Wal-Mart: The Enemy of Jeffersonianism

The essence of Jeffersonianism, in his own time and in ours, is individual freedom. The federal government should be empowered to do only that which it alone can do (i.e. foreign affairs and national defense), while state and local governments should handle those lower-level matters that the members of those respective communities decide are necessary (i.e. public education). Whenever possible, the people should not turn to the government at all, but work together cooperatively to achieve common goals. But the bottle line in everything must be individual freedom.

Jeffersonians talk a great deal, and rightly so, about unnecessary government infringements upon individual freedom. We talk rather less about corporate power, which poses at least as much danger to individual freedom as government, if not a greater one. And of all the corporations that threaten the Jeffersonian vision of America, none is more dangerous and more sinister than the retail and grocery giant Wal-Mart.

Wal-Mart is the world's largest corporation, with a massive share of the retail and grocery market in the United States and a strong presence overseas as well. Since its founder, Sam Walton, died in 1992, the company has steadily evolved into a monster that destroys local communities, tramples on the rights of its employees, and attempts to strangle the Jeffersonian dream of America.

Wal-Mart's modus operandi is simple, brutal and effective. It opens a store in a community, often a small town or a compact neighborhood. Because of the massive scale of its operations, its ruthless exploitation of foreign workers, and its disregard for such things as environmental quality, it can offer prices much below those of locally-owned independent businesses. When a Wal-Mart opens, locally-owned independent businesses are unable to compete and are gradually forced out of business. The old main streets of innumerable American small towns now stand empty and deserted, victims of Wal-Mart's greed.

The destruction of locally-owned independent businesses is far more than a simple economic matter. "Mom-and-Pop" hardware stores, retail establishments, and small grocers were once the backbone of communities across this nation. It is establishments like these which give communities their unique local characters; without them, every American community would look like every other American community, dominated by the same bland chain-stores. In destroying these locally-owned independent businesses, Wal-Mart is attacking the very heart and soul of America.

Wal-Mart also brutally exploits its own workers. Pay is minimal and the "benefits" provided are pathetic. Stories abound of workers being told that they would be fired if they didn't do hours of work off the clock, women subjected to regular sexual harassment, and even of Wal-Mart taking out massive life insurance policies on their workers without their knowledge or consent (literally making these workers worth more to Wal-Mart dead than alive).The way this business treats its own people is an affront to human dignity as well as to individual freedom.

Watch this powerful documentary, titled Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price. It was done by the outstanding documentary filmmaker Robert Greenwald, and should be watched by every Jeffersonian.



This is the kind of stuff that should make the blood boil in every 21st Century Jeffersonian. We should encourage our friends to boycott this monster of a corporate store and, if they attempt to move into our communities, we must fight to keep them out with every means at our disposal.

Gerrymandering Must Be Abolished

The principle of government in a republic is that the voters choose their legislators. In most of modern America, however, we are faced with the absurd reality that legislators choose their voters.

This is due to the process of partisan redistricting, also known as gerrymandering. Essentially, it involves the majority party in a legislative body deliberately drawing the lines of legislative districts in such a way as to maximize the number of districts their party will win and minimize the numbers of districts the opposition will win. In pursuit of partisan advantage, absurd district shapes are created, usually taking no account of such things as natural borders or keeping communities such as towns or cities within the same legislative district.

This is nothing new. During elections for the very first Congress in 1788, Patrick Henry tried to gerrymander James Madison out of a congressional seat. Indeed, the very term "gerrymander" comes from Elbridge Gerry, a contemporary of Jefferson who, as governor of Massachusetts, made the gerrymandering of his political enemies a standard policy for his tenure in office. But the fact that it has been done for a long time is no justification for its continuation, for gerrymandering is blatantly undemocratic and should be abolished as soon as possible.

Because of gerrymandering, the vast majority of congressional districts in America have become extremely skewed towards one of the two major political parties, usually by a ratio of around 70% to 30%. This means that if a person is unfortunate enough to be a Republican in a Democratic district or a Democrat in a Republican district, he or she has no real representation.

Another, even worse consequence of gerrymandering is that shockingly large number of representatives face no competition on election day. Since the minority party in a gerrymandered district sees little chance of victory, they often decide it's not worth the effort and resources and simply don't run a candidate at all. This means that the incumbent need not fear the judgment of the people, and can act in ways that would otherwise get him thrown out of office by his constituents. The easier it is for an incumbent to remain in office, the less attention he needs to pay to the wishes of his constituents, thus degrading the very principles of representative democracy.

Gerrymandering also contributes to voter apathy. Seeing the incumbent win reelection over and over again, citizens often see little or no value in casting their vote on election day. Why bother, when the outcome has already been settled by the gerrymandering process?

