by – Alamy, aol.com

I’m a great believer I luck, and I find the harder I work, the  more I have it. — Thomas Jefferson

Both working hard and hard work play an important role in the development of an individual, But ‘hard work’ is hard work. Its not easy. And hence, most avoid hard work. They run after what’s easy to achieve. 

If you avoid doing hard work, you avoid what it takes to succeed. Hard work acts as the distinguishing factor between the weak and the strong, between those who ’say’ they’ll do it and those who actually ‘do’ it.

Realize that you have a choice. Despite of the pain and regularity of initiative it asks, its benefits are enormous. What you achieve by hard work is something you cannot have by any other means.

Getting into the habit of working hard involves a change. The change is such that working hard isn’t a problem anymore. Its something you look forward to. Because it is the ’stand out’ quality you then have. It is the primary characteristic for anyone who wishes to reach to great heights.

So what is the change?

The change is to learn to learn to overcome the pain of working hard. To transmute that pain into enjoyment. Enjoyment of making an extra effort where others simply do what is easy and obvious. When you transmute that low level pain of working hard into higher level of pleasure, enjoyment and fulfillment and start enjoying working hard, the tides turn in your favor.

Merely working hard makes you stand out from the crowd because hard work is a region off the crowd. Even if you don’t quite arrive at the destination you started for, the lessons learnt along the way and most importantly the characteristics you developed to work hard prove invaluable in the long run.

I think that the articles of confederation were a weak and ineffective form of government; they had no executive branch and little power to enforce laws on states, as well as tax them and regulate their trade. The articles where originally to tie the states together and to help run the revolutionary war, but those days where over and the articles no longer served Americas needs for a democratic government. They where written by a population widely proud of escaping the British Parliaments control and taxation, not wanting to go back; the articles designed a weak federal government on purpose. The articles were quickly proven ineffective at keeping order on this new nation as shays rebellion stirred up as well as other problems with taxes and war debt.

One of the main problems is there inability to control the states government. Congress had the ability to tax but states could deny congressional if they didn’t like it (A). This is a major disadvantage to the Articles of Confederation, the congress asked the states to fill there tax quota but could not enforce it and were lucky to even receive a fourth of the decided quota. . These over controlling state governments led to different forms of currency and trade problems. The states acted as individual countries instead of a united nation, with no strong central government to pull them together. The states with no real leadership developed differing laws, tariffs and trade laws from state to state. The states constitutions of each state even limited the power of central governments citizen’s rights. The difference in state constitutions, laws and currency led to major trade conflicts and inflation of individual currencies leading to major debts unplayable, eventually leading to Shay’s Rebellion.

Shay’s rebellion showed another major flaw in the articles; the almost worthless paper money of the nation, due to states ability to print there own currency, led to these men losing property and profit of any kind decided to enforce there own demands. This outburst showed that articles defective federal system with no power to put down this rebellion eventually ended by a state government funded by a few wealthy men.

The articles did create an army but with no money and desperately struggling in war debt with no good source of revenue the army was forced to endure little pay, congresses inability to pay there demands, and other injustices (C). they didn’t even have the authority to rid leftover British soldiers still “holed up” in old garrisons; made especially hard when still trying to fix trade problems with Brittan, including restrictions on our trade with them, and pay our massive debts (D). Our foreign problems don’t stop their Spain continued to pester us with conflict over the navigation of the Mississippi river (F), as well as the Frances continued frustration with our inability to pay back the debts we owed them.

Now though due to the troubles developed with Britain and their trade restrictions no matter how big our country gets we continue to make the same amount of money from trade (B). The navigation acts were still imposed on use by Britain who continued to hinder our trade and close ports of the West Indies to American merchants and traders weakening Americas industries and tax base further. The British still on American soil in the north continued to recruit Indians, to keep us out of Canada, and maintain the profitable fur trade taking further from our economy. Some colonists insisted on a revenge against Europe by imposing tariffs and quotas on our trade with them, but the article weakened congress had no control over the commerce of the states could do no such thing; this allowed easy going states to lower their trade barriers and make more of foreign industries. In these dismal times in the economy of early America George Washington said this about our relationships to foreign nations “Europe has a set of primary interests, which to us have none, or a very remote relation. Hence she must be engaged in frequent controversies, the causes of which are essentially foreign to our concerns. Hence therefore it must be unwise in us to implicate ourselves, by artificial ties, in the ordinary vicissitudes of her politics, or the ordinary combinations and collisions of her friendships, or enmities”.

These continuing problems tore the country apart with both factions fighting for a stronger or weaker federal government but, change was to come for the nation, which could no longer prosper under such a weak and ineffective form of government, but “the confederation was praiseworthy as confederations  went” the nation needed a tighter more formed and united form of government to lead and guide the people of this new nation, which is why the articles could never pull America from the spiraling disaster of foreign debt, relation, and continued disunity. 

