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IM5688 · 61-69, M
1. It should be more up to date to keep up with the changing times. Even Thomas Jefferson had said that the Constitution should be re-written every 20 years or so.
2. It should be written clearly in simple everyday language. We shouldn't need politicians and lawyers to figure it out and understand it and tell us what it's all about.
2. It should be written clearly in simple everyday language. We shouldn't need politicians and lawyers to figure it out and understand it and tell us what it's all about.
@IM5688 I went to Jefferson's library, Monticello.org, he never said that, it was nowhere in a search, however he did say this.
https://www.monticello.org/research-education/thomas-jefferson-encyclopedia/tree-liberty-quotation/
In a 1787 letter to William Stephens Smith, the son-in-law of John Adams, Thomas Jefferson used the phrase "tree of liberty":
I do not know whether it is to yourself or Mr. Adams I am to give my thanks for the copy of the new constitution. I beg leave through you to place them where due. It will be yet three weeks before I shall receive them from America. There are very good articles in it: and very bad. I do not know which preponderate. What we have lately read in the history of Holland, in the chapter on the Stadtholder, would have sufficed to set me against a Chief magistrate eligible for a long duration, if I had ever been disposed towards one: and what we have always read of the elections of Polish kings should have forever excluded the idea of one continuable for life. Wonderful is the effect of impudent and persevering lying. The British ministry have so long hired their gazetteers to repeat and model into every form lies about our being in anarchy, that the world has at length believed them, the English nation has believed them, the ministers themselves have come to believe them, and what is more wonderful, we have believed them ourselves. Yet where does this anarchy exist? Where did it ever exist, except in the single instance of Massachusets? And can history produce an instance of a rebellion so honourably conducted? I say nothing of it’s motives. They were founded in ignorance, not wickedness. God forbid we should ever be 20. years without such a rebellion.[1] The people can not be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions it is a lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. We have had 13. states independant 11. years. There has been one rebellion. That comes to one rebellion in a century and a half for each state. What country before ever existed a century and half without a rebellion? And what country can preserve it’s liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is it’s natural manure. Our Convention has been too much impressed by the insurrection of Massachusets: and in the spur of the moment they are setting up a kite to keep the hen yard in order. I hope in god this article will be rectified before the new constitution is accepted.[2]
https://www.monticello.org/research-education/thomas-jefferson-encyclopedia/tree-liberty-quotation/
In a 1787 letter to William Stephens Smith, the son-in-law of John Adams, Thomas Jefferson used the phrase "tree of liberty":
I do not know whether it is to yourself or Mr. Adams I am to give my thanks for the copy of the new constitution. I beg leave through you to place them where due. It will be yet three weeks before I shall receive them from America. There are very good articles in it: and very bad. I do not know which preponderate. What we have lately read in the history of Holland, in the chapter on the Stadtholder, would have sufficed to set me against a Chief magistrate eligible for a long duration, if I had ever been disposed towards one: and what we have always read of the elections of Polish kings should have forever excluded the idea of one continuable for life. Wonderful is the effect of impudent and persevering lying. The British ministry have so long hired their gazetteers to repeat and model into every form lies about our being in anarchy, that the world has at length believed them, the English nation has believed them, the ministers themselves have come to believe them, and what is more wonderful, we have believed them ourselves. Yet where does this anarchy exist? Where did it ever exist, except in the single instance of Massachusets? And can history produce an instance of a rebellion so honourably conducted? I say nothing of it’s motives. They were founded in ignorance, not wickedness. God forbid we should ever be 20. years without such a rebellion.[1] The people can not be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions it is a lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. We have had 13. states independant 11. years. There has been one rebellion. That comes to one rebellion in a century and a half for each state. What country before ever existed a century and half without a rebellion? And what country can preserve it’s liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is it’s natural manure. Our Convention has been too much impressed by the insurrection of Massachusets: and in the spur of the moment they are setting up a kite to keep the hen yard in order. I hope in god this article will be rectified before the new constitution is accepted.[2]
IM5688 · 61-69, M
@NativePortlander1970
Thomas Jefferson on whether the American Constitution is binding on those who were not born at the time it was signed and agreed to (1789)
Found in: The Works of Thomas Jefferson, 12 vols.
