Fire Hydrant of Freedom

Politics, Religion, Science, Culture and Humanities => Science, Culture, & Humanities => Topic started by: Crafty_Dog on September 10, 2007, 08:10:13 AM

Title: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 10, 2007, 08:10:13 AM

“These are the times that try men’s souls: The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it NOW, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.” —Thomas Paine

Title: Re: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 11, 2007, 04:48:35 PM

"How could a readiness for war in time of peace be safely
prohibited, unless we could could prohibit, in like manner,
the preparations and establishments of every hostile nation?"

-- James Madison (Federalist No. 41, 1788)

Title: Re: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 12, 2007, 07:12:51 AM

"Knowledge is, in every country, the surest basis of public
happiness."

-- George Washington (First Annual Message, 8 January 1790)

Reference: George Washington: A Collection, W.B. Allen, ed. (469)

Title: Re: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: SB_Mig on September 12, 2007, 01:44:05 PM

"Without freedom of thought, there can be no such thing as wisdom; and no such thing as public liberty without freedom of speech; which is the right of every man as far as by it he does not hurt or control the right of another; and this is the only check it ought to suffer and the only bounds it ought to know. . . . Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freedom of speech, a thing terrible to traitors."

Benjamin Franklin, The New England Courant

Title: Re: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 13, 2007, 05:27:03 AM

"Wish not so much to live long as to live well."

-- Benjamin Franklin (Poor Richard's Almanack, June 1746)

Reference: Franklin: Writings, Lemay, Library of America (1209)

Title: Re: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 14, 2007, 06:54:32 AM

"It must be observed that our revenues are raised almost wholly
on imported goods."

-- Thomas Jefferson (letter to Gouverneur Morris, 1793)

Reference: The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Memorial Edition,
9:198

“Love your neighbor as yourself and your country more than yourself.” —Thomas Jefferson

Title: Re: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 17, 2007, 08:52:45 AM

"[T]he present Constitution is the standard to which we are to
cling. Under its banners, bona fide must we combat our political
foes - rejecting all changes but through the channel itself
provides for amendments."

-- Alexander Hamilton (letter to James Bayard, April 1802)

Reference: Selected Writings and Speeches of Alexander Hamilton,
Frisch, ed. (511)

“Should, hereafter, those incited by the lust of power and prompted by the Supineness or venality of their Constituents, overleap the known barriers of this Constitution and violate the unalienable rights of humanity: it will only serve to shew, that no compact among men (however provident in its construction and sacred in its ratification) can be pronounced everlasting an inviolable.” —George Washington, First Inaugural Address

CONSTITUTION DAY 2007
“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America... Done... the seventeenth day of September, in the year of our LORD one thousand seven hundred and eighty seven.” —George Washington and the delegates

INSIGHT
“In questions of power, then, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution.” —Thomas Jefferson

IChThUS IMPRIMIS
“All of us who were engaged in the struggle must have observed frequent instances of superintending providence in our favor. To that kind providence we owe this happy opportunity of consulting in peace on the means of establishing our future national felicity. And have we now forgotten that powerful friend? Or do we imagine that we no longer need his assistance? I have lived, Sir, a long time, and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth—that God governs in the affairs of men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the Ground without his Notice, is it probable that an Empire can rise without his Aid?” —Benjamin Franklin

CULTURE
“A constitution founded on these principles introduces knowledge among the people, and inspires them with a conscious dignity becoming freemen; a general emulation takes place, which causes good humor, sociability, good manners, and good morals to be general. That elevation of sentiment inspired by such a government, makes the common people brave and enterprising. That ambition which is inspired by it makes them sober, industrious, and frugal.” —John Adams

LIBERTY
“If it be asked, What is the most sacred duty and the greatest source of our security in a Republic? The answer would be, An inviolable respect for the Constitution and Laws—the first growing out of the last... A sacred respect for the constitutional law is the vital principle, the sustaining energy of a free government.” —Alexander Hamilton

THE GIPPER
“[A]ll Americans should reflect upon the precious heritage of liberty under law passed on to us by our Founding Fathers. This heritage finds its most comprehensive expression in our Constitution. The framing of the Constitution was an arduous task accomplished in the spirit of cooperation and with dedication to the ideals of republican self-government and unalienable God-given human rights that gave transcendent meaning and inspiration to the American Revolution... The wisdom and foresight of the architects of the Constitution are manifest in the fact that it remains a powerful governing tool to the present day. Indeed, a great British statesman has called it ‘the most wonderful work ever struck off at a given time by the brain and purpose of man.’ For 200 years, people from other lands have come to the United States to participate in the great adventure in self-government begun in Philadelphia in 1787... [A]ll citizens should reread and study this great document and rededicate themselves to the ideals it enshrines.” —Ronald Reagan

Title: Re: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 18, 2007, 09:09:09 AM

Title: Re: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 19, 2007, 05:29:06 AM

Title: Re: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 20, 2007, 06:26:32 AM

"A good government implies two things; first, fidelity to the
objects of the government; secondly, a knowledge of the means,
by which those objects can be best attained."

-- Joseph Story (Commentaries on the Constitution, 1833)

Reference: Story, Commentaries on the Constitution, 206

Title: Re: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 21, 2007, 06:25:51 AM

"I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country."

-- Nathan Hale (before being hanged by the British, 22 September
1776)

Reference: The Spirit of `Seventy-Six, Commager and Morris (476);
original General William Hull, Campbell (37-38)

Title: Re: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 23, 2007, 12:26:36 PM

http://www.liberty-page.com/foundingdocs/americancrisis/1.html

The Crisis Number I
by Thomas Paine
Founding Documents > The Crisis Papers >

I.

THESE are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as freedom should not be highly rated. Britain, with an army to enforce her tyranny, has declared that she has a right (not only to tax) but "to bind us in all cases whatsoever," and if being bound in that manner, is not slavery, then is there not such a thing as slavery upon earth. Even the expression is impious; for so unlimited a power can belong only to God.
Whether the independence of the continent was declared too soon, or delayed too long, I will not now enter into as an argument; my own simple opinion is, that had it been eight months earlier, it would have been much better. We did not make a proper use of last winter, neither could we, while we were in a dependent state. However, the fault, if it were one, was all our own*; we have none to blame but ourselves. But no great deal is lost yet. All that Howe has been doing for this month past, is rather a ravage than a conquest, which the spirit of the Jerseys, a year ago, would have quickly repulsed, and which time and a little resolution will soon recover.

* The present winter is worth an age, if rightly employed; but, if lost or neglected, the whole continent will partake of the evil; and there is no punishment that man does not deserve, be he who, or what, or where he will, that may be the means of sacrificing a season so precious and useful.
I have as little superstition in me as any man living, but my secret opinion has ever been, and still is, that God Almighty will not give up a people to military destruction, or leave them unsupportedly to perish, who have so earnestly and so repeatedly sought to avoid the calamities of war, by every decent method which wisdom could invent. Neither have I so much of the infidel in me, as to suppose that He has relinquished the government of the world, and given us up to the care of devils; and as I do not, I cannot see on what grounds the king of Britain can look up to heaven for help against us: a common murderer, a highwayman, or a house-breaker, has as good a pretence as he.
'Tis surprising to see how rapidly a panic will sometimes run through a country. All nations and ages have been subject to them. Britain has trembled like an ague at the report of a French fleet of flat-bottomed boats; and in the fourteenth [fifteenth] century the whole English army, after ravaging the kingdom of France, was driven back like men petrified with fear; and this brave exploit was performed by a few broken forces collected and headed by a woman, Joan of Arc. Would that heaven might inspire some Jersey maid to spirit up her countrymen, and save her fair fellow sufferers from ravage and ravishment! Yet panics, in some cases, have their uses; they produce as much good as hurt. Their duration is always short; the mind soon grows through them, and acquires a firmer habit than before. But their peculiar advantage is, that they are the touchstones of sincerity and hypocrisy, and bring things and men to light, which might otherwise have lain forever undiscovered. In fact, they have the same effect on secret traitors, which an imaginary apparition would have upon a private murderer. They sift out the hidden thoughts of man, and hold them up in public to the world. Many a disguised Tory has lately shown his head, that shall penitentially solemnize with curses the day on which Howe arrived upon the Delaware.

As I was with the troops at Fort Lee, and marched with them to the edge of Pennsylvania, I am well acquainted with many circumstances, which those who live at a distance know but little or nothing of. Our situation there was exceedingly cramped, the place being a narrow neck of land between the North River and the Hackensack. Our force was inconsiderable, being not one-fourth so great as Howe could bring against us. We had no army at hand to have relieved the garrison, had we shut ourselves up and stood on our defence. Our ammunition, light artillery, and the best part of our stores, had been removed, on the apprehension that Howe would endeavor to penetrate the Jerseys, in which case Fort Lee could be of no use to us; for it must occur to every thinking man, whether in the army or not, that these kind of field forts are only for temporary purposes, and last in use no longer than the enemy directs his force against the particular object which such forts are raised to defend. Such was our situation and condition at Fort Lee on the morning of the 20th of November, when an officer arrived with information that the enemy with 200 boats had landed about seven miles above; Major General [Nathaniel] Green, who commanded the garrison, immediately ordered them under arms, and sent express to General Washington at the town of Hackensack, distant by the way of the ferry = six miles. Our first object was to secure the bridge over the Hackensack, which laid up the river between the enemy and us, about six miles from us, and three from them. General Washington arrived in about three-quarters of an hour, and marched at the head of the troops towards the bridge, which place I expected we should have a brush for; however, they did not choose to dispute it with us, and the greatest part of our troops went over the bridge, the rest over the ferry, except some which passed at a mill on a small creek, between the bridge and the ferry, and made their way through some marshy grounds up to the town of Hackensack, and there passed the river. We brought off as much baggage as the wagons could contain, the rest was lost. The simple object was to bring off the garrison, and march them on till they could be strengthened by the Jersey or Pennsylvania militia, so as to be enabled to make a stand. We staid four days at Newark, collected our out-posts with some of the Jersey militia, and marched out twice to meet the enemy, on being informed that they were advancing, though our numbers were greatly inferior to theirs. Howe, in my little opinion, committed a great error in generalship in not throwing a body of forces off from Staten Island through Amboy, by which means he might have seized all our stores at Brunswick, and intercepted our march into Pennsylvania; but if we believe the power of hell to be limited, we must likewise believe that their agents are under some providential control.

I shall not now attempt to give all the particulars of our retreat to the Delaware; suffice it for the present to say, that both officers and men, though greatly harassed and fatigued, frequently without rest, covering, or provision, the inevitable consequences of a long retreat, bore it with a manly and martial spirit. All their wishes were one, which was, that the country would turn out and help them to drive the enemy back. Voltaire has remarked that King William never appeared to full advantage but in difficulties and in action; the same remark may be made on General Washington, for the character fits him. There is a natural firmness in some minds which cannot be unlocked by trifles, but which, when unlocked, discovers a cabinet of fortitude; and I reckon it among those kind of public blessings, which we do not immediately see, that God hath blessed him with uninterrupted health, and given him a mind that can even flourish upon care.

I shall conclude this paper with some miscellaneous remarks on the state of our affairs; and shall begin with asking the following question, Why is it that the enemy have left the New England provinces, and made these middle ones the seat of war? The answer is easy: New England is not infested with Tories, and we are. I have been tender in raising the cry against these men, and used numberless arguments to show them their danger, but it will not do to sacrifice a world either to their folly or their baseness. The period is now arrived, in which either they or we must change our sentiments, or one or both must fall. And what is a Tory? Good God! what is he? I should not be afraid to go with a hundred Whigs against a thousand Tories, were they to attempt to get into arms. Every Tory is a coward; for servile, slavish, self-interested fear is the foundation of Toryism; and a man under such influence, though he may be cruel, never can be brave.

BUT, before the line of irrecoverable separation be drawn between us, let us reason the matter together: Your conduct is an invitation to the enemy, yet not one in a thousand of you has heart enough to join him. Howe is as much deceived by you as the American cause is injured by you. He expects you will all take up arms, and flock to his standard, with muskets on your shoulders. Your opinions are of no use to him, unless you support him personally, for 'tis soldiers, and not Tories, that he wants.

I once felt all that kind of anger, which a man ought to feel, against the mean principles that are held by the Tories: a noted one, who kept a tavern at Amboy, was standing at his door, with as pretty a child in his hand, about eight or nine years old, as I ever saw, and after speaking his mind as freely as he thought was prudent, finished with this unfatherly expression, "Well! give me peace in my day." Not a man lives on the continent but fully believes that a separation must some time or other finally take place, and a generous parent should have said, "If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may have peace;" and this single reflection, well applied, is sufficient to awaken every man to duty. Not a place upon earth might be so happy as America. Her situation is remote from all the wrangling world, and she has nothing to do but to trade with them. A man can distinguish himself between temper and principle, and I am as confident, as I am that God governs the world, that America will never be happy till she gets clear of foreign dominion. Wars, without ceasing, will break out till that period arrives, and the continent must in the end be conqueror; for though the flame of liberty may sometimes cease to shine, the coal can never expire.

AMERICA did not, nor does not want force; but she wanted a proper application of that force. Wisdom is not the purchase of a day, and it is no wonder that we should err at the first setting off. From an excess of tenderness, we were unwilling to raise an army, and trusted our cause to the temporary defence of a well-meaning militia. A summer's experience has now taught us better; yet with those troops, while they were collected, we were able to set bounds to the progress of the enemy, and, thank God! they are again assembling. I always considered militia as the best troops in the world for a sudden exertion, but they will not do for a long campaign. Howe, it is probable, will make an attempt on this city [Philadelphia]; should he fail on this side the Delaware, he is ruined. If he succeeds, our cause is not ruined. He stakes all on his side against a part on ours; admitting he succeeds, the consequence will be, that armies from both ends of the continent will march to assist their suffering friends in the middle states; for he cannot go everywhere, it is impossible. I consider Howe as the greatest enemy the Tories have; he is bringing a war into their country, which, had it not been for him and partly for themselves, they had been clear of. Should he now be expelled, I wish with all the devotion of a Christian, that the names of Whig and Tory may never more be mentioned; but should the Tories give him encouragement to come, or assistance if he come, I as sincerely wish that our next year's arms may expel them from the continent, and the Congress appropriate their possessions to the relief of those who have suffered in well-doing. A single successful battle next year will settle the whole. America could carry on a two years' war by the confiscation of the property of disaffected persons, and be made happy by their expulsion. Say not that this is revenge, call it rather the soft resentment of a suffering people, who, having no object in view but the good of all, have staked their own all upon a seemingly doubtful event. Yet it is folly to argue against determined hardness; eloquence may strike the ear, and the language of sorrow draw forth the tear of compassion, but nothing can reach the heart that is steeled with prejudice.

QUITTING this class of men, I turn with the warm ardor of a friend to those who have nobly stood, and are yet determined to stand the matter out: I call not upon a few, but upon all: not on this state or that state, but on every state: up and help us; lay your shoulders to the wheel; better have too much force than too little, when so great an object is at stake. Let it be told to the future world, that in the depth of winter, when nothing but hope and virtue could survive, that the city and the country, alarmed at one common danger, came forth to meet and to repulse it. Say not that thousands are gone, turn out your tens of thousands; throw not the burden of the day upon Providence, but "show your faith by your works," that God may bless you. It matters not where you live, or what rank of life you hold, the evil or the blessing will reach you all. The far and the near, the home counties and the back, the rich and the poor, will suffer or rejoice alike. The heart that feels not now is dead; the blood of his children will curse his cowardice, who shrinks back at a time when a little might have saved the whole, and made them happy. I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection. 'Tis the business of little minds to shrink; but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles unto death. My own line of reasoning is to myself as straight and clear as a ray of light. Not all the treasures of the world, so far as I believe, could have induced me to support an offensive war, for I think it murder; but if a thief breaks into my house, burns and destroys my property, and kills or threatens to kill me, or those that are in it, and to "bind me in all cases whatsoever" to his absolute will, am I to suffer it? What signifies it to me, whether he who does it is a king or a common man; my countryman or not my countryman; whether it be done by an individual villain, or an army of them? If we reason to the root of things we shall find no difference; neither can any just cause be assigned why we should punish in the one case and pardon in the other. Let them call me rebel and welcome, I feel no concern from it; but I should suffer the misery of devils, were I to make a whore of my soul by swearing allegiance to one whose character is that of a sottish, stupid, stubborn, worthless, brutish man. I conceive likewise a horrid idea in receiving mercy from a being, who at the last day shall be shrieking to the rocks and mountains to cover him, and fleeing with terror from the orphan, the widow, and the slain of America.

THERE are cases which cannot be overdone by language, and this is one. There are persons, too, who see not the full extent of the evil which threatens them; they solace themselves with hopes that the enemy, if he succeed, will be merciful. It is the madness of folly, to expect mercy from those who have refused to do justice; and even mercy, where conquest is the object, is only a trick of war; the cunning of the fox is as murderous as the violence of the wolf, and we ought to guard equally against both. Howe's first object is, partly by threats and partly by promises, to terrify or seduce the people to deliver up their arms and receive mercy. The ministry recommended the same plan to Gage, and this is what the tories call making their peace, "a peace which passeth all understanding" indeed! A peace which would be the immediate forerunner of a worse ruin than any we have yet thought of. Ye men of Pennsylvania, do reason upon these things! Were the back counties to give up their arms, they would fall an easy prey to the Indians, who are all armed: this perhaps is what some Tories would not be sorry for. Were the home counties to deliver up their arms, they would be exposed to the resentment of the back counties who would then have it in their power to chastise their defection at pleasure. And were any one state to give up its arms, that state must be garrisoned by all Howe's army of Britons and Hessians to preserve it from the anger of the rest. Mutual fear is the principal link in the chain of mutual love, and woe be to that state that breaks the compact. Howe is mercifully inviting you to barbarous destruction, and men must be either rogues or fools that will not see it. I dwell not upon the vapors of imagination; I bring reason to your ears, and, in language as plain as A, B, C, hold up truth to your eyes.

I thank God, that I fear not. I see no real cause for fear. I know our situation well, and can see the way out of it. While our army was collected, Howe dared not risk a battle; and it is no credit to him that he decamped from the White Plains, and waited a mean opportunity to ravage the defenceless Jerseys; but it is great credit to us, that, with a handful of men, we sustained an orderly retreat for near an hundred miles, brought off our ammunition, all our field pieces, the greatest part of our stores, and had four rivers to pass. None can say that our retreat was precipitate, for we were near three weeks in performing it, that the country might have time to come in. Twice we marched back to meet the enemy, and remained out till dark. The sign of fear was not seen in our camp, and had not some of the cowardly and disaffected inhabitants spread false alarms through the country, the Jerseys had never been ravaged. Once more we are again collected and collecting; our new army at both ends of the continent is recruiting fast, and we shall be able to open the next campaign with sixty thousand men, well armed and clothed. This is our situation, and who will may know it. By perseverance and fortitude we have the prospect of a glorious issue; by cowardice and submission, the sad choice of a variety of evils- a ravaged country- a depopulated city- habitations without safety, and slavery without hope- our homes turned into barracks and bawdy-houses for Hessians, and a future race to provide for, whose fathers we shall doubt of. Look on this picture and weep over it! and if there yet remains one thoughtless wretch who believes it not, let him suffer it unlamented.

COMMON SENSE.

Philadelphia, December 19, 1776.

Title: Alexander Hamilton
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 24, 2007, 07:29:30 AM

"The State governments possess inherent advantages, which will
ever give them an influence and ascendancy over the National
Government, and will for ever preclude the possibility of federal
encroachments. That their liberties, indeed, can be subverted
by the federal head, is repugnant to every rule of political
calculation."

-- Alexander Hamilton (speech to the New York Ratifying Convention,
17 June 1788)

Reference: The Works of Alexander Hamilton, Henry Cabot Lodge,
ed., vol.2 (17)

Title: John Adams
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 25, 2007, 06:39:02 AM

Title: Re: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 26, 2007, 05:28:50 AM

"We have therefore to resolve to conquer or die: Our won Country's
Honor, all call upon us for vigorous and manly exertion, and if we
now shamefully fail, we shall become infamous to the whole world.
Let us therefore rely upon the goodness of the Cause, and the
aid of the supreme Being, in whose hands Victory is, to animate
and encourage us to great and noble Actions. "

-- George Washington (General Orders, 2 July 1776)

Reference: George Washington: A Collection, W.B. Allen, ed. (71)

Title: Re: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 27, 2007, 05:12:00 AM

"No political truth is certainly of greater intrinsic value, or is
stamped with the authority of more enlightened patrons of liberty
than that on which the objection is founded. The accumulation of
all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same
hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary,
self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very
definition of tyranny."

-- James Madison (Federalist No. 48, 1 February 1788)

Reference: Madison, Federalist No. 47.

Title: Re: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 28, 2007, 11:04:32 PM

"A Man may, if he know not how to save, keep his Nose to the
Grindstone, and die not wirth a Groat at last."

-- Benjamin Franklin (Poor Richard's Almanack, 1742)

Reference: Poor Richard: The Almanacks for the Years, 1733-1758,
intro by Van Wyck Brooks (94)

Title: Re: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 01, 2007, 04:00:04 AM

The Patriot Post
Founders' Quote Daily

"The great leading objects of the federal government, in which
revenue is concerned, are to maintain domestic peace, and provide
for the common defense. In these are comprehended the regulation
of commerce that is, the whole system of foreign intercourse;
the support of armies and navies, and of the civil administration."

-- Alexander Hamilton (remarks to the New York Ratifying
Convention, June 1788)

Reference: Selected Writings and Speeches of Alexander Hamilton,
Frisch, ed. (228-229)

Title: Samuel Adams
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 02, 2007, 05:11:23 PM

"No people will tamely surrender their Liberties, nor can
any be easily subdued, when knowledge is diffusd and Virtue is
preservd. On the Contrary, when People are universally ignorant,
and debauchd in their Manners, they will sink under their own
weight without the Aid of foreign Invaders."

-- Samuel Adams (letter to James Warren, 4 November 1775)

Title: John Adams
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 04, 2007, 09:54:47 AM

"It already appears, that there must be in every society of men
superiors and inferiors, because God has laid in the constitution
and course of nature the foundations of the distinction."

-- John Adams (Thoughts on Government, 1776)

Reference: The Works of John Adams, Charles Adams, ed., 427.
=====
“[J]udges, therefore, should be always men of learning and experience in the laws, of exemplary morals, great patience, calmness, coolness, and attention. Their minds should not be distracted with jarring interests; they should not be dependent upon any man, or body of men.” —John Adams

Patriot Post
======

"In times of peace the people look most to their representatives;
but in war, to the executive solely."

-- Thomas Jefferson (letter to Caeser Rodney, 10 February 1810)

Reference: Jefferson: Writings, Peterson ed., Library of America
(1218)

Title: Thomas Paine
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 05, 2007, 05:09:24 AM

"The times that tried men's souls are over-and the greatest and
completest revolution the world ever knew, gloriously and happily
accomplished."

-- Thomas Paine (The American Crisis, No. 13, 1783)

Reference: The Spirit of `Seventy-Six, Commager and Morris (109);
original Writings of Pain, Conway, ed., vol. 1 (370-375)

Title: Hamilton
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 08, 2007, 03:20:35 AM

Title: Benjamin Franklin
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 10, 2007, 06:36:38 AM

"But they have two other Rights; those of sitting when they
please, and as long as they please, in which methinks they have the
advantage of your Parliament; for they cannot be dissolved by the
Breath of a Minister, or sent packing as you were the other day,
when it was your earnest desire to have remained longer together."

-- Benjamin Franklin (letter to William Strahan, 19 August 1784)

Reference: Franklin Collected Works, Lemay, ed., 1099.

Title: Wilson on slavery
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 11, 2007, 03:52:17 AM

"Slavery, or an absolute and unlimited power in the master over
the life and fortune of the slave, is unauthorized by the common
law.... The reasons which we sometimes see assigned for the origin
and the continuance of slavery appear, when examined to the bottom,
to be built upon a false foundation. In the enjoyment of their
persons and of their property, the common law protects all."

-- James Wilson (The Natural Rights of Individuals, 1804)

Reference: Original Intent, Barton (293); original The Works of
the Honorable James Wilson, B. Wilson, ed., vol. 2 (488)

Title: Re: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 17, 2007, 08:43:07 AM

"I have not yet begun to fight!"

-- John Paul Jones (response to enemy demand to surrender, 23
September 1779)

Reference: The Spirit of `Seventy-Six, Commager and Morris (948);
original Life and Character of Jones, Sherburne (126-129)
==========

"If by the liberty of the press were understood merely the liberty
of discussing the propriety of public measures and political
opinions, let us have as much of it as you please: But if it means
the liberty of affronting, calumniating and defaming one another,
I, for my part, own myself willing to part with my share of it,
whenever our legislators shall please so to alter the law and
shall chearfully consent to exchange my liberty of abusing others
for the privilege of not being abused myself."

-- Benjamin Franklin (An Account of the Supremest Court of
Judicature in Pennsylvania, viz. The Court of the Press, 12
September 1789)

Reference: Franklin Collected Works, Lemay, ed., 1152.
================

"It will not be doubted, that with reference either to
individual, or National Welfare, Agriculture is of primary
importance. In proportion as Nations advance in population, and
other circumstances of maturity, this truth becomes more apparent;
and renders the cultivation of the Soil more and more, an object
of public patronage."

-- George Washington (Eighth Annual Message to Congress, 1796)

Reference: Washington's Maxims, 67.
==============
“The construction applied... to those parts of the Constitution of the United States which delegate Congress a power... ought not to be construed as themselves to give unlimited powers.” —Thomas Jefferson
============

"But if we are to be told by a foreign Power ... what we shall
do, and what we shall not do, we have Independence yet to seek,
and have contended hitherto for very little."

-- George Washington (letter to Alexander Hamilton, 8 May 1796)

Reference: The Writings of George Washington, Fitzpatrick, ed.,
vol. 35 (40)

==============

“Freedom had been hunted round the globe; reason was considered as rebellion; and the slavery of fear had made men afraid to think. But such is the irresistible nature of truth, that all it asks, and all it wants, is the liberty of appearing.”—Thomas Paine

Title: Re: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 18, 2007, 06:15:37 AM

"If there is a form of government, then, whose principle and
foundation is virtue, will not every sober man acknowledge it
better calculated to promote the general happiness than any
other form?"

-- John Adams (Thoughts on Government, 1776)

Reference: The Works of John Adams, Charles Adams, ed., 194.

Title: Re: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 19, 2007, 05:32:52 AM

"They define a republic to be a government of laws, and not
of men."

-- John Adams (Novanglus No. 7, 6 March 1775)

Reference: Papers of John Adams, Taylor, ed., vol. 2 (314)

Title: Re: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 23, 2007, 11:57:10 AM

“A Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty, once lost, is lost forever.” —John Adams

-----------------

"The members of the legislative department...are numerous.
They are distributed and dwell among the people at large.
Their connections of blood, of friendship, and of acquaintance
embrace a great proportion of the most influential part of the
society...they are more immediately the confidential guardians
of their rights and liberties."

-- James Madison (Federalist No. 50, 5 February 1788)

Reference: Madison, Federalist No. 50 (316)
--------------------

“Arbitrary power is most easily established on the ruins of liberty abused to licentiousness.” —George Washington

---------------------

"f you speak of solid information and sound judgement, Colonel
Washington is, unquestionably the greatest man on that floor."

-- Patrick Henry (on George Washington, October 1775)

Reference: The Life and Character of Patrick Henry, Writ (132)

Title: Re: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 24, 2007, 08:44:54 AM

“It should be your care, therefore, and mine, to elevate the minds of our children and exalt their courage; to accelerate and animate their industry and activity; to excite in them an habitual contempt of meanness, abhorrence of injustice and inhumanity, and an ambition to excel in every capacity, faculty, and virtue.” —John Adams

"The right of freely examining public characters and measures, and
of free communication among the people thereon . . . has ever been
justly deemed the only effectual guardian of every other right."

-- James Madison (Virginia Resolutions, 24 December 1798)

Reference: Documents of American History, Commager, vol. 1 (182)

Title: Re: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 25, 2007, 03:16:23 AM

"It does not take a majority to prevail...but rather an irate, tireless minority, keen on setting brushfires of freedom in the minds of men."
—Samuel Adams
==========================
"Under all those disadvantages no men ever show more spirit or
prudence than ours. In my opinion nothing but virtue has kept
our army together through this campaign."

-- Colonel John Brooks (letter to a friend, 5 January 1778)

Reference: The Spirit of `Seventy-Six, Commager and Morris (649);
original Massachusets Histrocal Society Procedings, Brooks,
vol. 13 (243-
========================
"Posterity — you will never know how much it has cost my generation to preserve your freedom. I hope you will make good use of it."

—John Quincy Adams

Title: Re: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 26, 2007, 06:07:30 AM

"It has ever been my hobby-horse to see rising in America an empire
of liberty, and a prospect of two or three hundred millions of
freemen, without one noble or one king among them. You say it
is impossible. If I should agree with you in this, I would still
say, let us try the experiment, and preserve our equality as long
as we can. A better system of education for the common people
might preserve them long from such artificial inequalities as are
prejudicial to society, by confounding the natural distinctions
of right and wrong, virtue and vice."

-- John Adams (letter to Count Sarsfield, 3 February 1786)

Reference: Our Sacred Honor, Bennett, 264.

Title: Re: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 29, 2007, 09:04:28 AM

THE FOUNDATION: CONSTITUTIONAL INTERPRETATION
“They are not to do anything they please to provide for the general welfare, but only to lay taxes for that purpose. To consider the latter phrase not as describing the purpose of the first, but as giving a distinct and independent power to do any act they please which may be good for the Union, would render all the preceding and subsequent enumerations of power completely useless.” —Thomas Jefferson

The following is from economist Walter Williams who while certainly not a Founding Father, equally certainly discusses a very pertinent matter:

GOVERNMENT
“In each new Congress since 1995, Rep. John Shadegg (R-AZ) has introduced the Enumerated Powers Act (HR 1359)... Simply put, if enacted, the Enumerated Powers Act would require Congress to specify the basis of authority in the U.S. Constitution for the enactment of laws and other congressional actions. HR 1359 has 28 co-sponsors in the House of Representatives. When Shadegg introduced the Enumerated Powers Act, he explained that the Constitution gives the federal government great, but limited, powers. Its framers granted Congress, as the central mechanism for protecting liberty, specific rather than general powers. The Constitution gives Congress 18 specific enumerated powers, spelled out mostly in Article 1, Section 8. The framers reinforced that enumeration by the 10th Amendment, which reads: ‘The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved for the States respectively, or to the people.’ Just a few of the numerous statements by our founders demonstrate that their vision and the vision of Shadegg’s Enumerated Powers Act are one and the same... I salute the bravery of Rep. Shadegg and the 28 co-sponsors of the Enumerated Powers Act. They have a monumental struggle. Congress is not alone in its constitutional contempt, but is joined by the White House and particularly the constitutionally derelict U.S. Supreme Court.” —Walter Williams

Title: Re: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 30, 2007, 09:07:04 AM

Title: Joseph Story
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 31, 2007, 09:33:25 AM

From: "PatriotPost.US" <Patriot-CR13724847@m1.PatriotPost.US>
To: <Craftydog@dogbrothers.com>
Subject: Founders' Quote Daily
Date: Wednesday, October 31, 2007 3:01 AM

The Patriot Post
Founders' Quote Daily

"On the other hand, the duty imposed upon him to take care,
that the laws be faithfully executed, follows out the strong
injunctions of his oath of office, that he will "preserve,
protect, and defend the constitution." The great object of the
executive department is to accomplish this purpose; and without
it, be the form of government whatever it may, it will be utterly
worthless for offence, or defence; for the redress of grievances,
or the protection of rights; for the happiness, or good order,
or safety of the people."

-- Joseph Story (Commentaries on the Constitution, 1833)

Reference: Story, Commentaries on the Constitution, 576.

--------

Title: Re: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 01, 2007, 04:56:24 AM

"It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth
can stand by itself. Subject opinion to coercion: whom will you
make your inquisitors?"

-- Thomas Jefferson (Notes on the State of Virginia, Query 17,
1781)

Reference: Jefferson: Writings, Peterson ed., Library of America
(286)

Title: Re: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 02, 2007, 03:23:20 AM

"It will be worthy of a free, enlightened, and, at no distant
period, a great Nation, to give to mankind the magnanimous and
too novel example of a People always guided by an exalted justice
and benevolence."

-- George Washington (Farewell Address, 19 September 1796)

Reference: George Washington: A Collection, W.B. Allen, ed. (522)

Title: Re: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 05, 2007, 06:58:17 AM

"If we desire to insult, we must be able to repel it; if we
desire to secure peace, one of the most powerful instruments of
our rising prosperity, it must be known, that we are at all times
ready for War."

-- George Washington (fifth annual address to Congress, 13
December 1793)

Title: Re: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 07, 2007, 06:03:51 AM

The Patriot Post
Founders' Quote Daily

"He [King George] has waged cruel war against human nature itself,
violating its most sacred right of life and liberty in the persons
of a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying
them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable
death in their transportation thither."

-- Thomas Jefferson (deleted portion of a draft of the Declaration
of Independence, June 1776)

Reference: Jefferson: Writings, Peterson ed., Library of America
(22)

Title: Re: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 08, 2007, 10:04:40 AM

"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with
the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure."

-- Thomas Jefferson (letter to William Stephens Smith, 13
November 1787)

Reference: Jefferson: Writings, Peterson ed., Library of America
(911)

Title: George Washington
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 09, 2007, 09:47:40 AM

"Gentlemen, you will permit me to put on my spectacles, for,
I have grown not only gray, but almost blind in the service of
my country."

-- George Washington (upon fumbling for his glasses before
delivering the Newburgh Address, 15 March 1783)

Reference: George Washington in the American Revolution, Flexner
(507)

Title: Re: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 10, 2007, 06:44:25 PM

Title: George Washington
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 11, 2007, 07:47:03 AM

Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force; like fire, a troublesome servant and a fearful master. Never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action.
George Washington

Title: Benjamin Franklin
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 12, 2007, 04:22:07 PM

"Human Felicity is produced not so much by great Pieces of good
Fortune that seldom happen, as by little Advantages that occur
every Day."

-- Benjamin Franklin (Autobiography, 1771)

Reference: Autobiography, Franklin (207) [Sheehan (3:3)]

Title: Re: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 13, 2007, 04:05:18 AM

"Nothing...is unchangeable but the inherent and unalienable rights
of man."

-- Thomas Jefferson (letter to John Cartwright, 1824)

Reference: The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Lipscomb and Bergh,
eds., 16:48.

Title: Jefferson , Franklin
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 14, 2007, 09:03:21 AM

“Newspapers... serve as chimnies to carry off noxious vapors and smoke.” —Thomas Jefferson

"Be in general virtuous, and you will be happy."

-- Benjamin Franklin (letter to John Alleyne, 9 August 1768)

Reference: The Works of Benjamin Franklin, Sparks, ed., vol. 7
(415)

Title: Jefferson on taxation
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 15, 2007, 06:33:11 AM

"Excessive taxation...will carry reason and reflection to every
man's door, and particularly in the hour of election."

-- Thomas Jefferson (letter to John Taylor, 1798)

Reference: The Writings of Thomas Jefferson (Memorial Edition),
Lipscomb and Bergh, eds., 10:64.

Title: Jefferson on fighting government expansion
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 16, 2007, 06:34:49 AM

"The multiplication of public offices, increase of expense beyond
income, growth and entailment of a public debt, are indications
soliciting the employment of the pruning knife."

-- Thomas Jefferson (letter to Spencer Roane, 9 March 1821)

Reference: The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Memorial Edition,
Lipscomb and Bergh, eds., vol. 15 (325)

Title: Re: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 16, 2007, 08:22:15 AM

THE FOUNDATION
“The Constitution shall never be construed... to prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms.” —Samuel Adams

PATRIOT PERSPECTIVE
“The right of the people to keep and bear arms”
By Mark Alexander

There is yet another ideological contest brewing in our nation’s capitol, this one between two distinctively different groups in the federal judiciary: constitutional constructionists, who render decisions based on the “original intent” of our nation’s founding document, and judicial despots, who endorse the dangerously errant notion of a “Living Constitution.”

This is no trivial contest, however, and the outcome will have significant consequences across the nation.

The subject of this dispute is Washington, DC’s “Firearms Control Regulations Act of 1975,” which prohibits residents from owning handguns, ostensibly to deter so-called “gun violence.”

Of course, suggesting that violence is a “gun problem” ignores the real problem—that of socio-pathology and the culture which nurtures it. (See the Congressional Testimony of Darrell Scott, father of Rachel Scott, one of the children murdered at Columbine High School in 1999.)

In 1960 the frequency of violent crime in the District was 554/100,000 residents, and the murder rate was 10/100,000. In 2006, the frequency of violent crime in the District was 1,512/100,000 residents, and the murder rate was 29/100,000. That is a 200 percent increase, and according to the latest data from Washington Metro Police, violent crime is up 12 percent thus far this year.

Fact is, firearm restrictions on law-abiding citizens in Washington, and other urban centers, have created more victims while protecting offenders. There is nothing new about this correlation. As Thomas Jefferson noted in his Commonplace Book (quoting Cesare Beccaria), “Laws that forbid the carrying of arms... disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes... Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man.”

Simply put, violent predators prefer victims who have no means of self defense.

Most pro and con arguments about firearms are constructed around the crime debate, including excellent research by John Lott, whose book More Guns, Less Crime, clearly establishes that restrictive gun policies lead to higher crime rates.

The arguments from both sides in the current case in Washington are also constructed around the crime issue. However, the Second Amendment debate is not about crime, but about the rule of law—constitutional law. Fortunately, the appellate court for DC is making this distinction.

In March of this year, the U.S. District Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia struck down that federal jurisdiction’s restrictions on gun ownership, finding that the District is violating the Second Amendment’s prohibition on government infringement of “the right of the people to keep and bear arms.” The case has been appealed to the Supreme Court, and should the High Court accept the case, its ruling would be the first substantial decision on the scope of the Second Amendment since 1939.

At issue: Does the Second Amendment prohibit the government from infringing on the individual rights of citizens to keep and bear arms, or does it restrict the central government from infringing on the rights of the several states to maintain well-armed militias?

The intent of the Second Amendment, however, was abundantly clear to our Founders.

Indeed, in the most authoritative explication of our Constitution, The Federalist Papers, its principal author, James Madison, wrote in No. 46, “The advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation... forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition, more insurmountable than any...”

Alexander Hamilton was equally unambiguous on the importance of arms to a republic, writing in Federalist No. 28, “If the representatives of the people betray their constituents, there is then no recourse left but in the exertion of that original right of self-defense...”

Justice Joseph Story, appointed to the Supreme Court by James Madison, wrote, “The right of the citizens to keep and bear arms has justly been considered as the palladium of the liberties of a republic; since it offers a strong moral check against the usurpation and arbitrary power of rulers; and will generally, even if these are successful in the first instance, enable the people to resist and triumph over them.”

In other words, the right of the people to bear arms is the most essential of the rights enumerated in our Constitution, because it ensures the preservation of all other rights.

