Power and Wisdom

Today's quote comes from Thomas Jefferson

"I hope that our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us that the less we use our power the greater it will be."

In January of 2009 President Obama gave a speech to the Muslim world in Cairo he used this quote to call for less American intervention. He has since then increase American intervention overseas while continuing to call for a less aggressive American military.

Sarah Palin Saturday criticized Obama for this view point saying "I would hope that our leaders in Washington, D.C., understand we like to be a dominant superpower. I don't understand a world view where we have to question whether we like it or not that America is powerful."

It seem like we still have some wisdom to gain since America likes to be a dominant superpower, an idea that is more in line with imperial Britain than our Founding Fathers.

Agents against Error

Today's quote comes from one of our Founding Fathers Thomas Jefferson.

"Reason and free inquiry are the only effectual agents against error."

As I said in my first post, to blindly follow tradition or to flee tradition into a unsure future are both terrible errors. To combat those errors we must use our reason, to many people I know reason is the enemy because as evangelicals we rely not on reason alone but faith also. Some have taken this to an extreme and said that faith is too secular and we shouldn't be relying on it at all. I think this is a mistake and I decry the trend I see among evangelicals to abandon the study of science and philosophy. Free inquiry of those ideas are what keep us from making the same errors generation after generation.