NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #27/NN_1992_27.iso/spool/austin/talk/344

Internet Message Format | 1992-11-19 | 2.9 KB

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From: [e-mail] (John F. Haugh II)
Newsgroups: austin.talk
Subject: Re: If you dump Bush, dump Congress too, (at least.)
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 19 Nov 92 13:48:44 GMT
References: <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]>
Reply-To: [e-mail] (John F. Haugh II)
Organization: Los Tejanos SCUBA Club and Beer Joint, Austin, Tejas
Lines: 38

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Alan R. Weiss) writes:
>In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (steve the foolhardy) writes:
>>"The rights of conscience we never submitted,  we could not submit.  We
>>are answerable for them to our God.  The legitimate powers of government
>>extend to such acts only as are injurious to others."
>>    -Thomas Jefferson,  "Notes on Virginia"
>
>This is the quote I was looking for to share with John Haugh II.
>
>And Curt, Jefferson was NOT a "states rights" advocate in the sense
>John C. Calhoun (S. Carolina) was.  He was a true decentralist --
>all the way down to the individual!  Having said that, Jefferson was
>also a Deist slaveholder wracked with a guilty conscience.  We all
>are imperfect.

I certainly agree 100% with Jefferson's statement, but disagree with your
interpretation of it.  You (and steve the foolhardy) think that "injury"
must be direct and patently obvious.  There are many behaviors whose
results are far more subtle that what you might be willing to accept and
which are no less "injurous."  The world is far to imprecise to accept
this concept - it would result in people saying "PROVE it is injurous"
and the victim being unable to because the relationship between the action
and the injury is somewhat indirect.

As for Jefferson being some radical decentralist, I am not aware of any
reliable writings by Jefferson (meaning, not some Libertarian wet-dream
analysis of Jeffersonian thinking) that would lead to the conclusions I
know you would like to draw.  Certainly at the most basic level, if he
had truly felt as you maintain, he would never have argued that slavery
be outlawed throughout the country.  He lived during the era that slavery
was abolished in the northern colonies (New York once being a major
agricultural state), certainly he was intelligent enough to draw the
conclusion that slavery would gradually be abolished in the remaining
colonies.  Yet he argued forcefully for its abolishion.  How do you
square this?  More Jeffersonian imperfection?
--
John F. Haugh II                  [  TSAKC  ] !'s: ...!cs.utexas.edu!rpp386!jfh
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