http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x7275091Oh my.
First, the itching carpenter:
Ichingcarpenter Donating Member (1000+ posts) Wed Oct-01-08 10:09 PM
Original message
Jefferson never said:"never underestimate the wisdom of the people" Ms Palin
When you talked to today on CBS news
He did say this however:
"I hope our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us, that the less we use our power the greater it will be."
Do a search on it folks, I thought it sounded weird when she said it being an admirer and student of Jefferson's work.
This was a bullshit response Gov. Palin.
ZombyWoof Donating Member (1000+ posts) Wed Oct-01-08 10:11 PM
Response to Original message
1. This amateur Jefferson scholar thanks you
He'd crap his stockings if he lived to see the likes of Palin come to power.
ocelot Donating Member (1000+ posts) Wed Oct-01-08 10:11 PM
Response to Original message
2. I'm surprised a right-wing wackjob like Palin would quote Jefferson, even if incorrectly. The wingers *hate* Jefferson -- he was a proto-liberal.
I dunno. franksolich quotes Jefferson all the time in real life.
TankLV (1000+ posts) Wed Oct-01-08 10:16 PM
Response to Reply #2
6. not to mention - wasn't he a founder of the DemocraTIC Party?
emphasis mine - I'm sick and tired of the lack of use of the proper term...
He was a founder of the Democrat-Republican party, something slightly different than the Democrat party.
ZombyWoof Donating Member (1000+ posts) Wed Oct-01-08 10:30 PM
Response to Reply #6
10. More of our party's direct ancestor
Jefferson was the first president from the Democratic-Republican Party - called "Republicans" in the shorthand of the day, ironically. Within a generation of Jefferson's departure from the White House, the party endured more name changes and turmoil, and eventually, Andrew Jackson convened the modern Democratic Party for the first ever nominating convention in 1824. Old Hickory is often deemed the developer or inventor of the party convention, when it actually did the dirty work of choosing the nominee.
ZombyWoof Donating Member (1000+ posts) Wed Oct-01-08 10:21 PM
Response to Reply #2
8. Some wingnuts embrace him
In Alf Mapp's "Thomas Jefferson: A Strange Case of Mistaken Identity", he has a part devoted to how people on both sides of the spectrum can interpret him to fit their pre-conceived mold. Since conservatives profess to be about smaller government, and Jefferson championed (although did not always practice) limited government, he is often embraced as one of their own.
Add to that he abolished the then-equivalent of the IRS during his first term as president, and ended nearly every tax except the tariff, and it adds to their conceit.
But then you could take him back for liberals by virtue of the Declaration of Independence, the Statute of Religious Freedom in Virginia, and as governor of VA, his vast reform of inheritance laws with property, often divvying up large tracts of land so that the male heirs would not always get the entire spoils of their birth. That did not endear him to the aristocrats, who saw him as something of a traitor a la FDR.
However, he was a genius of enormous self-contradictions and complexity, and it's easy to see where Mapp derived his thesis.
And now, from Pedro Picasso who some weeks thought the Declaration of Independence was part of the Constitution:
Atman Donating Member (1000+ posts) Wed Oct-01-08 10:17 PM
Response to Original message
7. "Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups."
It's nice to see Pedro Picasso back again, after a few days of being in a snit. Pedro Picasso was watching CNN and hanging around Skins's island on the job, and got flak from his boss about it; he's paid to stuff envelopes, not to watch CNN and hang around Skins's island, Pedro Picasso was reminded.
And so like a little baby, Pedro Picasso pouted for a few days.