Jefferson was a leader in developing republicanism in the United States. He insisted that the British aristocratic system was inherently corrupt and that Americans’ devotion to civic virtue required independence. In the 1790s he repeatedly warned that Hamilton and Adams were trying to impose a British-like monarchical system that threatened republicanism. He supported the War of 1812, hoping it would drive away the British military and ideological threat from Canada. Jefferson’s vision for American virtue was that of an agricultural nation of yeoman farmers minding their own affairs. His agrarianism stood in contrast to the vision of Alexander Hamilton of a nation of commerce and manufacturing, which Jefferson said offered too many temptations to corruption. Jefferson’s deep belief in the uniqueness and the potential of America made him the father of American exceptionalism. In particular, he was confident that an under populated America could avoid what he considered the horrors of class-divided, industrialized Europe. Jefferson’s republican political principles were heavily influenced by the Country Party of 18th century British opposition writers. He was influenced by John Locke (particularly relating to the principle of inalienable rights).

Jefferson’s very strong defense of States’ rights, especially in the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions of 1798, set the tone for hostility to expansion of federal powers. However, some of his foreign policies did strengthen the government. Most important was the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, when he used the implied powers to annex a huge foreign territory and all its French and Indian inhabitants. His enforcement of the Embargo Act of 1807, while it failed in terms of foreign policy, demonstrated that the federal government could intervene with great force at the local level in controlling trade that might lead to war.

Jefferson was a gifted writer but never a good speaker or advocate and was never comfortable in court. He believed that judges should be technical specialists but should not set policy. He privately felt the 1803 Supreme Court ruling in Marbury v. Madison was a violation of democracy, for it made the Supreme Court the final decision-maker on the Constitution. He lacked enough support in Congress to propose a Constitutional amendment to overturn it. Jefferson continued to oppose the doctrine of judicial review:

To consider the judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions [is] a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy.

14. Jefferson loved science, technology and innovation. One of his favorite devices was a rotating bookstand that could hold five books at once.

13. Thomas Jefferson facts said that he had one slave during his life. However, he was publicly opposed to slavery.

12. He had 12 grandchildren, and many of them lived with him at the same time.

11. Thomas Jefferson was a talented musician, he was a very gifted violin player.

10. Thomas Jefferson was the second Vice President of the United States of America and served under John Adams from March 4, 1797 to March 4, 1801.

9. His father was a planter and surveyor in Albemarle County, Virginia.

8. Jefferson apparently believed in God and the moral teachings of Jesus Christ and the Bible, he apparently did not believe, however, that Jesus Christ was divine.

7. Thomas Jefferson served as the first Secretary of State under George Washington from September 26, 1789 to December 31, 1793.

6. Thomas Jefferson was a United States Ambassador to France.

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5. According to Thomas Jefferson facts, he loved wine. Jefferson was one of the preeminent wine connoisseurs of his age.

4. Throughout his life, books played a vital role in Jefferson’s education. Even during the American Revolution and while minister to France, Jefferson collected and accumulated thousands of books for his library at Monticello.

3. On January 1, 1772, at age 28 Jefferson in Williamsburg married the 23-year-old widow Martha Wayles Skelton. They had six children, only two of whom survived to adulthood.

2. Jefferson handled many cases as a lawyer in colonial Virginia, and was very active from 1768 to 1773.

1. Thomas Jefferson was a terrible public speaker. He frequently mumbled and spoke in an inaudible voice that made it very difficult for people to hear him.

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With the state of today’s political atmosphere, people are angry and want to get back to the basics of what made this country great. Many think we are headed down the wrong path, and rightly so. Politicians always say “this is what the American people want”. But are they right? Is it really what the American people want? Or is it just something that they want? To often it seems that politicians do things not for the American people, but to make themselves look good in the eyes of the American people.

So far every bill they have passed is hurting the average everyday person. Here are some of the things they have put in play. 

1. Credit Card reform was supposed to protect the average guy. So what happens? As soon as they pass it, our interest rates go up. COST MORE.
2. Bank reform. As soon as they passed it, the free checking I had is no longer free. Now there is a monthly charge. And now a charge to use our ATM cards. COST MORE Also now if you go into the bank to cash a payroll check (that’s if you are lucky enough to have one,) and you don’t have an account at that bank, you are charged a check cashing fee. COST MORE. I know someone that has an all cash business. Now when he goes to the bank to make a deposit, they charge him a counting fee. You get that, they charge him a fee to count his money. COST MORE.
3. Health Care. They passed a health care law (which the majority of the American people were against) that was supposed to provide health care to more people and lower everyone’s cost. So far rates are going through the roof, people are being kicked off the insurance they already have, and our children are being kicked off policies because the insurance companies can’t afford to keep them on with the new rules and regulations the new law is proposing. COST MORE.

