“It astonishes me to find… [that so many] of our countrymen… should be contented to live under a system which leaves to their governors the power of taking from them the trial by jury in civil cases, freedom of religion, freedom of the press, freedom of commerce, the habeas corpus laws, and of yoking them with a standing army. This is a degeneracy in the principles of liberty… which I [would not have expected for at least] four centuries.” — letter of Thomas Jefferson to William Stephens Smith, 1788.
I note that as of today there are 112 references to the “founding fathers” and 54 references to “Thomas Jefferson” in the Congressional Record this year so far. And yet how many members of Congress stand in agreement with the political philosophy of Thomas Jefferson, one of the most central of the founding fathers?
S. 576 is a bill standing before the Senate which would reverse the onerous provisions of the Military Commissions Act — an act of the 109th Congress which among other things gutted habeas corpus and removed the right of trial by jury. Only the following members of Congress are discontented enough with the degeneration of liberty in the United States to cosponsor S. 576:
Senator Jeff Bingaman
Senator Barbara Boxer
Senator Sherrod Brown
Senator Chris Dodd
Senator Russ Feingold
Senator Tom Harkin
Senator Edward Kennedy
Senator Frank Lautenberg
Senator Patrick Leahy
Senator Bernard Sanders
Senator Bob Menendez
Senator Barbara Mikulski
The other 88 members of the U.S. Senate have reached a level of contentment with tyranny many years before Jefferson predicted. So much for veneration of the founding fathers.
Only one of the 12 remaining Jeffersonians in the Senate is a presidential candidate for 2008. Are we going to find ourselves with a new president in 2009 who is overly contented with the disappearance of liberty?