It is a commonplace practice for a member of a state legislature who is planning on running for Congress to use his influence to create a congressional district for himself, including the areas where his support is already the strongest. Thus he not only gains an unfair advantage over any candidate from the other party, but against any potential opposing candidate from his own party. While legal, it is still immoral and corrupt.

The essence of a Jeffersonian democracy is that the wishes of the people form the basis for the actions of the government. Through gerrymandering, however, partisan factions can achieve decisive political power even if the majority of the people do not want them to have it. Gerrymandering stifles political debate and allows incumbents to be free from the threat of defeat by their constituents. It should come as no surprise that well over 90% of Congressmen are reelected every two years, a fact which would have dismayed Jefferson.

Rather than allowing state legislatures to keep the power to draw congressional and state legislative districts, which will inevitably result in the continuation of the practice of gerrymandering, each state should have a nonpartisan committee of citizens to undertake the redrawing of district maps after each census. Legislation creating such commissions must include language to ensure that these commissions should be made up of citizens who are not elected officials, active supporters of elected officials, officials of any political party, or who otherwise have some personal advantage to gain by gerrymandering.

Twelve states, including Iowa, Arizona, and Washington, currently have such commissions functioning. It's no coincidence that their elections have become more competitive, resulting in greater attention paid by incumbents to the wishes of their constituents and more fruitful debate and discourse in their political campaigns.

Under the Constitution, Congress would have the authority to require the states to create independent redistricting commissions. Indeed, during the last Congress, House Resolution 1365 was proposed by Representative John Tanner (D-TN) and Representative Zach Wamp (R-TN), which would have done exactly that. However, it should come as no surprise that the bill went nowhere in Congress. After all, because the members of Congress are the ones who benefit from gerrymandering, how can we expect them to vote against their own individual interest?

It seems clear that, if any successful action is to be on the issue of gerrymandering, it must be done by the individual states. This presents obvious problem, due to the partisan divide currently splitting America. Consider the four largest states: California, Texas, New York, and Florida. If California and New York, which are dominated by Democrats, were to implement redistricting reform, it would be to the advantage of Republicans, whereas of Texas and Florida were to do so, it would be to the advantage of Democrats. Unless it was done everywhere at the same time, which seems extremely unlikely, one party or the other would gain an advantage, and this prospect would likely derail the entire process.

What must happen is a comprehensive grassroots efforts by Jeffersonian citizens to put enough pressure on their own state legislators to get them to get these bills passed. Twelve states have already done so, and as more follow suit momentum will be built to the point where it will be like a snowball rolling down a hill. If enough momentum is built, it can overcome the political inertia that holds the process back.

We, as citizens, must make this a priority, because until we do, the idea of a true Jeffersonian republic will remain a mere dream.

A Jeffersonian View of the Gay Marriage Debate

Jeffersonians believe that the role of government should be carefully limited, and that its primary functions are to preserve public order and protect citizens from harm. Government is merely one aspect of society, rather than the entirety of it. Government should have the power to do only that which society wants done and which government alone can do- that, and no more. As such, 21st Century Jeffersonians hold to the opinion that the government should have no opinion whatsoever in the current debate over gay marriage, as it is not the government's place to step into disputes about morality.

Of course, homosexuality was not something widely discussed in Jefferson's time. Everyone knew about it, but it was not considered proper to discuss it openly. The only policy decision Jefferson made in his life which has any bearing on the modern public debate about homosexuality was during his time as a Virginia state legislator, when he removed sodomy from the list of crimes for which a person could be subject to the death penalty.

Jeffersonians oppose laws that attempt to ban so-called "victimless crimes". If no one is harmed by an activity, how can that activity be considered a violation of the public order, or a threat to the security of a citizen? If a man marries a man, or a woman marries a woman, how does this action victimize me? How does it victimize the person reading this blog entry? It simply does not, and therefore it should be no business of the government. After all, it is not the government's job to regulate public morality.

Under the law, citizens have the right to enter into contracts with anyone they please. If the terms of the contract do not harm anyone and if they do not disturb the public order, they cannot be considered illegal. In terms of constitutional law, it seems perfectly obvious that any laws against gay marriage are an infringement on the right of citizens to enter into contracts with other citizens, and hence are unconstitutional on the face of it.

Thomas Jefferson would rightly see the present efforts by religious fundamentalists to politicize the cultural and religious debate about homosexual marriage as the efforts by demagogues to stir up public anger purely for partisan purposes. He would see through the antics of men like Pat Robertson and James Dobson within seconds, dismissing them as the monsters they are. They and their followers of the American equivalent of Saudi Arabia's Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice.

If Jefferson were alive today, he would keep his own personal opinions about gay marriage private, but he would oppose any efforts by state or national government to ban gay marriage as an unconstitutional assertion of power that the government does not have. From a Jeffersonian point of view, the government has no more right to regulate morality than it does to order citizens to support a particular football team.

