

> “A primary object should be the education of our youth in the science of government. In a republic, what species of knowledge can be equally important?”
— George Washington, Eighth Annual Message to Congress, 1796



Fellow Citizens,

If liberty be the child of reason and virtue, then ignorance is her assassin. No chains so fetter a people as those forged in darkness, and no tyranny so swift to return as that which creeps back through the uneducated mind. It was with this understanding that the architects of our Republic placed knowledge beside freedom, not beneath it, as a pillar of self-government.

When Virginia was still trembling in the infancy of independence, Thomas Jefferson laid before her assembly a plan both daring and humane,  A Bill for the More General Diffusion of Knowledge (1779). He foresaw that even under “the best forms,” power might by “slow operations” be perverted into tyranny, and that the only antidote was to “illuminate the minds of the people at large.” He proposed free schools in every district, merit-based advancement for all classes, and a public university devoted not to creed but to reason. Yet the bill foundered. The landed gentry feared taxation and distrusted the education of the poor. Thus a republic born in liberty refused to fund its own defense,  the education of its children.

Across the Potomac, John Adams inscribed into the Massachusetts Constitution of 1780 that “wisdom and knowledge, as well as virtue, diffused generally among the body of the people,” are indispensable to liberty. Here was the first declaration that education is not a charity but a duty of the state,  that taxes for schools are the price of freedom’s maintenance, not its betrayal.

Benjamin Franklin, long before the Revolution, sought to wed learning with usefulness. His Academy of Philadelphia offered instruction in science, history, and civics,  training citizens for service, not subjects for obedience. He broke the monopoly of Latin and theology, giving birth to what would become the University of Pennsylvania.

James Madison warned that “knowledge will forever govern ignorance.” In his letters and the Memorial and Remonstrance, he joined Jefferson in asserting that education must remain secular and universal, lest faction and superstition overtake the republic. His dream of a national university, though unrealized, inspired later generations to found public institutions open to all.

In his final message to Congress, George Washington pleaded for a National University where citizens of every state might study together and learn to be Americans first. He even left a portion of his estate toward its creation,  a testament to his belief that unity of learning could heal divisions of region and interest.

Noah Webster, though outside the Convention’s walls, became the republic’s schoolmaster. His spellers and readers shaped the tongue of the nation, teaching millions not only to read but to think in the shared idiom of liberty. Through language, he forged civic identity itself,  a quiet revolution of the classroom.

These endeavors, though scattered in time and place, converge upon the same axiom: that liberty requires enlightenment. Each Founder sought, by different means, to anchor freedom in knowledge. Their failures and partial victories alike warn us that ignorance is not merely the absence of education — it is the precondition of tyranny.

By the Five Pillars of the Party of Self-Evident Truth, this lesson stands renewed:

Universal Human Dignity: Every child possesses an equal claim to learning.

Reason and Reality: Education must rest upon truth, not ideology.

Ethical Human Responsibility: The public purse must serve the public good.

Foundations of Freedom and Justice: Knowledge is the first defense of rights.

Guardrail Against Tyranny: To keep power answerable, the people must be wise.


Let us, then, take up Jefferson’s unfinished crusade,  to “establish and improve the law for educating the common people.” For the tax that sustains knowledge is but the thousandth part of what ignorance will exact in servitude.

> “Preach, my dear Sir, a crusade against ignorance.”
— Thomas Jefferson to George Wythe, 1786


On the Necessity of Diffusing Knowledge Among a Free People