From Thomas Jefferson to you: Get Out And VOTE!!!

Two hundred and nine years ago, after a bitter campaign against his once, and future friend, John Adams, an election that would cause our faint hearted pundits of political correctness to faint dead away, Thomas Jefferson gave his first Inaugural Address. In that address there are several points that would be well worth it for us to remember as we go to the polls in this election. (You are going to the polls today, right? If you are not sure of your answer, let me give you a tip: Get Out And Vote! Get Your Friends and Family Out To Vote!)

From Thomas Jefferson, First Inaugural Address

4 Mar. 1801

...During the throes and convulsions of the ancient world, during the agonizing spasms of infuriated man, seeking through blood and slaughter his long-lost liberty, it was not wonderful that the agitation of the billows should reach even this distant and peaceful shore; that this should be more felt and feared by some and less by others, and should divide opinions as to measures of safety. But every difference of opinion is not a difference of principle. We have called by different names brethren of the same principle. We are all Republicans, we are all Federalists. 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 the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it. I know, indeed, that some honest men fear that a republican government can not be strong, that this Government is not strong enough; but would the honest patriot, in the full tide of successful experiment, abandon a government which has so far kept us free and firm on the theoretic and visionary fear that this Government, the world's best hope, may by possibility want energy to preserve itself? I trust not. I believe this, on the contrary, the strongest Government on earth. I believe it the only one where every man, at the call of the law, would fly to the standard of the law, and would meet invasions of the public order as his own personal concern. Sometimes it is said that man can not be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the forms of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question...."

We've had despicable funnymen such as Bill Maher describing Americans as dogs, capable of recognizing little more than inflection, fear and dominance, and at other times yearning for a strongman to just make things happen.

Let such fools
"stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it. " and believe like Jefferson, that "I believe this, on the contrary, the strongest Government on earth.", and for those such as Reid, Pelosi, Frank and Obama, who wish to place themselves on high and dictate to us how we should behave, regulate what we can sprinkle on our food and how we should be allowed to behave, repeat to yourselves , and to your wouldbe Regulatory Overlords,

"Sometimes it is said that man can not be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the forms of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question."

And history has answered that question, answered it in the French Revolution, in Nazi Germany, the USSR, Maoist China, North Korea and Cuba. The answer is that where there is no sanctity of property or rule of law, there are only the decrees of men seeking to do good unto their fellows - and the only progress that will be found there will be that of the growth of political prisons and rivers of blood.
Jefferson continues, counselling our forefathers to restore both honor and sanity:

"...Let us, then, with courage and confidence pursue our own Federal and Republican principles, our attachment to union and representative government. Kindly separated by nature and a wide ocean from the exterminating havoc of one quarter of the globe: too high-minded to endure the degradations of the others; possessing a chosen country, with room enough for our descendants to the thousandth and thousandth generation; entertaining a due sense of our equal right to the use of our own faculties, to the acquisitions of our own industry, to honor and confidence from our fellow-citizens, resulting not from birth, but from our actions and their sense of them; enlightened by a benign religion, professed, indeed, and practiced in various forms, yet all of them inculcating honesty, truth, temperance, gratitude, and the love of man; acknowledging and adoring an overruling Providence, which by all its dispensations proves that it delights in the happiness of man here and his greater happiness hereafter--with all these blessings, what more is necessary to make us a happy and a prosperous people? Still one thing more, fellow-citizens--a wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicities....

That last has got to bear repeating again and again, especially today,

Still one thing more, fellow-citizens--a wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicities.

That IS the sum of good government, and if those we've elected to it have forgotten it, days like this November 2nd I think were made for them... and for you - IOW Get Out And Vote!!!
Our third President continues with some sage advice for our present President and Congress:

"...About to enter, fellow-citizens, on the exercise of duties which comprehend everything dear and valuable to you, it is proper you should understand what I deem the essential principles of our Government, and consequently those which ought to shape its Administration. I will compress them within the narrowest compass they will bear, stating the general principle, but not all its limitations..."

[Leftists steel your hearts and prepare to endure the spewing of such strident extremism as might set your Tea Pot to boil!]

"...Equal and exact justice to all men, of whatever state or persuasion, religious or political; peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none; the support of the State governments in all their rights as the most competent administrations for our domestic concerns and the surest bulwarks against antirepublican tendencies; the preservation of the General Government in its whole constitutional vigor, as the sheet anchor of our peace at home and safety abroad; a jealous care of the right of election by the people--a mild and safe corrective of abuses which are lopped by the sword of revolution where peaceable remedies are unprovided; absolute acquiescence in the decisions of the majority, the vital principle of republics, from which is no appeal but to force, the vital principle and immediate parent of despotism; a well-disciplined militia, our best reliance in peace and for the first moments of war, till regulars may relieve them; the supremacy of the civil over the military authority; economy in the public expense, that labor may be lightly burthened; the honest payment of our debts and sacred preservation of the public faith; encouragement of agriculture, and of commerce as its handmaid; the diffusion of information and arraignment of all abuses at the bar of the public reason; freedom of religion; freedom of the press, and freedom of person under the protection of the habeas corpus, and trial by juries impartially selected. These principles form the bright constellation which has gone before us and guided our steps through an age of revolution and reformation. The wisdom of our sages and blood of our heroes have been devoted to their attainment. They should be the creed of our political faith, the text of civic instruction, the touchstone by which to try the services of those we trust; and should we wander from them in moments of error or of alarm, let us hasten to retrace our steps and to regain the road which alone leads to peace, liberty, and safety..."

And finally, this, a reminder to the voters, and those voted for alike - reality and expectations rarely meet and part friends:

"...I repair, then, fellow-citizens, to the post you have assigned me. With experience enough in subordinate offices to have seen the difficulties of this the greatest of all, I have learnt to expect that it will rarely fall to the lot of imperfect man to retire from this station with the reputation and the favor which bring him into it. ...

Quit pining for perfection, work with what you've got, and then work to improve it, rinse, repeat. And always...

Get Out And Vote!!!