Adam Griffin
  Staff writer

The Democratic Party — the party of Jefferson. Thomas Jefferson founded the modern Democratic Party in the 1790s as an opposition movement to the Federalist Party. Little did he know that the opposition that he and James Madison led would become the foundation of a political party that is still in existence today.

By all accounts, the Democratic Party today looks very different than it did in Jefferson’s day and despite many attempts by such notable party leaders as Franklin D. Roosevelt — who both erected the Jefferson Memorial in Washington and chose to solidify Jefferson’s place as the founder of the party — Jefferson himself would not agree with much of anything that the Democratic Party today stands for.

The Democratic-Republicans, as they were called in Jefferson’s day, were the party of small and limited government. They were created in opposition to the expanding size and scope of central government power brought on by the Federalists under the new constitution. One of Jefferson’s primary concerns, unheeded by both parties in the current day and age, was the evils of an overly burdensome debt. Given our rising debt of $18 trillion it is hard for any party to claim the mantle of Jefferson.

In his first two years in office, President Jefferson cut $20 million out of an $80 million debt that he believed was immoral and the equivalent of robbing future generations of capital. With fiscally irresponsible candidates, like Bernie Sanders on the Democratic Party’s main debate stage, it is facetious at best for the Democrats to lay claim to the Party of Jefferson.

Jefferson was a liberal democrat, but the meaning of those words has undergone massive change since his time. Liberal thought in Jefferson’s age was a belief in minimal government and maximum liberty—the two were linked; more government meant less freedom, less government meant greater liberty for the people. Jefferson was a liberal because he believed that true liberty was the morally correct state for men and women to live in, unencumbered by any restrictions, red tape or rules that were not intended to protect the rights of the people or advance the cause of liberty.

In a characteristic pronouncement from his First Inaugural Address, Jefferson spoke to America, “Still one thing more, fellow-citizens — a wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicities.”

Jefferson was a democrat because of his deeply held conviction that the people, “left free to regulate their own pursuits of industry,” were a greater force for transformative good in the world than any government, king or central power could ever be. Governments were meant to protect against people’s rights, violating vices and nothing more. A democrat to Jefferson was summed up in a simple phrase that he penned in reference to the American people, “Whatever they can, they will,” he wrote.

Today, the Democratic Party, and in many ways the Republican Party as well, have betrayed the legacy of Thomas Jefferson. Many of Jefferson’s visions for America as an egalitarian agrarian republic have faded from the realm of possibilities. Also, slavery has left a self-acknowledged scar on his legacy, and yet many of his beliefs and warnings about the future have come true. The Civil War, which he foresaw, did much to tarnish his standing in the minds of Americans. However, he made a rallying comeback under President Franklin Roosevelt during the Great Depression and World War II, because of his unbridled optimism and hope as a global advocate and apostle for liberty against the forces of Nazism and tyranny that were growing increasingly powerful.

This adoption of Jefferson by President Roosevelt—an avid proponent of increased government action—was an audacious political move, because it involved the acquisition of a man’s legacy known for fighting against government all of his life. Jefferson’s faith in the people would have caused him to take his hands off of the reins of government in times of economic turmoil, believing that the people could handle the crisis themselves and be stronger for it.

Roosevelt’s use of the government to rectify economic depression was an acknowledgment that the people could not recover from it themselves and would only lead to future dependency during times of depression—in Jefferson’s mind, dependency was a kind of shackle that would inhibit the true exercise of real liberty.

However, the real Jefferson, a liberal democrat focused on spreading liberty to all individuals across the globe, is properly invoked when politicians and other leaders express a shining optimism for the future of America and the hope her citizens will hold the sacred fire of liberty high so it can be seen by all peoples of the world.

After all, this implies that freedom is sponsored and acquired by the free will of the people and not at the discretion of the one institution that has a monopoly on force, government.