United States Should Reduce Nuclear Arsenal, Switch Entirely to Submarine-Based Weapons

Thomas Jefferson was a statesman who believed that rationality should be the ultimate test of whether or not a government policy should be adopted. If it makes sense from a rational point of view, if it is necessary, and if it is fair, then it should be implemented. If not, then it should not.

One region of American policy in the last several decades that would have shocked and saddened Jefferson would be the disgusting accumulation of vast numbers of nuclear weapons by the United States. The very existence of nuclear weapons would likely have shaken his Enlightenment view of the goodness of humanity, but he would have still insisted on using the power of human reason to craft a rational policy on how to deal with them.

At the height of the Cold War, both the United States and the Soviet Union possessed tens of thousands of nuclear warheads. It was a disgusting absurdity that the two superpowers spent literally trillions of dollars to build vastly more firepower than would have been necessary to obliterate the world many times over.

Since the end of the Cold War, both Russia and America have substantially reduced their nuclear arsenals, but both retain several thousand warheads. Britain, France, China, and Israel all likely have a few hundred each, and India and Pakistan each have built scores of weapons. Carl Sagan referred to nuclear weapons as "genies of death, patiently awaiting the rubbing of the lamps."

Today, the United States possesses roughly 5,400 nuclear weapons, divided between land-based missiles, submarine-based missiles and warheads delivered directly by bombers. This is obscene; there is no rational reason why the country requires such a vast nuclear arsenal. And in an age of severe budget pressures and massive spending deficits, it is absurd to spend tens of billions of dollar a year to maintain such a bloated arsenal.

Ostensibly, the purpose of a nuclear arsenal is to deter an enemy from launching a nuclear attack upon America. But if America were to unilaterally reduce its nuclear arsenal to a few hundred warheads (the size of the nuclear arsenals of the United Kingdom and France), it would still possess as an obvious deterrent against a nuclear attack, because a few hundred warheads is still more than enough to utterly destroy any conceivable combination of enemies. After all, you only need to destroy your enemy once.

President Obama has proven to be a man willing to consider radical shifts away from the policies of the past. He has the option now of initiating a bold and far-sighted policy: unilaterally reduce the American nuclear arsenal to 300 weapons. Furthermore, he could eliminate all land-based based missiles and bomber-delivered weapons, relying only on submarine-based missiles from now on. Sub-based weapons are the safest and most secure in any event, and their continued existence would serve as an effective deterrent against any power foolish enough to launch a nuclear attack on the United States.

Such a unilateral action of the part of the United States would do much to restoring the international reputation of the country, which has suffered so much during the presidency of George W. Bush. It might prompt other nations to consider reducing their stockpiles, or even persuade non-nuclear countries from initiating programs to obtain nuclear weapons that they might otherwise embark upon. It would also save the American taxpayer vast amounts of money, which would do much to reduce the ridiculous budget deficit. Finally, it would simply be in accordance with human nature.

If Jefferson were alive today, he would be among those working towards the ultimate abolition of nuclear weapons throughout the world. Unilaterally reducing our own nuclear arsenal and switching entirely to submarine-based weapons would be a good first step.

Massive Personal Debt Poses Grave Threat to America's Well-Being

Thomas Jefferson is a man to be emulated in many ways, but certainly not in the realm of personal financial management. He died deeply in debt, to the tune of $100,000 in his time (the equivalent of several million dollars today). While his retirement years were generally happy and productive, the knowledge of the disastrous state of his personal finances preyed on his mind.

Today, Americans have fallen into the same trap of personal debt. Nearly half of all American families spend more than they earn in any given year, and the average household now owes $8,000 in credit card debt alone. Mortgages have been refinanced again and again as if they were ATM machines, contributing greatly to the current global economic crisis.

If Alexander Hamilton, Jefferson's archenemy, were to magically materialize in 2009, I think the first thing he would do would be to start up a credit card company and start bilking people out of their hard-won cash. The manipulations of powerful financial interests are largely to blame for the present disastrous state of American personal finance.

But that leaves out much of the story. Americans as individuals have been living beyond their means for many years. Self-reliance and self-restraint has given way to consumerism of the grossest kind. If the long-term economic prospects of our country, and indeed the world, are to be protected, we not only need to implement rational reforms to our national financial systems, but we need to recover the spirit of self-reliance and self-restraint that prevailed in the country during Jefferson's day.

Watch this movie, Maxed Out, which describes in blunt detail how the greed of credit card companies, when combined with the naivete of the American people, has lead to the present crisis of personal debt in America.

Richard Dawkins and the Enemies of Reason

Richard Dawkins is one of the foremost intellectuals living and working in the world today. An extremely gifted and influential biologist, he is perhaps best known as the world's most outspoken opponent of the creationism movement. He remains one of the world's foremost champions of the Enlightenment values of rationality and human reason, values that are the very foundation of a progressive human civilization. I think Jefferson would have liked Dawkins very much.

