Glenn Beck Interviews David Barton on Founders' Faith 4-9-10

 Friday, April 09, 2010

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,590642,00.html


This is a rush transcript from "Glenn Beck," April 8, 2010.
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GLENN BECK, HOST: Tonight, we're going to spend an hour talking about faith, because this has been so grossly distorted by progressives. Most people will tell you now: Oh, we're not a Christian nation. We're a Judeo-Christian. What? These people were deists, they were atheists.
Really?
America, if you want to restore our country, we have to look at the foundations, find out how we were built, and repeat the process. We also need to find the things that unite us. I don't care if you're a Republican, Democrat or independent: Faith, hope and charity — we can unite on. Politics will divide us. And I think it was Abraham Lincoln that said, "United we stand, divided we fall."

We are on the verge of collapse. Let's rebuild it.
David Barton, founder and president of WallBuilders, author of "Original Intent: The Courts, the Constitution and Religion."
David, man, I have to tell you, I read this, how many years ago did the "Original Intent" come out?

DAVID BARTON, PRESIDENT, WALLBUILDERS: Oh, gracious. It's been a few years.

BECK: Yes, it's been 10 at least.

BARTON: Probably. Probably.

BECK: I read that years ago and it is an honor to know you. It is.

BARTON: Thanks, brother.

BECK: And you are part of our "American Revival," which we're going to be out in Phoenix this weekend doing. You do the first part on faith. And we were out last week in Orlando. And I said to you, we have got to do this on television.

BARTON: Yes.

BECK: Because most people — we had 8,000 people in the venue last or two weeks ago in Orlando.

BARTON: Packed house.

BECK: Packed house. And you could hear people going: Oh, my gosh, I didn't know that.

BARTON: Yes.

BECK: So, why don't you take me through these two paintings?

BARTON: OK.

BECK: This is American history. Here you go, gang. This is the stuff you're never ever going to be taught in school.
This is the Constitution. This is the Declaration of Independence. Which do you want to start with?

BARTON: Let's start with the signers of the "dec." That is a fun one.

BECK: OK. So, this — the premise here is — remember, America, no, there is, nobody, they're not God-fearing people. We're not a country based in God or faith. No, no, no. No.
Where do we start here?

BARTON: Let's start with the overall group. Let's just — let me start with this book right here. This came out of Continental Congress. This is the rarest, one of the rarest books in America. That little jewel right there is the first Bible printed in English in America.

BECK: Up here, one of the first Bibles printed in English.

BARTON: English in America. And it was printed by those guys there. The Congress printed that Bible. And the original congressional documents say that the Bible is, quote, "a neat addition of the Holy Scripture for use of our schools," end quote.

BECK: I'm sorry. What?

BARTON: "A neat addition of the Holy Scripture for use of our schools," end quote. And in the front of that Bible has a congressional endorsement.

(CROSSTALK)

BECK: But everyone will tell you separation of church and state.

BARTON: And that's what they wanted. They're the guys who came up with that. So, I think they know what the definition is.

BECK: OK. How many of these are left?

BARTON: There's 22 left in private hands. They printed 10,000 in Congress. And there's 22 left. And that's one of the 22 right there.

BECK: OK. So, let me start now. There's Congress. Let me just get a big red marker here so people can see it. Here is the — here is the Continental Congress and they are getting ready to sign the Declaration of Independence.

BARTON: That's Richard Henry Lee. He's the guy who made the recommendation we separate from Congress. It was really cool. When he died and his papers were passed on to his grandson, his grandson printed the papers in two volumes and they looked at the papers and said, isn't it cool that we had so many Christians together. And so, he's looking at the Founders' writings and that was the epitome of what Christian patriot looked like, Richard Henry Lee.

BECK: Let me — let me ask you this, because when the left always paints Christians as hate-mongers.

BARTON: Yes.

BECK: These guys, George Washington — George Washington, I mean, he went, they were vigorous defenders of other faith —

BARTON: Yes, you bet.

BECK: — of Jewish religion of any other religion, right?

BARTON: They were. One of the things you find is that that was a trait that they taught of Christianity. Christianity is not coercive. They said don't compare us to European Christianity. That was coercive. We're not. We believe that truth wins, you present the truth. That's fine.
And so, you'll find that in the American Revolution, we had Jewish patriots, we had Christian patriots. We had Muslims here in 1619. We had the first Jewish synagogues 1654. These guys had no trouble with other religions but they didn't deny their own.

BECK: Ben Franklin, he was asked — I think it was by Yale, you know this better than me.

BARTON: Yes.

BECK: Asked by Yale, what is the definition of American — the American religion? And he said, there is a God.

BARTON: That's right.

BECK: There is an afterlife. We'll have to answer for our sins in the afterlife.

BARTON: That's right.

BECK: And the best way to serve God is serve other people.

BARTON: That's right.

BECK: That doesn't sound like — I mean, that's not hate-mongers.

BARTON: Not radical stuff at all. And that's why they were so good. They set forth a model of real cooperation. And they're really good on that.

BECK: You know, let's go to number two here. Who's this?

BARTON: That's Sam Adams. Sam Adams, the father of the American Revolution. He was really known as an outspoken Christian guy. This is one of his proclamations. As the governor of Massachusetts, he did seven of these. Seven times he called the state to prayer and it is not the squishy language that he used in that.

BECK: This is — oh, he was amazing.

BARTON: He was outspoken.

BECK: If you see here of the faith, hope charity posters that we have made — can you get a shot of that?
Faith and hope and charity, that is Samuel Adams, the first face is Samuel Adams. Because you read him —

BARTON: Oh, yes.

BECK: Oh, my gosh.

BARTON: Oh, yes.

BECK: And when you're talking about separation of church and state, after the signing of the Declaration of the Independence and the Constitution, did not Massachusetts have a state religion?

BARTON: Oh, nine of 13 had state religions. It was the federal government who wasn't allowed to make a national religion for all denominations like they had in England.

BECK: So, this is kind of the thing — and the reason I bring this up is because this is like — we were talking on the radio today about health care. I don't have a problem with Massachusetts wanting to do health care. You can bankrupt your state all you want, but don't force it on me.

BARTON: That's right. That's right.

BECK: And that was the idea.

BARTON: That was in religion. That's why the First Amendment limited only the federal government. It didn't limit the states at all.

BECK: Right. You could do whatever you want.

BARTON: It's up to the people. Let people make choices.

BECK: OK.

BARTON: Real simple.

BECK: OK.

BARTON: Sam Adams.

BECK: So, there's proclamation of day of prayer.

BARTON: Yes. Day of — and by the way, he would often call the state to day of fasting, humiliation and prayer. So, he was serious about praying.

BECK: Don't ever ask to be humbled or humiliation from God because he'll give that to you.

BARTON: He'll give it to you.

BECK: Yes.

BARTON: Charles Carroll right there. Let me pull a letter from Charles. I've got Charles right here. This is a letter from Charles Carroll, he is the final surviving signer of the Declaration. Out of the 56, he's the last one to die. He died at the age of 95.
And this is a letter that he wrote at 89, a declaration of his faith in God, very outspoken. This guy actually took and endowed, he's the wealthiest man in America. He took his money and he endowed permanently a chapel and a preacher because he said in rural part of Maryland, we don't have churches and there's not enough people to pay for one. So, he took his wealth to endow chapel and a preacher permanently.

BECK: The reason why we're bringing this up, America, is because you have to know — you have to have the correct history here. The idea that these people were not men of faith is absolutely abhorrent. It is such a distortion of history.
Do you have the book, the book where, the modern day book of —

BARTON: Yes.

BECK: — oh, they were all godless heathens.

BARTON: Yes, this one right here.

BECK: Yes. This is it.

BARTON: A couple of Cornell professors.

BECK: Yes. Tell us what's in this book.

BARTON: What's in that book is called "The Godless Constitution" that's used in universities across the nation, in schools everywhere. And this is a textbook and it goes and says, hey, we're a secular nation. That's what made us great for 200 years, et cetera.

BECK: Now, this is scholarly book? Wait. Wait.

BARTON: Well, allegedly.

(CROSSTALK)

BARTON: It's academics, it's Ph.D.s who did it. It's a university textbook.

BECK: Right. Now, if you'll notice, if you've ever read anything scholarly — can we pick it up on three on Oscar's camera?
OK. If you've ever read anything scholarly, like read "Progressivism, the History of Modern Liberalism," it's a nightmare and it's full of footnotes. There are no footnotes.

BARTON: They say at the end, their quote is, we have dispensed what the usual scholarly apparatus of footnotes. Trust us, we're Ph.D.s, we know what we're talking about. None of the guys believed in God.

BECK: You have the largest collection in private hands of American papers and documents —

BARTON: Right.

BECK: — prior to 1800?

BARTON: Prior to 1812.

BECK: Prior to 1812. OK.
Let's continue to go here to number four.

BARTON: Benjamin Rush — he's considered one of the three most significant Founders. John Adams said when he died that you had George Washington, Ben Franklin and Benjamin Rush. We never heard of the guy today.
Benjamin Rush — let me pull his stuff right here. Benjamin Rush is the man who founded the first Bible society in America. He did the first mass-produced Bible in America. He founded the Sunday School Movement in America.
(VIDEO GAP)

BARTON: — John Adams.

BECK: When did this go awry?

BARTON: It went awry right after World War II. Right after World War II, we stopped teaching this in our textbooks. And today, we've been taught this knot-head stuff from these professors and this is what we think truth is. But here's truth.

