"A wise and frugal government, which shall leave men free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor and bread it has earned -- this is the sum of good government."
George Allen has voted against every attempt to raise the minimum wage, except Rick Santorum's attempt to raise minimum wage while abolishing overtime.
This website goes on to quote George Allen:
America has been the leader on virtually every important and transformative technology since the Industrial Revolution and it is vitally important that our nation continues to take the lead on these issues. For future generations of Americans to compete, they will need to have a firm grasp of new technologies and their applications in the real world.
George Allen voted against a bill to fund job training, college access, to support alternative energy development, opting instead to vote in favor of the Cheney devised Energy Policy, drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and to allow drilling off the coast of Virginia.
On illegal immigration, Allen says:
I believe that, first and foremost, we need to secure our borders. We need more border agents and detention centers along the border and we ought to be using technology, such as unmanned aerial vehicles, to help with surveillance. Secondly, we must not reward illegal behavior; rewarding illegal behavior will only encourage more illegal actions.
Allen voted against the Immigration Reform Act, which would provide for more border agents, detention centers, and aerial detection vehicles, along with fencing along the Mexican border. This law would also punish employers for hiring illegal aliens.
On support for veterans, Allen says:
+óGé¼+ôI will continue to stand strong with the courageous men and women who serve in our Armed Forces as they fight to protect our freedoms around the world. I am humbled by the opportunity to meet with these selfless warriors whether overseas in Iraq or back here at home. America is +óGé¼+ôthe land of the free+óGé¼-¥ because we are +óGé¼+ôthe home of the brave+óGé¼-¥ +óGé¼GÇ£ and we should do everything possible to support those who put their lives on the line for this great nation.+óGé¼-¥
Allen has voted against several attempts by Democrats to increase funding for veterans health care, and to protect from bankruptcy, reservists called for extended duty in Iraq and Afghanistan. (In 2006, vote #7, 8, and 41 for vet's health care and in 2005, vote # 13 and 40.)
Allen's stance on energy:
Increasing America+óGé¼Gäós energy independence will help reduce the soaring prices at the gas pump and make our nation more secure by lessening our dependence on energy from unstable regions and hostile dictators around the world.
In reality, he has voted against development of renewable energy that would truly make us "energy independent", and has opted instead to fund "big oil" in their attempt to ruin our natural wildlife preserves and coastal waterways.
Allen's stance on health care...one of the most important issues to the American people? He has made sure we can save for catastrophic illness or accident. He has done nothing to address health care for all, or abuses in the health care industry.
George Allen uses one quote from Thomas Jefferson's teachings to justify his views of the duties of government.
I'll leave you with some of Thomas Jefferson's other quotes that can be found here: http://etext.virgini...
"Aware of the tendency of power to degenerate into abuse, the worthies of our country have secured its independence by the establishment of a Constitution and form of government for our nation, calculated to prevent as well as to correct abuse.""I hope...the good sense and patriotism of friends of free government of every shade will spare us the painful, the deplorable spectacle of bretheren sacrificing to small passion the great, the immortal and immutable rights of men."
"In America, no other distinction between man and man had ever been known but that of persons in office exercising powers by authority of the laws and private individuals. Among these last, the poorest laborer stood on equal ground with the wealthiest millionaire, and generally on a more favored one whenever their rights seem to jar."
"The only exact testimony of a man is his actions, leaving the reader to pronounce on them his own judgement."
"Mankind soon learn to make interested uses of every right and power which they possess, or may assume."
And lastly,
"I do not exaggerate....Experience declares that man is the only animal which devours his own kind; for I can apply no milder term to the governments of Europe, and to the general prey of the rich on the poor."
Great work.
;-)
Great job.
"The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg."
Postpone to the great object of Liberty every smaller motive and passion.The spirit of 1776 is not dead. It has only been slumbering. The body of the American people is substantially republican. But their virtuous feelings have been played upon by some fact with more fiction; they have been the dupes of artful maneuvers, and made for a moment to be willing instruments in forging chains for themselves. But times and truth dissipated the delusion and opened their eyes.
We can only hope.
Some examples:
I have recently been examining all the known superstitions of the world, and do not find in our particular superstition one redeeming feature. They are all alike, founded upon fables and mythologies.
-- Thomas Jefferson, letter to Dr. Woods (undated), referring to "our particular superstition," Christianity, from John E. Remsburg, Six Historic Americans: Thomas Jefferson, quoted from Franklin Steiner, Religious Beliefs of Our Presidents (1936), "Thomas Jefferson, Freethinker"The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the Supreme Being as his father, in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter.
-- Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Adams, April 11, 1823, quoted from James A. Haught, "Breaking the Last Taboo" (1996)We find in the writings of his biographers ... a groundwork of vulgar ignorance, of things impossible, of superstitions, fanaticisms and fabrications.
-- Thomas Jefferson, to William Short, August 4, 1822, referring to Jesus's biographers, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.
This data is from the wikipedia entry for this volume:
The Jefferson Bible, or The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth as it is formally titled, was an attempt by Thomas Jefferson to glean the teachings of Jesus from the Christian Gospels. Jefferson wished to extract the doctrine of Jesus by removing sections of the New Testament containing supernatural aspects as well as perceived misinterpretations he believed had been added by the Four Evangelists.
