Sunset at Manhatten Beach via szeke. Gorgeous.

Some thoughts on religion and politics, from folks who set things up at the start.

First, from Thomas Jefferson, from his Notes on the State of Virginia regarding religion:

The error seems not sufficiently eradicated, that the operations of the mind, as well as the acts of the body, are subject to the coercion of the laws. But our rulers can have authority over such natural rights only as we have submitted to them. The rights of conscience we never submitted, we could not submit. We are answerable for them to our God. The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbour to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg. If it be said, his testimony in a court of justice cannot be relied on, reject it then, and be the stigma on him. Constraint may make him worse by making him a hypocrite, but it will never make him a truer man. It may fix him obstinately in his errors, but will not cure them. Reason and free enquiry are the only effectual agents against error. Give a loose to them, they will support the true religion, by bringing every false one to their tribunal, to the test of their investigation. They are the natural enemies of error, and of error only. Had not the Roman government permitted free enquiry, Christianity could never have been introduced. Had not free enquiry been indulged, at the aera of the reformation, the corruptions of Christianity could not have been purged away. If it be restrained now, the present corruptions will be protected, and new ones encouraged. (more…)

Gorgeous sunset over water via Giorgos~.

This seemed appropriate, somehow, for today. From a letter written by Thomas Jefferson to Dupont de Nemours in 1816:

We of the United States, you know, are constitutionally and conscientiously democrats. We consider society as one of the natural wants with which man has been created; that he has been endowed with faculties and qualities to effect its satisfaction by concurrence of others having the same want; that when, by the exercise of these faculties, he has procured a state of society, it is one of his acquisitions which he has a right to regulate and control, jointly indeed with all those who have concurred in the procurement, whom he cannot exclude from its use or direction more than they him.

We think experience has proved it safer, for the mass of individuals composing the society, to reserve to themselves personally the exercise of all rightful powers to which they are competent, and to delegate those to which they are not competent to deputies named, and removable for unfaithful conduct, by themselves immediately.

Hence, with us, the people (by which is meant the mass of individuals composing the society) being competent to judge of the facts occurring in ordinary life, they have retained the functions of judges of facts, under the name of jurors; but being unqualified for the management of affairs requiring intelligence above the common level, yet competent judges of human character, they chose, for their management, representatives, some by themselves immediately, others by electors chosen by themselves. Thus our President is chosen by ourselves, directly in practice, for we vote for A as elector only on the condition he will vote for B, our representatives by ourselves immediately, our Senate and judges of law through electors chosen by ourselves. And we believe that this proximate choice and power of removal is the best security which experience has sanctioned for ensuring an honest conduct in the functionaries of society.

What say you?

Sunset with flower via tonivc.

Why the Senate and the legal process was set up to be a slower, deliberative one. Or, as Washington once said, a saucer in which you pour your coffee to cool.

Today’s quote is from James Madison, from a letter to Benjamin Rush dated March 7, 1790:

If we are to take for the criterion of truth a majority of suffrages, they ought to be gathered from those philosophical and patriotic citizens who cultivate their reason apart from every scene that can- disturb its operations, or expose it to the influence of the passions. The advantage enjoyed by public bodies in the light struck out by the collision of debate is but too often overbalanced by the heat proceeding from the same source. Many other sources of involuntary error might be added. It is no reflection on Congress to admit for one the united voice of the place where they may happen to deliberate. Nothing is more contagious than opinion, especially on questions which, being susceptible of very different glosses, beget in the mind a distrust of itself. It is extremely difficult, also, to avoid confounding the local with the public opinion, and to withhold the respect due to the latter from the fallacious specimen exhibited by the former.

Next time someone forwards you one of those stupid e-mail tirades, send them this.

This evening’s quote comes from James Madison, from the Federalist Papers No. 51: “But the great security against a gradual concentration of the several powers in the same department, consists in giving to those who administer each department the necessary constitutional means and personal motives to resist encroachments of the others. The provision for defense must in this, as in all other cases, be made commensurate to the danger of attack. Ambition must be made to counteract ambition….”

Thought we could all do with a bit of uplift and contemplation at the end of the long week behind us. This evening’s quote comes from a letter from Thomas Jefferson to John Adams from April of 1816: You ask, if I would live my seventy or rather my seventy-three years over again? To which I say yea. I think with you, that it is a good world on the whole; that it has been framed on a principle of benevolence, and more pleasure than pain dealt out to us.

This evening’s first quote comes from Andrew Hamilton, who was representing Peter Zenger in court against a charge of libel in 1735:Power may justly be compared to a great river. While kept within its due bounds it is both beautiful and useful. But when it overflows its banks, it is then too impetuous to be stemmed; it bears down all before it,

Camel ride at sunset in Australia via marj k.

This evening’s quotes come from Thomas Paine.

First, from his The American Crisis published in 1777:There is a kind of bastard generosity, which, by being extended to all men, is as fatal to society, on one hand, as the want of true generosity is on the other.

Lest we forget that compromise has always been with us in the actual government of this nation — to the delight of those who win the argument of the day and get modifications, and the disgust of others who have to suffer through them. This from Thomas Jefferson’s Autobiography brings home the back and forth…