BECK: Number five —

BARTON: Stephen Hopkins. You can tell by the hat the guy is religious. He is a Quaker. He's a devout orthodox Quaker.
He's a really cool guy, outspoken of his faith. He wrote several religious treaties back in 1765 to show why we were about to separate from Great Britain using scriptures to make his point.

BECK: Number six. This guy.

BARTON: Right there, he's a — he's a fun guy. That's Robert Treat Paine. He's attorney general of Massachusetts but he is a military chaplain. He's an ordained minister. He had churches and taught in churches and the way he served in the military was, he was a chaplain for the troops.

BECK: How did we get to this point? I mean, look at this section. Just look at this section. Look at this section. Look how many are deeply, deeply religious.

BARTON: Yes.

BECK: How did we get to the point where, I don't know, these are —

BARTON: Well, what happens today is we know Jefferson and Franklin, and nobody else on that. We've been taught to recognize the least religious and we've been taught, oh, all —

BECK: And they weren't the least religious.
BARTON: And they weren't. You know, if you take even Jefferson and Franklin, there's no question that those guys are a whole lot more religious in their public expressions.

(CROSSTALK)

BECK: They didn't — correct me if I'm wrong — they didn't necessarily believe in the organized religion that was jammed down your throat —

BARTON: That's right.

BECK: — where it was I got to baptize you in the name of Jesus and there's no other truths.

BARTON: That's right.

BECK: That's what they didn't believe.

BARTON: But they were not secular. They were not anti-God. They were not even anti-Christian. As a matter of fact, the way they do it, Jefferson has 19,000 written letters. There are six letters in which he raises some questions about orthodox Christian teachings. Everybody focuses on the six, they don't touch the 19,000. So, that's the way they make these guys look bad.

BECK: All right. So, now, we go to — I think, this guy. Who's this?

BARTON: That is James Wilson. James Wilson signed both the Declaration and the Constitution. He's one of the six guys that signed both.

BECK: This is a younger version of him.

BARTON: That's right. And you can spot him both times because he's the only one that wore glasses in the founding pictures. So, he's got glasses. He is an original Supreme Court justice.
This — he started the first law school in America. This is the first law book that was ever used in law schools and he did this.

BECK: Any relationship to Woodrow Wilson?

BARTON: No, not at all.
But this guy, he tells students and it's in that book, that you cannot have good civil law that excludes divine law. If you cut the scriptures out of civil law, you'll not have good civil law. And that's what he's teaching in the court.

BECK: Isn't it — isn't it Deuteronomy that is the most quoted —

BARTON: Yes.

BECK: — out of any of our founding documents, right?

BARTON: Yes.

BECK: It's not Locke. It's nothing. It's Deuteronomy.

BARTON: That's right. Deuteronomy.

The political science professors found that when they looked at all the writings the founders used and relied and quoted, and there were — there were 15,000 writings they used. They found 3,154 quotes, the most quoted source was the Bible — 34 percent of their quotes came out of the Bible. Most quoted book in the Bible is the Book of Deuteronomy.

BECK: Which is basically the Mosaic Law.

BARTON: That's right. That's right. Exactly right.

BECK: So, when we say we're Judeo-Christian, it doesn't mean you have to go to this church or anything else.

BARTON: That's right. These principles.

BECK: This is the law.

BARTON: That's right.

BECK: This is the — you know, and this is the thing that we bring up in the — you know, on the "American Revival" that we're doing when we're talking about the faith is the 10 Commandments.

BARTON: Yes.

BECK: America, who disagrees with the 10 Commandments? Thou shall not kill?
Now, here's one Jim Wallis: Thou shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.

BARTON: Yes.

BECK: I mean, don't covet, don't have false idols. The problem with America is we have false idols. We worship the almighty dollar or our house or our car or whatever the neighbor has. I mean, that's the problem.

BARTON: What's interesting is it's easier up until the last 20 years when the court got involved in this, it was easier to find the 10 Commandments in government building than the church building. And that's because we use the 10 Commandments as basis of civil law and the Western world, has been for 2,000 years. These guys definitely did it.

BECK: OK. This guy.

BARTON: That guy right there is Francis Hopkinson. And he's the guy who designed the American flag. He's one of our very first federal judges.
I got a really cool book of his right here. He did this book in 1767. It's America's first purely American hymn book. He took the entire book of Psalms and set the book to music. So, this is America's first hymn book done by a signer of the Declaration. The entire of Book of Psalms set to music.
And if you know the Bible, you know, Psalms 1:19 is really long. It is 62 pages long in this hymn book. One hymn, 62 pages.

BECK: This guy — these guys — just looking at this now, these guys would be deemed un-American.

BARTON: Oh, yes. They're part of the radical religious extreme right, whatever the stuff is out there they call them. Yes, absolutely.

BECK: All right. Now, this is John Adams here, isn't it?

BARTON: John Adams is a lot of fun. You know, HBO did a —

BECK: Oh he looks like it.

BARTON: Yes, right. HBO did a special on him and managed to leave out his faith. I've got a really cool letter from John —

BECK: Relationship to Sam?

BARTON: A cousin — distant cousin.

BECK: OK.

BARTON: A distant cousin. This is the letter from John Adams. This is the letter he wrote to Benjamin Rush, who was a good friend. And this stuff right here —

BECK: Wait, wait, wait. You have to tell this story from the beginning.

BARTON: Yes.

BECK: I know we're rushing through stuff, but you have to tell this story from the beginning. John Adams, Thomas Jefferson —

BARTON: Benjamin Rush.

BECK: Right. Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, they're friends at first.

BARTON: They were great friends.

BECK: Great friends. And then they have so many disagreements that they start — they have a falling out. They can't even speak to each other. He only becomes president because he says, this guy is destroying, correct?

BARTON: Yes. Exactly.

BECK: OK. So, there's a falling out. Wait until you hear the rest of the story and then what's in that letter. We'll do that — next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BECK: America, you are never going to get — thank God, fall to your knees, I mean this and thank God every day for the people at Fox because they allow stuff like this on the air. And believe me, they will have heat for it.
It's an hour of faith and our founders. If you want to rebuild or restore America, you got to know the truth of America. What are our building blocks? Faith is the first one. Faith, hope and charity.
I want to show you what you're not learning in school. Call and a friend and tell them. I don't know if this show will ever be repeated.
We were talking about Thomas Jefferson and John Adams — we're with David Barton, by the way — and Benjamin Rush who is right here.
I told you before we went into break, [Jefferson] and [Adams], good friends. [Adams] becomes president. [Jefferson] doesn't want to be president, but [Jefferson] says [Adams] is destroying the republic. And so, [Jefferson] has to become the third president. And they have a big falling out.
Benjamin Rush, then, in the middle of the night has a dream, right?

BARTON: Right.

BECK: And he has a dream that he reads a book, he sees somebody carrying a book of letters between these two going back and forth. And it's history. And he says he writes to John and says, these letters haven't been written yet.

BARTON: Yes.

BECK: You guys are supposed to get back together.

BARTON: Yes.

BECK: Now we know that because that document has been out — that letter has been out for a long time.

BARTON: That's right.

BECK: But was — what wasn't part of history was a letter that you found.

BARTON: Right here.

BECK: This is the response from — he says, I had a dream. You two are supposed to get back together. You're going to write letters. And they will — and I have the collection.

BARTON: And, you know, what's cool is, he also said, by the way, in the history book, I saw that you both died on the same day, the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of the Independence, which they did, 17 years before this happened in the dream. That's when he saw and was written in the history book.

BECK: Unbelievable.
So, he says this, what history didn't know was what did he do about it, or what did he say. You have the letter sitting in front of you.

BARTON: Right there.

BECK: This is from John Adams to Benjamin Rush.

BARTON: And Benjamin Rush has told John, I had this dream, it's really strange. I think God gave me this dream, and I think you need to know about it. So, in the letter, John Adams goes through and he says, well, I'm willing, he says, but there's no conversation between me and Jefferson right now. But I'm willing.
 And then this thing was the dream from God. This is John Adams' quote right here. He's talking to Benjamin and says, "But my friend, Benjamin, there's something very serious in this business." He said, "The Holy Ghost carries on the whole Christian system and his troop. Not a baptism, not a marriage, not a sacrament can be administered but by the Holy Ghost." And he goes through this theological thing that I think God gave you the dream" I'm willing to do this. Let's get back together. That is the letter. They got these two guys reconciled. They did end up writing volumes of letters back and forth to each other from which we benefit today.

BECK: David, let me ask you this. In all the stuff that you've seen, because I think America is — I know, you know, I'm accused of a lot of things. I'm accused of just enriching myself. I'm accused — there's a lot of things.
You've known me for what, a month?

BARTON: Yes.

BECK: And you experienced some things with me. There's a lot I don't want to do and I don't want to say. Out of these guys, most of them were doing stuff they didn't want to do.

BARTON: Exactly right.

BECK: Right?

BARTON: Exactly right.

BECK: And they were prompted by God.

BARTON: That's right.

BECK: So, these are people who were — I mean, when we say we pledge our fortunes, our lives — our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor —

BARTON: That's right.

BECK: — with firm reliance on Divine Providence —

BARTON: Right.

BECK: — that's what they were doing.

BARTON: Seven of those guys never lived to see what they signed on the document. Seventeen of them lost everything they owned. Their fortunes, their states, everything — the British destroyed them. Four of them lost their wives. Four of them lost their kids. Five were prisoners of war.
You go through the list of what those guys went through — just to tell these stories of what they endured, it will make you cry. Because you just — you don't see patriotism like that.

BECK: And we don't tell these stories.

BARTON: We don't tell — we used to. Every school kid used to know this stuff.

