Power becomes tyranny
“Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms (of government) those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.”
– Thomas Jefferson
In: Quotes · Tagged with: Thomas Jefferson
Muslims have “right and duty” to be pirates?
Came across this 2004 article by Christopher Hitchens while studying the United States’ dealings with pirates (emphasis mine):
America’s two main diplomats at the time [1794] were John Adams in London and Jefferson in Paris. Together they called upon Ambassador Abdrahaman, the envoy of Tripoli in London, in March 1786. This dignitary mentioned a tariff of three payments–for the ransom of slaves and hostages, for cheap terms of temporary peace and for more costly terms of “perpetual peace.” He did not forget to add his own commission as a percentage. Adams and Jefferson asked to know by what right he was exacting these levies. The U.S. had never menaced or quarreled with any of the Muslim powers. As Jefferson later reported to the State Department and Congress, “The Ambassador answered us that it was founded on the Laws of their Prophet, that it was written in their Koran, that all nations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as Prisoners.”
“These are foundational ideas from the Islamic institution of jihad—the war Islam has waged by military and propagandistic and economic means since its advent— to Islamize the globe,” writes Andrew Bostom, author of The Legacy of Jihad, in an email discussion today.
“Sura 9 of the Koran is nothing more than a series of timeless war proclamations against all the world’s non-Muslims.” continues Bostom. “Add these Koranic injunctions to the Koranic commentaries, the canonical hadith collections, the biographies of Muhammad, and the Muslim jurisprudence–not to mention over a millennium of facts on the ground history– and these sources and historical evidence make plain that the Muslim Tripolitan Ambassador was entirely correct.” (emphasis mine)
Bostom covers this topic extensively in a 2006 post at FrontPage Magazine that is a must-read.
In: In Their Own Words, Religion · Tagged with: Barbary Wars, Islam, John Adams, pirates, Thomas Jefferson
Ignorant and free?
“If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.”
- Thomas Jefferson
In: Quotes · Tagged with: Thomas Jefferson
When Washington becomes the center of all power…
“[W]hen all government, domestic and foreign, in little as in great things, shall be drawn to Washington as the center of all power, it will render powerless the checks provided of one government on another.”
- Thomas Jefferson, letter to Charles Hammond – 1821
In: Quotes · Tagged with: Thomas Jefferson
Trading liberty for order
“A society that will trade a little liberty for a little order will lose both, and deserve neither”
- Thomas Jefferson
In: Quotes · Tagged with: Thomas Jefferson
Jefferson on rights
“No man has a natural right to commit aggression on the equal rights of another, and this is all from which the laws ought to restrict him.”
- Thomas Jefferson
In: Quotes · Tagged with: Thomas Jefferson
The downside of government’s benevolence
“A government big enough to give you everything you want, is strong enough to take everything you have.”
- Thomas Jefferson
In: Quotes · Tagged with: Thomas Jefferson