Accordingly, the appellate court, in a 2-1 decision, ruled, “The Second Amendment protects an individual right to keep and bear arms. That right existed prior to the formation of the new government under the Constitution and was premised on the private use of arms for activities such as hunting and self-defense, the latter being understood as resistance to either private lawlessness or the depredations of a tyrannical government... The individual right facilitated militia service by ensuring that citizens would not be barred from keeping the arms they would need when called forth for militia duty.”

Additionally, the majority opinion notes, “The activities [the amendment] protects are not limited to militia service, nor is an individual’s enjoyment of the right contingent upon his or her continued or intermittent enrollment in the militia.”

The dissenting judge’s conclusion did not dispute the plain language of the Second Amendment’s prohibition on government, but he insists that the District is not a state, and is, thus, not subject to the prohibition.

This is ridiculous, of course, since such a conclusion would imply, by extension, that District residents are not subject to any protection under the Constitution.

The real contest here is one between activist judges, those who amend the Constitution by judicial diktat rather than its clearly prescribed method stipulated in Article V, and constructionist judges, those who properly render legal interpretation based on the Constitution’s “original intent.”

As Hamilton wrote in Federalist No. 81, “[T]here is not a syllable in the [Constitution] under consideration which directly empowers the national courts to construe the laws according to the spirit of the Constitution...” In other words, nothing in the Constitution gives judges the right to declare the Constitution means anything beyond the scope of its plain language.

However, activist judges, including those among generations of High Court justices, have historically construed the Second Amendment through a pinhole, while viewing the First Amendment through a wide-angle lens.

For example, though the First Amendment plainly says, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” judicial activists interpret this plain language to mean a public school coach can’t offer a simple prayer before a game.

Equally absurd, they argue that the First Amendment’s “freedom of speech” clause means burning the American flag, exploiting women for “adult entertainment,” or using taxpayer dollars to fund works of “art” such as a crucifix immersed in a glass of human waste.

If these same judicial despots misconstrued the Second Amendment as broadly as they do the first, Americans would have nukes to defend themselves from noisy neighbors.

The appeals case regarding the constitutionality of DC’s Firearms Control Regulations Act of 1975 is not about crime prevention, or whether the District is subject to prohibitions in the Bill of Rights. It is about the essence of our Constitution’s most important assurance that all Americans have the right to defend themselves against both predatory criminals and tyrannical governments. It is about the need for the High Court to reaffirm this right and stop the incremental encroachment of said right by infringements like that in the District, or more egregious encroachments like those found within the Feinstein-Schumer gun-control act.

Of self-government’s “important principles,” Thomas Jefferson wrote, “It is [the peoples’] right and duty to be at all times armed.” Indeed, the right of the people to keep and bear arms should not be infringed.

Title: John Adams, Webster, Reagan
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 19, 2007, 04:46:20 AM

"It is the duty of all men in society, publicly, and at stated
seasons, to worship the SUPREME BEING, the great Creator
and Preserver of the universe. And no subject shall be hurt,
molested, or restrained, in his person, liberty, or estate, for
worshipping GOD in the manner most agreeable to the dictates of
his own conscience; or for his religious profession or sentiments;
provided he doth not disturb the public peace, or obstruct others
in their religious worship."

-- John Adams (Thoughts on Government, 1776)

Reference: The Works of John Adams, Charles Adams, ed., 221.
========

THE FOUNDATION: ARMS
“The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any band of regular troops that can be, on any pretence, raised in the United States.” —Noah Webster

THE GIPPER
“The gun has been called the great equalizer, meaning that a small person with a gun is equal to a large person, but it is a great equalizer in another way, too. It insures that the people are the equal of their government whenever that government forgets that it is servant and not master of the governed. When the British forgot that they got a revolution. And, as a result, we Americans got a Constitution; a Constitution that, as those who wrote it were determined, would keep men free. If we give up part of that Constitution we give up part of our freedom and increase the chance that we will lose it all. I am not ready to take that risk. I believe that the right of the citizen to keep and bear arms must not be infringed if liberty in America is to survive.” —Ronald Reagan

Title: James Madison
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 20, 2007, 03:39:48 AM

"It is the duty of every man to render to the Creator such homage,
and such only, as he believes to be acceptable to him. This duty
is precedent both in order of time and degree of obligation, to
the claims of Civil Society. Before any man can be considered as
a member of Civil Society, he must be considered as a subject of
the Governor of the Universe."

-- James Madison (A Memorial and Remonstrance, 1785)

Reference: Our Sacred Honor, Bennett (327)

Title: Hamilton
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 21, 2007, 08:45:38 AM

"To grant that there is a supreme intelligence who rules the
world and has established laws to regulate the actions of his
creatures; and still to assert that man, in a state of nature,
may be considered as perfectly free from all restraints of law
and government, appears to a common understanding altogether
irreconcilable. Good and wise men, in all ages, have embraced
a very dissimilar theory. They have supposed that the deity,
from the relations we stand in to himself and to each other, has
constituted an eternal and immutable law, which is indispensably
obligatory upon all mankind, prior to any human institution
whatever. This is what is called the law of nature....Upon this
law depend the natural rights of mankind."

-- Alexander Hamilton ()

Title: Washington
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 22, 2007, 03:49:54 AM

"It is the duty of all Nations to acknowledge the providence of
Almighty God, to obey his will, to be grateful for his benefits,
and humbly to implore his protection and favors."

-- George Washington (Thanksgiving Proclamation, 3 October 1789)

Reference: George Washington: A Collection, W.B. Allen, ed. (543)

Title: Jefferson - right to bear arms; Madison- separation of powers
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 23, 2007, 08:49:40 AM

No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms. The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government" -- Thomas Jefferson, 1 Thomas Jefferson Papers, 334

"[T]he great security against a gradual concentration of the
several powers in the same department consists in giving to those
who administer each department the necessary constitutional means
and personal motives to resist encroachment of the others."

-- James Madison (Federalist No. 10, 23 November 1787)

Title: Jefferson: Virtue
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 26, 2007, 06:48:12 AM

"Give up money, give up fame, give up science, give the earth
itself and all it contains rather than do an immoral act. And never
suppose that in any possible situation, or under any circumstances,
it is best for you to do a dishonorable thing, however slightly so
it may appear to you... From the practice of the purest virtue,
you may be assured you will derive the most sublime comforts in
every moment of life, and in the moment of death."

-- Thomas Jefferson (letter to Peter Carr, 19 August 1785)

Reference: Jefferson: Writings, Peterson ed., Library of America
(814-815)

Title: Hamilton: The National Government
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 27, 2007, 03:16:31 AM

"I am persuaded that a firm union is as necessary to perpetuate
our liberties as it is to make us respectable; and experience will
probably prove that the National Government will be as natural
a guardian of our freedom as the State Legislatures."

-- Alexander Hamilton (speech to the New York Ratifying Convention,
June 1788)

Title: Washington to Patrick Henry
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 28, 2007, 11:59:41 AM

"My ardent desire is, and my aim has been...to comply strictly
with all our engagements foreign and domestic; but to keep the U
States free from political connections with every other Country.
To see that they may be independent of all, and under the
influence of none. In a word, I want an American character,
that the powers of Europe may be convinced we act for ourselves
and not for others; this, in my judgment, is the only way to be
respected abroad and happy at home."

-- George Washington (letter to Partick Henry, 9 October 1775)

Reference: The Writings of George Washington, Fitzpatrick, ed.,
vol. 34 (335)

Title: Hamilton on govt. debt
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 29, 2007, 06:39:10 AM

Title: James Madison: Virtue
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 30, 2007, 03:16:51 AM

"Is there no virtue among us? If there be not, we are in a
wretched situation. No theoretical checks-no form of government
can render us secure. To suppose that any form of government will
secure liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people, is
a chimerical idea, if there be sufficient virtue and intelligence
in the community, it will be exercised in the selection of these
men. So that we do not depend on their virtue, or put confidence
in our rulers, but in the people who are to choose them."

-- James Madison (speech at the Virginia Ratifying Convention,
20 June 1788)

Reference: The True Republican, French, ed. (28-29)

Title: George Mason
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 03, 2007, 07:19:06 AM

"Nothing so strongly impels a man to regard the interest of his
constituents, as the certainty of returning to the general mass
of the people, from whence he was taken, where he must participate
in their burdens."

-- George Mason (speech in the Virginia Ratifying Convention,
17 June 1788)

Reference: The Papers of George Mason, Rutland, ed., vol. 3 (1093)
[Sheehan (5:5)]

Title: Thomas Jefferson: RKBA vs. tyranny
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 04, 2007, 11:22:13 AM

Title: James Madison-- Balance of Powers
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 05, 2007, 05:43:17 AM

"An elective despotism was not the government we fought for;
but one in which the powers of government should be so divided
and balanced among the several bodies of magistracy as that no
one could transcend their legal limits without being effectually
checked and restrained by the others."

-- James Madison (Federalist No. 58, 1788)

Reference: Madison, Federalist No. 48

Title: B. Franklin: Education
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 07, 2007, 05:33:23 AM

"The good Education of Youth has been esteemed by wise Men in
all Ages, as the surest Foundation of the Happiness both of
private Families and of Common-wealths. Almost all Governments
have therefore made it a principal Object of their Attention,
to establish and endow with proper Revenues, such Seminaries of
Learning, as might supply the succeeding Age with Men qualified to
serve the Publick with Honour to themselves, and to their Country."

-- Benjamin Franklin (Proposals Relating to the Education of
Youth in Pensilvania, 1749)

Reference: Franklin Collected Works, Lemay, ed., 324.

Title: Washington on signing legislation
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 10, 2007, 02:02:22 PM

"I give my signature to many Bills with which my Judgment is
at variance.... From the Nature of the Constitution, I must
approve all parts of a Bill, or reject it in total. To do the
latter can only be Justified upon the clear and obvious grounds
of propriety; and I never had such confidence in my own faculty
of judging as to be over tenacious of the opinions I may have
imbibed in doubtful cases."

-- George Washington (letter to Edmund Pendleton, 23 September
1793)

Reference: The Writings of George Washinton, Fitzpatrick, ed.,
vol. 33 (96)

Title: Washington: Virtue & Happiness
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 11, 2007, 09:05:41 AM

"There exists in the economy and course of nature, an indissoluble
union between virtue and happiness; between duty and advantage;
between the genuine maxims of an honest and magnanimous policy,
and the solid rewards of public prosperity and felicity; since we
ought to be no less persuaded that the propitious smiles of Heaven
can never be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal
rules of order and right, which Heaven itself has ordained."

-- George Washington (First Inaugural Address, 1789)

Reference: Inaugural Addresses of the Presidents of the U.S.

Title: John Jay: The country and its people
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 12, 2007, 06:27:56 AM

"This country and this people seem to have been made for each
other, and it appears as if it was the design of Providence that
an inheritance so proper and convenient for a band of brethren,
united to each other by the strongest of ties, should never be
split into a number of unsocial, jealous, and alien sovereignties."

-- John Jay (Federalist No. 2)

Reference: Jay, Federalist No. 2 (38)

Title: James Wilson
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 13, 2007, 08:28:17 AM

"In observations on this subject, we hear the legislature
mentioned as the people's representatives. The distinction,
intimated by concealed implication, through probably, not avowed
upon reflection, is, that the executive and judicial powers are not
connected with the people by a relation so strong or near or dear.
But is high time that we should chastise our prejudices; and that
we should look upon the different parts of government with a just
and impartial eye."

-- James Wilson (Lectures on Law, 1791)

Reference: The Works of James Wilson, McCloskey, ed., vol. 1
(292-293); original Lectures on Law, Wilson,

Title: Hamilton: Rights of Man; Washington's last words
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 14, 2007, 08:20:26 AM

“The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for, among old parchments, or musty records. They are written, as with a sun beam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of the divinity itself; and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power.” —Alexander Hamilton

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"Tis well."

-- George Washington (Last Words, 14 December 1799)

Reference: The First of Men, Ferling (507)

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PATRIOT PERSPECTIVE
“To secure these rights...”
By Mark Alexander

Saturday, 15 December, is the 216th anniversary of the adoption of the Bill of Rights, the first Ten Amendments to our Constitution, as ratified in 1791.

The Bill of Rights was inspired by three remarkable documents: John Locke’s 1689 thesis, Two Treatises of Government, regarding the protection of “property” (in the Latin context, proprius, or one’s own “life, liberty and estate”); in part from the Virginia Declaration of Rights authored by George Mason in 1776 as part of that state’s Constitution; and, of course, in part from our Declaration of Independence authored by Thomas Jefferson.

James Madison proposed the Bill of Rights as amendments to our Constitution in 1789, but many of our Founders objected to listing the Bill of Rights at all, much less as “amendments.” Their rationale was that such rights might then be construed as malleable rather than unalienable, as amendable rather than “endowed by our Creator” as noted in the Constitution’s supreme guidance, the Declaration of Independence.

Alexander Hamilton argued this point in The Federalist Papers, the most comprehensive explication of our Constitution: “I go further, and affirm that bills of rights, in the sense and to the extent in which they are contended for, are not only unnecessary in the proposed Constitution, but would even be dangerous... For why declare that things shall not be done which there is no power to do?” (Federalist No. 84)

George Mason was one of 55 who authored the U.S. Constitution, but one of 16 who refused to sign it because it did not adequately address limitations on what the central government had “no power to do.” He worked with Patrick Henry and Samuel Adams against the Constitution’s ratification for that reason.

As a result of Mason’s insistence, ten limitations were put on the Federal Government by the first session of Congress, for the reasons outlined by the Bill of Rights Preamble: “The Conventions of a number of the States having at the time of their adopting the Constitution, expressed a desire, in order to prevent misconstruction or abuse of its powers, that further declaratory and restrictive clauses should be added: And as extending the ground of public confidence in the Government, will best insure the beneficent ends of its institution...”

Read in context, the Bill of Rights is both an affirmation of innate individual rights (as noted by Thomas Jefferson: “The God who gave us life gave us liberty at the same time...”), and a clear delineation on constraints upon the central government.

However, as Jefferson warned repeatedly, the greatest threat to such limitations on the central government was an unbridled judiciary: “Over the Judiciary department, the Constitution [has] deprived [the people] of their control... The original error [was in] establishing a judiciary independent of the nation, and which, from the citadel of the law, can turn its guns on those they were meant to defend, and control and fashion their proceedings to its own will... It is a misnomer to call a government republican in which a branch of the supreme power [the judiciary] is independent of the nation... The opinion which gives to the judges the right to decide what laws are constitutional and what not, not only for themselves in their own sphere of action but for the Legislature and Executive also in their spheres, would make the Judiciary a despotic branch.”

In Federalist No. 81 Alexander Hamilton wrote, “[T]here is not a syllable in the [Constitution] which directly empowers the national courts to construe the laws according to the spirit of the Constitution, or which gives them any greater latitude in this respect than may be claimed by the courts of every State.”

That admonition notwithstanding, the federal judiciary has become “a despotic branch.”

Indeed, since the middle of the last century, judicial despots have grossly devitalized the Bill of Rights, asserting errantly that our Founders created a “Living Constitution” amendable by judicial diktat.

For example, the Leftjudiciary has “interpreted” the First Amendment as placing all manner of constraint upon the exercise of religion by way of the so-called “establishment clause” and based on the phony “Wall of Separation” argument. At the same time, the courts have asserted that all manner of expression constitutes “speech.”

The judiciary and legislatures have undermined the strength of the Second Amendment, a right of which James Madison’s appointee, Justice Joseph Story, referred to as “...the palladium of the liberties of a republic; since it offers a strong moral check against the usurpation and arbitrary power of rulers...”

Equally derelict is the manner in which the Tenth Amendment has been eroded by judicial interpretation.

In Federalist No. 45, Madison outlines the clear limits on central government power established in the Constitution: “The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite.”

Alexander Hamilton added in Federalist No. 81 “...the plan of the [Constitutional] convention aims only at a partial union or consolidation, the State governments would clearly retain all the rights of sovereignty which they before had, and which were not, by that act, exclusively delegated to the United States.”

There was a very bloody War Between the States fought over offense to the Constitution’s assurance of States’ Rights.

All is not lost, however.

Sunday, 16 December, is the 234th anniversary of the Boston Tea Party (1773). The “radicals” from Marlborough, Massachusetts, who threw 342 chests of tea from a British East India Company ship into the Boston Harbor in protest of tyrannical rule, did so noting, “Death is more eligible than slavery. A free-born people are not required by the religion of Christ to submit to tyranny, but may make use of such power as God has given them to recover and support their... liberties.”

Three years later, this rebellion had grown to such extent that our Founders were willing to give up their fortunes and lives, attaching their signatures to a document that declared, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”

Judicial and political despots, take note.

Title: Re: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 17, 2007, 05:37:05 AM

"No government ought to be without censors & where the press is
free, no one ever will."

-- Thomas Jefferson (letter to George Washington, 9 September 1792)

Title: Hamilton; John Adams
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 18, 2007, 09:50:31 AM

"As riches increase and accumulate in few hands, as luxury prevails
in society, virtue will be in a greater degree considered as
only a graceful appendage of wealth, and the tendency of things
will be to depart from the republican standard. This is the real
disposition of human nature; it is what neither the honorable
member nor myself can correct. It is a common misfortunate that
awaits our State constitution, as well as all others."

-- Alexander Hamilton (speech to the New York Ratifying Convention,
June 1788)

Reference: The Works of Alexander Hamilton, Henry Cabot Lodge,
ed., II, 26.

===============

This one by John Adams I think particularly profound:

"We have no government armed in power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Our Constitution was made only for a religious and moral people. It is wholly inadequate for the government of any other." John Adams

Title: Franklin
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 19, 2007, 06:10:35 AM

"Strangers are welcome because there is room enough for them
all, and therefore the old Inhabitants are not jealous of them;
the Laws protect them sufficiently so that they have no need of
the Patronage of great Men; and every one will enjoy securely the
Profits of his Industry. But if he does not bring a Fortune with
him, he must work and be industrious to live."

-- Benjamin Franklin (Those Who Would Remove to America,
February 1784)

Reference: Franklin Collected Works, Lemay, ed., 977.

Title: James Madison: Property Rights
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 20, 2007, 09:57:59 PM

"Government is instituted to protect property of every sort;
as well that which lies in the various rights of individuals, as
that which the term particularly expresses. This being the end
of government, that alone is a just government which impartially
secures to every man whatever is his own."

-- James Madison (Essay on Property, 29 March 1792)

Reference: Madison: Writings, Rakove, ed., Library of America (515)

Title: Jefferson: Liberty
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 21, 2007, 08:33:28 AM

"The boisterous sea of liberty is never without a wave."

-- Thomas Jefferson (letter to Richard Rush, 20 October 1820)

Reference: The Writings of Thomas Jefferson (Memorial Edition),
Lipscomb and Bergh, eds., 15:283.

Title: Re: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 24, 2007, 02:22:33 PM

"The deliberate union of so great and various a people in such a
place, is without all partiality or prejudice, if not the greatest
exertion of human understanding, the greatest single effort of
national deliberation that the world has ever seen."

-- John Adams (quoted in a letter from Rufus King to Theophilus
Parsons, 20 February 1788)

Reference: The Life and Correspondence of Rufus King, King, vol. 1
(321)

Title: Washington's Gift
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 26, 2007, 04:58:47 AM

"More permanent and genuine happiness is to be found in the
sequestered walks of connubial life than in the giddy rounds of
promiscuous pleasure."

-- George Washington (letter to the Marquis de la Rourie, 10
August 1786)

Reference: Original Intent, Barton (300); original The Writings
of George Washington, Sparks, ed., vol. 9 (190)
======================================
Washington's Gift
Our revolution could have ended in despotism, like so many others.

BY THOMAS FLEMING
Tuesday, December 25, 2007 12:01 a.m. EST

There is a Christmas story at the birth of this country that very few Americans know. It involves a single act by George Washington--his refusal to take absolute power--that affirms our own deepest beliefs about self-government, and still has profound meaning in today's world. To appreciate its significance, however, we must revisit a dark period at the end of America's eight-year struggle for independence.

The story begins with Gen. Washington's arrival in Annapolis, Md., on Dec. 19, 1783. The country was finally at peace--just a few weeks earlier the last British army on American soil had sailed out of New York harbor. But the previous eight months had been a time of terrible turmoil and anguish for Gen. Washington, outwardly always so composed. His army had been discharged and sent home, unpaid, by a bankrupt Congress--without a victory parade or even a statement of thanks for their years of sacrifices and sufferings.

Instead, not a few congressmen and their allies in the press had waged a vitriolic smear campaign against the soldiers--especially the officers, because they supposedly demanded too much money for back pay and pensions. Washington had done his utmost to persuade Congress to pay them, yet failed, in this failure losing the admiration of many of the younger officers. Some sneeringly called him "The Great Illustrissimo"--a mocking reference to his world-wide fame. When he said farewell to his officers at Fraunces Tavern in New York early in December, he had wept at the sight of anger and resentment on many faces.

Congressman Alexander Hamilton, once Washington's most gifted aide, had told him in a morose letter that there was a "principle of hostility to an army" loose in the country and too many congressmen shared it. Bitterly, Hamilton added that he had "an indifferent opinion of the honesty" of the United States of America.

Soon Hamilton was spreading an even lower opinion of Congress. Its members had fled Philadelphia when a few hundred unpaid soldiers in the city's garrison surrounded the Pennsylvania State House (now Independence Hall), demanding back pay. Congressman Hamilton called the affair "weak and disgusting to the last degree" and soon resigned his seat.

The rest of the country agreed. There were hoots of derision and contempt for Congress in newspapers from Boston to Savannah. The politicians took refuge in the village of Princeton, N.J., where they rejected Washington's advice to fund a small postwar regular army, then wandered to Annapolis.

In Amsterdam, where brokers were trying to sell shares in an American loan negotiated by John Adams, sales plummeted. Even America's best friend in Europe, the Marquis de Lafayette, wondered aloud if the United States was about to collapse. A deeply discouraged Washington admitted he saw "one head turning into thirteen."

Was there anyone who could rescue the situation? Many people thought only George Washington could work this miracle.
Earlier in the year he had been urged to summarily dismiss Congress and rule as an uncrowned king, under the title of president. He emphatically refused to consider the idea. Now many people wondered if he might have changed his mind. At the very least he might appear before Congress and issue a scathing denunciation of their cowardly flight from Philadelphia and their ingratitude to his soldiers. That act would destroy whatever shreds of legitimacy the politicians had left.

At noon on Dec. 23, Washington and two aides walked from their hotel to the Annapolis State House, where Congress was sitting. Barely 20 delegates had bothered to show up.

The general and his aides took designated seats in the assembly chamber. The president of Congress, Thomas Mifflin of Pennsylvania, began the proceedings: "Sir, the United States in Congress assembled are prepared to receive your communications."

Mifflin had been one of the generals who attempted to humiliate Washington into resigning during the grim winter at Valley Forge. He had smeared Washington as a puffed-up egotist, denigrated his military ability, and used his wealth to persuade not a few congressmen to agree with him. A few months later, Mifflin was forced to quit the army after being accused of stealing millions as quartermaster general.

Addressing this scandal-tarred enemy, Washington drew a speech from his coat pocket and unfolded it with trembling hands. "Mr. President," he began in a low, strained voice. "The great events on which my resignation depended having at length taken place; I now have the honor of offering my sincere congratulations to Congress and of presenting myself before them to surrender into their hands the trust committed to me, and to claim the indulgence of retiring from the service of my country."

Washington went on to express his gratitude for the support of "my countrymen" and the "army in general." This reference to his soldiers ignited feelings so intense, he had to grip the speech with both hands to keep it steady. He continued: "I consider it an indispensable duty to close this last solemn act of my official life by commending the interests of our dearest country to the protection of Almighty God and those who have the superintendence of them \[Congress\] to his holy keeping."

For a long moment, Washington could not say another word. Tears streamed down his cheeks. The words touched a vein of religious faith in his inmost soul, born of battlefield experiences that had convinced him of the existence of a caring God who had protected him and his country again and again during the war. Without this faith he might never have been able to endure the frustrations and rage he had experienced in the previous eight months.

Washington then drew from his coat a parchment copy of his appointment as commander in chief. "Having now finished the work assigned me, I retire from the great theater of action and bidding farewell to this august body under whom I have long acted, I here offer my commission and take leave of all the employments of public life." Stepping forward, he handed the document to Mifflin.
This was--is--the most important moment in American history.

The man who could have dispersed this feckless Congress and obtained for himself and his soldiers rewards worthy of their courage was renouncing absolute power. By this visible, incontrovertible act, Washington did more to affirm America's government of the people than a thousand declarations by legislatures and treatises by philosophers.

Thomas Jefferson, author of the greatest of these declarations, witnessed this drama as a delegate from Virginia. Intuitively, he understood its historic dimension. "The moderation. . . . of a single character," he later wrote, "probably prevented this revolution from being closed, as most others have been, by a subversion of that liberty it was intended to establish."

In Europe, Washington's resignation restored America's battered prestige. It was reported with awe and amazement in newspapers from London to Vienna. The Connecticut painter John Trumbull, studying in England, wrote that it had earned the "astonishment and admiration of this part of the world."

Washington shook hands with each member of Congress and not a few of the spectators. Meanwhile, his aides were bringing their horses and baggage wagons from their hotel. They had left orders for everything to be packed and ready for an immediate departure.

The next day, after an overnight stop at a tavern, they rode at a steady pace toward Mount Vernon. Finally, as twilight shrouded the winter sky, the house came into view beside the Potomac River. Past bare trees and wintry fields the three horsemen trotted toward the white-pillared porch and the green shuttered windows, aglow with candlelight. Waiting for them at the door was Martha Washington and two grandchildren. It was Christmas eve. Ex-Gen. Washington--and the United States of America--had survived the perils of both war and peace.

Mr. Fleming is the author, most recently, of "The Perils of Peace: America's Struggle for Survival After Yorktown" (Collins, 2007).

Title: Washington
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 27, 2007, 06:22:22 AM

At the close of the Revolutionary War in America, a perilous moment in the life of the fledgling American democracy occurred as officers of the Continental Army met in Newburgh, New York, to discuss grievances and consider a possible insurrection against the rule of Congress.

They were angry over the failure of Congress to honor its promises to the army regarding salary, bounties and life pensions. The officers had heard from Philadelphia that the American government was going broke and that they might not be compensated at all.

On March 10, 1783, an anonymous letter was circulated among the officers of General Washington's main camp at Newburgh. It addressed those complaints and called for an unauthorized meeting of officers to be held the next day to consider possible military solutions to the problems of the civilian government and its financial woes.

General Washington stopped that meeting from happening by forbidding the officers to meet at the unauthorized meeting. Instead, he suggested they meet a few days later, on March 15th, at the regular meeting of his officers.

Meanwhile, another anonymous letter was circulated, this time suggesting Washington himself was sympathetic to the claims of the malcontent officers.

And so on March 15, 1783, Washington's officers gathered in a church building in Newburgh, effectively holding the fate of democracy in America in their hands.
Unexpectedly, General Washington himself showed up. He was not entirely welcomed by his men, but nevertheless, personally addressed them...

Gentlemen:
By an anonymous summons, an attempt has been made to convene you together; how inconsistent with the rules of propriety, how unmilitary, and how subversive of all order and discipline, let the good sense of the army decide...

Thus much, gentlemen,
I have thought it incumbent on me to observe to you, to show upon what principles I opposed the irregular and hasty meeting which was proposed to have been held on Tuesday last - and not because I wanted a disposition to give you every opportunity consistent with your own honor, and the dignity of the army, to make known your grievances. If my conduct heretofore has not evinced to you that I have been a faithful friend to the army, my declaration of it at this time would be equally unavailing and improper. But as I was among the first who embarked in the cause of our common country. As I have never left your side one moment, but when called from you on public duty. As I have been the constant companion and witness of your distresses, and not among the last to feel and acknowledge your merits. As I have ever considered my own military reputation as inseparably connected with that of the army. As my heart has ever expanded with joy, when I have heard its praises, and my indignation has arisen, when the mouth of detraction has been opened against it, it can scarcely be supposed, at this late stage of the war, that I am indifferent to its interests.

But how are they to be promoted? The way is plain, says the anonymous addresser. If war continues, remove into the unsettled country, there establish yourselves, and leave an ungrateful country to defend itself. But who are they to defend? Our wives, our children, our farms, and other property which we leave behind us. Or, in this state of hostile separation, are we to take the two first (the latter cannot be removed) to perish in a wilderness, with hunger, cold, and nakedness? If peace takes place, never sheathe your swords, says he, until you have obtained full and ample justice; this dreadful alternative, of either deserting our country in the extremest hour of her distress or turning our arms against it (which is the apparent object, unless Congress can be compelled into instant compliance), has something so shocking in it that humanity revolts at the idea. My God! What can this writer have in view, by recommending such measures? Can he be a friend to the army? Can he be a friend to this country? Rather, is he not an insidious foe? Some emissary, perhaps, from New York, plotting the ruin of both, by sowing the seeds of discord and separation between the civil and military powers of the continent? And what a compliment does he pay to our understandings when he recommends measures in either alternative, impracticable in their nature?

I cannot, in justice to my own belief, and what I have great reason to conceive is the intention of Congress, conclude this address, without giving it as my decided opinion, that that honorable body entertain exalted sentiments of the services of the army; and, from a full conviction of its merits and sufferings, will do it complete justice. That their endeavors to discover and establish funds for this purpose have been unwearied, and will not cease till they have succeeded, I have not a doubt. But, like all other large bodies, where there is a variety of different interests to reconcile, their deliberations are slow. Why, then, should we distrust them? And, in consequence of that distrust, adopt measures which may cast a shade over that glory which has been so justly acquired; and tarnish the reputation of an army which is celebrated through all Europe, for its fortitude and patriotism? And for what is this done? To bring the object we seek nearer? No! most certainly, in my opinion, it will cast it at a greater distance.

For myself (and I take no merit in giving the assurance, being induced to it from principles of gratitude, veracity, and justice), a grateful sense of the confidence you have ever placed in me, a recollection of the cheerful assistance and prompt obedience I have experienced from you, under every vicissitude of fortune, and the sincere affection I feel for an army I have so long had the honor to command will oblige me to declare, in this public and solemn manner, that, in the attainment of complete justice for all your toils and dangers, and in the gratification of every wish, so far as may be done consistently with the great duty I owe my country and those powers we are bound to respect, you may freely command my services to the utmost of my abilities.

While I give you these assurances, and pledge myself in the most unequivocal manner to exert whatever ability I am possessed of in your favor, let me entreat you, gentlemen, on your part, not to take any measures which, viewed in the calm light of reason, will lessen the dignity and sully the glory you have hitherto maintained; let me request you to rely on the plighted faith of your country, and place a full confidence in the purity of the intentions of Congress; that, previous to your dissolution as an army, they will cause all your accounts to be fairly liquidated, as directed in their resolutions, which were published to you two days ago, and that they will adopt the most effectual measures in their power to render ample justice to you, for your faithful and meritorious services. And let me conjure you, in the name of our common country, as you value your own sacred honor, as you respect the rights of humanity, and as you regard the military and national character of America, to express your utmost horror and detestation of the man who wishes, under any specious pretenses, to overturn the liberties of our country, and who wickedly attempts to open the floodgates of civil discord and deluge our rising empire in blood.

By thus determining and thus acting, you will pursue the plain and direct road to the attainment of your wishes. You will defeat the insidious designs of our enemies, who are compelled to resort from open force to secret artifice. You will give one more distinguished proof of unexampled patriotism and patient virtue, rising superior to the pressure of the most complicated sufferings. And you will, by the dignity of your conduct, afford occasion for posterity to say, when speaking of the glorious example you have exhibited to mankind, "Had this day been wanting, the world had never seen the last stage of perfection to which human nature is capable of attaining."
George Washington - March 15, 1783

This speech was not very well received by his men. Washington then took out a letter from a member of Congress explaining the financial difficulties of the government.

After reading a portion of the letter with his eyes squinting at the small writing, Washington suddenly stopped. His officers stared at him, wondering. Washington then reached into his coat pocket and took out a pair of reading glasses. Few of them knew he wore glasses, and were surprised.

"Gentlemen," said Washington, "you will permit me to put on my spectacles, for I have not only grown gray but almost blind in the service of my country."

In that moment of utter vulnerability, Washington's men were deeply moved, even shamed, and many were quickly in tears, now looking with great affection at this aging man who had led them through so much. Washington read the remainder of the letter, then left without saying another word, realizing their sentiments.

His officers then cast a unanimous vote, essentially agreeing to the rule of Congress. Thus, the civilian government was preserved and the young experiment of democracy in America continued.
---------------

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Not only did Washington refuse absolute power, but he made the officers in the Army take an oath to refuse it themselves.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Society_of_the_Cincinnati

The concept of the Society of the Cincinnati probably originated with Major General Henry Knox. The first meeting of the Society was held at a dinner in Fishkill (now Beacon, New York near Newburgh), in May of 1783, before the British withdrew from New York City. The meeting was chaired by Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Hamilton, and the participants agreed to stay in contact with each other after the war. Membership was generally limited to officers who had served at least three years in the Continental Army or Navy but included officers of the French Army and Navy above certain ranks. (Later, membership was passed down to the eldest son after the death of the original member; present-day hereditary members generally must be descended from an officer who served in the Continental Army or Navy for at least three years, from an officer who died or was killed in service, or from an officer serving at the close of the Revolution.)
The Society is named after Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus, who left his farm to accept a term as Roman Consul and then served as Magister Populi for a short time, thereby assuming lawful dictatorial control of Rome to meet a war emergency. When the battle was won, he returned power to the Senate and went back to plowing his fields. The Society's motto reflects that ethic of selfless service: Omnia relinquit servare rempublicam - He relinquished everything to serve the Republic. The Society has from the beginning had three objects, referred to as the "Immutable Principles":
To preserve the rights so dearly won;
To promote the continuing union of the states; and
To assist members in need, their widows, and their orphans.
Within twelve months of the founding, a constituent Society had been organized in each state and in France. Of about 5,500 men originally eligible for membership, 2,150 had joined within a year. King Louis XVI ordained the French Society of the Cincinnati, which was organized on July 4, 1784. Up to that time, the King of France had not allowed his officers to wear any foreign decorations; but he made an exception in favor of the badge of the Cincinnati, and membership in the Society was so eagerly sought that it soon became as coveted as membership of certain orders of knighthood in France.
George Washington was elected the first President General of the Society. He served from December, 1783, until his death in 1799. The second President General was Alexander Hamilton.
The Society of the Cincinnati is generally considered the premiere American hereditary society.[citation needed] Its members have included many of the most distinguished military leaders and civil servants in the history of the country, beginning with twenty-three of the fifty-four signers of the U.S. Constitution. The Cincinnati is the oldest military society in continuous existence in North America

Title: Jefferson: Minority Rights
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 29, 2007, 08:53:46 AM

Thomas Jefferson, in his first inaugural address in 1801 said, "Though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will to be rightful must be reasonable;...the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression".

Title: Madison: Republic defined
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 31, 2007, 04:25:07 AM

Title: Madison on Jefferson
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 02, 2008, 06:33:02 AM

"He was certainly one of the most learned men of the age. It may
be said of him as has been said of others that he was a "walking
Library," and what can be said of but few such prodigies, that
the Genius of Philosophy ever walked hand in hand with him."

-- James Madison (on Thomas Jefferson in a letter to Samuel
Harrison Smith, 4 November 1826)

Reference: The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Hunt, ed., vol. 9
(260-61)

Title: Jefferson: Law
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 03, 2008, 04:51:06 AM

"We lay it down as a fundamental, that laws, to be just, must
give a reciprocation of right; that, without this, they are
mere arbitrary rules of conduct, founded in force, and not in
conscience."

-- Thomas Jefferson (Notes on the state of Virginia, 1782)

Title: Adams: Education of Children
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 04, 2008, 05:26:55 AM

"It should be your care, therefore, and mine, to elevate the
minds of our children and exalt their courage; to accelerate and
animate their industry and activity; to excite in them an habitual
contempt of meanness, abhorrence of injustice and inhumanity, and
an ambition to excel in every capacity, faculty, and virtue. If
we suffer their minds to grovel and creep in infancy, they will
grovel all their lives."

-- John Adams (Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law, 1756)

Reference: Our Sacred Honor, Bennett (253)

Title: Madison: The Senate and appointments; S. Adams: Leaders
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 07, 2008, 10:01:02 AM

"In forming the Senate, the great anchor of the Government, the
questions as they came within the first object turned mostly on
the mode of appointment, and the duration of it."

-- James Madison (letter to Thomas Jefferson, 24 October 1787)

Reference: Madison: Writings, Rakove, ed., Library of America (145)
======================

“If men of wisdom and knowledge, of moderation and temperance, of patience, fortitude and perseverance, of sobriety and true republican simplicity of manners, of zeal for the honor of the Supreme Being and the welfare of the commonwealth; if men possessed of these other excellent qualities are chosen to fill the seats of government, we may expect that our affairs will rest on a solid and permanent foundation.” —Samuel Adams

Title: Reagan: City upon a hill
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 07, 2008, 10:07:10 AM

“Our party must be the party of the individual. It must not sell out the individual to cater to the group. No greater challenge faces our society today than ensuring that each one of us can maintain his dignity and his identity in an increasingly complex, centralized society. Extreme taxation, excessive controls, oppressive government competition with business... frustrated minorities and forgotten Americans are not the products of free enterprise. They are the residue of centralized bureaucracy, of government by a self-anointed elite. Our party must be based on the kind of leadership that grows and takes its strength from the people...

ur cause must be to rediscover, reassert and reapply America s spiritual heritage to our national affairs. Then with God s help we shall indeed be as a city upon a hill with the eyes of all people upon us.” —Ronald Reagan

Title: Re: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 08, 2008, 08:29:27 AM

The Patriot Post
Founders' Quote Daily

"Wisdom and knowledge, as well as virtue, diffused generally among
the body of the people, being necessary for the preservation of
their rights and liberties, and as these depend on spreading the
opportunities and advantages of education in the various parts of
the country, and among the different orders of people, it shall be
the duty of legislators and magistrates... to cherish the interest
of literature and the sciences, and all seminaries of them."

-- John Adams (Thoughts on Government, 1776)

Reference: The Works of John Adams, Charles Adams, ed., 259.

Title: Hamilton: Creator's law, Nature's law
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 09, 2008, 05:37:32 AM

Title: Madison: RKBA
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 09, 2008, 02:54:26 PM

This is why we were supposed to have militias, instead of a standing army.
The armed populace was supposed to be the final check in our system of
checks and balances:

The federal and State governments are in fact but different agents and
trustees of the people . . the adversaries of the Constitution seem to have
lost sight of the people altogether in their reasonings on this subject; and
to have viewed these different establishments not only as mutual rivals and
enemies, but as uncontrolled by any common superior in their efforts to
usurp the authorities of each other. These gentlemen must here be reminded
of their error. They must be told that the ultimate authority, wherever the
derivative may be found, resides in the people alone . .

James Madison Federalist 46. According to Tench Coxe, another prominent
Federalist:

Title: Hamilton: good govt will be popular
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 10, 2008, 05:57:59 AM

"I will venture to assert that no combination of designing men
under heaven will be capable of making a government unpopular
which is in its principles a wise and good one, and vigorous in
its operations."

-- Alexander Hamilton (speech to the New York Ratifying Convention,
June 1788)

Reference: The Works of Alexander Hamilton, Henry Cabot Lodge,
ed., II, 29.