BECK: I want to show America these things. Tell me what this book is first.

BARTON: That is called "Lives of the Signers of the Declaration" by historian Benson Lossing. That is a textbook for generations.

BECK: OK. This is a textbook and in the textbook, we needed to learn who all of these — I can't — I can't get my fingers around it. I don't want to be — I want to be very careful. This is very old. I don't want to open it up. But basically —

BARTON: It has that picture.

BECK: Right. Right on the front. In school, you had to learn all of the story.

BARTON: Every one of the 56.

BECK: OK. And in this book here, David, is what?

BARTON: It's called the "Wives of the Signers."

BECK: And this book was also a textbook?

BARTON: It was a textbook and it told you about what happened to the wives of these guys, because they made huge sacrifices. And their patriotism was huge.

BECK: So, it was the male and female version, OK?

BARTON: That's right.

BECK: And that's every school had that. You had to know those.

BARTON: Typical textbook, common textbook.

BECK: These are the reprints of this book. These are the exact reprints of the book. Anything changed in this?

BARTON: No. We just did exact reprints of what's there.

BECK: And available where?

BARTON: WallBuilders.com or Amazon or any other place.

BECK: If you want to know what our kids used to be learning, it's this.
More with David Barton on faith and the history of our country and God — next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BECK: Hello, America.
You know, my show is kind of focusing on faith, hope and charity. Those are the things that will unite us. Those are the things we can all come together. I don't care if you are Republican, Democrat or independent.
If you want to restore the country — because look, under George Bush, I was saying the same stuff, man. We're in trouble. If you want to restore the country, you have to know what it was, where we came from. How they put it together.
Tonight, an hour of faith.
David Barton is here. And David, you were actually on the Texas school book board. And thank you for all of your hard work because it's amazing. You know, you can hear these scholars, but you don't need to hear the scholars. You have the books.

BARTON: Yes.

BECK: You have the original writings. You have the largest collection of American documents and writings from 1812 and backwards.

BARTON: And backwards.

BECK: And backwards. We were I want to spend some time here, because where everybody takes this apart and they say, "Oh, they're deists." There's three of them: There's George Washington, there is Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson.

BARTON: Right.

BECK: OK. So help me out on this because these are the most — this is what everybody is saying: They're not religious at all.

BARTON: Yes. Let's start with Washington. Washington is a really simple one to start with. When he died, the chaplain of Congress did the first ever biography of him and had the first collection of Washington's writings.
So what he did is he wrote to Washington's family, particularly Nelly Custis, who lived with George for 20 years before she got married, the stepdaughter he adopted. And said, "You know, we just want to make sure. Was Washington really a Christian?"
And she went through this long letter describing what he did, his prayer habits, his scripture habits, how many churches he helped to start, what he did in churches. And she came up and she said, you know, you might as well question his patriotism as to question his Christianity. And that was her conclusion.
What happens in 1926, a guy named W. Wood, part of the progressives, wrote a new book on Washington that said, "Well, we don't think he had that much faith. He was really a deist."
And since then, everybody quotes that 1926 book —

BECK: All right. Hang on. Hang on. Hang on. Slow down a bit, because the progressive puts a book out that says here is new evidence, but —

BARTON: No, he didn't —

BECK: He didn't say new evidence. He just —

BARTON: It was this book right here. He had not a — he didn't have a single footnote in the book.

BECK: Right.

BARTON: He said, oh, no, Washington really wasn't religious. And he made all these claims.

BECK: Right. OK. So he says that, but then that book is discredited.

BARTON: That book is discredited the next year in 1927 with a scholarly book that came out and footnoted saying, hey, what you said last year, here is the exact opposite proof of what you said.
But nobody quoted the scholarly book. They kept quoting the progressive revisionist book, and that's where we are today. People think Washington was not religious.

BECK: And here is the thing — America, the progressives knew when they were with Woodrow Wilson — all of these guys, it was just a nasty mess. And they were trying to undo what those guys did. They were trying to undo the Constitution, to make progress past that.
I'm not saying that they were evil or anything else. That's what they wanted to do. But America wouldn't let them do it. Why? Because we used to talk about what these people did and we knew who they were.
And so the idea was we have to change history books. We have to discredit the Founders. This is, if I'm not mistaken, progressive period. That's when they were old, white, rich —

BARTON: Yes.

(CROSSTALK)

BECK: That's all they did.

BARTON: That's right. Right.

BECK: And they were all — they were all not Christian. They weren't good or anything else.

BARTON: That's right.

BECK: OK. So there, you have Washington. How about Jefferson?

BARTON: Jefferson is a lot of fun. Jefferson right here — this is one of his presidential documents. And in the document, he didn't like — well, I can't say he didn't like. He just went further than what the other Founders did.
The other Founders signed the presidential documents the way the Constitution closes in Article Seven, "in the year of our Lord" and they signed it. Jefferson signed his documents —

BECK: Here — hang on. You've got to bring this — got to bring this in. Oscar, I don't know if you can get this. This is absolutely fantastic. It's right here. Can you bring it in any farther than that? What does it say?

BARTON: "In the year of our Lord Christ." That's the way Jefferson signed his documents. Now, the other fun thing about Jefferson was when his presidency of the United States just started in December of 1800, he started church services in the U.S. Capitol.
The church he started in the Capitol became the largest church in America. Over 2,000 people a week went to church inside the Capitol. I have the sermons that were preached back then in the Capitol.
Jefferson thought he could help the worship service in the Capitol. So he had the Marine Corps band come play worship services in the Capitol. It was a cool place. The first woman ever to preach in the Capitol, 1806, Dorothy Ripley. The first black ever to preach, Henry Highland Garnet. Huge black history stuff that we don't even talk about anymore with these guys.
There is so much cool stuff in the church that Jefferson started at the Capitol. And he went over and started a church in the War Department and a church in the Treasury Department and a church at the Navy Yard.

BECK: Where everybody gets — and this is where they are going to attack this show — Where everybody gets screwed up is they're going to say, Oh, there they go on the religious zealotry.

BARTON: Yes.

BECK: No. Jefferson didn't care what church you attended.

BARTON: That's it.

BECK: Right? That was America and that needs to be America: Go to church; worship God; follow the 10 Commandments. That's it.

BARTON: And what was so cool about the church of the Capitol was the chaplains ran it but you had preachers from all denominations coming in to preach. And that's what made Jefferson unusual as he was not denominational guy. He was a trans-denominational guy.

BECK: OK. One last guy and then we have to take a break. Help me out with Benjamin Franklin, because he is here and he is also here — Benjamin Franklin.

BARTON: Well, Ben Franklin is the guy who called for prayer at the Constitutional Convention, one of greatest calls, Thursday, June 28, 1787. He went through a number of scriptures to say, guys, we've had five weeks of fighting. We need to do some praying.
So he gave this passionate call for prayer. Washington said they recessed for three days and went to church at the Rev. William Rogers Church. It's in his diary.
And they had a time of prayer — actually, I have the original prayer that they prayed over at the convention there at the church. So Franklin does that. After that, he became — actually, he was the governor of Pennsylvania before.
And get this. Franklin, as the governor of Pennsylvania, came up with a plan to raise church attendance in state of Pennsylvania. When was the last time a governor did something like that? That's Franklin.

BECK: They say he is not religious because at the end of his life — if I'm not mistaken. You know better than I.

BARTON: Yes.

BECK: But he is painted here sitting in a chair, and that's because he had kidney stones, gallstones?

BARTON: Yes. He had all sorts — he had a whole plethora of —

(CROSSTALK)

BECK: He was actually carried —

BARTON: He was carried in.

BECK: In that chair, because he couldn't stand the pain of walking on cobblestones.

BARTON: Walking — that's right.

BECK: And so they carried him in. He was on opium —

BARTON: That's right.

BECK: And hated it —

BARTON: Yes.

BECK: And tried to get off it as much as he could because it clouded his mind. It was at this point that people began to question him because he was fiercely anti-slavery.

BARTON: Absolutely.

BECK: And they also started questioning his Christianity and his sanity because he was fiercely anti-slavery.

BARTON: Well, he had written one letter early in life where he called himself a deist. Now, the difference is a deist in that dictionary definition does not match up with what we call a deist.
A deist back then was someone who believed in God, believed in revelation, just wasn't sure about the divinity of Jesus. That's all a deist meant.

BECK: OK.

BARTON: So we turned the deist today into an agnostic, atheist and it's not the same thing.

BECK: OK.

BARTON: So he made one letter, but that was not the rest of his life. If you look at 60 years, he was a supporter of this church. He had a pew in his church, Christchurch. And then he is very active religiously. He is not what we might call orthodox. He's another trans-denominational guy, quite frankly.

BECK: He flew a kite in a storm and almost electrocuted himself —

BARTON: Exactly. Exactly.

BECK: Not orthodox. I think we got that.
Back in just a second.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BECK: Welcome back. I'm with David Barton from WallBuilders and we're talking about faith, how — the truth about the founding of our nation and the Founders.
This is — I mean, when they reprinted this — I don't know, maybe 10 years ago, I got a copy of it. I never heard of it. And I'm a big fan of Jefferson. And I am — and this is so cool. This is the morals of Jesus.

BARTON: "The Life and Morals of Jesus —"

BECK: Life and Morals —

BARTON: "Of Nazareth."

BECK: What Jefferson did — what he did is he took four different languages, the scriptures in four — the Gospel in four different languages and he put them side-by-side and kept them up. And you just called it a red letter.

BARTON: Yes. What he did was took all the words of Jesus and pasted them end to end non-stop so he can read the words of Jesus in four languages.

