From: gts (gts_2000@yahoo.com)
Date: Wed Jan 15 2003 - 09:48:42 MST
Lee Corbin wrote:
> Want to analyze? Or is this being hubristic? Here is what
> [TJ] wrote again:
>
> "This is what is called personal liberty, and is given him by
> the Author of nature, because necessary for his own sustenance."
>
> 1. "because necessary for his own sustenance". Now Jefferson
> knew well the Romans and the Greeks, and saw himself what
> was working and not working in Europe and the colonies.
> But what did he know of three thousand years of Egyptian
> history, or almost that much of Chinese history? He would
> have refrained from using such a phrase had he known!
Your comment makes no sense to me whatsoever. Our personal liberty,
i.e., our right to move our bodies as we please so far as we do not
infringe on the equal rights of others, *is* "necessary for our own
sustenance." Without that liberty one could not so much as chew and
swallow one's food, to say nothing of such things as working (as a slave
or as a freeperson), and this was as true in ancient Egypt and China as
it was in 18th century America.
> 2. The "Author" of nature? Are you indeed a Believer? Few
> indeed have survived the hammer blows of Marx, Darwin, and
> Freud. Now materialism reigns supreme, and even theists
> avoid such language today.
The "Author of nature" might just as well be a mathematical formula so
far as TJ and other deists were concerned. He was merely pointing out
that his observation should be seen as an objective truth of nature,
which it is.
> "Under the law of nature, all men are born free, every one
> comes into the world with a right to his own person, which
> includes the liberty of moving and using it at his own will."
>
> It is patently false that humans are born free or with a
> right to his or her own person.
See my previous post in which I reply to this.
-gts
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