A fundamental presumption that shifted since the time of Jefferson, grossly distorting the intent of the Declaration and our Constitution, is the notion that there are many other values more important than Freedom itself. When this notion first crept into national experience the great mass of people mobilized and reset politics for a long time. Federalists were served public notice for political excesses, and Jefferson won an overwhelming victory in the presidential election of 1800. Indeed, he presided over the first peaceful transition of power in our nation’s history. He also assured those, who lost the election, that the majority was bound to respect their rights under the Constitution and spirit of the Declaration. His famous quote, "We are all Republicans, we are all Federalists" meant that citizens of whatever political party are nevertheless Americans. All of us are bound to respect each other, according to terms of the Founding documents, which people had fought for, ratified and amended. The pronouncement established a standard that every incoming administration has tried to emulate or at least lay claim to.

As president, Jefferson rallied the country around the principles that animated the Founding. These principles were of limited government, which implicitly recognized the preeminence of the national value, Freedom. In his First Inaugural, he said "the sum of good government" is a "wise and frugal one,"—a government that "shall restrain men from injuring one another [and] …leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits…." He was extraordinarily clear: Government must not "take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned." Government runs entirely counter to its stated purpose, counter to intent of the Founding, and counter to the value of Freedom whenever it exceeds its limited function or enumerated powers and strikes off into other directions—say, like health care, green technology, social justice, diversity, worldwide democracy, economic interdependence, international regulatory regimes, and world government! Somewhere in the recognizably modern contemporary mix of goals we just listed, the idea of Freedom seems to have gotten lost. We constantly subordinate Freedom to other values. In so doing, we have also subordinated the people of these United States to other countries, other cultures, other institutions, other religions, other currencies, other laws and codes of ethics, and literally to other people who got here legally or illegally.

After retirement Thomas Jefferson returned to his home in Monticello. There he continued to think about the requirements and meaning of republican government. According to Professor Yarbrough, Jefferson concluded that republicanism is more than a set of institutional arrangements and depends fundamentally upon the character of the people. "To keep alive [a] civic spirit, he championed public education for both boys and girls, with the most talented…going on at public expense all the way through college. He envisioned the University of Virginia, to which he devoted the last years of his life, as a temple that would keep alive the ‘vestal flame’ of republicanism and train men for public service." Jefferson believed that education had an important political mission for survival of the Republic, beginning with elementary school. Yarbrough again: "Schools were to form citizens who understood their rights and duties, who knew how earlier free societies had risen to greatness, and by what errors and vices they had declined."

Jefferson wanted the Republic to remain free above all else too. In order to accomplish this, he believed parents should determine the type of schooling their children received. By dividing and subdividing political power, and by dividing and subdividing the educational determinations made by ward and by school district, he believed we might keep a large republic in constant reach of its citizens. Today when the federal government intrudes into every aspect of our lives and knows no bounds to authority, the people are reduced to serfdom. But even if they are no longer "free," well at least they’ve got health care coming, and oodles and gobs more diversity, notwithstanding an occasional massacre. We may count on the many benefits reflective of those other values besides Freedom, all paid for at taxpayer expense. And never the mind the mouth of labor or so-called bread it has earned, because it all belongs to Government now.

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