BECK: OK. Now, here is what is very interesting. This is — this one was printed in 1904. "The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth" by Thomas Jefferson and it was printed Washington, Government Printing Office, 1904. And I see here it's from the House of Representatives.

BARTON: Yes.

BECK: What is this?

BARTON: That is what was given to every freshman member of Congress every election. Congress gave that to freshmen members because they needed — they felt that this was an important thing for you to know. This is what Jefferson thought was important and was just passing it to members of Congress.

BECK: When did we stop printing this?

 BARTON: We probably stopped that about the progressive time, in the 1920s. We moved away from that.

BECK: Unbelievable. David, we are — we are going to Phoenix this weekend. Judge is going to be with us. He is doing something on charity, which is basically the Constitution. We have David Buckner on hope, which is truth. And you are doing faith.
Our country is facing a time that I haven't seen in my lifetime because we have all of this debt and everything else. And we have a storm coming our way.
Am I missing any of the fundamental building blocks of our country: faith, hope, charity? Faith, truth — charity comes from the individual. Live by the law and be good to each other. Am I missing anything?

BARTON: The one word that I would use that they used repeatedly is the word "duty." You mentioned these guys didn't want to do this. They wanted to be home.
Patrick Henry tried not to be governor four times and he said, I've got 19 kids. I've got 81 grandkids. I want to be home with the kids. And they kept electing him. He said, I've got a duty to serve.

BECK: That's amazing. [Washington], when they knocked on his door to come here to this convention said, "Please, find someone else." I know — I think his words were, "Have I not served my country enough?"

BARTON: That's right.

BECK: OK. So he didn't want to do it and he certainly didn't want to be president.

BARTON: That's right.

BECK: [Jefferson] guy didn't even put "president" on his tombstone.

BARTON: That's right.

BECK: Wouldn't you like to find one of those guys to run for office or force them in somehow or another?
Be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BECK: We're with David Barton from WallBuilders and I want him to take you to the 20th Century now and different ways that the government has — it would never, never be involved.
Let's start with this: Forest and Flames in the Bible. The back, here is Smokey the Bear, "And please make people careful, Amen." I mean, Smokey the Bear is praying and this is all Bible scripture.

BARTON: All by the Department of Agriculture in the '60s, just showing what the Bible says about forests in flames. And let's preserve the forest and Smokey Bear praying.

BECK: OK. This is from World War II. Again, this is a government-issued poster. This is World War II. "This is the enemy." The book —

BARTON: The Bible.

BECK: What is the thinking behind this?

BARTON: The Nazi forces and the Axis powers were coming after our faith, our belief, our culture which is built on faith. That was — they were coming after —

BECK: Truman said this also about the Soviets, right?

BARTON: Truman, in the speech when he took over the Cold War, said it's a fight between Christianity and anti-Christianity. That was Truman's official position as president.

BECK: This is to buy war bonds, "Save Freedom of Worship. Each to the dictates of his own conscience." This actually comes from a speech of FDR.

BARTON: It is.

BECK: The progressives — [the Founders] guys lived it. The progressives used it.

BARTON: They used it. That's right. That's right.

BECK: Again, another buy bonds from the U.S. Government, "For peace and security."

BARTON: At the bottom, it says, "An official U.S. Treasury poster." I love the fact — there is the Nativity of the Christ.

BECK: And this one — this one again, the United States Treasury Department. This looks like World War I.

BARTON: That is divine guidance, Joan of Arc. God led her to victory over the enemy. And that's —

(CROSSTALK)

BECK: This was Woodrow Wilson.

BARTON: Yes, right. It would be that time.

BECK: You know, what's fascinating to me is — I mean, Woodrow Wilson, his father was a preacher.

BARTON: He was a preacher. That's right.
 
BECK: Yes. And they knew they had to — and this is why I say you must be very careful about the idea of social justice. Correct me if I'm wrong. Social justice is dangerous because these guy guys knew how they had to get into the churches.

BARTON: Yes.

BECK: To be able to control you, they had to get into the churches.
Remember, [the Founders], all of the stuff that we've laid out here in front of you — these two scenes, they were not about controlling you. They were about giving you freedom and liberty. And they didn't care what church or synagogue or anything. They didn't care what mosque you went to. Just regulate yourself and serve your fellow man.
[Progressives] use religion for power. That's where the danger comes in. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BECK: We have been with David Barton. He is the author of a book that I read — I don't know — 10, 15 years ago. It's great, "Original Intent." He's from Wall Builders. And he is also joining me in Phoenix on Saturday at something we call the "American Revival." And it is the idea of faith, hope and charity, the building blocks of our country.
Whose face would you add for duty?

BARTON: All of them. That's what drove every one of them. They did things they would prefer not to, but it was their duty to do it.
And if we catch that notion of duty as citizens, we'll get this thing restored — not rebuilt, but restored. But we've got to have the same commitment to do things that are difficult and take our time because it's the right thing to do.

BECK: David, we'll see you Saturday. Tickets are still available at "GlennBeck.com," "The American Revival."
"Use truth as your anvil and non-violence as your hammer." And anything that doesn't stand the test when it is brought to the anvil of truth and hammered with non-violence, reject it. The words of Gandhi.

Read @ Source: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,590642,00.html#ixzz1NRrfahND

Virginia Declaration of Rights by George Mason 1776

Thomas Jefferson regarded Mason as the "the wisest man of his generation," the Virginia Declaration of Rights was adopted by the Virginia Constitutional Convention on June 12, 1776. Widely copied by the other colonies (by the end of 1776 five colonies had adopted declarations of rights; by 1783 every state had some form of a bill of rights), it became the basis of the Bill of Rights to the U.S. Constitution after Mason fought against ratification of the Constitution because it contained no bill of rights. The Declaration of Rights was also used by Thomas Jefferson for the opening paragraphs of the Declaration of Independence. The Marquis de Condorcet called the Virginia Declaration of Rights "the first Bill of Rights to merit the name."

A DECLARATION OF RIGHTS made by the representatives of the good people of Virginia, assembled in full and free convention which rights do pertain to them and their posterity, as the basis and foundation of government .
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Equality Independence Freedom and Posterity

Section 1. That all men are by nature equally free and independent and have certain inherent rights, of which, when they enter into a state of society, they cannot, by any compact, deprive or divest their posterity; namely, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.
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Power From The People

Section 2. That all power is vested in, and consequently derived from, the people; that magistrates are their trustees and servants and at all times amenable to them.
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Right to Reform Alter or Abolish

Section 3. That government is, or ought to be, instituted for the common benefit, protection, and security of the people, nation, or community; of all the various modes and forms of government, that is best which is capable of producing the greatest degree of happiness and safety and is most effectually secured against the danger of maladministration. And that, when any government shall be found inadequate or contrary to these purposes, a majority of the community has an indubitable, inalienable, and indefeasible[1] right to reform, alter, or abolish it, in such manner as shall be judged most conducive to the public weal[2].

[1] indefeasible: not defeasible;  not to be annulled or made void; not forfeitable.(a)

[2] weal: good, well being, (b), prosperity, happiness, wealth (c). Antonym: woe
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Payment or Privileges to Public Servants; Positions not Hereditary

Section 4. That no man, or set of men, is entitled to exclusive or separate emoluments[3] or privileges from the community, but in consideration of public services; which, nor being descendible[4], neither ought the offices of magistrate, legislator, or judge to be hereditary.

[3] emoluments: profit, salary, or fees from office or employment; compensation for services: Tips are an emolument in addition to wages. (d) Compensation

[4] descendible: capable of being transmitted by inheritance. (e)
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Separation of Powers, Frequent Vacancy and Elections

Section 5. That the legislative and executive powers of the state should be separate and distinct from the judiciary; and that the members of the two first may be restrained from oppression, by feeling and participating the burdens of the people, they should, at fixed periods, be reduced to a private station, return into that body from which they were originally taken, and the vacancies be supplied by frequent, certain, and regular elections, in which all, or any part, of the former members, to be again eligible, or ineligible, as the laws shall direct.
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Sufferage to those with Permanent Common Interest, and Restrictions on Law & Taxation

Section 6. That elections of members to serve as representatives of the people, in assembly ought to be free; and that all men, having sufficient evidence of permanent common interest with, and attachment to, the community, have the right of suffrage and cannot be taxed or deprived of their property for public uses without their own consent or that of their representatives so elected, nor bound by any law to which they have not, in like manner, assembled for the public good.
__________________________________________________________________________________
Discouragement of the Suspension of Laws

Section 7. That all power of suspending laws, or the execution of laws, by any authority, without consent of the representatives of the people, is injurious to their rights and ought not to be exercised.
__________________________________________________________________________________
Rights of the Accused; Trial by Jury etc

Section 8. That in all capital or criminal prosecutions a man has a right to demand the cause and nature of his accusation, to be confronted with the accusers and witnesses, to call for evidence in his favor, and to a speedy trial by an impartial jury of twelve men of his vicinage[5], without whose unanimous consent he cannot be found guilty; nor can he be compelled to give evidence against himself; that no man be deprived of his liberty except by the law of the land or the judgment of his peers.

