Can a founding father believe in public education, taxing only the rich, progressive taxes,?

Question

gov't job training programs, for using government to fight poverty, pensions for the elderly, safety nets for the blind and lame, and be against the death penalty and still be a "classical liberal"?

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TAX ONLY THE RICH
"We are all the more reconciled to the tax on importations, because it falls exclusively on the rich, and with the equal partition of intestate's estates, constitutes the best agrarian law.. Our revenues once liberated by the discharge of the public debt, and its surplus applied to canals, roads, schools, etc., and the farmer will see his government supported, his children educated, and the face of his country made a paradise by the contributions of the rich alone, without his being called on to spare a cent from his earnings."
--Thomas Jefferson to Thaddeus Kosciusko, 1811. ME 13:41
http://www.constitution.org/tj/jeff13.txt

PROGRESSIVE TAXES
"The property of this country is absolutely concentred in a very few hands, having revenues of from half a million of guineas a year downwards... I am conscious that an equal division of property is impracticable. But the consequences of this enormous inequality producing so much misery to the bulk of mankind, legislators cannot invent too many devices for subdividing property, only taking care to let their subdivisions go hand in hand with the natural affections of the human mind. Another means of silently lessening the inequality of property is to exempt all from taxation below a certain point, and to tax the higher portions of property in geometrical progression as they rise. Whenever there is in any country, uncultivated lands and unemployed poor, it is clear that the laws of property have been so far extended as to violate natural right. The earth is given as a common stock for man to labor and live on."

--Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, October 28,1785. ME 19:17, Papers 8:682
http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?document=967

GOVERNMENT WORK PROGRAMS
"Many a youth comes up to London full of expectations, and with little or no money, and unless he get immediate employment he is already half undone; and boys bred up in London without any means of a livelihood, and as it often happens of dissolute parents, are in a still worse condition; and servants long out of place are not much better off. In short, a world of little cases is continually arising, which busy or affluent life knows not of, to open the first door to distress. Hunger is not among the postponable wants, and a day, even a few hours, in such a condition is often the crisis of a life of ruin.
- Thomas Paine, Rights of Man

SOCIAL SPENDING REDUCING POVERTY
"By adopting this method, not only the poverty of the parents will be relieved, but ignorance will be banished from the rising generation, and the number of poor will hereafter become less, because their abilities, by the aid of education, will be greater. Many a youth, with good natural genius, who is apprenticed to a mechanical trade, such as a carpenter, joiner, millwright, shipwright, blacksmith, etc., is prevented getting forward the whole of his life from the want of a little common education when a boy."
- Thomas Paine, Rights of Man

SUPPORT FOR A PENSION SYSTEM FOR THE ELDERLY
"Having thus in a few words, opened the merits of the case, I shall now proceed to the plan I have to propose, which is... To create a national fund, out of which there shall be paid to every person, when arrived at the age of twenty-one years, the sum of fifteen pounds sterling, as a compensation in part, for the loss of his or her natural inheritance, by the introduction of the system of landed property: And also, the sum of ten pounds per annum, during life, to every person now living, of the age of fifty years, and to all others as they shall arrive at that age."
- Thomas Paine, Agrarian Justice

PRIVATE CHARITIES ALONE ARE NOT SUFFICIENT TO ADDRESS POVERTY
"There are, in every country, some magnificent charities established by individuals. It is, however, but little that any individual can do, when the whole extent of the misery to be relieved is considered. He may satisfy his conscience, but not his heart. He may give all that he has, and that all will relieve but little. It is only by organizing civilization upon such principles as to act like a system of pulleys, that the whole weight of misery can be removed... The plan here proposed will reach the whole. It will immediately relieve and take out of view three classes of wretchedness-the blind, the lame, and the aged poor; and it will furnish the rising generation with means to prevent their becoming poor; and it will do this without deranging or interfering with any national measures."
- Thomas Paine, Agrarian Justice

Answer 1

I can make this simple:
as an American Tax Payer, would you want ur tax money to be spent in a foreign country with ungrateful people that hate our guts, or do you want ur tax money spent here in ours and your country helping and educating our own children and our elderly?

Answer 2

Knowledge will forever govern ignorance; and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.
James Madison

Learned Institutions ought to be favorite objects with every free people. They throw that light over the public mind which is the best security against crafty and dangerous encroachments on the public liberty.
James Madison
Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government.
Thomas Jefferson
If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.
Thomas Jefferson
Experience demands that man is the only animal which devours his own kind, for I can apply no milder term to the general prey of the rich on the poor.
Thomas Jefferson

Answer 3

If they tried to tax only the rich , the first thing they would do is say the rich is anyone who makes over 100 grand a year , because when you go to the ones like Trump , and Gates , you tax them too much they can close up shop on their companies , and leave the Country . How do you plan to fix the high unemployment after Gates shuts down all of Microsoft , and Trump closes all his hotels/casinos etc. ...it would not hurt them , they are super rich , and can live off what they already have , the super rich owns the places many of America works , over burden them , and they close up ,and retire ....what then ?????

Answer 4

I do not give a flip what the founding fathers had in mind. Times change, environmental conditions change, population levels change, etc... If you want to stick to what people may have ment 100s of years ago you are doomed to fail. Where we are coming from is ever evolving and so should our ways.

Socrates once observed that the natural progression of a democracy is to an Oligarchy and then on to a dictatorship. Is this the path you hope to expedite? It sure sounds like that is what you are after.

Answer 5

What is the deal with the hatred for public education?

An education is one of the truly good ways one can elevate their station in life.

Would cons rather have the poor out on the streets or poor children working in factories? Would they consider that to be the "good old days"?

Answer 6

Tories, ie, the King's social gathering quite then the american social gathering. by ability of ways, Bush is a average/present day Republican as are all the so-noted as neocons. Calling him a conservative is scuffling with phrases to a conservative.

Answer 7

Hate to be the one to break this to you, but all the Founding Fathers have been dead for quite some time now.

Answer 8

Read the Constitution, NOW!