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Thomas Jefferson, president of the United States from 1801 to 1809, was scheduled to speak in Salida yesterday. The modern Jefferson is actually Clay Jenkinson, a scholar who speaks with a resonate baritone, unlike the real Jefferson's thin, reedy voice.
Even so, I feel more patriotic when I am reminded that
this nation once had a president who stated that banking
institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than
standing armies,
who attacked the loathsome
combination of Church and State,
and who observed that
man is the only animal which devours his own kind, for I
can apply no milder term to the general prey of the rich on
the poor.
Jefferson has been dead since July 4, 1826, and Clay Jenkinson is one of many who preserve his legacy. Some modern out-of-office politicians, however, are not willing to trust posterity; instead, they have hastened to be heard.
Most notable of late is Dick Cheney, the former vice-president who's been making the rounds to explain the virtues of torture and warrantless wiretapping. He's not the only one. Newt Gingrich, former Speaker of the House, nowadays pops up on television more often than Cialis commercials, and two of Colorado's own has-beens have also stepped forward.
One is Tom Tancredo, late of our 6th congressional
district and an unsuccessful candidate for the GOP
presidential nomination in 2008. Tancredo, apparently in
need of a fiery statement to rev up both of his remaining
followers, has charged that La Raza, an Hispanic advocacy
group so radical that it receives donations from Wal-Mart
and Citibank, is a Latino KKK without the hoods or the
nooses.
I've lived around La Raza for years, and from what I haven't seen, La Raza has to be the most inept KKK imitator known to history. I've never had a six-armed cross burned on my lawn, or even seen one afire in some clearing. No non-hooded La Razans have interfered when I or various Anglo neighbors have gone to the polls to vote. No bombings, no beatings, no lynchings, no notices to leave El Pueblo Del Salida before sundown.
If there is an iota of similarity between the operations of La Raza and the activities of the Ku Klux Klan, it has yet to appear. But perhaps things are different on Tancredo's planet.
The other blast from the past is Marilyn Musgrave, who
represented our 4th congressional district for three terms
before voters replaced her last year. Musgrave has returned
to public life with a fundraising letter for an outfit she
leads, Votes Have Consequences.
She says she lost in 2008 because the radical
homosexual lobby, abortionists, gun-grabbers and all the
rest of the extremists finally spent enough money, spread
enough lies and fooled enough voters to defeat me.
And it should be noted that while other politicians
worried about climate change, economic instability,
international terrorism, crumbling infrastructure, two
wars, energy supplies, home foreclosures and other minor
matters, Musgrave told us that preventing gay marriage was
the most important issue that we face today.
Yet even Dick Cheney, who seems able to find scores of threats to our way of life, doesn't have a problem with states legalizing gay marriage.
The out-of-office Musgrave says she is now free to speak
the truth because she is no longer shackled by the
constraints of the Washington political world or even the
Republican Party.
In other words, she said she was constrained from speaking the truth when she held office, but now she is free to do so. So it follows that the best way to preserve her moral character is to prevent her from holding public office ever again, lest she suffer a relapse.
Or as Jefferson once observed, When a man has cast
his longing eye on [political] offices, a rottenness begins
in his conduct.
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