, Cuba, and others (many of them, we must shamefully admit, our allies). Shall we cover the world in blood by trying to invade and overthrow them all? As John Quincy Adams said in 1821, the United States "goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy."

It is far too soon for history to judge President George W. Bush. But if Thomas Jefferson could have watched his presidency unfold, he would certainly have shaken his head in shame at the Iraq War. 21st Century Jeffersonians must hold their elected leaders accountable and make sure that nothing of this sort ever happens again.

Book Recommendation: Free Lunch, by David Cay Johnston

2010-03-15T07:36:00.001-05:00

David Cay Johnston is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter for the New York Times who specializes in tax policy. He has made a name for himself for his in-depth reporting on shady government deals that involve using public money to benefit the extremely rich.

Johnston's book Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense (and Stick You With the Bill) was published in 2007. It is an enlightening if disturbing investigation of various government programs that transfer taxpayer money to politically well-connected people. In essence, it reverses the dictum of Robin Hood by stealing money from the poor and middle class and giving it to the already rich and powerful.

Johnston presents several case studies that collectively describe a sinister system, in which the free market ideas of Adam Smith have been replaced by a rigged game. He describes how big-box retailers like Wal-Mart and Cabela's effectively blackmail local governments into giving them massive public subsidies, wickedly forcing their small business competitors to pay taxes to support the very big box stores that are driving them out of business. He describes how municipalities subtly adjust park financing policy to ensure that parks in well-to-do areas are fully-funded and well-maintained, while those in poorer neighborhoods are starved of money and eventually become crime-ridden cesspools. Each chapter lays out yet another boondoggle in which the taxes paid by hard-working American citizens are diverted into the pockets of the already rich and powerful.

One particularly interesting chapter of the book deals with George W. Bush during his business career, before he entered politics. Johnston reveals how he used his father's political and business connections to persuade the city of Arlington, outside of Dallas, to use taxpayer money to finance the construction of a new stadium for the Texas Rangers, after using the power of eminent domain to seize the surrounding property and turn it over to a group of investors he put together. Considering his later calls for small government and low taxes, this episode in Bush's life is ironic, to say the least.

This book should be required reading for anyone who cares about the future of America, and for 21st Century Jeffersonians in particular.

Dividend Income Should Be Taxed As Regular Income

2010-03-08T07:10:00.005-06:00

Thomas Jefferson was the ultimate enemy of aristocracy. He believed that the danger of an artifical class of elites, based on wealth and birth rather than virtue and talent, entrenching itself in the American republic was one of the greatest threats to the continued survival of the nation. His time in France, where he saw a nobility that paid no taxes while the mass of the people starved, only deepened his hostility. As he said in a letter to John Adams, "The artificial aristocracy is a mischievious ingredient in government, and provision should be made to prevent its ascendancy."

Sadly, Jefferson's worst fears about aristocracy have been realized. To quote the New York Times investigative report David Johnston, in his book Free Lunch, "[I]n 2005, the 300,000 men, women, and children who comprised the top tenth of 1 percent had nearly as much income as all 150 million Americans who make up the economic lower half of our population. Add the income the rich are not required to report and those 300,000 made more than the 150 million."

America likes to think of itself as the great land of opportunity, a true meritocracy where one's prosperity depends entirely on one's abilities and their willingness to work hard. This may have been true at the time of the nation's founding, and perhaps event for some time thereafter. But in the early 21st Century, the American economy has undeniably become rigged in favor of the rich and powerful. And it's not just because the rich and powerful have more access to politicians, can obtain better lawyers and more easily get into the elite schools. It's also because the American tax system is also rigged in favor of the rich at the expense of the poor and the middle-class.

This can most clearly be seen when looking at the dividend tax. The rich earn a much greater share of their wealth from dividends on investments than do the poor (who usually have no investments at all) and the middle-class. Indeed, for many rich people in America, dividends on their investments are their primary source of income. Under the federal tax code, income from investment dividends is taxed at a significantly lower rate than regular income. The tax rate on dividend income is currently 15%, whereas the tax rate for regular income is usually between 25% and 35%, depending on the level of income.

If you look at the federal income tax alone, it has the appearance of being progressive, in that people who earn more pay a higher percentage of their income as taxes. But if you look at regular income and dividend income together, the picture quickly changes. The more a person earns from dividend income, the lower their overall tax rate. As a result, the average Wall Street executive pays a lower tax rate on his total income than does the average public school janitor.

As an example, take the world's richest man, Warren Buffet. Curious about the tax burden of the rich vis-a-vis the middle class, he asked the few dozen people in his office to calculate the percentage of their total tax bracket so that he could compare it with his own. It turned out that Buffet paid only 17.7% of his total income in taxes, while his employees paid 32.9% on average.

The rationale for a lower tax rate on dividends is that it encourages investment, which is good for the American economy. On some abstract level, this might make a certain amount of sense. But when the vast majority of the nation's wealth is in the hands of the super-rich, what difference can it possibly make to the ordinary citizens who actually do the work that makes the country function? The fact that the hard-working teachers, police officers, janitors, and other ordinary citizens (the people who actually do the work, in other words) pay a higher percentage of their income than do the super-rich is an utter outrage that shouldn't be tolerated.

Despite efforts by the Republicans to make permanent the Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthy, the 15% tax rate on investment dividends is scheduled to expire at the end of this year. Starting in 2011, dividend income will be taxed at the same level as regular income. This is a development that all 21st Century Jeffersonians should applaud. But it is likely that this process will be challenged in Congress, so we must remain on our guard.

If Jefferson could see the modern American tax system, he would probably call for its complete scrapping and replacement with something completely different. He saw taxation as a necessary evil, and would have recognized the byzantine complexities of the current tax code as a Hamiltonian plot to rob ordinary Americans of their hard-earned money while giving the rich and the powerful enough loopholes (Cayman Islands, anyone?) to avoid paying anywhere near their fair share. The fact that most of the revenue raised by current federal taxation is used to fund dubious and probably unnecessary government programs would have upset Jefferson all the more.

But Jefferson would have seen the blatant inequality in the current tax system as an even greater problem. Believing as he did that "all men are created equal", the unfair advantages given to the rich and powerful by the current American tax system would have shocked and angered him, and he would have rightly considered them a gross violation of the principles of the American Revolution.

In the long-term, we need to shrink the size of the federal government significantly, so as to get the absurd federal budget deficit under control and eventually bring the tax burden down. But the first step in reforming our tax system must be to level the playing field and make sure that all citizens pay an equal share and that no one gets special treatment. And a first step to achieve this is to tax dividend income at the same rate as regular income.

Proportional Representation: An Idea Whose Time Has Come

2010-03-01T07:53:00.000-06:00

Elections to the United States Congress and to the various state legislatures are very simple. The states are divided into contiguous geographic districts, voters within each district cast their ballots for the one candidate they support, and whichever candidate gets the most votes wins. While simple, the winner-take-all system is also very undemocratic.

The idea behind a representative republic is that the men and women sent to represent the people in the legislative bodies are chosen by the people. But the winner-take-all system doesn't achieve this, for it only ensures that the representatives are chosen by at least half of the people; those who voted against the winner, in effect, do not get a representative and are therefore denied effective representation in the legislature.

Take, for example, the 2006 election in the 2nd Congressional District of Connecticut, where Democrat Joe Courtney faced off against Republican Rob Simmons. There were a total of 242,410 votes cast in the election, with Courtney getting 121,252 and Simmons getting 121,158. The margin of Courtney's victory was a mere 81 votes, yet his supporters got 100% of the representation. The almost equally large number of people who voted for Simmons were out of luck. Indeed, it was effectively as if they hadn't voted at all.

However, there is an alternative to the winner-take-all system: proportional representation.

Under proportional representation, voters cast their ballots in large, multi-member districts rather than small, single-member districts. Political parties draw up lists up preferred candidates, equal to the number of representatives the district is allowed to elect. As near as is possible, each party wins as many representatives as their share of the vote percentage indicates. In most systems, provisions also exist to allow independent candidates to run as well.

As a thought experiment, imagine a district which elects ten representatives. Then imagine that the vote in the district emerges as follows: 60% Republican, 30% Democratic, 10% Libertarian, and 10% Green. In such a case, the district would elect 6 Republicans, 3 Democrats, 1 Libertarian, and 1 Green. It would ensure that almost everyone earns some measure of representation, while keeping the majority rule intact.

Such systems of proportional representation are already operating successfully in many other Western countries, including Finland, the Netherlands, and Sweden. Some other countries use a modified form of proportional representation called a mixed-member system, with overlapping single-member and multi-member districts. This kind of system is used in Germany and New Zealand, as well as the devolved parliaments of Scotland and Wales. Whilenot without inevitable hiccups, the use of proportional representation in these countries has generally been a great success.

Implementing proportional representation for congressional and state legislative elections would give the stagnant American electoral system a much-needed shakeup and help ensure true representation for all citizens. In addition, proportional representation would help break the stranglehold of the two party system and give those with alternative views a more level playing field.

The powers-that-bewill oppose any effort to move towards proportional representation, because the current winner-take-all system is extremely useful to them in maintaining their political power, especially when it is combined with partisan redistricting of legislative districts. But we won't have a true representative democracy until we have proportional representative. Let's roll up our sleeves and get started.

Congressman Rangel Should Resign

2010-02-27T07:40:00.004-06:00

This week, the House Ethics Committee admonished Congressman Charles Rangel (D-NY) for taking trips with some staffers to the Caribbean that were paid for by corporations with important business before Congress. Since Congressman Rangel is Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, which crafts legislation involving taxes and many of the largest social welfare programs, he is one of the most powerful members of Congress and is clearly in a position to do critical favors for well-connected corporations.

The House Ethics Committee has a history of going soft on members of Congress who break ethics rules or commit outright illegal acts (such as with this announcement of yesterday), and the admonishment carries no further penalties for Congressman Rangel. Nor did the committee bother to comment on the whole host of other ethics violations that Congressman Rangel has committed, including failing to report income from the rental of overseas properties he owns and getting sweetened deals on rent-stabilized apartments in New York City from a real estate developer.

Some members of Congress, including members of his own party, have called on Rangel to resign his chairmanship of the House Ways and Means Committee in light of these scandals. This is not sufficient. Congressman Rangel should resign from Congress altogether.

The American people elect their representatives in Congress to serve the interests of their constituents and the nation as a whole. Unfortunately, the modern culture in Washington has long since reduced this ideal to a quaint idea from a utopian past. Every time news ethics rules are created, the politically and financially powerful quickly and easily finds ways to circumvent them. Besides, most ethics rules are written with loopholes deliberately inserted into them anyway.

The only true insurance against bribery and corruption in Congress is the American voter. All citizens should remorselessly monitor their own representatives in Congress and the state legislatures, and hold their feet to the fire when any hint of ethical lapses rears its head. Congressman Rangel, for his part, should have been voted out of office by his own constituents long ago.

Orlando Zapata Tamayo: 1967-2010

2010-02-24T07:30:00.002-06:00

One of Cuba's best-known dissidents, Orlando Zapata Tamayo, has died in a Havana clinic. He had spent the last several years in a Cuban prison for daring to speak out against the Castro regime, and died as a result of a hunger strike that lasted nearly three months. He might as well have been murdered by the oppressive forces that currently control Cuba.

One day, when the Castros are long gone and the Cuban people enjoy the fruits of democracy, let's hope they build a statue to Mr. Tamayo in commemoration of his courage and self-sacrifice.

Purchase of Additional C-17 Transports Wasteful and Irresponsible

2010-02-22T07:25:00.002-06:00

The C-17 Globemaster III is highly successful American-built military transport aircraft, used not only by the United States but many of our allies. It forms a critical part in the massive system of military airlift that, for better or worse, holds together the American global "empire of bases". The United States currently operates about 190 of the aircraft and the Air Force says that they do not need any more.

Congress, nevertheless, has allocated funding for at least ten more transports. At $200 million per aircraft, that adds up to $2 billion taken from hard-working American taxpayers (and borrowed from American citizens yet unborn) to build aircraft that the Air Force doesn't even want. It is a clear case of Congress deciding military funding policy not on based on military necessity, but on purely political motivations.

The long-established defense contractor Boeing is the primary corporation responsible for building the C-17, and is clearly determined to squeeze every taxpayer dollar that it can out of the program. Not surprisingly, the members of Congress who have been the biggest pushes for the purchase of additional C-17s, such as Senator Christopher Dodd (D-CT), have campaign accounts awash in contributions from the company.

John McCain (R-AZ), the recent Republican presidential candidate, has probably been the loudest voice raised in opposition to buying additional C-17s. In this, he has a somewhat ironic ally in President Obama, who has called on the Senate to reject the appropriation. Unfortunately, the Senate voted down a proposal to strip the funding out of the defense appropriations bill in October, and President Obama decided to sign the bill rather than go to the wall on the issue of the C-17s.

Few should doubt that many members of Congress, prompted by their corporate masters at Boeing, will continue to push for even more C-17s in the next congressional session and beyond. It i similar to story we saw with the F-22; a military product becomes a cash cow for a well-connected corporation, and its minions in Congress continue to fund additional units long after the military has said it does not need any more.

When this happens, the federal government is effectively robbing from the poor to give to the rich, and worsening an already disastrous national fiscal crisis. Though perfectly legal, it's a sinister form of Hamiltonian corruption and must be stopped. All 21st Century Jeffersonians should contact their own representatives in the House and Senate and make it clear to them that they want the production of further C-17s halted. And be sure to hold their feet to the fire at every townhall meeting you can get to.

President Obama Creates Deficit Reduction Commission

2010-02-18T12:13:00.003-06:00

Last month, Senator Judd Gregg (R-NH) and Senator Kent Conrad (D-ND) proposed creating a bipartisan commission to propose solutions to the nation's disastrous fiscal crisis. Foolishly and with incredible short-sightedness, the Senate voted down the proposal. However, as he said he would do in his State of the Union Address, President Obama has now taken the step himself, issuing an executive order creating a high-powered commission to study ways to reduce the deficit.

To co-chair this commission, President Obama has chosen Democrat Erskine Bowles, who was chief-of-staff to President Clinton, and Republican Alan Simpson, a former Governor of Wyoming who also served as one of the state's senators for several years. Two other members of the commission will be chosen by the White House, while six will be chosen by congressional Democrats and six by congressional Republicans.

Considering the refusal of the Republican Party to act as a responsible opposition over the last year, it wouldn't be surprising if they will simply refuse to participate in the commission in an effort to embarass the President. This would be a great disservice to the country. The fiscal situation of the United States presents a danger to the country far greater than any conceivable combination of foreign enemies, and to play political games while the disaster accelerates is so irresponsible that history will condemn the GOP for decades to come if they don't step up and work with the Democrats to deal with it.

