‘You got no priests, you got no infidels’
8th January 2011
“His character and doctrines have received still greater injury from those who pretend to be his special disciples, and who have disfigured and sophisticated his actions and precepts, from views of personal interest, so as to induce the unthinking part of mankind to throw off the whole system in disgust, and to pass sentence as an impostor on the most innocent, the most benevolent, the most eloquent and sublime character that ever has been exhibited to man.” ~ TJ, 1803
You may not want to pay too much attention to this. These were the thoughts of arguably the greatest American who ever lived, but in our streamlined (read: dumbed down) world, the ideas he expressed are probably too complex, and, viewed in the context of the daily bottom line, too conceptually obsolete to be of actual use to you. Plus, if you have received an American public school education after 1970, you likely will be unable to puzzle out his archaic language because it is not in the billboard style you have become used to that has eroded your ability to think far beyond what you will ever realize.
For those students transferring in from the Advanced Ebonics class shown daily on CNN, modern translations of this writer’s antique sentence structure will follow each of his statements in brackets.
And this is guy who invented our system of weights and measures, our university system, and a definition of freedom that is pretty much accepted by everyone in the world who can still think. Here’s what he said. Try to actually understand the words and what they mean. You may wish to repeat certain phrases. Feel free to do so.
“His character and doctrines have received still greater injury from those who pretend to be his special disciples, and who have disfigured and sophisticated his actions and precepts, from views of personal interest, so as to induce the unthinking part of mankind to throw off the whole system in disgust, and to pass sentence as an impostor on the most innocent, the most benevolent, the most eloquent and sublime character that ever has been exhibited to man.” ~ TJ, 1803
You may not want to pay too much attention to this. These were the thoughts of arguably the greatest American who ever lived, but in our streamlined (read: dumbed down) world, the ideas he expressed are probably too complex, and, viewed in the context of the daily bottom line, too conceptually obsolete to be of actual use to you. Plus, if you have received an American public school education after 1970, you likely will be unable to puzzle out his archaic language because it is not in the billboard style you have become used to that has eroded your ability to think far beyond what you will ever realize.
For those students transferring in from the Advanced Ebonics class shown daily on CNN, modern translations of this writer’s antique sentence structure will follow each of his statements in brackets.
And this is guy who invented our system of weights and measures, our university system, and a definition of freedom that is pretty much accepted by everyone in the world who can still think. Here’s what he said. Try to actually understand the words and what they mean. You may wish to repeat certain phrases. Feel free to do so.
“I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.”
[Now that’s what I call a robust drinking toast!]
[How ironic that he could not see, way back then, that he was swearing TO a tyranny to oppose that very tyranny. Is that too complex for you? Let’s let him try to make it clearer.]
[How ironic that he could not see, way back then, that he was swearing TO a tyranny to oppose that very tyranny. Is that too complex for you? Let’s let him try to make it clearer.]
“Question with boldness even the existence of a god; because if there be one he must approve of the homage of reason more than that of blindfolded fear.”
[Now we’re into the meat of the matter. To translate that into contemporary jargon, it means: God gave you a brain, and it’s a sin not to use it. Which means that every time you hear “that’s something we just can’t talk about,” the subliminal meaning of it is that you may be protecting your own religion, but you’re going against God.]
Jefferson continues:
Jefferson continues:
“Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should 'make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' thus building a wall of separation between church and State.”
[This is the sense of individual liberty that America was founded upon. Anyone who opposes this sentiment does not fall into the category of honest man, and never will. Which leads us to his penultimate pronouncement about all governments, the one that absolutely must be followed if individual freedom is ever to be achieved and preserved.]
“History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance of which their civil as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purposes.
[No better illustration is available than now, when presidents wearing microphones concealed inside their jackets to take instructions on what to say to the public suddenly paroxysm out, and say, “Hold it. I’m getting a message from God,” as the 43rd president of the United States ~ Bush the More Retarded ~ once did.]
Jefferson again. Often seen etched in copper.
Jefferson again. Often seen etched in copper.
“In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own.”
[Quite relevant to the sexual abuse of children that plagues all denominations, which didn’t really begin, BTW, until Jewish homosexuals infiltrated Catholic seminaries.]
“My opinion is that there would never have been an infidel, if there had never been a priest. The artificial structures they have built on the purest of all moral systems, for the purpose of deriving from it pence and power, revolts those who think for themselves, and who read in that system only what is really there.”
[A paragraph that stands the test of time, and cannot be improved.]
