The Founders' Message of Hope for Concerned Americans Today

It was in this very month, 184 years ago, that the aged Thomas Jefferson took pen in hand and composed a message for all future Americans. Just eight months before he died, he had become alarmed at the obtrusiveness of the federal government upon the rights of the states and the people. He drafted a document to be adopted by the Virginia General Assembly entitled Declarations and Protest of the Commonwealth of Virginia, on the Principles of the Constitution of the United States of America, and on the Violations of them.

This great Founder had already noticed a beginning departure from the balanced, limited government of the Constitution, and so he wrote, "...the federal branch has assumed in some cases, and claimed in others, a right of enlarging its own powers by constructions, inferences, and indefinite deductions from those directly given, which this assembly does declare to be usurpations of the powers retained to the independent branches (states), mere interpolations into the compact, and direct infractions of it.”

As though writing to all Americans in the present and future generations, Jefferson then explained why we should be willing to make any sacrifice necessary to correct this imbalance in order to make this great freedom experiment work. Said he:

"We owe every other sacrifice to ourselves, to our federal brethren, and to the world at large, to pursue with temper and perseverance the great experiment which shall prove that man is capable of living in society, governing itself by laws self-imposed, and securing to its members the enjoyment of life, liberty, property, and peace...."

Then, as though peering down the corridor of America's history to 2009, Thomas Jefferson gives his best advice to those of us who wonder what we should be doing in our present crisis. What he said really encompasses the mission of the National Center for Constitutional Studies (NCCS) and should be the objective of every individual citizen who loves liberty. Said he:

"...and further to show, that even when the government of its choice shall manifest a tendency to degeneracy, we are not at once to despair but that the will and the watchfulness of its sounder parts will reform its aberrations, recall it to original and legitimate principles, and restrain it within the rightful limits of self-government."