All well stated prose.

Jefferson, however, was a slave owner.
He's held on a certain pedestal in history books, but I never liked the guy...
okay so sue me...

I liked Washington better.

Jefferson seemed like an elitist. He was decidedly pro-slavery.

Washington was freezing his @ss off along with his toops on the Potomac.

Jefferson was drinking tea on his plantation.

Idealism is great for cocktail parties and late night chats in the college dorm; but in practice
it rarely works.

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In God we trust, all others we monitor.

Why, then, do the former Republican and Democratic party chairs who run the Commission on Presidential Debates continue to erect unreasonable barriers to the inclusion of credible independent and third-party candidates in the fall debates?

The answer is simple: The commission is a private corporation set up by Republican Frank Fahrenkopf and Democrat Paul Kirk with the sole purpose of ensuring that presidential "debates" are dull enough so that neither major-party contender is seriously harmed by the experience.

They do this by selecting cautious moderators and arranging formats that discourage a genuine give-and-take - turning what should be heated face-offs into little more than joint appearances. And they ensure that the rough balance of their pseudo debates is maintained by excluding serious third-party and independent candidates who would inject doses of ideology and passion into the proceedings.

Since Fahrenkopf and Kirk elbowed aside the League of Women Voters in 1987 and created the Commission on Presidential Debates, the United States has held three presidential elections in which third-party and independent contenders have been significant enough players that the winner was elected without a majority of the vote. George W. Bush won only 47.8 percent of the vote in 2000. Bill Clinton took 49 percent in 1996 and 43 percent in 1992.In each of those years, millions of Americans voted for candidates other than the Democratic and Republican nominees. Yet all but one of those candidates was denied a place in the televised national debates in those years.

The only exception, Ross Perot in 1992, got a place on the stage because his poll numbers were so strong that the first President Bush and Clinton were forced to insist on his inclusion. In 1996, however, Perot was excluded, as was Ralph Nader. Four years later, Nader, again running on the Green Party line, and Pat Buchanan, the nominee of the Reform Party, were excluded, along with Libertarian and Constitution party contenders.

So it was that, in both 1996 and 2000, the American people were denied an opportunity to hear the ideas of candidates who held the balance of power in the popular vote and, in 2000, in the voting that would determine the makeup of the Electoral College.

That's an unacceptable circumstance. Walter Cronkite, a former presidential debate panelist, calls the commission-sponsored debates an "unconscionable fraud" set up with the purpose of "sabotaging the electoral process."

And a federal judge has ruled that the Commission on Presidential Debates may have violated federal law by excluding third-party presidential candidates in 2000.


http://www.opendebates.org/news/rela...s/nichols.html


If there were more thrid party people in the debates. There would be a shake up in Washington DC and it would give people the chance to see alternatives that they just don't get to see. Also you wouldn't see the 50/50 poll type of stuff that is happening now.

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If it was that easy, everyone would do it.

Don't forget that Jefferson did outlaw the overseas slave trade under his administration. And he did free his slaves upon his death. But, yes, he was hypocritical for keeping slaves while being one of the greatest advocates for human liberty in history. In the final equation, he is a human being and is therefore subject to flaws.

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"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident." - Schopenhauer

True, I don't dismiss Jefferson's influence on our fledgling Republic.
He was instrumental in it's foundation.

I just have an affinity for Washington, who often times paid his troops out of his own pocket since the pay was in arrears. He fought right alongside his men. He also was somewhat pro-slavery.
So I understand the flawed nature of us all.

I just respect Washington's hands on approach to fighting for Independence...literally fighting.

Jefferson was a lawyer, not a warrior. His weapon was the pen, and I disagree that the pen is mightier than the sword.

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In God we trust, all others we monitor.

I hate that you can't quote Jefferson without the slavery issue being brought up. I always thought it was like being mad at the guy who invented the wheel because he also didnt invent the car.

Jefferson didn't like slavery, and in personal letters he wrote that he would free his own slaves if he didn't fear that they would be taken up by someone else who may not treat them half as well.

In the end, the guy had a lot of great insights, and his foresight has been spot on.


Thanks for the positive feedback so far on the post. I'm excited to see so many people enjoying it. I think we don't give enough credence to the idea that people's minds can be changed. Yes, a lot of things have become social norms, but look at us, we can see through them, so it must be possible to convince others to see the government the way we do.

I've been digging on John Adams after reading McCullough's book, and I guess a little disappointed in Mr. Franklin. I knew he was somewhat hypocritical wrt some of his famous anecdotes on responsible living, but Wow.

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Caption for avatar photo:

AP photo / Matt Rourke

Police use pepper spray on a woman as she approaches them with a flower during a rally at the Republican National Convention in St. Paul.

Our founding fathers that owned slaves didn’t invent slavery, they were born into the institution of slavery.

First, the old south was an agricultural economy and even though attitudes toward slavery were beginning to change especially in the north, slave labor in the south was the economic condition by which no single or even a few plantation owners could abolish and survive economically against majority competition from those who wouldn’t give up their slaves.

Jefferson, Washington and others were born into a world that taught them from childhood that blacks and native Americans were sub-human and that women were property. They didn’t develop those notions on their own. Thus, they were products of their environment and their times.

Logical observation by any logical folk has it that old bigoted notions are hard and slow to change. The notion of accepted slavery was beginning to change at the time of our founding especially in the north. Thus, compromise between northern and southern founders was a must if they were ever to ally to rid the nation of British imperialism.

While surely the founders were not perfect men, their compromise to establish a newer form of governance, a constitutional republic based in liberty, personal responsibility and individual rights, established an idea of greatness.

We should all take note that even after the abolition of slavery it took even longer to rid ourselves of the bigoted political notion of “women being property.”

Some day, we may even figure out that forced government socialism is stupidity and unconstitutional and also abolish it. Don’t hold your breath for that one, bribing the vote with other people’s money creates well paid corrupted career politicians, who get to make up the rules as they go along.

good post, as everyone pointed out.

I will be posting stuff like that in my bar/restaurant, hope it won't pi$$ off authorities, but I don't care. I will also have a list of top American traitors with their photos, which include Bush, Clinton, FoxNews, CNN, ...

And top American patriots which will definetely include Ron Paul, Dennis Kucinich, JFK, MLK, infowars guy Alex?, and a couple others

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Obama, Bob Gates, Colin Powel, Hillary Clinton and other war criminals from Bush administration… Yes, it's a change we can forget about, because do not forget, it was a candidate brought to you by a non democratic media, while any real candidate has been obscured by it.

You will not see any change until you unite for democratic media.

Where's the bar? I'd like to check it out and drink a few.

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Caption for avatar photo:

AP photo / Matt Rourke

Police use pepper spray on a woman as she approaches them with a flower during a rally at the Republican National Convention in St. Paul.

I assume you are supporting Obama because you believe him to be the lessor of two evils. It certainly can't be because Obama supports compliance with the US Constitution. If anyone should know the Constitution in this election Obama should and he would know that it is and was a document of enumerated powers which goes against the progressive philosphy that "if the Constitution doesn't expressly prohibit something then the federal government is empowered to do it." The "progressive" interpretation of the Constitution is juxtaposed to a government empowered by the People because it assumes that all power originates with the govenment.

Neither the Democrats or the Republicans support adherence to the Constitution and this is something we were warned about when America was founded. If you want to support the Constitution you cannot support either Republicans or Democrats.

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Soldiers swear to protect and defend the Constitution with their lives.

Politicians swear to protect and defend the Constitution with someone else's life.