“Priests...dread the advance of science as witches do the approach of daylight and scowl on the fatal harbinger announcing the subversions of the duperies on which they live.”
[And what will that result in?]
“Man once surrendering his reason, has no remaining guard against absurdities the most monstrous, and like a ship without rudder, is the sport of every wind.
[The sport of every wind, he said in 1803. Today, that would come out as something like “the victim of every hustler”; absurdities most monstrous would evolve into today’s lingo as “slavery of thought.”]
Jefferson makes his choice.
"Ignorance is preferable to error, and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing than he who believes what is wrong."
[That vindicates all those hostile homeowners who told all those missionaries who came to the front door with a deal for all eternity to GET THE HELL OFF MY PROPERTY AND NEVER COME BACK!]
[I’ll stop these cloying subtitles now. It was just a trick to get the kids to read this far.]
Yet, for all his hostility to the pious men in black robes, Jefferson forever cherished the core ideals of the savior, but he did it modestly and sensibly, a belief for himself, when he said . . .
[I’ll stop these cloying subtitles now. It was just a trick to get the kids to read this far.]
Yet, for all his hostility to the pious men in black robes, Jefferson forever cherished the core ideals of the savior, but he did it modestly and sensibly, a belief for himself, when he said . . .
“ . . . such are the fragments remaining as to show a master workman, and that his system of morality was the most benevolent and sublime probably that has been ever taught, and consequently more perfect than those of any of the ancient philosophers. His character and doctrines have received still greater injury from those who pretend to be his special disciples, and who have disfigured and sophisticated his actions and precepts, from views of personal interest, so as to induce the unthinking part of mankind to throw off the whole system in disgust, and to pass sentence as an impostor on the most innocent, the most benevolent, the most eloquent and sublime character that ever has been exhibited to man.”
[So, why don’t you tell us how you really feel, Mr. President, greatest president America ever had? Tell us about what these so-called representatives of the highest power have done to our cherished ideals.]
“They have been still more disfigured by the corruptions of schismatising followers, who have found an interest in sophisticating and perverting the simple doctrines he taught by engrafting on them the mysticisms of a Grecian sophist, frittering them into subtleties, and obscuring them with jargon, until they have caused good men to reject the whole in disgust, and to view Jesus himself as an impostor.
Notwithstanding these disadvantages, a system of morals is presented to us, which, if filled up in the true style and spirit of the rich fragments he left us, would be the most perfect and sublime that has ever been taught by man. The question of his being a member of the Godhead, or in direct communication with it, claimed for him by some of his followers, and denied by others, is foreign to the present view, which is merely an estimate of the intrinsic merit of his doctrines.
1. He corrected the Deism of the Jews, confirming them in their belief of one only God, and giving them juster notions of his attributes and government.
2. His moral doctrines, relating to kindred and friends, were more pure and perfect than those of the most correct of the philosophers, and greatly more so than those of the Jews; and they went far beyond both in inculcating universal philanthropy, not only to kindred and friends, to neighbors and countrymen, but to all mankind, gathering all into one family, under the bonds of love, charity, peace, common wants and common aids. A development of this head will evince the peculiar superiority of the system of Jesus over all others.
3. The precepts of philosophy, and of the Hebrew code, laid hold of actions only. He pushed his scrutinies into the heart of man; erected his tribunal in the region of his thoughts, and purified the waters at the fountain head.
4. He taught, emphatically, the doctrines of a future state, which was either doubted, or disbelieved by the Jews; and wielded it with efficacy, as an important incentive, supplementary to the other motives to moral conduct.
Jefferson didn’t stop there.
In consequence of some conversation with Dr. Rush, in the year 1798-99, I had promised some day to write him a letter giving him my view of the Christian system. I have reflected often on it since, and even sketched the outlines in my own mind.
I should first take a general view of the moral doctrines of the most remarkable of the ancient philosophers, of whose ethics we have sufficient information to make an estimate, say of Pythagoras, Epicurus, Epictetus, Socrates, Cicero, Seneca, Antoninus. I should do justice to the branches of morality they have treated well; but point out the importance of those in which they are deficient.
I should then take a view of the deism and ethics of the Jews, and show in what a degraded state they were, and the necessity they presented of a reformation.
I should proceed to a view of the life, character, and doctrines of Jesus, who sensible of incorrectness of their ideas of the Deity, and of morality, endeavored to bring them to the principles of a pure deism, and more just notions of the attributes of God, to reform their moral doctrines to the standard of reason, justice and philanthropy, and to inculcate the belief of a future state.