Jefferson wrote in a letter to John Adams on October 13, 1813:
"I have performed this operation for my own use, by cutting verse by verse out of the printed book, and arranging the matter which is evidently his, and which is as easily distinguishable as diamonds in a dunghill."
The work is described in wikipedia:
Miracles and references to the Trinity and the divinity of Jesus are notably absent from the Jefferson Bible. The Bible begins with an account of Jesus's birth without references to angels, genealogy, or prophecy. The work ends with the words: "Now, in the place where he was crucified, there was a garden; and in the garden a new sepulchre, wherein was never man yet laid. There laid they Jesus. And rolled a great stone to the door of the sepulchre, and departed." There is no mention of the resurrection.
The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth is available here from UVA and is in the public domain.
-T. Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson was a well know deist and during his Presidential campaigns was constantly heckled as an Athiest (which was not true either). Jefferson wrote a great deal about God, Jesus and the Church which is explored here. I have excerpted some of it below...
In a letter to John Adams shortly before his death he wrote:
"The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the Supreme Being as his father, in the womb of a virgin will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter" (Jefferson's Works, Vol. iv, p. 365).
In the gospel history of Jesus, Jefferson discovers what he terms "a groundwork of vulgar ignorance, of things impossible, of superstitions, fanaticism, and fabrications" (Works, Vol. iv, p. 325).He continues:
"If we could believe that he [Jesus] really countenanced the follies, the falsehoods, and the charlatanism which his biographers [Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John,] father on him, and admit the misconstructions, interpolations, and theorizations of the fathers of the early, and the fanatics of the latter ages, the conclusion would be irresistible by every sound mind that he was an impostor" (Ibid..).
Jefferson, however, did not regard Jesus as an impostor. He says:
"Among the sayings and discourses imputed to him by his biographers, I find many passages of fine imagination, correct morality, and of the most lovely benevolence; and others, again, of so much ignorance, of so much absurdity, so much untruth and imposture, as to pronounce it impossible that such contradictions should have proceeded from the same being. I separate, therefore, the gold from the dross, restore to him the former, and leave the latter to the stupidity of some and the roguery of others of his disciples" (Ibid., 320).
When Jefferson's works were first published, the New York Observer, then the leading Christian journal of this country, gave them the following notice:"Mr. Jefferson, it is well known, was never suspected of being very friendly to orthodox religion, but these volumes prove not only that he was a disbeliever, but a scoffer of the very lowest class."
Besides, Arianists believed that Jesus was created rather than born a man which Jefferson regarded as myth. Jefferson was a Deist.
I don't understand the need to claim that Jefferson was a Christian when, if you consider his writings, he clearly wasn't. This fact was widely known in his own lifetime.
I know that this will not be a very popular position but, there it is...
Jefferson was a complex and controversial man. Allen wouldn't want you to associate him with the real Jefferson, I'm sure.
Hey George with the Jeffersonian values- where's your Sally Hemmings?
When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.
An elective despotism was not the government we fought for.
Liberty is the great parent of science and of virtue; and a nation will be great in both in proportion as it is free.I figure that Allen wants to be identified with Thomas Jefferson because:
A) People know the name of Thomas Jefferson (though not very much about him!)and think he was great
B) Allen threw footballs around at UVAAllen probably likes the sound of some of the laissez-faire idealism of Jefferson, but not the proponents for separations between church and state. Of course, Allen is really much more of a mercantilist than Jefferson; if they were alive today, I'm sure Allen would be more comfortable in the Hamilton camp.
Allen doesn't go into this Jeffersonian jazz very deeply at all- if he did, he could very well end up more embarrassed than he was after the media pilloried him over his remarks to Sidarth.
Some more Jefferson quotes to debunk Allen's claim:
On Corporations: I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around [the banks] will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs.
On Opportunity: There is nothing more unequal, than the equal treatment of unequal people.
On Separation of Church and State: Because religious belief, or non-belief, is such an important part of every person's life, freedom of religion affects every individual. State churches that use government power to support themselves and force their views on persons of other faiths undermine all our civil rights. Moreover, state support of the church tends to make the clergy unresponsive to the people and leads to corruption within religion. Erecting the "wall of separation between church and state," therefore, is absolutely essential in a free society.
On Dick Cheney: How much have cost us the evils that never happened!
On the Patriot Act: I am mortified to be told that, in the United States of America, the sale of a book can become a subject of inquiry, and of criminal inquiry too.
On the Bush Doctrine: I hope our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us, that the less we use our power the greater it will be.
On the Deficit/War: It is incumbent on every generation to pay its own debts as it goes. A principle which if acted on would save one-half the wars of the world.
On Equal Protection: It is more dangerous that even a guilty person should be punished without the forms of law than that he should escape.
And my personal favorite--on the Hate Ammendment: Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add 'within the limits of the law' because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.
Forgive me for going on, but I was raised in Charlottesville, and Jefferson is taught from birth :)
P.S.--Anything substantial planned by the Fluco Dems for Old Farm Day?
It makes me cringe. Our father of democracy and rights turns in his grave.