The Democrats, however, need to get their own house in order before anyone can take them seriously on this issue. While the freeze on discreationary spending increases is better than nothing, President Obama and the Democratic leaders in Congress need to go much further. All talk of a second stimulus package should be dismissed out of hand, and the country needs to be prepared for inevitable cuts, not just spending increases.

The continued announcements by moderates and "deficit hawks" in Congress that they are resigning is not encouraging. Thus far, three of the most prominent champions of a more sensible budget have announced that they will not seek reelection this year: Judd Gregg (R-NH), Byron Dorgan (D-ND) and Evan Bayh (D-IN). While all the mindless political pundits analyze these announcements for any perceived advantage or disadvantage they create for one party or the other (as if that matters), few are mentioning the disquieting implications these resignations will have on budget and deficit issues, which cannot be solved without bipartisan solutions.

Let's hope this commission can actually accomplish something and that this opportunity is not sacrificed on the altar of partisan politics.

Putting Terrorists on Trial in Civilian Courts is Proper Course of Action

2010-02-15T07:17:00.003-06:00

Ever since the 9/11 attacks in 2001, a dispute has raged over how to deal with terrorists when they are captured. Should they be tried like ordinary criminals in civilian courts, or should they be given some other sort of status that puts them on a different level from ordinary criminals?

The Bush Administration was emphatic that terrorists were not ordinary criminals and shouldn't be treated as such. However, since the terrorists are not military personnel of a foreign state, they cannot be treated as prisoners of war under international law. To resolve this paradox, and despite having no constitutional authority to do so, the Bush Administration created a new legal designation for terrorists- "enemy combatants"- and locked them up in the prison camp of Guantanamo Bay or other detainment facilities around the world (many of them secret), so as to circumvent the constitutional protections the terrorists would have had on American soil.

In the past, terrorist suspects were tried in civilian courts. This was done in the case of the men who bombed the World Trade Center in 1993, and also in the case of Timothy McVeigh, the domestic terrorist who blew up Alfred O. Murrah Federal Building in 1995, killing 168 people. Trying terrorist suspects in civilian courts never presented any insurmountable problems before the 9/11 attacks, which makes the subsequent behavior of the Bush Administration all the more confusing.

Civilian courts were deemed unacceptable by the Bush Administration, which decided to implement a special system of military courts in which to try the 9/11 suspects and other Al Qaeda prisoners. In its desire to paint the campaign against Al Qaeda as a "war", even though the enemy is a nonstate organization and not an independent nation, the administration apparently never considered simply treating the terrorists as the criminals they are. With the hindsight available to us eight years later, we can now see that this was a very serious mistake.

Al Qaeda, and all the other Islamic terrorist groups who share its ideology, like to see themselves as religious warriors fighting for freedom against an oppressive enemy. Indeed, they have created a sophisticated propaganda machine to spread this image throughout the Muslim world and beyond. By treating them as something more than common criminals, the Bush administration gave them a mystique and credibility that they do not deserve. With the stroke of a pen, Bush raised the public status of the Al Qaeda fighters from murderous criminals to holy warriors.

Last November, President Obama created a firestorm of controversy when he announced that Al Qaeda suspects would be tried in a civilian court in New York, rather than in a military court in in the Guantanamo prison camp. Republicans lambasted the decision as somehow being "soft" on terrorism. But President Obama's decision was the correct one, and he is to be commended for sticking to his guns in the face of sustained political pressure.

Terrorists are nothing but murderous thugs, and treating them as common criminals is the only rational thing to do. Giving them some sort of special status elevates them to a higher level than they deserve and creates artifical credibility for their twisted political and religious ideologies. It also subverts the forms of constitutional law on which our nation is founded, for if the legal status of terrorists can be altered simply by executive decree, so can the legal status of anybody else.

Political Dynasties Have No Place in a Jeffersonian Republic

2010-02-12T07:20:00.005-06:00

There is news today that Congressman Patrick Kennedy (D-RI) will not be seeking reelection. While not a major news item in and of itself, it does mean that the most famous political dynasty in America without a direct role in the federal government for the first time in many decades. And this is good news, because 21st Century Jeffersonians should always raise eyebrows whenever political candidates attempt to capitalize on family connections and prestige, rather than their own fitness for office.

When the nation was founded, Jefferson and his cohorts saw the possibility of a new kind of society, uninfected by the virus of aristocracy. Thomas Paine, writing in Common Sense, made the obvious yet important point that "virtue and ability are not hereditary." As a state legislator in Virginia, Jefferson pushed legislation banning the practice of primogeniture and attacked other pillars of aristocratic privilege. In order to prevent the establishment of an aristocracy in America, based on wealth rather than noble lineages, Jefferson waged a long struggle against Hamilton and his Federalist allies.

But despite all the efforts of the early Jeffersonians, we can see that the virus of aristocracy has wormed its way into the American political process, and this is most clear in the form of the many family dynasties that hold a disproportionate share of political power in our country.

The Kennedys may be the most famous political dynasty in America, but the Bush family is a close second. From the ranks of this family have emerged two presidents, two senators, a governor, and a Supreme Court justice. Their example is perhaps the most telling argument against political dynasties, for George W. Bush would never have become Governor of Texas, let alone President of the United States, had he not been his father's son. And while the history of his administration still has yet to be fully written, it is more obvious every day that the United States would have been much better off had George W. Bush lived out his life as the part-owner of a baseball team.

Throughout our nation's history, many families have operated political machines that have controlled entire states or large cities, sometimes for decades. The Daley family has treated Chicago pretty much as their own personal fiefdom since the 1950s. After the assassination of Huey Long in 1935, his family continued to effectively control the politics of Louisiana for decades, and his son Russell continued to serve in the Senate until 1987. The Udall family has had a disproportionate share of power in many Western states for nearly a century, and two of its members are currently United States senators, one from New Mexico and one from Colorado. When Senator Frank Murkowski (R-AK) was elected Governor of Alaska, he had the gall to appoint his own daughter, Lisa Murkowski, to succeed him in the Senate. Beau Biden, the son of the current Vice-President, was elected Attorney General of Delaware on account of his father's popularity, and there has been talk of his succeeding to his father's Senate seat. And there are countless other examples of family political dynasties in America.

This sort of nonsense must stop. If the officeholders of the land are going to be chosen because of who their parents are, rather than on account of their own virtues and abilities, then America is no better than a medieval kingdom. Citizens must be extremely wary whenever they hear of a current politician's child or other relative running for office. If all else seems equal between two candidates, the fact that of them is a member of a powerful political family should be a sufficient enough reason to vote against them.

New Poll Shows Three-Quarters of Americans "Angry" at the Federal Government

2010-02-10T11:45:00.000-06:00

According to a newly-released public opinion poll from Rasmussen Reports, 75% of the American people describe themselves as "angry" at the federal government. Broken down by political affiliation, 89% of Republicans, 61% of Democrats, and 78% of Independents describe themselves as angry.

In a certain sense, this is not news. Being angry at the federal government is standard procedure for the American people. And one shouldn't assume that this poll represents some sort of unity among citizens. Republicans might be angry because the Obama Administration is trying to pass amassie healthcare bill, whereas Democrats might be angry at their failure to do so.

But there is a clear picture that the American people are more disillusioned with the government today than they have been in some time. The polling data indicates that the American peole blame both political parties more or less equally. Many are disillusioned because President Obama promised a great deal during the campaign, which it turned out he couldn't deliver. Many are disillusioned by the Republicans for blocking the President's initiatives for motives that are clearly based on parisanship rather than policy. Almost everyone, I think, is disillusioned because it is becoming increasingly obvious that the current structure of the government are unable to meet the expectations of the American people.

It's not a big surprise that so many American citizens don't bother to vote on election day, because they see their votes as essentially worthless. One finding of the poll was that a large majority of the American people believe "that the political system is broken, that most politicians are corrupt, and that neither party has the answers." As usual, the American people are quite correct.

Jeffersonian Victory! NAIS Is De-Funded

2010-02-09T17:30:00.002-06:00

Good news in the fight to save America's independent family farms. The Department of Agriculture has announced that the National Animal Identification System (NAIS) has had its funding stripped in the next federal budget.

We've discussed this program in the past. Its purpose was to tag literally every livestock animal in America with an electronic marker and monitor their movements. Ostensibly intended to help prevent the outbreak of cattle disease, it representated a massive intrusion of federal power into areas where it had no constitutional authority. The giant agribusiness corporations loved the idea, as the additional costs to them would be more than made up for by additional profits from overseas sales. But organizations representing independent ranchers were furious, especially because the cost of the program would fall to them and would have been about two dollars per animal. Indeed, many small ranchers believed that a main motivation for the inception of the program was the desire by the agribusiness corporations to drive small-scale operators out of business.

The announcement that this program will not be pursued is wonderful news and something that all 21st Century Jeffersonians should applaud.

Increased Tensions with China Disturbing but Not Surprising

2010-02-08T07:26:00.000-06:00

In the last month or so, relations between the United States and China seem to have taken a sharply negative turn. When looking over the geopolitical situation of the world, a sound argument can be made that the Sino-American relationship is the most important one in the world, so any trouble in the relationship has to be taken seriously.

The sudden downturn in relations was highlighted when it was announced that the United States would sell a weapons package worth $6.4 billion to Taiwan, which China considers a renegade province. The package included Patriot air defense missiles, Blackhawk helicopters, and communications equipment for Taiwan's F-16 fighters. Despite the fact that these weapons are mostly defensive in nature, China has loudly protested the move and suspended contacts between the American and Chinese militaries.

Taiwan is a democracy under threat of invasion from the world's most powerful autocracy, so a case can be made that selling arms to them is not only good business, but a moral imperative. Had the United States not supplied Taiwan with the necessary tools to defend itself against a Chinese attack, the island would have long since fallen to China, and the people who today live under a democracy would instead be living under tyranny.

There have also recently been several acrimonious exchanges between America and China on the subject of trade. The United States accuses China of keeping its currency at an artificially low value, allowing cheap Chinese exports to flood the American market while hindering the entry of American products into the Chinese market. The Sino-American trade imbalance is absurdly tilted in favor of China, resulting in a long-term flow of wealth from us to them. It's a situation that cannot be allowed to continue.

There are numerous other bones of contention between the two powers. President Obama is scheduled to meet with the Dalai Lama, against Chinese protests. The United States is not happy with China's opposition to stronger sanctions against Iran or its position on an international agreement on global climate change. Indeed, the list of problems between the two countries seems to go on forever.

For all this rhetoric, nothing has happened in Sino-American relations in recent months that hasn't happened many times before. China, having recovered from the economic downturn more quickly than the rest of the world, is simply feeling confident and wanting to throw its weight around a little bit. In the grand scheme of things, it's nothing to be concerned about.

But what of the long-term Sino-American relationship and its impact on the wider world. Any rational observer of the global geopolitical scene can see that China's power is on the ascendent while that of America is beginning to wane. In and of itself, the relative decline of American power is not something that should worry 21st Century Jeffersonians, and indeed will have some positive benefits (no temptation to invade and occupy unthreatening countries, for example). But the fact that the rising power is clearly China, potentially the most powerful autocracy the world has ever seen, certainly raises eyebrows.

The United States should never kow-tow to China, but it should also strive to remove potential points of dispute. Eventually, the desire for freedom that is basic to human nature will liberate China from itself, but until then, we need to keep a wary and respectful eye on China.

Cassini Mission to Saturn Gets Seven Year Extension

2010-02-04T10:53:00.000-06:00

America's manned spaceflight program might be in complete disarray, but NASA's robotic explorations of the Solar System continue to produce tremendous results in terms of scientific information. Yesterday, the tremendously good news that the Cassini mission to Saturn had been extended for seven years was revealed, and this is certainly cause for celebration.

The Cassini mission is one of the feathers in the cap of America's space program, and will go down in history along with other robotic missions like Viking, Voyager, and Galileo for contributing to the knowledge of humanity and furthering our understanding of the Solar System. Launched in 1997 and arriving in orbit around Saturn in 2004, the probe has been exploring Saturn and its family of moons for the past several years, sending back massive quantities of information that is currently causing scientists to rewrite the textbooks not just on Saturn but on the entire Solar System.

Cassini is still operating perfectly, and NASA made a very sensible decision in renewing the mission for an additional seven years. The additional cost is very small, and the reward in additional scientific information is certain to be vast. The mysterious moon Titan holds many secrets yet to be unraveled, although Cassini has flown past it many times and deployed onto its surface the descent probe Huygens, designed by the European Space Agency. Cassini has also flown past the equally enigmatic moon of Enceladus several times, but we are only just beginning to understand this strange little world. And, of course, Saturn itself, despite centuries of study, is still yet to be fully understood. We are fortunate indeed to already have a robot emissary in orbit in the Saturnian system, and NASA made a very wise decision in extending its mission.

Thomas Jefferson's heart would quicken in excitement if he could be alive to hear about this. A man who always considered himself a scientist before a politician, he would have considered the exploration of Saturn and its moons far more interesting and important than debates about healthcare or arguments about our policy towards Iran. If he could choose only one magazine subscription today, he would be far more likely to choose Scientific American over Newsweek.

Raise a glass to Cassini, and to the fact that it will continue to explore Saturn and its moons for seven more glorious years.

Greed of A.I.G. Knows No Bounds

2010-02-03T06:40:00.003-06:00

The serious economic crisis from which the country is still emerging, and which we might fall back into if we are not careful, is mostly due to the sickening greed, shortsightedness, and lack of decency by those who run the big financial corporations like A.I.G. Their foolishness in risking the money of their shareholders on dangerous speculations (it's an insult to call them "investments") in a real estate market they knew was falling apart might have given them short-term profits, but at the cost of strangling the American economy and ruining the lives of millions of American citizens.

To prevent the massive stupidity and greed of the investment bankers from causing the entire American economy to tank, the federal government stepped up and provided a massive bailout package, of which A.I.G. received about $170 billion. But despite the fact that the bank has yet to pay back the government the money (provided, lest it be forgotten, by the hardworking American taxpayer), A.I.G. continues to pay its executives obscene bonuses.

Today, A.I.G. has announced a new round of bonuses, totalling $100 million. Clearly, they have either learned nothing, or simply couldn't care less. Most likely it's the latter.

These Hamiltonian jackasses deserve no bonuses, since their mismanagement, greed, and lack of civic virtue helped bring on the financial crisis in the first place. Certainly they should not be paying such bonuses when they have yet to pay back what they owe to American taxpayers.

What A.I.G. and their ilk have done with the money of American citizens in the last decade is rather similar to another story of financial fraud from our history. During the Revolutionary War, patriotic citizens helped hund the war effort through the purchase of war bonds and many soldiers of the Continental Army received such bonds as their salary. After the war, the desperate financial straits of the government resulted in the bonds losing most of their value, so that a bond worth a dollar might have plunged to the level of fifteen cents or less.

