Freedom Folks

Tuesday, September 19, 2006

Smart Dead White Dudes II

Earlier I posted this detailing how illegal immigration was pushing California to the hard left.  That shift is being caused by those who've immigrated here from hard left countries.  I began the piece with a quote from Thomas Jefferson (the titular 'Smart Dead White Dude).

Friend of this blog Katie's Dad has suggested that quote needed a bit more context and left this in comments...
"…But are there no inconveniences to be thrown into the scale against the advantage expected from a multiplication of numbers by the importation of foreigners? It is for the happiness of those united in society to harmonize as much as possible in matters which they must of necessity transact together. Civil government being the sole object of forming societies, its administration must be conducted by common consent. Every species of government has its specific principles. Ours perhaps are more peculiar than those of any other in the universe. It is a composition of the freest principles of the English constitution, with others derived from natural right and natural reason. To these nothing can be more opposed than the maxims of absolute monarchies [Note: today we call them despots, tyrants and kleptocrats. Vicente Fox comes to mind]. Yet, from such, we are to expect the greatest number of emigrants. They will bring with them the principles of the governments they leave, imbibed in their early youth; or, if able to throw them off, it will be in exchange for an unbounded licentiousness, passing, as is usual, from one extreme to another. It would be a miracle were they to stop precisely at the point of temperate liberty. These principles, with their language, they will transmit to their children. In proportion to their numbers, they will share with us the legislation. They will infuse into it their spirit, warp and bias its direction, and render it a heterogeneous, incoherent, distracted mass."
He also has an excellent treatise on the subject...here.