STRENGTHENING THE STATE GOVERNMENTS

I shall hazard my own ideas to you as hastily as my business obliges me. I wish to preserve the line drawn by the federal constitution between the general & particular governments as it stands at present, and to take every prudent means of preventing either from stepping over it. Tho’ the experiment has not yet had a long enough course to shew us from which quarter encroachments are most to be feared, yet it is easy to foresee from the nature of things that the encroachments of the state governments will tend to an excess of liberty which will correct itself (as in the late instance) while those of the general government will tend to monarchy, which will fortify itself from day to day, instead of working its own cure, as all experience shews. I would rather be exposed to the inconve-niencies attending too much liberty than those attending too small a degree of it. Then it is important to strengthen the state governments: and as this cannot be done by any change in the federal constitution, (for the preservation of that is all we need contend for,) it must be done by the states themselves, erecting such barriers at the constitutional line as cannot be surmounted either by themselves or by the general government. The only barrier in their power is a wise government. A weak one will lose ground in every contest. To obtain a wise & an able government, I consider the following changes as important. Render the legislature a desirable station by lessening the number of representatives (say to 100) and lengthening somewhat their term, and proportion them equally among the electors: adopt also a better mode of appointing Senators. Render the Executive a more desirable post to men of abilities by making it more independant of the legislature. To wit, let him be chosen by other electors, for a longer time, and ineligible for ever after. Responsibility is a tremendous engine in a free government. Let him feel the whole weight of it then by taking away the shelter of his executive council. Experience both ways has already established the superiority of this measure. Render the Judiciary respectable by every possible means, to wit, firm tenure in office, competent salaries, and reduction of their numbers. Men of high learning and abilities are few in every country; & by taking in those who are not so, the able part of the body have their hands tied by the unable. This branch of the government will have the weight of the conflict on their hands, because they will be the last appeal of reason. — These are my general ideas of amendments; but, preserving the ends, I should be flexible & conciliatory as to the means. You ask whether Mr. Madison and myself could attend on a convention which should be called? Mr. Madison’s engagements as a member of Congress will probably be from October to March or April in every year. Mine are constant while I hold my office, and my attendance would be very unimportant. Were it otherwise, my office should not stand in the way of it. I am with great & sincere esteem, Dr Sir,

your friend & servt.

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

- Thomas Jefferson

Where are you at? Phoenix area or Tucson area?

22 – I do not belong to the NRA, but thanks for the suggestion. I’m looking into it in another browser window as I type this. By the way, if you’re concerned about your electronic rights, I’d recommend you take a look at becoming a member of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (eff.org).

As for shooting practice, I’d love to come to Arizona to take some shooting practice. Gunsite looks like a very interesting school (although their ammo prices seem to be a bit too high for my blood).

..Chuck..

Reminds me of another saying: “What’s a Conservative? A Liberal who’s been mugged.” Well, not really right, but the meaning and the point is right on.

I have not yet ever heard one argument for banning guns that holds water, that cannot be torn to shreds. But the anti-2nd Amendment crowd just keep mindlessly bleating the same nonsensical arguments over and over and over, even though each and every one has been thoroughly defeated many times over.

Robert, you are absolutely right. Without the protection against tyranny afforded us by the 2nd Amendment, the other rights are meaningless. Without the means to defend them, they can be swept away with the stroke of a pen.

For the liberals and anyone else who doesn’t know, the single greatest killer of people over the last century has been their own government. Between Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot over 40,000,000 people were killed by their own government. Doesn’t that say a lot for totalitarian (1) and communist (3) regimes? Of course they all had to disarm the vast majority of their citizens first to do it. As one bumper sticker I’ve seen puts it: “A man with a gun is a citizen, a man without a gun is a subject.”

Chuck with that last bit of information to supplement your stated desire to prevent the US from becoming a fascist state are you going to come to Arizona for shooting practice? We also have an excellent school in Prescott. Gunsite is one of the premier shooting and self defense schools in the country. BTW doesn’t the very concept of “political correctness” fly in the face of civil liberties as it is in fact a form of speech censorship?

As for the NSA cell phone intercept program, the way that is supposed to work is that they are only eavesdropping on calls coming in from or going out to numbers either known to belong to suspected terrorists or to areas known to harbor terrorists. They are not monitoring calls inside the US, unlike the Clinton Echelon program.

Another thing to keep in mind about cell phones, technically they’re radio transmitters operating on publicly owned airwaves. The cell phone companies do not own the frequencies they operate on, the people of the US do. The cell phone service providers simply license the airwaves from the government who administers them for the people of the US. Technically the US government could simply require, as part of the licensing agreement, that any and all calls be made available for monitoring without warrant as a condition of the license. As long as the cell phone service provider informed the user of this change in terms of service, the only option that the user could do would be to not use a cell phone.

Honestly, now that the NSA program has been leaked (note to self: Shoot Jay Rockefeller if civil war/ revolution starts) the terrorists are probably using another means to call each other, or talk in code. If I were them, I’d sign up for comething like Vonage which would be damn near impossible to intercept because you’d never know where the calls would be coming from and if used from a lap top in a wi fi bubble (like the entire city of Tempe, AZ) would be next to impossible to pin down.

As for data mining our cellphones, I’m not sure you understand what they’re truly doing. If a terrorist has a cellphone, the FBI/CIA/NSA/etc has a right and a duty to see those phone records and even listen in on the calls. If my number shows up on that record, then I’m immediately a suspect and they can, and should, get my phone records, lather-rinse-repeat. That is *NOT* data mining.

Data mining is when they download every call made from every cellphone in the entire US. Then they go through that list looking for patterns. From that, they can divine the social connections between anyone who uses a cellphone. This is wrong for at least four reasons (give me time and I can probably come up with more):

1. The government never got a warrant from a judge to look into *MY* phone records. Due process simply was not followed and it violates my 4th ammendment right to be “secure in my papers”.

2. If I choose to make public who my friends are, that’s my business. Unless I’ve committed a crime, the government has no business knowing who I call.

3. Despite their best efforts, that information WILL be used for non-terrorist-hunting reasons. It’s a fact of life that any information the government gathers will be misused after the original intent has been exhausted.

4. It’s a very short step down the slope to something slightly more intrusive, in the name of hunting down terrorists.

I do not want to see another 9/11 or the eradication of the Jewish State either, but less palatable to me is to see the revocation of my constitutional rights. Without those, this is no longer America and we might as well hang it up and hand our lives over to the facist dictators who “know what’s best for us”.

..Chuck..