When Alexander Hamilton became Secretary of the Treasury, he made the decision that the bonds would be bought back by the government at par, rather than at their market value. But before the general public was aware of this, Hamilton revealed the plan to his cronies in New York, who proceeded to launch a nationwide effort to buy up as many war bonds as they possibly could while they were still at their reduced value. The result was that Hamilton's cronies made a financial killing, while the veterans, war widows, and patriotic citizens were tricked out of the money that was rightfully theirs. It was all perfectly legal, but that didn't change the fact that it was all sickening and immoral.

The executives of A.I.G. and their ilk at other Wall Street financial corporations are Hamilton's modern cronies and their actions are equally ruinous to the live of countless American citizens. Just as the country once broke up monopolies like Standard Oil, which were acting against the interest of ordinary Americans, we should now act to break up these big banks. If you're "too big to fail", then the system is out of joint and needs to be fixed.

"Don't Ask, Don't Tell" Must Go

2010-02-02T19:50:00.002-06:00

Earlier today, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates stood before the Senate Armed Services Committee and said that the long-standing "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy needed to be scrapped. This obvious decision has been staring the country in the face for many years.

Don't-Ask-Don't-Tell, instituted in 1993, was President's Clinton rather cowardly way out of the dilemma of gays serving openly in the United States military. Essentially, it required that homosexuals not disclose their sexual orientation, and that military officials not inquire into it. There was nothing whatsoever laudable about this policy. It still meant that homosexuals could be dismissed for the service for nothing other than being the kind of person they were born to be. Such a disgraceful and undemocratic policy has no place in a Jeffersonian republic.

Admiral Mullen himself said it best when he stated, "No matter how I look at the issue, I cannot escape being troubled by the fact that we have in place a policy which forces young men and women to lie about who they are in order to defend their fellow citizens."

Being a homosexual in no way inhibits an individual's ability to serve in the armed forces. All the arguments used by opponents of gays serving in the military are essentially identical to those used by opponents of blacks serving in desegregated units with whites before President Truman's desegregation of the military in 1948. Believing, as we do, that all men are created equal, we cannot in good conscience maintain such a policy as Don't-Ask-Don't-Tell. It is a stain upon our national honor.

All citizens of the United States are entitled to equal treatment before the law. For this most basic reason, the discriminatory policy of Don't-Ask-Don't-Tell must go.

American Space Program Needs Clear Direction

2010-02-01T07:12:00.003-06:00

The recent decision by President Obama to cancel NASA's plans to return astronauts to the Moon and eventually send an expedition to Mars is a great disappointment and a serious mistake on the part of the President. While Project Constellation was certainly not without its problems, a vastly better course of action would have been to adapt and adjust the program to ensure success, not scrap it entirely (especially since the federal government has already spent several billion dollars on it). The cancellation of Project Constellation leaves the American space program with no real direction, and this is a recipe for disaster.

In 1961, President Kennedy gave the newly-established NASA a clear and specific mission: successfully send a manned mission to the Moon by the end of the decade. Against all odds, it succeeded, with Neil Armstrong planting the American flag on the Moon in 1969. It was one of the greatest achievements in world history.

Jefferson would have been delighted by the Apollo Program, and the bold spirit that NASA exhibited back in its glory days. He was always a firm supporter of exploration, as both a private citizen and as a public servant. Seeing a clear national interest, Jefferson didn't hesitate to use taxpayer money to fund the Lewis and Clark Expedition, not the mention the explorations of Zebulon Pike and many others. The pioneers of eventually settled the American West had had their trails blazed for them by these bold explorers.

Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were, in a very real sense, the true descendants of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark. But unlike the exploration of the American West, the American space program has stalled and become mired in inefficiency and unproductive activity. Rather than continue to blaze a trail for future settlers, most of NASA's work has become needless waste of taxpayer dollars.

Even as the American flag was being planted on the Moon, NASA had drawn up ambitious plans to establish a permanent outpost on our lunar neighbor by 1978 and send a manned expedition to Mars by 1981. Shortly thereafter, however, President Nixon cancelled all these plans. Had NASA been allowed to go forward, we might today be well into the process of harvesting the vast resources of the Solar System to improve life on Earth in unimaginable ways.

In the years after the last Apollo mission to the Moon in 1972, the American manned space program has had no definable goals, seemingly existing merely to perpetuate its own existence. We have built and flown the Space Shuttle for the past thirty years, but it does little that cannot be done by expendable rockets and its poor safety record has lead to the deaths of 14 brave astronauts. Ostensibly, the Space Shuttle was created in order to build the International Space Station, but no one can seem to articulate what the ISS is actually for. In truth, we built ruinously expensive Space Shuttles in order to build a ruinously expensive Space Station, which goes nowhere and does nothing.

The utter failure of the manned spaceflight program since Apollo has been somewhat alleviated by the tremendous success NASA has had with its unmanned exploratory missions around the Solar System. All Americans should be tremendously proud of the Voyager missions to the Outer Solar System, the Viking and Mars Exploration Rover missions that landed on Mars, the Galileo mission to Jupiter, the Cassini mission to Saturn, the Magellan mission to Venus, and many other such projects that have unlocked great scientific secrets and advanced the collective knowledge of humanity. Thomas Jefferson would have been overjoyed by these achievements.

In January of 2004, not quite a year after the tragic loss of the Space Shuttle Columbia with its seven-man crew, then-President George W. Bush announced a new policy for NASA, aiming at the return of astronauts to the Moon and eventually sending an expedition to Mars. It was an ambitious goal, and one of the few major initiatives of the Bush Administration of which Jefferson would have approved. But despite some progress, including the design of a new manned spacecraft called the Orion, the plan had run into numerous roadblocks, most specifically technical issues involving the Ares rockets and the massive budgetary pressures that characterize our times. The decision by the Obama administration to cancel the program may be a disappointment, but it is not a surprise.

So now we are left with a manned spaceflight program with no clear direction or goal. A space program without a clear direction is worse than no space program at all, since it wastes great amounts of taxpayer money for no gain.

21st Century Jeffersonians should strongly support space exploration, for the same reason we would have supported the exploration of the American West in Jefferson's time. It's where the future hopes of humanity lie, and the reopening of the frontier spirit will reawaken many of the Jeffersonian impulses among the people, who have slumbered for too long.

Being fully conscious of our nation's precarious fiscal situation, we should push our government to move forward with a common sense, cost effective manned spaceflight program, whose long-range goal should be the establishment of a permanent human presence on the Moon and Mars and, eventually, throughout the Solar System. While the pioneers of the future will not travel in covered wagons, they will be as Jeffersonian as their spiritual ancestors, and we should be laying the groundwork for them now.

As Jefferson said of the Western explorations he did so much to make happen, "The work we are now doing is, I hope, done for posterity. We shall delineate with correctness the great arteries of this nation. Those who come after us will fill up the canvas we began."

Obama's Spending Freeze Good, But Not Good Enough

2010-01-30T11:29:00.002-06:00

One of the major announcements that President Obama made in his recent State of the Union Address was that he would freeze federal spending on nondiscretionary programs in the budget. In other words, there would be no increases in spending on anything aside from defense, homeland security, international affairs, and mandated programs like Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.

It is estimated that this measure would save $250 billion over the next decade. But while it is a positive gesture, it is still only a gesture. The vast bulk of the federal budget is spent on defense, mandated programs, and paying interest on the debt, and none of these will be affected by the spending freeze.

To get serious about the fiscal crisis facing our country, we need more than just gestures. We need effective national leadership. Both parties are clearly blind on this issue, with the Democrats remaining obsessed with increased spending while the Republicans remain obsessed with lower taxes. In order to even begin to solve the problem, a Balanced Budget Amendment needs to be passed, massive reductions in our military spending need to be made, the mandated programs need to be reformed (which will be a painful process), and much if not most of the discretionary programs need to be abolished, rather than merely having their funding frozen.

Whether the political leadership in Washington has the courage to do what is necessary remains to be seen. Recent events are not encouraging in this regard.

State of the Union Addresses Should be Discontinued

2010-01-25T07:35:00.002-06:00

Under Article II, Section 3 of the Constitution, the President is required to report to Congress on the "state of the union" from time to time. This has evolved into a tradition of a grand speech by the President at the beginning of the year, in which the chief executive lays out his legislative agenda and highlights the achievements of his administration and the challenges facing the country. It is usually aired live by all major networks and cable news stations, becoming a grand media event.

It hasn't always been this way. George Washington and John Adams gave speeches to Congress, but Thomas Jefferson refused to do so, sending only written messages instead. This may have simply been due to shyness and the fact that Jefferson was a very poor public speaker. But Jefferson also believed that the State of the Union address had the appearence of a monarchial ceremony, similar to the Speech from the Throne that the British sovereign gave at the opening of every Parliament.

The country would be well-advised to go back to Jefferson's style of having the President merely send a written message and not elevating the State of the Union address into a public spectacle. After all, one of the most disturbing trends in American history over the last several decades has been the emergence of executive supremacy, and the steady rising of the office of President of the United States into an institution increasingly appearing to be a monarch. An elected monarch, to be sure, but still a monarch.

In Jefferson's mind, the President of the United States was merely the chief officer of the executive branch of the federal government. Nothing more, nothing less. While more powerful and possessing greater responsibilities, the President is no more worthy of elaborate ceremonial trappings than any local mailman. If Jefferson could see the elevation of the State of the Union address in the public spectacle it has become, he would be a bit disappointed in us.

The gradual elevation of the President of the United States into a de facto monarch is one of the most distressing trends in American history. Believing that the people of the country are the sovereign power, the simple fact of the matter is that Congress, and not the President, is supposed to be the supreme organ of the federal government, as it has the closest contact with the people themselves. Every American knows the name of the President, but shockingly few know the name of any of their representatives in Congress.

In an ideal Jeffersonian republic, the President should send a written State of the Union message to Congress, which would be reprinted in the newspapers and read with interest by all citizens. But the public addresses the people would really pay attention to would be those of their own congressional representative at town hall meetings.

President Obama's Response to Recent Supreme Court Decision

2010-01-23T09:29:00.004-06:00

This blog has more than its fair share of problems with President Obama, not least of which is the massive deficit spending of his administration. But in his weekly radio address today, President Obama responded to Thursday's decision by the Supreme Court to overthrow all limits to corporate spending on political campaigns and he hit the nail right on the head.

Supreme Court Decision on Campaign Finance an Outrage

2010-01-22T10:27:00.004-06:00

Yesterday, the Supreme Court overturned critical campaign finance laws regulating political campaign contributions from corporations. The Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002, the brainchild of Senator John McCain (R-AZ) and Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI), had limited how much corporations could spend on political campaign advertising and imposed other restrictions specific to the final days of a campaign. Other campaign finance laws going back nearly a century had already limited the ability of corporations to directly fund election campaigns. Yesterday's decision, however, will allow massive amounts of corporate and labor union money to flood the electoral process all over the country, drowning out the voice of the people.

Somewhere, the ghost of Alexander Hamilton is laughing.

In a 5-4 decision, the Court ruled that placing restrictions on political campaign spending by corporations represents a violation on free speech. This is, of course, utter nonsense. Natural rights such as the right to free speech are possessed by human beings, not artificial entities like corporations. A corporation has no more an inherent right to donate to a political campaign than does a puddle of water.

The idea of corporate personhood is an insidious legal concept that should be rejected with maximum prejudice. After all, can the entity known as "Bank of America" or "Walmart" walk into a county courthouse and register to vote?

If the executives of a corporation want to donate their own money to a political campaign, they are as free to do so as any other citizen. But they have no moral right, and should have no legal right, to rob the company coffers of shareholder money and funnel it to political candidates their shareholders may or may not support. To suggest otherwise is ludicrous on the face of it. The same, by the way, is true of labor union bosses using the funds of the union members.

Beyond the abstract outrages inherent in this court decision, its practical impact is likely to be extremely damaging to American democracy. Without any restrictions, corporations will be able to use their gargantuan financial weight to flood the airwaves and mail boxes with virtually unlimited advertisements attacking or supporting political candidates. If the past is any guide, these ads will be mere twenty-second soundbites designed to create false caricatures, utterly devoid of any meaningful content. The grassroots efforts of ordinary citizens, the true currency of genuine democracy, simply won't be able to compete.

Genuine democracy can only function when all viewpoints have a roughly equal opportunity for expression, and that requires the playing field to be as level as possible. If the financial power of the corporations is allowed to sweep away the words of ordinary citizens, then our elections are no better than the sham elections held by tin-pot dictatorships all over the world, in which the ruling party's control of the media ensures that the people hear only good things about the incumbents and only bad things about the challengers.

This decision is terrible news, and unfortunately not likely to be overturned anytime soon. It is yet more evidence of the critical need for fundamental reforms of the American electoral system on all levels. We need public financing of elections to ensure a more level playing field, we need redistricting reform to prevent partisan gerrymandering, and we need many other reforms.

We can only hope that there will be enough people of common sense and a commonwealth interest among our elected leaders to help bring this about.

Interesting Column by Charles Lane

2010-01-21T09:56:00.002-06:00

Charles Lane of the Washington Post makes a very good point in this brief online column. He suggests that the reason comprehensive national healthcare reform is so difficult to enact is because of the basic structure of the Constitution itself. Because the Constitution was written by men who lived in a time when the power of the states was dominant and the power of any central government was to be feared, the system put in place by the Constitution made it extremely difficult for any significant national legislation to be passed (except during a time of war, when partisan rivalries might be put aside).

It makes for some very interesting reading. Perhaps those people who want significant healthcare reform would better use their time in their own state capitals rather than in Washington D.C.

Republican Victory in Massachutsetts Gives Both Parties a Chance to Act Responsibly

2010-01-21T06:43:00.004-06:00

The surprise victory of Republican Scott Brown in the Massachusetts special election to fill the Senate seat left vacant by the death of Senator Edward Kennedy has left the Democratic Party reeling in confusion. The unexpected result reduces the Democratic majority in the Senate from 60 to 59, meaning that the Democrats will no longer be able to block a Republican filibuster. Among other things, this development seems to have effectively derailed President Obama's much-touted healthcare bill.

The Republicans have proven adept at blocking the Obama agenda in the year since he took office. Their newly-acquired ability to sustain filibusters, assuming their caucus remains firmly united, substantially increases their political power. Republicans are hopeful that this special election result is a harbinger of more gains to come when the general mid-term election takes place in November.

Democrats, by contrast, seem in despair. A year ago, the party was celebrating the inauguration of President Obama and the elevation of the party to a more powerful position than it had enjoyed since the administration of Franklin Roosevelt. Now, faced with a resurgent opposition and having failed to enact much of their domestic agenda, the Democrats seem as confused and disjointed as a man picking himself up after being run over by a dump truck.

The new political situation now gives both parties a chance to act like responsible public servants. Over the last year, the Republicans have not acted like a responsible opposition party, but merely as the "Party of No" determined to block any and all initiatives by the Obama administration for purely political motivations. They certainly have not had the public interest in mind. For their part, the Democrats have attempted to ram through enormous and expensive bills as though the Republican Party didn't exist.