Title: Jefferson: War and Commerce
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 11, 2008, 08:11:25 AM

"War is not the best engine for us to resort to; nature has given
us one in our commerce, which if properly managed, will be a
better instrument for obliging the interested nations of Europe
to treat us with justice."

-- Thomas Jefferson (letter to Thomas Pickney, 29 May 1797)

Reference: The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Ford, ed., vol. 8
(293)

Title: J. Story: Interpreting the C.
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 14, 2008, 07:03:57 AM

"The constitution of the United States is to receive a reasonable
interpretation of its language, and its powers, keeping in view the
objects and purposes, for which those powers were conferred. By
a reasonable interpretation, we mean, that in case the words are
susceptible of two different senses, the one strict, the other
more enlarged, that should be adopted, which is most consonant
with the apparent objects and intent of the Constitution."

-- Joseph Story (Commentaries on the Constitution, 1833)

Reference: Story, Commentaries on the Constitution, 140.

--------

Title: J. Adams: The more things change , , ,
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 15, 2008, 07:50:04 AM

"Public affairs go on pretty much as usual: perpetual chicanery and
rather more personal abuse than there used to be... Our American
Chivalry is the worst in the world. It has no Laws, no bounds,
no definitions; it seems to be all a Caprice."

-- John Adams (letter to Thomas Jefferson, 17 April 1826)

Reference: The Adams-Jefferson Correspondence, Lester Cappon, ed.,

Title: Fisher Aimes: Champions of Liberty
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 16, 2008, 06:31:02 AM

"I am commonly opposed to those who modestly assume the rank
of champions of liberty, and make a very patriotic noise about
the people. It is the stale artifice which has duped the world a
thousand times, and yet, though detected, it is still successful.
I love liberty as well as anybody. I am proud of it, as the true
title of our people to distinction above others; but...I would
guard it by making the laws strong enough to protect it."

-- Fisher Ames (letter to George Richard Minot, 23 June 1789)

Reference: Works of Fisher Ames, W. B. Allen, ed., vol. 1 (678)

Title: Jefferson: Natural Aristocracy
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 17, 2008, 05:22:40 AM

"The natural aristocracy I consider as the most precious gift
of nature for the instruction, the trusts, and government of
society. And indeed it would have been inconsistent in creation
to have formed man for the social state, and not to have provided
virtue and wisdom enough to manage the concerns of the society.
May we not even say that that form of government is the best
which provides the most - for a pure selection of these natural
aristoi into the offices of government?"

-- Thomas Jefferson (letter to John Adams, 28 October 1813)

Reference: Jefferson Writings, Lemay, ed., 1306.

Title: F. Ames: Licentiousness and Liberty
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 18, 2008, 03:58:40 AM

"The known propensity of a democracy is to licentiousness which
the ambitious call, and ignorant believe to be liberty."

-- Fisher Ames (speech in the Massachusetts Ratifying Convention,
15 January 1788)

Reference: The Works of Fisher Ames, W.B. Allen, ed., vol. 1 (546)

Title: Franklin: Religion & Morals; MLK
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 21, 2008, 07:07:21 AM

"In such a performance you may lay the foundation of national
happiness only in religion, not by leaving it doubtful "whether
morals can exist without it," but by asserting that without
religion morals are the effects of causes as purely physical as
pleasant breezes and fruitful seasons."

-- Benjamin Rush (letter to John Adams, 20 August 1811)

Reference: Americanism, Gebhardt (12); original Letters, Rush,
Butterfield, ed., vol. 2 (1096-97)
================================

“I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.’... I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character... And if America is to be a great nation this must become true.” —Martin Luther King, Jr.

Title: Franklin: Children
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 22, 2008, 06:27:30 AM

"And as to the Cares, they are chiefly what attend the bringing
up of Children; and I would ask any Man who has experienced it,
if they are not the most delightful Cares in the World; and if
from that Particular alone, he does not find the Bliss of a double
State much greater, instead of being less than he expected."

-- Benjamin Franklin (Reply to a Piece of Advice)

Reference: Franklin: Collected Works, Lemay, ed. (249)

Title: Re: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 28, 2008, 11:40:36 AM

"No people can be bound to acknowledge and adore the invisible
hand, which conducts the Affairs of men more than the People
of the United States. Every step, by which they have advanced
to the character of an independent nation, seems to have been
distinguished by some token of providential agency."

-- George Washington (First Inaugural Address, 30 April 1789)
============

Title: Big catch up post
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 31, 2008, 05:16:37 AM

Wisdom and knowledge, as well as virtue, diffused generally among
the body of the people, being necessary for the preservation of
their rights and liberties, and as these depend on spreading the
opportunities and advantages of education in the various parts of
the country, and among the different orders of people, it shall be
the duty of legislators and magistrates... to cherish the interest
of literature and the sciences, and all seminaries of them."

-- John Adams (Thoughts on Government, 1776)

Reference: The Works of John Adams, Charles Adams, ed., 259.
============

“To judge from the history of mankind, we shall be compelled to conclude that... to model our political systems upon speculations of lasting tranquility would be to calculate on the weaker springs of human character.” —Alexander Hamilton
==============
“In politics, as in religion, it is equally absurd to aim at making proselytes by fire and sword. Heresies in either can rarely be cured by persecution.” —Alexander Hamilton
===============
"The prosperity of commerce is now perceived and acknowledged by
all enlightened statesmen to be the most useful as well as the
most productive source of national wealth, and has accordingly
become a primary object of its political cares."

-- Alexander Hamilton (Federalist No. 12, 27 November 1787)

Reference: Hamilton, Federalist No. 12.
===============

Would it not be better to simplify the system of taxation rather than to spread it over such a variety of subjects and pass through so many new hands.” —Thomas Jefferson

===============

"The spirit of encroachment tends to consolidate the powers of
all the departments in one, and thus to create whatever the form
of government, a real despotism. A just estimate of that love of
power, and proneness to abuse it, which predominates in the human
heart is sufficient to satisfy us of the truth of this position."

-- George Washington (Farewell Address, 19 September 1796)

Reference: George Washington: A Collection, W.B. Allen, ed. (521)

================

"The God who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time;
the hand of force may destroy, but cannot disjoin them."

-- Thomas Jefferson (Summary View of the Rights of British America,
August 1774)

Reference: Jefferson: Writings, Peterson ed., Library of America
(122)
============

"No people can be bound to acknowledge and adore the invisible
hand, which conducts the Affairs of men more than the People
of the United States. Every step, by which they have advanced
to the character of an independent nation, seems to have been
distinguished by some token of providential agency."

-- George Washington (First Inaugural Address, 30 April 1789)

Reference: resp. quoted

============

“The preservation of the sacred fire of liberty, and the destiny of the republican model of government, are justly considered deeply, perhaps as finally, staked on the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people.” —George Washington

============

"It is the madness of folly, to expect mercy from those who have
refused to do justice; and even mercy, where conquest is the
object, is only a trick of war; the cunning of the fox is as
murderous as the violence of the wolf."

-- Thomas Paine (The American Crisis, No. 1, 19 December 1776)

Reference: Thomas Paine: Collected Writings , Foner ed., Library
of America (97)
================

"There is no part of the administration of government that requires
extensive information and a thorough knowledge of the principles
of political economy, so much as the business of taxation. The
man who understands those principles best will be least likely
to resort to oppressive expedients, or sacrifice any particular
class of citizens to the procurement of revenue. It might be
demonstrated that the most productive system of finance will
always be the least burdensome."

-- Alexander Hamilton (Federalist No. 35, 1788)

Reference: The Federalist

===============

“

ur Commercial policy should hold an equal and impartial hand: neither seeking nor granting exclusive favours or preferences; consulting the natural course of things; diffusing and diversifying by gentle means the streams of Commerce, but forcing nothing; establishing with Powers so disposed; in order to give trade a stable course.” —George Washington

===============

"It is the duty of every good citizen to use all the opportunities
which occur to him, for preserving documents relating to the
history of our country."

-- Thomas Jefferson (letter to Hugh P. Taylor, 4 October 1823)

Title: Franklin: Virtue;
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 02, 2008, 05:57:55 AM

"I pronounce it as certain that there was never yet a truly great
man that was not at the same time truly virtuous."

-- Benjamin Franklin (The Busy-body, No. 3, 18 February 1728)

Reference: The Works of Benjamin Franklin, Bigelow, ed., vol. 1
(350)

------------

Title: Madison
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 04, 2008, 03:34:08 AM

"As there is a degree of depravity in mankind which requires
a certain degree of circumspection and distrust: So there are
other qualities in human nature, which justify a certain portion
of esteem and confidence. Republican government presupposes the
existence of these qualities in a higher degree than any other
form. Were the pictures which have been drawn by the political
jealousy of some among us, faithful likenesses of the human
character, the inference would be that there is not sufficient
virtue among men for self-government; and that nothing less than
the chains of despotism can restrain them from destroying and
devouring one another."

-- James Madison (Federalist No. 55, 15 February 1788)

Reference: Madison, Federalist No. 55.

Title: Franklin: Divine Providence
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 05, 2008, 08:47:25 AM

"All of us who were engaged in the struggle must have observed
frequent instances of superintending providence in our favor. To
that kind providence we owe this happy opportunity of consulting in
peace on the means of establishing our future national felicity.
And have we now forgotten that powerful friend? Or do we imagine
that we no longer need his assistance? I have lived, Sir, a
long time, and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs
I see of this truth-that God governs in the affairs of men.
And if a sparrow cannot fall to the Ground without his Notice,
is it probable that an Empire can rise without his Aid?""

-- Benjamin Franklin (To Colleagues at the Constitutional
Convention)

Reference: Quoted by James Madison, Notes of Debates in the
Federal Convention of 1787. (New York: W.W. Norton and Company,
1987), pp. 209-

Title: Jefferson on George Washington
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 06, 2008, 04:38:44 AM

"His integrity was most pure, his justice the most inflexible
I have ever known, no motives of interest or consanguinity,
of friendship or hatred, being able to bias his decision.
He was indeed, in every sense of the words, a wise, a good,
and a great man."

-- Thomas Jefferson (on George Washington in a letter to Dr. Walter
Jones, 2 January 1814)

Reference: Jefferson: Writings, Peterson ed., Library of America
(1318-19)

Title: Reagan
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 06, 2008, 08:46:40 AM

"And whatever else history may say about me when I'm gone, I hope it will record that I appealed to your best hopes, not your worst fears, to your confidence rather than your doubts. My dream is that you will travel the road ahead with liberty's lamp guiding your steps and opportunity's arm steadying your way. My fondest hope for each one of you — and especially for young people — is that you will love your country, not for her power or wealth, but for her selflessness and her idealism. May each of you have the heart to conceive, the understanding to direct, and the hand to execute works that will make the world a little better for your having been here. May all of you as Americans never forget your heroic origins, never fail to seek divine guidance, and never lose your natural, God-given optimism. And finally, my fellow Americans, may every dawn be a great new beginning for America and every evening bring us closer to that shining city upon a hill." —Ronald Reagan

“We, the members of the New Republican Party, believe that the preservation and enhancement of the values that strengthen and protect individual freedom, family life, communities and neighborhoods and the liberty of our beloved nation should be at the heart of any legislative or political program presented to the American people.”

“We believe that liberty can be measured by how much freedom Americans have to make their own decisions, even their own mistakes.”

“Families must continue to be the foundation of our nation. Families—not government programs—are the best way to make sure our children are properly nurtured, our elderly are cared for, our cultural and spiritual heritages are perpetuated, our laws are observed and our values are preserved... We fear the government may be powerful enough to destroy our families; we know that it is not powerful enough to replace them.”

“Extreme taxation, excessive controls, oppressive government competition with business... frustrated minorities and forgotten Americans are not the products of free enterprise. They are the residue of centralized bureaucracy, of government by a self-anointed elite.”

“We must be ever willing to negotiate differences, but equally mindful that there are American ideals that cannot be compromised. Given that there are other nations with potentially hostile design, we recognize that we can reach our goals only while maintaining a superior national defense, second to none.”

“Our party must be based on the kind of leadership that grows and takes its strength from the people... And our cause must be to rediscover, reassert and reapply America’s spiritual heritage to our national affairs. Then with God’s help we shall indeed be as a city upon a hill with the eyes of all people upon us."

Title: T. Paine: Tyranny
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 07, 2008, 06:55:33 AM

"Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this
consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more
glorious the triumph."

-- Thomas Paine (American Crisis, No. 1, 19 December 1776)

Reference: Thomas Paine: Collected Writings , Foner ed., Library
of America (91)

Title: Jefferson
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 09, 2008, 05:46:22 AM

"Cherish, therefore, the spirit of our people, and keep alive their
attention. Do not be too severe upon their errors, but reclaim
them by enlightening them. If once they become inattentive to the
public affairs, you and I, and Congress, and Assemblies, Judges,
and Governors, shall all become wolves."

-- Thomas Jefferson (letter to Edward Carrington, 16 January 1787)

Reference: The Learning of Liberty, Prangle, 111.

Title: Jefferson; Reagan
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 11, 2008, 09:23:49 AM

"Experience having long taught me the reasonableness of mutual
sacrifices of opinion among those who are to act together for
any common object, and the expediency of doing what good we can;
when we cannot do all we would wish."

-- Thomas Jefferson (letter to John Randolph, 1 December 1803)
-------------------
“[A] wise and frugal government... shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned.” —Thomas Jefferson

----------------

“We must remove government’s smothering hand from where it does harm; we must seek to revitalize the proper functions of government. We do these things to set loose again the energy and the ingenuity of the American people. We do these things to reinvigorate those social and economic institutions which serve as a buffer and a bridge between the individual and the state—and which remain the real source of our progress as a people.” —Ronald Reagan

Title: Jefferson; debt and taxes
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 12, 2008, 08:47:00 AM

"It is a wise rule and should be fundamental in a government
disposed to cherish its credit, and at the same time to restrain
the use of it within the limits of its faculties, "never to
borrow a dollar without laying a tax in the same instant for
paying the interest annually, and the principal within a given
term; and to consider that tax as pledged to the creditors on
the public faith.""

-- Thomas Jefferson (letter to John Wayles Eppes, 24 June 1813)

Title: Jefferson: legitimate powers of government
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 13, 2008, 06:15:34 AM

"The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only
as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my
neighbour to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither
picks my pocket nor breaks my leg."

-- Thomas Jefferson (Notes on the State of Virginia, Query 17,
1782)

Reference: Jefferson: Writings, Peterson ed., Library of America
(285)

Title: Hanilton: The people
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 14, 2008, 04:00:52 AM

"Here sir, the people govern."

-- Alexander Hamilton (speech in the New York ratifying convention,
17 June 1788)

Reference: The Debates of the Several State..., Elliot, vol. 2
(348)

Title: J. Adams: Washington
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 18, 2008, 07:53:30 AM

"His Example is now complete, and it will teach wisdom and virtue
to magistrates, citizens, and men, not only in the present age,
but in future generations, as long as our history shall be read."

-- John Adams (message to the U.S. Senate, 19 December 1799)

Reference: Life of Washington, John Marshal, vol. 5
=======================================

NY Times

Our Founding Lame Duck
By WILLIAM HOGELAND
Published: February 18, 2008
HISTORIANS have often noted that George Washington not only began but also did much to define the American presidency. He imprinted on the office a sense of competence and integrity that can make later presidents, even successful ones, seem to fall short. Then to top it off, he left the job voluntarily. No law required him to step down, and running against him would have been impossible. Retiring after two terms, Washington enabled the transfer of executive power by electoral process.

That crowning achievement also made George Washington our first lame-duck president. Here again he set the standard, albeit one less celebrated by history. His last year in office was, in his estimation, lame indeed. He was just waiting for it all to be over.

Not that Washington was ever exactly chipper about being president. He’d fervently hoped to resign at the end of his first term. By then, his hearing and memory had started to fail. He complained of the burden of endless duty. His cultural status as a demigod made it impossible for anyone to criticize him publicly, but he interpreted every attack on a subordinate as meant for him. According to Thomas Jefferson, then secretary of state, Washington bitterly disbelieved the gushing reverence the press accorded him. Yet feeling that he was needed to referee the battles between Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton, secretary of the Treasury, and to shore up national unity, he agreed to serve a second term.

By 1796, Washington might reasonably have felt proud, relieved, even optimistic. The skeletal American Army had beaten a powerful confederation of Great Lakes Indians, and the president himself had led a force to suppress an insurgency of Western settlers known as whiskey rebels. These victories established national sovereignty and federal law, discouraged Spanish and British designs on American lands and helped renew the country’s patriotism.

Still, Washington’s spirits that year were lower than ever. He was exhausted. He suffered from a disabling back injury. He had to sit for hours for the portraitist Gilbert Stuart, a hard-drinking hustler. Among his second- and third-string cabinet members — some of whom were founding the job of executive-branch hack — were cronies of Hamilton, who was trying to run the presidency from outside. Meanwhile, at Monticello, Jefferson was excoriating the president and mounting open opposition. Partisan politics had arrived, and to Washington, that was a miserable failure.

The only significant order of business for 1796 was getting through Congress a treaty with England. The press and public loudly criticized Washington for negotiating it — he was no longer off limits to direct attack — and the House of Representatives threatened to withhold financing. In the end, Congress ratified the treaty, but Washington thought the House had crossed a line separating federal powers and struck at the Constitution itself. “Charity would lead one to hope that the motives to it have been pure,” he reflected to allies. “Suspicions, however, speak a different language.”

The hopelessness with which Washington ended his presidency was obvious in the way he described to Hamilton his plan to retire. He wrote that he had “a disinclination to be longer buffeted in the public prints by a set of infamous scribblers.” He needed retirement, he told another correspondent, just to make bearable what he predicted would be a short trip to his death.

In the last few months of his term, as the first vicious presidential election contest (between Jefferson and John Adams) geared up, the president did little but hold ceremonial meetings with Indian leaders, accept visits of congratulation and write farewell letters. His annual address to Congress that year was as insistent a goodbye as his much-praised farewell speech. But he himself seemed, one observer thought, “morose.” Today we might call it depressed.

Two-term presidents nowadays typically celebrate their accomplishments, hand out grants and pardons, and talk excitedly about beginning a new career of public service. They may be happier than Washington was, but he may have set the pattern that condemns them to a period of impotence while we wait for the next leader to come along.

William Hogeland is the author of “The Whiskey Rebellion.”

Title: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 18, 2008, 11:25:34 AM

Second post of the morning, from the LA Times:
=======

A tussle over the founding fathers' words
BEN THERE: A portrait of Benjamin Franklin by Joseph Wright. Scholars are transcribing and annotating the writings of Franklin, George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and Alexander Hamilton.
It will take decades for historians to finish editing the volumes. But some scholars want them online now.
By Sarah D. Wire, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
February 18, 2008
WASHINGTON -- The names and public acts of the founding fathers are familiar to many Americans, but their thoughts have remained largely a mystery.

"People think it would be difficult to touch them as who they were," historian David McCullough told a recent Senate hearing. "And it is, except in what they wrote."

For 65 years, scholars have been compiling, transcribing and annotating the writings of Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and Alexander Hamilton. By the time the work is completed in 2049, the letters, diaries, official papers and other writings of the historical figures will be chronicled in 341 volumes, each 600 to 800 pages.

On Feb. 7, the Senate Judiciary Committee heard from scholars, librarians and others seeking to improve public access to the papers while the bound volumes are finished over the next 41 years. The consensus was that the papers should be available online, but there was little agreement on how -- and how rapidly -- that should be accomplished.

Brian Lee, a spokesman for the National Endowment for the Humanities, which provides financial support for the project, said in an interview that it was crucial to get the papers online quickly, and the fastest way to do that was "in the form of nonedited papers."

Such a move concerns historians, who gain as much from the editors' annotations of each detail as from the original words. "The footnotes are pure gold," McCullough told the panel. "Many are masterpieces of close scholarship."

Editing the documents is not a process that can be rushed, scholars said.

First, the documents are gathered from archives, libraries, private homes and other depositories. Then an editor transcribes each page, which may be blurred, faded or damaged.

After that, the transcription is annotated to identify each significant person, event and place mentioned in the text.

Editors then compare it with all other known texts of the document and note any variations.

Such close study is costly and time-consuming. So far, nearly $60 million in private and public money has been spent on the project. Rebecca W. Rimel, president and chief executive of the Pew Charitable Trusts, which has contributed more than $7.5 million, told the Senate panel that about one volume per founding father is completed each year.

The bound, annotated copies will be most beneficial to scholars, said Stanley N. Katz, a professor of public affairs at Princeton University and chairman of Papers of the Founding Fathers Inc., an umbrella group that raises money for the project.

But he acknowledged that the public would have easier access to the documents if they were online.

About two-thirds of the volumes have been published. Because Hamilton was only 49 when he was killed in a duel with Aaron Burr, he left fewer papers than the other five. The collection of his writings is the only one to be completed. One volume of the Hamilton papers costs $180; the complete set of 27 volumes is $2,600.

"We don't imagine any individual is going to buy these series," Katz said last week.

There is a split over where to put the online versions. Papers of the Founding Fathers supports digitization of "fully verified, scrupulously accurate texts" on a fee-based website at the University of Virginia Press. The Pew Charitable Trusts supports placing unannotated documents, along with digitized versions of the volumes as they are produced, "on a single, easily accessible and searchable website, such as that of the Library of Congress."

"It ought to be free to everyone," Rimel told the panel. "These are the founders' words."

In a September 2006 letter to the National Endowment for the Humanities, the editors of the five ongoing projects -- based at the University of Virginia, Princeton and Yale universities, the Massachusetts Historical Society and the Thomas Jefferson Foundation -- said that if they were given $13 million, all of the papers could be searchable online through a single database within five years.

The editors' plan would digitize the papers of Washington, Adams, Jefferson and Madison and make them available through Rotunda, an online publication service of the University of Virginia Press.

Franklin's and Hamilton's would be added online later. The plan calls for increasing staff and office space, as well as improving coordination among the five projects, which work independently.

=======

Rotunda began digitizing the published volumes of the Washington papers in 2004, paid for by Mount Vernon and the University of Virginia. Even without a secure source of funding, the online project is moving forward, with Adams' papers due next month and Jefferson's and Madison's expected in the next year.

The price for access to all four presidents' papers has not been set. It is expected to be a sliding scale. For example, to gain access to the Washington papers already on the Rotunda site, individuals and high schools pay a one-time fee of $663, with prices increasing to $6,630 for large research universities.

"Once a library buys it, they have it forever," said Penelope J. Kaiserlian, director of the University of Virginia Press.

But the cost could prevent the public from getting the papers, said Deanna Marcum, associate librarian for library services at the Library of Congress.

She urged the senators to support placing an online version, including unannotated papers, at her institution, which she said already had digitized copies of the presidential papers of Washington, Jefferson and Madison.

"The scholarly editions in their current form are serving the scholarly community well, but we serve a different audience," she said.

Historians emphasized that placing the information online or speeding the process should not be allowed to affect the quality of the work.

The papers' editors, McCullough told the committee, "are the best in the business, and the high quality of the work they do need not [and] must not be jeopardized or vitiated in order to speed up the rate of production. There really should be no argument about that."

McCullough, who said he supported increased funding so that additional staff could be hired, noted that he had relied extensively on the founding fathers' papers for two of his bestselling books, "1776" and the Pulitzer-winning "John Adams."

"Their value is unassailable, immeasurable. They are superbly edited. They are thorough. They are accurate," he said, adding: "I know how essential the papers are to our understanding those great Americans and their time."

Title: Webster
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 19, 2008, 04:09:02 AM

"It is an object of vast magnitude that systems of education should
be adopted and pursued which may not only diffuse a knowledge
of the sciences but may implant in the minds of the American
youth the principles of virtue and of liberty and inspire them
with just and liberal ideas of government and with an inviolable
attachment to their own country."

-- Noah Webster (On Education of Youth in America, 1790)

Reference: The Learning of Liberty, Prangle and Prangle (126);
original Noah Webster: Schoolmaster to America, Harry Warfel (42)

Title: Re: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 20, 2008, 03:07:16 AM

"I am not a Virginian, but an American."

-- Patrick Henry (speech in the First Continental Congress,
6 September 1774)

Reference: Patrick Henry: Life Corerespondence and Speeches, Wirt,
ed., vol. 1 (220); original Life and Works of John Adams, vol. 2
(365)

Title: thomas Paine
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 21, 2008, 06:24:10 AM

"Society in every state is a blessing, but government, even in
its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an
intolerable one; for when we suffer or are exposed to the same
miseries by a government, which we might expect in a country
without government, our calamity is heightened by reflecting that
we furnish the means by which we suffer."

-- Thomas Paine (Common Sense, 1776)

Reference: Thomas Paine: Collected Writings , Foner ed., Library
of America (6)

Title: Jefferson on Washington
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 22, 2008, 06:14:25 AM

"His person, you know, was fine, his stature exactly what one
would wish, his deportment easy, erect and noble."

-- Thomas Jefferson (on George Washington in a letter to Dr. Walter
Jones, 2 January 1814)

Reference: Jefferson: Writings, Peterson ed., Library of America
(1319)

Title: Joseph Sotry: Taxes
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 25, 2008, 10:36:30 AM

"In a general sense, all contributions imposed by the government
upon individuals for the service of the state, are called taxes,
by whatever name they may be known, whether by the name of tribute,
tythe, tallage, impost, duty, gabel, custom, subsidy, aid, supply,
excise, or other name."

-- Joseph Story (Commentaries on the Constitution, 1833)

Reference: Story, Commentaries on the Constitution, 337.

Title: Joseph Story: Federalism
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 26, 2008, 09:55:07 AM

"The true test is, whether the object be of a local character, and
local use; or, whether it be of general benefit to the states. If
it be purely local, congress cannot constitutionally appropriate
money for the object. But, if the benefit be general, it matters
not, whether in point of locality it be in one state, or several;
whether it be of large, or of small extent."

-- Joseph Story (Commentaries on the Constitution, 1833)

Reference: Story, Commentaries on the Constitution, 453.

Title: Washington
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 29, 2008, 08:28:26 AM

"Harmony, liberal intercourse with all Nations, are recommended
by policy, humanity and interest. But even our Commercial policy
should hold an equal and impartial hand: neither seeking nor
granting exclusive favours or preferences; consulting the natural
course of things; diffusing and diversifying by gentle means the
streams of Commerce, but forcing nothing; establishing with Powers
so disposed; in order to give trade a stable course."

-- George Washington (Farewell Address, 19 September 1796)

Reference: Maxims of George Washington, Schroeder, ed. (71)

Title: Re: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 04, 2008, 08:24:29 AM

"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."

-- Thomas Jefferson (letter to William Stephens Smith, 1787)

Reference: The Writings of Thomas Jefferson (Memorial Edition),
Lipscomb and Bergh, eds., 6:373.

Title: S. Adams: The people's principles and virtue
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 05, 2008, 05:22:35 AM

"A general dissolution of principles and manners will more
surely overthrow the liberties of America than the whole force
of the common enemy. While the people are virtuous they cannot
be subdued; but when once they lose their virtue then will be
ready to surrender their liberties to the first external or
internal invader."

-- Samuel Adams (letter to James Warren, 12 February 1779)

Reference: The Writings of Samuel Adams, Cushing, ed., vol. 4 (124)

Title: James Madison: Free Markets
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 06, 2008, 08:58:25 AM

"I own myself the friend to a very free system of commerce, and
hold it as a truth, that commercial shackles are generally unjust,
oppressive and impolitic - it is also a truth, that if industry
and labour are left to take their own course, they will generally
be directed to those objects which are the most productive, and
this in a more certain and direct manner than the wisdom of the
most enlightened legislature could point out."

-- James Madison (speech to the Congress, 9 April 1789)

Title: Hamilton: Representation, mutual checks
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 07, 2008, 06:55:49 AM

"The great desiderata are a free representation and mutual
checks. When these are obtained, all our apprehensions of the
extent of powers are unjust and imaginary."

-- Alexander Hamilton (Speech to the New York Ratifying Convention,
June 1788)

Reference: The Works of Alexander Hamilton, Henry Cabot Lodge,
ed., II, 60.

Title: Madison, Reagan
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 10, 2008, 09:26:37 AM

“f industry and labour are left to take their own course, they will generally be directed to those objects which are the most productive, and this in a more certain and direct manner than the wisdom of the most enlightened legislature could point out.” —James Madison

"Each State, in ratifying the Constitution, is considered as
a sovereign body, independent of all others, and only to be
bound by its own voluntary act. In this relation, then, the
new Constitution will, if established, be a FEDERAL, and not a
NATIONAL constitution."

-- James Madison (Federalist No. 39, 1788)

Reference: The Federalist

“How can limited government and fiscal restraint be equated with lack of compassion for the poor? How can a tax break that puts a little more money in the weekly paychecks of working people be seen as an attack on the needy? Since when do we in America believe that our society is made up of two diametrically opposed classes—one rich, one poor—both in a permanent state of conflict and neither able to get ahead except at the expense of the other? Since when do we in America accept this alien and discredited theory of social and class warfare? Since when do we in America endorse the politics of envy and division?” —Ronald Reagan

Title: S. Adams: Laws of Nature and the Creator
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 11, 2008, 06:19:42 AM

"In the supposed state of nature, all men are equally bound
by the laws of nature, or to speak more properly, the laws of
the Creator."

-- Samuel Adams (letter to the Legislature of Massachusetts,
17 January 1794)

Reference: Original Intent, Barton (224); original The Writings
of Samuel Adams, Cushing, ed., vol. 4 (356)

Title: Book on John Adams
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 11, 2008, 05:29:42 PM

A friend writes:

I'm halfway through the book John Adams, by David McCullough. This is the second time I've read it, I picked it back up when I heard HBO was doing a series based on the book. This book is a must read for anyone that wants to feel and breathe in the nature of the times of the American Revolution, as well as get inside the head of one of our Founding Fathers. It's hard to imagine the extremes of the times and the circumstances that shaped the mind, that shaped a nation. It received a very much deserved Pulitzer when it came out in 2001. You folks in Europe will be interested as well, Adams, spent much of the war in Europe trying to get assistance in supporting the effort to break from England.

Title: Hamilton; Govt overstepping bounds
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 13, 2008, 03:15:22 PM

"If the federal government should overpass the just bounds of its
authority and make a tyrannical use of its powers, the people,
whose creature it is, must appeal to the standard they have
formed, and take such measures to redress the injury done to the
Constitution as the exigency may suggest and prudence justify."

-- Alexander Hamilton (Federalist No. 33, 3 January 1788)

Title: This looks very promising
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 13, 2008, 09:25:15 PM

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/entertainment/jan-june08/adams_03-12.html

Title: Franklin, Jefferson
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 17, 2008, 03:14:12 AM

"We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang
separately."

-- Benjamin Franklin (at the signing of the Declaration of
Independence, 4 July 1776)

Reference: Our Sacred Honor, Bennett (29) and Respectfully Quoted
===================
"To restore... harmony,... to render us again one people acting
as one nation should be the object of every man really a patriot."

-- Thomas Jefferson (letter to Thomas McKean, 1801)

Reference: 63 The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Ford Edition, 8:78

Title: Franklin: Greatest or the Best
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 18, 2008, 11:52:54 AM

"Strive to be the greatest man in your country, and you may
be disappointed. Strive to be the best and you may succeed:
he may well win the race that runs by himself."

-- Benjamin Franklin (Poor Richard's Almanack, 1747)

Reference: Bartlett's Quotations (177)

Title: S. Adams: Religion and morals
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 19, 2008, 08:40:41 AM

"Religion and good morals are the only solid foundation of public
liberty and happiness."

-- Samuel Adams (letter to John Trumbull, 16 October 1778)

Reference: Original Intent, Barton (320); original The Writings
of Samuel Adams, Cushing, ed., vol. 4 (74)

Title: Jefferson
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 20, 2008, 08:25:49 AM

"If we move in mass, be it ever so circuitously, we shall attain
our object; but if we break into squads, everyone pursuing the
path he thinks most direct, we become an easy conquest to those
who can now barely hold us in check."

-- Thomas Jefferson (letter to William Duane, 1811)

Reference: The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Memorial Edition,
13:29

Title: Washington's letter to the Hebrew Congregation
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 21, 2008, 07:57:11 AM

"May the father of all mercies scatter light, and not darkness,
upon our paths, and make us in all our several vocations useful
here, and in His own due time and way everlastingly happy. "

-- George Washington (letter to the Hebrew Congregation in
Newport, August 1790)

Reference: George Washington: A Collection, W.B. Allen, ed. (548)

Title: Franklin: Religion; P. Henry: Life & Death
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 24, 2008, 08:35:37 AM

"If men are so wicked with religion, what would they be if
without it?"

-- Benjamin Franklin (to Thomas Paine, Date Unknown)

Reference: Original Intent, Barton (297); original The Works of
Benjamin Franklin, Sparks, ed., vol. 10 (281-282)
====================================

“Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!” —Patrick Henry, 23 March 1775

Title: The Dems super disaster
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 24, 2008, 12:43:16 PM

Not exactly on point with the subject matter of this thread, but pertinent enough I think to merit its placement here.
=======================

The Democrats' Super Disaster
By JOHN YOO
March 24, 2008; Page A15
WSJ

Until recent weeks, one of the least understood aspects of the Democrats' primary contest was the role of superdelegates. These are Democratic Party insiders, members of Congress, and other officials who can cast ballots at the party's national convention this summer.

But now these unelected delegates are coming in for a close inspection, because neither Hillary Clinton nor Barack Obama can win their party's nomination without superdelegate support. The big Pennsylvania primary on April 22, for example, has only 158 delegates at stake (each of them will be pledged to support one of the candidates). By comparison, there are a total of 795 superdelegates, none of whom are required to honor the will of the voters of their state at the party's convention.

Sound undemocratic? It is. That the 2008 Democratic nominee for president will be chosen by individuals no one voted for in the primaries flew for too long under the commentariat's radar. This from the party that litigated to "make every vote count" in the 2000 Florida recount, reviled the institution of the Electoral College for letting the loser of the national popular election win the presidency, and has called the Bush administration illegitimate ever since.

Democratic Party reforms in 1982 gave super-delegates about 20% of convention votes -- so that party greybeards can stop a popular, but politically extreme, candidate from seizing the nomination. The Democrats deliberately rejiggered their party's rules to head off insurgent candidates, like a George McGovern or a Jimmy Carter, who might be crushed in the general election. Unelected delegates thus have more than twice the votes of the richest state prize, California.

So much for unfiltered democracy. In truth, the Democratic Party runs by rules that are the epitome of the smoke-filled room and ensure, in essence, that congressional incumbents exercise a veto power over the nomination.

This delegate dissonance wasn't anything the Framers of the U.S. Constitution dreamed up. They believed that letting Congress choose the president was a dreadful idea. Without direct election by the people, the Framers said that the executive would lose its independence and vigor and become a mere servant of the legislature. They had the record of revolutionary America to go on. All but one of America's first state constitutions gave state assemblies the power to choose the governor. James Madison commented that this structure allowed legislatures to turn governors into "little more than ciphers."

That's why, during the Constitutional Convention in 1787, the Framers rejected early proposals to follow any such model. New York delegate Gouverneur Morris explained that if Congress picked the president, he "will not be independent of it; and if not independent, usurpation and tyranny on the part of the Legislature will be the consequence." Choosing the president would result from the "work of intrigue, of cabal, and of faction." After weeks of debate, the Framers vested the presidency with its own base of popular support by establishing a national election, saying that the president should represent the views of the entire people, not the wishes of Congress.

They kept the same rule when considering what should happen when the president ran for re-election. Alexander Hamilton wrote, while ratification of the Constitution was being debated, "that the executive should be independent for his continuance in office on all, but the people themselves," for otherwise, the president might "be tempted to sacrifice his duty to his complaisance for those whose favor was necessary to the duration of his official consequence."

The Framers were deeply concerned that a president chosen by Congress would keep his eye only on the happiness of legislators, turning our government into a parliamentary system like those which prevail in Europe today, in which the nation's leader is merely a prime minister.

Press reports indicate that the Framers were right to worry. The Clinton and Obama campaigns are now competing hard to win superdelegates. Members of Congress no doubt will cut deals for themselves and their constituents. A water project here, some pet legislation there -- surely such details are worth the nomination. Lose, and the candidate pays nothing. Win, and a presidency is gained. Like shareholders deciding whether to sell in a tender offer, superdelegates will bargain ferociously until the moment that the nominee secures a delegate majority. As we close in on the Democratic convention, the demand for superdelegates will escalate, with the choice of the nominee becoming increasingly the work of political intrigue, inside deals, and power struggles among special interest groups -- just as the Framers feared.

A nominee who survives this process will come to the presidency weighed down by dozens, if not hundreds, of commitments. Little hope there for a fresh start, or any break from a politics-as-usual Congress. Some may welcome such a development. Some students of American politics argue that the president and Congress should work more closely together. Critics of the Bush administration may well prefer a President Clinton or Obama who obeys congressional wishes.

But the historical record on this is not heartening. During the reign of the Jeffersonians, the progenitors of today's Democrats, the congressional caucus chose the party's nominee. It was a system that yielded mediocrity, even danger. Congressional hawks pushed James Madison into the War of 1812 by demanding ever more aggressive trade restrictions against Great Britain and ultimately declaring war -- all because they wanted to absorb Canada. It ended with a stalemate in the north, the torching of the U.S. capital, and Gen. Andrew Jackson winning a victory at the Battle of New Orleans.

"King Caucus" finally broke down when the system reached a peak of "cabal, intrigue, and faction." Jackson received the plurality of the popular vote in the election of 1824, but with no Electoral College majority the choice went to the House of Representatives. In what became known as the "corrupt bargain," House Speaker Henry Clay, who had come in fourth, threw his electors behind John Quincy Adams in exchange for being appointed Secretary of State. Jackson spent the next four years successfully attacking the legitimacy of the Adams administration and won his revenge in the election of 1828.

It is unlikely that a candidate today would trade a cabinet post for a superdelegate's vote. Sen. Harry Reid is unlikely to be the next Secretary of Veterans' Affairs, or Speaker Nancy Pelosi the next Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. But the election of 1824 ought to serve as a caution about what may happen again today, if we let Congress play a large role in choosing the next president. Our Framers designed the Constitution to prevent just this from happening. The Democrats have created an electoral system that echoes failed models from the American past, and threatens to sap the presidency of its independence and authority by turning it into the handmaiden of Congress instead of the choice of the American people.

Mr. Yoo is a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley and a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. He was an official in the Justice Department from 2001-03.

Title: Washington: on slavery
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 25, 2008, 05:42:48 AM

"[T]here is not a man living who wishes more sincerely than I do,
to see a plan adopted for the abolition of [slavery]."

-- George Washington (letter to Robert Morris, 12 April 1786)

Reference: Washington's Maxims, 157.