In a letter written to James Madison from Paris just after the French Revolution had broken out, Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) argues that any Constitution expires after 19 years and must be renewed if it is not to become “an act of force and not of right”:
"The question Whether one generation of men has a right to bind another, seems never to have been started either on this or our side of the water… (But) between society and society, or generation and generation there is no municipal obligation, no umpire but the law of nature. We seem not to have perceived that, by the law of nature, one generation is to another as one independant nation to another…
On similar ground it may be proved that no society can make a perpetual constitution, or even a perpetual law. The earth belongs always to the living generation…
Every constitution, then, and every law, naturally expires at the end of 19. years. If it be enforced longer, it is an act of force and not of right."
- Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson on whether the American Constitution is binding on those who were not born at the time it was signed and agreed to (1789)
Found in: The Works of Thomas Jefferson, 12 vols.
In a letter written to James Madison from Paris just after the French Revolution had broken out, Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) argues that any Constitution expires after 19 years and must be renewed if it is not to become “an act of force and not of right”:
"The question Whether one generation of men has a right to bind another, seems never to have been started either on this or our side of the water… (But) between society and society, or generation and generation there is no municipal obligation, no umpire but the law of nature. We seem not to have perceived that, by the law of nature, one generation is to another as one independant nation to another…
On similar ground it may be proved that no society can make a perpetual constitution, or even a perpetual law. The earth belongs always to the living generation…
Every constitution, then, and every law, naturally expires at the end of 19. years. If it be enforced longer, it is an act of force and not of right."
- Thomas Jefferson
@IM5688 Show your actual source, don't just claim it's in a writing and then fail to cite the exact passage.
IM5688 · 61-69, M
@NativePortlander1970
In an 1816 letter to Virginia lawyer Samuel Kercheval on the subject of calling a convention to revise the state's constitution, Jefferson stated that a constitution should be revised every 19 to 20 years. Jefferson's proposed time period was based on the era's mortality rate. Since a majority of adults at any point in time would likely be dead in approximately 19 years, he reasoned, a new generation should have the right to adapt its government to changing circumstances instead of being ruled by the past.
Jefferson's belief in the importance of periodic political change was not limited to state constitutions. For example, in 1787, while he was away serving as the country's ambassador to France, Jefferson wrote a letter to John Adams' assistant discussing the national Constitutional Convention. In this letter, Jefferson mentioned Shays' Rebellion, an armed protest in Massachusetts, and wrote, "god forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion." However, Jefferson did not regard violent conflict as intrinsically necessary. In a letter written shortly before his death in 1824, Jefferson stated that the U.S. Constitution could last perpetually if it were regularly amended to reflect new developments in science and society.
References:
1 Library of Congress: Exhibitions -- Thomas Jefferson: Establishing a Federal Republic
2 Library of Congress: American Memory: The Thomas Jefferson Timeline: 1743 - 1827: The Early Republic, 1784-1789
There are many sources on the internet that state this. The NY Times, NPR, etc.
In an 1816 letter to Virginia lawyer Samuel Kercheval on the subject of calling a convention to revise the state's constitution, Jefferson stated that a constitution should be revised every 19 to 20 years. Jefferson's proposed time period was based on the era's mortality rate. Since a majority of adults at any point in time would likely be dead in approximately 19 years, he reasoned, a new generation should have the right to adapt its government to changing circumstances instead of being ruled by the past.
Jefferson's belief in the importance of periodic political change was not limited to state constitutions. For example, in 1787, while he was away serving as the country's ambassador to France, Jefferson wrote a letter to John Adams' assistant discussing the national Constitutional Convention. In this letter, Jefferson mentioned Shays' Rebellion, an armed protest in Massachusetts, and wrote, "god forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion." However, Jefferson did not regard violent conflict as intrinsically necessary. In a letter written shortly before his death in 1824, Jefferson stated that the U.S. Constitution could last perpetually if it were regularly amended to reflect new developments in science and society.
References:
1 Library of Congress: Exhibitions -- Thomas Jefferson: Establishing a Federal Republic
2 Library of Congress: American Memory: The Thomas Jefferson Timeline: 1743 - 1827: The Early Republic, 1784-1789
There are many sources on the internet that state this. The NY Times, NPR, etc.
@IM5688 NY Times, NPR? 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