Showing posts with label Education. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Education. Show all posts

Wednesday, November 6, 2013

Jefferson said "we the people" must know enough to govern ourselves - or be unfree

Someone will accumulate enough power to dominate our lives unless we constantly seek to prevent that.  Even it this sounds impossible - we have to select and persuade people smarter and more competent than most of us to work to keep us all free and, yes, to work for the general welfare (as noted in the Constitution).
"I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power."
--Thomas Jefferson to W. Jarvis, 1820.

Tuesday, December 4, 2012

Where to Begin? #3

"I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power."
--Thomas Jefferson to W. Jarvis, 1820.