(03-13-2019, 12:00 PM)jj82284 Wrote: The founding of the country and the principles that underpin it are born of a revolution.  Staire Davis is has its merits but is subordinate to enumerated powers, textuslism, originalism, and the just role of the state.  

And as Jefferson pointed out we hold these truths to be "self evident"  the principles are universally applicable, their name however "conservative" "classical liberal" carries.  

if we were able to teleport Thomas Jefferson into the present, and we just asked him to start giving his opinions on stuff without telling him anything that's been going on, he would come across to us as a libertarian. But in his own time he was a liberal.

Jefferson really didn't care about existing orders at all.

 "it may be proved that no society can make a perpetual constitution, or even a perpetual law. The earth belongs always to the living generation. They may manage it then, and what proceeds from it, as they please, during their usufruct. They are masters too of their own persons, and consequently may govern them as they please. But persons and property make the sum of the objects of government. The constitution and the laws of their predecessors extinguished then in their natural course with those who[27]gave them being. This could preserve that being till it ceased to be itself, and no longer. Every constitution then, and every law, naturally expires at the end of 19[28] years. If it be enforced longer, it is an act of force, and not of right.—It may be said that the succeeding generation exercising in fact the power of repeal, this leaves them as free as if the constitution or law had been expressly limited to 19[29] years only. In the first place, this objection admits the right, in proposing an equivalent. But the power of repeal is not an equivalent. It might be indeed if every form of government were so perfectly contrived that the will of the majority could always be obtained fairly and without impediment. But this is true of no form. The people cannot assemble themselves. Their representation is unequal and vicious. Various checks are opposed to every legislative proposition. Factions get possession of the public councils. Bribery corrupts them. Personal interests lead them astray from the general interests of their constituents: and other impediments arise so as to prove to every practical man that a law of limited duration is much more manageable than one which needs a repeal."

Suppose we got our Re-Animated Thomas Jefferson up to date about everything that eventually happened with the Civil War and then the New Deal. The information overload might cause him to completely lose his sanity. But if it didn't, and we asked him about the Constitution, he'd most likely just shrug his shoulders and say "good for you. I was dead. I'm glad the living got what they wanted." Then you'd be thinking, "my goodness he's a liberal". If we asked him next about the level of national debt that we've amassed in peacetime, he would probably be extremely concerned and even angry. Then we would accuse him of being a conservative.

again I think the defining characteristic of a conservative is that they recognize that a lot of things are going right in society that we take for granted. When a conservative sees something going wrong in society, he looks for the smallest and most precise possible remedy, because he is concerned that any broader remedy would disturb many of the things that are going right. This definition is meaningful across all societies and theories of government. By this definition our boy Jefferson was a liberal.

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