JEFFERSON REJECTED CONCENTRATED POLITICAL POWER

Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Governor of New York State in 1930, relied on our third president when condemning Big Business and Wall Street for pitching our nation into the Great Depression. FDR wanted to curb power "economic royalists" wielded. Only a handful of corporations controlled our nation's purse.

"If Thomas Jefferson were alive," FDR asserted in a Jefferson Day speech on April 26, 1930, "he would be the first to question the concentration of economic power."

Jefferson harbored deep distrust of coalesced political power beyond the control of the individual. His Federalist opponents shuddered over terror raging in France. They painted a bleak picture of national destiny if the atheistic French Revolution leaped across the Atlantic Ocean. Such immoral mayhem, if it reached our shores, would act like a raging flood, destroying democratic ideals making our nation great. The Federalists entrusted the nation to a strong president who curtailed individual rights when terrorists threatened national security.

Jefferson believed the Spirit of 76 must protect our citizens' cherished rights. He rejected concentrated power, even if its motivation to protect national security proved worthy. Reread The Declaration of Independence. Listed are multiple castigations against King George III because he epitomized what Jefferson detested-grabbing power at the expense of common folk.

Jefferson would urge President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney to survey The Declaration's tone, texture and tirades against power a self-nominated few exert. The Supreme Court recently overruled Bush's policy of curtailing the legal rights of foreign prisoners incarcerated at Quantanamo Bay. Bush habitually makes the case for protecting national security, even if tactics entail chipping away at individual rights. Cheney, prior to the 9/11 terrorist attacks, quickly expanded presidential power. He felt since Watergate the courts and Congress had trimmed Oval Office prerogatives. He put up roadblocks whenever experts questioned whether it was constitutional to deprive terrorist detainees of civil liberties.

With a robust independent spirit, Jefferson declared individual rights rank supreme in a Republic. Governments King George III or George W. Bush lead hold no prerogative to curtail these rights. Our current president acts like a benevolent sovereign who maintains the 9/11 attacks granted him enlarged authority to minimize civil liberties. Jefferson condemns this argument because it's against the Spirit of 76.

Why did Jefferson side with individual rights, even when France and Britain seized U.S. ships and impressed our sailors, forcing them into slavish duty within their navies?

Our third president knew how precious personal liberties are. They act like arrows notched in a bow. An archer lets them fly. They land in a dense forest and get lost. Like hard-to-retrieve arrows hidden in thick underbrush, our liberties put to flight in the name of national security are difficult to get back, too. Once the government commandeers liberties, leaders knock out of kilter constitutional checks and balances.

Jefferson abhorred government in which power coalesces at the top. His epithet for such a Republic gone badly was "consolidation." He favored "diffusion" as the lifeblood of a healthy Republic. Think of red dye squirted into a glass of water. Swirl it around as the dye gets diffused. Power must be spread out like red dye. Our Republic founders when a president accumulates concentrated power. It flourishes as citizens share in this power.

The eminent jurist Learned Hand opined, "Liberty is never being too sure you're right." Jefferson got angry when Alexander Hamilton and John Adams, without any misgivings, amassed power. Our Republic works more smoothly when its leaders don't haughtily grab power but humbly invite feedback from its citizens.

By carefully reading The Declaration of Independence, we discover a subtle distinction that exposes significant interpretive differences. The Bush Administration links our nation's safety with government protection. Jefferson disagrees. Yale historian Edmund S. Morgan, in his book The Meaning of Independence,crisply notes a critical difference between nation and government. "He [Jefferson] reserved his highest reverence not for the nation but for the individuals who comprise it. In a sense, he was as eager to free individuals from the pressures of the nation as he was to free the nation from the trammels of excess government."

Jefferson believed the nation is composed of citizens whose rights are precious. The government steps out of bounds when it confiscates them. Morgan tells why Jefferson detested political power lodged in the few at the expense of the many. "Jefferson's national loyalty lay in a devotion to the American nation, not to the national government it employed," Morgan rightly notes.

Danger lurks when we highly esteem The Declarationof Independence but don't really know what it teaches. We then act like a book collector who protects important volumes under glass but seldom reads these books to learn from them.

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