Now that the Republicans have solidified their ability to block Democratic bills, one of two things will happen. It may be that the two parties will simply continue to snip away at each other and refuse to work together, ignoring the people's business and allowing the critical problems facing our country to go unsolved. Or they can do what the people have been asking them to do for decades: sit down together and work out compromise solutions that will tackle the important issues.

There are a few good signs in the days since the election. Immediately after the results were announced, there was talk of simply rushing the healthcare bill through the final stages of the Senate legislative procedure and sending it to the President's desk before Senator-election Brown took his seat. However, President Obama himself has firmly rejected this course of action, saying that it would be improper in light of the new political situation. The next few days will be very interesting to watch.

Because we live in a representative republic, the government should act only in keeping with the wishes of the great majority of the people, as nearly as these can be determined. Unfortunately, when one party is firmly in control, it acts as if the American people who support the other party no longer exist. The Republican Party did this between 2000 and 2006, when it controlled both Congress and the White House, and the Democratic Party has done the same over the last year.

Perhaps the two parties will recognize the futility of continuing this way of doing business and sit together together in the spirit of compromise and cooperation. But don't hold your breath.

Remembering Martin Luther King

2010-01-18T08:09:00.004-06:00

It is strangely ironic to reflect that Martin Luther King, Jr. was a Jeffersonian.

The dark side of Jefferson, of course, is that he was a slaveholder. Even though he personally supported the abolition of slavery, his own lifestyle was made possible only by the labor of the human beings he owned. Like most white Americans during his time and for a century afterwards, Jefferson was a blatant racist by any modern standard. For many, these facts alone is sufficient to cast Jefferson and his ideals into the dustbin of history.

It's often difficult to look past the failings of Jefferson the man in order to embrace the ideals of Jefferson the visionary. But Martin Luther King was able to do so. He respected Jefferson very highly and it's no surprise that he quoted the Declaration of Independence in his famous "I Have a Dream" speech. At a very fundamental level, the vision of Jefferson and the dream of King fuse together, each embracing and absorbing the other.

It's worth remembering that this blog is about 21st Century Jeffersonianism, not 18th Century Jeffersonianism. We are not simply picking up Jefferson's ideas and trying to transplant them to our own time; we are also adapting and modifying them in the context of all that has happened since Jefferson's death in 1826. Had Jefferson been able to see the unfolding of American history, being the rational man of the Enlightenment that he was, he would certainly have changed his views on the subject of race. In our mind's eye, we can see Jefferson marching with King on the Mall in Washington on that day in 1963.

Thoughts on the Departure of Senators Chris Dodd and Byron Dorgan

2010-01-18T07:29:00.009-06:00

Earlier this month, two prominent Democratic senators, Chris Dodd of Connecticut and Byron Dorgan of North Dakota, announced that they will not be seeking reelection this year. From the standpoint of 21st Century Jeffersonianism, the departure of Senator Dodd is most welcome, but the departure of Senator Dorgan is to be much lamented.

Senator Dodd has represented Connecticut in the Senate since 1981, and while he has supported some sound environmental policies and opposed the Iraq War, he is also corrupt to the core and completely in the pocket of the nation's crooked financial industry. While serving as the Chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, he received a sweetheart mortgage deal (not to mention massive campaign contributions) from Countrywide Financial, even while he was pushing a bill through the Senate that bailed out the mortgage industry from its self-imposed financial crisis. As if that were not bad enough, Senator Dodd also inserted a loop hole into a bank bailout bill allowing AIG and other institutions to use taxpayer dollars in order to pay obscenely massive bonuses to their executives, the very people whose greed brought the country to the brink of economic ruin. Not surprisingly, Senator Dodd has received more campaign donations from AIG than any other senator.

The sleaze stories don't end there. Senator Dodd owns a vacation home in Ireland, which somehow tripled in value when the rest of Irish real estate was plunging in value. Clearly, the property was purchased at a price far below its actual market value. The man who helped Dodd buy this home, Edward Downe, had been convicted of insider trading and wire fraud back in the 1990s. Senator Dodd was instrumental in getting Downe a presidential pardon.

Senator Dodd is a man after Alexander Hamilton's heart: an officeholder who would rather use his influence to serve the rich and powerful rather than the ordinary citizens who elected him. Luckily, the wheels of democracy have not entirely halted, for the voters in Connecticut have made it rather clear that, in the wake of these revelations, Dodd had little or no chance of being reelected. Hence, his announcement that he is leaving the Senate is as welcome as it is unsurprising. Dodd will have to look at himself in the mirror for the rest of his life and know that he failed in his sacred trust as a United States Senator.

But if Senator Dodd's departure from Washington will bring smiles to the faces of 21st Century Jeffersonians, the departure of Senator Dorgan will leave crestfallen expressions of sadness.

Senator Dorgan is one of a dying breed- one of the last genuine Jeffersonians in a position of major political power in the United States. Embodying the virtues of small town North Dakota, he has always displayed an ability to cut through the complicated morass of policy-making to get at the real issues at stake. He has been a constant opponent of incompetent (corrupt?) military contractors in Iraq and American companies who harm our own economy by shipping our jobs overseas (especially Wal-Mart, a mortal enemy of 21st Century Jeffersonianism). And he has cracked down when he saw wasteful use of taxpayer dollars, no matter how small, as when he squelched a foolish proposal by the Treasury Department to hire a humor consultant. And while he initially supported the Iraq War, he publicly disavowed the war when it became clear that rationale the Bush administration laid out for the war was completely false, and that the administration had either been deliberately deceptive or criminally incompetent.

Perhaps most notably, Dorgan was one of only eight senators who, in 1999, voted against the so-called Financial Services Modernization Act, which broke down the regulatory barriers between banks and investment firms and thus paved the way for the current financial crisis. Dorgan saw the disaster coming and tried to stop it. How much better off would we be had we listened to him?

America needs a Congress that has fewer Chris Dodds and more Byron Dorgans. The best thing 21st Century Jeffersonians can do, aside from making themselves as self-sufficient and free as possible in their own lives, is to help elect people to Congress and the state legislatures who possess common sense, who resist the seductions offered by special interests, and who have a commonwealth interest at heart. The more we do that, the closer we are to the dream of living in a truly Jeffersonian republic.

Is Democracy Stirring in Egypt?

2010-01-16T18:13:00.003-06:00

Since becoming President of Egypt in 1981, Hosni Mubarak has maintained his grip on power through a series of rigged elections, imprisonment of political enemies, and massive government censorship of the press. Despite being considered an "ally" of the United States, there can be no question that Egypt is a dictatorship and President Mubarak is a dictator.

21st Century Jeffersonians, as a general principle, oppose American intervention in the affairs of other countries, noting that these have historically done little good and much evil. But this does not mean we ignore what goes on beyond our shores, and we should always cheer on and provide moral support to those who seek to bring democracy and representative government to their own nations. We saw this nearly happen last year when the people of Iran launched a massive series of protests against fraudulent election results.

In this spirit, 21st Century Jeffersonians should applaud the current activities of Mohamed ElBaradei, the Nobel Peace Prize winner best known to Americans as the former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency. He has been making statements indicated that he may run for President of Egypt when the next election takes place in 2011. If he did so, it would present a significant challenge to President Mubarak, who, at 81 years of age, is reportedly grooming his son Gamal to succeed him when he either dies or leaves the Presidency.

As a Nobel Peace Prize winner who commands immense international respect, ElBaradei could not be treated by Mubarak in the same manner as other opposition politicians (the last candidate to challenge Mubarak in a presidential election, Ayman Nour, was convicted on trumped-up charges of forgery and thrown in jail for four years). Egypt's economy only keeps its head above water with the help of the United States and Europe, and while they have been willing to close their eyes to Mubarak's dictatorial tendancies in the past, it would be impossible to do so with ElBaradei in the picture. His international profile is simply too large.

The prospect of an ElBaradei candidacy has rejunivated the stagnant political scene in Egypt and Egyptians seem excited by the prospect of a credible choice in the upcoming election. With Mubarak and his security forces having ruled Egypt with an iron fist for so many years, and with elections having been long recognized as fraudulent farces, the Egyptian people are hungry for democracy and a real chance to assert their sovereignty, which, after all, belongs to them by natural law.

ElBaradei seems open to the idea of running for President, but has said he will only do so if there were guarantees that the election would be free and fair, including international observers and equal time for all candidates in the Egyptian media. Considering Mubarak's past record, these requirements seem unlikely to materialize. Indeed, the Egyptian constitution effectively limits candidates for President to a few people selected by the ruling party, so it's possible that ElBaradei would not be allowed to run at all.

Again, it is not the business of the United States to stick its nose into the internal affairs of other nations. But we can hope that Mubarak sees the way history is moving and agrees to a free and fair election in 2011. The ideals of Thomas Jefferson may have emerged in America, but they are equally valid the world over.

Bipartisan Senate Pair Team Up to Tackle National Fiscal Crisis

2010-01-12T15:09:00.003-06:00

21st Century Jeffersonians believe that the most important issue facing the United States today is not terrorism, or healthcare, or immigration. Important as those issues are, they pale in comparison with the most critical challenge of all.

The national debt.

As of today, the national debt is $12.3 trillion and rising by about $3.92 billion every day. The enormous costs of our mandated social programs like Social Security and Medicare, the sickeningly bloated military budget and the wars being waged in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the unnecessary waste that is endemic on the federal level have completely bankrupted the nation.

Our current political leadership in Washington, on both sides of the aisle, would like to pretend that this crisis simply doesn't exist, and therefore are continuing to spend money as if it grows on trees. They can only do this, of course, by passing the buck onto succeeding generations. In order to pay for our present extravagance, we are quite literally stealing money from our children and grandchildren.

Jefferson believed that fiscal discipline was one of the two greatest responsibilities of political leadership (the other was avoiding war). He believed that running a government at a deficit was a greater evil than higher taxation. Indeed, he stated explicitly that if government on any level had to borrow money , it had a moral duty to immediately implement a tax to ensure that the debt was paid off within twenty years. To do otherwise was not only poor fiscal policy, but a moral crime.

Both Republicans and Democrats regularly accuse the other of creating this crisis. The fact is that they are both equally to blame. When President Bush took office in 2001, his administration and the Republican-controlled Congress took a large budget surplus (which obviously should have been spent on paying down the debt) and turned it into a massive budget deficit by cutting taxes for the rich and launching an unnecessary invasion of Iraq. A year ago, when President Obama took office, his administration and a Democratic Congress embarked on an even bigger spending spree, passing a stimulus bill totalling nearly $800 billion and transforming an already horrible fiscal situation into an absolutely catastrophic one.

It should come as no surprise that the last time the budget was balanced was when one party controlled the White House and the other party controlled Congress. A bipartisan approach to this crisis is essential to solving it, and in that spirit, two members of the Senate from opposite sides of the aisle have come together to lay out an interesting joint proposal.

Senator Kent Conrad (D-ND) and Senator Judd Gregg (R-NH), the chairman and ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee, have proposed creating a bipartisan commission of 18 members (eight congressional Democrats, eight congressional Republicans, and two representatives from the administration) to study various proposals for lowering the deficit and getting the national debt under control. If 14 of the 18 members could agree on a plan, then it would be sent to the House and Senate for an up-or-down vote, but would need to be approved by a 60% vote in each house, rather than by a simple majority.

Here is an NPR radio interview with the two senators as they discuss their plan.

These two senators should be applauded for their willingness to face the problem fair and square. We should be under no illusions that this proposal will be some kind of silver bullet that will solve the problem, but it's a start. 21st Century Jeffersonians should immediately contact their own senators and tell them to support what Conrad and Gregg have proposed.

President Proposes New Tax on Wall Street Banks

2010-01-11T16:30:00.003-06:00

According to this story from the Associated Press, the Obama Administration is considering a new tax on those Wall Street banks which benefited from the taxpayer-funded, government-run Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). The goal of the proposed tax would be to recoop any money lost to the federal government as a result of expending TARP funds and to help balance the woefully-unbalanced federal budget.

This is good news, and 21st Century Jeffersonians should wholeheartedly support this proposal. It is only right and fair that these banks pay an additional tax after having been bailed out by the federal government. Furthermore, considering the fiscal crisis, this new bank tax would be a most welcome stream of additional revenue (although, truth be told, persuading the federal government to use the money for deficit reduction is likely to be an uphill battle).

In any case, Wall Street clearly needs to be reigned in, and an additional tax on these banks would be a welcome addition to any new regulations on their activities that may emerge from the current Congress. These people ruined the lives of millions of American citizens, and brought the country to the brink of total econoic collapse, merely to line their own pockets with obscene multi-million dollar bonuses. While millions of Americans were losing their jobs and homes because of the mismanagement and greed of Wall Street, the bank executives were popping open champagne bottles.

These banks only survived because they were bailed out by extremely reluctant American taxpayers. But even after that, we now see the Wall Street fat cats already back to their old tricks again, preparing to pay out billions of dollars in bonuses even before they have paid back the taxpayers. This is something that should outrage every American citizen.

Let's hope President Obama's bank tax proposal is successful, and that a serious financial regulation reform package can get through Congress. Thus far, Obama has been far too soft on the bankers, despite occasional populist rhetoric on the subject. It's high time for him to take the kid gloves off and crack down on them. In a truly just world, many of these investment bankers would be in jail. Slapping them with an additional tax, however, is a good place to start.

What Would Jefferson Think of the Healthcare Debate?

2010-01-11T07:20:00.002-06:00

Thomas Jefferson would have been rather stunned by the debate on the future of America's healthcare system currently unfolding in Congress. As a man of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, the very concept of a healthcare system would have been alien to him, and it would have taken him some time to adjust to it. Jefferson would certainly have been delighted and amazed by the astonishing progress that has been made in medical science since his time, and would certainly want its fruits to be available to all citizens. Indeed, it could be argued that access to proper healthcare is part of a person's inalienable right to life. But how to ensure it?

After familiarizing himself with the debate, Jefferson would have first pointed out that personal responsibility is the most important aspect to this question, and he would have been dismayed by its near-total lack of mention in the debate. Americans, he would quickly say, would do more for their own health if they simply took a thirty minute walk every day than if they created the best healthcare system in the world. But aside from this, what manner of public policy would Jefferson call for in the healthcare debate?

One of the key sticking points in the healthcare bill that is to emerge from negotiations between the House and the Senate is whether it should include the so-called Public Option, a program to be offered by the federal government to compete with private insurance plans. The House bill includes it, while the Senate bill excludes it. Its proponents say it is the only way to ensure proper coverage for a large segment of the American populace, while its detractors say it would lead to a collapse of the private healthcare system altogether.

