The Demon-Haunted World_ Science as a Candle in the Dark - Carl Sagan [205]
He died at Monticello on 4 July 1826, fifty years to the day after the colonies issued that stirring document, written by Jefferson, called the Declaration of Independence. It was denounced by conservatives worldwide. Monarchy, aristocracy and state-supported religion - that’s what conservatives were defending then. In a letter composed a few days before his death, he wrote that it was the ‘light of science’ that had demonstrated that ‘the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs’, nor were a favoured few born ‘booted and spurred’. He had written in the Declaration of Independence that we all must have the same opportunities, the same ‘unalienable’ rights. And if the definition of ‘all’ was disgracefully incomplete in 1776, the spirit of the Declaration was generous enough that today ‘all’ is far more inclusive.
Jefferson was a student of history - not just the compliant and safe history that praises our own time or country or ethnic group, but the real history of real humans, our weaknesses as well as our strengths. History taught him that the rich and powerful will steal and oppress if given half a chance. He described the governments of Europe, which he saw at first hand as the American ambassador to France. Under the pretence of government, he said, they had divided their nations into two classes: wolves and sheep. Jefferson taught that every government degenerates when it is left to the rulers alone, because rulers - by the very act of ruling -misuse the public trust. The people themselves, he said, are the only prudent repository of power.
But he worried that the people - and the argument goes back to Thucydides and Aristotle - are easily misled. So he advocated safeguards, insurance policies. One was the constitutional separation of powers; accordingly, various groups, some pursuing their own selfish interests, balance one another, preventing any one of them from running away with the country: the Executive, Legislative and Judicial Branches; the House and the Senate; the States and the Federal Government. He also stressed, passionately and repeatedly, that it was essential for the people to understand the risks and benefits of government, to educate themselves, and to involve themselves in the political process. Without that, he said, the wolves will take over. Here’s how he put it in Notes on Virginia, stressing how the powerful and unscrupulous find zones of vulnerability they can exploit:
In every government on earth is some trace of human weakness, some germ of corruption and degeneracy, which cunning will discover and wickedness insensibly open, cultivate and improve. Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves therefore are its only safe depositories. And to render even them safe, their minds must be improved...
Jefferson had little to do with the actual writing of the US Constitution; as it was being formulated, he was serving as American minister to France. When he read its provisions, he was pleased, but with two reservations. One deficiency: no limit was provided on the number of terms the President could serve. This, Jefferson feared, was a way for a President to become a king, in fact if not in law. The other major deficiency was the absence of a bill of rights. The citizen, the average person, was insufficiently protected, Jefferson thought, from the inevitable abuses of those in power.
He advocated freedom of speech, in part so that even wildly unpopular views could be expressed, so that deviations from the conventional wisdom could be offered for consideration. Personally he was an extremely amiable man, reluctant to criticize even his sworn enemies. He displayed a bust of his arch-adversary Alexander Hamilton