Title: Lots of Jefferson
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 25, 2008, 03:22:16 PM

A Bill of Rights is what the people are entitled to against every government, and what no just government should refuse, or rest on inference.
Thomas Jefferson

A coward is much more exposed to quarrels than a man of spirit.
Thomas Jefferson

A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine.
Thomas Jefferson

A wise and frugal government, which shall leave men free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor and bread it has earned - this is the sum of good government.
Thomas Jefferson

Advertisements contain the only truths to be relied on in a newspaper.
Thomas Jefferson

All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.
Thomas Jefferson

All, too, will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will to be rightful must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression.
Thomas Jefferson

Always take hold of things by the smooth handle.
Thomas Jefferson

An association of men who will not quarrel with one another is a thing which has never yet existed, from the greatest confederacy of nations down to a town meeting or a vestry.
Thomas Jefferson

An enemy generally says and believes what he wishes.
Thomas Jefferson

An injured friend is the bitterest of foes.
Thomas Jefferson

As our enemies have found we can reason like men, so now let us show them we can fight like men also.
Thomas Jefferson

Banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies.
Thomas Jefferson

Be polite to all, but intimate with few.
Thomas Jefferson

Bodily decay is gloomy in prospect, but of all human contemplations the most abhorrent is body without mind.
Thomas Jefferson

Books constitute capital. A library book lasts as long as a house, for hundreds of years. It is not, then, an article of mere consumption but fairly of capital, and often in the case of professional men, setting out in life, it is their only capital.
Thomas Jefferson

But friendship is precious, not only in the shade, but in the sunshine of life, and thanks to a benevolent arrangement the greater part of life is sunshine.
Thomas Jefferson

Commerce with all nations, alliance with none, should be our motto.
Thomas Jefferson

Conquest is not in our principles. It is inconsistent with our government.
Thomas Jefferson

Delay is preferable to error.
Thomas Jefferson

Dependence begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition.
Thomas Jefferson

Determine never to be idle. No person will have occasion to complain of the want of time who never loses any. It is wonderful how much may be done if we are always doing.
Thomas Jefferson

Difference of opinion is advantageous in religion. The several sects perform the office of a Censor - over each other.
Thomas Jefferson

Do not bite at the bait of pleasure, till you know there is no hook beneath it.
Thomas Jefferson

Do you want to know who you are? Don't ask. Act! Action will delineate and define you.
Thomas Jefferson

Don't talk about what you have done or what you are going to do.
Thomas Jefferson

Educate and inform the whole mass of the people... They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty.
Thomas Jefferson

Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day.
Thomas Jefferson

Errors of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it.
Thomas Jefferson

Every citizen should be a soldier. This was the case with the Greeks and Romans, and must be that of every free state.
Thomas Jefferson

Every generation needs a new revolution.
Thomas Jefferson

Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves are its only safe depositories.
Thomas Jefferson

Experience demands that man is the only animal which devours his own kind, for I can apply no milder term to the general prey of the rich on the poor.
Thomas Jefferson

Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.
Thomas Jefferson

Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear.
Thomas Jefferson

For a people who are free, and who mean to remain so, a well-organized and armed militia is their best security.
Thomas Jefferson

Force is the vital principle and immediate parent of despotism.
Thomas Jefferson

Friendship is but another name for an alliance with the follies and the misfortunes of others. Our own share of miseries is sufficient: why enter then as volunteers into those of another?
Thomas Jefferson

Happiness is not being pained in body or troubled in mind.
Thomas Jefferson

He who knows best knows how little he knows.
Thomas Jefferson

He who knows nothing is closer to the truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors.
Thomas Jefferson

History, in general, only informs us of what bad government is.
Thomas Jefferson

Title: Our Birth
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 26, 2008, 10:11:42 AM

"When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for
one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected
them with another, and to assume among the Powers of the earth,
the separate and equal station to which the Law of Nature and
Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of
mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel
them to the separation."

The Declaration of Independence, 4 July 1776

Title: Hamilton: People can be fooled
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 27, 2008, 08:49:31 AM

"It is an unquestionable truth, that the body of the people in
every country desire sincerely its prosperity. But it is equally
unquestionable that they do not possess the discernment and
stability necessary for systematic government. To deny that they
are frequently led into the grossest of errors, by misinformation
and passion, would be a flattery which their own good sense
must despise."

-- Alexander Hamilton (speech to the Ratifying Convention of New
York, June 1788)

Reference: The Works of Alexander Hamilton, Henry Cabot Lodge,
ed., II, 42.

Title: Jefferson: Natural Aristocracy
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 28, 2008, 12:17:21 PM

"For I agree with you that there is a natural aristocracy
among men. The grounds of this are virtue and talents."

-- Thomas Jefferson (letter to John Adams, 28 October 1813)

Reference: Jefferson Writings, Lemay, ed., 1305.

Title: J. Wilson: Religion and Law
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 31, 2008, 09:12:13 AM

"Far from being rivals or enemies, religion and law are twin
sisters, friends, and mutual assistants. Indeed, these two sciences
run into each other. The divine law, as discovered by reason and
the moral sense, forms an essential part of both."

-- James Wilson ()

Reference: The Works of James Wilson, McCloskey, ed., 125.

Title: Whither America?
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 05, 2008, 12:17:10 AM

http://www.hillsdale.edu/news/imprimis.asp

Title: Several days worth
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 07, 2008, 07:25:23 AM

Woof All:

I've fallen a bit behind here with the run-up to our just completed "3 Day Gathering of the Pack", so here are several days worth of posts:

Marc
===================================

“f industry and labour are left to take their own course, they will generally be directed to those objects which are the most productive, and this in a more certain and direct manner than the wisdom of the most enlightened legislature could point out.” —James Madison

“How can limited government and fiscal restraint be equated with lack of compassion for the poor? How can a tax break that puts a little more money in the weekly paychecks of working people be seen as an attack on the needy? Since when do we in America believe that our society is made up of two diametrically opposed classes—one rich, one poor—both in a permanent state of conflict and neither able to get ahead except at the expense of the other? Since when do we in America accept this alien and discredited theory of social and class warfare? Since when do we in America endorse the politics of envy and division?” —Ronald Reagan

"Stability in government is essential to national character and
to the advantages annexed to it, as well as to that repose and
confidence in the minds of the people, which are among the chief
blessings of civil society."

-- James Madison (Federalist No. 37, 11 January 1788)

Reference: The Federalist

“The public cannot be too curious concerning the characters of public men.” —Samuel Adams

“Facts are stubborn things.” —John Adams

"The regular distribution of power into distinct departments; the
introduction of legislative balances and checks; the institution
of courts composed of judges holding their offices during good
behavior; the representation of the people in the legislature by
deputies of their own election... They are means, and powerful
means, by which the excellences of republican govenrment may be
retained and its imperfections lessened or avoided."

-- Alexander Hamilton (Federalist No. 9, 1787)

"The convention have done well, therefore, in so disposing of
the power of making treaties, that although the President must,
in forming them, act by the advice and consent of the Senate,
yet he will be able to manage the business of intelligence in
such a manner as prudence may suggest."

-- John Jay (Federalist No. 64, 7 March 1788)

Reference: The Federalist

“Public affairs go on pretty much as usual: perpetual chicanery and rather more personal abuse than there used to be.” —John Adams

"Let the American youth never forget, that they possess a
noble inheritance, bought by the toils, and sufferings, and
blood of their ancestors; and capacity, if wisely improved, and
faithfully guarded, of transmitting to their latest posterity
all the substantial blessings of life, the peaceful enjoyment of
liberty, property, religion, and independence."

-- Joseph Story (Commentaries on the Constitution, 1833)

Reference: Story, Commentaries on the Constitution, 718.

"Children should be educated and instructed in the principles
of freedom."

-- John Adams (Defense of the Constitutions, 1787)

Reference: The Learning of Liberty, Prangle and Prangle (96);
original The Works of John Adams, C.F. Adams, ed., vol. 6 (168)

“I own myself the friend to a very free system of commerce, and hold it as a truth, that commercial shackles are generally unjust, oppressive and impolitic.” —James Madison

"If the present Congress errs in too much talking, how can it
be otherwise in a body to which the people send 150 lawyers,
whose trade it is to question everything, yield nothing, & talk
by the hour? That 150 lawyers should do business together ought
not to be expected."

-- Thomas Jefferson (Autobiography, 1821)

Reference: Jefferson: Writings, Peterson ed., Library of America
(53)

Title: Several days worth 2
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 10, 2008, 06:46:25 AM

"The Declaration of Independence...[is the] declaratory charter
of our rights, and the rights of man."

-- Thomas Jefferson (letter to Samuel Adams Wells, 12 May 1821)

Reference: The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Memorial Edition,
Lipscomb and Bergh, eds., vol. 15 (200)

----------

"That, as a republic is the best of governments, so that particular
arrangements of the powers of society, or, in other words, that
form of government which is best contrived to secure an impartial
and exact execution of the laws, is the best of republics."

-- John Adams (Thoughts on Government, 1776)

Reference: The Works of John Adams, Charles Adams, ed., 194
-------------

“Remember, that Time is Money.” —Benjamin Franklin
---------------

"Why has government been instituted at all? Because the passions
of men will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice
without constraint."

-- Alexander Hamilton (Federalist No. 15)

Reference: Hamilton, Federalist No. 15.
------------------

Title: Re: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 14, 2008, 06:52:08 AM

"[T]he States can best govern our home concerns and the general
government our foreign ones. I wish, therefore...never to see
all offices transferred to Washington, where, further withdrawn
from the eyes of the people, they may more secretly be bought
and sold at market."

-- Thomas Jefferson (letter to Judge William Johnson, 12 June 1823)

Reference: Original Intent, Barton (261); original Memoir,
Correspondence, and Miscellanies, From the Papers of Thomas
Jefferson, Thomas Jefferson

Title: Washington: The value of liberty
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 16, 2008, 09:43:52 AM

"The value of liberty was thus enhanced in our estimation by
the difficulty of its attainment, and the worth of characters
appreciated by the trial of adversity."

-- George Washington (letter to the people of South Carolina,
Circa 1790)

Reference: Maxims of George Washington, Schroeder, ed. (16);
original The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Fitzpatrick, ed.,
vol. 31 (67)

Title: 3 days worth
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 18, 2008, 08:32:37 AM

"'Tis done. We have become a nation."

-- Benjamin Rush (on the ratification of the Constitution, letter
to Boudinot, 9 July 1788)

===========

"A dying man can do nothing easy."

-- Benjamin Franklin (after his daughter asked him to move,
17 April 1790)

Reference: The Life of Franklin, Sparks, vol. 1 (531)

=============

"What a glorious morning this is!"

-- Samuel Adams (to John Hancock at the Battle of Lexington,
Massachusetts, 19 April 1775)

Reference: American Statesman: Samuel Adams, Hosmer (297)

Title: Jefferson: Constitutional construction
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 21, 2008, 07:34:15 AM

"My construction of the constitution is very different from that
you quote. It is that each department is truly independent of the
others, and has an equal right to decide for itself what is the
meaning of the constitution in the cases submitted to its action;
and especially, where it is to act ultimately and without appeal."

-- Thomas Jefferson (letter to Samuel Adams Wells, 12 May 1819)

Reference: Jefferson Writings, Peterson, ed., 1426

Title: Franklin: On borrowing
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 22, 2008, 09:06:18 AM

"He that goes a borrowing goes a sorrowing."

-- Benjamin Franklin (from his writings, 1758)

Reference: Franklin: Writings, Lemay, ed., Library of America
(1300)

Title: Hamilton
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 23, 2008, 05:28:27 AM

"It seems to have been reserved to the people of this country,
by their conduct and example, to decide the important question,
whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing
good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are
forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on
accident and force. If there be any truth in the remark, the
crisis at which we are arrived may with propriety be regarded
as the era in which that decision is to be made; and a wrong
election of the part we shall act may, in this view, deserve to
be considered as the general misfortune of mankind."

-- Alexander Hamilton (Federalist No. 1, 27 October 1787)

Reference: Hamilton, Federalist No. 1.

Title: Jefferson: Every citizen a soldier; Washington
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 24, 2008, 05:23:56 AM

"Every citizen should be a soldier. This was the case with the Greeks and Romans, and must be that of every free state."

-Thomas Jefferson

"No country upon earth ever had it more in its power to attain
these blessings than United America. Wondrously strange, then,
and much to be regretted indeed would it be, were we to neglect
the means and to depart from the road which Providence has pointed
us to so plainly; I cannot believe it will ever come to pass."

-- George Washington (letter to Benjamin Lincoln, 29 June 1788)

Reference: George Washington: A Collection, W.B. Allen, ed. (403)

Title: Washington: Letter to Hebrew Congregation
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 25, 2008, 08:15:23 AM

"The citizens of the United States of America have the right to
applaud themselves for having given to mankind examples of an
enlarged and liberal policy worthy of imitation. All possess
alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship. It
is now no more that toleration is spoken of as if it were by
the indulgence of one class of citizens that another enjoyed
the exercise of their inherent natural rights, for happily
the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no
sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they
who live under its protection should demean themselves as good
citizens in giving it on all occasions their effectual support."

-- George Washington (letter to the Hebrew Congregation of Newport,
Rhode Island, 9 September 1790)

Reference: Our Sacred Honor, Bennett (330)

Title: Wilson
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 28, 2008, 07:21:43 AM

"Illustrious examples are displayed to our view, that we may
imitate as well as admire. Before we can be distinguished by the
same honors, we must be distinguished by the same virtues. What
are those virtues? They are chiefly the same virtues, which we
have already seen to be descriptive of the American character --
the love of liberty, and the love of law."

-- James Wilson (Of the Study of the Law in the United States,
Circa 1790)

Reference: The Learning of Liberty, Prangle and Prangle (207);
original Selected Political Essays of James Wilson, McCloskey,
ed. (189)

Title: MA 1780 Bill of Rights on Freedom of Religion
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 01, 2008, 07:36:04 PM

The Patriot Post
Founders' Quote Daily

"It is the right as well as the duty of all men in society,
publicly and at stated seasons, to worship the Supreme Being, the
great Creator and Preserver of the universe. And no subject shall
be hurt, molested, or restrained in his person, liberty, or estate,
for worshipping God in the manner and season most agreeable to the
dictates of his own conscience; or for his religion profession
of sentiments; provided he doth not disturb the public peace,
or obstruct others in their religious worship...."

Massachusetts Bill of Rights, Part the First, 1780

Reference: Documents of American History, Commager, ed., vol. 1
(107)

Title: Jefferson; Franklin; Washington; Hamilton; and Rush
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 06, 2008, 08:49:06 AM

"In our private pursuits it is a great advantage that every honest
employment is deemed honorable. I am myself a nail-maker."

-- Thomas Jefferson (letter to Jean Nicolas Démeunier, 29 April
1795)

Reference: Jefferson: Writings, Peterson ed., Library of America
(1028)
=========
"A fine genius in his own country is like gold in the mine."

-- Benjamin Franklin (Poor Richard's Almanack, 1733)

Reference: Franklin: Writings, Lemay, ed., Library of America
(1188)
===========

“May the father of all mercies scatter light, and not darkness, upon our paths, and make us in all our several vocations useful here, and in His own due time and way everlastingly happy.” —George Washington
=========

"In disquisitions of every kind there are certain primary truths, or first principles, upon which all subsequent reasoning must depend.” —Alexander Hamilton
========

“Without religion, I believe that learning does real mischief to the morals and principles of mankind.” —Benjamin Rush
========

Title: Wilson: Law and Liberty
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 08, 2008, 08:33:54 AM

"Without liberty, law loses its nature and its name, and becomes
oppression. Without law, liberty also loses its nature and its
name, and becomes licentiousness."

-- James Wilson (Of the Study of the Law in the United States,
Circa 1790)

Reference: The Works of James Wilson, Andrews, ed., vol. 1 (7)

Title: J. Adams: Moral example for children
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 09, 2008, 09:10:24 AM

"The foundation of national morality must be laid in private
families. . . . How is it possible that Children can have any
just Sense of the sacred Obligations of Morality or Religion if,
from their earliest Infancy, they learn their Mothers live in
habitual Infidelity to their fathers, and their fathers in as
constant Infidelity to their Mothers?"

-- John Adams (Diary, 2 June 1778)

Reference: The Works of John Adams, C.F. Adams, ed., vol. 3 (171)

Title: Story: Presidential Power
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 12, 2008, 09:37:13 AM

"If, for instance, the president is required to do any act, he is
not only authorized, but required, to decide for himself, whether,
consistently with his constitutional duties, he can do the act."

-- Joseph Story (Commentaries on the Constitution, 1833)

Reference: Story, Commentaries on the Constitution, 124.

Title: J. Adams: Foundation of Constitution
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 13, 2008, 05:35:51 AM

"Statesmen by dear Sir, may plan and speculate for Liberty, but it
is Religion and Morality alone, which can establish the Principles
upon which Freedom can securely stand....The only foundation
of a free Constitution, is pure Virtue, and if this cannot be
inspired into our People, in a great Measure, than they have it
now, They may change their Rulers, and the forms of Government,
but they will not obtain a lasting Liberty."

-- John Adams (letter to Zabdiel Adams, 21 June 1776)

Reference: Our Sacred Honor, Bennett, pg. 371.

Title: Hamilton: The Executive
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 14, 2008, 03:56:37 AM

"The ingredients which constitute energy in the Executive are,
first, unity; secondly, duration; thirdly, an adequate provision
for its support; fourthly, competent powers. ... The ingredients
which constitute safety in the republican sense are, first,
a due dependence on the people, secondly, a due responsibility."

-- Alexander Hamilton (Federalist No. 70, 14 March 1788)

Title: Hamilton" Well-Regulated Militia
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 16, 2008, 06:45:01 AM

"If a well-regulated militia be the most natural defense of a free
country, it ought certainly to be under the regulation and at the
disposal of that body which is constituted the guardian of the
national security. If standing armies are dangerous to liberty,
an efficacious power over the militia in the same body ought,
as far as possible, to take away the inducement and the pretext
to such unfriendly institutions. If the federal government can
command the aid of the militia in those emergencies which call
for the military arm in support of the civil magistrate, it can
the better dispense with the employment of a different kind of
force. If it cannot avail itself of the former, it will be obliged
to recur to the latter. To render an army unnecessary will be a
more certain method of preventing its existence than a thousand
prohibitions upon paper."

-- Alexander Hamilton (Federalist No. 29, 10 January 1788)

Reference: Hamilton, Federalist No. 29.

Title: Jefferson: Greeks and Romans
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 19, 2008, 07:41:54 AM

"The Grecians and Romans were strongly possessed of the spirit of
liberty but not the principle, for at the time they were determined
not to be slaves themselves, they employed their power to enslave
the rest of mankind."

-- Thomas Paine (The American Crisis, No. 5, 21 March 1778)

Reference: Paine Writings, Foner, 169.

Title: Jefferson: Arms
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 20, 2008, 06:35:50 AM

"One loves to possess arms, though they (sic) hope never to have occasion
for them."

-- Thomas Jefferson (letter to George Washington, 19 June 1796)

Reference: The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Library of Congress,
Mansucript Division, Microfilm Roll #51

Title: Captain John Parker at Lexington
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 21, 2008, 04:20:16 AM

"Don't fire unless fired upon. But if they want a war let it
begin here."

-- Captain John Parker (commander of the militiamen at Lexington,
Massachusetts, on siting British Troops (attributed), 19 April
1775)

Reference: The Spirit of 'Seventy-Six, Commanger and Morris (70)

Title: Hamilton: Citizen's discernment
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 22, 2008, 07:32:10 AM

"The citizens of America have too much discernment to be argued
into anarchy. and I am much mistaken if experience has not wrought
a deep and solemn conviction in the public mind that greater
energy of government is essential to the welfare and prosperity
of the community."

-- Alexander Hamilton (Federalist No. 26)

Reference: Hamilton, Federalist No. 26.

Title: Madison: Being armed, subordinate governments
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 23, 2008, 07:06:27 AM

"Besides the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess
over the people of almost every other nation, the existence of
subordinate governments, to which the people are attached and by
which the militia officers are appointed, forms a barrier against
the enterprises of ambition, more insurmountable than any which
a simple government of any form can admit of."

-- James Madison (Federalist No. 46, 1 February 1788)

Reference: Madison, Federalist No. 46.

Title: Paine: Sunshine patriots
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 26, 2008, 08:55:55 AM

Title: Hamilton: emminent domain
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 27, 2008, 07:40:14 AM

"Wherever indeed a right of property is infringed for the
general good, if the nature of the case admits of compensation,
it ought to be made; but if compensation be impracticable, that
impracticability ought to be an obstacle to a clearly essential
reform."

-- Alexander Hamilton (Vindication of the Funding System, 1792)

Reference: Selected Writings and Speeches of Alexander Hamilton,
Frisch, 334.

Title: Hamilton: States rights, federalism
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 28, 2008, 06:54:09 AM

"The proposed Constitution, so far from implying an abolition
of the State governments, makes them constituent parts of the
national sovereignty, by allowing them a direct representation in
the Senate, and leaves in their possession certain exclusive and
very important portions of sovereign power. This fully corresponds,
in every rational import of the terms, with the idea of a federal
government."

-- Alexander Hamilton (Federalist No. 9, 1787)

Reference: The Federalist

Title: Madison: Diversity in faculties of men
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 29, 2008, 05:08:45 AM

"The diversity in the faculties of men from which the rights
of property originate, is not less an insuperable obstacle to a
uniformity of interests. The protection of these faculties is
the first object of government."

-- James Madison (Federalist No. 10, 23 November 1787)

Reference: Madison, Federalist No. 10 (78)

Title: Catching up
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 07, 2008, 05:36:01 AM

I've been on the road, and so have not posted on this thread for several days:

"Reading, reflection and time have convinced me that the interests
of society require the observation of those moral precepts...in
which all religions agree."

-- Thomas Jefferson (Westmoreland County Petition, 2 November 1785)

Reference: Religion and the Founding of the American Republic,
Hutson, (84); original Westmoreland County, petition, November 2,
1785, to V
===============
"First in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his
countrymen, he was second to none in humble and enduring scenes
of private life. Pious, just humane, temperate, and sincere;
uniform dignified, and commanding; his example was as edifying
to all around him as were the effects of that example lasting;
correct throughout, vice shuddered in his presence and virtue
always felt his fostering hand. The purity of his private charter
gave effulgence to his public virtues;. Such was the man for
whom our nation morns"

-- John Marshall (official eulogy of George Washington, delivered
by Richard Henry Lee, 26 December 1799)

Reference: Patriot Sage, Spalding

==========

"The best service that can be rendered to a Country, next to that
of giving it liberty, is in diffusing the mental improvement
equally essential to the preservation, and the enjoyment of
the blessing."

-- James Madison (letter to Littleton Dennis Teackle, 29 March
1826)

Reference: Advice to My Country, Mattern ed. (42); original
Madison Papers in the Library of Congress

===============
"No one more sincerely wishes the spread of information among
mankind than I do, and none has greater confidence in its effect
towards supporting free and good government."

-- Thomas Jefferson (letter to Trustees for the Lottery of East
Tennessee College, 6 May 1810)

Reference: The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Washington, ed.,
vol. 5 (521)

=========
“We should always remember that our strength still lies in our faith in the good sense of the American people.” “There’s no limit to what a man can do or where he can go if he doesn’t mind who gets the credit.” “Evil is powerless if the good are unafraid.” “To those who are fainthearted and unsure, I have this message: If you’re afraid of the future, then get out of the way, stand aside. The people of this country are ready to move again.” “We must remove government’s smothering hand from where it does harm.” “Trust but verify.” “I have wondered at times what the Ten Commandments would have looked like if Moses had run them through the U.S. Congress.” “We’ve long thought there are two things in Washington that are unbalanced—the budget and the liberals.” —Ronald Reagan
===========

“The public cannot be too curious concerning the characters of public men.” —Samuel Adams
==========

“If we can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people, under the pretence of taking care of them, they must become happy.”—Thomas Jefferson

INSIGHT
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their consciences.” —C.S. Lewis

THE GIPPER
“An opportunity society awaits us. We need only believe in ourselves and give men and women of faith, courage, and vision the freedom to build it. Let others run down America and seek to punish success. Let them call you greedy for not wanting government to take more and more of your earnings. Let them defend their tombstone society of wage and price guidelines, mandatory quotas, tax increases, planned shortages, and shared sacrifices. We want no part of that mess, thank you very much. We will encourage all Americans—men and women, young and old, individuals of every race, creed, and color—to succeed and be healthy, happy, and whole. This is our goal. We see America not falling behind, but moving ahead; our citizens not fearful and divided, but confident and united by shared values of faith, family, work, neighborhood, peace and freedom.” —Ronald Reagan

Title: Catching up
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 16, 2008, 10:18:51 AM

"My confidence is that there will for a long time be virtue and
good sense enough in our countrymen to correct abuses."

-- Thomas Jefferson (letter to Edward Rutledge, 1788)

Reference: The Writings of Thomas Jefferson (Memorial Edition),
Lipscomb and Bergh, eds., 7:81.

=========

"[H]onesty will be found on every experiment, to be the best and
only true policy; let us then as a Nation be just."

-- George Washington (Circular letter to the States, 14 June 1783)

Reference: George Washington: A Collection, W.B. Allen, ed. (244)
=============

"We have heard of the impious doctrine in the old world, that
the people were made for kings, not kings for the people. Is
the same doctrine to be revived in the new, in another shape -
that the solid happiness of the people is to be sacrificed to
the views of political institutions of a different form? It is
too early for politicians to presume on our forgetting that the
public good, the real welfare of the great body of the people, is
the supreme object to be pursued; and that no form of government
whatever has any other value than as it may be fitted for the
attainment of this object."

-- James Madison (Federalist No. 45)

Reference: Federalist No. 45.
===============

"Where liberty dwells, there is my country."

-- Benjamin Franklin (letter to Benjamin Vaughn, 14 March 1783)

Reference: Respectfully Quoted, p. 201
===========

"The name of American, which belongs to you, in your national
capacity, must always exalt the just pride of Patriotism, more
than any appellation derived from local discriminations."

-- George Washington (Farewell Address, 1796)

Reference: Inaugural Addresses of the Presidents of the United
States.
=============

"So that the executive and legislative branches of the national
government depend upon, and emanate from the states. Every
where the state sovereignties are represented; and the national
sovereignty, as such, has no representation."

-- Joseph Story (Commentaries on the Constitution, 1833)

Reference: Story, Commentaries on the Constitution, 191.

===========
“The Constitution shall never be construed... to prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms.” —Samuel Adams

==========

Every new regulation concerning commerce or revenue; or in any manner affecting the value of the different species of property, presents a new harvest to those who watch the change and can trace its consequences; a harvest reared not by themselves but by the toils and cares of the great body of their fellow citizens.” —James Madison

============

“And as to the Cares, they are chiefly what attend the bringing up of Children; and I would ask any Man who has experienced it, if they are not the most delightful Cares in the World.” —Benjamin Franklin

===========

“The latent causes of faction are thus sown in the nature of man.” —James Madison

Title: Jefferson: The source of rights
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 17, 2008, 08:33:54 AM

"A free people [claim] their rights as derived from the laws of
nature, and not as the gift of their chief magistrate."

-- Thomas Jefferson (Rights of British America, 1774)

Reference: The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Lipscomb and Bergh,
eds., 1:209.

Title: J. Adams: Cost of Freedom
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 17, 2008, 09:07:42 AM

"Posterity! You will never know how much it cost us to preserve your freedom. I hope you will make a good use of it. If you do not, I shall repent in Heaven that I ever took half the pains to preserve it." John Adams, 1777

Title: Madison: Limitations of federal govt.
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 18, 2008, 06:26:06 AM

Title: J. Story: State Govts
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 19, 2008, 11:26:45 AM

"The state governments have a full superintendence and control over
the immense mass of local interests of their respective states,
which connect themselves with the feelings, the affections,
the municipal institutions, and the internal arrangements of the
whole population. They possess, too, the immediate administration
of justice in all cases, civil and criminal, which concern the
property, personal rights, and peaceful pursuits of their own
citizens."

-- Joseph Story (Commentaries on the Constitution, 1833)

Reference: Story, Commentaries on the Constitution, 191.

Title: Re: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 20, 2008, 07:16:17 AM

"The happiest moments of my life have been the few which I have
past at home in the bosom of my family."

-- Thomas Jefferson (letter to Francis Willis Jr., 18 April 1790)

Title: Washington
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 23, 2008, 08:29:26 AM

"[T]he first transactions of a nation, like those of an individual
upon his first entrance into life make the deepest impression,
and are to form the leading traits in its character."

-- George Washington (letter to John Armstrong, 25 April 1788)

Reference: A Sacred Union of Citizens, Spalding and Garrity (10);
original The Writings of George Washington from the Original
Manuscript S

Title: Re: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: SB_Mig on June 23, 2008, 01:42:46 PM

Not a Founding Father, but an excellent couple of paragraphs:

"The men who do iniquity in the name of patriotism, of reform, of Americanism, are merely one small division of the class that has always existed and will always exist,- the class of hypocrites and demagogues, the class that is always prompt to steal the watchwords of righteousness and use them in the interests of evil-doing.

"The stoutest and truest Americans are the very men who have the least sympathy with the people who invoke the spirit of Americanism to aid what is vicious in our government or to throw obstacles in the way of those who strive to reform it. It is contemptible to oppose a movement for good because that movement has already succeeded somewhere else, or to champion an existing abuse because our people have always been wedded to it. To appeal to national prejudice against a given reform movement is in every way unworthy and silly."

Theodore Roosevelt
The Works of Theodore Roosevelt

Title: Madison
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 24, 2008, 07:08:17 AM

"A local spirit will infallibly prevail much more in the members
of Congress than a national spirit will prevail in the legislatures
of the particular States."

-- James Madison (Federalist No. 46, 29 January 1788)

Reference: Madison, Federalist, No. 46.

Title: Hamilton: Weakness and Liberty
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 25, 2008, 07:39:03 AM

"[H]owever weak our country may be, I hope we shall never sacrifice
our liberties."

-- Alexander Hamilton (Report on a National Bank, 13 December 1790)

Reference: The Works of Alexander Hamilton, Henry Cabot Lodge,
ed. (4)

Title: Hamilton: States' sovereignty
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 26, 2008, 07:12:47 AM

"But as the plan of the convention aims only at a partial union or
consolidation, the State governments would clearly retain all the
rights of sovereignty which they before had, and which were not,
by that act, EXCLUSIVELY delegated to the United States."

-- Alexander Hamilton (Federalist No. 32, 3 January 1788)

Reference: The Federalist

Title: Madison: Change of mind
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 27, 2008, 06:42:46 AM

"Nothing more than a change of mind, my dear."

-- James Madison (responding to his niece asking what was wrong,
28 June 1836)

Reference: James Madison: Commander in Chief, Brandt, vol. 6 (520)

Title: Franklin: Liberty
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 30, 2008, 07:31:52 AM

"Where liberty dwells, there is my country."

-- Benjamin Franklin (letter to Benjamin Vaughn, 14 March 1783)

Reference: Respectfully Quoted, p. 201

Title: John Adams: Liberty's sources
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 01, 2008, 08:55:33 AM

"Liberty must at all hazards be supported. We have a right to it,
derived from our Maker. But if we had not, our fathers have earned
and bought it for us, at the expense of their ease, their estates,
their pleasure, and their blood."

-- John Adams (A Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law, 1765)

Reference: The Revolutionary Writings of John Adams, Thompson,
ed. (28)

Title: T. Paine:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 03, 2008, 03:52:25 AM

"The Sun never shined on a cause of greater worth."

-- Thomas Paine (Common Sense, 1776)

Reference: Paine: Collected Writings, Foner ed., Library of America
(21)

Title: Re: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 04, 2008, 07:38:57 AM

The Unanimous Declaration
of the Thirteen United States of America
When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. -- That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, -- That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. -- Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these united Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. -- And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.

-- John Hancock

New Hampshire:
Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton

Massachusetts:
John Hancock, Samuel Adams, John Adams, Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry

Rhode Island:
Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery

Connecticut:
Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott

New York:
William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris

New Jersey:
Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart, Abraham Clark

Pennsylvania:
Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Morton, George Clymer, James Smith, George Taylor, James Wilson, George Ross

Delaware:
Caesar Rodney, George Read, Thomas McKean

Maryland:
Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll of Carrollton

Virginia:
George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton

North Carolina:
William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn

South Carolina:
Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr., Arthur Middleton

Georgia:
Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton

Title: Hamilton's Capital '
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 05, 2008, 02:21:20 PM

Alexander Hamilton's Capital Compromise
By FERGUS M. BORDEWICH
July 5, 2008; Page A11

Last month, workmen jacked up a 206-year-old yellow clapboard house, levered it onto a set of remote-controlled dollies, and trundled it two blocks to a new site in St. Nicholas Park, overlooking East Harlem in New York City.

The Grange, as it is called, was the home of Alexander Hamilton, best known as co-author of the Federalist papers and America's first secretary of the Treasury. But this founding father also had an extraordinary role in the infant nation's attempt to come to grips with the curse of slavery.

Born in the West Indies, Hamilton was one of the most ardent abolitionists of his generation. Rare among white men of his time, he grasped the basic psychology of racism and rejected the notion of black inferiority. "The contempt we have been taught to entertain for the blacks," he wrote to fellow founding father John Jay during the Revolutionary War, "makes us fancy many things that are founded in neither reason nor experience."

He even proposed recruiting slaves to fight in return for their freedom. Arming them, he said, would "secure their fidelity, animate their courage and I believe have a good influence upon those who remain [in slavery], by opening a door to their emancipation." Hamilton was a driving force behind the New York Manumission Society, and in 1785 issued a then-radical proposal for gradual emancipation.

When he took office as secretary of the Treasury in 1789, the United States of America was in financial crisis. The federal government and the states together owed a staggering $79 million, or more than $2 trillion in present-day money, with an annual interest bill of $4.5 million – triple the foreseeable national income.

Hamilton came up with an audacious plan to consolidate the states' debts, and to create a system of credit for the national government which would enable it to recover the trust of the foreign bankers upon whom it depended for future loans. Anti-Federalists, many of them Southerners, fiercely opposed the plan, predicting that it would lead to overbearing centralization and tyranny by New York and Philadelphia money men.

Meanwhile, Congress was also at loggerheads over the site for a permanent national capital. More than 30 sites had been proposed, from Kingston, N.Y., to the frontier port of Marietta, in the future state of Ohio.

In the spring of 1790, the leading candidate was centrally located Pennsylvania, where with the assistance of local Quakers, emancipated slaves were creating the first autonomous black communities in the U.S. This was a prospect that Southern slave owners deemed horrifyingly subversive.

Snarled Rep. Aedanus Burke: "I would as soon pitch my tent beneath a tree in which was a hornet's nest, as I would, as a delegate from South Carolina, vote for placing the government in a settlement of Quakers." Northerners just as ferociously opposed the scheming of Potomac Valley planters and other Southern interests to plant the nation's permanent capital in the slave-holding South.

The result was a Congress paralyzed. Southerners were threatening secession. Hamilton was desperate: With reason, he believed that the stability of his new country depended on passage of his stalled financial package.

One day Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson found the Treasury secretary, "a pathetic picture" of despair, trudging back and forth in front of President George Washington's residence in New York City, the nation's temporary capital. That chance encounter led to the grand-daddy of all political backroom deals.

On the afternoon of June 20, 1790, Hamilton, Jefferson and James Madison met over dinner in Jefferson's rented quarters at 57 Maiden Lane in what is now New York's financial district. On the question of the new capital, Hamilton controlled enough Northern votes to sway the decision toward either Pennsylvania or the Potomac. He had already offered his support to the Pennsylvanians. But they were fatally split between advocates for Philadelphia and for a site on the Susquehannah River.

The Virginians were willing to deal. They agreed, albeit "with a revulsion of stomach almost convulsive," as Jefferson later put it, to trade enough votes to pass Hamilton's financial plan in return for his support for a capital on the Potomac, far from Philadelphia's free blacks and those worrisome Quakers.

The decision was a fateful one for the financial stability of the young nation – and for the future of 700,000 Americans held as slaves.

Had the capital been rooted in the free soil of Pennsylvania, Northerners rather than pro-slavery Southerners would have filled the ranks of government service. Southern congressmen would have witnessed the success of Pennsylvania's policy of emancipation, easing the nation toward a peaceful solution of its most divisive issue. Instead, Hamilton traded away a free national capital for one that would within a few years become one of the country's busiest slave markets, and that protected the institution of slavery from serious political challenge for another 70 years.

While the Grange is a national landmark, Hamilton's house has rarely been visited except by local school groups. Its dramatic new location at the park's steep crest will, after its restoration, doubtless draw an increasing number of pilgrims hoping to commune, in some fashion, with the spirit of the man who did more than any other to set the U.S. on a firm financial foundation. These visitors should also reflect upon the inspired idealism of a man who grappled early and daringly with the problem of race and slavery – yet who, in a twist of history, betrayed enslaved Americans in the most important decision he ever made that affected their fate.

Although Alexander Hamilton's contribution to the politics of emancipation was far greater than that of any other founding father, it was also more tragic. Fittingly, when his home reopens to the public next year, it will gaze out from its perch in St. Nicholas Park over one of the most vibrant black neighborhoods in America.

The restored Grange should be more than a hagiographic "house beautiful" monument to a marble-bust version of a founding father. Both Hamilton and black Americans deserve a memorial that squarely faces his racial idealism – as well as the noble intentions that collided with cruel political reality over Jefferson's dinner table that day in June 1790.

Mr. Bordewich is author of "Washington: The Making of the American Capital," published in May by Amistad.

Title: Jefferson
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 10, 2008, 05:28:33 AM

"People generally have more feeling for canals and roads than
education. However, I hope we can advance them with equal pace."

-- Thomas Jefferson (letter to Joel Barlow, 10 December 1807)

Reference: The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Washington, ed.,
vol. 5 (521)

Title: A big catch-up post
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 16, 2008, 06:22:04 AM

“The Constitution shall never be construed... to prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms.” —Samuel Adams

“Every new regulation concerning commerce or revenue; or in any manner affecting the value of the different species of property, presents a new harvest to those who watch the change and can trace its consequences; a harvest reared not by themselves but by the toils and cares of the great body of their fellow citizens.” —James Madison

“And as to the Cares, they are chiefly what attend the bringing up of Children; and I would ask any Man who has experienced it, if they are not the most delightful Cares in the World.” —Benjamin Franklin

"The blessed Religion revealed in the word of God will remain an
eternal and awful monument to prove that the best Institution may
be abused by human depravity; and that they may even, in some
instances be made subservient to the vilest purposes. Should,
hereafter, those incited by the lust of power and prompted by
the Supineness or venality of their Constituents, overleap the
known barriers of this Constitution and violate the unalienable
rights of humanity: it will only serve to shew, that no compact
among men (however provident in its construction and sacred in
its ratification) can be pronounced everlasting an inviolable,
and if I may so express myself, that no Wall of words, that no
mound of parchm[en]t can be so formed as to stand against the
sweeping torrent of boundless ambition on the side, aided by the
sapping current of corrupted morals on the other."

-- George Washington (fragments of the Draft First Inaugural
Address, April 1789)

“Let the American youth never forget, that they possess a noble inheritance, bought by the toils, and sufferings, and blood of their ancestors.” —Joseph Story

"The pyramid of government-and a republican government may
well receive that beautiful and solid form-should be raised to
a dignified altitude: but its foundations must, of consequence,
be broad, and strong, and deep. The authority, the interests, and
the affections of the people at large are the only foundation,
on which a superstructure proposed to be at once durable and
magnificent, can be rationally erected."

-- James Wilson ()

Reference: The Works of James Wilson, McCloskey, ed., 403.

