Recently I received an e-mail from a little girl who said, “I am 8 years old. Some of my little friends say there is no Jefferson State. Mama says, ‘If you see it in A News Café, it’s so.’ Please tell me the truth; Is there a Jefferson State?”
Virginia, your little friends are wrong. They have been infected with the cynicism of a cynical age. They do not believe in what they cannot see. They think that nothing exists which is not comprehensible to their little minds. All minds are little, Virginia, whether they be children’s or adults’. Our minds are like amoebas in a vast sea of knowledge, incapable of grasping the whole of truth and wisdom.
Yes, Virginia, there is a State of Jefferson. It exists as surely as truth, beauty and justice exist. Alas! How dreary would be the world without a Jefferson State to believe in. It would be as dreary as if there were no Internet. There would be no poetry, no romance, no dream of regional representation. We would have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The eternal light with which freedom fills the world would be extinguished.
Not believe in Jefferson State! You might as well not believe in the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. You might get the functionaries in Sacramento and Salem to hire all the inspectors and surveyors in the world to search for it, but if they did not find it, what would that prove? Nobody can see Jefferson State, but that is no proof that it does not exist. The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor adults can see.
You may tear apart the baby’s rattle to see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not even the united strength of all the materialists who have ever lived can tear apart. Only faith, fancy, poetry, love, romance can push aside that curtain to view the supernal beauty that lies behind it. Is it real? Ah, Virginia, in all this world there is nothing so real as a dream.
No Jefferson State! Thank God! It exists in the minds and hearts of scattered dwellers in the mountains, plains and shores of its own mythical sovereignty, and all the cynics, bureaucrats and board members in the world cannot destroy it.
James Montgomery calls himself a broken-down logger/garbageman who went back to school and got a law degree. His work is in senior services. His interests include hiking, fishing, computers, kayaking, hunting and writing.