[5] Vicinage: proximity

Section 9. That excessive bail ought not to be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.
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Warrant Without Evidence discouraged

Section 10. That general warrants, whereby an officer or messenger may be commanded to search suspected places without evidence of a fact committed, or to seize any person or persons not named, or whose offense is not particularly described and supported by evidence, are grievous and oppressive and ought not to be granted.
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Property Suits resolved by [sacred] Jury Trial

Section 11. That in controversies respecting property, and in suits between man and man, the ancient trial by jury is preferable to any other and ought to be held sacred.
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Freedom of Press

Section 12. That the freedom of the press is one of the great bulwarks of liberty, and can never be restrained but by despotic governments.
__________________________________________________________________________________
Militia Good, Standing Army Bad

Section 13. That a well-regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained to arms, is the proper, natural, and safe defense of a free state; that standing armies, in time of peace, should be avoided as dangerous to liberty; and that in all cases the military should be under strict subordination to, and governed by, the civil power.
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Singular Uniform Govt. of the State

Section 14. That the people have a right to uniform government; and, therefore, that no government separate from or independent of the government of Virginia ought to be erected or established within the limits thereof.
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Necessities to the Preservation of Freedom

Section 15. That no free government, or the blessings of liberty, can be preserved to any people but by a firm adherence to justice, moderation, temperance, frugality, and virtue and by frequent recurrence[6] to fundamental principles.

[6] recurrence: turning back (f)
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Freedom of Religion: Duty to God; directed by Reason not Force
Christian forbearance, love, and Charity

Section 16. That religion, or the duty which we owe to our Creator, and the manner of discharging it, can be directed only by reason and conviction, not by force or violence; and therefore all men are equally entitled to the free exercise of religion, according to the dictates of conscience; and that it is the mutual duty of all to practise Christian forbearance[7], love, and charity toward each other.

[7] Forbearance: the act of forbearing; a refraining from something, patience, endurance; self-control, tolerance 

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http://www.constitution.org/bcp/virg_dor.htm

The Use of Knowledge in Society by FA Hayek 1945

Synopsis/Commentary by Asderathos

H.1

What is the problem we wish to solve when we try to construct a rational economic order? On certain familiar assumptions the answer is simple enough.If we possess all the relevant information, if we can start out from a given system of preferences, and if we command complete knowledge of available means, the problem which remains is purely one of logic. That is, the answer to the question of what is the best use of the available means is implicit in our assumptions. The conditions which the solution of this optimum problem must satisfy have been fully worked out and can be stated best in mathematical form: put at their briefest, they are that the marginal rates of substitution between any two commodities or factors must be the same in all their different uses.

If all relevant information is available the most preferable outcome is only a matter of logical mathematics. Any such formula must account for the minutest degree of variable in use of commodities.
 
H.2

This, however, is emphatically not the economic problem which society faces. And the economic calculus which we have developed to solve this logical problem, though an important step toward the solution of the economic problem of society, does not yet provide an answer to it. The reason for this is that the "data" from which the economic calculus starts are never for the whole society "given" to a single mind which could work out the implications and can never be so given.


The production of such a formula is not the problem at hand nor the whole solution, because in its completion the data to which it may be applied is not available, nor could any single mind wield either.

H.3

The peculiar character of the problem of a rational economic order is determined precisely by the fact that the knowledge of the circumstances of which we must make use never exists in concentrated or integrated form but solely as the dispersed bits of incomplete and frequently contradictory knowledge which all the separate individuals possess. The economic problem of society is thus not merely a problem of how to allocate "given" resources—if "given" is taken to mean given to a single mind which deliberately solves the problem set by these "data." It is rather a problem of how to secure the best use of resources known to any of the members of society, for ends whose relative importance only these individuals know. Or, to put it briefly, it is a problem of the utilization of knowledge which is not given to anyone in its totality.

The problem of such a formula is characterized by conflicting interests of individuals [who only know their interests themselves at any given time, in totality].

H.4

This character of the fundamental problem has, I am afraid, been obscured rather than illuminated by many of the recent refinements of economic theory, particularly by many of the uses made of mathematics. Though the problem with which I want primarily to deal in this paper is the problem of a rational economic organization, I shall in its course be led again and again to point to its close connections with certain methodological questions. Many of the points I wish to make are indeed conclusions toward which diverse paths of reasoning have unexpectedly converged. But, as I now see these problems, this is no accident. It seems to me that many of the current disputes with regard to both economic theory and economic policy have their common origin in a misconception about the nature of the economic problem of society. This misconception in turn is due to an erroneous transfer to social phenomena of the habits of thought we have developed in dealing with the phenomena of nature.
 

A rational economic organization [structure/concept] must include certain methodical questions. 

The human problem of the formula has been obscured in preference to the math; because of how we've come to study nature [via science?]. 

II H.5

In ordinary language we describe by the word "planning" the complex of interrelated decisions about the allocation of our available resources. All economic activity is in this sense planning; and in any society in which many people collaborate, this planning, whoever does it, will in some measure have to be based on knowledge which, in the first instance, is not given to the planner but to somebody else, which somehow will have to be conveyed to the planner. The various ways in which the knowledge on which people base their plans is communicated to them is the crucial problem for any theory explaining the economic process, and the problem of what is the best way of utilizing knowledge initially dispersed among all the people is at least one of the main problems of economic policy—or of designing an efficient economic system.

H.6

The answer to this question is closely connected with that other question which arises here, that of who is to do the planning. It is about this question that all the dispute about "economic planning" centers. This is not a dispute about whether planning is to be done or not. It is a dispute as to whether planning is to be done centrally, by one authority for the whole economic system, or is to be divided among many individuals. Planning in the specific sense in which the term is used in contemporary controversy necessarily means central planning—direction of the whole economic system according to one unified plan. Competition, on the other hand, means decentralized planning by many separate persons. The halfway house between the two, about which many people talk but which few like when they see it, is the delegation of planning to organized industries, or, in other words, monopoly. SOCIALISM

H.7

Which of these systems is likely to be more efficient depends mainly on the question under which of them we can expect that fuller use will be made of the existing knowledge. And this, in turn, depends on whether we are more likely to succeed in putting at the disposal of a single central authority all the knowledge which ought to be used but which is initially dispersed among many different individuals, or in conveying to the individuals such additional knowledge as they need in order to enable them to fit their plans with those of others. A Communist Central Plan
 

III H.8

It will at once be evident that on this point the position will be different with respect to different kinds of knowledge; and the answer to our question will therefore largely turn on the relative importance of the different kinds of knowledge; those more likely to be at the disposal of particular individuals and those which we should with greater confidence expect to find in the possession of an authority made up of suitably chosen experts. If it is today so widely assumed that the latter will be in a better position, this is because one kind of knowledge, namely, scientific knowledge, occupies now so prominent a place in public imagination that we tend to forget that it is not the only kind that is relevant. It may be admitted that, as far as scientific knowledge is concerned, a body of suitably chosen experts may be in the best position to command all the best knowledge available—though this is of course merely shifting the difficulty to the problem of selecting the experts. What I wish to point out is that, even assuming that this problem can be readily solved, it is only a small part of the wider problem.

H.9

Today it is almost heresy to suggest that scientific knowledge is not the sum of all knowledge. But a little reflection will show that there is beyond question a body of very important but unorganized knowledge which cannot possibly be called scientific in the sense of knowledge of general rules: the knowledge of the particular circumstances of time and place. It is with respect to this that practically every individual has some advantage over all others because he possesses unique information of which beneficial use might be made, but of which use can be made only if the decisions depending on it are left to him or are made with his active coöperation. We need to remember only how much we have to learn in any occupation after we have completed our theoretical training, how big a part of our working life we spend learning particular jobs, and how valuable an asset in all walks of life is knowledge of people, of local conditions, and of special circumstances. To know of and put to use a machine not fully employed, or somebody's skill which could be better utilized, or to be aware of a surplus stock which can be drawn upon during an interruption of supplies, is socially quite as useful as the knowledge of better alternative techniques. And the shipper who earns his living from using otherwise empty or half-filled journeys of tramp-steamers, or the estate agent whose whole knowledge is almost exclusively one of temporary opportunities, or the arbitrageur who gains from local differences of commodity prices, are all performing eminently useful functions based on special knowledge of circumstances of the fleeting moment not known to others.

---
 
H.10

It is a curious fact that this sort of knowledge should today be generally regarded with a kind of contempt and that anyone who by such knowledge gains an advantage over somebody better equipped with theoretical or technical knowledge is thought to have acted almost disreputably. To gain an advantage from better knowledge of facilities of communication or transport is sometimes regarded as almost dishonest, although it is quite as important that society make use of the best opportunities in this respect as in using the latest scientific discoveries. This prejudice has in a considerable measure affected the attitude toward commerce in general compared with that toward production. Even economists who regard themselves as definitely immune to the crude materialist fallacies of the past constantly commit the same mistake where activities directed toward the acquisition of such practical knowledge are concerned—apparently because in their scheme of things all such knowledge is supposed to be "given." The common idea now seems to be that all such knowledge should as a matter of course be readily at the command of everybody, and the reproach of irrationality leveled against the existing economic order is frequently based on the fact that it is not so available. This view disregards the fact that the method by which such knowledge can be made as widely available as possible is precisely the problem to which we have to find an answer.
 

IV H.11

If it is fashionable today to minimize the importance of the knowledge of the particular circumstances of time and place, this is closely connected with the smaller importance which is now attached to change as such. Indeed, there are few points on which the assumptions made (usually only implicitly) by the "planners" differ from those of their opponents as much as with regard to the significance and frequency of changes which will make substantial alterations of production plans necessary. Of course, if detailed economic plans could be laid down for fairly long periods in advance and then closely adhered to, so that no further economic decisions of importance would be required, the task of drawing up a comprehensive plan governing all economic activity would be much less formidable.