“How could a readiness for war in time of peace be safely prohibited, unless we could prohibit, in like manner, the preparations and establishments of every hostile nation?” —James Madison

"Remember, my Eliza, you are a Christian."

-- Alexander Hamilton (speaking to his grieving wife, 7/12/1804)
Reference: Facts and Documments..., Editor of the Evening Post,
ed. (23); original letter from David Hosack, August 17, 1804

“National defense is one of the cardinal duties of a statesman.” —John Adams

"The Alien bill proposed in the Senate is a monster that must
forever disgrace its parents."

-- James Madison (letter to Thomas Jefferson, 20 May 1798)

Reference: James Madison, Letters and Other Writings, Fendall,
ed., vol. 2 (142)

“I am not influenced by the expectation of promotion or pecuniary reward.” —Nathan Hale, who was hanged for his service to his country

"Energy in the executive is a leading character in the definition
of good government. It is essential to the protection of the
community against foreign attacks; it is not less essential
to the steady administration of the laws; to the protection of
property against those irregular and high-handed combinations
which sometimes interrupt the ordinary course of justice; to
the security of liberty against the enterprises and assaults of
ambition, of faction, and of anarchy."

-- Alexander Hamilton (Federalist No. 69, 14 March 1788)

Reference: Hamilton, Federalist No. 69.

"[W]e are confirmed in the opinion, that the present age would be
deficient in their duty to God, their posterity and themselves,
if they do not establish an American republic. This is the
only form of government we wish to see established; for we can
never be willingly subject to any other King than He who, being
possessed of infinite wisdom, goodness and rectitude, is alone
fit to possess unlimited power."

Instructions of Malden, Massachusetts for a Declaration of
Independence, 27 May 1776

Reference: Documents of American Histroy, Commager, vol. 1 (97)

Title: Re: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 17, 2008, 05:57:18 AM

"Without Freedom of Thought there can be no such Thing as Wisdom;
and no such Thing as Public Liberty, without Freedom of Speech."

-- Benjamin Franklin (writing as Silence Dogood, No. 8, 9 July
1722)

Reference: The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, Labaree, ed., vol. 1
(27)

Title: Re: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 18, 2008, 06:49:44 AM

"A popular Government, without popular information, or the means
of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy; or,
perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance: And a
people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves
with the power which knowledge gives."

-- James Madison (letter to W.T. Barry, 4 August 1822)

Reference: Letters and other Writings of James Madison, vol. 3
(276)
==============
“If men of wisdom and knowledge, of moderation and temperance, of patience, fortitude and perseverance, of sobriety and true republican simplicity of manners, of zeal for the honour of the Supreme Being and the welfare of the commonwealth; if men possessed of these other excellent qualities are chosen to fill the seats of government, we may expect that our affairs will rest on a solid and permanent foundation.” —Samuel Adams

Title: Jefferson: Men of character
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 22, 2008, 07:03:03 AM

"Men of energy of character must have enemies; because there
are two sides to every question, and taking one with decision,
and acting on it with effect, those who take the other will of
course be hostile in proportion as they feel that effect."

-- Thomas Jefferson (letter to John Adams, 21 December 1817)

Reference: The Writings of Thomas Jefferson (Memorial Edition),
Lipscomb and Bergh, eds., 15:109.

Title: J. Adams
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 23, 2008, 06:49:25 AM

Title: Samuel Williams: Marriage
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 24, 2008, 08:43:09 AM

"It is not necessary to enumerate the many advantages, that arise
from this custom of early marriages. They comprehend all the
society can receive from this source; from the preservation, and
increase of the human race. Every thing useful and beneficial
to man, seems to be connected with obedience to the laws of
his nature, the inclinations, the duties, and the happiness
of individuals, resolve themselves into customs and habits,
favourable, in the highest degree, to society. In no case is this
more apparent, than in the customs of nations respecting marriage."

-- Samuel Williams (The Natural and Civil History of Vermont, 1794)

Reference: American Political Writing during the Founding Era:
1760-1805, Hyneman and Lutz, ed., vol. 2 (952)

Title: Franklin: Time
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 25, 2008, 05:12:48 AM

"Remember, that Time is Money."

-- Benjamin Franklin (Advice to a Young Tradesman, 1748)

Reference: Franklin: Writings, Lemay, Library of America (1198)

Title: Reagan
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 29, 2008, 09:42:34 PM

Ronald Reagan, speaking at the Brandenburg Gate, Berlin, June 12, 1987:

In this season of spring in 1945, the people of Berlin emerged from their air-raid shelters to find devastation. Thousands of miles away, the people of the United States reached out to help. And in 1947 Secretary of State George Marshall announced the creation of what would become known as the Marshall Plan. Speaking precisely 40 years ago this month, he said: "Our policy is directed not against any country or doctrine, but against hunger, poverty, desperation, and chaos." [T]hat dream became real. Japan rose from ruin to become an economic giant. Italy, France, Belgium -- virtually every nation in Western Europe saw political and economic rebirth; the European Community was founded.

In West Germany and here in Berlin, there took place an economic miracle, the Wirtschaftswunder. Adenauer, Erhard, Reuter, and other leaders understood the practical importance of liberty -- that just as truth can flourish only when the journalist is given freedom of speech, so prosperity can come about only when the farmer and businessman enjoy economic freedom. The German leaders reduced tariffs, expanded free trade, lowered taxes. From 1950 to 1960 alone, the standard of living in West Germany and Berlin doubled.

In the 1950s, Khrushchev predicted: "We will bury you." But in the West today, we see a free world that has achieved a level of prosperity and well-being unprecedented in all human history. . . . And now the Soviets themselves may, in a limited way, be coming to understand the importance of freedom. . . . Are these the beginnings of profound changes in the Soviet state? Or are they token gestures, intended to raise false hopes in the West, or to strengthen the Soviet system without changing it? There is one sign the Soviets can make that would be unmistakable, that would advance dramatically the cause of freedom and peace. General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization: Come here to this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!

Title: Hamilton: Consent of the people
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 30, 2008, 07:41:19 AM

"The fabric of American empire ought to rest on the solid basis of
THE CONSENT OF THE PEOPLE. The streams of national power ought
to flow from that pure, original fountain of all legitimate
authority."

-- Alexander Hamilton (Federalist No. 22, 14 December 1787)

Reference: Hamilton, Federalist No. 22.

Title: Re: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 31, 2008, 10:53:20 AM

"I believe a time will come when an opportunity will be offered
to abolish this lamentable evil. Everything we do is to improve
it, if it happens in our day; if not, let us transmit to our
descendants, together with our slaves, a pity for their unhappy
lot and an abhorrence of slavery."

-- Patrick Henry (letter to Robert Pleasants, 18 January 1773)

Reference: The Spirit of 'Seventy-Six, Henry Commager and Richard
Morris, 402.

Title: Madison's second inaugural
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 01, 2008, 10:46:38 AM

The Patriot Post
Founders' Quote Daily

"[T]o exclude foreign intrigues and foreign partialities,
so degrading to all countries and so baneful to free ones; to
foster a spirit of independence too just to invade the rights of
others, too proud to surrender our own, too liberal to indulge
unworthy prejudices ourselves and too elevated not to look down
upon them in others; to hold the union of the States on the basis
of their peace and happiness; to support the Constitution, which
is the cement of the Union, as well in its limitations as in its
authorities; to respect the rights and authorities reserved to
the States and to the people as equally incorporated with and
essential to the success of the general... as far as sentiments
and intentions such as these can aid the fulfillment of my duty,
they will be a resource which can not fail me."

-- James Madison (Second Inaugural Address, March 1813)

Reference: Inaugural Addresses of the Presidents of the United
States.

Title: Story: State Govts essential
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 04, 2008, 06:18:34 AM

Title: Reagan:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 04, 2008, 08:56:32 AM

“When World War II ended, the United States had the only undamaged industrial power in the world. Our military might was at its peak, and we alone had the ultimate weapon, the nuclear weapon, with the unquestioned ability to deliver it anywhere in the world. If we had sought world domination then, who could have opposed us? But the United States followed a different course, one unique in all the history of mankind. We used our power and wealth to rebuild the war-ravished economies of the world, including those of the nations who had been our enemies. May I say, there is absolutely no substance to charges that the United States is guilty of imperialism or attempts to impose its will on other countries, by use of force.” —Ronald Reagan

Title: Patrick Henry: Liberty
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 05, 2008, 08:17:37 AM

"Is the relinquishment of the trial by jury and the liberty of the
press necessary for your liberty? Will the abandonment of your most
sacred rights tend to the security of your liberty? Liberty, the
greatest of all earthly blessings - give us that precious jewel,
and you may take every things else! Guard with jealous attention
the public liberty. Suspect every one who approaches that jewel."

-- Patrick Henry (Speech to the Virginia Convention, 5 June 1788)

Title: Washington: Never despair
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 07, 2008, 04:48:49 AM

"We should never despair, our Situation before has been unpromising
and has changed for the better, so I trust, it will again. If
new difficulties arise, we must only put forth new Exertions and
proportion our Efforts to the exigency of the times."

-- George Washington (letter to Philip Schuyler, 7/15/1777)

Reference: Washington's Maxims, 16.

Title: Jefferson: War and Peace
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 11, 2008, 04:28:37 AM

"Whatever enables us to go to war, secures our peace."

-- Thomas Jefferson (letter to James Monroe, 24 October 1823)

Reference: Jeffersonian Cyclopedia, Foley (685); orignal The
Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Ford, ed., vol. 5 (198)

Title: Franklin: Work
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 12, 2008, 08:09:20 AM

"This gave me occasion to observe, that when Men are employ'd
they are best contented. For on the Days they work'd they were
good-natur'd and chearful; and with the consciousness of having
done a good Days work they spent the Evenings jollily; but on the
idle Days they were mutinous and quarrelsome, finding fault with
their Pork, the Bread, and in continual ill-humour."

-- Benjamin Franklin (Autobiography, 1771)

Reference: Franklin: Writings, Lemay, ed., Library of America
(1447)

Title: Jefferson: Taxes
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 13, 2008, 06:56:52 AM

"Taxes should be continued by annual or biennial reeactments,
because a constant hold, by the nation, of the strings of
the public purse is a salutary restraint from which an honest
government ought not wish, nor a corrupt one to be permitted,
to be free."

-- Thomas Jefferson (letter to John Wayles Eppes, 24 June 1813)

Reference: The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Library of Congress,
American Memory Collection

Title: Madison: Restraint on House of Reps
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 14, 2008, 03:37:44 AM

The Patriot Post
Founders' Quote Daily

"If it be asked what is to restrain the House of Representatives
from making legal discriminations in favor of themselves and
a particular class of the society? I answer, the genius of the
whole system, the nature of just and constitutional laws, and
above all the vigilant and manly spirit which actuates the people
of America, a spirit which nourishes freedom, and in return is
nourished by it."

-- James Madison (Federalist No. 57, 19 February 1788)

Reference: Madison, Federalist No. 57.

=============

By the way, a quick personal note:

When I first started this thread the ratio of reads to posts was rather low. It warms my spirit to see the ration now around 45:1.

TAC,
Marc

Title: Madison
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 15, 2008, 06:58:30 AM

"I entirely concur in the propriety of resorting to the sense in
which the Constitution was accepted and ratified by the nation. In
that sense alone it is the legitimate Constitution. And if that
is not the guide in expounding it, there may be no security "

-- James Madison (letter to Henry Lee, 25 June 1824)

Reference: Advice to my Country, Mattern, 34-35.

Title: Washington: Fight for Liberty
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 18, 2008, 05:57:15 AM

"The hour is fast approaching, on which the Honor and Success of
this army, and the safety of our bleeding Country depend. Remember
officers and Soldiers, that you are Freemen, fighting for the
blessings of Liberty - that slavery will be your portion, and
that of your posterity, if you do not acquit yourselves like men."

-- George Washington (General Orders, 23 August 1776)

Reference: Maxims of George Washington, Schroeder, ed. (86)

Title: Deism
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 19, 2008, 06:06:17 AM

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deism#Deism_in_the_United_States

A good place to begin with regards to an important strand of thought amongst our Founding Fathers.

Title: Madison
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 20, 2008, 05:41:35 AM

"One hundred and seventy-three despots would surely be as
oppressive as one."

-- James Madison (Federalist No. 48, 1 February 1788)

Reference: Madison, Federalist No. 48.

Title: Catching up
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 01, 2008, 08:17:26 AM

========
"Work as if you were to live 100 Years, Pray as if you were to
die To-morrow."

-- Benjamin Franklin (Poor Richard's Almanack, 1757)

Reference: Franklin: Writings, Lemay, ed., Library of America
(1290)
=============
"Cherish, therefore, the spirit of our people, and keep alive
their attention. Do not be too severe upon their errors, but
reclaim them by enlightening them."

-- Thomas Jefferson (letter to Edward Carrington, 16 January 1787)

Reference: Jefferson: Writings, Peterson ed., Library of America
(880)
=============
"At the establishment of our constitutions, the judiciary bodies
were supposed to be the most helpless and harmless members of
the government. Experience, however, soon showed in what way
they were to become the most dangerous; that the insufficiency
of the means provided for their removal gave them a freehold
and irresponsibility in office; that their decisions, seeming to
concern individual suitors only, pass silent and unheeded by the
public at large; that these decisions, nevertheless, become law
by precedent, sapping, by little and little, the foundations of
the constitution, and working its change by construction, before
any one has perceived that that invisible and helpless worm
has been busily employed in consuming its substance. In truth,
man is not made to be trusted for life, if secured against all
liability to account."

-- Thomas Jefferson (letter to Monsieur A. Coray, 31 October 1823)

Reference: respec. Quoted
=================

"Among the features peculiar to the political system of the United
States, is the perfect equality of rights which it secures to
every religious sect. "

-- James Madison (letter to Jacob de la Motta, August 1820)

Reference: Our Sacred Honor, Bennett, pg. 333

============

"I never expect to see a perfect work from imperfect man."

-- Alexander Hamilton (Federalist No. 85, 1788)

===========
"All good men wish the entire abolition of slavery, as soon as
it can take place with safety to the public, and for the lasting
good of the present wretched race of slaves. The only possible
step that could be taken towards it by the convention was to fix
a period after which they should not be imported."

-- Oliver Ellsworth (The Landholder, 10 December 1787)

Reference: The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787, Farrand,
ed., vol. 3 (165)
==============
"Early to bed, early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy,
and wise."

-- Benjamin Franklin (Advice to Young Tradesman, 1748)

Reference: Franklin: Writings, Lemay, Library of America (320)
=========

“The great principles of right and wrong are legible to every reader; to pursue them requires not the aid of many counselors. The whole art of government consists in the art of being honest.” —Thomas Jefferson

=============

THE GIPPER
“‘Trust me’ government asks that we concentrate our hopes and dreams on one man; that we trust him to do what’s best for us. My view of government places trust not in one person or one party, but in those values that transcend persons and parties. The trust is where it belongs—in the people. The responsibility to live up to that trust is where it belongs, in their elected leaders. That kind of relationship, between the people and their elected leaders, is a special kind of compact.” —Ronald Reagan

Title: Re: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 03, 2008, 06:54:10 AM

"There is little need of commentary upon this clause. No man
can well doubt the propriety of placing a president of the
United States under the most solemn obligations to preserve,
protect, and defend the constitution. It is a suitable pledge of
his fidelity and responsibility to his country; and creates upon
his conscience a deep sense of duty, by an appeal, at once in the
presence of God and man, to the most sacred and solemn sanctions,
which can operate upon the human mind."

-- Joseph Story (Commentaries on the Constitution, 1833)

Reference: Story, Commentaries on the Constitution, 545.

Title: Thomas Paine
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 05, 2008, 06:43:34 AM

"Now is the seedtime of continental union, faith and honor.
The least fracture now, will be like a name engraved with the point
of a pin on the tender rind of a young oak; the wound would enlarge
with the tree, and posterity read in it full grown characters."

-- Thomas Paine (Common Sense, 1776)

Reference: Paine: Collected Writings, Foner ed., Library of America
(21)

Title: Re: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 11, 2008, 08:23:01 AM

"Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations,
entangling alliances with none."

-- Thomas Jefferson (First Inaugural Address, 4 March 1801)

Reference: Inauguration Addresses of the Presidents
===============
"How could a readiness for war in time of peace be safely
prohibited, unless we could prohibit, in like manner, the
preparations and establishments of every hostile nation?"

-- James Madison (Federalist No. 41, 1788)

Reference: The Federalist

Title: 2 Franklin, 1 Madison
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 12, 2008, 08:50:43 AM

"Our new Constitution is now established, and has an appearance
that promises permanency; but in this world nothing can be said
to be certain, except death and taxes."

-- Benjamin Franklin (letter to Jean-Baptiste Leroy, 13 November
1789)

Reference: The Works of Benjamin Franklin, Begelow, ed., vol. 12
(161)

=================
"Finally, there seem to be but three Ways for a Nation to acquire
Wealth. The first is by War as the Romans did in plundering their
conquered Neighbours. This is Robbery. The second by Commerce
which is generally Cheating. The third by Agriculture the only
honest Way; wherein Man receives a real Increase of the Seed
thrown into the Ground, in a kind of continual Miracle wrought by
the Hand of God in his favour, as a Reward for his innocent Life,
and virtuous Industry."

-- Benjamin Franklin (Positions to be Examined, 4 April 1769)

Reference: Franklin Collected Works, Lemay, ed., 645.
============

"In a society under the forms of which the stronger faction can
readily unite and oppress the weaker, anarchy may as truly be
said to reign as in a state of nature."

-- James Madison (Federalist No. 52, 8 February 1788)

Reference: Madison, Federalist No. 52.

Title: Madison
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 15, 2008, 09:06:04 AM

"Conscience is the most sacred of all property. "

-- James Madison (essay on Property, 29 March 1792)

Reference: Madison: Writings, Rakove, ed., Library of America (516)

Title: Jefferson
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 16, 2008, 06:28:30 AM

"The freedom and happiness of man...[are] the sole objects of
all legitimate government."

-- Thomas Jefferson (letter to Thaddeus Kosciusko, 1810)

Reference: The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Lipscomb and Bergh,
eds., 12:369.

Title: Hamilton
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 17, 2008, 07:45:21 AM

Title: Washington
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 18, 2008, 09:18:06 AM

"The bosom of America is open to receive not only the Opulent
and respectable Stranger, but the oppressed and persecuted of all
Nations and Religions; whom we shall welcome to a participation
of all our rights and privileges, if by decency and propriety of
conduct they appear to merit the enjoyment."

-- George Washington (Address to the Members of the Volunteer
Association of Ireland, 2 December 1783)

Reference: George Washington, Address to the Members of the
Volunteer Association of Ireland, December 2, 1783.

Title: Franklin
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 19, 2008, 08:54:04 AM

"The ordaining of laws in favor of one part of the nation, to
the prejudice and oppression of another, is certainly the most
erroneous and mistaken policy. An equal dispensation of protection,
rights, privileges, and advantages, is what every part is entitled
to, and ought to enjoy."

-- Benjamin Franklin (Emblematical Representations, Circa 1774)

Reference: The Works of Benjamin Franklin, Sparks, ed. (457)

Title: Nathan Hale
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 22, 2008, 03:37:15 AM

Title: Reagan; Luther Martin
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 22, 2008, 10:06:10 AM

“The character that takes command in moments of crucial choices has already been determined by a thousand other choices made earlier in seemingly unimportant moments. It has been determined by all the ‘little’ choices of years past—by all those times when the voice of conscience was at war with the voice of temptation, [which was] whispering the lie that ‘it really doesn’t matter.’ It has been determined by all the day-to-day decisions made when life seemed easy and crises seemed far away—the decision that, piece by piece, bit by bit, developed habits of discipline or of laziness; habits of self-sacrifice or self-indulgence; habits of duty and honor and integrity—or dishonor and shame.” —Ronald Reagan

================

God, we're told, chooses the foolish to confound the wise, and the wise men who guided America's founding -- James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, John Marshall and Gouverneur Morris, among others -- were, to a man, confounded by Luther Martin. They were mistaken to take their obstreperous opponent lightly, however, though foolish he could be.

In "Forgotten Founder, Drunken Prophet," a short and engaging biography of Luther Martin (1748-1826), Bill Kauffman shows us a sot, a quarrelsome bore, a butcher of the English language, an outspoken abolitionist who himself owned slaves -- and a man who advanced opinions at the Constitutional Convention that desperately needed to be heard.

The Maryland lawyer, and the state's attorney general, was the Constitutional Convention's "least honored delegate," Mr. Kauffman says. This relatively low esteem Mr. Kauffman attributes to Martin's relentless defense of the Articles of Confederation, under which, we should remember, the states, though "united" during the Revolutionary War, nevertheless retained their autonomy and independence. Martin's efforts to prevent a more centralized form of government surely made him his share of enemies at the Convention, though his slovenly habits, argumentative nature and blabbermouth tendencies surely played a role, too. Had Martin been tactful and succinct, his warnings might well have received the serious consideration they deserved.

The Anti-Federalists have long been portrayed as bumpkins who, in their provincialism, refused to admit the superiority of the Constitution and the new nation's potential for greatness. The portrayal is often unfair, and it is to Mr. Kauffman's credit that he has undertaken to give the dissenters their due. Martin, George Mason and Patrick Henry -- easily the intellectual equals of their more celebrated opponents -- raised serious arguments against the Constitution. In case after case, as Mr. Kauffman demonstrates, their dire predictions proved warranted.

Forgotten Founder, Drunken Prophet
By Bill Kauffman
(ISI Books, 202 pages, $25)
The Constitution would relegate the states to a subordinate status, the Anti-Federalists argued. It would thereby prove to be a threat to liberty, by denying states the freedom to govern their own affairs and by imposing laws and obligations that the states themselves would otherwise reject. The Constitution did not safeguard civil liberties either, the anti- Federalists charged; a Bill of Rights would be required to correct the flaw. The Constitution's "general welfare" clause, they said, could open the door to almost any activity that the national government wished to involve itself in -- as indeed it did.

When Martin was raising the alarm about such dangers, he was at his reckless best. In November 1787, in a speech to the Maryland House of Delegates, he assailed the Constitutional Convention not only for what it was attempting to do but for how it was going about the job. He broke the pledge to secrecy under which the convention had met and informed the Maryland legislators that the Framers -- already regarded with reverence -- had wantonly violated their instructions to meet "for the sole and express purpose of revising" the Articles of Confederation.

Instead, convention delegates had taken it upon themselves to make a fresh start by creating an entirely new system of government. To Martin, such an effort was akin to launching a coup d'état. George Washington and Benjamin Franklin had given their "hearty concurrence" to this mischief, Martin declared, but we should not "suffer our eyes to be so far dazzled by the splendor of names, as to run blindfolded into what may be our destruction."

Maryland largely ignored Martin's warnings. In April 1788, it voted to ratify the Constitution, the seventh state to do so, though on condition that a Bill of Rights be added. In June, when New Hampshire became the ninth state to ratify, the required threshold had been reached, and the new Constitution took effect. Three years later, the first 10 amendments were added.

Martin's energetic opposition to the Constitution, though ultimately futile, was nevertheless the capstone of a peculiar career. Before then, he had been an increasingly important force in Maryland and the new nation. After, he seems to have stalled. His later life, while reasonably productive, was not happy. Just 40 years old when defeated by the Constitution's ratification, Martin served for decades on the Maryland bar and bench. In 1818, he represented the losing side in the landmark case of McCulloch v. Maryland, in which the state attempted to impose a tax on the notes of banks not chartered in Maryland. The state lost, further strengthening the power of the federal government that Martin had sought to restrain.

Martin also continued to drink heavily, sinking into bankruptcy and madness. By the mid-1820s he was subsisting on a special tax imposed on Maryland lawyers solely for his personal support. Eventually he was taken in by Aaron Burr, whom he had defended at the disgraced ex-vice president's 1807 trial for treason. By this time, an irrational detestation of Thomas Jefferson, his one-time decentralist ally, led Martin to embrace the Federalist Party, in apparent repudiation of everything he had argued for so strenuously. He was buried in New York City, evidently in an unmarked grave.

Mr. Kauffman tells this harrowing tale with a proper recognition of its farcical elements. He is a rollicksome stylist, though some readers may find his tone a tad too jokey at times. But throughout Mr. Kauffman shows a sympathetic regard for his subject. An appreciation of Luther Martin is perhaps overdue; a respect for the Anti-Federalists certainly is. Both ends are well served by this entertaining and instructive work.

Mr. Crawford is the author of "Twilight at Monticello: The Final Years of Thomas Jefferson."

Title: Madison
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 23, 2008, 07:54:56 AM

"The belief in a God All Powerful wise and good, is so essential
to the moral order of the world and to the happiness of man,
that arguments which enforce it cannot be drawn from too many
sources nor adapted with too much solicitude to the different
characters and capacities impressed with it."

-- James Madison (letter to Frederick Beasley, 20 November 1825)

Reference: Writings of Madison, Hunt, ed., vol. 9 (230)

Title: Davy Crockett
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 27, 2008, 02:38:40 PM

Not Yours To Give

Col. David Crockett
US Representative from Tennessee

Originally published in "The Life of Colonel David Crockett,"
by Edward Sylvester Ellis.

One day in the House of Representatives a bill was taken up appropriating money for the benefit of a widow of a distinguished naval officer. Several beautiful speeches had been made in its support. The Speaker was just about to put the question when Crockett arose:

"Mr. Speaker--I have as much respect for the memory of the deceased, and as much sympathy for the sufferings of the living, if suffering there be, as any man in this House, but we must not permit our respect for the dead or our sympathy for a part of the living to lead us into an act of injustice to the balance of the living. I will not go into an argument to prove that Congress has not the power to appropriate this money as an act of charity. Every member upon this floor knows it. We have the right, as individuals, to give away as much of our own money as we please in charity; but as members of Congress we have no right so to appropriate a dollar of the public money. Some eloquent appeals have been made to us upon the ground that it is a debt due the deceased. Mr. Speaker, the deceased lived long after the close of the war; he was in office to the day of his death, and I have never heard that the government was in arrears to him.

"Every man in this House knows it is not a debt. We cannot, without the grossest corruption, appropriate this money as the payment of a debt. We have not the semblance of authority to appropriate it as charity. Mr. Speaker, I have said we have the right to give as much money of our own as we please. I am the poorest man on this floor. I cannot vote for this bill, but I will give one week's pay to the object, and if every member of Congress will do the same, it will amount to more than the bill asks."

He took his seat. Nobody replied. The bill was put upon its passage, and, instead of passing unanimously, as was generally supposed, and as, no doubt, it would, but for that speech, it received but few votes, and, of course, was lost.

Later, when asked by a friend why he had opposed the appropriation, Crockett gave this explanation:

"Several years ago I was one evening standing on the steps of the Capitol with some other members of Congress, when our attention was attracted by a great light over in Georgetown. It was evidently a large fire. We jumped into a hack and drove over as fast as we could. In spite of all that could be done, many houses were burned and many families made houseless, and, besides, some of them had lost all but the clothes they had on. The weather was very cold, and when I saw so many women and children suffering, I felt that something ought to be done for them. The next morning a bill was introduced appropriating $20,000 for their relief. We put aside all other business and rushed it through as soon as it could be done.

"The next summer, when it began to be time to think about election, I concluded I would take a scout around among the boys of my district. I had no opposition there, but, as the election was some time off, I did not know what might turn up. When riding one day in a part of my district in which I was more of a stranger than any other, I saw a man in a field plowing and coming toward the road. I gauged my gait so that we should meet as he came to the fence. As he came up, I spoke to the man. He replied politely, but, as I thought, rather coldly.

"I began: 'Well, friend, I am one of those unfortunate beings called
candidates, and---‘

"Yes I know you; you are Colonel Crockett. I have seen you once before, and voted for you the last time you were elected. I suppose you are out electioneering now, but you had better not waste your time or mine, I shall not vote for you again."

"This was a sockdolager...I begged him to tell me what was the matter.
" ’Well, Colonel, it is hardly worth-while to waste time or words upon it. I do not see how it can be mended, but you gave a vote last winter which shows that either you have not capacity to understand the Constitution, or that you are wanting in the honesty and firmness to be guided by it. In either case you are not the man to represent me. But I beg your pardon for expressing it in that way. I did not intend to avail myself of the privilege of the constituent to speak plainly to a candidate for the purpose of insulting or wounding you. I intend by it only to say that your understanding of the Constitution is very different from mine; and I will say to you what, but for my rudeness, I should not have said, that I believe you to be honest.
…But an understanding of the Constitution different from mine I cannot overlook, because the Constitution, to be worth anything, must be held sacred, and rigidly observed in all its provisions. The man who wields power and misinterprets it is the more dangerous the more honest he is.'

" 'I admit the truth of all you say, but there must be some mistake about it, for I do not remember that I gave any vote last winter upon any constitutional question.’
“ ‘No, Colonel, there’s no mistake. Though I live in the backwoods and seldom go from home, I take the papers from Washington and read very carefully all the proceedings of Congress. My papers say that last winter you voted for a bill to appropriate $20,000 to some sufferers by a fire in Georgetown. Is that true?’

" ‘Well, my friend; I may as well own up. You have got me there. But certainly nobody will complain that a great and rich country like ours should give the insignificant sum of $20,000 to relieve its suffering women and children, particularly with a full and overflowing Treasury, and I am sure, if you had been there, you would have done just as I did.'

" ‘It is not the amount, Colonel, that I complain of; it is the principle. In the first place, the government ought to have in the Treasury no more than enough for its legitimate purposes. But that has nothing with the question. The power of collecting and disbursing money at pleasure is the most dangerous power that can be entrusted to man, particularly under our system of collecting revenue by a tariff, which reaches every man in the country, no matter how poor he may be, and the poorer he is the more he pays in proportion to his means. What is worse, it presses upon him without his knowledge where the weight centers, for there is not a man in the United States who can ever guess how much he pays to the government. So you see, that while you are contributing to relieve one, you are drawing it from thousands who are even worse off than he. If you had the right to give anything, the amount was simply a matter of discretion with you, and you had as much right to give $20,000,000 as $20,000. If you have the right to give to one, you have the right to give to all; and, as the Constitution neither defines charity nor stipulates the amount, you are at liberty to give to any and everything which you may believe, or profess to believe, is a charity, and to any amount you may think proper. You will very easily perceive what a wide door this would open for fraud and corruption and favoritism, on the one hand, and for robbing the people on the other. 'No, Colonel, Congress has no right to give charity. Individual members may give as much of their own money as they please, but they have no right to touch a dollar of the public money for that purpose. If twice as many houses had been burned in this county as in Georgetown, neither you nor any other member of Congress would have thought of appropriating a dollar for our relief. There are about two hundred and forty members of Congress. If they had shown their sympathy for the sufferers by contributing each one week's pay, it would have made over $13,000. There are plenty of wealthy men in and around Washington who could have given $20,000 without depriving themselves of even a luxury of life.' "The congressmen chose to keep their own money, which, if reports be true, some of them spend not very creditably; and the people about Washington, no doubt, applauded you for relieving them from the necessity of giving by giving what was not yours to give. The people have delegated to Congress, by the Constitution, the power to do certain things. To do these, it is authorized to collect and pay moneys, and for nothing else. Everything beyond this is usurpation, and a violation of the Constitution.'
----------
" 'So you see, Colonel, you have violated the Constitution in what I consider a vital point. It is a precedent fraught with danger to the country, for when Congress once begins to stretch its power beyond the limits of the Constitution, there is no limit to it, and no security for the people. I have no doubt you acted honestly, but that does not make it any better, except as far as you are personally concerned, and you see that I cannot vote for you.'

"I tell you I felt streaked. I saw if I should have opposition, and this man should go to talking, he would set others to talking, and in that district I was a gone fawn-skin. I could not answer him, and the fact is, I was so fully convinced that he was right, I did not want to. But I must satisfy him, and I said to him:

" ‘Well, my friend, you hit the nail upon the head when you said I had not sense enough to understand the Constitution. I intended to be guided by it, and thought I had studied it fully. I have heard many speeches in Congress about the powers of Congress, but what you have said here at your plow has got more hard, sound sense in it than all the fine speeches I ever heard. If I had ever taken the view of it that you have, I would have put my head into the fire before I would have given that vote; and if you will forgive me and vote for me again, if I ever vote for another unconstitutional law I wish I may be shot.'

"He laughingly replied; 'Yes, Colonel, you have sworn to that once before, but I will trust you again upon one condition. You say that youare convinced that your vote was wrong. Your acknowledgment of it will do more good than beating you for it. If, as you go around the district, you will tell people about this vote, and that you are satisfied it was wrong, I will not only vote for you, but will do what I can to keep down opposition, and, perhaps, I may exert some little influence in that way.'

" ‘If I don't’, said I, 'I wish I may be shot; and to convince you that I am in earnest in what I say I will come back this way in a week or ten days, and if you will get up a gathering of the people, I will make a speech to them. Get up a barbecue, and I will pay for it.'

" ‘No, Colonel, we are not rich people in this section, but we have plenty of provisions to contribute for a barbecue, and some to spare for those who have none. The push of crops will be over in a few days, and we can then afford a day for a barbecue. This is Thursday; I will see to getting it up on Saturday week. Come to my house on Friday, and we will go together, and I promise you a very respectable crowd to see and hear you.’

" 'Well, I will be here. But one thing more before I say good-bye. I must know your name.’

" 'My name is Bunce.'

" 'Not Horatio Bunce?'

" 'Yes.’

" 'Well, Mr. Bunce, I never saw you before, though you say you have seen me, but I know you very well. I am glad I have met you, and very proud that I may hope to have you for my friend.'

"It was one of the luckiest hits of my life that I met him. He mingled but little with the public, but was widely known for his remarkable intelligence and incorruptible integrity, and for a heart brimful and running over with kindness and benevolence, which showed themselves not only in words but in acts. He was the oracle of the whole country around him, and his fame had extended far beyond the circle of his immediate acquaintance. Though I had never met him, before, I had heard much of him, and but for this meeting it is very likely I should have had opposition, and had been beaten. One thing is very certain, no man could now stand up in that district under such a vote.

"At the appointed time I was at his house, having told our conversation to every crowd I had met, and to every man I stayed all night with, and I found that it gave the people an interest and a confidence in me stronger than I had ever seen manifested before.

"Though I was considerably fatigued when I reached his house, and, under ordinary circumstances, should have gone early to bed, I kept him up until midnight, talking about the principles and affairs of government, and got more real, true knowledge of them than I had got all my life before.

"I have known and seen much of him since, for I respect him - no, that is not the word - I reverence and love him more than any living man, and I go to see him two or three times every year; and I will tell you, sir, if every one who professes to be a Christian lived and acted and enjoyed it as he does, the religion of Christ would take the world by storm.

"But to return to my story. The next morning we went to the barbecue, and, to my surprise, found about a thousand men there. I met a good many whom I had not known before, and they and my friend introduced me around until I had got pretty well acquainted - at least, they all knew me.

"In due time notice was given that I would speak to them. They gathered up around a stand that had been erected. I opened my speech by saying:

" ‘Fellow-citizens - I present myself before you today feeling like a new man. My eyes have lately been opened to truths which ignorance or prejudice, or both, had heretofore hidden from my view. I feel that I can today offer you the ability to render you more valuable service than I have ever been able to render before. I am here today more for the purpose of acknowledging my error than to seek your votes. That I should make this acknowledgment is due to myself as well as to you. Whether you will vote for me is a matter for your consideration only.’"

"I went on to tell them about the fire and my vote for the appropriation and then told them why I was satisfied it was wrong. I closed by saying:

" ‘And now, fellow-citizens, it remains only for me to tell you that the most of the speech you have listened to with so much interest was simply a repetition of the arguments by which your neighbor, Mr. Bunce, convinced me of my error.

" ‘It is the best speech I ever made in my life, but he is entitled to the
credit for it. And now I hope he is satisfied with his convert and that he will get up here and tell you so.'

"He came upon the stand and said:

" ‘Fellow-citizens - It affords me great pleasure to comply with the request of Colonel Crockett. I have always considered him a thoroughly honest man, and I am satisfied that he will faithfully perform all that he has promised you today.'

"He went down, and there went up from that crowd such a shout for Davy Crockett as his name never called forth before.'

"I am not much given to tears, but I was taken with a choking then and felt some big drops rolling down my cheeks. And I tell you now that the remembrance of those few words spoken by such a man, and the honest, hearty shout they produced, is worth more to me than all the honors I have received and all the reputation I have ever made, or ever shall make, as a member of Congress.'

"Now, sir," concluded Crockett, "you know why I made that speech yesterday.

"There is one thing now to which I will call your attention. You remember that I proposed to give a week's pay. There are in that House many very wealthy men - men who think nothing of spending a week's pay, or a dozen of them, for a dinner or a wine party when they have something to accomplish by it. Some of those same men made beautiful speeches upon the great debt of gratitude which the country owed the deceased--a debt which could not be paid by money--and the insignificance and worthlessness of money, particularly so insignificant a sum as $10,000, when weighed against the honor of the nation. Yet not one of them responded to my proposition. Money with them is nothing but trash when it is to come out of the people. But it is the one great thing for which most of them are striving, and many of them sacrifice honor, integrity, and justice to obtain it."

Title: Catching up:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 01, 2008, 05:30:49 AM

I've been travelling a lot. I'm glad to be home and begin catching up:
================

"The greatest good we can do our country is to heal its party
divisions and make them one people."

-- Thomas Jefferson (letter to John Dickinson, 23 July 1801)

Reference: The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Ford Edition, vol. 8
(76)

======
“To take from one, because it is thought his own industry and that of his fathers has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers, have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association, the guarantee to everyone the free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it.” —Thomas Jefferson
=========
"It is important also to consider, that the surest means of
avoiding war is to be prepared for it in peace."

-- Joseph Story (Commentaries on the Constitution, 1833)

Reference: Story, Commentaries on the Constitution, 415.
=========
"I am principled against this kind of traffic in the human
species...and to disperse the families I have an aversion."

-- George Washington (letter to Robert Lewis, 18 August 1799)

Reference: Washington's Maxims, 159.
============
“Every new regulation concerning commerce or revenue; or in any manner affecting the value of the different species of property, presents a new harvest to those who watch the change and can trace its consequences; a harvest reared not by themselves but by the toils and cares of the great body of their fellow citizens. This is a state of things in which it may be said with some truth that laws are made for the few not for the many.” —James Madison
==========
"Our own Country's Honor, all call upon us for a vigorous
and manly exertion, and if we now shamefully fail, we shall
become infamous to the whole world. Let us therefore rely upon
the goodness of the Cause, and the aid of the supreme Being,
in whose hands Victory is, to animate and encourage us to great
and noble Actions - The Eyes of all our Countrymen are now upon
us, and we shall have their blessings, and praises, if happily
we are the instruments of saving them from the Tyranny mediated
against them. Let us therefore animate and encourage each other,
and shew the whole world, that a Freeman contending for Liberty
on his own ground is superior to any slavish mercenary on earth."