Jefferson would almost certainly oppose the Public Option, because he opposed virtually any measure that increased the power of the central government. He clearly saw that every increase in the power of the central goverment made the people less free, and enacting the public option would certainly be a massive accumulation of goverment power. Even if the federal government had the very best of intentions, it would be a blow to the self-reliance of the people and, therefore, to their freedom.

But Jefferson equally understood that the government was not the only threat to the liberty of the people, and he would have opposed private health insurance companies when they sought to rob Americans of their right to healthcare. The image of private companies denying coverage to citizens because of their past medical history would have struck Jefferson as immoral and unacceptable. He saw the government as the protector of the rights of the citizens, so it seems clear that he would have supported those provisions of the bill which prohibit private health insurance companies from discriminating against citizens based on their past medical history.

In short, Jefferson would have opposed the government becoming a provider of healthcare itself, but he would have supported reasonable government regulation of private healthcare companies to ensure that they couldn't deny Americans their right to health insurance. He would be rational enough to recognize that there had to be some government involvement in the healthcare system, but he would have striven to make sure that this was limited as much as possible to local and state governments, and that federal involvement was kept to an absolute minimum.

Both the House and the Senate versions of the bill prohibit taxpayer money from being used to pay for abortions, and Jefferson would have approved of this. While it's impossible to know what Jefferson would have thought about abortion in general, he certainly would have opposed a person being compelled to pay taxes to support a practice he or she found morally repugnant.

Jefferson, as a rational man, would also ask us to look at the multitude of examples provided by the experiences of other nations and see what miht be emulated in an American environment. What does the healthcare of France do well, which we might do as well? Or Germany? Or Japan? The all-too-common American practice of ignoring what works well in other countries would have dismayed Jefferson, especially on such an important matter as this.

And finally, Jefferson would have been kept up at night by the thought of how much the final bill that emerges from Congress was going to cost. While always in favor of low taxes, he would have approved of the measures in both versions of the bill to pay for the expense through increased tax on higher-income earners, because he firmly believed that deficit spending was a greater evil than taxation. Still, he would call on us to do everything in power to minimize the cost to taxpayers, while still ensuring the provision of affordable healthcare to every American.

Between the House and Senate versions of the healthcare bill, it's rather clear that Jefferson would consider the Senate verson to be superior. But he would still consider it too expensive and call for additional revisions to reduce cost and curtail the involvement of the federal government. To the greatest extent possible, Jefferson would want decisions regarding healthcare to be kept local and personal.

This does not mean that Jefferson would want to maintain the status quo on healthcare. Believing as he would that access to the fruits of medical science is an inalienable human right, he would recognize that the current system allow private companies to deny this right to Americans and that this wrong needed to be righted.

Why We Must Protect the Financial System from the Hamiltonians

2010-01-10T19:43:00.003-06:00

This column in the New York Times by Frank Rich is an absolute must-read piece. He begins by pointing our, quite correctly, that the damage done to the United States by those responsible for the financial crisis that sparked the 2009 "Great Recession" was, in a certain sense, greater than that which might be caused by an Al-Qaeda terrorist attack. From this, he makes the obvious point that we must guard against a repeat of the recent looting of the nation by Wall Street executives just as assiduously as we would guard against another Al-Qaeda terrorist attack.

The men and women responsible for the disaster on Wall Street that has unfolded over recent years- and they number in the thousands- have escaped any meaningful punishment. Sadly, this is not surprising. Thanks to the armies of lobbyists the Hamiltonians employ on Capitol Hill, Congress has never passed any meaningful legislation prohibiting the unscrupulous activities the Wall Streeters that lead to the economic crisis (and, lest it be forgotten, ruined lives of millions of American citizens).

Adding insult to injury, of course, was the fact that American taxpayers were forced to shell out the money to save the massive Wall Street financial institutions, even as the executives have continued paying themselves billions of dollars in obscene bonuses.

Thomas Jefferson would not be at all surprised by the financial crisis that has unfolded over the past few years, and he would point out the fitting irony that it was caused by the greed and unscrupulousness of men and women working within a few hundred yards of where Alexander Hamilton was buried. The struggle between Jeffersonianism and Hamiltonianism did not end in the early 1800s, but continued to rage even in our own day. Indeed, the contest is as fierce as ever.

Film Recommendation: Food, Inc.

2010-01-09T08:47:00.003-06:00

In Jefferson's time, the greatest threat to liberty came from overbearing governmental power, first from the British and later from the Hamiltonians. If he could take a peek into our own time, however, he would see the unrestrained greed and arrogance of corporate power to be just as great a threat as that of government. Indeed, it often seems that those two go hand-in-hand, working together to reduce the American people to a state of dependence.

Nothing would terrify Jefferson more than the control multinational corporations have over the nation's food supply. In his time, more than nineteen out of twenty citizens were independent farmers entirely self-sufficient in terms of food. In our time, independent farmers have virtually vanished as a segment of society. Only about two percent of Americans today are farmers, and most of those have been reduced to the status of servants of the big multinational corporations.

It might seem infinitely more convenient for an American citizen to go to the grocery store to buy a loaf of bread than for him to grow it and produce it himself, but the unseen costs are astronomical. By allowing something as fundamental as our food supply to be taken out of our own individual control, we have perhaps gained a bit of comfort, but only at the price of freedom. Even worse, we have little or no idea how the multinational food corporations are producing the food itself.

A wonderful documentary, Food, Inc., hit the theaters last year and is now available for rental. Better than any previous documentary on the subject, it lays out the facts of how the big multinational corporations have taken control of the nation's food supply, how they disdain the health and safety of our citizens in pursuit of profits, and how their lobbying of the federal government allows them to avoid any meaningful regulation which might help protect the American people. Directed by Robert Kenner and featuring authors Eric Schlosser (Fast Food Nation) and Michael Pollan (In Defense of Food), this movie cannot be recommended strongly enough.

Watch the trailer below.

Find this movie and watch it whenever you get the chance. Better yet, invite a bunch of friends over and watch it together while eating a meal made from ingredients purchased entirely at the local farmer's market.

Obama Administration's Efforts to Improve Science and Math Education Would Be Better Left to the States

2010-01-06T17:59:00.002-06:00

President Obama announced today that the federal government will be allocating $250 million to improve training for science and math teachers throughout the country. While believing that the President is well-intended and agreeing with him that the international rankings of American students in math and science need to be improved, 21st Century Jeffersonians should view this effort as a misguided assertion of federal power and yet another erosion of the principles of federalism.

The Constitution does not delegate any powers to the federal government in the field of education, which is an issue that should be left entirely to the states. In the last half century, especially since the establishment of the Department of Education in 1980, the federal governmnt in Washington has encroached continually on the independence of state governments in matters of education. Different states have different requirements, and the idea that a congressman in Vermont understands the needs of a student in Oregon better that the local schoolboard is simply ridiculous.

Furthermore, while $250 million may be a very small sliver of the overall federal budget, every single one of those dollars makes the disastrous fiscal situation of the federal government that much worse. It can easily be argued that the money would have been spent in reducing the deficit.

Wherever federal money goes, federal control will inevitably follow, even with the best of intentions. State and local governments should be working hard to improve the quality of math and science education (and, indeed, education in general) because that is part of their duties to their citizens. But as failed efforts like the No Child Left Behind Act have amply demonstrated, interventions by the federal government into the education system usually produce little or no good and a great deal of trouble.

Thanks, Mr. President. But no thanks.

Happy New Year!

2010-01-01T09:30:00.003-06:00

So, the first decade of the 21st Century has come to an end. It certainly hasn't gone as planned. Speaking frankly, the hopes we all felt on New Year's Eve of 1999, when we saw out one millenium and welcomed in another, have not come to pass the way we expected.

Ten years ago, the world seemed energized by tremendous optimism. The Soviet Union was gone and the Cold War was a memory; the possibility of a general war between major powers seemed ridiculous. Terrorism was an admitted problem, but the horrors of the 9/11 attacks had not yet been experienced. The global economy was humming along and there seemed no reason for it to stop. Science and technology were making rapid gains. More than perhaps any time in history, the future looked bright and sunny.

But almost immediately into the new decade, things began to go wrong. The first disaster was the horribly undemocratic election of George W. Bush in the 2000 election, when half a million more Americans voted for Al Gore than for Bush and the result in the state of Florida was settled by a biased Supreme Court rather than a fair recount of the votes.

At the same time, the booming economyof the 1990s morphed into te sluggish economy that would characterize the first decade of the 21st Century. This was largely on account of the "dot com" bubble bursting, but the situation was made worse by Republican fiscal policies, which helped the rich at the expense of the poor and middle class, and took a federal budget surplus and turned it into a deficit. Uncertain economic times would characterize the entire decade.

Then, of course, we had the horrors of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. For the remainder of the decade, the political and diplomatic activities of the United States would revolve around the threat of terrorism. The image of a world largely at peace, which seemed obtainable in 1999, was shattered.

And finally, we had the invasion of Iraq in 2003, and the resulting war which has dragged on to the present day. While the campaign in Afghanistan was undertaken in response to a direct attack, we now know that Iraq was no threat to the United States and that the claim that it possessed weapons of mass destruction was a mere excuse used to justify the invasion. 4,400 Americans, and a much larger number of innocent Iraqis, have paid the ultimate price.

The great thing about New Year's Day is that is presents the possibility of a fresh start. In the next decade, we can hope that our country will avoid foolisly stumbling into unnecessary wars, enact sensible legislation to deal with critical problems and pursue more sound fiscal policies. And while we're in such a hopeful mood, we can even envision the implementation of critical political reforms that are so desperately needed.

So, on this New Year's Day, let's hope that the coming decade is one of peace and prosperity, rather than war and disorder. Jefferson would certainly raise a glass of Bordeaux to such a toast.

Documentary on Bordeaux Wines

2009-11-09T08:05:00.002-06:00

Thomas Jefferson epitomized the ideal of the Renaissance Man, for in addition to being a great statesman, he was also an architect, scientist, musician, inventor, writer, university founder, and planter. He also happened to be the greatest wine connoisseur of the 18th and early 19th centuries, not just in America, but in the entire world.

21st Century Jeffersonians would be well-advised to take Jefferson's example and make their own self-improvement their chief priority. A sound and comprehensive knowledge of good wine is an indispensable part of being a well-rounded human being. It also serves as a unifying pole around which people of various political, religious and social views can come together and forge common bonds of friendship, a Jefferson fully understood when he hosted innumerable dinners at the White House.

Watch this wonderful hour-long documentary on wines of Bordeaux, which is probably the most famous wine region in the world. Then, go out and buy yourself a good, affordable bottle of Bordeaux and drink it tonight with a home-cooked meal. A more Jeffersonian evening cannot be had.

Major News Organizations Should Cease Entertainment Coverage

2009-11-02T08:36:00.000-06:00

Thomas Jefferson would have deplored the modern American obsession with entertainment celebrities. Indeed, had he seen the grotesque amount of time the average American citizens spends analyzing the minutia of the lives of actors, singers, and those bizarre celebrities who seem famous only for being famous, he would conclude that celebrity obsession is a cancer eating away at American society.

We live in a time when most Americans would be very hard-pressed to name their own representative in Congress, or even the governor of their state. However, it is likely that substantial majorities would be able to identify the subject of the latest reality television show, or which Hollywood couple is expecting a baby, or which musical superstar has been arrested for drunk driving.

While the main blame for this must be laid at the feet of the American people themselves, a large part of the problem also lies with the media. We used to be able to distinguish between legitimate news organizations and those who engage in mere tabloid journalism. But today, there seems to be little that separates them. When we turn on CNN or one of the three semi-reputable network news affiliates, we are just as likely to see a story about the latest party escapades of a young Hollywood figure as we are to see an investigative story about the budget deficit.

About the only news organizations which maintain a shred of credibility in America are PBS and NPR. Because they are public broadcasters rather than corporate networks dependent on advertising revenue, their producers can resist the pressure to down down their programming and can focus on news reports of genuine importance to citizens. (A wonderful way for a 21st Century Jeffersonian to begin the day is to listen to the hourly news summary on NPR while sipping a cup of coffee.)

The media barons see their operations as mere profit-generators and choose to ignore their civic responsibilities to educate the American people about the issues of the day. It is imperative that 21st Century Jeffersonians begin to put pressure on the media establishment and send the message that stories about the lives of entertainment celebrities belong in tabloid magazines and should have no place among serious news reporting.

Searching for Jeffersonian Economics in the 21st Century

2009-10-26T08:17:00.000-05:00

In Jefferson's time, more than nine out of ten people were independent, largely self-sufficient farmers. They provided for almost all their own needs, and only relied on others for luxuries. The people who provided these luxuries, such as book sellers or makers of musical instruments, were tradesmen whom we might today call small business owners. If a person worked for someone else, it was often as an apprentice until he had accumulated enough knowledge to strike out on their own. People controlled their economic destinies to a vastly greater extent than they do today.

Times have certainly changed since then. Today, our economic destinies are almost entirely beyond our control, being determined instead in the high-rise offices of faraway corporations or in government agency buildings in Washington D.C. Since Jefferson's time, the simultaneous rise of the mega-corporation and of government economic intervention have so transformed the economy that it is effectively impossible for citizens to obtain any level of self-sufficiency.

In our time, economic conflict is often reduced to a competition between socialism and capitalism, with every position marked somewhere on a scale between complete government control of the economy on one side and absolutely no regulations on economic activities at all on the other side. Is there a place on this spectrum where should 21st Century Jeffersonians should stand?

First off, Jefferson not only would not only reject socialism, but would fight against it with every ounce of his strength. All his life, he struggled against those who sought centralized governmental power, whether it took the form of George III and the British or Alexander Hamilton and the Federalists. The idea of socialism would have terrified Jefferson, as it removes decisions from the hands of individuals and places it in the hands of others: the very antithesis of freedom.

From a rational perspective, Jefferson would also point out the obvious fact that socialism simply doesn't work. In every country where socialism has been tried on a large scale, it has not only failed but failed disastrously. The Soviet Union collapsed spectacularly between 1989 and 1991, while India and China dumped socialistic models in favor of capitalism and experienced massive economic growth as a result. Modern Venezuela, with its clownish President, is today on the brink of economic collapse, being propped up only by high oil prices.

No, Jefferson would never have been a socialist. Having said that, though, it is equally clear that unbridled capitalism would also have dismayed Jefferson. He was a man who lived in a time of broad economic equality, with a vast class of independent farmers and tradesmen making up the great bulk of the American population. There were very few super-rich people and and astonishingly small number of people living in poverty. Jefferson saw real poverty during his years in Europe, and often expressed how grateful he was that America had escaped such conditions.

In our time, of course, Jefferson's fears have been realized. Wealth is highly concentrated at the very top, with a shrinking middle class and an impoverished lower class, the very existence of which would have saddened Jefferson. The question Jefferson would ask, therefore, is how can America restore the self-sufficiency of the individual and economic equality, while avoiding the socialistic trap of government control?

