What Thomas Jefferson has to say and why he would have voted YES on Amendment 4

We decided that this is an important response to the argument about Republicanism versus Democracy. Even the Constitution Committee sent out an e-mail on Friday telling its members to Vote NO on Amendment 4. The head of the Constitution Committee, David Wood, gave a quote by Ben Franklin who slapped down democracy as a reason to reject Amendment 4.

Mayor Rene Varela should be supporting Amendment 4 as he is a firm believer in the Constitution and he is a Jeffersonian. But most politicians speak with forked tongue. Once they get elected, who knows what they will do but we have seen the effects of their bad decisions across the State...empty developments, foreclosure after foreclosure. We don't expect many politicians to ever agree to give up the power to the people. They just want to continue to make corrupt, under the table deals and flip-flop on the very people who trusted them.

Opinion in Fernandina New Leader
by: Robert M. Weintraub

In the ongoing struggle over the Florida Hometown Democracy amendment – Amendment 4 on the November ballot – the centuries-old debate between democracy and republicanism is being revisited.The question: How much power should the people have?

Those who control government want to keep the public at bay. They say the public has enough power, and that our form of representative government is sufficient. They say we elect our representatives whom we expect will protect our interests and represent our views. But Thomas Jefferson warned: "The further the departure from direct and constant control by the citizens, the less has the government the ingredient of republicanism.”

Jefferson further wrote: "The only orthodox object of the institution of government is to secure the greatest degree of happiness possible to the general mass of those associated under it . . . unless the mass retains sufficient control over those entrusted with the powers of their government, these will be perverted to their own oppression, and to the perpetuation of wealth and power in the individuals . . . selected for the trust."

In the Hometown Democracy debate, opponents say “we are a republic, not a democracy,” so therefore land use decisions should be left to those elected to make those decisions. Proponents point out that elected officials have become a collective rubber stamp for every developers’ proposal put before them, the perversion of power Jefferson referred to.

As we have seen repeatedly, not only in Nassau County, but throughout Florida, elected officials do not listen to the public. Crane Island, the commercial development on industrial land at Chester Road, Crawford Industrial Area near Bryceville, Nocatee in St. John’s and Duval Counties and so many more across the state, was ignored by elected officials. This is exactly what Jefferson warned about.

Jefferson called those who bypass the public interest "rogues . . . who, rising above the swinish multitudes, always contrive to nestle themselves into places of power and profit . . . stealing the people's good opinion, and then steal from them the right of withdrawing it, by contriving laws and associations against the power of the people themselves."

Some say the answer is to vote out those who do not pay attention to the public will. Not an easy task when developers and land speculators bankroll their candidates’ election campaign and outspend opponents 3 to 1. Opponents of Hometown Democracy say land use decisions are too complex for the public to understand. To them Jefferson said “I am not among those who fear the people….I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of society, but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take if from them, but to inform their discretion.”

When government abuses the powers given by the people, it is the people’s right to take those powers back as Jefferson so eloquently wrote in the American Declaration of Independence: “Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it….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 Hometown Democracy Amendment follows Jeffersonian philosophy: it is conceived to challenge the despotism that has usurped our government and restore a voice to people on community changes that affect them. Amendment 4 will provide new protection for our future security.

Representative government has failed because those in power have ignored the will of the people. Jefferson said: “The mass of the citizens is the safest depository of their own rights."

That is why we must prevail; we must vote yes for Amendment 4.