-- George Washington (General Orders, 2 July 1776)

Reference: Washington, General Orders, July 2, 1776.
==========
“If we can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people, under the pretence of taking care of them, they must become happy.” —Thomas Jefferson

“I believe that the people you and I represent are ready to chart a new course. They look to us to meet the great challenge, to reach beyond the commonplace and not fall short for lack of creativity or courage... We can restore our economic strength and build opportunities like none we’ve ever had before. As Carl Sandburg said, all we need to begin with is a dream that we can do better than before. All we need to have is faith, and that dream will come true. All we need to do is act, and the time for action is now.” —Ronald Reagan

==========

"I trust that the proposed Constitution afford a genuine specimen
of representative government and republican government; and that
it will answer, in an eminent degree, all the beneficial purposes
of society."

-- Alexander Hamilton (speech to the New York Ratifying Convention,
June 1788)

Reference: The Works of Alexander Hamilton, Henry Cabot Lodge,
ed., II, 30.

Title: Madison; S. Adams
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 03, 2008, 12:29:13 PM

"For the same reason that the members of the State legislatures
will be unlikely to attach themselves sufficiently to national
objects, the members of the federal legislature will be likely
to attach themselves too much to local objects."

-- James Madison (Federalist No. 46, 1 February 1788)

Reference: Madison, Federalist No. 46
==================

"No people will tamely surrender their Liberties, nor can
any be easily subdued, when knowledge is diffusd and Virtue is
preservd. On the Contrary, when People are universally ignorant,
and debauchd in their Manners, they will sink under their own
weight without the Aid of foreign Invaders."

-- Samuel Adams (letter to James Warren, 4 November 1775)

Reference: Our Sacred Honor, Bennett (261)

Title: B. Franklin
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 06, 2008, 05:56:42 AM

Benjamin Franklin: "If a man empties his purse into his head, no
one can take it from him."

Title: Washington's farewell address
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 07, 2008, 06:03:35 AM

"Tis folly in one Nation to look for disinterested favors from
another; that it must pay with a portion of its Independence
for whatever it may accept under that character; that by such
acceptance, it may place itself in the condition of having given
equivalents for nominal favours and yet of being reproached with
ingratitude for not giving more. There can be no greater error than
to expect, or calculate upon real favours from Nation to Nation.
'Tis an illusion which experience must cure, which a just pride
ought to discard."

-- George Washington (Farewell Address, 19 September 1796)

Reference: Washington's Maxims, 71.

Title: Washington
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 08, 2008, 05:45:02 AM

"Having now finished the work assigned me, I retire from the
great theatre of Action; and bidding an Affectionate farewell to
this August body under whose orders I have so long acted, I here
offer my commission, and take my leave of all the employments of
public life."

-- George Washington (Address to Congress on Resigning his
Commission, 23 December 1783)

Reference: George Washington: A Collection, W.B. Allen, ed. (273)

Title: Re: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 09, 2008, 07:49:05 AM

"We established however some, although not all its
[self-government] important principles . The constitutions of most
of our States assert, that all power is inherent in the people;
that they may exercise it by themselves, in all cases to which they
think themselves competent, (as in electing their functionaries
executive and legislative, and deciding by a jury of themselves,
in all judiciary cases in which any fact is involved,) or they
may act by representatives, freely and equally chosen; that it
is their right and duty to be at all times armed."

-- Thomas Jefferson (letter to John Cartwright, 1824)

Reference: The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Memorial Edition,

Title: J. Adams
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 10, 2008, 06:28:35 AM

Title: VA Ratifying Convention
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 14, 2008, 05:57:45 AM

"That the people have a right to keep and bear arms; that a
well-regulated militia, composed of the body of the people trained
to arms, is the proper, natural, and safe defence of a free state;
that standing armies, in time of peace, are dangerous to liberty,
and therefore ought to be avoided, as far as the circumstances
and protection of the community will admit; and that, in all
cases, the military should be under strict subordination to,
and governed by, the civil power."

Recommended Bill of Rights from the Virginia Ratifying Convention,
27 June 1778

Reference: The Debates of the Several State..., Elliot, vol. 3
(659)

Title: J Adams:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 14, 2008, 03:45:12 PM

"Duty is ours, results are God's."
John Quincy Adams

Title: Washington: Immigration; Hamilton
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 16, 2008, 05:55:26 AM

"[T]he policy or advantage of [immigration] taking place in
a body (I mean the settling of them in a body) may be much
questioned; for, by so doing, they retain the Language, habits
and principles (good or bad) which they bring with them. Whereas
by an intermixture with our people, they, or their descendants,
get assimilated to our customs, measures and laws: in a word,
soon become one people."

-- George Washington (letter to John Adams, 15 November 1794)

Reference: The Writings of George Washington from the Original
Manuscript Sources, 1745-1799, Fitzpatrick, Ed., vol. 34 (American
Memory Co
==============
"States, like individuals, who observe their engagements, are
respected and trusted: while the reverse is the fate of those
who pursue an opposite conduct."

-- Alexander Hamilton (Report on Public Credit, 9 January 1790)

Reference: The Reports of Alexander Hamilton, Cooke, ed. (3)

Title: Hamilton: Proximity
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 17, 2008, 05:08:04 AM

"There are certain social principles in human nature, from
which we may draw the most solid conclusions with respect to the
conduct of individuals and of communities. We love our families
more than our neighbors; we love our neighbors more than our
countrymen in general. The human affections, like solar heat,
lose their intensity as they depart from the centre... On these
principles, the attachment of the individual will be first and
for ever secured by the State governments. They will be a mutual
protection and support."

-- Alexander Hamilton (speech at the New York Ratifying Convention,
June 1788)

Reference: The Works of Alexander Hamilton, Henry Cabot Lodge,
ed., II, 70.

Title: Re: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 20, 2008, 10:59:18 AM

Title: Re: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: SB_Mig on October 20, 2008, 04:04:24 PM

"To preserve [the] independence [of the people,] we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude. If we run into such debts as that we must be taxed in our meat and in our drink, in our necessaries and our comforts, in our labors and our amusements, for our callings and our creeds, as the people of England are, our people, like them, must come to labor sixteen hours in the twenty-four, give the earnings of fifteen of these to the government for their debts and daily expenses, and the sixteenth being insufficient to afford us bread, we must live, as they now do, on oatmeal and potatoes, have no time to think, no means of calling the mismanagers to account, but be glad to obtain subsistence by hiring ourselves to rivet their chains on the necks of our fellow-sufferers." --Thomas Jefferson to Samuel Kercheval, 1816. ME 15:39

"There [is a measure] which if not taken we are undone...[It is] to cease borrowing money and to pay off the national debt. If this cannot be done without dismissing the army and putting the ships out of commission, haul them up high and dry and reduce the army to the lowest point at which it was ever established. There does not exist an engine so corruptive of the government and so demoralizing of the nation as a public debt. It will bring on us more ruin at home than all the enemies from abroad against whom this army and navy are to protect us." --Thomas Jefferson to Nathaniel Macon, 1821. (*) FE 10:193

Title: Jefferson
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 21, 2008, 05:02:34 AM

Good to see someone else contributing to this thread SB :-)

"In America, no other distinction between man and man had ever
been known but that of persons in office exercising powers by
authority of the laws, and private individuals. Among these last,
the poorest laborer stood on equal ground with the wealthiest
millionaire, and generally on a more favored one whenever their
rights seem to jar."

-- Thomas Jefferson (Answers to de Meusnier Questions, 1786)

Reference: The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Lipscomb and Bergh,
eds., 17:8.

Title: Re: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: SB_Mig on October 21, 2008, 08:55:42 AM

He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.
Thomas Paine, Dissertation on First Principles of Government, December 23, 1791

If, from the more wretched parts of the old world, we look at those which are in an advanced stage of improvement, we still find the greedy hand of government thrusting itself into every corner and crevice of industry, and grasping the spoil of the multitude. Invention is continually exercised, to furnish new pretenses for revenues and taxation. It watches prosperity as its prey and permits none to escape without tribute.
Thomas Paine, Rights of Man, 1791

As a man is said to have a right to his property, he may be equally said to have a property in his rights. Where an excess of power prevails, property of no sort is duly respected. No man is safe in his opinions, his person, his faculties, or his possessions.
James Madison, National Gazette Essay, March 27, 1792

Title: Madison
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 22, 2008, 08:37:28 AM

"But ambitious encroachments of the federal government, on the
authority of the State governments, would not excite the opposition
of a single State, or of a few States only. They would be signals
of general alarm... But what degree of madness could ever drive
the federal government to such an extremity."

-- James Madison (Federalist No. 46, 29 January 1788)

Reference: The Federalist

Title: Franklin
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 23, 2008, 09:33:20 AM

"Wish not so much to live long as to live well."

-- Benjamin Franklin (Poor Richard's Almanack, June 1746)

Reference: Franklin: Writings, Lemay, Library of America (1209)

Title: Re: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 23, 2008, 12:55:36 PM

Some of you may have noticed the presence in this thread of President Reagan. It is because I think him as having added genuinely and at a profound level, added to the DNA of the American creed.

Although there are areas of MLK's thinking which do not belong in this thread (and ones with which I disagree in whole or part are posted, I will delete them :lol: ) there most certainly are areas of his thinking that do, so, for the first time here, Martin Luther King.

"The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands in times of challenge and controversy."

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Title: Franklin
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 24, 2008, 07:01:19 AM

"That wise Men have in all Ages thought Government necessary
for the Good of Mankind; and, that wise Governments have always
thought Religion necessary for the well ordering and well-being
of Society, and accordingly have been ever careful to encourage
and protect the Ministers of it, paying them the highest publick
Honours, that their Doctrines might thereby meet with the greater
Respect among the common People."

-- Benjamin Franklin (On that Odd Letter of the Drum, April 1730)

Reference: Franklin Collected Writings, Lemay, ed., 148

Title: James Wilson: Marriage
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 27, 2008, 07:43:25 AM

"The most important consequence of marriage is, that the husband
and the wife become in law only one person... Upon this principle
of union, almost all the other legal consequences of marriage
depend. This principle, sublime and refined, deserves to be
viewed and examined on every side."

-- James Wilson (Of the Natural Rights of Individuals, 1792)

Reference: The Works of James Wilson, Andrews, ed., vol. 1 (324)

Title: J. Story
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 28, 2008, 03:15:18 AM

Title: Jefferson: A republic; Hamilton
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 29, 2008, 08:12:06 AM

"The republican is the only form of government which is not
eternally at open or secret war with the rights of mankind."

-- Thomas Jefferson (Letter to William Hunter, 11 March 1790)

Reference: Bartlett's; check LOA edition
=============
“It is an unquestionable truth, that the body of the people in every country desire sincerely its prosperity. But it is equally unquestionable that they do not possess the discernment and stability necessary for systematic government. To deny that they are frequently led into the grossest of errors, by misinformation and passion, would be a flattery which their own good sense must despise.” —Alexander Hamilton

Title: T. Paine: Bless of freedom
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 30, 2008, 04:38:22 AM

"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom, must, like men,
undergo the fatigues of supporting it."

-- Thomas Paine (The Crisis, no. 4, 11 September 1777)

Reference: resp. quoted

Title: Re: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 05, 2008, 06:47:55 AM

"Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm."
--James Madison, Federalist No. 10

========

"I acknowledge, in the ordinary course of government, that the
exposition of the laws and Constitution devolves upon the judicial.
But I beg to know upon what principle it can be contended that
any one department draws from the Constitution greater powers
than another in marking out the limits of the powers of the
several departments."

-- James Madison (speech in the Congress of the United States,
17 June 1789)

Reference: Original Intent, Barton (264); original The Debates
and Proceedings in the Congress of the United States, vol. 1 (520)
========
"Let each citizen remember at the moment he is offering his vote that he is not making a present or a compliment to please an individual -- or at least that he ought not so to do; but that he is executing one of the most solemn trusts in human society for which he is accountable to God and his country." --Samuel Adams
========

"Governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the
consent of the governed."

Declaration of Independence, 4 July 1776

Reference: The Writings of Thomas Jefferson (Memorial Edition), Lipscomb and
Bergh, eds., 1:29.
=============

"We should never despair, our Situation before has been unpromising and has changed for the better, so I trust, it will again. If new difficulties arise, we must only put forth new Exertions and proportion our Efforts to the exigency of the times." --George Washington

Title: Re: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 06, 2008, 03:17:41 AM

"Let the American youth never forget, that they possess a noble inheritance, bought by the toils, and sufferings, and blood of their ancestors; and capacity, if wisely improved, and faithfully guarded, of transmitting to their latest posterity all the substantial blessings of life, the peaceful enjoyment of liberty, property, religion, and independence."
—Joseph Story (Commentaries on the Constitution, 1833)

Reference: Story, Commentaries on the Constitution, 718.

Title: Re: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 06, 2008, 09:34:32 AM

Program Announcer: Ladies and gentlemen, we take pride in presenting a thoughtful address by Ronald Reagan. Mr. Reagan:

Reagan: Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you and good evening. The sponsor has been identified, but unlike most television programs, the performer hasn't been provided with a script. As a matter of fact, I have been permitted to choose my own words and discuss my own ideas regarding the choice that we face in the next few weeks.

I have spent most of my life as a Democrat. I recently have seen fit to follow another course. I believe that the issues confronting us cross party lines. Now, one side in this campaign has been telling us that the issues of this election are the maintenance of peace and prosperity. The line has been used, "We've never had it so good."

But I have an uncomfortable feeling that this prosperity isn't something on which we can base our hopes for the future. No nation in history has ever survived a tax burden that reached a third of its national income. Today, 37 cents out of every dollar earned in this country is the tax collector's share, and yet our government continues to spend 17 million dollars a day more than the government takes in. We haven't balanced our budget 28 out of the last 34 years. We've raised our debt limit three times in the last twelve months, and now our national debt is one and a half times bigger than all the combined debts of all the nations of the world. We have 15 billion dollars in gold in our treasury; we don't own an ounce. Foreign dollar claims are 27.3 billion dollars. And we've just had announced that the dollar of 1939 will now purchase 45 cents in its total value.

As for the peace that we would preserve, I wonder who among us would like to approach the wife or mother whose husband or son has died in South Vietnam and ask them if they think this is a peace that should be maintained indefinitely. Do they mean peace, or do they mean we just want to be left in peace? There can be no real peace while one American is dying some place in the world for the rest of us. We're at war with the most dangerous enemy that has ever faced mankind in his long climb from the swamp to the stars, and it's been said if we lose that war, and in so doing lose this way of freedom of ours, history will record with the greatest astonishment that those who had the most to lose did the least to prevent its happening. Well I think it's time we ask ourselves if we still know the freedoms that were intended for us by the Founding Fathers.

Not too long ago, two friends of mine were talking to a Cuban refugee, a businessman who had escaped from Castro, and in the midst of his story one of my friends turned to the other and said, "We don't know how lucky we are." And the Cuban stopped and said, "How lucky you are? I had someplace to escape to." And in that sentence he told us the entire story. If we lose freedom here, there's no place to escape to. This is the last stand on earth.

And this idea that government is beholden to the people, that it has no other source of power except the sovereign people, is still the newest and the most unique idea in all the long history of man's relation to man.

This is the issue of this election: whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capitol can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves.

You and I are told increasingly we have to choose between a left or right. Well I'd like to suggest there is no such thing as a left or right. There's only an up or down: [up] man's old -- old-aged dream, the ultimate in individual freedom consistent with law and order, or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism. And regardless of their sincerity, their humanitarian motives, those who would trade our freedom for security have embarked on this downward course.

In this vote-harvesting time, they use terms like the "Great Society," or as we were told a few days ago by the President, we must accept a greater government activity in the affairs of the people. But they've been a little more explicit in the past and among themselves; and all of the things I now will quote have appeared in print. These are not Republican accusations. For example, they have voices that say, "The cold war will end through our acceptance of a not undemocratic socialism." Another voice says, "The profit motive has become outmoded. It must be replaced by the incentives of the welfare state." Or, "Our traditional system of individual freedom is incapable of solving the complex problems of the 20th century." Senator Fulbright has said at Stanford University that the Constitution is outmoded. He referred to the President as "our moral teacher and our leader," and he says he is "hobbled in his task by the restrictions of power imposed on him by this antiquated document." He must "be freed," so that he "can do for us" what he knows "is best." And Senator Clark of Pennsylvania, another articulate spokesman, defines liberalism as "meeting the material needs of the masses through the full power of centralized government."

Well, I, for one, resent it when a representative of the people refers to you and me, the free men and women of this country, as "the masses." This is a term we haven't applied to ourselves in America. But beyond that, "the full power of centralized government" -- this was the very thing the Founding Fathers sought to minimize. They knew that governments don't control things. A government can't control the economy without controlling people. And they know when a government sets out to do that, it must use force and coercion to achieve its purpose. They also knew, those Founding Fathers, that outside of its legitimate functions, government does nothing as well or as economically as the private sector of the economy.

Now, we have no better example of this than government's involvement in the farm economy over the last 30 years. Since 1955, the cost of this program has nearly doubled. One-fourth of farming in America is responsible for 85% of the farm surplus. Three-fourths of farming is out on the free market and has known a 21% increase in the per capita consumption of all its produce. You see, that one-fourth of farming -- that's regulated and controlled by the federal government. In the last three years we've spent 43 dollars in the feed grain program for every dollar bushel of corn we don't grow.

Senator Humphrey last week charged that Barry Goldwater, as President, would seek to eliminate farmers. He should do his homework a little better, because he'll find out that we've had a decline of 5 million in the farm population under these government programs. He'll also find that the Democratic administration has sought to get from Congress [an] extension of the farm program to include that three-fourths that is now free. He'll find that they've also asked for the right to imprison farmers who wouldn't keep books as prescribed by the federal government. The Secretary of Agriculture asked for the right to seize farms through condemnation and resell them to other individuals. And contained in that same program was a provision that would have allowed the federal government to remove 2 million farmers from the soil.

At the same time, there's been an increase in the Department of Agriculture employees. There's now one for every 30 farms in the United States, and still they can't tell us how 66 shiploads of grain headed for Austria disappeared without a trace and Billie Sol Estes never left shore.

Every responsible farmer and farm organization has repeatedly asked the government to free the farm economy, but how -- who are farmers to know what's best for them? The wheat farmers voted against a wheat program. The government passed it anyway. Now the price of bread goes up; the price of wheat to the farmer goes down.

Meanwhile, back in the city, under urban renewal the assault on freedom carries on. Private property rights [are] so diluted that public interest is almost anything a few government planners decide it should be. In a program that takes from the needy and gives to the greedy, we see such spectacles as in Cleveland, Ohio, a million-and-a-half-dollar building completed only three years ago must be destroyed to make way for what government officials call a "more compatible use of the land." The President tells us he's now going to start building public housing units in the thousands, where heretofore we've only built them in the hundreds. But FHA [Federal Housing Authority] and the Veterans Administration tell us they have 120,000 housing units they've taken back through mortgage foreclosure. For three decades, we've sought to solve the problems of unemployment through government planning, and the more the plans fail, the more the planners plan. The latest is the Area Redevelopment Agency.

They've just declared Rice County, Kansas, a depressed area. Rice County, Kansas, has two hundred oil wells, and the 14,000 people there have over 30 million dollars on deposit in personal savings in their banks. And when the government tells you you're depressed, lie down and be depressed.

We have so many people who can't see a fat man standing beside a thin one without coming to the conclusion the fat man got that way by taking advantage of the thin one. So they're going to solve all the problems of human misery through government and government planning. Well, now, if government planning and welfare had the answer -- and they've had almost 30 years of it -- shouldn't we expect government to read the score to us once in a while? Shouldn't they be telling us about the decline each year in the number of people needing help? The reduction in the need for public housing?

But the reverse is true. Each year the need grows greater; the program grows greater. We were told four years ago that 17 million people went to bed hungry each night. Well that was probably true. They were all on a diet. But now we're told that 9.3 million families in this country are poverty-stricken on the basis of earning less than 3,000 dollars a year. Welfare spending [is] 10 times greater than in the dark depths of the Depression. We're spending 45 billion dollars on welfare. Now do a little arithmetic, and you'll find that if we divided the 45 billion dollars up equally among those 9 million poor families, we'd be able to give each family 4,600 dollars a year. And this added to their present income should eliminate poverty. Direct aid to the poor, however, is only running only about 600 dollars per family. It would seem that someplace there must be some overhead.

Now -- so now we declare "war on poverty," or "You, too, can be a Bobby Baker." Now do they honestly expect us to believe that if we add 1 billion dollars to the 45 billion we're spending, one more program to the 30-odd we have -- and remember, this new program doesn't replace any, it just duplicates existing programs -- do they believe that poverty is suddenly going to disappear by magic? Well, in all fairness I should explain there is one part of the new program that isn't duplicated. This is the youth feature. We're now going to solve the dropout problem, juvenile delinquency, by reinstituting something like the old CCC camps [Civilian Conservation Corps], and we're going to put our young people in these camps. But again we do some arithmetic, and we find that we're going to spend each year just on room and board for each young person we help 4,700 dollars a year. We can send them to Harvard for 2,700! Course, don't get me wrong. I'm not suggesting Harvard is the answer to juvenile delinquency.

But seriously, what are we doing to those we seek to help? Not too long ago, a judge called me here in Los Angeles. He told me of a young woman who'd come before him for a divorce. She had six children, was pregnant with her seventh. Under his questioning, she revealed her husband was a laborer earning 250 dollars a month. She wanted a divorce to get an 80 dollar raise. She's eligible for 330 dollars a month in the Aid to Dependent Children Program. She got the idea from two women in her neighborhood who'd already done that very thing.

Yet anytime you and I question the schemes of the do-gooders, we're denounced as being against their humanitarian goals. They say we're always "against" things -- we're never "for" anything.

Well, the trouble with our liberal friends is not that they're ignorant; it's just that they know so much that isn't so.

Now -- we're for a provision that destitution should not follow unemployment by reason of old age, and to that end we've accepted Social Security as a step toward meeting the problem.

But we're against those entrusted with this program when they practice deception regarding its fiscal shortcomings, when they charge that any criticism of the program means that we want to end payments to those people who depend on them for a livelihood. They've called it "insurance" to us in a hundred million pieces of literature. But then they appeared before the Supreme Court and they testified it was a welfare program. They only use the term "insurance" to sell it to the people. And they said Social Security dues are a tax for the general use of the government, and the government has used that tax. There is no fund, because Robert Byers, the actuarial head, appeared before a congressional committee and admitted that Social Security as of this moment is 298 billion dollars in the hole. But he said there should be no cause for worry because as long as they have the power to tax, they could always take away from the people whatever they needed to bail them out of trouble. And they're doing just that.

A young man, 21 years of age, working at an average salary -- his Social Security contribution would, in the open market, buy him an insurance policy that would guarantee 220 dollars a month at age 65. The government promises 127. He could live it up until he's 31 and then take out a policy that would pay more than Social Security. Now are we so lacking in business sense that we can't put this program on a sound basis, so that people who do require those payments will find they can get them when they're due -- that the cupboard isn't bare?

Barry Goldwater thinks we can.

Title: Reagan: The Speech part 2
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 06, 2008, 09:35:30 AM

Part Two

At the same time, can't we introduce voluntary features that would permit a citizen who can do better on his own to be excused upon presentation of evidence that he had made provision for the non-earning years? Should we not allow a widow with children to work, and not lose the benefits supposedly paid for by her deceased husband? Shouldn't you and I be allowed to declare who our beneficiaries will be under this program, which we cannot do? I think we're for telling our senior citizens that no one in this country should be denied medical care because of a lack of funds. But I think we're against forcing all citizens, regardless of need, into a compulsory government program, especially when we have such examples, as was announced last week, when France admitted that their Medicare program is now bankrupt. They've come to the end of the road.

In addition, was Barry Goldwater so irresponsible when he suggested that our government give up its program of deliberate, planned inflation, so that when you do get your Social Security pension, a dollar will buy a dollar's worth, and not 45 cents worth?

I think we're for an international organization, where the nations of the world can seek peace. But I think we're against subordinating American interests to an organization that has become so structurally unsound that today you can muster a two-thirds vote on the floor of the General Assembly among nations that represent less than 10 percent of the world's population. I think we're against the hypocrisy of assailing our allies because here and there they cling to a colony, while we engage in a conspiracy of silence and never open our mouths about the millions of people enslaved in the Soviet colonies in the satellite nations.

I think we're for aiding our allies by sharing of our material blessings with those nations which share in our fundamental beliefs, but we're against doling out money government to government, creating bureaucracy, if not socialism, all over the world. We set out to help 19 countries. We're helping 107. We've spent 146 billion dollars. With that money, we bought a 2 million dollar yacht for Haile Selassie. We bought dress suits for Greek undertakers, extra wives for Kenya[n] government officials. We bought a thousand TV sets for a place where they have no electricity. In the last six years, 52 nations have bought 7 billion dollars worth of our gold, and all 52 are receiving foreign aid from this country.

No government ever voluntarily reduces itself in size. So, governments' programs, once launched, never disappear.

Actually, a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we'll ever see on this earth.

Federal employees -- federal employees number two and a half million; and federal, state, and local, one out of six of the nation's work force employed by government. These proliferating bureaus with their thousands of regulations have cost us many of our constitutional safeguards. How many of us realize that today federal agents can invade a man's property without a warrant? They can impose a fine without a formal hearing, let alone a trial by jury? And they can seize and sell his property at auction to enforce the payment of that fine. In Chico County, Arkansas, James Wier over-planted his rice allotment. The government obtained a 17,000 dollar judgment. And a U.S. marshal sold his 960-acre farm at auction. The government said it was necessary as a warning to others to make the system work.

Last February 19th at the University of Minnesota, Norman Thomas, six-times candidate for President on the Socialist Party ticket, said, "If Barry Goldwater became President, he would stop the advance of socialism in the United States." I think that's exactly what he will do.

But as a former Democrat, I can tell you Norman Thomas isn't the only man who has drawn this parallel to socialism with the present administration, because back in 1936, Mr. Democrat himself, Al Smith, the great American, came before the American people and charged that the leadership of his Party was taking the Party of Jefferson, Jackson, and Cleveland down the road under the banners of Marx, Lenin, and Stalin. And he walked away from his Party, and he never returned til the day he died -- because to this day, the leadership of that Party has been taking that Party, that honorable Party, down the road in the image of the labor Socialist Party of England.

Now it doesn't require expropriation or confiscation of private property or business to impose socialism on a people. What does it mean whether you hold the deed to the -- or the title to your business or property if the government holds the power of life and death over that business or property? And such machinery already exists. The government can find some charge to bring against any concern it chooses to prosecute. Every businessman has his own tale of harassment. Somewhere a perversion has taken place. Our natural, unalienable rights are now considered to be a dispensation of government, and freedom has never been so fragile, so close to slipping from our grasp as it is at this moment.

Our Democratic opponents seem unwilling to debate these issues. They want to make you and I believe that this is a contest between two men -- that we're to choose just between two personalities.

Well what of this man that they would destroy -- and in destroying, they would destroy that which he represents, the ideas that you and I hold dear? Is he the brash and shallow and trigger-happy man they say he is? Well I've been privileged to know him "when." I knew him long before he ever dreamed of trying for high office, and I can tell you personally I've never known a man in my life I believed so incapable of doing a dishonest or dishonorable thing.

This is a man who, in his own business before he entered politics, instituted a profit-sharing plan before unions had ever thought of it. He put in health and medical insurance for all his employees. He took 50 percent of the profits before taxes and set up a retirement program, a pension plan for all his employees. He sent monthly checks for life to an employee who was ill and couldn't work. He provides nursing care for the children of mothers who work in the stores. When Mexico was ravaged by the floods in the Rio Grande, he climbed in his airplane and flew medicine and supplies down there.

An ex-GI told me how he met him. It was the week before Christmas during the Korean War, and he was at the Los Angeles airport trying to get a ride home to Arizona for Christmas. And he said that [there were] a lot of servicemen there and no seats available on the planes. And then a voice came over the loudspeaker and said, "Any men in uniform wanting a ride to Arizona, go to runway such-and-such," and they went down there, and there was a fellow named Barry Goldwater sitting in his plane. Every day in those weeks before Christmas, all day long, he'd load up the plane, fly it to Arizona, fly them to their homes, fly back over to get another load.

During the hectic split-second timing of a campaign, this is a man who took time out to sit beside an old friend who was dying of cancer. His campaign managers were understandably impatient, but he said, "There aren't many left who care what happens to her. I'd like her to know I care." This is a man who said to his 19-year-old son, "There is no foundation like the rock of honesty and fairness, and when you begin to build your life on that rock, with the cement of the faith in God that you have, then you have a real start." This is not a man who could carelessly send other people's sons to war. And that is the issue of this campaign that makes all the other problems I've discussed academic, unless we realize we're in a war that must be won.

Those who would trade our freedom for the soup kitchen of the welfare state have told us they have a utopian solution of peace without victory. They call their policy "accommodation." And they say if we'll only avoid any direct confrontation with the enemy, he'll forget his evil ways and learn to love us. All who oppose them are indicted as warmongers. They say we offer simple answers to complex problems. Well, perhaps there is a simple answer -- not an easy answer -- but simple: If you and I have the courage to tell our elected officials that we want our national policy based on what we know in our hearts is morally right.

We cannot buy our security, our freedom from the threat of the bomb by committing an immorality so great as saying to a billion human beings now enslaved behind the Iron Curtain, "Give up your dreams of freedom because to save our own skins, we're willing to make a deal with your slave masters." Alexander Hamilton said, "A nation which can prefer disgrace to danger is prepared for a master, and deserves one." Now let's set the record straight. There's no argument over the choice between peace and war, but there's only one guaranteed way you can have peace -- and you can have it in the next second -- surrender.

Admittedly, there's a risk in any course we follow other than this, but every lesson of history tells us that the greater risk lies in appeasement, and this is the specter our well-meaning liberal friends refuse to face -- that their policy of accommodation is appeasement, and it gives no choice between peace and war, only between fight or surrender. If we continue to accommodate, continue to back and retreat, eventually we have to face the final demand -- the ultimatum. And what then -- when Nikita Khrushchev has told his people he knows what our answer will be? He has told them that we're retreating under the pressure of the Cold War, and someday when the time comes to deliver the final ultimatum, our surrender will be voluntary, because by that time we will have been weakened from within spiritually, morally, and economically. He believes this because from our side he's heard voices pleading for "peace at any price" or "better Red than dead," or as one commentator put it, he'd rather "live on his knees than die on his feet." And therein lies the road to war, because those voices don't speak for the rest of us.

You and I know and do not believe that life is so dear and peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery. If nothing in life is worth dying for, when did this begin -- just in the face of this enemy? Or should Moses have told the children of Israel to live in slavery under the pharaohs? Should Christ have refused the cross? Should the patriots at Concord Bridge have thrown down their guns and refused to fire the shot heard 'round the world? The martyrs of history were not fools, and our honored dead who gave their lives to stop the advance of the Nazis didn't die in vain. Where, then, is the road to peace? Well it's a simple answer after all.

You and I have the courage to say to our enemies, "There is a price we will not pay." "There is a point beyond which they must not advance." And this -- this is the meaning in the phrase of Barry Goldwater's "peace through strength." Winston Churchill said, "The destiny of man is not measured by material computations. When great forces are on the move in the world, we learn we're spirits -- not animals." And he said, "There's something going on in time and space, and beyond time and space, which, whether we like it or not, spells duty."

You and I have a rendezvous with destiny.

We'll preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on earth, or we'll sentence them to take the last step into a thousand years of darkness.

We will keep in mind and remember that Barry Goldwater has faith in us. He has faith that you and I have the ability and the dignity and the right to make our own decisions and determine our own destiny.

Thank you very much.

Title: Jefferson
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 10, 2008, 09:50:54 AM

"The republican is the only form of government which is not eternally at open or secret war with the rights of mankind."

—Thomas Jefferson, Letter to William Hunter, March 11, 1790

Title: J. Adams
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 11, 2008, 07:59:43 AM

"Our obligations to our country never cease but with our lives."

—John Adams, letter to Benjamin Rush, April 18, 1808

Title: Re: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 12, 2008, 08:35:07 AM

"It should be the highest ambition of every American to extend his views beyond himself, and to bear in mind that his conduct will not only affect himself, his country, and his immediate posterity; but that its influence may be co-extensive with the world, and stamp political happiness or misery on ages yet unborn."

—George Washington, letter to the Legislature of Pennsylvania, September 5, 1789

Title: Re: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 12, 2008, 08:54:15 AM

"Let us therefore animate and encourage each other, and shew the whole world, that a Freeman contending for Liberty on his own ground is superior to any slavish mercenary on earth." --George Washington

Title: Re: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: SB_Mig on November 13, 2008, 03:05:55 PM

Title: B. Rush
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 14, 2008, 08:28:42 AM

"Patriotism is as much a virtue as justice, and is as necessary for the support of societies as natural affection is for the support of families."

—Benjamin Rush, letter to His Fellow Countrymen: On Patriotism, October 20, 1773

Title: Fund Raising Appeal from PatriotPost
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 14, 2008, 10:16:42 AM

I support PatriotPost and hope you will too:
==============

Our sacred honor ... to support and defend
By Mark Alexander

In 1776, an extraordinary group of men signed a document that affirmed their God-given right to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." By attaching their signatures to our great Declaration of Independence, they, in effect, were signing their potential death warrants.

Indeed, the last line of our Declaration reads, "For the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor."

Many of these men, and many of their countrymen, the first generation of American Patriots, would die fighting for American liberty.

A decade later, their liberty having been won at great cost, our Founders further codified their independence and interdependence by instituting yet another historic document, our Constitution.

The Constitution specifies in Article VI, clause 3:

"The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution..."

Bound by Oath to support...

The Constitution also prescribes the following oath to be taken by the president-elect: "I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."

Preserve, protect and defend...

Commissioned and enlisted military personnel are also required by statute to "solemnly swear, that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same...", though the officer's oath doesn't include any provision that they obey orders.

Against all enemies, foreign and domestic...

Notably, all these oaths mandate the preservation, protection, support and defense of our Constitution as ratified, not the so-called "living constitution" as amended by judicial activists populating what Thomas Jefferson predicted would become "the despotic branch."

While uniformed Americans serving our nation defend our Constitution with their lives, most elected officials debase it with all manner of extra-constitutional empowerment of the central government, not the least of which is the forced redistribution of income to benefit their constituency groups which, in turn, dutifully re-elect them.

Military service personnel who violate the Constitution are remanded for courts-martial under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, while politicians who violate the Constitution are remanded for -- re-election.

On that note, the latest crop of Leftists on their way to Washington under the supervision of President-elect Barack Obama are destined to make a greater mockery of our Constitution than any administration in history. Clearly, Obama and his ilk have no history of honoring, or intention to honor, their oaths and, in fact, have no context for such honor.

A small cadre of liberals who believe themselves to be "patriots" have asked, "Can't I be a bona fide Patriot and support Barack Obama?"

In a word ... NO, unless in a state of solemn repentance.

In the spirit of charity, perhaps Obama supporters, who self-identify as patriots, are just grossly misinformed about our Constitution, our history and their own civic duty. Of course, they would likewise be grossly deluded about their identity, but perhaps the delusion is temporary.

I would suggest that Obama "patriots" are nothing more than "sunshine patriots," as Thomas Paine wrote, who "will in crisis, shrink from the service of his country."

At its core, the word "patriot" has direct lineage to those who fought for American independence and established our constitutional republic. That lineage has descended most directly through our history with those who have been entrusted "to support and defend" our Constitution -- more specifically, those who have been faithful to, and have abided by, that oath. As previously noted, by "our Constitution," I am referring to the United States Constitution, not the adulterated vestigial remains that liberals call "the living constitution."

I have taken oaths five times in the service of our country. But I did not have to take any oath to understand my obligations as a citizen "to support and defend" our Constitution.

So, does the title of "Patriot" apply to an individual who votes for a man who has not honored his public oaths of office previously, and has given no indication he intends to "bear true faith and allegiance to the same" as president -- a man who subscribes to the errant notion of a "living constitution" which, in his own words, "breaks free from the essential constraints that were placed by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution"?

No authentic Patriot would support those who violate their sacred oaths.

Unfortunately, in this most recent election, we saw even a handful of flag-rank military officers who have no more reverence for their oaths than Obama. However, they are the exception, not the rule.

Obama's mantra, "change," is a euphemism for constitutional abrogation -- an incremental encroachment on liberty until, at last, liberty is lost.

Our nation's second president, John Adams, warned, "A Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty, once lost, is lost forever."

As for Obama's deception about his own patriotic pedigree, I commend the words of our nation's first president, George Washington: "Guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism. ...[W]here is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation deserts the oaths...?"

Regarding the Presidential Oath of Office, Justice Joseph Story wrote: "[T]he duty imposed upon him to take care, that the laws be faithfully executed, follows out the strong injunctions of his oath of office, that he will 'preserve, protect, and defend the constitution.' The great object of the executive department is to accomplish this purpose." He wrote further that if the president does not honor his oath, his office "will be utterly worthless for ... the protection of rights; for the happiness, or good order, or safety of the people."

Of course, Barack Obama proposes to further constrain the rights of the people by advancing centralized government control of the economy by way of regulation and forced income redistribution, all in the name of "happiness, good order, and safety of the people," but in direct violation of his oath.

Quote of the week
"Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States where men were free." --Ronald Reagan

Legacy of the American Revolution
"It should be the highest ambition of every American to extend his views beyond himself, and to bear in mind that his conduct will not only affect himself, his country, and his immediate posterity; but that its influence may be co-extensive with the world, and stamp political happiness or misery on ages yet unborn." --George Washington

Fellow Patriots, our 2008 Annual Fund campaign is under way. We raise almost 60 percent of our budget in the last two months of each year.

As you know, The Patriot is not sustained by any political, special interest or parent organization. Nor do we accept any online or e-mail advertising. Our operations and mission are funded by -- and depend entirely upon -- the voluntary financial support of American Patriots like YOU!

Thanks to you, our financial partners, The Patriot is now the most widely subscribed and distributed Internet-based conservative political journal. Indeed, your generosity and commitment have made it possible to offer The Patriot without a subscription fee to our military and mission-field readers, as well as collegiate readers -- the young people from whose ranks will come our next generation of leaders. We are also able to authorize the free redistribution and reprinting of our publication through various academic, media and political outlets and forums, thus reaching a very large audience.

"Thanks fellow Patriots for allowing us to reprint your commentary. It is rare, in today's publishing world, to find a first rate resource like The Patriot which permits its original content to be republished without charge. That policy certainly serves your mission, and ours." --State Family Policy Institute

Additionally, your donation will maintain some of the best research and advocacy resources on the Internet: PatriotPost.US, CollegiatePatriot.US, PatriotPetitions.US, Reagan2020.US (the most comprehensive tribute to Ronald Reagan on the Internet), and our Armed Forces outreach service Operation Shield of Strength.

As with other mission-based, donor-supported organizations, we raise most of our budget in the last two months of each year. As of this morning, we still must raise $299,325 before year's end.

If you have not already done so, please take a moment to support The Patriot's 2008 Annual Fund today with a secure online donation -- however large or small. If you prefer to support The Patriot by mail, please use our Donor Support Form.

Every dollar you contribute provides a free subscription for someone serving our nation, or a young person who will fill a family, community and national leadership role in the next generation!

I thank you for the honor and privilege of serving you as editor and publisher of The Patriot Post. On behalf of your Patriot Staff and National Advisory Committee, thank you and God bless you and your family.

