Day 39: Happy Independence Day to a land that is more dependent now than it has ever been, due to the inequality our system has created. Our "great" nation torn apart by two parties who can not comprehend the philosophies of our forefathers and who, like religious pontificators, imbed their own personal values while defining its terms to the lazy and less informed.
I spent the early morning reading the letters of Thomas Jefferson, one of our nation's brightest minds and one of our founding fathers. A man, who I assume by all of us, is held with high esteem and reverance. A man, who is undoubtedly the most misquoted and misunderstood of our founding members. A man, with such insight, that he not only prepared the text that would become the blueprint for our nation's government, but also quite accurately predicted its failures.
As we celebrate our nation's "birthday" and our two parties fight, neglecting our needs; we have one who misinterprets each and every word of our founding fathers and another who seeks to constantly change them. Two parties whose philosophical views are so apart, the greater good has lost meaning and vision. We now, almost 240 years later, are witnessing all of Jefferson's fears. One of his greatest, the inescapable fear of grand inequality. So, as some of you enjoy your thick steaks, juicy burgers and carafes of wine with friends and family, while others are doled out soup from strangers, I'll leave you with the words of someone much more eloquent and insightful than I. I ask only that you read the words of Jefferson in this letter to another of our founding father and take note of the date. Ask then, how did we allow ourselves to ignore the warning of what would destroy us, when it was foretold, more than 225 years before, by the men who we credit for making us what we are.
"I am conscious that an equal division of property is impracticable. But the consequences of this enormous inequality producing so much misery to the bulk of mankind, legislators cannot invent too many devices for subdividing property..[a] means of silently lessening the inequality of property is to exempt all from taxation below a certain point, and to tax the higher portions of property in geometrical progression as they rise."
Letter to James Madison (October 28, 1785)
#100DaysOfHopper
I spent the early morning reading the letters of Thomas Jefferson, one of our nation's brightest minds and one of our founding fathers. A man, who I assume by all of us, is held with high esteem and reverance. A man, who is undoubtedly the most misquoted and misunderstood of our founding members. A man, with such insight, that he not only prepared the text that would become the blueprint for our nation's government, but also quite accurately predicted its failures.
As we celebrate our nation's "birthday" and our two parties fight, neglecting our needs; we have one who misinterprets each and every word of our founding fathers and another who seeks to constantly change them. Two parties whose philosophical views are so apart, the greater good has lost meaning and vision. We now, almost 240 years later, are witnessing all of Jefferson's fears. One of his greatest, the inescapable fear of grand inequality. So, as some of you enjoy your thick steaks, juicy burgers and carafes of wine with friends and family, while others are doled out soup from strangers, I'll leave you with the words of someone much more eloquent and insightful than I. I ask only that you read the words of Jefferson in this letter to another of our founding father and take note of the date. Ask then, how did we allow ourselves to ignore the warning of what would destroy us, when it was foretold, more than 225 years before, by the men who we credit for making us what we are.
"I am conscious that an equal division of property is impracticable. But the consequences of this enormous inequality producing so much misery to the bulk of mankind, legislators cannot invent too many devices for subdividing property..[a] means of silently lessening the inequality of property is to exempt all from taxation below a certain point, and to tax the higher portions of property in geometrical progression as they rise."
Letter to James Madison (October 28, 1785)
#100DaysOfHopper
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