President, Planter, Philosopher, Architect, Archeologist & Psychic?

Since grade school I was aware that the great Thomas Jefferson was a president, planter, architect, archaeologist and philosopher, but recently I discovered that he may have been a psychic!

While reading Jefferson's writing, I came across many admonishments that clearly and directly address the political and economic ills that the United States now faces.

Of course the world has changed greatly since Jefferson, but the fundamentals of the human condition have remained the same. Read and reflect on this small sample of the wise and continuously relevant thoughts of Jefferson and you will certainly see that many of our current economic and political ills, from our massive national debt, to our bloated welfare state, to the war in Iraq, at least partially stem from the abandonment of sound Jeffersonian principles:

-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.

-The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not.

-I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.

-Conquest is not in our principles. It is inconsistent with our government.

-I sincerely believe that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies, and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale.

-Dependence begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition.

-Every generation needs a new revolution.

-Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.

-I abhor war and view it as the greatest scourge of mankind.

-I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have.

-I was bold in the pursuit of knowledge, never fearing to follow truth and reason to whatever results they led, and bearding every authority which stood in their way.

-I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than those attending too small a degree of it.

-In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock.

-It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God.

-It is neither wealth nor splendor; but tranquility and occupation which give you happiness.

-My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government.

-Never spend your money before you have earned it.

-No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms.

-Nothing is unchangeable but the inherent and unalienable rights of man.

-Peace and abstinence from European interferences are our objects, and so will continue while the present order of things in America remain uninterrupted.

-That government is best which governs the least, because its people discipline themselves.

-The moment a person forms a theory, his imagination sees in every object only the tracts which favor that theory.

-The spirit of this country is totally adverse to a large military force.

-The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government.

-Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of liberty.

-To compel a man to subsidize with his taxes the propagation of ideas which he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.

-To penetrate and dissipate these clouds of darkness, the general mind must be strengthened by education.

-When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.

-Whenever a man has cast a longing eye on offices, a rottenness begins in his conduct.

-Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government.

-Where the press is free and every man able to read, all is safe.