This view would purposely omit the question of his divinity, and even his inspiration. To do him justice, it would be necessary to remark the disadvantages his doctrines have had to encounter, not having been committed to writing by himself, but by the most unlettered of men, by memory, long after they had heard them from him; when much was forgotten, much misunderstood, and presented in very paradoxical shapes.
Yet such are the fragments remaining as to show a master workman, and that his system of morality was the most benevolent and sublime probably that has been ever taught, and consequently more perfect than those of any of the ancient philosophers.
His character and doctrines have received still greater injury from those who pretend to be his special disciples, and who have disfigured and sophisticated his actions and precepts, from views of personal interest, so as to induce the unthinking part of mankind to throw off the whole system in disgust, and to pass sentence as an impostor on the most innocent, the most benevolent, the most eloquent and sublime character that ever has been exhibited to man.
Yes, I know I’m repeating this. Please repeat it to yourself one more time, and think about what it means, and what it doesn’t.
Source: http://www.sullivan-county.com/deism/ffnc.htm
1. He corrected the Deism of the Jews, confirming them in their belief of one only God, and giving them juster notions of his attributes and government.
2. His moral doctrines, relating to kindred and friends, were more pure and perfect than those of the most correct of the philosophers, and greatly more so than those of the Jews; and they went far beyond both in inculcating universal philanthropy, not only to kindred and friends, to neighbors and countrymen, but to all mankind, gathering all into one family, under the bonds of love, charity, peace, common wants and common aids. A development of this head will evince the peculiar superiority of the system of Jesus over all others.
3. The precepts of philosophy, and of the Hebrew code, laid hold of actions only. He pushed his scrutinies into the heart of man; erected his tribunal in the region of his thoughts, and purified the waters at the fountain head.
4. He taught, emphatically, the doctrines of a future state, which was either doubted, or disbelieved by the Jews; and wielded it with efficacy, as an important incentive, supplementary to the other motives to moral conduct.
Jefferson didn’t stop there.
In consequence of some conversation with Dr. Rush, in the year 1798-99, I had promised some day to write him a letter giving him my view of the Christian system. I have reflected often on it since, and even sketched the outlines in my own mind.
I should first take a general view of the moral doctrines of the most remarkable of the ancient philosophers, of whose ethics we have sufficient information to make an estimate, say of Pythagoras, Epicurus, Epictetus, Socrates, Cicero, Seneca, Antoninus. I should do justice to the branches of morality they have treated well; but point out the importance of those in which they are deficient.
I should then take a view of the deism and ethics of the Jews, and show in what a degraded state they were, and the necessity they presented of a reformation.
I should proceed to a view of the life, character, and doctrines of Jesus, who sensible of incorrectness of their ideas of the Deity, and of morality, endeavored to bring them to the principles of a pure deism, and more just notions of the attributes of God, to reform their moral doctrines to the standard of reason, justice and philanthropy, and to inculcate the belief of a future state.
This view would purposely omit the question of his divinity, and even his inspiration. To do him justice, it would be necessary to remark the disadvantages his doctrines have had to encounter, not having been committed to writing by himself, but by the most unlettered of men, by memory, long after they had heard them from him; when much was forgotten, much misunderstood, and presented in very paradoxical shapes.
Yet such are the fragments remaining as to show a master workman, and that his system of morality was the most benevolent and sublime probably that has been ever taught, and consequently more perfect than those of any of the ancient philosophers.
His character and doctrines have received still greater injury from those who pretend to be his special disciples, and who have disfigured and sophisticated his actions and precepts, from views of personal interest, so as to induce the unthinking part of mankind to throw off the whole system in disgust, and to pass sentence as an impostor on the most innocent, the most benevolent, the most eloquent and sublime character that ever has been exhibited to man.
Yes, I know I’m repeating this. Please repeat it to yourself one more time, and think about what it means, and what it doesn’t.
Source: http://www.sullivan-county.com/deism/ffnc.htm
John Kaminski is a writer who lives on the Gulf Coast of Florida, urging people to understand that no problem in the world can be authentically addressed without first analyzing tangents caused by Jewish perfidy, which has subverted and diminished every aspect of human endeavor throughout history. Support for his work is wholly derived from people who can understand what he’s saying and know what it means.
I think eventually many of us just run out of heroes and decide if you need one, make it yourself.
ReplyDeleteSo long Steve, I am going to miss you.