{"id":154900,"date":"2026-03-06T02:29:38","date_gmt":"2026-03-06T02:29:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/154900\/"},"modified":"2026-03-06T02:29:38","modified_gmt":"2026-03-06T02:29:38","slug":"remembering-thomas-jefferson-queens-gazette","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/154900\/","title":{"rendered":"Remembering Thomas Jefferson – Queens Gazette"},"content":{"rendered":"

In his State of the Union Address, on Tuesday, February 24, President Donald Trump spoke of Thomas Jefferson, \u201c\u2026on July 4th, 1826, the author of the Declaration of Independence, brilliant Thomas Jefferson, drew his last breath.\u201d<\/p>\n

Why should we care about a southern aristocrat, a founder of America, who was a slaveholder? Thomas Jefferson wrote the most influential document in history, changing the world. With his flaws, Thomas Jefferson gave us our country\u2019s Declaration of Independence. In The Foundation for Economic Education, in an article entitled, \u201cThe Declaration of Independence: Its Greek to Me,\u201d the author, James Person tells us that Thomas Jefferson was a believer in Epicurus\u2019 philosophy that the point of all one\u2019s actions was to attain peace for oneself, and that this could be done by limiting one\u2019s desires and by fear of death. Jefferson and the Founders, drafting the Declaration of Independence, \u201ckeen students of the idea of natural law, which was back to the ancient tradition of the Greeks. \u2018Dike,\u2019 (eternal law), lies at the foundation of the universe.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jefferson\u2019s radical ideas of the Declaration of Independence were not new. They were held by the best minds of the Enlightenment. The American Revolution was based on natural rights and natural laws. It was a revolution begun thousands of years earlier by the great thinkers of the tiny city of Athens, Greece. Jefferson believed \u201call men are endowed with certain unalienable rights, existed before government, and the function of government is to secure these rights.\u201d Jefferson and the founders believed in the natural law of the Greeks that man wants his own highest good.<\/p>\n

In a Fall 1823 letter, Jefferson wrote to Adamantios Korais, \u201cNo people sympathize more feelingly than ours with the sufferings of your countrymen: but the fundamental principle of our government, never to entangle us with the broils of Europe, could restrain our generous youth from taking some part in this holy war. Possessing ourselves the combined blessings of liberty and order, we wish the same to other countries and to none more than yours which the first of civilized nations, presented examples of what man should be.\u201d Jefferson did not grant Adamantios Korais requests for public political support. A Philhellenic movement swept across America stemming from Thomas Jefferson, the Founders and their love for the contribution of the ancient Greeks.<\/p>\n

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