Scholar Claims Jefferson Would Support Tea Party Movement

The Orange County Register reports:

A "little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical," is one of the better-known quotes of Thomas Jefferson, who was born this day in 1743. It's not hard to imagine which side he would take in today's battles over the increased centralization of power in government.

Were he alive today, would Jefferson support the Tea Party movement and others who object to President Barack Obama's health care bill, stimulus programs and increased spending and debt? "Yes," Jack Pitney told us. He's a professor of American politics at Claremont McKenna College. "Jefferson was deeply suspicious of the centralization of power. He was also suspicious of elites, even though he belonged to the educated and social elite of his time."

There's little doubt who Karl Marx would support.