H.12

It is, perhaps, worth stressing that economic problems arise always and only in consequence of change. So long as things continue as before, or at least as they were expected to, there arise no new problems requiring a decision, no need to form a new plan. The belief that changes, or at least day-to-day adjustments, have become less important in modern times implies the contention that economic problems also have become less important. This belief in the decreasing importance of change is, for that reason, usually held by the same people who argue that the importance of economic considerations has been driven into the background by the growing importance of technological knowledge.

H.13

Is it true that, with the elaborate apparatus of modern production, economic decisions are required only at long intervals, as when a new factory is to be erected or a new process to be introduced? Is it true that, once a plant has been built, the rest is all more or less mechanical, determined by the character of the plant, and leaving little to be changed in adapting to the ever-changing circumstances of the moment?

H.14

The fairly widespread belief in the affirmative is not, as far as I can ascertain, borne out by the practical experience of the businessman. In a competitive industry at any rate—and such an industry alone can serve as a test—the task of keeping cost from rising requires constant struggle, absorbing a great part of the energy of the manager. How easy it is for an inefficient manager to dissipate the differentials on which profitability rests, and that it is possible, with the same technical facilities, to produce with a great variety of costs, are among the commonplaces of business experience which do not seem to be equally familiar in the study of the economist. The very strength of the desire, constantly voiced by producers and engineers, to be allowed to proceed untrammeled by considerations of money costs, is eloquent testimony to the extent to which these factors enter into their daily work.

H.15

One reason why economists are increasingly apt to forget about the constant small changes which make up the whole economic picture is probably their growing preoccupation with statistical aggregates, which show a very much greater stability than the movements of the detail. The comparative stability of the aggregates cannot, however, be accounted for—as the statisticians occasionally seem to be inclined to do—by the "law of large numbers" or the mutual compensation of random changes. The number of elements with which we have to deal is not large enough for such accidental forces to produce stability. The continuous flow of goods and services is maintained by constant deliberate adjustments, by new dispositions made every day in the light of circumstances not known the day before, by B stepping in at once when A fails to deliver. Even the large and highly mechanized plant keeps going largely because of an environment upon which it can draw for all sorts of unexpected needs; tiles for its roof, stationery for its forms, and all the thousand and one kinds of equipment in which it cannot be self-contained and which the plans for the operation of the plant require to be readily available in the market.

H.16

This is, perhaps, also the point where I should briefly mention the fact that the sort of knowledge with which I have been concerned is knowledge of the kind which by its nature cannot enter into statistics and therefore cannot be conveyed to any central authority in statistical form. The statistics which such a central authority would have to use would have to be arrived at precisely by abstracting from minor differences between the things, by lumping together, as resources of one kind, items which differ as regards location, quality, and other particulars, in a way which may be very significant for the specific decision. It follows from this that central planning based on statistical information by its nature cannot take direct account of these circumstances of time and place and that the central planner will have to find some way or other in which the decisions depending on them can be left to the "man on the spot."

V H.17

If we can agree that the economic problem of society is mainly one of rapid adaptation to changes in the particular circumstances of time and place, it would seem to follow that the ultimate decisions must be left to the people who are familiar with these circumstances, who know directly of the relevant changes and of the resources immediately available to meet them. We cannot expect that this problem will be solved by first communicating all this knowledge to a central board which, after integrating all knowledge, issues its orders. We must solve it by some form of decentralization. But this answers only part of our problem. We need decentralization because only thus can we insure that the knowledge of the particular circumstances of time and place will be promptly used. But the "man on the spot" cannot decide solely on the basis of his limited but intimate knowledge of the facts of his immediate surroundings. There still remains the problem of communicating to him such further information as he needs to fit his decisions into the whole pattern of changes of the larger economic system.

H.18

How much knowledge does he need to do so successfully? Which of the events which happen beyond the horizon of his immediate knowledge are of relevance to his immediate decision, and how much of them need he know?

H.19

There is hardly anything that happens anywhere in the world that mightnot have an effect on the decision he ought to make. But he need not know of these events as such, nor of all their effects. It does not matter for himwhy at the particular moment more screws of one size than of another are wanted, why paper bags are more readily available than canvas bags, or whyskilled labor, or particular machine tools, have for the moment become more difficult to obtain. All that is significant for him is how much more or lessdifficult to procure they have become compared with other things with which he is also concerned, or how much more or less urgently wanted are the alternative things he produces or uses. It is always a question of the relative importance of the particular things with which he is concerned, and the causes which alter their relative importance are of no interest to him beyond the effect on those concrete things of his own environment.

H.20

It is in this connection that what I have called the "economic calculus" proper helps us, at least by analogy, to see how this problem can be solved, and in fact is being solved, by the price system. Even the single controlling mind, in possession of all the data for some small, self-contained economic system, would not—every time some small adjustment in the allocation of resources had to be made—go explicitly through all the relations between ends and means which might possibly be affected. It is indeed the great contribution of the pure logic of choice that it has demonstrated conclusively that even such a single mind could solve this kind of problem only by constructing and constantly using rates of equivalence (or "values," or "marginal rates of substitution"), i.e., by attaching to each kind of scarce resource a numerical index which cannot be derived from any property possessed by that particular thing, but which reflects, or in which is condensed, its significance in view of the whole means-end structure. In any small change he will have to consider only these quantitative indices (or "values") in which all the relevant information is concentrated; and, by adjusting the quantities one by one, he can appropriately rearrange his dispositions without having to solve the whole puzzle ab initio or without needing at any stage to survey it at once in all its ramifications.

H.21

Fundamentally, in a system in which the knowledge of the relevant facts is dispersed among many people, prices can act to coördinate the separate actions of different people in the same way as subjective values help the individual to coördinate the parts of his plan. It is worth contemplating for a moment a very simple and commonplace instance of the action of the price system to see what precisely it accomplishes. Assume that somewhere in the world a new opportunity for the use of some raw material, say, tin, has arisen, or that one of the sources of supply of tin has been eliminated. It does not matter for our purpose—and it is very significant that it does not matter—which of these two causes has made tin more scarce. All that the users of tin need to know is that some of the tin they used to consume is now more profitably employed elsewhere and that, in consequence, they must economize tin. There is no need for the great majority of them even to know where the more urgent need has arisen, or in favor of what other needs they ought to husband the supply. If only some of them know directly of the new demand, and switch resources over to it, and if the people who are aware of the new gap thus created in turn fill it from still other sources, the effect will rapidly spread throughout the whole economic system and influence not only all the uses of tin but also those of its substitutes and the substitutes of these substitutes, the supply of all the things made of tin, and their substitutes, and so on; and all this without the great majority of those instrumental in bringing about these substitutions knowing anything at all about the original cause of these changes. The whole acts as one market, not because any of its members survey the whole field, but because their limited individual fields of vision sufficiently overlap so that through many intermediaries the relevant information is communicated to all. The mere fact that there is one price for any commodity—or rather that local prices are connected in a manner determined by the cost of transport, etc.—brings about the solution which (it is just conceptually possible) might have been arrived at by one single mind possessing all the information which is in fact dispersed among all the people involved in the process.

VI H.22

We must look at the price system as such a mechanism for communicating information if we want to understand its real function—a function which, of course, it fulfils less perfectly as prices grow more rigid. (Even when quoted prices have become quite rigid, however, the forces which would operate through changes in price still operate to a considerable extent through changes in the other terms of the contract.) The most significant fact about this system is the economy of knowledge with which it operates, or how little the individual participants need to know in order to be able to take the right action. In abbreviated form, by a kind of symbol, only the most essential information is passed on and passed on only to those concerned. It is more than a metaphor to describe the price system as a kind of machinery for registering change, or a system of telecommunications which enables individual producers to watch merely the movement of a few pointers, as an engineer might watch the hands of a few dials, in order to adjust their activities to changes of which they may never know more than is reflected in the price movement.

H.23

Of course, these adjustments are probably never "perfect" in the sense in which the economist conceives of them in his equilibrium analysis. But I fear that our theoretical habits of approaching the problem with the assumption of more or less perfect knowledge on the part of almost everyone has made us somewhat blind to the true function of the price mechanism and led us to apply rather misleading standards in judging its efficiency. The marvel is that in a case like that of a scarcity of one raw material, without an order being issued, without more than perhaps a handful of people knowing the cause, tens of thousands of people whose identity could not be ascertained by months of investigation, are made to use the material or its products more sparingly; i.e., they move in the right direction. This is enough of a marvel even if, in a constantly changing world, not all will hit it off so perfectly that their profit rates will always be maintained at the same constant or "normal" level.

H.24

I have deliberately used the word "marvel" to shock the reader out of the complacency with which we often take the working of this mechanism for granted. I am convinced that if it were the result of deliberate human design, and if the people guided by the price changes understood that their decisions have significance far beyond their immediate aim, this mechanism would have been acclaimed as one of the greatest triumphs of the human mind. Its misfortune is the double one that it is not the product of human design and that the people guided by it usually do not know why they are made to do what they do. But those who clamor for "conscious direction"—and who cannot believe that anything which has evolved without design (and even without our understanding it) should solve problems which we should not be able to solve consciously—should remember this: The problem is precisely how to extend the span of our utilization of resources beyond the span of the control of any one mind; and therefore, how to dispense with the need of conscious control, and how to provide inducements which will make the individuals do the desirable things without anyone having to tell them what to do.

H.25

The problem which we meet here is by no means peculiar to economics but arises in connection with nearly all truly social phenomena, with language and with most of our cultural inheritance, and constitutes really the central theoretical problem of all social science. As Alfred Whitehead has said in another connection, "It is a profoundly erroneous truism, repeated by all copy-books and by eminent people when they are making speeches, that we should cultivate the habit of thinking what we are doing. The precise opposite is the case. Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them." This is of profound significance in the social field. We make constant use of formulas, symbols, and rules whose meaning we do not understand and through the use of which we avail ourselves of the assistance of knowledge which individually we do not possess. We have developed these practices and institutions by building upon habits and institutions which have proved successful in their own sphere and which have in turn become the foundation of the civilization we have built up.

