A Message from Jefferson on Staying Involved

[Brainwalter]

[ QUOTE ]
Anyone wanna help me out and tell me how he endorsed statism?

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Well he did say government is at best a necessary evil. That implies endorsement of statism, because of the implication that government is necessary.

But anyway, tom said he would have been an ACer, not that he was one. Would have implies "if things had been different" in some way. I'll give tom the benefit of the doubt and assume he means if TJ had been alive when Austrian economic theory was already developed, instead of writing when Adam Smith's work was new and groundbreaking, he would have endorsed AC rather than statism.

[samsonite2100]

Wait, you guys are serious? From wiki--

Thomas Jefferson (April 13, 1743 N.S. – July 4, 1826) was the third President of the United States (1801–1809), the principal author of the Declaration of Independence (1776), and an influential founder of the United States. Major events during his presidency include the Louisiana Purchase (1803), the Lewis and Clark Expedition (1804–1806), and the failed Embargo Act of 1807.

A political philosopher who promoted Republicanism, sharp limits on the powers of the federal government, and the separation of church and state, he was the author of the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom (1779, 1786). He was the eponym of Jeffersonian democracy and the founder and leader of the Democratic-Republican Party, which dominated the First Party System for over a quarter-century. Jefferson served as the wartime Governor of Virginia (1779–1781), first United States Secretary of State (1789–1793), and second Vice President (1797–1801).


I'm mystified as to how anyone could think that a man whose wiki biography begins with these two paragraphs would be an anarchocapitalist today. Is it the "sharp limits on the powers of the federal government" part that's throwing some of you off?

[tomdemaine]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Anyone wanna help me out and tell me how he endorsed statism?

[/ QUOTE ]

Well he did say government is at best a necessary evil. That implies endorsement of statism, because of the implication that government is necessary.

But anyway, tom said he would have been an ACer, not that he was one. Would have implies "if things had been different" in some way. I'll give tom the benefit of the doubt and assume he means if TJ had been alive when Austrian economic theory was already developed, instead of writing when Adam Smith's work was new and groundbreaking, he would have endorsed AC rather than statism.

[/ QUOTE ]

I was making a dumb joke, I'll take the benefit though. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[AlexM]

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Jefferson would totally be an ACer.

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Jefferson's a pretty solid minarchist libertarian, but he's definitely not an ACer.