The government has a habit of trying to fix things that are not broken. And every time they do, they just screw it up, big time.

I have only one message for our government. STOP TRYING TO HELP US, WE CAN’T AFFORD IT ANY MORE.

The government needs to get off the backs of the American people. They need to stop smothering us. Don’t tell us what, and what not, to do. To many, laws and regulations hurts us as a people. Somewhere through the history of our country, the government got it in their heads that they were the great protector of the people. Well, I have a message for our government. GET OFF OUR BACKS. My grand- father said it best. Every time the government passes a law, it’s just another chip of our freedom gone. My grandfather had a good name for the people in Washington. He called them EDUCATED JERKS. That says it all.

“When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.” Thomas Jefferson.

In Philadelphia, American and British lawyers have debated the legality of America’s founding documents.

On Tuesday night, while Republican candidates in Nevada were debating such American issues as nuclear waste disposal and the immigration status of Mitt Romney’s gardener, American and British lawyers in Philadelphia were taking on a far more fundamental topic.

Namely, just what did Thomas Jefferson think he was doing?

Some background: during the hot and sweltering summer of 1776, members of the second Continental Congress travelled to Philadelphia to discuss their frustration with royal rule.

By 4 July, America’s founding fathers approved a simple document penned by Jefferson that enumerated their grievances and announced themselves a sovereign nation.

“Start Quote

When a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security”

The Declaration of Indepence

Called the Declaration of Independence, it was a blow for freedom, a call to war, and the founding of a new empire.

It was also totally illegitimate and illegal.

At least, that was what lawyers from the UK argued during a debate at Philadelphia’s Ben Franklin Hall.

American experiment

The event, presented by the Temple American Inn of Court in conjunction with Gray’s Inn, London, pitted British barristers against American lawyers to determine whether or not the American colonists had legal grounds to declare secession.

For American lawyers, the answer is simple: “The English had used their own Declaration of Rights to depose James II and these acts were deemed completely lawful and justified,” they say in their summary.

To the British, however, secession isn’t the legal or proper tool by which to settle internal disputes. “What if Texas decided today it wanted to secede from the Union? Lincoln made the case against secession and he was right,” they argue in their brief.

A vote at the end of the debate reaffirmed the legality of Jefferson and company’s insurrection, and the American experiment survived to see another day.

It was an unsurprising result, considering the venue – just a few blocks away from where the Declaration was drafted. But did they get it right? Below are some more of the arguments from both sides.

Some of you brain washed people out there has actually believed that you had rights. You actually believed that the conspiracy theroy protestors were crazy.

YOU ARE THE CRAZY ONES why? because you did not listen in school, you did not learn your lessons you failed our country. THANK GOD there was some people out there that had remembered studied and made this battle a difference

Here are some famous quotes that warned you but you the idiots did not listen

“The central bank is an institution of the most deadly hostility existing against the Principles and form of our Constitution. I am an Enemy to all banks discounting bills or notes for anything but Coin. If the American People allow private banks to control the issuance of their currency, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the People of all their Property until their Children will wake up homeless on the continent their Fathers conquered.”

Thomas Jefferson

“The money power preys upon the nation in time of peace and conspires against it in times of adversity. It is more despotic than monarchy, more insolent than autocracy, more selfish than bureaucracy. I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me, and causes me to tremble for the safety of our country. Corporations have been enthroned, an era of corruption will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people, until the wealth is aggregated in a few hands, and the republic is destroyed. “

Abraham Lincoln

“The Colonies would gladly have borne the little tax on tea and other matters had it not been the poverty caused by the bad influence of the English bankers on the Parliament, which has caused in the Colonies hatred of England and the Revolutionary War.”

Benjamin Franklin

We were taught this and I think most people wanted to be cool going to school wanted to be accepted as popular, Instead of learning what we needed to protect our families and our prosperity. Lucky for all of us that some of us actually paid attention.