H.26

The price system is just one of those formations which man has learned to use (though he is still very far from having learned to make the best use of it) after he had stumbled upon it without understanding it. Through it not only a division of labor but also a coördinated utilization of resources based on an equally divided knowledge has become possible. The people who like to deride any suggestion that this may be so usually distort the argument by insinuating that it asserts that by some miracle just that sort of system has spontaneously grown up which is best suited to modern civilization. It is the other way round: man has been able to develop that division of labor on which our civilization is based because he happened to stumble upon a method which made it possible. Had he not done so, he might still have developed some other, altogether different, type of civilization, something like the "state" of the termite ants, or some other altogether unimaginable type. All that we can say is that nobody has yet succeeded in designing an alternative system in which certain features of the existing one can be preserved which are dear even to those who most violently assail it—such as particularly the extent to which the individual can choose his pursuits and consequently freely use his own knowledge and skill.

VII H.27

It is in many ways fortunate that the dispute about the indispensability of the price system for any rational calculation in a complex society is now no longer conducted entirely between camps holding different political views. The thesis that without the price system we could not preserve a society based on such extensive division of labor as ours was greeted with a howl of derision when it was first advanced by von Mises twenty-five years ago. Today the difficulties which some still find in accepting it are no longer mainly political, and this makes for an atmosphere much more conducive to reasonable discussion. When we find Leon Trotsky arguing that "economic accounting is unthinkable without market relations"; when Professor Oscar Lange promises Professor von Mises a statue in the marble halls of the future Central Planning Board; and when Professor Abba P. Lerner rediscovers Adam Smith and emphasizes that the essential utility of the price system consists in inducing the individual, while seeking his own interest, to do what is in the general interest, the differences can indeed no longer be ascribed to political prejudice. The remaining dissent seems clearly to be due to purely intellectual, and more particularly methodological, differences.

H.28

A recent statement by Professor Joseph Schumpeter in his Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy provides a clear illustration of one of the methodological differences which I have in mind. Its author is pre-eminent among those economists who approach economic phenomena in the light of a certain branch of positivism. To him these phenomena accordingly appear as objectively given quantities of commodities impinging directly upon each other, almost, it would seem, without any intervention of human minds. Only against this background can I account for the following (to me startling) pronouncement. Professor Schumpeter argues that the possibility of a rational calculation in the absence of markets for the factors of production follows for the theorist "from the elementary proposition that consumers in evaluating ('demanding') consumers' goods ipso facto also evaluate the means of production which enter into the production of these goods."*1

H.29

Taken literally, this statement is simply untrue. The consumers do nothing of the kind. What Professor Schumpeter's "ipso facto" presumably means is that the valuation of the factors of production is implied in, or follows necessarily from, the valuation of consumers' goods. But this, too, is not correct. Implication is a logical relationship which can be meaningfully asserted only of propositions simultaneously present to one and the same mind. It is evident, however, that the values of the factors of production do not depend solely on the valuation of the consumers' goods but also on the conditions of supply of the various factors of production. Only to a mind to which all these facts were simultaneously known would the answer necessarily follow from the facts given to it. The practical problem, however, arises precisely because these facts are never so given to a single mind, and because, in consequence, it is necessary that in the solution of the problem knowledge should be used that is dispersed among many people.

H.30

The problem is thus in no way solved if we can show that all the facts, ifthey were known to a single mind (as we hypothetically assume them to be given to the observing economist), would uniquely determine the solution; instead we must show how a solution is produced by the interactions of people each of whom possesses only partial knowledge. To assume all the knowledge to be given to a single mind in the same manner in which we assume it to be given to us as the explaining economists is to assume the problem away and to disregard everything that is important and significant in the real world.

H.31

That an economist of Professor Schumpeter's standing should thus have fallen into a trap which the ambiguity of the term "datum" sets to the unwary can hardly be explained as a simple error. It suggests rather that there is something fundamentally wrong with an approach which habitually disregards an essential part of the phenomena with which we have to deal: the unavoidable imperfection of man's knowledge and the consequent need for a process by which knowledge is constantly communicated and acquired. Any approach, such as that of much of mathematical economics with its simultaneous equations, which in effect starts from the assumption that people's knowledge corresponds with the objective facts of the situation, systematically leaves out what is our main task to explain. I am far from denying that in our system equilibrium analysis has a useful function to perform. But when it comes to the point where it misleads some of our leading thinkers into believing that the situation which it describes has direct relevance to the solution of practical problems, it is high time that we remember that it does not deal with the social process at all and that it is no more than a useful preliminary to the study of the main problem.

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External Links to Document

http://www.econlib.org/library/Essays/hykKnw1.html

http://home.uchicago.edu/~vlima/courses/econ200/spring01/hayek.pdf

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FA HAYEK - http://asderathoslchaimclassicalliberalism.blogspot.com/2010/01/friedrich-august-von-hayek.html

FDR's Letter to Luther C. Steward about Public Sector Unions

August 16, 1937

My dear Mr. Steward:

As I am unable to accept your kind invitation to be present on the occasion of the Twentieth Jubilee Convention of the National Federation of Federal Employees, I am taking this method of sending greetings and a message.
Reading your letter of July 14, 1937, I was especially interested in the timeliness of your remark that the manner in which the activities of your organization have been carried on during the past two decades "has been in complete consonance with the best traditions of public employee relationships." Organizations of Government employees have a logical place in Government affairs.
The desire of Government employees for fair and adequate pay, reasonable hours of work, safe and suitable working conditions, development of opportunities for advancement, facilities for fair and impartial consideration and review of grievances, and other objectives of a proper employee relations policy, is basically no different from that of employees in private industry. Organization on their part to present their views on such matters is both natural and logical, but meticulous attention should be paid to the special relationships and obligations of public servants to the public itself and to the Government.
All Government employees should realize that the process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service. It has its distinct and insurmountable limitations when applied to public personnel management. The very nature and purposes of Government make it impossible for administrative officials to represent fully or to bind the employer in mutual discussions with Government employee organizations. The employer is the whole people, who speak by means of laws enacted by their representatives in Congress. Accordingly, administrative officials and employees alike are governed and guided, and in many instances restricted, by laws which establish policies, procedures, or rules in personnel matters.
Particularly, I want to emphasize my conviction that militant tactics have no place in the functions of any organization of Government employees. Upon employees in the Federal service rests the obligation to serve the whole people, whose interests and welfare require orderliness and continuity in the conduct of Government activities. This obligation is paramount. Since their own services have to do with the functioning of the Government, a strike of public employees manifests nothing less than an intent on their part to prevent or obstruct the operations of Government until their demands are satisfied. Such action, looking toward the paralysis of Government by those who have sworn to support it, is unthinkable and intolerable. It is, therefore, with a feeling of gratification that I have noted in the constitution of the National Federation of Federal Employees the provision that "under no circumstances shall this Federation engage in or support strikes against the United States Government."
I congratulate the National Federation of Federal Employees the twentieth anniversary of its founding and trust that the convention will, in every way, be successful.

Very sincerely yours,

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Mr. Luther C. Steward,
President,
National Federation of Federal Employees,
10 Independence Avenue, S.W., Washington, D.C.
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SOURCE -
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=15445#axzz1Ja9JpaGC
http://www.scribd.com/doc/37000401/FDR-Opposes-Federal-Unions
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APP Note: Although this letter appears to be signed, "Very sincerely yours, Mr. Luther C. Steward, President, National Federation of Federal Employees, 10 Independence Avenue, S.W., Washington, D.C.," the letter is from Roosevelt to Steward. The placement of the addressee's name and address at the bottom of the document was an editorial decision in the original "Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt." The American Presidency Project's policy is to reproduce documents in their original form.

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Citation: John T. Woolley and Gerhard Peters,The American Presidency Project[online]. Santa Barbara, CA. Available from World Wide Web: http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=15445.

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Read more at the American Presidency Project:Franklin D. Roosevelt: Letter on the Resolution of Federation of Federal Employees Against Strikes in Federal Servicehttp://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=15445#ixzz1Ja9pPUDY
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In the current political climate the issue of public sector unions [that is unionization of govt. workers] has become an issue, [using colloquial misnomers of political affiliation] the left has claimed the right to be working to destroy "Collective Bargaining Rights", making no distinction between Public & Private Sector, Unions. The right has blanketly stated that FDR [The Father of the Modern Union] was against Govt. Sector Unions. Upon investigation, this letter has shown that FDR believed that govt. workers should be set apart to the point that they be prohibited from striking; I'll leave the particulars to nuanced interpretation.

