Nice SELECTIVE quote: Here's the full quote where Jefferson is talking about one particular rebellion, which he says was IGNORANT! He was saying that when idiots believe something stupid (like the tea-baggers), they should still speak out, because people cannot be well-informed about everything. He was (optimistically) saying that people will eventually find out that they were wrong, but that people should always stand up when they perceive their government is failing them. So if tea-baggers want to associate themselves with this IGNORANT rebellion of the past, by all means... I agree. Tea-baggers are ignorant, but they have a right to scream that ignorance from the hilltops. "Yet where does this anarchy exist? Where did it ever exist, except in the single instance of Massachusetts? And can history produce an instance of a rebellion so honourably conducted? I say nothing of it's motives. They were founded in ignorance, not wickedness. God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion. The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented, in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions, it is lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. And what country can preserve its liberties, if it's rulers are not warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to the facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure."