<<"The two enemies of the people are criminals and government, so let us
tie the second down with the chains of the Constitution so the second
will not become the legalized version of the first." >>
I certainly don't think that that was the intention of the Founding Fathers, despite the false attribution of those words to Thomas Jefferson. I am afraid you have been hoaxed, as were many others, by the false quotation. Here's what Jefferson DID say:
http://www.barrypopik.com/index.php/new_york_city/entry/the_two_enemies_of_the_people_are_criminals_and_government/<<Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) did write, in the Kentucky Resolutions of 1798, the following: “...in questions of power then, then, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the constitution.”
<<Jefferson did not write the following quotation that is frequently credited to him: “The two enemies of the people are criminals and government, so let us tie the second down with the chains of the Constitution so the second will not become the legalized version of the first.”
<<The Jefferson misquotation appears in April 2000 in an essay, “Rule by Brute Force,” by Steve Kubby of the American Medical Marijuana Association.>>
A more detailed exposition of the hoax is contained in the article to which I linked, above.
In answer to your question, no, of course I do not agree with that. It was certainly not the intention of the Founding Fathers, whose primary experience was the so-called "tyranny" of King George. They had "had it" with monarchical government and what they perceived to be arbitrary and irresponsible one-man rule and their No. 1 concern was to make the people, rather than a monarch, sovereign. Jefferson, the third President of the U.S.A., would have had to be the supreme hypocrite to have denounced government itself as an enemy of the people. That is totally absurd. Although that false quote is apparently much in vogue with the right wing, it is basically saying that Jefferson was an anarchist. Total rubbish.