Could it be the present European model, which attempts to mix elements of socialism and capitalism to reach some sort of synthesis? Jefferson would have followed the European experiment with interest, as he believed the world was entering "the age of experiments in government". But he wouldn't have held out much hope of success for the European model, in which the people rely to such a great extent on their government. Rationally speaking, the long-term fiscal and demographic situation of the European nations will spell an end to their welfare-state experiment, which even now is only maintained due to the willingness of the United States to finance the defense of Western Europe.

Jefferson would dismiss the contest between socialism and corporate capitalism as not particularly relevant, as both models eventually result in citizens losing their self-sufficiency and hence their liberty. Socialism deprives citizens of their liberty by denying them freedom of action, whereas the prevailing corporate model of capitalism deprives citizens of their liberty by permitting powerful corporations to exploit citizens and take away their freedom. Either way, the result is the same.

Jefferson would call upon us to devise a new economic model altogether, freeing ourselves from dependence upon corporations while avoiding the socialistic trap of state control. But what form could such a model take?

These days, there is a lot of talk about the globalization. The steady trend in increasing globalization is largely inevitable due to advances in transportation and communication technologies, and in many cases there is no particular reason to object to it. Obviously, there are no mom-and-pop semiconductor plants, car manufacturers, or big-screen TV factories. The economic activities of such corporations do not directly threaten the freedom of individual citizens, they provide good jobs for a great many citizens, and the corporate models are probably the best way to provide for the manufacture and distribution of such things.

But globalization has taken root among many other economic activities that are vastly more important to individual liberty and community cohesion, particularly the local establishments and businesses which are the heart and soul of individual communities. Corporate chain stores and restaurants are slowly squeezing the life out of both individual citizens and entire communities, whose cash reserves allow them to undercut competition and force independent businesses to close. By doing so, they represent as great a threat to American liberty as that posed by British bayonets in 1776.

Communities should protect their own independent businesses, ensuring that the greatest proportion of money being spent remains within the community and is not swept away into the coffers of some distant corporation. Jeffersonians avoid Starbucks in favor of locally-owned coffee houses, disdain Barnes and Noble in favor of independent bookstores, and stay away from Chili's and Olive Garden in favor of locally-owned restaurants. By supporting a vibrant local economy, Jeffersonians help themselves and their neighbors to disentangle themselves from the prevailing corporate economic structure, becoming that much more free.

Public Buildings Should be of High Architectual Quality

2009-10-19T08:18:00.000-05:00

In addition to being a great statesman, a scientist, a farmer, a musician, and the foremost wine connoisseur of his age, Thomas Jefferson was also an important architect, whose work helped create the neo-Palladian style in the United States. In addition to his homes at Monticello and Poplar Forest, Jefferson designed the Virginia State Capitol and the Rotunda at the University of Virginia. Even had he never done anything else, Jefferson's work as an architect would have made him worthy of being remembered.

Public architecture is a reflection of the society that creates it, and Jefferson liked the Palladian style because he felt it represented the Enlightenment values of rationality and natural rights on which the country had been founded. It's interesting to speculate as to what Jefferson would think of the public architecture of our time.

As an example, compare the New York Public Library Main Branch Building, completed in 1911, with the central branch of the Denver Public Library, finished in 1996. The former building is an excellent example of civic architecture, symmetrical and rational, projecting an image of knowledge as strength. The building in Denver, by contrast, is an irrational mash of colors and shapes, looking like it was dropped into place by a passing plane.

Jefferson would consider modern architecture a travesty of aesthetics and a betrayal of Enlightenment values. Postmodernism would be nothing but nonsense to him, and he would be calling on us to recapture the vibrant architectural quality we had when our country was young.

Whenever any level of government creates a new building, whether it be a post office, train station, city hall, or court building, it should be seen as an opportunity to create a piece of architecture that properly reflects the community and its values. America was founded on Enlightenment values of rationality and progress, and its architecture should reflect that fact.

Is NATO Necessary?

2009-10-12T08:01:00.000-05:00

21st Century Jeffersonians believe that the United States must abandon its long-standing policy of high-level interventions around the world. This does not mean isolationism, as we must acknowledge the critical importance of global trade and recognize that the safety provided by the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans is no longer what it was in Jefferson's time. But in the murky waters of the 21st Century, we would do well to remember Jefferson's exhortations against becoming too deeply embedded in the affairs of other nations.

2009 has seen the 60th anniversary of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which was the key foundation of American policy during the Cold War against the Soviet Union. It effectively deterred a Soviet invasion of Western Europe and played an enormous role in the eventual victory of America and its allies in the ideological struggle with the Soviets. But with the end of the Cold War in 1989, it can easily be argued that the mission of NATO was at an end. Today, it's hard to identify exactly what NATO is for.

In 2009, the United States maintains 56,000 troops in Germany, about 9,000 in Italy and another 9,000 in the United Kingdom. To defend against whom? Russia no longer poises any conventional military threat to Western Europe, and even if it did, shouldn't the defense of Western Europe be undertaken by the Europeans?

America spends nearly 5% of his GDP on defense, whereas only four other NATO members spend even 2% of their GDP on defense. Germany spends only 1.19% of its GDP on defense, while Spain spends a mere 0.73% of its GDP on defense. European nations can afford to do this only because of the American commitment to defend Western Europe. Since they are not required to spend much on their own defense, European nations are able to spend immense amounts on social programs while keeping taxes artificially low. When you get right down to it, the main effect of the American membership in NATO is that the American taxpayer subsidizes European social programs.

NATO is continuing to expand, bringing in small and vulnerable countries that are fearful of a resurgent Russia. This is a recipe for disaster. Not only does it needlessly provoke Russia, but it raises the possibility of the United States being drawn into a full-scale war with that country over some minor squabble in the Balkans or Caucuses. In 2008, Russia and and the small nation of Georgia (a prospective NATO member) engaged in a brief but fierce war over the status of the tiny region of South Ossetia, a dispute in which the United States has absolutely no compelling interest. Is America really willing to risk a nuclear war with Russia over such petty disputes?

NATO's extremely disappointing performance in Afghanistan raises further questions about the utility of the alliance. Nearly all the fighting against the Taliban has been done by the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, and the Netherlands. Other NATO members have deployed troops to Afghanistan, but insist on keeping them away from combat zones. What good is having allies when they won't help you?

NATO achieved its goal with the end of the Cold War in 1989, and its continued existence is simply the result of bureaucratic sluggishness. The American fiscal crisis demands that we significantly cut our military spending, and the deployment of massive numbers of American military forces in Europe must therefore be put under the microscope. It is imperative that the federal government implement a phased withdrawal of American troops from Europe, to begin as soon as possible.

The political unification of Europe under the auspices of the European Union is a development that America should watch with great interest, and good relations between America and Europe are essential for the well-being of the American republic. But NATO seems an anachronism, more likely to drag America into an unwanted war than promote American national security. It is time we sent it into honorable retirement.

Public Financing Would Help Reduce Influence of Corporate Money in Elections

2009-10-05T07:44:00.000-05:00

Thomas Jefferson would consider modern elections in the United States to be a complete sham. No longer are political campaigns conducted by newspaper editorials and printed pamphlets filled with detailed discussions of public policy, but rather by massive waves of thirty-second television or radio spots, financed by corporations that have their own selfish interests at heart. When the incumbency rate of members of Congress is usually as high as 90%, even while public approval of Congress is very low, it's obvious that something is very wrong.

Money rather than ideas has emerged as the deciding factor in who wins a congressional election. Corporate interests of all sorts have established large-scale operations designed to funnel massive amounts of campaign money to political candidates. Because political candidates depend on this money to finance their electoral campaigns, these corporations utterly dwarf ordinary citizens in the influence they have on the actions of office-holders. If an office-holder toes the line, the corporations will keep the money flowing; if not, the money stops. If that's not bribery, I don't know what is.

An incumbent member of Congress, by doing favors for powerful corporations, is able to count on massive financial resources for their reelection campaigns. Consequently, it is always difficult if not impossible for ordinary citizens to challenge sitting members of Congress (or, for that matter, state and local office-holders), because there is simply no way for them to raise the necessary amounts of money to be competitive. In the 2008 elections, 55 incumbent members of the House of Representatives lacked a challenger, something Jefferson would have considered an utter disgrace.

There is an idea that may not, by itself, solve this problem, but which at least has the potential to make it much better: public financing of elections. If qualified candidates have access to public funds with which to launch a respectable political campaign, the power of incumbency can be greatly reduced, and the corrupt practices that have bedeviled politics in recent decades would be reduced along with it.

We can examine whether or not such a system would work by looking at the successes and failures of it on the state level. 14 states now provide some form of public financing to certain types of candidates, but let us take the state of Maine as a case-in-point for how public financing can make electoral politics more Jeffersonian.

In 1996, the Pine Tree State passed the Maine Clean Elections Act, which provided for public funds for candidates running for Governor, the State Senate, or the State House. In order to quality, candidates had to demonstrate a reasonable level of public support by raising a certain amount of money in $5 donations. Once they crossed the threshold, they qualified for public funds and could no longer accept private donations.

The program has been a great success, with more than four out of five candidates for the Maine State Legislature using the program. This has largely eliminated the power of corporations to unduly influence the legislation passed in Maine, giving control of the legislative process back to the people where it belongs. In the 2006 gubernatorial election, the Democratic and Republican candidates were forced to compete with competitively-financed independent candidates, one of whom gained over 20% of the vote, while the candidate of the Green Party earned nearly 10% of the vote. This vibrant competition for office was exactly what Jefferson would have wanted to see.

Imagine taking the example of Maine and applying it on a national scale for elections to Congress. No longer would the corporate-controlled candidates have the field all to themselves every two years, facing either minimal opposition from underfunded candidates or no opposition at all. The rotation in office, so important to the survival of a vibrant democracy, would be greatly increased, an even incumbent Congressmen would be forced to act more responsibly if faced with genuine opposition every election cycle.

By itself, public financing for congressional elections would not solve the problem of corporate dominance of the political process. But it would be a great step forward if it could be implemented. Of course, the very people who would have the most to lose are the very ones who would have to pass it, so it will be a long struggle to get such a program passed. We'd better get started.

Four Jeffersonian Reasons to Support Farmers' Markets

2009-09-28T08:26:00.001-05:00

Eating a meal composed of ingredients purchased entirely at farmers' markets is one of the most Jeffersonian acts a person can take part in. Here are five reasons why.

1. Every dollar spent outside the corporate-dominated economy is a good thing. If Jefferson were alive today, he would see the influence corporations have over our lives as a greater threat to our freedom than the federal government, especially due to the manner in which it robs us of our self-sufficiency. By getting our food from farmers' markets, we can cut out the corporate middlemen who have done so much to usurp our economy and use their power to degrade the state of American freedom. It's a way of voting with our dollars for a Jeffersonian republic and against a corporate-controlled society.

2. Locally-grown food is healthier, fresher, and better. The produce at a corporate grocery store comes from fields sprayed with chemicals and grown in soil that has been contaminated with artificial fertilizers. It has been picked weeks before, frozen, and transported over a thousand miles before arriving on the shelf. By contrast, the produce at a farmers' market was likely grown organically, with no chemicals or artificial fertilizers, and was very likely picked within 24 hours of arriving at the farmers' market.

Compare the taste of a tomato from a corporate grocery store with the taste of a tomato purchased at a farmers' market, and the latter will win hands down, every time. Try it.

3. Farmers' markets strengthen the community. Corporate grocery stores are pretty bland places and there's little reason to any more time in them than absolutely necessary. Farmers' markets, however, are magical places. People seem more friendly and comfortable, perhaps because they sense their freedom from outside control as they exchange cash for produce or meat directly with farmers and ranchers.

4. Farmers' market helped support farmers. The decline of the independent farmer under the crushing weight of corporate-run factory farms is a trend that must be reversed. By allowing farmers to sell their produce directly to consumers, farmers' markets provide a mean for farmers to avoid the enormous operating costs that would otherwise be imposed on them by agribusiness corporations. As more and more farmers' markets are opening each year, it provides proof that the death of the independent American farmer has been greatly exaggerated.

United States Should Sign Treaty Banning Antipersonnel Landmines

2009-09-21T07:48:00.000-05:00

Thomas Jefferson was a humanitarian far in advance of his time, standing out among the great men of his age for his constant advocacy on behalf of prisoners-of-war and civilians caught in war zones. In 1779, in a celebrated letter to Patrick Henry, dealing with British prisoners-of-war captured at the Battle of Saratoga, Jefferson said, "It is for the benefit of mankind to mitigate the horrors of war as much as possible."

The amelioration of human suffering was a key element of the Age of Enlightenment in which Jefferson lived. The Founding Fathers tried to infuse America with Enlightenment values as they created it. The early 21st Century is, in many ways, a more brutal and less civilized time than was the 18th Century, and 21st Century Jeffersonians have a responsibility to do everything they can to alleviate suffering in our time, just as Jefferson tried to do in his.

One cause of great human suffering in our age is the deployment of massive numbers of antipersonnel landmines during conflicts in Africa, Asia, the Balkans, and Latin America during the 1980s. These devices are specifically designed to maim rather than kill, the sickening logic being that it requires an enemy to spend more resources caring for a badly-wounded soldier than to dispose of a dead body. Vast swaths of land remain infested with these minefields, usually long after the conflict for which they were deployed had ended.

Every week, hundreds of people are maimed and killed, many laid decades before for use in conflicts long since over. Almost all the people being killed by landmines today are innocent civilians with no connection to any combatant force. A very large proportion of those injured or killed are children.

Adding to the miserable human toll are numerous other costs. Landmine fields often prevent refugees from returning to their homes after the end of a conflict, hindering the economic redevelopment which might prevent a future war. Livestock are often killed by landmines, contributing to poverty and starvation. The long-term negative impacts of the deployment of antipersonnel landmines, both direct and indirect, boggles the imagination.

On December 3, 1997, 122 countries came together in Ottawa and signed a comprehensive treaty banning the production and deployment of antipersonnel landmines. Since then, many nations in Africa and Asia have made great progress in clearing their minefields, returning the land to productive use, and allowing people from war-torn regions to begin to rebuild their lives. The total number of countries that have signed the Ottawa Treaty now stands at 156. The movement to free the world from the scourge of antipersonnel landmines represents one of the most glorious episodes of the last few decades of human history.

But despite innumerable requests, the United States of America has refused to sign the treaty. Indeed, antipersonnel landmines are still being produced in American factories.

The fact that America has not joined the movement to ban antipersonnel landmines would have shocked and saddened Jefferson. He would have seen is as a failing of the American people and a black mark on the honor of the United States. Having an opportunity to alleviate the suffering of humanity, yet not taking it, is a failure of us to live up to the Enlightenment values on which the country was founded.

It is high time for the United States to join with the rest of the world, submit its name to the Ottawa Treaty, and join in the effort to rid the world of antipersonnel landmines. Rather than selling weapons to undemocratic regimes, our government should be dispatching teams of specialists to clear landmine fields.

