Jefferson Offers a Vision (p461-p466)

(Setting:  At his trial for treason, Jefferson concludes his speech with a description of the moral and political framework that will be put in place after the 2nd American Revolution).

"After we destroy your criminal government, what shall we put in its place? I’ll offer you a vision. It starts with the right to life, which is the foundation of all rights and all morality. There is nothing more precious than life, and nothing that can be so completely and uniquely possessed by each person. All else is derived from this sacred right.

"The purpose of life is to achieve happiness, which means to experience the joy of existence. Any other motive for living is destructive, because unhappiness is the only alternative. Happiness requires values as a foundation for the actions and choices that will lead to fulfillment. Nobody, not even God or Caesar, can determine these values for us, and nobody else can make the thousands upon thousands of choices consistent with our values to enable our happiness. If we aren’t free to choose our values and to act consistently with them to achieve happiness, then we are essentially dead, even if we still have a pulse. Individual liberty is therefore a pre-requisite for happiness and a direct extension of the right to life.

"All men have the right to their own lives, not just a privileged few. The right to life is an all or nothing proposition for humanity. No man is born into this world as chattel of another man or of a social entity. We possess individual desires and ambitions, which are supreme in each of our own universes. If some men are allowed to forcibly violate other men's right to life, then all such rights will become untenable as society devolves into anarchic chaos or totalitarian lock down.

"The right to earn and keep private property is the only guarantee of a man's right to his own life, and it is founded in our natural right to what we acquire through our efforts, without violating the similar rights of other sensible beings. If a man doesn’t own the fruit of his productive effort, then he doesn’t own his life, because his ability to sustain it is owned and controlled by someone else, rendering the rest of his rights meaningless. Each man's physical and intellectual effort belongs to him alone. If he doesn’t have the sole right to that which his life brings into being, then he is a slave in every sense of the word and is merely chattel to be bargained away in grand political initiatives to transfer wealth from those that produce to those that don’t. Thus, the only moral justification for creating governments among men is to protect property and life, with property understood as that which life produces. If property rights are not protected, then life is not protected, and the social compact will disintegrate as bands of thieves pirate what other people produce. The glaring contradiction of our history is that the governments which should have been protecting us have been instead the greatest threats to our lives and the most audacious thieves of our productive efforts.

"Since individual liberty is a corollary of the right to life, voluntarism must be the fundamental mode of social and economic interaction. Anything else implies forcible coercion by some men over others, which is slavery and which violates the right to life. Every transaction and interaction among men must be voluntary, based on mutual consent and mutual benefit.

"A market system with free exchange of labor, capital, and goods is the only moral economic structure consistent with everyone’s fundamental right to life. It’s the only mechanism that guarantees societal ambitions will be subordinated to individual rights. It’s the only system in which men can consensually trade their labor for other things of value. It’s the only system in which accumulated capital can be made available consensually for others to use, in return for a profit. It’s the only system in which the products of our efforts can be exchanged for other valuables with mutual consent. Thus, it’s the only system in which men can cooperate on an enormous scale, while retaining their individual sovereignty. That it’s also the most efficient way to organize economically is merely a serendipitous coincidence. The true beauty of the market system is not its magnificent productivity, but rather its moral requirement that all interactions and transactions be voluntary. Free men require free markets. Any other system for economic activity is, by definition, a form of slavery. It’s as simple and inescapable as that.

"The sole justification for government is to protect life, civil liberty, and the property, equal or unequal, which results to every man from his own industry, or that of his fathers. Rights enforcement, property laws, police, and national defense are therefore legitimate functions of the state.

"The way to have good and safe government is not to create one centralized behemoth, but to divide it among many smaller local governments, distributing to each exactly the functions it is competent to execute. This puts each citizen closer to more of the governmental apparatus than if all things are directed from Washington, enabling them to oversee their appointed officials more effectively. If scoundrels make their way into government, they will be more easily detected, more readily eradicated, and less likely to surreptitiously accumulate irreversible power.

"Any attempt by politicians and judges to enact laws which violate the right to life and property is cause for their removal, first by procedural means, and if those fail, then by violence justified as self defense by citizens. Any step a government takes beyond its charter of protecting life and property must inherently be destructive of either life or property, even if good intentions are professed, and the ultimate result will be slavery, terror, and bloodshed.

"In summation, the moral compact of society is based on each man's right to his own life, and to that property which his life brings into existence. Governments are instituted solely to protect these rights. When governments abuse these rights, it is our birthright to revolt. We have a fundamental right to defend ourselves against our government. Without the 2nd Amendment, all of our other rights are superfluous. As Patrick Henry admonished, 'Suspect everyone who approaches the jewel of public liberty. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are ruined. The great object is that every man be armed.' We must retain the right to bear arms to protect ourselves from tyrannical government when society and law are unequal to the task. Our greatest security is to be found in organizing for defense with our brothers and neighbors in local militias.

"Does this vision have a name? Naming a philosophy is dangerous, because men are quick to suffocate the principles with dogma and suspend their worship of reason for worship of canons. When men look at their philosophies with sanctimonious reverence, faith gradually supersedes reason under their sleepy watch, until the dogma looks nothing like the original doctrine and enslaves them with something unrecognizable and horrible. This is how America ended up with politically correct Ismism, which means nothing and everything at the same time simply because we allow it to, having lost the ability to make proper judgments with reason as our guide.

"America religiously worshipped its founding isms, and then forgot the principles they were built on. These foundations have crumbled, but our dulled minds continue to worship capitalism, federalism, and republicanism, even though we don’t understand their moral and philosophical precepts. We are enslaved by ignorant faith in them, because we have abdicated our responsibility to think.

"We don't need another ism put forth by me. We simply need common sense, which is a commitment to thinking. Thinking will yield more enlightenment in one day than any dogma or ism can in a lifetime. Our lives aren’t meant to be subsumed into grandiose social movements, urged along by terminology and syllogisms beyond our ken. The time has come to abandon our isms, for they are the chains on our ankles and the nooses around our necks. Rousseau wondered why man is born free, but is everywhere in chains. It’s because we surrendered reason in favor of faith, which is the first link in the chain of enslavement to kings and priests.

"We shouldn’t worship our past, our Constitution, or even the Declaration I wrote, merely for their tradition. They served us well, but they are simply manifestations of the much larger human greatness of common sense, the catalytic engine for evaluating reality in a manner that is proper for individuals to grow and prosper. Never let the worship of common sense degenerate into an ism, with dogma, faith, and ritual. Simply recognize that the minds of individual men are sacred, that they must be utilized constantly, and that they must remain free and independent. All rational constructions of society will then be continuously regenerated.

"We should have revered common sense all along. Ironically, Thomas Paine used the title ‘Common Sense’ for his dramatic writings that fueled the intellectual and emotional fire of the original American Revolution. So, if you must name my philosophy, follow Paine’s inspiration and call it Common Sense, or call it nothing it all. In our brief lives on this planet, the goal isn’t to choose one ideology or faith over another, but to resist all such calls and to instead rationally exercise our individual minds to stand firm against all who oppose life, liberty, and the laws that protect both. We must pursue ideas because they are common sense to us, not because our priest or our king has decreed them. If we chain ourselves to an ideology, we will eventually discover that a man like the Head Honcho is holding the other end of that chain. Like Rousseau, we will be left with nothing but to wonder why.