Thomas Jefferson’s Crusade against Ignorance

A Series of interviews with Thomas Jefferson and his crusade against ignorance

Mr. President, your time in France helped frame your commitment to educate the common people; can you explain your thoughts?

President Jefferson: “Our act for freedom of religion is extremely applauded. The ambassadors & ministers of the several of Europe resident at this court have asked of me copies to send to their sovereigns, and it is inserted at full length in several books now in the press; among others, in the new Encyopedie. I think it will produce consider-able good even in these countries where ignorance, superstition, poverty, & oppression of body & mind in every form, are so firmly settled on the mass of the people, that their redemption from can never be hoped.”

“If the Almighty had begotten a thousand sons, instead of one, they would not have sufficed for this task. If all the sovereigns of Europe were to set themselves to work to emancipate the minds of their subjects from present ignorance & prejudices, & that as zealously as now endeavor the contrary, a thousand years would not them on that high ground on which our common people now setting out.”

“Ours could not have been so fairly into the hands of their own common sense had they not separated from their parent stock & kept from contamination, either from them, or the other people of the old world by the intervention of so wide an ocean”

“To know the worth of this, one must see the want of it here. I think by far the most important bill in our whole code is that for the diffusion of knowledge among the people. No other sure foundation can be devised, for the preservation of freedom and happiness. If anybody thinks that kings, nobles, or priests are conservators of the public happiness send them here. It best school in the universe to cure them of that folly.”

“They will see here with their own cues that these descriptions en are an abandoned confederacy against the happiness of the mass of the people. The omnipotence of their effect cannot be better proved than in this country particularly, where notwithstanding the finest soil upon earth, the finest to under heaven, and a people of the most benevolent, the most gay and amiable character of which the human form is susceptible, where such a people I say, surrounded by so many blessings from nature, are yet loaded with misery by kings, nobles and priests, and by them alone”

“Preach, my dear Sir, a crusade against ignorance; establish & improve the law for educating the common people. Let our countrymen know that the people alone can protect us against these evils, and that the tax which will be paid for this purpose is not more than the  thousandth part of what will be paid to kings, priests ales who will rise up among us if we leave the people in ignorance”

"When government ceases to regulate and begins to manage, ceases to be an impartial umpire in the economic game and becomes a player, it attempts to use the vast financial power of blank check government, uses the prestige of the executive office to purge truth from the undesired representatives of the people, and uses an excess of law is despotism”   Sir Francis Bacon

Mr. Martin Chekel, a noted international businessman and author of the thought provoking “Managing America” six book series and the retrospective eight book series “The Diary of American Foreign Policy 1938 – 1945” that laid the foundation for US foreign policy the past seventy-four years.