-Asderathos, 4-15-2011

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Jefferson's Letter to Madison Sep 6, 1789

Thomas Jefferson's Letter To James Madison Paris, Sep. 6, 1789 http://www.let.rug.nl/usa/P/tj3/writings/brf/jefl81.htm http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/v1ch2s23.html I sit down to write to you without knowing by what occasion I shall send my letter. I do it because a subject comes into my head which I would wish to develope a little more than is practicable in the hurry of the moment of making up general dispatches. [The Earth Belongs To The Living: Debt] The question Whether one generation of men has a right to bind another, seems never to have been started either on this or our side of the water. Yet it is a question of such consequences as not only to merit decision, but place also, among the fundamental principles of every government. The course of reflection in which we are immersed here on the elementary principles of society has presented this question to my mind; and that no such obligation can be so transmitted I think very capable of proof.--I set out on this ground, which I suppose to be self evident, "that the earth belongs in usufruct[1] to the living": that the dead have neither powers nor rights over it. The portion occupied by an individual ceases to be his when himself ceases to be, and reverts to the society. If the society has formed no rules for the appropriation of it's lands in severality, it will be taken by the first occupants. These will generally be the wife and children of the decedent. If they have formed rules of appropriation, those rules may give it to the wife and children, or to some one of them, or to the legatee of the deceased. So they may give it to his creditor. But the child, the legatee, or creditor takes it, not by any natural right, but by a law of the society of which they are members, and to which they are subject. Then no man can, by natural right,oblige the lands he occupied, or the persons who succeed him in that occupation, to the paiment of debts contracted by him. For if he could, he might, during his own life, eat up the usufruct of the lands for several generations to come, and then the lands would belong to the dead, and not to the living, which would be the reverse of our principle. What is true of every member of the society individually, is true of them all collectively, since the rights of the whole can be no more than the sum of the rights of the individuals.--To keep our ideas clear when applying them to a multitude, let us suppose a whole generation of men to be born on the same day, to attain mature age on the same day, and to die on the same day, leaving a succeeding generation in the moment of attaining their mature age all together. Let the ripe age be supposed of 21. years, and their period of life 34. years more, that being the average term given by the bills of mortality to persons who have already attained 21. years of age. Each successive generation would, in this way, come on, and go off the stage at a fixed moment, as individuals do now. Then I say the earth belongs to each of these generations, during it's course, fully, and in their own right. The 2d. generation receives it clear of the debts and incumberances of the 1st. the 3d of the 2d. and so on. For if the 1st. could charge it with a debt, then the earth would belong to the dead and not the living generation. Then no generation can contract debts greater than may be paid during the course of it's own existence. At 21. years of age they may bind themselves and their lands for 34. years to come: at 22. for 33: at 23. for 32. and at 54. for one year only; because these are the terms of life which remain to them at those respective epochs.--But a material difference must be noted between the succession of an individual, and that of a whole generation. Individuals are parts only of a society, subject to the laws of the whole. These laws may appropriate the portion of land occupied by a decedent to his creditor rather than to any other, or to his child on condition he satisfies the creditor. But when a whole generation, that is, the whole society dies, as in the case we have supposed, and another generation or society succeeds, this forms a whole, and there is no superior who can give their territory to a third society, who may have lent money to their predecessors beyond their faculties of paying. What is true of a generation all arriving to self-government on the same day, and dying all on the same day, is true of those in a constant course of decay and renewal, with this only difference. A generation coming in and going out entire, as in the first case, would have a right in the 1st. year of their self-dominion to contract a debt for 33. years, in the 10th. for 24. in the 20th. for 14. in the 30th. for 4. whereas generations, changing daily by daily deaths and births, have one constant term, beginning at the date of their contract, and ending when a majority of those of full age at that date shall be dead. The length of that term may be estimated from the tables of mortality, corrected by the circumstances of climate, occupation &c. peculiar to the country of the contractors. Take, for instance, the table of M. de Buffon wherein he states 23,994 deaths, and the ages at which they happened. Suppose a society in which 23,994 persons are born every year, and live to the ages stated in this table. The conditions of that society will be as follows. 1st. It will consist constantly of 617,703. persons of all ages. 21y. Of those living at any one instant of time, one half will be dead in 24. years 8. months. 3dly. 1[8],675 will arrive every year at the age of 21. years complete. 41y. It will constantly have 348,417 persons of all ages above 21. years. 5ly. And the half of those of 21. years and upwards living at any one instant of time will be dead in 18. years 8. months, or say 19. years as the nearest integral number. Then 19. years is the term beyond which neither the representatives of a nation, nor even the whole nation itself assembled, can validly extend a debt. To render this conclusion palpable by example, suppose that Louis XIV. and XV. had contracted debts in the name of the French nation to the amount of 10,000 milliards of livres, and that the whole had been contracted in Genoa. The interest of this sum would be 500. milliards, which is said to be the whole rent roll or nett proceeds of the territory of France. Must the present generation of men have retired from the territory in which nature produced them, and ceded it to the Genoese creditors? No. They have the same rights over the soil on which they were produced, as the preceding generations had. They derive these rights not from their predecessors, but from nature. They then and their soil are by nature clear of the debts of their predecessors. Again suppose Louis XV. and his cotemporary generation had said to the money-lenders of Genoa, give us money that we may eat, drink, and be merry in our day; and on condition you will demand no interest till the end of 19. years you shall then for ever after receive an annual interest of 125/8 per cent. The money is lent on these conditions, is divided among the living, eaten, drank, and squandered. Would the present generation be obliged to apply the produce of the earth and of their labour to replace their dissipations? Not at all. I suppose that the recieved opinion, that the public debts of one generation devolve on the next, has been suggested by our seeing habitually in private life that he who succeeds to lands is required to pay the debts of his ancestor or testator: without considering that this requisition is municipal only, not moral; flowing from the will of the society, which has found it convenient to appropriate lands, become vacant by the death of their occupant, on the condition of a paiment of his debts: but that between society and society, or generation and generation, there is no municipal obligation, no umpire but the law of nature. We seem not to have percieved that, by the law of nature, one generation is to another as one independant nation to another. The interest of the national debt of France being in fact but a two thousandth part of it's rent roll, the paiment of it is practicable enough: and so becomes a question merely of honor, or of expediency. But with respect to future debts, would it not be wise and just for that nation to declare, in the constitution they are forming, that neither the legislature, nor the nation itself, can validly contract more debt than they may pay within their own age, or within the term of 19. years? And that all future contracts will be deemed void as to what shall remain unpaid at the end of 19. years from their date? This would put the lenders, and the borrowers also, on their guard. By reducing too the faculty of borrowing within it's natural limits, it would bridle the spirit of war, to which too free a course has been procured by the inattention of money-lenders to this law of nature, that succeeding generations are not responsible for the preceding. [The Earth Belongs To The Living: Govt.] On similar ground it may be proved that no society can make a perpetual constitution, or even a perpetual law. The earth belongs always to the living generation. They may manage it then, and what proceeds from it, as they please, during their usufruct. They are masters too of their own persons, and consequently may govern them as they please. But persons and property make the sum of the objects of government. The constitution and the laws of their predecessors extinguished then in their natural course with those who gave them being. This could preserve that being till it ceased to be itself, and no longer. Every constitution then, and every law, naturally expires at the end of 19 years. If it be enforced longer, it is an act of force, and not of right.--It may be said that the succeeding generation exercising in fact the power of repeal, this leaves them as free as if the constitution or law has been expressly limited to 19 years only. In the first place, this objection admits the right, in proposing an equivalent. But the power of repeal is not an equivalent. It might be indeed if every form of government were so perfectly contrived that the will of the majority could always be obtained fairly and without impediment. But this is true of no form. The people cannot assemble themselves. Their representation is unequal and vicious. Various checks are opposed to every legislative proposition. Factions get possession of the public councils. Bribery corrupts them. Personal interests lead them astray from the general interests of their constituents: and other impediments arise so as to prove to every practical man that a law of limited duration is much more manageable than one which needs a repeal. This principle that the earth belongs to the living, and not to the dead, is of very extensive application and consequences, in every country, and most especially in France. It enters into the resolution of the questions Whether the nation may change the descent of lands holden in tail? Whether they may change the appropriation of lands given antiently to the church, to hospitals, colleges, orders of chivalry, and otherwise in perpetuity? Whether they may abolish the charges and privileges attached on lands, including the whole catalogue ecclesiastical and feudal? It goes to hereditary offices, authorities and jurisdictions; to hereditary orders, distinctions and appellations; to perpetual monopolies in commerce, the arts and sciences; with a long train of et ceteras: and it renders the question of reimbursement a question of generosity and not of right. In all these cases, the legislature of the day could authorize such appropriations and establishments for their own time, but no longer; and the present holders, even where they, or their ancestors, have purchased, are in the case of bonâ fide purchasers of what the seller had no right to convey. Turn this subject in your mind, my dear Sir, and particularly as to the power of contracting debts; and develope it with that perspicuity and cogent logic so peculiarly yours. Your station in the councils of our country gives you an opportunity of producing it to public consideration, of forcing it into discussion. At first blush it may be rallied, as a theoretical speculation: but examination will prove it to be solid and salutary. It would furnish matter for a fine preamble to our first law for appropriating the public revenue; and it will exclude at the threshold of our new government the contagious and ruinous errors of this quarter of the globe, which have armed despots with means, not sanctioned by nature, for binding in chains their fellow men. We have already given in example one effectual check to the Dog of war by transferring the power of letting him loose from the Executive to the Legislative body, from those who are to spend to those who are to pay. I should be pleased to see this second obstacle held out by us also in the first instance. No nation can make a declaration against the validity of long-contracted debts so disinterestedly as we, since we do not owe a shilling which may not be paid with ease, principal and interest, within the time of our own lives.--Establish the principle also in the new law to be passed for protecting copyrights and new inventions, by securing the exclusive right for 19. instead of 14. years. Besides familiarising us to this term, it will be an instance the more of our taking reason for our guide, instead of English precedent, the habit of which fetters us with all the political heresies of a nation equally remarkeable for it's early excitement from some errors, and long slumbering under others. _____________________________________________________________________

[1] - Usufruct: right to the use and profits of the property of another without damaging it; the legal right to use and derive profit or benefit from property that belongs to another person, as long as the property is not damaged