Charles Curley - Software Engineer, Writer - Thomas Jefferson: Patron Saint of the Internet

Happy Thomas Jefferson's Birthday

"Our legislators are not sufficiently apprized of the rightful limits of their power; that their true office is to declare and enforce only our natural rights and duties, and to take none of them from us."
-- Thomas Jefferson, Letter to F. W. Gilmer, 1816

Today, April 13th, 1998, is the 255th anniversary of Thomas Jefferson's birthday. He greatly favored the free spread of knowledge and technology. He founded a university, opposed religious oppression and always thought for himself. If he were alive today, I have no doubt he would be well established in cyberspace, and fighting fiercely for the cyber rights of the people.

The epitaph Jefferson wrote for himself tells us what he thought important: "Here was buried Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of American Independence, of the statute of Virginia for religious freedom, and father of the University of Virginia."

Clearly Jefferson is a man whose life should be celebrated, and nowhere is it more appropriate to do so than in cyberspace.

I propose that we declare Thomas Jefferson the Patron Saint of the Internet. Jefferson would have been appalled at anything that smacked of centralization, so the way to do this is for each of us on our web sites and email declare Thomas Jefferson the Patron Saint of the Internet. Links to Thomas Jefferson sites are optional. No doubt some enterprising person, in the co-operative spirit of the Internet, will produce some cute graphics we can put on our web sites. Someone else will step forward to offer a list server to the Thomas Jefferson for Patron Saint of the Internet campaign. The Official Thomas Jefferson for Patron Saint of the Internet Web Server? There isn't one.

I hereby declare Thomas Jefferson to be Patron Saint of the Internet. Go thou and do likewise. If you believe in it.

"I never submitted the whole system of my opinion to the creed of any party of men whatever, in religion, in philosophy, in politics, or in anything else, where I was capable of thinking for myself. Such an addiction is the last degradation of a free and moral agent. If I could not go to heaven but with a party, I would not go there at all."
-- Thomas Jefferson, letter to Francis Hopkinson, (1789)