Jeffersons Views Perverted: Traditions Have Become More Important Than Liberty

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Mandeville, LA – Exclusive Audio and Transcript – I think the idea that everything has to be equal is at the root of all this.  This is where Jefferson is perverted with this whole “all men are created equal” stuff.  They’re not all created equal.  Jefferson rued the day that he wrote that because he didn’t qualify it as the great George Mason of Virginia did. What is really provocative, and most people don’t think of it in these terms, is that it is the words liberty, the phrase “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” the phrase “all men are created equal,” the phrase, “by the people, for the people, of the people.”  It is all these romantic phrases that are supposedly expressions of our commitment to the verbs in those expressions that actually has allowed these perversions to take place. Check out today’s transcript and audio for more…

Begin Mike Church Show Transcript

AG:  I guess you get that same kind of battle where you’re asking for government involvement in some things but at the same time arguing we need a limited government at the same time.

Mike:  Obviously there are contradictions.  You’re obviously not talking about me because I am opposed to both of the instances there.  I find myself, as I’m reading more about Jefferson, that Jefferson was actually proposing a public school.  I have to draw the line here.  What Jefferson was proposing — libs will go, [mocking] “Thomas Jefferson was a proponent of public schools.”  Yeah, but you didn’t read the fine print.  He was not a proponent of compulsory public education that every living, breathing soul over the age of six and under the age of 24 had to go to.  He simply thought it was a general good that the state could fund an institution of higher learning.  He raised the money to put his money where his mouth is.  He helped found the University of Virginia.  Jefferson, yes, thought there was a role.

I think, though, Andrew, what you’re really talking about here is the difference between the advocacy or habit, and I think it’s a bad habit, a morally bad habit and a financially bad habit, the habit of turning to others to solve problems using other people’s money.  The best solutions to problems are almost always the result of someone spending their own time and their own funds to address the issue.  Whether it’s government or any other entity that you would turn to, that is the basic Wilkowian principle, if I can quote Wilkow for a moment here, that should help guide you.  The last resort would be you tried everything, including spending your own money or your money put together with other people to address an issue and it just hasn’t worked, you’re going to have to get the government involved because there’s too much corruption, or whatever the case may be.  I can’t think of an example right now.  I just think it is the general principle and tendency to look at another entity and say, “It’s government; they can fix it.”  No, they can’t, they suck, they stink.  They have no track record of fixing anything unless there’s a war and a country that needs to be bombed.

AG:  So did you find anything in the Chronicles article that led you to believe they thought a government policy would further society’s betterment?

Mike:  No.

AG:  Nothing there?  So it was simply small communities doing it on their own?

Mike:  I think it was the banishment of the all-male teaching experience that he was decrying, and you’re partially a product of it.  This has been done by the government courts.  There have been lawsuits filed.  Let me give you some famous examples.  When I first was cutting my teeth in the talk radio business back in ’92, ’93, ’94, one of the big things that I would talk about whenever there would be news on it was this young woman named Shannon Faulkner and her assault on the Citadel in South Carolina, the military academy.  She was demanding she wanted to be a knobber.  She was demanding that they had to admit her into the Citadel.  The Citadel kept saying, [mocking] “Screw you.  No, we’re an all-male academy.  Go somewhere else.”  Finally, a court ordered the integration there.  That’s just an example.

Then what followed after that?  The great Virginia Military Institute, VMI, was invaded forcefully.  It was desegregated, if you will, by the government.  It’s government using its power and its courts to undermine what it was that community was doing.  You might even say it undermined what public community was doing.  There were public all-boy schools and there were public all-girl schools, too, and they were preferable, but we can’t have them anymore.

AG:  Me being 28 years old, I’ve grown up in this society that’s like this, so it’s a different perspective.  I know you’ve talked about in the past kind of how women are now at the frontlines serving in the military and whether that’s a positive or negative.  I guess in my mind, I look at it, if you have a public institution or something that it funded by the public, by our taxpayer dollars, I would think a bar is set in terms of, if we go specifically military service here, if a person male or female can achieve these set standards, this baseline bar, then they’re qualified.  I guess I don’t necessarily look at you need x-amount of women there or x-percentage of women serving as fair.  At the same time, if you have a standard, if a woman reaches that standard, I don’t necessarily see the negative in allowing her, in this example, to serve on the frontlines.  I don’t see making any exceptions because it’s a woman trying out for a specific position.  If a standard is reached in a publicly-funded job or whatever, I guess I see a problem saying it’s not good for women to be there.

Mike:  You would defer this and you would defer the discussion of it to was there a tradition and was the tradition beneficial to society at large?  Was the tradition all-male or all-female and was it beneficial?  You can have a tradition that is beneficial to society and argue it’s not beneficial to fat people.  Too bad.  I’m sure there were institutions that aren’t beneficial to fat people and skinny people.  I think the idea that everything has to be equal is also at the root of all this.  This is where Jefferson is perverted with this whole “all men are created equal” stuff.  They’re not all created equal.  Jefferson rued the day that he wrote that because he didn’t qualify it as the great George Mason of Virginia did.

What is really provocative, and most people don’t think of it in these terms, is that it is the words liberty, the phrase “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” the phrase “all men are created equal,” the phrase, “by the people, for the people, of the people.”  It is all these romantic phrases that are supposedly expressions of our commitment to the verbs in those expressions that actually has allowed these perversions to take place.  No one that proposed to desegregate schools, for example, proposed it under anything other than it was a utopia.  It was going to be a paradise on Earth.  No one proposed desegregating by gender for any other reason other than it would generate societal calm and benefits that would be undeniable, and everyone would be as happy with it as they possibly could be.  There would be nothing but sunshine, rainbows and gumdrops for everyone.

All these things we are currently possessed of have all been proposed under the greatest of intentions and using the exact language that some of us say we need to use to end those things.  We want to reclaim our liberties.  Those romantic phrases only animated the idea and then the raw, naked power of government was used to execute the dream, thus it becomes someone else’s nightmare.  Folks, these facts are inescapable.  As bars have been broken down and obstacles to these things have been broken down and chipped away at, it compounds itself.  Now all these issues of liberty and what have you, [mocking] “We have the freedom to do this.  I have my rights to do this.”  We are possessed of the idea of rights but seldom possessed of the responsibility that should be requisite in exercising them.  You may have the right to free speech;  you do not have the right to use my property to speak it on, just as an example.

End Mike Church Show Transcript

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