Contact the White House and contact your Senators. Tell them that the United States should sign the Ottawa Treaty, and should do so immediately. Doing so is one more step in living up to Jefferson's vision for what our country can become.

Time for a New Constitutional Convention?

2009-09-17T08:49:00.001-05:00

It's September 17. Happy Constitution Day!

Thomas Jefferson personally celebrated just two holidays: New Year's Day and Independence Day. He also didn't believe it was the business of the federal government to officially proclaim official holidays, or days of observance of any sort. Still, September 17 was the day that the men of the Constitutional Convention signed the document, and 21st Century Jeffersonians should set aside a few moments to reflect on just how important the Constitution is.

The fact that 55 flawed men could craft such a brilliant intellectual achievement as the United States Constitution almost defies belief. The further fact that it has continued to function, almost unchanged, for more than two hundred years simply seems miraculous. Observers of the time, Jefferson included, would have been astounded. Certainly it is the most successful written constitution in the history of the world.

But it's not a perfect document, by any means. The Electoral College is archaic and should be thrown away, the term "high crimes and misdemeanors" needs to be clarified, Supreme Court justices shouldn't serve for life, and there are other problems. And while many constitutional problems within our current system, such as the overwhelming superiority of the Executive Branch, are not the fault of the Constitution itself but rather our flawed interpretation of it, they could be solved were the wording of the document somewhat different.

Jefferson was not involved in the creation of the Constitution, as he was then serving as the American Minister to France. Madison sent a copy of it immediately after it was made public, and Jefferson didn't much like it at first. He objected specifically to the lack of a bill of rights and the lack of presidential term limits. The first was corrected almost immediately, thanks to James Madison steering the Bill of Rights through the First Congress. The second was largely corrected by Washington's decision to step down after two terms, thus creating a firm tradition of serving only two terms that wouldn't be broken until Franklin Roosevelt in 1940. It was permanently solved by the 22nd Amendment in 1951.

Jefferson also believed that a new constitutional convention should be held every twenty years or so, as he felt no generation should have to live under a constitution it had had no role in crafting. Jefferson would be very surprised and disappointed to learn that, over two centuries, the American people would only amend the Constitution twenty-seven times. Were he alive today, he would be calling for an immediate constitutional convention, and 21st Century Jeffersonians should do the same.

Larry Sabato, one of the most respected political commentators in our time, has authored a wonderful book entitled A More Perfect Constitution. The book lays out 23 proposed amendments to the Constitution that would essentially update it for the 21st Century. Among the proposals Sabato lays out, which Jeffersonians should support, are:

A Balanced Budget Amendment
Nonpartisan redistricting of congressional districts
Term limits for members of Congress
Giving the President a line-item veto
Limiting Presidential war powers
Abolishing life tenure for Supreme Court Justices in favor a single, 15-year terms

There are many other interesting proposals and Sabato's book is highly-recommended for all 21st Century Jeffersonians.

There are many aspects of our modern system of American government that are fundamentally anti-Jeffersonian and need to be corrected. Human nature being what it is, we cannot expect the members of Congress to pass the needed amendments, no matter how much political pressure may be brought to bear. It will likely be only slightly easier to make use of the provisions of Article V of the Constitution, which state that a constitutional convention will be assembled if two-thirds of the states (34 states, in other words) call for one. Either would take many long years of intense lobbying and campaigning, involving substantial grassroots organizing on the part of 21st Century Jeffersonians. And there would be no guarantee of a successful outcome.

Still, the fact that it will be difficult is no excuse not to try. At the very least, it will be easier than the task the Founding Fathers faced in 1776.

Supporting Independent Bookstores

2009-09-14T08:10:00.000-05:00

Few institutions are as Jeffersonian as the bookstore. In a letter to John Adams late in life, Jefferson said, "I cannot live without books." Although he distrusted large cities, Jefferson haunted the bookstores of Paris and Philadelphia, eventually accumulating what may have been the largest private library in the New World. A visit to a bookstore is a Jeffersonian act.

A good bookstore, however, is more than just a place to buy books. A good bookstore provides a meeting place for the community, where groups of people can come together to discuss anything from politics to gardening. It hosts authors, known and unknown, for book-signings and readings. It provides assistance to struggling local writers by giving them preferential treatment on the shelves. A good bookstore a pillar of any local community.

There are many bookstores across America whose connection with their community has become famous. There is City Lights in San Francisco, Tattered Cover in Denver, BookPeople in Austin, Strand Bookstore in New York, and hundreds of others. These independent stores glow with literary culture, and they are places where Jefferson would have been right at home.

Unfortunately, for the past several years, independent bookstores have been fighting a battle for survival against the corporate chain bookstore giants, Borders and Barnes and Noble. Able to draw on unrivaled financial resources, these two corporations have opened thousands of bookstores across the country, often strategically choosing store locations with the deliberate intention of driving nearby independent bookstores out of business. Across the country, hundreds of independent bookstores have been driven out of business over the last few decades. Every time one is forced to close, a little bit of the Jeffersonian fire is extinguished.

In contrast to independent bookstores, the chain bookstores are fairly bland and lifeless. Each store looks more or less identical to every other store, with no local uniqueness in their character. There is little real interaction between a chain bookstore and the local community, as the activities at a chain bookstore must be approved by some corporate bureaucrat higher up in the organization. Books by local authors are not highlighted in any way, as the choice of merchandise for sale was decided in a corporate office far removed from the community. Everything is geared merely towards maximizing sales; even the music played at a corporate bookstore is designed only to advertise the record in question, rather than provide pleasure to the customers.

In the early 21st Century, the greatest threat to the freedom of the American people does not come from a foreign enemy, but rather from the gradual sapping of what Jefferson called "the sacred fire." One element of this is the encroachment of corporate standardization on pillars of our communities like independent bookstores and, for that matter, independent coffee houses, restaurants, and other types of stores. We need to vote with our dollars by shopping only at independent bookstores, shunning those corporate establishments that would destroy these citadels of Jeffersonianism if they could.

NASA's Dawn Mission to the Asteroid Belt

2009-09-07T08:42:00.000-05:00

Roughly two years from now, the Dawn spacecraft will enter orbit around the asteroid Vesta. It is one of the most exciting missions of space exploration currently underway, venturing into regions of the Solar System that have never previously been explored. It will become the first spacecraft to orbit multiple worlds beyond the Earth, and will utilize advanced new technologies. The objective of the Dawn mission is to go into orbit and intensively study two major asteroids: Vesta and Ceres, the latter technically being defined as a dwarf planet.

The mission was launched in 2007, and has been sailing through the Solar System since then, powered by its remarkable ion engine. It flew past Mars in February of 2009, using its gravity to "slingshot" it along on its orbital path. If all goes well, Dawn will arrive at Vesta in September of 2011, depart a few months later, and arrive at Ceres in February of 2015. The information that will be sent back by the Dawn spacecraft will be a scientific treasure trove.

Studying the asteroids serves three major purposes. First, scientific knowledge is good in and of itself, contributing to the greater human understanding of the universe. Second, asteroids represent a small but real risk to the safety of Earth, and knowing more about them might one day prove priceless to the human race in the event that we discover that an asteroid is on a collision course with our planet. Finally, as the human race expands into the Solar System, the resources of raw materials present in the Asteroid Belt will prove to be of great value. The more we know about them, the better.

Thomas Jefferson was a strong proponent of exploration and discovery, which is why he sent the Lewis and Clark Expedition, among many other missions, to explore the American West. If he could see the activities of the modern American government, he would disapprove of a great deal, but he would excitedly approve of the activities of NASA. The 21st Century Jeffersonian should follow the course of the Dawn mission with great interest and excitement.

Watch this short documentary, made a few months before the launch of the Dawn mission, that provides an excellent background to the mission and its goals.

Excise Tax on Wine Should Be Reduced

2009-08-31T08:19:00.000-05:00

In addition to being a brilliant statesman, scientist, farmer and a myriad other things, Thomas Jefferson was the greatest wine connoisseur of the 18th Century, not just in America but in the entire world. While serving as Minister to France in the 1780s, Jefferson toured all the important French wine regions, as well as some of most significant wine producing regions in Germany and Italy. The careful notes he kept on this trip reveal his astonishing knowledge and skill as a wine-taster.

During his years in the White House, President Jefferson famously invited members of Congress to the White House for weekly dinners. The wines he served at these gatherings, along with the wonderful food prepared by his French chef, kept both Republican friends and Federalist enemies coming coming back to his table. While talk of political matters was apparently discouraged at these meals, we can imagine the positive effect they had on achieving Jefferson's political goals simply be building goodwill between erstwhile adversaries. And although he drank wine every day, he claims never to have been intoxicated in his life.

Contrary to prevailing opinion, then and now, Jefferson did not think that wine was a drink for the upper class. Indeed, he thought the high cost of wine as compared to beer or liquor was a major social problem, because it contributed to drunkenness and therefore violence among the lower classes. He therefore called for a reduction of excise taxes on wine and an increase in excise taxes on gin, so as to make wine relatively less expensive and therefore less expensive to common people.

As Jefferson put it: "No nation is drunken where wine is cheap, and none sober where the dearness of wine substitutes ardent spirits as the common beverage."

One thing Jefferson would love about the modern world is the widespread consumption of wine by members of the middle class, and the easy availability of wine to all members of society. Truth be told, the cheapest bottle of wine available in a typical grocery store is possibly superior in quality to the best wine Jefferson himself ever consumed. American consumption of wine still lags behind European countries, but it is increasing every year. This would please Jefferson and he would be calling on us to do what we can to further this social trend.

For a standard bottle of wine, with an alcohol level of 14% or less, the federal excise tax is $0.21. For a "naturally sparkling" bottle of wine, the federal excise tax is $0.67. These taxes should be reduced or eliminated. As Jefferson realized so long ago, there are clear social benefits to encouraging the consumption of wine over other alcoholic beverages, and we should do whatever we can to do so.

Current System of Foreign Aid Does More Harm Than Good

2009-08-24T08:53:00.000-05:00

Every day, over 20,000 people around the world die from causes stemming from extreme poverty. Infectious diseases continue to ravage Africa and many other parts of the planet, long after they have become mere memories in the West. Half the world's population lives in conditions that affluent people in America, Europe and Japan can scarcely imagine.

Although their exposure to the suffering is mostly limited to images on television, many people in the West are moved by the plight of the developing world and want to help. In 2008, the United States spent about $25 billion in foreign aid to countries in the Third World. The European Union spent even more than that. By some estimates, Western nations have given $2.3 trillion in foreign aid over the last five decades. Entire government agencies and international organizations have been created to focus on the problem of raising the people of the developing world out of poverty, employing armies of well-paid technocrats.

But despite the gargantuan amount of money the West has poured into the developing world since 1945, the people of the recipient nations seems more impoverished today than ever. Why the lack of progress? The sad fact is that the massive amount of foreign aid from the West does nothing to help the people of the developing world. Indeed, it makes the problem worse.

For the people of any nation to be free and prosperous, they obviously have to be able to stand on their own and not be dependent upon the largess of others. Ostensibly, the purpose of foreign aid to to help the people of the developing world become self-sufficient, but in truth it cruelly traps them into a cycle of dependence from which they cannot escape.

Consider the case of a random farmer in Tanzania. In order for him to prosper, he has to deal able to sell his produce at a reasonable rate, so as to provide for his own needs while incidentally helping to feed the nation. But when a development agency from a Western country shows up in his town and starts unloading bags of flour for free, it's quite clear that no one is going to buy the farmer's wheat. Why pay for something you can get for free? Consequently, the farmer is driven out of business and becomes an impoverished person dependent on the very aid that destroyed him. Expand this logic from a single farmer to an entire country, and you have one of the key problems with foreign aid.

Making the problem worse is the blatant corruption that pervades most of governments in the developing world. A huge portion, perhaps the majority, of the foreign aid money from the West ends up in the pockets of well-to-do corrupt officials, with little and sometimes none at all filtering down to the ordinary people who are the intended recipients. It might well be said that one outcome of foreign aid has been providing economic stimulus to the Swiss banking industry.

Another root of the problem is the inefficiency inherent in large governmental agencies being endowed with vast resources, but being given open-ended and effectively permanent mandates. If a government creates a very specific objective, such as getting a man on the Moon or eradicating smallpox, it can often achieve great results. But if it creates an agency and tells it to make the world better, without any real benchmarks or responsibility, the inevitable result is a bloated bureaucracy and a lot of wasted taxpayer money.

Aid agencies also fixate on top-down efforts, when they should be looking at bottom-up solutions. Economists and bureaucrats in New York or London, who may have little or no knowledge of the conditions in the country in question, devise elaborate and complicated plans that look good on paper but which almost always fail in practice. In the meantime, talented entrepreneurs in the impoverished countries themselves, who are undertaking their own efforts to improve their societies, are usually ignored by international aid agencies.

Proponents of foreign aid seem remarkably blind to the utter failure of their policies. Usually, they claim that any shortcomings in their work can be overcome by more massive infusions of cash. Entertainment celebrities (particularly U2 front man Bono, who has become the global face of the effort) are deployed in public relations efforts that largely disguise the inability of foreign aid to raise the quality of life for anyone. Their hearts are clearly in the right place, but their levels of self-deception are so high that they don't see how their efforts are actually harming those they are trying to help.

A few people are beginning to cry out that the emperor has no clothes. The man who has done the most to reveal the failure of foreign aid programs is William Easterly, who wrote two books on the subject, The Elusive Quest for Growth and The White Man's Burden. But considering the appeal of the underlying message of foreign aid proponents and their sophisticated public relations efforts, it will be some time before people come to understand the problems with foreign aid.

Frankly, the people of Africa and other impoverished regions would probably be better off if Western nations simply ceased providing foreign aid money. If Western citizens want to help the people of Africa, they would be well-advised to work through institutions other than the government. One particularly interesting method of assisting the developing is microfinance, which provides small loans to people to help them set up economically self-perpetuating means of supporting themselves.

Thomas Jefferson would have felt his heart be moved by the plight of the impoverished people of the developing world in the early 21st Century. But he would have also insisted that any effort to alleviate it be guided by rationality and common sense. Looking at the failure of big government action on this front, we can easily see that the prevailing approach hasn't worked. Therefore, we should do something else.

We Need a Balanced Budget Amendment

2009-08-17T08:05:00.002-05:00

When Thomas Jefferson became President in 1801, he inherited a national debt of several tens of millions of dollars, an immense sum for the time. This was a legacy of the large standing army created by Alexander Hamilton during the Adams administration. Over the next eight years, despite paying Napoleon $15 million for the Louisiana Territory in 1803, Jefferson succeeded in maintaining balanced budgets and significantly paying down the debt.