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            In Clay’s Resolutions, he states that “slavery does not exist by law.” (A)   An Anonymous Georgian states in “Plain Words for the North”, “In a government where sectional interests and feelings may come into conflict, the sole security for permanence and peace is to be found in a Constitution whose provisions are inviolable.” (B) Both sources lead me to say that it was not the Constitution’s fault the nation wanted secession. The Constitution never clearly stated anything about slavery, “the words “slaves” and “slavery” are not to be found in the Constitution, and therefore that is was never intended to give any protection or countenance to the slave system, it is sufficient to reply, that no such words are contained in the instrument, other words were used, intelligently and specifically, to meet the necessities of slavery…”, William Lloyd Garrison, “The United States Constitution”, 1852. (D)  The Constitution was written by a group of men from both North and South, therefore if slavery was absolutely necessary for the good of the nation then the Southern men would have made sure that a section on slavery was made. However, there is none. A good example of people reading between the lines of the Constitution is the Caution Colored People sign. It shows what the Fugitive Slave Law passed by Congress did to runaway slaves, even in the North.(C)  Although the Constitution protects the property rights of the landowner, it does not specifically force the people to enforce the landowner’s property to stay on his or her land. There was no Constitutional basis to support this law, therefore it should never have been passed in the first place, but since Southern congressmen took advantage of the simplicity of the document holding our country together, they were able to make things true that our founding fathers would never have agreed to. The Constitution still served as an instrument of national unity, however, corrupt congressmen, aggressive proslavery persons and abolitionists were disrupting the balance the Constitution was providing the nation, through their sly legal loopholes.

            The political cartoon titled, “Forcing Slavery down the Throat of a Freesoiler.” depicts angry democrats shoving a slave down the throat of a man yelling “Murder!!! Help neighbors, oh my poor wife and children!” In the background there is a hanged man, a house burning and a woman and child running as soldiers shoot. This is a cartoon representation of the troubles in Kansas, a dangerous place to be at this time. ( The 1850s)  This cartoon also shows what politicians were doing at the time: taking an issue and forcing it to be accepted, even if it was technically not right, or unconstitutional.(E) Nowhere in the Constitution did it state that it was okay to force slavery upon those who did not approve of it. However, that did not stop them from doing so, which is exactly what happened back then. It was not the Constitution’s fault that the nation wanted to split apart; it was the fault of the politicians who wanted their way or the highway. They were unhappy with the fact that their issues were not addressed in the written word of the founding fathers, therefore they did not adhere to the Constitution and made up their own answers.

            President James Buchanan, in his fourth annual message to Congress addressed the issue of slavery in the south, “All for which the slave States have ever contended, is to be let alone and permitted to manage their domestic institutions in their own way. As sovereign States, they, and they alone, are responsible before God and the world for the slavery existing among them.” ( I )  By saying this, he is stating that the South should be solely responsible for its own problems, and that the North should not bother them about it. He then goes on to say that according to the Constitution, the Southern states have a right to revolutionary resistance to the federal government if peaceful means of dealing with the Northern aggression do not work. (I) By stating this he gives the South a reason and a legal way to separate. Also, he states the question “Has the Constitution delegated to Congress the power to coerce a State into submission, which is attempting to withdraw or has actually withdrawn from the Confederacy?” (I) Buchanan questioned if the Constitution gave Congress the power to keep States from breaking away from the Union.   This, although a smart idea to question whether the Constitution allowed for such actions, was a bad topic to address. The South now had something to back them up if they so decided to split ( which we all know they did for a short period of time.) Even better, this back up was from the President himself. The Constitution itself did nothing to encourage anything, it was those who analyzed it who are at fault. Without realization of an idea, there is no need to worry about it.

            Chief Justice Roger B. Taney on the Dred Scott v Sanford case stated “If the Constitution recognizes the right of property of the master in a slave, and makes no distinction between that description of property and other property owned by a citizen, no tribunal, acting under the authority of the United States, whether it be legislative, executive, or judicial has a right to draw such a distinction, or deny to it the benefit of the provisions and guarantees which have been provided for the protection of private property against the encroachments of the government.” (J)  However, although he states that the Constitution says that property is property, and nothing else, slaves, although labeled as property, are biologically human beings and since white people are also human beings and not property, therefore black people cannot be property and therefore need to be addressed as white people are. The Constitution does not always have an exact answer for every case, and therefore reading between its lines can cause serious issues such as this one. The Constitution provided no way to determine “superiority” or define “property” thus, that is where the issues arise. When a single, biased, human being must decide something, someone else will always disagree and will always be unhappy with the decision. Unless the Constitution was a living, breathing, talking and interactive document, there was no fair way to rule the Dred Scot case without consulting many people from both the North and South first. When a case threatens to tear the country in two, I believe that consulting the Constitution to determine which side is right is the wrong thing to do. The Constitution was written to keep peace between opposites, not drive a wedge between them.

            It is wrong in saying that “By the 1850’s, the Constitution, originally framed as an instrument of national unity, had become a source of sectional discord and tension and ultimately contributed to the failure of the union which it had created.” The Constitution is what it is and is not to blame for Southern secession. People reading between the lines of the Constitution and coming up with their own ideas as to what it meant are to blame. Since they took what might have seemed to be incomprehensible material and twisted it to be comprehensible and usually not constitutional anymore, the people of the 1850’s destroyed what chances of unity they had remaining. The Constitution is only paper, it could not have physically contributed to the failure of the Union in the 1850s.

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