“If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this Union or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it.”
Monthly Archives: September 2006
On false news in the media:
Wednesday, September 13, 2006
“[S]ince truth and reason have maintained their ground against false opinions in league with false facts, the press, confined to truth, needs no other legal restraint; the public judgment will correct false reasonings and opinions. . . .”
On government and the media:
Tuesday, September 12, 2006
“The basis of our governments being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.”
On vigilante military groups:
Monday, September 11, 2006
“That individuals should undertake to wage private war, independently of the authority of their country, cannot be permitted in a well-ordered society. Its tendency to produce aggression on the laws and rights of other nations, and to endanger the peace of our own is so obvious, that I doubt not you will adopt measures for [...]
On monopolies in trade:
Friday, September 8, 2006
“It is contrary to the spirit of trade, and to the dispositions of merchants, to carry a commodity to any market where but one person is allowed to buy it, and where, of course, that person fixes its prices, which the seller must receive. . . .”
On allowing immigration:
Thursday, September 7, 2006
“[S]hall we refuse the unhappy fugitives from distress that hospitality which the savages of the wilderness extended to our fathers arriving in this land? Shall oppressed humanity find no asylum on this globe?”
On free enterprise:
Wednesday, September 6, 2006
“Agriculture, manufacture, commerce, and navigation, the four pillars of our prosperity, are the most thriving when left most free to individual enterprise.”
On the dangers of foreign alliances:
Tuesday, September 5, 2006
“Friendship is but another name for an alliance with the follies and the misfortunes of others. Our own share of miseries is sufficient: why enter then as volunteers into those of another?”
On sanctions against belligerent nations:
Friday, September 1, 2006
Over the past few months, Iran has defied international demands to stop uranium enrichment. Now U.S. Ambassador John Bolton says it is time to enact sanctions against Iran to try to force it to comply with UN demands. Thomas Jefferson noted the usefulness of enacting embargos or other sanctions to punish belligerent nations:
“To give time [...]