McClaughry: Biden and Jefferson

By John McClaughry

President Joe Biden did a pretty good job on his inaugural address. His theme was unity, and his speechwriters decorated it with lots of good words like hope, truth, honor, respect, tolerance, goodness, faith, and of course democracy. He also listed half a dozen of the great causes he intends to address, which left me a bit apprehensive.

But the spirit of his address was similar to that of President Jefferson, inaugurated in 1801 after an equally savage and bitter campaign. Said Jefferson, famously, “Let us unite with one heart and one mind. Let us restore to social intercourse that harmony and affection without which liberty and even life itself are but dreary things … we are all republicans – we are all federalists.”

Then after that appeal to unity, President Jefferson went on to offer this excellent prescription for a free republic: “What more is necessary to make us a happy and a prosperous people? A wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned.  This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicities.”

I wish I could have heard something like that from President Biden, but today’s Democrats have long ago left that thought in the dustbin of history.

John McClaughry is vice president of the Ethan Allen Institute. Reprinted with permission from the Ethan Allen Institute Blog.

Image courtesy of Public domain

11 thoughts on “McClaughry: Biden and Jefferson

  1. Biden is corporate yes man who will bow to the media demands and allow the strong arm of a centralized federal government to further erode our individual rights. Rights that Jefferson so strongly defended as president. Of course the current ‘cancel culture’ dismisses Jefferson as some evil slave owner which cancel out any of this remarkable American’s genius. It’s a shame. And we further urbanize, the flare of our nation faded with the insipid boredom of the nanny state and a censored education. Our independence and individualism eroded. Jefferson was a great man with vision, Biden will obey whatever the liberal lobby tells him. I’m also noticing gas prices starting to increase since his inauguration.

  2. Thank you John. I would also add that President Jefferson also allowed the Sedition Act to lapse and led the charge to see that Vermont Congressman Matthew Lyon was Pardoned and released from his sentence under the same. His crime? Among other “lapses” and “crimes against the state”, he allowed a letter to circulate that called then President Adams “His Rotundity”…

    Similarity to FascistBook and Twitter censorship under the “Sedition” Logarithms operating to censor speech with direct effects on the election by denying voters informed choice!??

    To channel spirits of the ACLU, the remedy for offensive speech is not censorship but more stupid offensive and arrogant speech. Shall I be jailed for calling Biden “King of dementia”? Change the channel if I offend you.

    Lyon was re-elected to Congress from a cage (Federal) in Vergennes despite his temerity. Will someone who is today charged for “crimes” committed January 6th be elected to Congress in two years. That would show the Republic Lives!!!

  3. Biden couldn’t write a paragraph, to say nothing of a speech.

    The invisible people who “handle his handlers” – got just what they wanted

    Warm Moist Air?

    • Biden, a man with a pen

      Biden is just an uninspiring functionary, sitting at his desk with mask, trying to look serious/presidential.

      Every day, the invisible Biden handlers are telling Biden to “get out his pen” to sign executive orders to:

      1) Open the borders to let in the illiterate, unskilled illegals to get more Dem/Prog votes
      2) Halt the Keystone XL pipeline
      3) Join Paris
      4) Stop drilling for oil and gas on federal lands in Utah and many other states; Biden creating shortages to benefit wind and solar.
      Look outside, no wind and no sun to-day.
      5) Whatever else they can dream up to “undo/erase Trump”.

      In the evening, Biden may tell his admiring wife, over a sumptuous dinner, he is very tired, because he has been:

      1) Very busy changing the US and the world
      2) Fighting climate change, 24/7, already for ONE WHOLE WEEK

      The whole charade is off-the-charts ridiculous.

      Do the invisible Biden handlers really believe the WORLD will use less oil, because of halting Keystone XL?

      FOUR YEARS OF THIS FARCE?

  4. I am surprised that anything Biden has done surprises anyone. Any trace of rationality, wisdom, patriotism or adherence to the Constitution would be cause for wonder. His concern for controlling the corona virus is expressed by opening the borders to a hundred thousand indigent citizens of foreign countries? Arizona, California are already peak states. For jobs and the economy by shutting down Keystone? Unemployment – minimum wage that prices the least skilled out of jobs? And the incoming unskilled to top that off?

  5. Now what is all this talk we’re hearing of “President Joe Biden did a pretty good job on his inaugural address.”? Brit Hume said it, Karl Rove said it, Chris Wallace said it and now John McClaughry, all good people hoping beyond hope that President Biden will keep his promise of Unity.

    So what did the American people get? Our new President reading from a teleprompter and yelling his words of Unity into an essentially empty space, other than the 25,000 National Guard troops present who later had to sleep on the concrete floor of a parking garage………And then within 24 hours Biden broke his promise of Unity and broke his promise of Unity again in the next 24 hours and again, again and again……Preforming so poorly that even the New York Times Editorial Board admonished him to slow down on the Executive Orders.

    As usual, Biden reads the talk, but can’t walk the walk……..This could be a long and bumpy journey as we follow Biden who has already missed his first stop at the “Unity Station.”

    • I didn’t say I believed any of it. His speechwriters were told to stress all those good things, and I confess the speech result was a lot better than Trump’s in 2017

      • John…….That’s the problem…….Politicians and their aides stressing all sorts of things with no intension of doing what they say just to get elected……….As Biden has just demonstrated.

        Politicians have been feeding the American people hogwash for as long as I can remember, but it’s difficult to recall any time worse than what we’ve been experiencing in the recent past.

      • John

        Trump ACHIEVED much better for US and the American people, than Biden’s handlers ever will.

        That is a THE difference

    • Peter,

      Biden has a history of:

      1) Performing near the bottom of his class, in college and in law school,
      2) Repeated plagiarism,
      3) Shady financial dealings with China and Ukraine,
      4) Touchy-feeling women and children in public, on video,
      5) Assaulting women co-workers,
      6) Impeachable malfeasance, while in office.

      All of it can be easily obtained by some googling.
      https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/hiding-the-hunter-biden-evidence-to-protect-joe-biden

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