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We celebrate Independence Day because the Declaration of Independence was formally issued on July 4, 1776. It was written by Thomas Jefferson, who believed that it suffered from editing by the rest of the drafting committee -- John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Robert R. Livingston, Roger Sherman -- as well as the Continental Congress during the debates before its adoption.
Many memorable phrases survived, though, among them
life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
People
often claim that these are constitutional rights. But
they're not in the U.S. Constitution. They're in the
Declaration, which has no legal force or effect.
Jefferson had no direct hand in drafting the U.S.
Constitution. When the convention met in 1787 to
revise
the Articles of Confederation, Jefferson was
in Paris, serving as the U.S. ambassador to France. But his
political ally James Madison was at the convention.
Jefferson had issues with the original Constitution.
Since there was then no limit on how many times a President
could run for re-election, he feared Americans might suffer
a President for life.
He also objected to the
absence of express declarations insuring freedom of
religion, freedom of the press, freedom of the person under
the uninterrupted protection of the Habeas corpus, &
trial by jury in civil as well as in criminal
cases.
The 22nd Amendment, adopted in 1951, put a term limit on
the presidency. The first 10 amendments, the Bill of
Rights
adopted in 1791, covered most of his other
objections.
Here is where Jefferson and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales are in agreement: Habeas Corpus, which in essence is to ask an impartial judge to determine whether one is legally held in custody.
In the main body of the Constitution, it is defined as a
privilege
that shall not be suspended, unless
when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety
may require it.
Jefferson saw that as the absence of a
constitutional right. It was not put in the Bill of Rights.
Thus Gonzales has argued that there is no express grant
of habeas in the Constitution.
It's interesting to see what Jefferson has to say about
other controversies that have survived from his time to
ours. Today, we see immigration as a federal issue, and so
did Federalist President John Adams, who got a law passed
allowing him to deport, without trial, any alien
dangerous to the peace and safety of the United
States.
Jefferson, who was vice-president at the time, responded
with the Kentucky Resolution. Aliens are under the
jurisdiction and protection of the laws of the State
wherein they are: that no power over them has been
delegated to the United States, nor prohibited to the
individual States.
Further, an act which authorizes the
executive to act on his own suspicion, without
accusation, without jury, without public trial, without
confrontation of the witnesses against him, without hearing
witnesses in his favor, without defense, without counsel,
is contrary to the provision also of the Constitution, is
therefore not law, but utterly void.
So there are places where Jefferson disagrees with Gonzales and Dick Cheney.
Organized religion today gets much more public respect
than it did from Jefferson: In every country and every
age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always
in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return
for protection to his own.
Elsewhere, Jefferson observed that It does me no
injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no
God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.
Jefferson coined the phrase wall of separation between
church and state
in an 1802 letter to the Danbury
Baptist Association in Connecticut.
Nowhere could I find Jefferson's opinions on abortion,
gay marriage, flag-burning or similar modern wedge issues.
He did have some opinions on health care, however.
Home-based care is better than in a general hospital,
where the sick, the dying, and the dead are crammed
together, in the same rooms.
As for physicians, Whenever I see two doctors
gathered in a public road, I look up to see whether there
are turkey vultures flying overhead.
We don't celebrate Jefferson's birthday on April 13, and that's just as well. It's not the sort of thing he would have approved of. But when we celebrate America's birthday on July 4, we're also celebrating Jefferson, more than any of the other Founding Fathers -- and it does seem oddly appropriate that both he and John Adams both died on the Fourth of July in 1826.
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