Semper Vigilo, Fortis, Paratus, et Fidelis!
Mark Alexander
Publisher

Title: Washington
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 17, 2008, 08:25:11 AM

"No country upon earth ever had it more in its power to attain these blessings than United America. Wondrously strange, then, and much to be regretted indeed would it be, were we to neglect the means and to depart from the road which Providence has pointed us to so plainly; I cannot believe it will ever come to pass."

—George Washington, letter to Benjamin Lincoln, June 29, 1788

Title: Story
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 18, 2008, 07:11:22 AM

"The constitution of the United States is to receive a reasonable interpretation of its language, and its powers, keeping in view the objects and purposes, for which those powers were conferred. By a reasonable interpretation, we mean, that in case the words are susceptible of two different senses, the one strict, the other more enlarged, that should be adopted, which is most consonant with the apparent objects and intent of the Constitution."

—Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution, 1833

Title: Jefferson: Speak Truth
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 19, 2008, 05:49:26 AM

"It is of great importance to set a resolution, not to be shaken, never to tell an untruth. There is no vice so mean, so pitiful, so contemptible; and he who permits himself to tell a lie once, finds it much easier to do it a second and a third time, till at length it becomes habitual; he tells lies without attending to it, and truths without the world's believing him. This falsehood of the tongue leads to that of the heart, and in time depraves all its good disposition."

—Thomas Jefferson, letter to Peter Carr, August, 19 1785

Title: Re: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 20, 2008, 08:54:53 AM

"It should be your care, therefore, and mine, to elevate the minds of our children and exalt their courage; to accelerate and animate their industry and activity; to excite in them an habitual contempt of meanness, abhorrence of injustice and inhumanity, and an ambition to excel in every capacity, faculty, and virtue. If we suffer their minds to grovel and creep in infancy, they will grovel all their lives."

—John Adams, Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law, 1756

Title: Re: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 21, 2008, 05:43:59 AM

"The propitious smiles of Heaven can never be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and right, which Heaven itself has ordained."

—George Washington, First Inaugural Address, April 30, 1789

Title: Washington: Hand of Providence
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 24, 2008, 09:05:54 AM

"The Hand of providence has been so conspicuous in all this, that he must be worse than an infidel that lacks faith, and more than wicked, that has not gratitude enough to acknowledge his obligations."

—George Washington, letter to Thomas Nelson, August 20, 1778

Title: Sam Adams
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on November 25, 2008, 05:46:38 AM

'The Patriarch of Liberty'
Restoring Sam Adams to his rightful place among the founders

Michael C. Moynihan | November 25, 2008

When John Adams traveled to France in 1779 to confer with America's Revolutionary War allies, Parisians lamented that they would not be playing host to "the famous Adams." That title was reserved for the future president's cousin, the muckraking journalist turned zealous revolutionary, Samuel Adams.

So it is odd, then, that this Zelig of independence, present at virtually every revolutionary convulsion of early America, is now remembered mostly for lending his name to a popular brand of beer. As Ira Stoll observes in Samuel Adams: A Life, his engaging and hagiographic biography of this forgotten founding father, a name once synonymous with the American independence movement was "lost in the attic of history."

This is unfortunate, says Stoll, the former managing editor of The New York Sun, because it was Adams who acted as the "moral conscience of the American Revolution." Indeed, it was Adams who helped precipitate the revolutionary unrest, skillfully whipping up public sentiment against British attempts to tax his fellow colonists without allowing them parliamentary representation and, through his pseudonymous newspaper column, inflaming public passions following the Boston Massacre.

Adams was an early and unwavering supporter of separation from Britain, and totally uninterested in compromise or reconciliation with America's imperial masters. When King George III asked Thomas Hutchinson, the former colonial governor of Massachusetts, to provide intelligence on the situation in America, he singled out Adams as "the first that publically asserted the independency of the colonies." As a measure of Adams influence, Stoll points out that when England proffered a pardon for all citizens engaged in revolutionary activity in exchange for a cessation of violence, the only two Bostonians exempted from the deal were Adams and his friend John Hancock.

But Adams was not merely an agitator of mobs. The Massachusetts constitution (1779), which Adams "patiently navigated .ñ.ñ. through revision after revision, and then to ratification," enumerated the "natural, essential and unalienable rights" of "all men." And as Stoll notes, it not only provided the foundation upon which the federal constitution was built, but was later cited when state courts abolished slavery and legalized same-sex marriage.

Stoll argues that, for a man of his times, Adams possessed enlightened, if imperfect, views of slavery and religious liberty (excepting his fanatical anti-Catholicism), and understood that the foundation of a free society was the constitutional guarantee of private property rights. "Property rights, after all," Stoll writes, "were one of Adams's main arguments against taxation by the British." It was the one issue he stressed "almost as much as religious rights in arguing against Britain's treatment of the colonies."

But Christianity was the dominant theme of his writing. He argued strenuously that liberty and religion were inextricably linked, commenting that "whether America shall long preserve her freedom or not, will depend on her virtue" because once Americans "lose their virtue they will be ready to surrender their liberties to the first external or internal invader."

But he could also be a moral scold; at times sounding like a proto-social conservative. Adams stridently campaigned against "theatrical entertainments," inveighing against the supposedly deleterious effects of horse racing, theater-going, dancing, card playing and salty language. The curbing of such "idle amusements" was necessary, he believed, to restore virtue and to preserve revolutionary gains.

Stoll offers not only a compelling portrait of an overlooked figure, but a crisp intellectual history of the American Revolution and its main players. And he reminds readers that it was John Adams who remarked upon his cousin's death that "Without the character of Samuel Adams, the true history of the American Revolution can never be written." With Samuel Adams: A Life, Stoll has succeeded in returning the man Thomas Jefferson called "the patriarch of liberty" to his proper place in the pantheon of great revolutionaries.

Michael C. Moynihan is an associate editor at reason. This article originally appeared at The New York Post.

http://www.reason.com/news/show/130256.html

Title: Jefferson: The foundation
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 25, 2008, 06:28:30 AM

Nice find.
==========

"I consider the foundation of the Constitution as laid on this ground that 'all powers not delegated to the United States, by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states or to the people.' To take a single step beyond the boundaries thus specially drawn around the powers of Congress, is to take possession of a boundless field of power, not longer susceptible of any definition."

—Thomas Jefferson (Opinion on the Constitutionality of a National Bank, 15 February 1791)

Title: Catchin up
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 02, 2008, 06:46:23 AM

"The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground." --Thomas Jefferson
=====

"I consider the foundation of the Constitution as laid on this ground that 'all powers not delegated to the United States, by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states or to the people.' To take a single step beyond the boundaries thus specially drawn around the powers of Congress, is to take possession of a boundless field of power, not longer susceptible of any definition."

—Thomas Jefferson (Opinion on the Constitutionality of a National Bank, 15 February 1791)

======

"It is the duty of every man to render to the Creator such homage, and such only, as he believes to be acceptable to him. This duty is precedent both in order of time and degree of obligation, to the claims of Civil Society. Before any man can be considered as a member of Civil Society, he must be considered as a subject of the Governor of the Universe."

–James Madison, A Memorial and Remonstrance, 1785
=======

"Go on, then, in your generous enterprise with gratitude to Heaven for past success, and confidence of it in the future. For my own part, I ask no greater blessing than to share with you the common danger and common glory ... that these American States may never cease to be free and independent." --Samuel Adams

======

Pilgrims Regress
By Mark Alexander

In the aftermath of a momentous election, an election sure to change the course of our nation, it is tempting to despair. On this Thanksgiving, though, let us resist that powerful temptation and instead take stock of the blessings of liberty.

President Ronald Reagan often cited the Pilgrims who celebrated the first Thanksgiving as our forebears who charted the path of American freedom. He made frequent reference to John Winthrop's "shining city upon a hill."

As Reagan explained, "The phrase comes from John Winthrop, who wrote it to describe the America he imagined. What he imagined was important because he was an early Pilgrim, an early freedom man. He journeyed here on what today we'd call a little wooden boat; and like the other Pilgrims, he was looking for a home that would be free."

Who were these "freedom men," and how did they eventually blaze the path of true liberty? They were Calvinist Protestants who rejected the institutional Church of England, believing that worshipping God must originate freely in the individual soul, without coercion. Suffering persecution and imprisonment in England for their beliefs, a group of these separatists fled to Holland in 1608. There, they found spiritual liberty in the midst of a disjointed economy that failed to provide adequate compensation for their labors, and a dissolute, degraded, corrupt culture that tempted their children to stray from faith.

Determined to protect their families from such spiritual and cultural dangers, the Pilgrims left Plymouth, England, on 6 September 1620, sailing for a new world that offered the promise of both civil and religious liberty. After an arduous journey, they dropped anchor off the coast of what is now Massachusetts.

On 11 December 1620, prior to disembarking at Plymouth Rock, they signed the Mayflower Compact, America's original document of civil government. It was the first to introduce self-government, and the foundation on which the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were built. Governor William Bradford described the Compact as "a combination ... that when they came a shore they would use their owne libertie; for none had power to command them."

Upon landing, the Pilgrims conducted a prayer service and quickly turned to building shelters. Under harrowing conditions, the colonists persisted through prayer and hard work, reaping a bountiful summer harvest. But their material prosperity soon evaporated, for the Pilgrims had erred in acquiescing to their European investors' demands for a financial arrangement holding all crops and property in common, in order to return an agreed-to half to their overseas backers.

By 1623, however, Plymouth Colony was near failure as a result of famine, blight and drought, as well as excessive taxation and what amounted to forced collectivization.

In desperation, the Pilgrims set a day for prayers of repentance; God answered, delivering a gentle rainfall by evening. Bradford's diary recounts how the colonists repented in action: "At length, after much debate of things, the Governor (with the advice of the chiefest amongst them) gave way that they should set corn every man for his own particular, and in that regard trust to themselves; in all other things to go in the general way as before. And so assigned to every family a parcel of land, according to the proportion of their number."

Property ownership and families freely laboring on their own behalf replaced the "common store," but only after their ill-advised experiment with communism nearly wiped out the entire settlement.

In their simple representative government, born out of dedication to religious freedom, the Pilgrims replaced the rule of men -- with its arbitrary justice administered capriciously at the whim of rulers who favor some at the expense of others -- with the rule of law, treating individuals equally. Yet even these "freedom men" strayed under straits. So could we, if we revert to materialistic government reliance instead of grateful obedience to God. Sadly, we're a long way down that path already.

Closing his farewell address in 1989, Ronald Reagan asked, "And how stands the city on this winter night?" Contemplating our blessings of liberty this Thanksgiving, nearly 20 years after President Reagan left office and 20 generations past the Pilgrims' experience, how stands the city on our watch?

===========

"It is the duty of all Nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey his will, to be grateful for his benefits, and humbly to implore his protection and favors."

–George Washington, Thanksgiving Proclamation, 3 October 1789

============

"And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with his wrath? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep for ever."

--Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, Query 18, 1781

==========

"Human nature itself is evermore an advocate for liberty. There is also in human nature a resentment of injury, and indignation against wrong. A love of truth and a veneration of virtue. These amiable passions, are the "latent spark"... If the people are capable of understanding, seeing and feeling the differences between true and false, right and wrong, virtue and vice, to what better principle can the friends of mankind apply than to the sense of this difference?"

--John Adams, the Novanglus, 1775
=======

"Were we directed from Washington when to sow, and when to reap, we should soon want bread." --Thomas Jefferson
==========

"The good Education of Youth has been esteemed by wise Men in all Ages, as the surest Foundation of the Happiness both of private Families and of Common-wealths. Almost all Governments have therefore made it a principal Object of their Attention, to establish and endow with proper Revenues, such Seminaries of Learning, as might supply the succeeding Age with Men qualified to serve the Publick with Honour to themselves, and to their Country."

--Benjamin Franklin, Proposals Relating to the Education of Youth in Pensilvania, 1749
=========

Title: Re: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 03, 2008, 04:59:43 AM

"To cherish and stimulate the activity of the human mind, by multiplying the objects of enterprise, is not among the least considerable of the expedients, by which the wealth of a nation may be promoted."

--Alexander Hamilton, Report on Manufactures, December, 1791

Title: Paine
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 03, 2008, 08:17:42 AM

"I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection." --Thomas Paine

Title: Jefferson: Debt
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 04, 2008, 09:02:06 AM

"But with respect to future debt; would it not be wise and just for that nation to declare in the constitution they are forming that neither the legislature, nor the nation itself can validly contract more debt, than they may pay within their own age, or within the term of 19 years."

--Thomas Jefferson, letter to James Madison, 6 September 1789

Title: Re: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 04, 2008, 01:25:27 PM

Reposting SB Mig's post on the Books thread:

The Trouble With Thomas Jefferson
The eloquent Founder's original sin

Damon W. Root | January 2009 Print Edition

The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family, by Annette Gordon-Reed, New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 800 pages, $35

In 1775 the English essayist and lexicographer Samuel Johnson wrote a spirited political pamphlet titled Taxation No Tyranny. His subject was the loud and increasingly aggressive rhetoric coming from the American colonies, where criticism of British economic policy was giving way to calls for popular revolution. “How is it,” Johnson retorted, “that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of Negroes?”

It’s still a good question. Perhaps no one illustrates the paradox better than Thomas Jefferson. The celebrated author of the Declaration of Independence, which famously declares that “all men are created equal” and are born with the inalienable rights to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” Jefferson was also a slaveholder, a man whose livelihood was rooted in the subjugation of hundreds of human beings, including members of his wife’s family and his own.

At the center of Jefferson’s tangled, frequently horrifying web of blood and bondage were two women: Elizabeth Hemings and her daughter Sarah, better known as Sally. Elizabeth, the daughter of an African slave and an English sea captain, was the slave mistress of a Virginia slave owner and broker named John Wayles. Sally Hemings was the youngest of their six children. Wayles also had children from his three marriages, including a daughter named Martha. Sally Hemings, in other words, was Martha Wayles’ half-sister. At her father’s death in 1773, Martha inherited his human property, including Elizabeth and Sally Hemings. In 1772 Martha married Thomas Jefferson. Thus the Hemingses came to Monticello.

In 1782 Martha died from complications after giving birth to her sixth child with Jefferson. Among those with him at her deathbed were Elizabeth and Sally Hemings, who then was 9 years old. Edmund Bacon, one of Jefferson’s overseers at Monticello, reported that as Martha lay dying she asked her husband not to remarry. “Holding her hand, Mr. Jefferson promised her solemnly that he would never marry again,” Bacon recalled. “And he never did.”

That doesn’t mean Jefferson became celibate. In 1789, while serving as U.S. envoy in Paris, he almost certainly began a four-decade-long relationship with his late wife’s half-sister. (In addition to the oral testimony of numerous Hemings family members, the evidence for their relationship includes DNA tests conducted in 1998 establishing that a Jefferson family male fathered Sally Hemings’ son Eston.) At this point Sally Hemings was 16.

It was an affair the historian Edmund S. Morgan has called a “monogamous spousal relationship.” In her extraordinary new book The Hemingses of Monticello, Annette Gordon-Reed, a professor of history at Rutgers University and a professor of law at New York Law School, uses a more specific term: concubine, which Virginia law defined at the time as a woman living with a man who was not her husband. If Sally Hemings were white, we might describe her relationship with Jefferson as a common-law marriage. But as Gordon-Reed reminds us, “Any black woman who lived with a white man could only have been his concubine. It was legally impossible to be anything else.”

This relationship apparently lasted until Jefferson’s death in 1826, by which time Hemings had given birth to seven of his children, four of whom survived into adulthood. In his will, Jefferson formally emancipated two of them, James Madison Hemings and Thomas Eston Hemings. The other two, William Beverly Hemings and Harriet Hemings, simply left Monticello on their own in the early 1820s to live—“pass”—as white. (All three males, it’s worth noting, were named after men Jefferson knew or admired, a common practice among Virginia’s planter elites.) Eight years after Jefferson’s death, his daughter Martha Randolph quietly freed Sally Hemings, who was then 53 years old. Why didn’t Jefferson emancipate her too? “Formally freeing Hemings,” Gordon-Reed observes, “while also emancipating two people obviously young enough to be their children, would have told the story of his life over the past thirty-eight years quite well.”

Among the many achievements of Gordon-Reed’s compelling, if slightly repetitive, book is her vivid illumination of these previously hidden lives. She persuasively argues that Hemings exacted a promise from Jefferson that proved no less momentous than the one he had granted his dying wife. In essence, 16-year-old Hemings, who was pregnant with Jefferson’s child and working as his domestic “servant” in Paris, chose to return to America with him, rather than remain in France, where she could have formally received her freedom. (By law any slave that set foot on French soil was automatically free.) She did so because Jefferson promised to emancipate her children when they became adults—a promise he kept. In exchange, she lived as his concubine. “Like other enslaved people when the all too rare chance presented itself,” Gordon-Reed writes, “Hemings seized her moment and used the knowledge of her rights to make a decision based upon what she thought was best for her as a woman, family member, and a potential mother in her specific circumstances.”

Jefferson apparently cared for Sally Hemings and their children, and he clearly treated members of her family (some of who were also his deceased wife’s family) with much consideration. Elizabeth Hemings, for instance, became something of a revered matriarch. Her sons Robert and James (brothers to Sally Hemings and Martha Jefferson) received instruction in the skilled trades of barbering and cooking, respectively.

Both were permitted to work for private wages, and both enjoyed relative freedom of movement outside of Monticello—so long as they came running at their master’s command, of course. “Despite their status on the law books,” Gordon-Reed writes, “Jefferson treated them, to a degree, as if they were lower-class white males.” Eventually, Jefferson freed them both.

But let’s not draw too rosy a picture. As part of the marriage settlement for his sister Anna, Jefferson handed over the slave Nancy Hemings (another of Elizabeth Hemings’ offspring, though not by John Wayles) and her two children. When Anna’s husband decided to sell these three slaves, Nancy Hemings implored Jefferson to buy them back so they could remain together as a family. Jefferson bought Nancy, an expert weaver, and her young daughter, but refused to buy her son. The family was split apart. “No matter how ‘close’ the Hemingses were to Jefferson, no matter that he viewed some of them in a different light and did not subject them to certain hardships,” Gordon-Reed writes, “their family remained a commodity that could be sold or exchanged at his will.”

Which brings us back to Samuel Johnson and his quip about slaveholders yelping for liberty. Does the fact that Thomas Jefferson owned slaves—probably including his own children—negate the wonderful things he wrote about inalienable rights in the Declaration of Independence? To put it another way, why should anyone listen to what Master Jefferson (or other slaveholding Founders) had to say about liberty and equality?

It’s important to remember that the idea of inalienable rights didn’t start or stop in the year 1776. The historian Gordon S. Wood, in his superb 1991 book The Radicalism of the American Revolution, argues that “to focus, as we are apt to do, on what the Revolution did not accomplish—highlighting and lamenting its failure to abolish slavery and change fundamentally the lot of women—is to miss the great significance of what it did accomplish.” In Wood’s view, by destroying monarchical rule and replacing it with republicanism, the American revolutionaries “made possible the anti-slavery and women’s rights movements of the nineteenth century and in fact all our current egalitarian thinking.” They upended “their societies as well as their governments…only they did not know—they could scarcely have imagined—how much of their society they would change.”

As evidence, consider two very different figures whose lives intersected with slavery in the 19th century: the abolitionist Frederick Douglass and the pro-slavery politician John C. Calhoun. An escaped slave and self-taught author and orator, Douglass understood better than most just how potent the Declaration’s promise of inalienable rights could be. “Would you have me argue that man is entitled to liberty? That he is the rightful owner of his own body?” Douglass would demand of his mostly white audiences. “There is not a man beneath the canopy of heaven that does not know that slavery is wrong for him.”

Calhoun, by contrast, believed the Declaration’s assertion that “all men are created equal” was “the most dangerous of all political error.” As he put it in an 1848 speech, “For a long time it lay dormant; but in the process of time it began to germinate, and produce its poisonous fruits.” This false notion of equality, Calhoun continued, “had strong hold on the mind of Mr. Jefferson…which caused him to take an utterly false view of the subordinate relation of the black to the white race in the South; and to hold, in consequence, that the former, though utterly unqualified to possess liberty, were as fully entitled to both liberty and equality as the latter.”

Think about what Calhoun is saying here. The idea that “all men are created equal” has slowly developed in the American consciousness, producing the “poisonous fruits” of the anti-slavery movement. Jefferson may or may not have intended such an outcome; he certainly did little actively to bring it about, though he did denounce slavery and its brutalizing impact on white society. But the libertarian ideas that inspired Jefferson, the ones coursing through the Declaration of Independence and later through the Constitution, nonetheless did bring it about. Douglass welcomed that result; Calhoun despised it.

That’s why Jefferson’s words matter. In spite of his despicable actions, he gave eloquent and resounding voice to the ideas that have been at the forefront of human liberty for hundreds of years. That members of the Hemings family may have heard such rhetoric while they lived in bondage further highlights the tragedy of their terrible situation. Thanks to Annette Gordon-Reed, these forgotten and silent individuals at least have the opportunity to register their own verdicts on this shameful period.

Damon W. Root is an associate editor of reason.

Title: Re: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 05, 2008, 10:07:59 AM

"There is not a more important and fundamental principle in legislation, than that the ways and means ought always to face the public engagements; that our appropriations should ever go hand in hand with our promises. To say that the United States should be answerable for twenty-five millions of dollars without knowing whether the ways and means can be provided, and without knowing whether those who are to succeed us will think with us on the subject, would be rash and unjustifiable. Sir, in my opinion, it would be hazarding the public faith in a manner contrary to every idea of prudence."

--James Madison, Speech in Congress, 22 April 1790

============================================================

Friday Digest — Vol. 08 No. 49
5 December 2008

THE FOUNDATION
"No people will tamely surrender their Liberties, nor can any be easily subdued, when knowledge is diffusd and virtue is preservd. On the Contrary, when People are universally ignorant, and debauchd in their Manners, they will sink under their own weight without the Aid of foreign Invaders." --Samuel Adams

PATRIOT PERSPECTIVE
Stupid is as stupid does
By Mark Alexander

After the most recent presidential election, when, as you may recall, our once great nation exposed its collective flank -- unmitigated ignorance -- to the world, a reputable pollster, John Zogby, endeavored to determine how 66 million of us could be so profoundly stupid.

We reported his findings in our "Non Compos Mentis" section two weeks ago, including, for example, that 56.1 percent of Obama supporters did not know his political career was launched by two former terrorists from the Weather Underground; that 57 percent did not know which political party controlled congress; that 72 percent did not know Joe Biden withdrew from a previous presidential campaign because of plagiarism in law school; and that 87 percent thought Sarah Palin said she could "see Russia from my house," even though that was "Saturday Night Live" comedian Tina Fey in a parody of Palin.

The Zogby polling was designed to determine how much influence the media had on shaping public opinion, and, thus, the outcome of the election. Of course, establishing that the political landscape would look very different if the media were neutral is filed under "keen sense of the obvious."

However, a report issued last week by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute is more relevant to understanding why Barack Obama received so much support from those between 18 and 30 years of age -- support that put him over the top.

For the last two years, ISI has assessed the civil literacy of young people at American colleges and universities, testing both students and faculty. The civics test included a cross section of multiple-choice questions about our system of government, history and free enterprise -- questions to assess the knowledge that all Americans should possess in order to understand their civic responsibility and make informed decisions in matters such as elections.

More than 14,000 freshmen and seniors at 50 schools nationwide were given the 60-question exam. More than 50 percent of freshmen and 54 percent of seniors failed the test. (So they get dumber?)

This year, ISI went beyond the "institutions of higher learning" to assess civic literacy across demographic groups. The 2008 civics quiz asked similar questions to those asked to college and university students in previous years, but also included questions about civic participation and policy issues. The results were then subjected to multivariate regression analysis in order to determine if college and university graduates had a higher civic IQ than the rest of society.

As you might expect, 71 percent of Americans failed the test, with an average score of 49. Educators did not fare much better, scoring an average of 55 percent. As the researchers noted, "Fewer than half of all Americans can name all three branches of government, a minimal requirement for understanding America's constitutional system."

College grads flunked, answering 57 percent of the questions correctly, compared to 44 percent for high school grads.

Less than 24 percent of those with college degrees knew that the First Amendment prohibits establishing an official religion for the United States. Further, only 54 percent can correctly identify the basic tenets of the free enterprise system.

Would you be shocked to know that elected officials have a lower civic IQ than the public they ostensibly serve? Indeed, these paragons of representative government answered just 44 percent of the questions correctly. Almost a third of elected officials could not identify "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" as the inalienable rights in our Declaration of Independence.

Our Founders, those venerable Patriots who signed our Declaration of Independence and codified the liberty that is declared in our Constitution, understood that liberty could not long survive an epidemic of ignorance.

According to George Washington: "The best means of forming a manly, virtuous, and happy people will be found in the right education of youth. Without this foundation, every other means, in my opinion, must fail."

John Adams wrote: "Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people, who have a right, from the frame of their nature, to knowledge, as their great Creator, who does nothing in vain, has given them understandings, and a desire to know; but besides this, they have a right, an indisputable, unalienable, indefeasible, divine right to that most dreaded and envied kind of knowledge; I mean, of the characters and conduct of their rulers. ... Wisdom and knowledge, as well as virtue, diffused generally among the body of the people, being necessary for the preservation of their rights and liberties..."

Thomas Jefferson insisted: "Enlighten the people, generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like spirits at the dawn of day. ... If a nation expects to be ignorant -- and free -- in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."

James Madison agreed: "A people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives. ... What spectacle can be more edifying or more seasonable, than that of Liberty and Learning, each leaning on the other for their mutual & surest support?"

Today, however, it would seem that ignorance is not only blissful but virtuous.

Title: Re: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Freki on December 05, 2008, 01:01:31 PM

I would like to thank everyone who posts here. This is one of my favorite threads and I look forward to the new posts. Thank you for your efforts.

Title: Richard Henry Lee
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on December 05, 2008, 03:24:04 PM

RHL is my favorite Antifederalist, and one of the fellas who argued against a "select militia," favoring one formed of "the whole of the yeomanry" instead. This latter point is important as those who would disappear the Second Amendment by claiming its protections have devolved to the National Guard are ignoring the "select militia"--meaning a militia comprised of specifically appointed or empowered people rather that the citizenry as a whole--fears the Antifederalists not only clearly expressed but used to buttress arguments for a Bill of Rights.

Some Richard Henry Lee quotes follow:

A militia when properly formed are in fact the people themselves... and include all men capable of bearing arms. . . To preserve liberty it is essential that the whole body of people always possess arms... The mind that aims at a select militia, must be influenced by a truly anti-republican principle.
Richard Henry Lee, Additional Letters From The Federal Farmer, 1788, at 169

No free government was ever founded, or ever preserved its liberty, without uniting the characters of the citizen and soldier in those destined for the defense of the state...such area well-regulated militia, composed of the freeholders, citizen and husbandman, who take up arms to preserve their property, as individuals, and their rights as freemen.
Richard Henry Lee, State Gazette (Charleston), September 8, 1788

To preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of people always possess arms, and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them...
Richard Henry Lee, 1788, Additional Letters From The Federal Farmer 53, 1788

To say that a bad government must be established for fear of anarchy is really saying that we should kill ourselves for fear of dying.

The constitution ought to secure a genuine militia and guard against a select militia... all regulations tending to render this general militia useless and defenseless, by establishing select corps of militia, or distinct bodies of military men, not having permanent interests and attachments to the community ought to be avoided.

Title: Re: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 06, 2008, 06:14:09 AM

Freki:

Thank you for your words, words which warm my heart.

When I first started this thread, the number of "reads-per-post" (which tells me of the interest in a thread) was rather desultory, but over time it has risen to a ratio of over 60 RPP. This number includes the time when the RPP was lower, so current RPP is even higher than that.

We share a belief in the profound importance of our American creed and the value of doing our part to see that it lives and is transmitted to the current and following generations!

TAC!
Marc

Title: Madison
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 08, 2008, 09:00:13 AM

Title: Jefferson
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 09, 2008, 04:22:23 AM

"The same prudence which in private life would forbid our paying our own money for unexplained projects, forbids it in the dispensation of the public moneys."

--Thomas Jefferson, letter to Shelton Gilliam, 19 June 1808

Title: Washington:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 10, 2008, 06:59:23 AM

"No pecuniary consideration is more urgent, than the regular redemption and discharge of the public debt: on none can delay be more injurious, or an economy of time more valuable."

--George Washington, Message to the House of Representatives, 3 December 1793

Title: Washington
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 11, 2008, 08:41:05 AM

Title: Re: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 11, 2008, 12:06:27 PM

My Fellow Patriots,

Of the American fight for liberty, George Washington wrote, "Our cause is noble; it is the cause of mankind!" Indeed, it was, and it remains our noble cause. And we know, by virtue of your patronage, that you are standing with us on many frontlines in honor and defense of our nation's proud heritage and legacy of liberty.

Of those unwilling to enlist in this righteous cause, Samuel Adams said, "If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen."

However, of those who did enlist, and have in generations since, Adams wrote, "It does not take a majority to prevail ... but rather an irate, tireless minority, keen on setting brushfires of freedom in the minds of men."

Though a minority we may be, we have never wavered in our endeavor to set brushfires of liberty.

From our humble beginnings in 1996, The Patriot Post is now the most widely read conservative political journal on the Internet. We reach millions of readers, and by extension, their families, friends and associates, and we do so at a cost of less than 25 cents per reader per year. Thousands of our readers repost our content on blogs, social networking sites and personal Web sites. High school teachers, and college and university professors use our content to teach their students, and many political and cultural organizations reprint our content in their publications.

On the other hand, the major print media outlets, which have commanded a stranglehold on public opinion for generations, are now suffering unprecedented reader attrition. Liberal standard-bearers like The New York Times, Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, Baltimore Sun and other print dailies are losing ground to the "new media" -- that's us.

The Patriot's Annual Fund is donor supported so we can offer our publication free of charge to thousands of American military personnel, students and those in ministry or other professions with limited financial means.

We hear from these Patriot readers every day, and I would like to share a few of their recent comments:

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Patriots, this is a call to arms. As we close out our books this year, we still must raise $153,787 in order to meet our budget. Please, support The Patriot's 2008 Annual Fund today, in accordance with your ability. (If you prefer to support us by mail, please use our printable donor form or print the donor information listed below.)

Publishing, like freedom, is not free. We employ editorial and technical managers, numerous part-time feature and content editors, and an indispensable research and analysis team. In addition, our Internet publishing efforts require a sizable investment beyond the human one; this includes robust and powerful hardware, custom software, office space, installations, maintenance and more. We also incur substantial legal, accounting and insurance costs.

Yet, our mission and operations budget is a small fraction of the expenses of other influential conservative organizations, primarily because our dedicated staff members are motivated by mission and not deterred by modest wages. (View our expense graphic here.)

If you have not already done so, please take a moment to support The Patriot today.

I thank you for the honor and privilege of serving you as editor and publisher of The Patriot. On behalf of your Patriot Staff and National Advisory Committee, thank you, and God bless you and your family this Christmas season.

Semper Vigilo, Fortis, Paratus, et Fidelis!

Mark Alexander,
Publisher, for the editors and staff

Note: Once your donation has been recorded, your e-mail address is removed from our appeal and update lists. However, when the year-end campaign is complete, we will send you a report.

Donor Guide:
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(Please pray on this and every day for our Patriot Armed Forces standing in harm's way around the world in defense of our liberty, and for the families awaiting their safe return.)

Title: Jefferson: Lies
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 12, 2008, 09:53:37 AM

"It is of great importance to set a resolution, not to be shaken, never to tell an untruth. There is no vice so mean, so pitiful, so contemptible; and he who permits himself to tell a lie once, finds it much easier to do it a second and a third time, till at length it becomes habitual; he tells lies without attending to it, and truths without the world's believing him. This falsehood of the tongue leads to that of the heart, and in time depraves all its good disposition."

--Thomas Jefferson, letter to Peter Carr, 19 August 1785

Title: Washington: Last words
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 15, 2008, 08:32:44 AM

"'Tis well."

--George Washington, last words, 14 December 1799

Title: Bill of Rights
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 15, 2008, 10:55:11 AM

BILL OF RIGHTS ANNIVERSARY
Today, 15 December, is the 217th anniversary of the adoption of the Bill of Rights, the first Ten Amendments to our Constitution, as ratified in 1791.

The Bill of Rights was inspired by three remarkable documents: John Locke's 1689 thesis, Two Treatises of Government, regarding the protection of "property" (in the Latin context, proprius, or one's own "life, liberty and estate"); in part from the Virginia Declaration of Rights authored by George Mason in 1776 as part of that state's Constitution; and, of course, in part from our Declaration of Independence authored by Thomas Jefferson.

Read in context, the Bill of Rights is both an affirmation of innate individual rights and a clear delineation on constraints upon the central government. As oft trampled and abused as the Bill of Rights is, Patriots should remain vigilant in the fight for our rights.

Title: Reagan
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 15, 2008, 10:56:22 AM

Third post of day:

THE GIPPER
"The most dangerous myth is the demagoguery that business can be made to pay a larger share, thus relieving the individual. Politicians preaching this are either deliberately dishonest, or economically illiterate, and either one should scare us. Business doesn't pay taxes, and who better than business to make this message known? Only people pay taxes, and people pay as consumers every tax that is assessed against a business. Begin with the food and fiber raised in the farm, to the ore drilled in a mine, to the oil and gas from out of the ground, whatever it may be -- through the processing, through the manufacturing, on out to the retailer's license. If the tax cannot be included in the price of the product, no one along that line can stay in business." --Ronald Reagan

Title: Libraries of Early America:
Post by: rachelg on December 15, 2008, 06:42:30 PM

http://www.librarything.com/thingology/2008/12/libraries-of-early-america-project.php

If you go the original page it will link to the libraries.
http://www.librarything.com/groups/PLEA

Libraries of Early America: Project Announcement
I've posted the following announcement on several rare book/library/American history listservs this morning as the official rollout of the Libraries of Early America project, an offshoot of the Legacy Libraries effort specifically for libraries created in America before c. 1825. Note: I've "blog-ified" the announcement here by adding additional links.

Have you ever wondered what books Benjamin Franklin, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson had in their personal libraries? How about 18th-century Virginia musician Cuthbert Ogle, or four generations of Mather family members? Or the most active female book collector in Virginia during the colonial/early national period, Lady Jean Skipwith?

A new project will make it possible to search, compare and study these and other Libraries of Early America. Using the book-cataloging website LibraryThing.com, scholars from institutions around the country (including Monticello, the Massachusetts Historical Society, the Boston Athenaeum, the Boston Public Library, the Library Company of Philadelphia, the American Philosophical Society and others) have begun the process of creating digital catalogs of early American book collections - the project covers anyone who lived in America and collected primarily before 1825.

Is your institution home to any personal library collections or library inventories/book lists? Have you run across early American library catalogs (manuscript or printed) in the course of your research? We have begun compiling a list of collections to be added and are happy to receive further submissions.

Also, if your institution's holdings include books from any of the personal libraries already completed or underway, we would be very interested to hear of them so that the records can be added to the database. While it will be impossible to catch every single book ever owned or read by these individuals, we intend to make these catalogs as complete as possible, so every title helps.

For more information, links, and so forth, please visit the Libraries of Early America group page. Feel free to ask any questions or offer any suggestions you have on the project, and if you'd like to volunteer, we'd love the assistance.

Title: Webster
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 16, 2008, 03:10:04 AM

"The virtues of men are of more consequence to society than their abilities; and for this reason, the heart should be cultivated with more assiduity than the head."

--Noah Webster, On the Education of Youth in America, 1788

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 16, 2008, 05:10:54 AM

Woof All:

I added to the name of the thread this AM to reflect my sense that there is an American Creed. It was articulated and defined by our Founding Fathers, but others since then have done so as well. Its why I quote President Reagan here, and have quoted Martin Luther King here. Note that the standard non-contemporaries of the FF must meet to belong here on this thread is a very high one indeed!

Before continuing, lets bring some light to the dark side of this. There ARE certain thoughts and values which are part of being a true American-- and YES I am saying that if you don't, you aren't. For example, a belief in the pursuit of happiness enabled by freedom of choice, informed by freedom of speech, made real by separation of church and state. If you don't believe in these things, you are not a true American and if you work against them, you are no friend of mine.

The point however is not to exclude, the point is to find what it is that unites us.

I recognize that I take a risk here-- how rare! :lol: Know that I will be fairly ruthless in shutting down any tendencies to drift into the cats and dogs squabbles of the moment-- we look here for the deeper and abiding essence of things. If the experience shows this to be a mistake, well then I will change my mind and revert the thread to its original definition.

Lets kick things off with something I ran across yesterday:
====================================

http://www.uscis.gov/portal/site/uscis/menuitem.5af9bb95919f35e66f614176543f6d1a/?vgnextoid=931696981298d010VgnVCM10000048f3d6a1RCRD

The oath of allegiance is:

"I hereby declare, on oath, that I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen; that I will support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I will bear arms on behalf of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform noncombatant service in the Armed Forces of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform work of national importance under civilian direction when required by the law; and that I take this obligation freely without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; so help me God."

In some cases, USCIS allows the oath to be taken without the clauses:

". . .that I will bear arms on behalf of the United States when required by law; that I will perform noncombatant service in the Armed Forces of the United States when required by law. . .
=================

I wonder why it is, and whether it is sound, to allow the oath to be taken in less than its entirety , , ,

Marc

Title: Washington:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 19, 2008, 07:48:52 AM

"Citizens by birth or choice of a common country, that country has a right to concentrate your affections. The name of American, which belongs to you, in your national capacity, must always exalt the just pride of Patriotism, more than any appellation derived from local discriminations."

--George Washington, Farewell Address, 1796

Title: Washington:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 24, 2008, 06:39:11 AM

"I have often expressed my sentiments, that every man, conducting himself as a good citizen, and being accountable to God alone for his religious opinions, ought to be protected in worshipping the Deity according to the dictates of his own conscience."

--George Washington, letter to the General Committee of the United Baptist Churches in Virginia, May 1789

Title: Samuel Adams
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 25, 2008, 04:31:57 PM

"Religion and good morals are the only solid foundation of public liberty and happiness."

--Samuel Adams, letter to John Trumbull, 16 October 1778

Title: J. Story: Consitutional interpretation
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 26, 2008, 05:00:26 AM

"The constitution of the United States is to receive a reasonable interpretation of its language, and its powers, keeping in view the objects and purposes, for which those powers were conferred. By a reasonable interpretation, we mean, that in case the words are susceptible of two different senses, the one strict, the other more enlarged, that should be adopted, which is most consonant with the apparent objects and intent of the Constitution."

--Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution, 1833

Title: T.Parsons
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 29, 2008, 10:16:25 AM

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: DougMacG on December 29, 2008, 11:06:56 AM

I found this critique of Theodore Roosevel trelevant to the topic of the view of the founding fathers (and how we have strayed).

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123033881006136515.html

Theodore Roosevelt Was No Conservative
There's a reason he left the GOP to lead the Progressive Party.

By RONALD J. PESTRITTO

We know that Barack Obama and his allies identify themselves as "progressives," and that they aim to implement the big-government liberalism that originated in America's Progressive Era and was consummated in the New Deal. What remains a mystery is why some conservatives want to claim this progressive identity as their own -- particularly as it was manifested by Theodore Roosevelt.

