Jefferson and America's Lost Liberties

Portrait of Jefferson by  

Charles Wilson Peale, 1791

I hold it that a little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical.

- Thomas Jefferson in a letter to James Madison,  30 January 1787

For all his failings, not least his slave holding and his views of the First Nations peoples whose lands he coveted for the American Republic, Thomas Jefferson was nonetheless the architect of America's now lost conception of liberty. Deeply formed by both the philosophers of an earlier generation called Humanists, and even more by his European philosophical contemporaries, the early advocates of the Enlightenment, Jefferson taught without hesitation that the rights of humankind to liberty, to strive for happiness, to speak freely without fear of reprisal, to believe or not believe in divinity, and to equal justice before the law are all apparent as the natural product of reason. He taught that the moral obligation of a fearless conscience is the defence of these rights. The famous quote that appears above is part of a larger argument, that it is the nature of government to seek power, to gather power and to exert power at the expense of natural human liberty. 

Rebellions, said Jefferson, are the people’s way of putting governments in their place as servants to the people, not their masters. In the generations since the Second World War we have seen rebellions in America: both the Civil Rights Movement and the Anti-War Movement were precisely the kinds of correctives Jefferson envisioned. But at the same time and since, aided by changes in technology and communications, as well as a spirit of fear fostered by our government -- first the 1950’s Red Scares, secondly the fear of annihilation that pervaded the Cold War with the USSR, and today, the government’s drumbeat of fear and economic loss that blend the image of terror with the faces of ethnic and religious difference.

American government has become a tyranny all but unrestrained by the freedoms Jefferson saw as unalienable rights, our rights to free speech, to unfettered communication and thought, to travel where and how we please, to champion the causes that appeal to our hearts, and to command equal protection under the law, all have been scoured away by technologies of surveillance, by legal acts that deprive of an unfettered right to habeas corpus, that permit secret courts, secret warrants and secret trials, even secret detention and torture, all in the name of “Homeland Security.” 

Never has tyranny had a better friend than the tiny minorities of religious fanatics, both Muslim and Christian that have engaged in acts of terror, save one, those who have taken advantage of terror to establish their own power by trampling ours. Today we suffer under an administration that trades on fear, that asks us to hate that we might fear all the more. What should our response to such tyrants be? I know the answer Jefferson offered. I’m not sure that Americans have the stomach for liberty today. I know what Jefferson the revolutionary taught, but it’s so much easier to live behind walls of hate, to trade the depth of conscience liberty demands for these superficial protections from our fears. 

DHH

Here is the complete text of Jefferson’s letter, written 232 years ago:

Dear Sir,

My last to you was of the 16th of December; since which, I have received yours of November 25 and December 4, which afforded me, as your letters always do, a treat on matters public, individual, and economical. I am impatient to learn your sentiments on the late troubles in the Eastern states. So far as I have yet seen, they do not appear to threaten serious consequences. Those states have suffered by the stoppage of the channels of their commerce, which have not yet found other issues. This must render money scarce and make the people uneasy. This uneasiness has produced acts absolutely unjustifiable; but I hope they will provoke no severities from their governments. A consciousness of those in power that their administration of the public affairs has been honest may, perhaps, produce too great a degree of indignation; and those characters, wherein fear predominates over hope, may apprehend too much from these instances of irregularity. They may conclude too hastily that nature has formed man insusceptible of any other government than that of force, a conclusion not founded in truth or experience. Societies exist under three forms, sufficiently distinguishable: (1) without government, as among our Indians; (2) under governments, wherein the will of everyone has a just influence, as is the case in England, in a slight degree, and in our states, in a great one; (3) under governments of force, as is the case in all other monarchies, and in most of the other republics.

To have an idea of the curse of existence under these last, they must be seen. It is a government of wolves over sheep. It is a problem, not clear in my mind, that the first condition is not the best. But I believe it to be inconsistent with any great degree of population. The second state has a great deal of good in it. The mass of mankind under that enjoys a precious degree of liberty and happiness. It has its evils, too, the principal of which is the turbulence to which it is subject. But weigh this against the oppressions of monarchy, and it becomes nothing.  [loosely Better the evils of liberty than the quiescence of servitude -- Jefferson is quoting from Rousseau's Social Contract of 1762 - ed.]. Even this evil is productive of good. It prevents the degeneracy of government and nourishes a general attention to the public affairs. I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical. Unsuccessful rebellions, indeed, generally establish the encroachments on the rights of the people which have produced them. An observation of this truth should render honest republican governors so mild in their punishment of rebellions as not to discourage them too much. It is a medicine necessary for the sound health of government. If these transactions give me no uneasiness, I feel very differently at another piece of intelligence, to wit, the possibility that the navigation of the Mississippi may be abandoned to Spain. I never had any interest westward of the Allegheny; and I will never have any. But I have had great opportunities of knowing the character of the people who inhabit that country; and I will venture to say that the act which abandons the navigation of the Mississippi is an act of separation between the Eastern and Western country. It is a relinquishment of five parts out of eight of the territory of the United States; an abandonment of the fairest subject for the payment of our public debts, and the chaining those debts on our own necks, in perpetuum. I have the utmost confidence in the honest intentions of those who concur in this measure; but I lament their want of acquaintance with the character and physical advantages of the people, who, right or wrong, will suppose their interests sacrificed on this occasion to the contrary interests of that part of the confederacy in possession of present power. If they declare themselves a separate people, we are incapable of a single effort to retain them. Our citizens can never be induced, either as militia or as soldiers, to go there to cut the throats of their own brothers and sons, or rather, to be themselves the subjects instead of the perpetrators of the parricide. Nor would that country quit the cost of being retained against the will of its inhabitants, could it be done. But it cannot be done. They are able already to rescue the navigation of the Mississippi out of the hands of Spain, and to add New Orleans to their own territory. They will be joined by the inhabitants of Louisiana. This will bring on a war between them and Spain; and that will produce the question with us, whether it will not be worth our while to become parties with them in the war in order to reunite them with us and thus correct our error. And were I to permit my forebodings to go one step further, I should predict that the inhabitants of the United States would force their rulers to take the affirmative of that question. I wish I may be mistaken in all these opinions.

Yours affectionately, Th. Jefferson