Jefferson believed that governments debt was something to be avoided at all costs. He stated specifically that whenever a government was compelled by some emergency to borrow money, it should implement a tax to ensure that the debt was paid off within twenty years at most. Failure to do so, in his mind, constituted an act of theft against a generation that hadn't even been born yet. It was not only bad fiscal policy, but was a crime.

Today, the national debt is obscene: roughly $11.7 trillion. That's roughly $38,000 per citizen. And the debt is increasing by nearly $4 billion every day. In 2008, the federal government spent $249 billion, 8% of the total budget, just to pay the interest on the debt. Jefferson would be shocked and dismayed, and would tell us that we should be ashamed of ourselves.

The nation's disastrous fiscal situation is one of the great issues of our time. Neither of the two major parties are willing to address the issue, and both act as though the problem doesn't exist. Since they would rather pass the buck on to unborn generations than face the wrath of living voters, members of Congress are always more willing to go more deeply into debt than they are to either raise taxes or decrease spending.

The last time the country saw a balanced budget was in the last years of the Clinton Administration. During the 2000 presidential campaign, George W. Bush advocated using the surplus to cut taxes, whereas Al Gore called for using it to secure various government programs. The idea of actually using the surplus to pay down the debt never seems to have occurred to either of them.

If things continue down this path, the troubled fiscal structure of the United States will completely collapse, taking the country with it. But there is a solution to this problem: a Balanced Budget Amendment.

The gist of such an amendment would be very simple: the federal government cannot spend more than it earns in any fiscal year. Obviously, emergencies such as war or economic depression may occasionally require deficit spending, so the amendment would have to include a provision allowing Congress to engage in deficit spending if a supermajority (three-fourths would seem appropriate) declares such an emergency to be in effect, or Congress declares war against a foreign power. To avoid misuse of this provision, the amendment would have to require such emergency deficit spending to be strictly temporary, requiring another two-thirds vote to be renewed for an additional fiscal year.

Under the provisions of Article V of the Constitution, the federal government must convene a convention to discuss possible amendments to the Constitution if two-thirds of the states request it. In the early 1990s, this very nearly happened when 32 states (just two short of the required 34) had filed requests with Congress for a convention specifically to discuss a Balanced Budget Amendment. Some states subsequently rescinded their request, but this pressure from the states was partially responsible for the more responsible behavior of the federal government on budget issues in the 1990s, when we actually had a surplus for a few years. Since then, unfortunately, any semblance of fiscal responsibility has been thrown away.

Next year is a congressional election year, and some jockeying in the primaries has already begun. 21st Century Jeffersonians should take every opportunity to meet with congressional and state legislative candidates of all parties and ask them whether or not they support a Balanced Budget Amendment. Their response to that question should go a long way in determining who you end up voting for.

21st Century Jeffersonianism in Action: The Black Star Co-Op

2009-08-10T07:12:00.000-05:00

The essence of Jeffersonianism, whether in the 18th Century or the 21st, is liberty. Most of the time, we are talking about ensuring freedom from governmental or corporate power. But an individual's true liberty is measured by the extent to which he or she is free from any interference from entities which can infringe on their own freedom of action, even inadvertently. Therefore, we must guard against restrictions on our liberty which come from our own laziness, as well as those which come from people with sinister motives.

Self-sufficiency is the key. The more self-sufficient an individual or a community is, the greater its liberty is. If an individual has a vegetable garden in their backyard that can provide a significant portion of their food, they are that much less dependent on others, and hence that much freer. If a community can achieve a desirable goal on their own, without recourse to the government, they are that much more free.

As a single example, consider the case of the Black Star Co-Op, a collective effort by citizens to create a member-owned brew pub in Austin, Texas. Having made a decision that a member-owner brew pub was a desirable goal, ordinary citizens came together and are making it happen on their own.

Watch this five-minute video to see what we're talking about:

Jefferson probably wouldn't have known what to make of the Halloween costumes, and he personally preferred wine to beer. But he certainly would have understood and approved of the spirit of independence and self-reliance of the citizens behind this project. Whether they know it or not, they are helping to bring America closer to the Jeffersonian ideal.

(NOTE: Since the time the video was made, the Black Star Co-Op has expanded to more than 1,000 members.)

Sotomayor Confirmation Expected Today

2009-08-06T08:17:00.003-05:00

Unless something truly unexpected happens, Judge Sonia Sotomayor will today be confirmed as the next Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court. While a significant political victory for President Obama, it does not represent a serious shakeup in the court's composition, as we have a moderately liberal justice replacing a moderately liberal justice.

21st Century Jeffersonians can easily be of two minds about this. On the one hand, President Obama won the election with a significant mandate from the nation and, therefore, has a certain right to appoint whomever he wishes to the court, so long as the Senate gives its approval. And it must be frankly admitted that Judge Sotomayor is a highly-qualified candidate, having been a federal judge for fifteen years.

Still, there are some concerns. In terms of constitutional law, America has wandered too far from solid grounding in the Constitution. 21st Century Jeffersonians are, by and large, strict constructionists when it comes to interpreting the Constitution, tempered by their desire for far more frequent amendments to the document, and new constitutional conventions once every generation to rewrite it completely.

The first fight over an Obama nomination to the Supreme Court generated far fewer fireworks than we might have expected, but it is clear that Republicans missed a tremendous opportunity in the debate over the confirmation of Judge Sotomayor. Rather than examine her judicial philosophy and use the hearings as a platform to debate the sound interpretation of the Constitution by the Supreme Court, Republicans instead engaged in childish attacks on a few obscure comments Judge Sotomayor made in the past, including some attacks with had a clear racial tinge to them.

Had the Republicans made their stand in the debate on such foundations as actually matter- namely, how the Constitution is to be properly interpreted by the Supreme Court- and had they conducted the debate in a civil manner, then the country would have benefited greatly. Let's hope this happens the next time President Obama has to appoint a new member to the highest court in our land.

Mars: A Worthy Jeffersonian Goal

2009-08-03T07:15:00.001-05:00

Thomas Jefferson was a believer in the exploration and colonization of new lands. Indeed, he did more to explore and settle the American West than any other president. He engineered the Louisiana Purchase, sent the Corps of Discovery and other exploratory missions to map and chart the land, and laid down the principles for future legislation (such as the Homestead Act of 1862) that made the settlement of the American West possible.

Jefferson believed that the existence of vast amounts of land to the west of the original 13 colonies was the greatest blessing America possessed. It allowed future generations the chance to recreate America over and over again, starting afresh in new lands. Jefferson called it the "Empire of Liberty" and believed it would lead to "the age of experiments in government." Innumerable communities would be able to decide for themselves how they would be governed, and the great diffusion of humanity across the continent would, Jefferson hoped, ensure that no powerful central government would be able to control the entirety of them.

While much of what Jefferson foresaw did come to pass, as can be seen in the Jeffersonian spirit that still pervades small towns throughout the Midwest, it must be admitted that the continent is all filled up now. In Jefferson's time, a person dissatisfied with his life in Boston or Philadelphia could head west to start his life over again. In our time, with no open frontier, this option no longer exists. As Jefferson understood very well, societies have no open frontier will eventually stagnant and decay.

This is why space exploration should be an important priority for 21st Century Jeffersonians. A Jeffersonian society can only exist if there is a frontier to act as a social steam valve, and with the Age of Exploration long since relegated to the history books, there are no open frontiers on Earth any longer. If 21st Century Jeffersonians want to find a new frontier, they must look to the stars.

Of all the planets in the Solar System, Mars is certain to be the first which is explored and settled by human beings. Even now, three robotic spacecraft (two American, one European) are orbiting the Red Planet, while the plucky robotic rovers Spirit and Opportunity wander its landscapes as they conduct geological studies. NASA has declared that human expeditions to Mars are its long-term goal, and we will hopefully see the first men and women exploring the Red Planet within the next twenty years.

Some visionaries are looking forward to the day when permanent human settlements will be established on Mars, an event which would reopen the frontier to humankind and mightily advance Jeffersonian ideals. One such man is Robert Zubrin, founder of the Mars Society. More than just about anyone, he has put the exploration and colonization of Mars on the map as an achievable goal.

Watch this documentary (in five parts) about Zubrin and his work. It is certainly a vision of which Jefferson would have strongly approved.

Liberty Continues to Vanish in Venezuela

2009-08-01T08:32:00.004-05:00

President Hugo Chavez continues his long slide from elected leader to outright dictator of Venezuela, as CNN is reporting that his government is systematically shutting down dozens of independently-controlled radio stations, with hundreds of other potentially being targeted, too. At the same time, a "Special Bill Against Media Crimes" is making its way through the Venezuelan legislature, as if there can be such a thing as a "media crime" under natural law.

At the same time, a new election law has just passed in Venezuela which will allow the government to redraw legislative district lines. The measure is clearly intended to benefit the Chavez ruling party ahead of next year's National Assembly elections. People who think that Venezuela remains a representative democracy are deluding themselves.

President Chavez was once the darling of the world's radical leftists. After he won election in 1998, he implemented popular educational and health programs that seemed to raise the quality of life for many of his country's disadvantaged population. Today, these same programs are mired in corruption and inefficiency, with lucrative contracts going only to Chavez loyalists. And all of Chavez's anti-capitalistic rhetoric cannot hide the utter failure of his particular brand of socialism to bring prosperity to his people, as inflation goes through the roof and shortages of basic goods begins to be felt.

Whether or not Chavez started out as an idealist and gradually morphed into a dictator or whether he was interested only in his own power from the beginning is irrelevant, for the man clearly is a dictator now. Thomas Jefferson would have understood him perfectly well, and would have cast him into the same class as King George III as a tyrant who deserved to be overthrown. His governance of Venezuela is a violation of natural law; the sooner it ends, the better.

Citigroup, Bank of America Continue to Rip Off American Taxpayers

2009-07-30T17:18:00.003-05:00

The Hamiltonian impulse is alive and well on Wall Street. Months after taking tens of billions of dollars from the federal government (which, needless to say, hasn't been paid back), Citigroup and Bank of America have paid out billions of dollars in bonuses to hundreds of high-level employees, despite their utterly disastrous performances in recent years. Legal or not, this is theft from the pocketbooks of hardworking Americans.

Of the $45 billion in government money received by Citigroup through the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) last year, more than one-seventh went to massive pay bonuses for their high-level employees, with 738 people receiving bonuses of more than $1 million each. Bank of America also got $45 billion in government money, and paid out $3.3 billion in salary bonuses, with 172 employees receiving bonuses of $1 million or more. Even worse, Bank of America spent $20 billion on its TARP money to acquire Merill Lynch, which is a great move for the business but does absolutely nothing to restore stability to financial markets, which was the ostensible purpose of TARP to begin with.

These types of financial abuses are not new in American history. When Alexander Hamilton created the financial structure of the nation in the early days of the Republic, he made sure his cronies were given inside information that allowed them to make immense profits by buying up bonds the government had issued during the war. The Hamiltonians knew it was about to skyrocket in price, while the veterans and widows who owned them had no idea and were willing to part with them for a fraction of their cost. The result was that the corrupt stockjobbers made huge amounts of money, while the veterans and widows were financially ruined.

Thus far, President Obama has not followed through with his promises of a complete overhaul of the laws governing the financial industry. Today's revelations about Citigroup and Bank of America illustrate the urgent need to do so.

Creating a Jeffersonian Military

2009-07-27T07:55:00.005-05:00

In the early 21st Century, the United States is by far the world's dominant military power. Indeed, the military budget of the United States is nearly as large as the rest of the world put together. While it is basic common sense for the nation to take adequate measures to guarantee its security, the massive American military expenditures every year certainly raise eyebrows, especially in an age of severe budget pressures and a rapidly increasing national debt.

If Jefferson could see the American military of the modern age, he would be very confused and not a little frightened. Jefferson was deeply opposed to the existence of a standing army. Not only was a large standing army a massive weight on the national budget, but it could potentially entice the national leadership to military adventurism of the kind undertaken by the Bush administration in Iraq. Even worse, it could potentially be used by the political faction in power to suppress the opposition by force, as Alexander Hamilton threatened to do to the political followers of Jefferson.

Jefferson would be mystified at the permanent American military deployments overseas, wondering why we have tens of thousands of soldiers in places like Germany, South Korea, and Japan. More to the point, he would wonder why the United States feels it necessary to maintain a massive standing army at all, when defense is easily provided by sufficient naval strength in both the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans.

The current regular United States Army is made up of ten divisions, six independent brigades or regiments, and large numbers of independent smaller units. The personnel for these units are full-time regular soldiers, a substantial portion of whom intend the Army to be their lifetime career. Regular full-time strength of the Army is around 550,000 men. The Army Reserve contributes another 200,000 men.

For Jefferson, the ideal means of ensuring national security rested primarily with the militia system of the individual states. The state militia could be used by the individual governors to deal with immediate emergencies, such as Indian attacks or slave uprisings. In the unfortunate event of a major war with a foreign power, the first line of defense would be provided by the militia units, until a regular army could be raised by the federal government. In peacetime, only a small federal army should exist, to serve as the core of a large federal army needed in the event of war.

The idea of a national defense secured by a small regular army supplemented by militia units, which can be quickly expanded if necessary, has achieved great success in many countries. Indeed, it is the concept behind the structure of the Israeli Defense Forces, which has proven to be an astoundingly successful military force over the last six decades. And the United States has a ready-made organization to transform our current, bloated military into a fighting force more Jeffersonian: the National Guard.

The Army National Guard has eight divisions and a large number of independent service brigades. Unlike the personnel of the regular Army, the men and women of the National Guard are not full-time professionals, but reservists. They serve, as the motto states, "one weekend a month and two weeks a year." When not training or on actual duty, the men and women of the National Guard are ordinary citizens, working ordinary jobs and living ordinary lives. During peacetime, they may be called into service by their state's governor in the event of an emergency, such as civil unrest or a natural disaster, but they can also be called into federal service in the event of war.

Recently, National Guard units have served with a high degree of effectiveness in both Afghanistan and Iraq. At any given time, between a quarter and a half of all American personnel in the conflict zones have been members of the National Guard. By all accounts, the performance of the National Guardsmen has been excellent.

21st Century Jeffersonians should favor a complete revamping of America's military policy, and the National Guard should play a major role in this. An ideal policy would include a massive reduction of the active-duty military (including the termination of most, if not all, of our permanent overseas deployments) and a shift in reliance from the regular units to the National Guard. In the event of a war with a foreign power, the National Guard could serve as the core of a great national army, and would be returned to its ordinary state once the war was concluded.

Such a policy would allow the United States to maintain a more-than-sufficient ability to defend itself, especially as our security is mostly dependent upon sea and air power in any event. It would also allow us to significantly reduce military expenditures, vastly relieving pressure on the federal budget. Perhaps most importantly, it would remove the temptation for military adventurism that brought such disastrous results to the country during the Bush administration. And American society would also be enriched by the contributions of hundreds of thousands of citizens whose energies would otherwise be sadly devoted to destructive ends.