Patriots and Tyrants
Here’s a fuller quote of the Jefferson aphorism William Kostric had truncated on a placard along with his open carry penis gun:
“What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.” –Thomas Jefferson to William Stephens Smith, 1787. ME 6:373, Papers 12:356
Charming, isn’t it? Almost Stalinesque. In that light, Kostric’s use of the verb “water” is off the mark; it’s really time to poop on the tree of liberty.
Lately libertarians have been invoking the “wisdom of Our Founders” as an argument against health care reform, as if any of the slavers and smugglers from the 18th Century had any clue about medicine, socialized or otherwise. When the Constitution was written, doctors were still cutting off legs without anesthetic or washing their hands. Still, Ben Franklin thought the fire department and the post office served essential social needs, so had the issue come up, he might have seen merit in universal access to health care. Who knows?
But say the Founders had explicit objections to government involvement in health care. Who cares? They’re dead. We live. We need health care.
Selective nostalgia aside, the libertarian obeisance to every aphorism culled from speeches and letters written by Jefferson, et al. rests upon the admirable job they performed in putting together a functioning republican system of government. Admirable, but not perfect, nor without problems that proved disastrous the longer they festered: the 3/5 compromise, the electoral college. To their credit, the Framer Founder Freak Brothers knew they were fallible and built into the Constitution itself the means with which to amend it — hence, the 13th and 14th Amendments overriding the 3/5 compromise. Not without blood, of course. A lot of blood.