Watch this amazing two-part video: The Enemies of Reason. In it, Dawkins examines the sometimes silly, sometimes disturbing world of "New Age" pseudoscience and quackery, including everything from tarot card reading to astrology and psychics to such nonsensical things as "water dowsing." His scientific and skeptical approach is something sadly lacking in the modern world.

As Dawkins puts it, "There are two ways of looking at the world. Through faith and superstitution, or through the rigors of logic, observation and evidence- through reason." These are sentiments that those of us who believe the the New Enlightenment must always remember.

Part One:



Part Two:

America Should Not Sell Weapons to Undemocratic States

Jefferson and the other Founding Fathers believed that America would stand throughout history as a shining example of what a free, self-governing people could do if liberated from the shackles of despotism. He would be very pleased to see that, nearly a century-and-a-half after he wrote the Declaration of Independence, representative democracies are now the norm rather than the exception throughout the world.

But, sadly, there remain many parts of the world untouched by the democratic revolution, where monarchies and dictatorships continue to oppress their people. This would have no doubt disappointed Jefferson, but what would have shocked him even more would be the fact that many of these undemocratic regimes are being armed to the teeth with American military equipment.

The United States is the world's largest arms exporter. Every year, it sells billions of dollars worth of military equipment to nations all over the world. This is perhaps justified in some cases; it sells weapons to countries like Taiwan, South Korea, and Israel, which are democracies seeking to defend themselves against countries with decidedly undemocratic regimes. But in many cases, we sell weapons to countries which are ruled by tyrannies far more severe than that which the American Founders rebelled against.

Saudi Arabia is still a medieval-style monarchy, with all the power concentrated in the hands of the sickeningly corrupt Al-Saud family. Freedom of religion is completely absent, women have no rights at all, and the ordinary people of the country have no way whatsoever in how the country is run. People who peacefully call for political reforms are arrested and imprisoned. In terms of human rights, the country is still in the Dark Ages. But the Saudi Air Force is equipped with American-made F-15 fighters, the Saudi Army fields hundreds of American-made M1A2 and M60 tanks, as well as hundred of M-109 self-propelled artillery pieces. Annual sales of American arms to Saudi Arabia add up to billions of dollars.

Egypt is effectively a military dictatorship, ruled by President Hosni Mubarak. His last "election" was characterized by harassment and arrest of opposition political figures, vote-rigging, and other methods designed to ensure his reelection. He is also grooming his son Gamal to take over the presidency upon his death. Reporters Without Borders ranks Egyptian press freedom as 146th out of 169 nations, a dismal record, indeed. If this isn't a dictatorship, I don't know what is. But according to the 2008 budget for international aid, the United States is providing $1.3 billion in military aid to Egypt "to foster a modern, well-trained Egyptian military." American tanks form the backbone of the Egyptian Army, and American aircraft form the backbone of the Egyptian Air Force.

The country of Azerbaijan is run virtually as a medieval fiefdom by the Aliyev family. Heydar Aliyev seized power in a military coup in 1993. Ten years later, his son Ilham took power after an election denounced by international observers for innumerable irregularities. Azerbaijan has been routinely criticized by the State Department for human rights abuses and lack of democratic reforms. Despite this, Azerbaijan is the recipient of millions of dollars worth of American military aid.

Uzbekistan is ruled by a ruthless dictator named Islom Karimov. According to the former British ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray, the Karimov government routinely subjects political dissidents to torture, there even being credible reports of some dissidents being boiled alive. The media is strictly under the control of the Karimov government and the people possess no right to engage in political activity. According to eye witness accounts, hundreds of pro-democracy demonstrators were killed in 2005 in the town of Andijan. Nevertheless, Uzbekistan has received military equipment and training worth hundreds of millions of dollars since 2001.

The fact that the United States provides military assistance to these undemocratic and even tyrannical regimes is a stain upon American honor. Thomas Jefferson probably would not have approved the selling of weapons to anyone, but he certainly would be appalled at the sight of America selling arms to despotic regimes such as these. At the very least, rules should be put into place ensuring that any nation that receives American military equipment or military assistance meets certain standards of democracy, freedom of the press, religious freedom, gender equality, and so forth.

People calling themselves pragmatists will say that the proposal that we stop supplying these undemocratic regimes with military equipment is dangerously naive and that it will threaten the American strategic position in the Middle East and elsewhere. America needs these alliances, it is maintained, to ensure its access to oil supplies. But America should be reducing its dependence on oil in any case. Rationally speaking, the less America has to do with these countries, the better. And from a purely moral perspective, America should not assist tyrants in holding down their own people.