Reverend Al Can't Imagine Thomas Jefferson Being All Insurrection-ey
Sharpton is a racist buffoon, but sometimes we can learn from buffoons.
Yesterday, Al Sharpton mused that it was impossible to imagine Thomas Jefferson and James Madison throwing down against any government. It was a stunning statement in its audacity and historical inaccuracy.
Of course, Rev. Al is a race hustling buffoon, but his statement is a teaching moment.
Thomas Jefferson authored a document that would seem to resolve Sharpton’s inability to imagine, and it is one you might have heard of - called the Declaration of Independence - it includes the following passage:
"...whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."
Thomas Jefferson left behind a large library of writings, letters and documents. TJ was a polymath and a man of letters. One letter was to Samuel Kercheval on June 12, 1816, and I consider to be one of the most insightful expositions I have read on human nature and attempts we make to overcome that nature and live together in civility and peace.
It also provided a prescription for the eventual failure of that attempt, if not provided with adequate safeguards. Jefferson wrote:
"A departure from principle in one instance becomes a precedent for a second; that second for a third; and so on, till the bulk of the society is reduced to be mere automatons of misery, and to have no sensibilities left but for sinning and suffering."
Humans are undoubtedly the most fickle and feckless beasts of God's creations - and being a human construction, institutions live and die, history notes that their rise and fall is as natural as the changing of seasons
Institutions (i.e. the church, academia, charitable organizations, even government) are created for the propagation and defense of commonly shared beliefs, ideals and actions specific to certain groups of people. They are the result of humankind creating "rules of the road" for the care and feeding of their civilization. Institutions are defined by the boundaries they establish. Membership in them, seeking to live withing those boundaries, lends legitimacy and credibility to the institution. To gain (and retain) membership, one must constantly adhere to the rules that define the institution or the identity of the institution is lost.
Institutions exist because people believe in what they represent, they choose to live by the specific set of standards the institution represents. Representing a specific pattern of living, they provide a code by which members are identified - but when institutions refuse to live by their own codes and standards, the reason for people to join or respect them disappears, along with their legitimacy and credibility.
Institutions fail, not necessarily due to their walls being pulled down from without by an invading horde, they often fall when they weaken themselves by ignoring their own codes and standards. They fall after the rot from within weakens those walls enough that they can be breached - or in many cases, the people behind the wall tear them down on their own.
Religion is failing because it no longer enforces God's Laws. The Catholic Church refusing to excommunicate prominent Democrats who support the horrific institution of abortion (which, in my opinion, is worse than the institution of slavery) is an recent example. Almost every Christian sect is backing away from Holy Law in an attempt to be popular, contemporary, and “relevant”.
No less than Satan's number one fan (there is literary evidence he did praise Lucifer), the patron saint of political agitation and Hillary’s college crush, Saul Alinsky, recognized in Rule 4 of his "Rules For Radicals" that if you can force an institution to break its own rules, you can destroy it.
"Make the enemy live up to their own book of rules. You can kill them with this, for they can no more obey their own rules than the Christian church can live up to Christianity."
When an institution loses credibility, there is no longer a reason for it to continue to exist. It becomes hollow and meaningless. Perhaps there has never been a better example than what Groucho Marx is alleged to have written to the Friar's Club:
"I don’t want to belong to any club that would accept me as one of its members."
When an any institution fails, it often becomes a tool of its enemies, used to further co-opt and corrupt those who foolishly cling to it, not realizing the institution is no longer what it was.
Being the prescient polymath he was, Jefferson allowed for that in the Declaration of Independence.
Dead for almost two centuries and he is still taking us to school.
Amen brother. Though I am not yet seeing the light at the end of the tunnel, I know that HE is there shining bright and our only way!