The fact that conservative politicians such as John McCain and writers like William Kristol and Karl Rove are attracted to our 26th president is strange because, if we want to understand where in the American political tradition the idea of unlimited, redistributive government came from, we need look no further than to Roosevelt and others who shared his outlook.

Progressives of both parties, including Roosevelt, were the original big-government liberals. They understood full well that the greatest obstacle to their schemes of social justice and equality of material condition was the U.S. Constitution as it was originally written and understood: as creating a national government of limited, enumerated powers that was dedicated to securing the individual natural rights of its citizens, especially liberty of contract and private property.

It was the Republican TR, who insisted in his 1910 speech on the "New Nationalism" that there was a "general right of the community to regulate" the earning of income and use of private property "to whatever degree the public welfare may require it." He was at one here with Democrat Woodrow Wilson, who had in 1885 condemned Americans' respect for their Constitution as "blind worship," and suggested that his countrymen dedicate themselves to the Declaration of Independence by leaving out its "preface" -- i.e., the part of it that establishes the protection of equal natural rights as the permanent task of government.

In his "Autobiography," Roosevelt wrote that he "declined to adopt the view that what was imperatively necessary for the nation could not be done by the President unless he could find some specific authorization to do it." The national government, in TR's view, was not one of enumerated powers but of general powers, and the purpose of the Constitution was merely to state the narrow exceptions to that rule.

This is a view of government directly opposed by Alexander Hamilton in Federalist 84. Hamilton explains there that the fundamental difference between a republican constitution and a monarchic one is that the latter reserves some liberty for the people by stating specific exceptions to the assumed general power of the crown, whereas the former assumes from the beginning that the power of the people is the general rule, and the power of the government the exception.

TR turns this on its head. In his New Nationalism speech he noted how, in aiming to use state power to bring about economic equality, the government should permit a man to earn and keep his property "only so long as the gaining represents benefit to the community." The government itself of course would determine what represented a benefit to the community, and whether society would be better off if an individual's wealth was transferred to somebody else.

We can see the triumph of this outlook in progressive income taxation, which TR trumpeted in his speech (along with progressive estate taxes). We may also see this theory in action when a government seizes private property through eminent domain, transferring it to others in order to generate higher tax revenues -- a practice blessed by the Supreme Court in its notorious Kelo v. New London decision of 2005.

Some conservatives today are misled by the battle between TR and Wilson in the 1912 presidential election. But Wilson implemented most of TR's program once he took office in 1913, including a progressive income tax and the establishment of several regulatory agencies, such as the Federal Trade Commission.

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 30, 2008, 06:44:31 AM

The book "Liberal Fascism" (the author's name slips my mind at the moment) discusses TR at some length. TR was McCain's idol/hero. After McCain's terrible response to the market meltdown I'm finding it less upsetting that he lost.

Bush, McCain, and BO all were/are Keynesians and with the utter stupidity, vapidity, and disingenuity of how the story of the meltdown is being told (the market did it :roll: :-P :x :x :x :x) it looks like we are set to repeat the same policy errors of FDR and with the same results of FDR and the Japanese's "lost decades".

Our cultural memory of what this country is about grows dimmer and dimmer.

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on December 30, 2008, 07:51:58 AM

Quote from: Crafty_Dog on December 30, 2008, 06:44:31 AM

The book "Liberal Fascism" (the author's name slips my mind at the moment) discusses TR at some length.

Jonathan Goldman, Lucianne's little boy.

Title: WSJ: S.Huntington and The American Creed:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 30, 2008, 07:54:51 AM

Thank you.

Who is Lucianne?

Speaking of the American Creed, here's this:
==============================

By FOUAD AJAMI
The last of Samuel Huntington's books -- "Who Are We? The Challenges to America's National Identity," published four years ago -- may have been his most passionate work. It was like that with the celebrated Harvard political scientist, who died last week at 81. He was a man of diffidence and reserve, yet he was always caught up in the political storms of recent decades.

Zina Saunders"This book is shaped by my own identities as a patriot and a scholar," he wrote. "As a patriot I am deeply concerned about the unity and strength of my country as a society based on liberty, equality, law and individual rights." Huntington lived the life of his choice, neither seeking controversies, nor ducking them. "Who Are We?" had the signature of this great scholar -- the bold, sweeping assertions sustained by exacting details, and the engagement with the issues of the time.

He wrote in that book of the "American Creed," and of its erosion among the elites. Its key elements -- the English language, Christianity, religious commitment, English concepts of the rule of law, the responsibility of rulers, and the rights of individuals -- he said are derived from the "distinct Anglo-Protestant culture of the founding settlers of America in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries."

Critics who branded the book as a work of undisguised nativism missed an essential point. Huntington observed that his was an "argument for the importance of Anglo-Protestant culture, not for the importance of Anglo-Protestant people." The success of this great republic, he said, had hitherto depended on the willingness of generations of Americans to honor the creed of the founding settlers and to shed their old affinities. But that willingness was being battered by globalization and multiculturalism, and by new waves of immigrants with no deep attachments to America's national identity. "The Stars and Stripes were at half-mast," he wrote in "Who Are We?", "and other flags flew higher on the flagpole of American identities."

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Three possible American futures beckoned, Huntington said: cosmopolitan, imperial and national. In the first, the world remakes America, and globalization and multiculturalism trump national identity. In the second, America remakes the world: Unchallenged by a rival superpower, America would attempt to reshape the world according to its values, taking to other shores its democratic norms and aspirations. In the third, America remains America: It resists the blandishments -- and falseness -- of cosmopolitanism, and reins in the imperial impulse.

Huntington made no secret of his own preference: an American nationalism "devoted to the preservation and enhancement of those qualities that have defined America since its founding." His stark sense of realism had no patience for the globalism of the Clinton era. The culture of "Davos Man" -- named for the watering hole of the global elite -- was disconnected from the call of home and hearth and national soil.

But he looked with a skeptical eye on the American expedition to Iraq, uneasy with those American conservatives who had come to believe in an "imperial" American mission. He foresaw frustration for this drive to democratize other lands. The American people would not sustain this project, he observed, and there was the "paradox of democracy": Democratic experiments often bring in their wake nationalistic populist movements (Latin America) or fundamentalist movements (Muslim countries). The world tempts power, and denies it. It is the Huntingtonian world; no false hopes and no redemption.

In the 1990s, when the Davos crowd and other believers in a borderless world reigned supreme, Huntington crossed over from the academy into global renown, with his "clash of civilizations" thesis. In an article first published in Foreign Affairs in 1993 (then expanded into a book), Huntington foresaw the shape of the post-Cold War world. The war of ideologies would yield to a civilizational struggle of soil and blood. It would be the West versus the eight civilizations dividing the rest -- Latin American, African, Islamic, Sinic, Hindu, Orthodox, Buddhist and Japanese.

In this civilizational struggle, Islam would emerge as the principal challenge to the West. "The relations between Islam and Christianity, both orthodox and Western, have often been stormy. Each has been the other's Other. The 20th-century conflict between liberal democracy and Marxist-Leninism is only a fleeting and superficial historical phenomenon compared to the continuing and deeply conflictual relation between Islam and Christianity."

He had assaulted the zeitgeist of the era. The world took notice, and his book was translated into 39 languages. Critics insisted that men want Sony, not soil. But on 9/11, young Arabs -- 19 of them -- would weigh in. They punctured the illusions of an era, and gave evidence of the truth of Huntington's vision. With his typical precision, he had written of a "youth bulge" unsettling Muslim societies, and young, radicalized Arabs, unhinged by modernity and unable to master it, emerging as the children of this radical age.

In Today's Opinion Journal

REVIEW & OUTLOOK

The Wizards of OilThe Philanthropy ShakedownYou Are Your Record

TODAY'S COLUMNISTS

Global View: Hamas Know One Big Thing
– Bret StephensMain Street: New Jersey Is the Perfect Bad Example
– William McGurn

COMMENTARY

Samuel Huntington's Warning
– Fouad AjamiWhy Detroit Has an Especially Bad Union Problem
– Logan RobinsonObama Will Ration Your Health Care
– Sally C. PipesThe FDA Is Killing Crohn's Patients
– Gideon J. Sofer
If I may be permitted a personal narrative: In 1993, I had written the lead critique in Foreign Affairs of his thesis. I admired his work but was unconvinced. My faith was invested in the order of states that the West itself built. The ways of the West had become the ways of the world, I argued, and the modernist consensus would hold in key Third-World countries like Egypt, India and Turkey. Fifteen years later, I was given a chance in the pages of The New York Times Book Review to acknowledge that I had erred and that Huntington had been correct all along.

A gracious letter came to me from Nancy Arkelyan Huntington, his wife of 51 years (her Armenian descent an irony lost on those who dubbed him a defender of nativism). He was in ill-health, suffering the aftermath of a small stroke. They were spending the winter at their summer house on Martha's Vineyard. She had read him my essay as he lay in bed. He was pleased with it: "He will be writing you himself shortly." Of course, he did not write, and knowing of his frail state I did not expect him to do so. He had been a source of great wisdom, an exemplar, and it had been an honor to write of him, and to know him in the regrettably small way I did.

We don't have his likes in the academy today. Political science, the field he devoted his working life to, has been in the main commandeered by a new generation. They are "rational choice" people who work with models and numbers and write arid, impenetrable jargon.

More importantly, nowadays in the academy and beyond, the patriotism that marked Samuel Huntington's life and work is derided, and the American Creed he upheld is thought to be the ideology of rubes and simpletons, the affliction of people clinging to old ways. The Davos men have perhaps won. No wonder the sorrow and the concern that ran through the work of Huntington's final years.

Mr. Ajami is professor of Middle East Studies at The Johns Hopkins University, School of Advanced International Studies. He is also an adjunct research fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution.

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on December 30, 2008, 08:24:16 AM

Quote

Who is Lucianne?

She is the federal employee who Monica Lewinsky took her tale of presidential trysts to.

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 30, 2008, 08:31:26 AM

"She is the federal employee who Monica Lewinsky took her tale of presidential trysts to."

"She is the federal employee to whom Monica Lewinsky took her tale of presidential trysts." :wink:

I must be slow this morning , , , I am still not understanding. :oops:

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on December 30, 2008, 12:20:53 PM

I mispoke; Lewinsky talked to Linda Tripp, who confided in Goldberg. Per Wikipedia:

Clinton scandal

Goldberg met Linda Tripp in the early part of the Clinton administration while assisting an author writing a book on Vince Foster. Goldberg advised Tripp to record all her (Tripp's) conversations with Monica Lewinsky. [6] In New York, where Goldberg lived, such surreptitious recordings would not have been illegal, but they were illegal in Maryland, where Tripp lived. Goldberg also urged Tripp to take the tapes to Kenneth Starr and brought the tapes to the attention of people working on the Paula Jones case. [7] She started speaking to reporters about the tapes in the fall of 1997, notably to Michael Isikoff of Newsweek.[8]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucianne_Goldberg

Title: Washington:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 31, 2008, 07:55:57 AM

"The spirit of encroachment tends to consolidate the powers of all the departments in one, and thus to create whatever the form of government, a real despotism. A just estimate of that love of power, and proneness to abuse it, which predominates in the human heart is sufficient to satisfy us of the truth of this position."

--George Washington, Farewell Address, 1796

Title: B. Franklin
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 01, 2009, 03:56:21 AM

"Resolve to perform what you ought. Perform without fail what you resolve."

--Benjamin Franklin, Autobiography, 1771

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 01, 2009, 10:42:54 PM

By PETER BERKOWITZ
After their dismal performance in November, conservatives are taking stock. As they debate the causes that have driven them into the political wilderness and as they contemplate paths out, they should also take heart. After all, election 2008 shows that our constitutional order is working as designed.

The Constitution presupposes a responsive electorate, and respond the electorate did to the vivid memory of a spendthrift and feckless Republican Congress; to a stalwart but frequently ineffectual Republican president; and to a Republican presidential candidate who -- for all his mastery of foreign affairs, extensive Washington experience, and honorable public service -- proved incapable of crafting a coherent and compelling message.

Indeed, while sorting out their errors and considering their options, conservatives of all stripes would be well advised to concentrate their attention on the constitutional order and the principles that undergird it, because maintaining them should be their paramount political priority.

A constitutional conservatism puts liberty first and teaches the indispensableness of moderation in securing, preserving and extending its blessings. The constitution it seeks to conserve carefully defines government's proper responsibilities while providing it with the incentives and tools to perform them effectively; draws legitimacy from democratic consent while protecting individual rights from invasion by popular majorities; assumes the primacy of self-interest but also the capacity on occasion to rise above it through the exercise of virtue; reflects, and at the same time refines, popular will through a complex scheme of representation; and disperses and blends power among three distinct branches of government as well as among federal and state governments the better to check and balance it. The Constitution and the nation that has prospered under it for 220 years demonstrate that conserving and enlarging freedom and democracy depends on weaving together rival interests and competing goods.

Unfortunately, contrary to the Constitution's lesson in moderation, the two biggest blocs in the conservative coalition are tempted to conclude that what is needed now is greater purity in conservative ranks. Down that path lies disaster.

Some social conservatives point to the ballot initiatives this year in Arizona, California and Florida that rejected same-sex marriage as evidence that the country is and remains socially conservative, and that any deviation from the social conservative agenda is politically suicidal. They overlook that whereas in California's 2000 ballot initiative 61% of voters rejected same-sex marriage, in 2008 only 52% of voters in the nation's most populous state opposed the proposition. Indeed, most trend lines suggest that the public is steadily growing more accepting of same-sex marriage, with national polls indicating that opposition to it, also among conservatives, is weakest among young voters.

Meanwhile, more than a few libertarian-leaning conservatives are disgusted by Republican profligacy. They remain uncomfortable with or downright opposed to the Bush administration's support in 2004 for a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage, and its continuation of the Clinton administration's moratorium on government funding of embryonic stem-cell research.

In addition, many are still angry about the Republican-led intervention by the federal government in the 2005 controversy over whether Terri Schiavo's husband could lawfully remove the feeding tubes that were keeping his comatose wife alive. These libertarian conservatives entertain dreams of a coalition that jettisons social conservatives and joins forces with moderates and independents of libertarian persuasion.

But the purists in both camps ignore simple electoral math. Slice and dice citizens' opinions and voting patterns in the 50 states as you like, neither social conservatives nor libertarian conservatives can get to 50% plus one without the aid of the other.

Yet they, and the national security hawks who are also crucial to conservative electoral hopes, do not merely form a coalition of convenience. Theirs can and should be a coalition of principle, and a constitutional conservatism provides the surest ones.

The principles are familiar: individual freedom and individual responsibility, limited but energetic government, economic opportunity and strong national defense. They are embedded in the Constitution and flow out of the political ideas from which it was fashioned. They were central to Frank Meyer's celebrated fusion of traditionalist and libertarian conservatism in the 1960s. And they inspired Ronald Reagan's consolidation of conservatism in the 1980s.

Short-term clashes over priorities and policies are bound to persist. But championing these principles is the best means over the long term for conserving the political conditions hospitable to traditional morality, religious faith, and the communities that nourish them. And it is also the best means over the long term for conserving the political conditions that promote free markets, and the economic growth and expanded opportunity free markets bring.

Moreover, a constitutional conservatism provides a framework for developing a distinctive agenda for today's challenges to which social conservatives and libertarian conservatives can both, in good conscience, subscribe. Leading that agenda should be:

- An economic program, health-care reform, energy policy and protection for the environment grounded in market-based solutions.

- A foreign policy that recognizes America's vital national security interest in advancing liberty abroad but realistically calibrates undertakings to the nation's limited knowledge and restricted resources.

- A commitment to homeland security that is as passionate about security as it is about law, and which is prepared to responsibly fashion the inevitable, painful trade-offs.

- A focus on reducing the number of abortions and increasing the number of adoptions.

- Efforts to keep the question of same-sex marriage out of the federal courts and subject to consideration by each state's democratic process.

- Measures to combat illegal immigration that are emphatically pro-border security and pro-immigrant.

In Today's Opinion Journal

REVIEW & OUTLOOK

The Euro Decade and Its LessonsTreasury to Ford: Drop Dead

TODAY'S COLUMNISTS

Declarations: In With the New
– Peggy NoonanPotomac Watch: The Senate Goes Wobbly on Card Check
– Kimberley A. Strassel

COMMENTARY:

Conservatives Can Unite Around the Constitution
– Peter BerkowitzLet's Be Worthy of Their Sacrific
– Karl RoveLet's Write the Rating Agencies Out of Our Law
– Robert RosenkranzObama Promises Bush III on Iran
– John R. BoltonIsrael's Policy Is Perfectly 'Proportionate'
– Alan M. Dershowitz- A case for school choice as an option that enhances individual freedom while giving low-income, inner-city parents opportunities to place their children in classrooms where they can obtain a decent education.

- A demand that public universities abolish speech codes and vigorously protect liberty of thought and discussion on campus.

- The appointment of judges who understand that their function is to interpret the Constitution and not make policy, and, therefore, where the Constitution is most vague, recognize the strongest obligation to defer to the results of the democratic process.

If they honor the imperatives of a constitutional conservatism, both social conservatives and libertarian conservatives will have to bite their fair share of bullets as they translate these goals into concrete policy. They will, though, have a big advantage: Moderation is not only a conservative virtue, but the governing virtue of a constitutional conservatism.

Mr. Berkowitz is a senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution. An expanded version of this article is forthcoming in Policy Review.

Title: Hamilton
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 02, 2009, 08:52:45 AM

"A government ought to contain in itself every power requisite to the full accomplishment of the objects commmitted to its care, and to the complete execution of the trusts for which it is responsible, free from every other control but a regard to the public good and to the sense of the people."

--Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 31, 1 January 1788

Title: Jefferson
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 05, 2009, 09:12:27 AM

"But of all the views of this law none is more important, none more legitimate, than that of rendering the people the safe, as they are the ultimate, guardians of their own liberty. For this purpose the reading in the first stage, where they will receive their whole education, is proposed, as has been said, to be chiefly historical. History by apprising them of the past will enable them to judge of the future; it will avail them of the experience of other times and other nations; it will qualify them as judges of the actions and designs of men; it will enable them to know ambition under every disguise it may assume; and knowing it, to defeat its views."

--Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, Query 14, 1781

Title: Madison: Too many laws
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 06, 2009, 06:45:29 AM

"It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man who knows what the law is today can guess what it will be to-morrow."

--James Madison (likely), Federalist No. 62, 1788

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: David III on January 06, 2009, 08:12:24 AM

"...or so incoherent that they cannot be understood.." - this seems to be a very good definition of virtually any law. I can't guess what a particular law means today and no telling how it will be interpreted in the future. :?

Title: Jefferson
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 07, 2009, 07:34:55 AM

"I think we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious."

--Thomas Jefferson, letter to Thomas Cooper, 29 November 1802

Title: Hamilton
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 08, 2009, 08:12:40 AM

Title: John Adams
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 09, 2009, 07:36:11 AM

"Each individual of the society has a right to be protected by it in the enjoyment of his life, liberty, and property, according to standing laws. He is obliged, consequently, to contribute his share to the expense of this protection; and to give his personal service, or an equivalent, when necessary. But no part of the property of any individual can, with justice, be taken from him, or applied to public uses, without his own consent, or that of the representative body of the people. In fine, the people of this commonwealth are not controllable by any other laws than those to which their constitutional representative body have given their consent."

--John Adams, Thoughts on Government, 1776

Title: Hamilton; Madison; Reagan
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 12, 2009, 06:54:29 AM

"This process of election affords a moral certainty that the office of President will seldom fall to the lot of any man who is not in an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications."

--Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 68, 14 March 1788

"A universal peace, it is to be feared, is in the catalogue of events, which will never exist but in the imaginations of visionary philosophers, or in the breasts of benevolent enthusiasts." --James Madison

"Is there anyone that isn't concerned with the energy problem? Government caused that problem while we all stood by unaware that we were involved. Unnecessary regulations and prices imposed -- price limits -- back in the '50's are the direct cause of today's crisis. Our crisis isn't because of a shortage of fuel; it's a surplus of government. ...[W]hen they tell us about the conservation -- of course we should save. No one should waste a natural resource. But they act as if we've found all the oil and gas there is to be found in this continent, if not the world. Do you know that 57 years ago our government told us we only had enough for 15 years? And 19 years went by and they told us we only had enough left for 13 more years. Now, we've done a lot of driving since then and we'll do a lot more if government would do one simple thing: get out of the way and let the incentives of the marketplace urge the industry out to find the sources of energy this country needs." --Ronald Reagan

Title: Washington
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 13, 2009, 06:24:07 AM

"For myself the delay [in assuming the office of the President] may be compared with a reprieve; for in confidence I assure you, with the world it would obtain little credit that my movements to the chair of Government will be accompanied by feelings not unlike those of a culprit who is going to the place of his execution: so unwilling am I, in the evening of a life nearly consumed in public cares, to quit a peaceful abode for an Ocean of difficulties, without that competency of political skill, abilities and inclination which is necessary to manage the helm."

--George Washington, comment to General Henry Knox, March 1789

Title: Wilson; Jefferson;
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 14, 2009, 06:11:39 AM

"[The President] is the dignified, but accountable magistrate of a free and great people. The tenure of his office, it is true, is not hereditary; nor is it for life: but still it is a tenure of the noblest kind: by being the man of the people, he is invested; by continuing to be the man of the people, his investiture will be voluntarily, and cheerfully, and honourably renewed."

--James Wilson, Lectures on Law, 1791

"The same prudence which in private life would forbid our paying our own money for unexplained projects, forbids it in the dispensation of the public moneys." --Thomas Jefferson

Title: Washington; Story
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 15, 2009, 09:33:27 AM

G. Washington

We should never despair, our Situation before has been unpromising and has changed for the better, so I trust, it will again. If new difficulties arise, we must only put forth new Exertions and proportion our Efforts to the exigency of the times."

==========

"On the other hand, the duty imposed upon him to take care, that the laws be faithfully executed, follows out the strong injunctions of his oath of office, that he will 'preserve, protect, and defend the constitution.' The great object of the executive department is to accomplish this purpose; and without it, be the form of government whatever it may, it will be utterly worthless for offence, or defence; for the redress of grievances, or the protection of rights; for the happiness, or good order, or safety of the people."

--Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution, 1833

Title: Story
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 16, 2009, 06:36:31 AM

"No man can well doubt the propriety of placing a president of the United States under the most solemn obligations to preserve, protect, and defend the constitution. It is a suitable pledge of his fidelity and responsibility to his country; and creates upon his conscience a deep sense of duty, by an appeal, at once in the presence of God and man, to the most sacred and solemn sanctions, which can operate upon the human mind."

--Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution, 1833

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: DougMacG on January 16, 2009, 07:35:05 PM

Not a founding father, but one of my favorite quotes defending them:

JUDGE JOHN ROBERTS: I had someone ask me in this process, I don't remember who it was, but somebody asked me: are you going to be on the side of the little guy? You obviously want to give an immediate answer, but as you reflect on it, if the Constitution says that the little guy should win, the little guy is going to win in court before me. But if the Constitution says that the big guy should win, well, then the big guy is going to win, because my obligation is to the Constitution.

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 18, 2009, 06:52:45 PM

MLK's Letter from Jail:

http://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.html

Title: A Prayer unheard
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 19, 2009, 07:48:53 AM

"I Pray Heaven to Bestow The Best of Blessing on THIS HOUSE, and on ALL that shall hereafter Inhabit it. May none but Honest and Wise Men ever rule under This Roof!"

--John Adams, letter to his wife Abigail, 2 November 1800

Title: Reagan's inaugural address
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 19, 2009, 08:15:06 AM

"To a few of us here today this is a solemn and most momentous occasion, and yet in the history of our nation it is a commonplace occurrence. The orderly transfer of authority as called for in the Constitution routinely takes place, as it has for almost two centuries, and few of us stop to think how unique we really are. In the eyes of many in the world, this every-four-year ceremony we accept as normal is nothing less than a miracle. ... The business of our nation goes forward. These United States are confronted with an economic affliction of great proportions. ... It distorts our economic decisions, penalizes thrift, and crushes the struggling young and the fixed-income elderly alike. It threatens to shatter the lives of millions of our people. ... But great as our tax burden is, it has not kept pace with public spending. For decades we have piled deficit upon deficit, mortgaging our future and our children's future for the temporary convenience of the present. To continue this long trend is to guarantee tremendous social, cultural, political, and economic upheavals. You and I, as individuals, can, by borrowing, live beyond our means, but for only a limited period of time. Why, then, should we think that collectively, as a nation, we're not bound by that same limitation? ... In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem." --Ronald Reagan, first Inaugural Address (20 January 1981)

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 20, 2009, 07:04:41 AM

"There exists in the economy and course of nature, an indissoluble union between virtue and happiness; between duty and advantage; between the genuine maxims of an honest and magnanimous policy, and the solid rewards of public prosperity and felicity; since we ought to be no less persuaded that the propitious smiles of Heaven can never be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and right, which Heaven itself has ordained."

--George Washington, First Inaugural Address, 1789

Title: Paine
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 21, 2009, 08:14:25 AM

I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection. 'Tis the business of little minds to shrink; but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles unto death." --Thomas Paine

Title: Declaration of Independence
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 22, 2009, 10:08:51 AM

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

--Declaration of Independence

Title: Franklin
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 23, 2009, 07:46:21 AM

Title: Lincoln:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 25, 2009, 04:39:59 PM

As he swore in on Lincoln's bible (if I heard this correctly) I wonder what BO made of this:

I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races, [applause]-that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality.

http://www.classic-literature.co.uk/...am-lincoln-04/

Title: J. Adams on judges
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 26, 2009, 05:27:46 AM

"[J]udges, therefore, should be always men of learning and experience in the laws, of exemplary morals, great patience, calmness, coolness, and attention. Their minds should not be distracted with jarring interests; they should not be dependent upon any man, or body of men."

--John Adams, Thoughts on Government, 1776

Title: Madison; Reagan
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 26, 2009, 09:49:27 AM

"I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on the objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents." --James Madison

"We who live in free market societies believe that growth, prosperity and ultimately human fulfillment, are created from the bottom up, not the government down. Only when the human spirit is allowed to invent and create, only when individuals are given a personal stake in deciding economic policies and benefitting from their success -- only then can societies remain economically alive, dynamic, progressive, and free." --Ronald Reagan

Title: Jefferson: limits on judicial power
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 27, 2009, 08:46:24 AM

"[T]he opinion which gives to the judges the right to decide what laws are constitutional and what not, not only for themselves, in their, own sphere of action, but for the Legislature and Executive also in their spheres, would make the Judiciary a despotic branch."

--Thomas Jefferson, letter to Abigail Adams, 11 September 1804

Title: Paine; Parsons
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 28, 2009, 09:21:27 AM

"Beware the greedy hand of government, thrusting itself into every corner and crevice of industry." --Thomas Paine

"We have duties, for the discharge of which we are accountable to our Creator and benefactor, which no human power can cancel. What those duties are, is determinable by right reason, which may be, and is called, a well informed conscience."

--Theophilus Parsons, the Essex Result, 1778

Title: Washington; Lincoln
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 29, 2009, 10:22:50 AM

If we desire to secure peace, one of the most powerful instruments of our rising prosperity, it must be known that we are at all times ready for war. -- George Washington

‘‘We, the People are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts — not to overthrow the Constitution, but to overthrow men who pervert the Constitution.’’
— Abraham Lincoln

Title: Washington; Lincoln
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 30, 2009, 06:36:16 AM

"The Citizens of America, placed in the most enviable condition, as the sole Lords and Proprietors of a vast Tract of Continent, comprehending all the various soils and climates of the World, and abounding with all the necessaries and conveniencies of life, are now by the late satisfactory pacification, acknowledged to be possessed of absolute freedom and Independency; They are, from this period, to be considered as the Actors on a most conspicuous Theatre, which seems to be peculiarly designated by Providence for the display of human greatness and felicity; Here, they are not only surrounded with every thing which can contribute to the completion of private and domestic enjoyment, but Heaven has crowned all its other blessings, by giving a fairer opportunity for political happiness, than any other Nation has ever been favored with. Nothing can illustrate these observations more forcibly, than a recollection of the happy conjuncture of times and circumstances, under which our Republic assumed its rank among the Nations."

--George Washington, Circular to the States, 8 June 1783
==========

--
"If you gave me 6 hours to cut down a tree, I would spend the first four hours sharpening the ax." -- Abraham Lincoln

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 30, 2009, 04:10:22 PM

Newt Gingrich does movie about President Ronald Reagan

http://www.gingrichproductions.com/

Title: Jefferson; Abraham Williams
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 02, 2009, 11:17:40 AM

Title: Jefferson: Perpetual Debt
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 03, 2009, 09:55:46 AM

"We must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt."

--Thomas Jefferson, letter to Samuel Kercheval, 12 July 1816

Title: Hamilton
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 04, 2009, 06:49:04 AM

"The fabric of American empire ought to rest on the solid basis of THE CONSENT OF THE PEOPLE. The streams of national power ought to flow from that pure, original fountain of all legitimate authority."

--Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 22, 14 December 1787

Title: Franklin:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 05, 2009, 05:58:14 AM

"Wish not so much to live long as to live well."

--Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard's Almanack, 1746

Title: Franklin
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 06, 2009, 05:48:32 AM

"Strive to be the greatest man in your country, and you may be disappointed. Strive to be the best and you may succeed: he may well win the race that runs by himself."

--Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard's Almanack, 1746

Title: John Jay
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 10, 2009, 07:30:09 AM

"This country and this people seem to have been made for each other, and it appears as if it was the design of Providence that an inheritance so proper and convenient for a ban of brethren, united to each other by the strongest of ties, should never be split into a number of unsocial, jealous, and alien sovereignties."

--John Jay, Federalist No. 2

Title: Washington; Madison; Adams; Jefferson; S. Adams
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 11, 2009, 10:45:06 AM

"Labor to keep alive in your breast that little spark of celestial fire called conscience."

--George Washington, The Rules of Civility, Circa 1748

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"If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the General Welfare, the Government is no longer a limited one, possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one...." --James Madison

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Fear is the foundation of most governments; but it is so sordid and brutal a passion, and renders men in whose breasts it predominates so stupid and miserable, that Americans will not be likely to approve of any political institution which is founded on it." --John Adams
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"It is of great importance to set a resolution, not to be shaken, never to tell an untruth. There is no vice so mean, so pitiful, so contemptible; and he who permits himself to tell a lie once, finds it much easier to do it a second and a third time, till at length it becomes habitual; he tells lies without attending to it, and truths without the world's believing him. This falsehood of the tongue leads to that of the heart, and in time depraves all its good disposition."

--Thomas Jefferson, letter to Peter Carr, 19 August 1785
===============================================

"I hope our country will never see the time, when either riches or the want of them will be the leading consideration in the choice of public officers."
Samuel Adams, Jan 2, 1776

"No People will tamely surrender their liberties, nor can any be easily subdued, when knowledge is diffused and virtue is preserved. On the contrary, when people are universally ignorant and debauched in their manners, they will sink under their own weight without the aid of foreign invaders."
Samuel Adams, 1775

"I have long been convinced that our enemies have made it an object, to eradicate from the minds of the People in general a sense of true religion and virtue, in hopes thereby the more easily to carry their point of enslaving them. Indeed my friend, this is a subject so important in my mind, that I know not how to leave it. Revelation assures us that righteousness exalts a Nation; communities are dealt with in this world by the wise and just ruler of the universe. He rewards or punishes them according to their general character. The diminution of public liberty will not long survive the total extinction of morals."
Samuel Adams, April 30, 1776

Title: Jefferson: The tree of Liberty
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 12, 2009, 09:40:41 AM

"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure."

--Thomas Jefferson, letter to William Stephens Smith, 13 November 1787

Title: T. Paine; Washington; Jefferson:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 13, 2009, 09:49:01 AM

"This new world hath been the asylum for the persecuted lovers of civil and religious liberty from every part of Europe. Hither have they fled, not from the tender embraces of the mother, but from the cruelty of the monster; and it is so far true of England, that the same tyranny which drove the first emigrants from home, pursues their descendants still."

--Thomas Paine, Common Sense, 1776

=======================
"A people ... who are possessed of the spirit of commerce, who see and who will pursue their advantages may achieve almost anything." --George Washington
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"If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this Union or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it." --Thomas Jefferson

PATRIOT PERSPECTIVE
Lincoln's legacy at 200
By Mark Alexander

February 12 marked the 200th anniversary of the birth of Abraham Lincoln.

During his inauguration, Barack Hussein Obama insisted on using Lincoln's Bible as he took his oath of office. Those who know their history might understand why Obama then proceeded to choke on that oath.

Obama, the nation's first half-African American president, was playing on Lincoln's status as "The Great Emancipator," though Obama himself is certainly not the descendant of slaves. His ancestors may well have been slaveholders, though -- and I am not talking about his maternal line. Tens of millions of Africans have been enslaved by other Africans in centuries past. Even though Chattel (house and field) and Pawnship (debt and ransom) slavery was legally abolished in most African nations by the 1930s, millions of African men, women and children remain enslaved today, at least those who escape the slaughter of tribal rivalry.

Not to be outdone by the Obama inaugural, Republican organizations are issuing accolades in honor of their party's patriarch, on this template: "The (name of state) Republican Party salutes and honors Abraham Lincoln on the celebration of his 200th birthday. An extraordinary leader in extraordinary times, Abraham Lincoln's greatness was rooted in his principled leadership and defense of the Constitution."

Really?

If the Republican Party would spend more energy linking its birthright to our Constitution rather than Lincoln, it might still enjoy the popular support it had under Ronald Reagan.

Though Lincoln has already been canonized by those who settle for partial histories, in the words of John Adams, "Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclination, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence."

In our steadfast adherence to The Patriot Post's motto, Veritas Vos Liberabit ("the truth shall set you free"), and our mission to advocate for the restoration of constitutional limits on government, I am compelled to challenge our 16th president's iconic standing.

Lincoln is credited with being the greatest constitutional leader in history, having "preserved the Union," but his popular persona does not reconcile with the historical record. The constitutional federalism envisioned by our Founders and outlined by our Constitution's Bill of Rights was grossly violated by Abraham Lincoln. Arguably, he is responsible for the most grievous constitutional contravention in American history.

Needless to say, when one dares tread upon the record of such a divine figure as Lincoln, one risks all manner of ridicule, even hostility. That notwithstanding, we as Patriots should be willing to look at Lincoln's whole record, even though it may not please our sentiments or comport with the common folklore of most history books. Of course, challenging Lincoln's record is NOT tantamount to suggesting that he believed slavery was anything but an evil, abominable practice. Nor does this challenge suggest that Lincoln himself was not in possession of admirable qualities. It merely suggests, contrary to the popular record, that Lincoln was far from perfect.

It is fitting, then, in this week when the nation recognizes the anniversary of his birth, that we answer this question -- albeit at great peril to the sensibilities of some of our friends and colleagues.

Liberator of the oppressed...

The first of Lincoln's two most oft-noted achievements was ending the abomination of slavery. There is little doubt that Lincoln abhorred slavery, but likewise little doubt that he held racist views toward blacks. His own words undermine his hallowed status as the Great Emancipator.

For example, in his fourth debate with Stephen Douglas, Lincoln argued: "I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races -- that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race."

Lincoln declared, "What I would most desire would be the separation of the white and black races..."

In 1860, Lincoln racial views were explicit in these words: "They say that between the nigger and the crocodile they go for the nigger. The proportion, therefore, is, that as the crocodile to the nigger so is the nigger to the white man."

As for delivering slaves from bondage, it was two years after the commencement of hostilities that Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation -- to protests from free laborers in the North, who didn't want emancipated slaves migrating north and competing for their jobs. He did so only as a means to an end, victory in the bloody War Between the States -- "to do more to help the cause."

"My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery," said Lincoln in regard to the Proclamation. "If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union."

In truth, not a single slave was emancipated by the stroke of Lincoln's pen. The Proclamation freed only "slaves within any State ... the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States." In other words, Lincoln declared slaves were "free" in Confederate states, where his proclamation had no power, but excluded slaves in states that were not in rebellion, or areas controlled by the Union army. Slaves in Kentucky, Missouri, Delaware and Maryland were left in bondage.

His own secretary of state, William Seward, lamented, "We show our sympathy with slavery by emancipating slaves where we cannot reach them and holding them in bondage where we can set them free."

The great abolitionist Frederick Douglass was so angry with Lincoln for delaying the liberation of some slaves that he scarcely contacted him before 1863, noting that Lincoln was loyal only "to the welfare of the white race..." Ten years after Lincoln's death, Douglass wrote that Lincoln was "preeminently the white man's President" and American blacks were "at best only his step-children."

With his Proclamation, Lincoln succeeded in politicizing the issue and short-circuiting the moral solution to slavery, thus leaving the scourge of racial inequality to fester to this day -- in every state of the Union.

Many historians argue that Southern states would likely have reunited with Northern states before the end of the 19th century had Lincoln allowed for a peaceful and constitutionally accorded secession. Slavery would have been supplanted by moral imperative and technological advances in cotton production. Furthermore, under this reunification model, the constitutional order of the republic would have remained largely intact.

In fact, while the so-called "Civil War" (which by definition, the Union attack on the South was not) eradicated slavery, it also short-circuited the moral imperative regarding racism, leaving the nation with racial tensions that persist today. Ironically, there is now more evidence of ethnic tension in Boston than in Birmingham, in Los Angeles than in Atlanta, and in Chicago than in Charleston.

Preserve the Union...

Of course, the second of Lincoln's most famous achievements was the preservation of the Union.

Despite common folklore, northern aggression was not predicated upon freeing slaves, but, according to Lincoln, "preserving the Union." In his First Inaugural Address Lincoln declared, "I hold that in contemplation of universal law and of the Constitution the Union of these States is perpetual. Perpetuity is implied, if not expressed, in the fundamental law of all national governments."

"Implied, if not expressed"?

This is the first colossal example of errant constitutional interpretation, the advent of the so-called "Living Constitution."

Lincoln also threatened the use of force to maintain the Union when he said, "In [preserving the Union] there needs to be no bloodshed or violence ... unless it be forced upon the national authority."

On the other hand, according to the Confederacy, the War Between the States had as its sole objective the preservation of the constitutional sovereignty of the several states.

The Founding Fathers established the constitutional Union as a voluntary agreement among the several states, subordinate to the Declaration of Independence, which never mentions the nation as a singular entity, but instead repeatedly references the states as sovereign bodies, unanimously asserting their independence. To that end, our Constitution's author, James Madison, in an 1825 letter to our Declaration of Independence's author, Thomas Jefferson, asserted, "On the distinctive principles of the Government ... of the U. States, the best guides are to be found in ... The Declaration of Independence, as the fundamental Act of Union of these States."

The states, in ratifying the Constitution, established the federal government as their agent -- not the other way around. At Virginia's ratification convention, for example, the delegates affirmed "that the powers granted under the Constitution being derived from the People of the United States may be resumed by them whensoever the same shall be perverted to injury or oppression." Were this not true, the federal government would not have been established as federal, but instead a national, unitary and unlimited authority. In large measure as a consequence of the War Between the States, the "federal" government has grown to become an all-but unitary and unlimited authority.

Our Founders upheld the individual sovereignty of the states, even though the wisdom of secessionist movements was a source of debate from the day the Constitution was ratified. Tellingly, Alexander Hamilton, the utmost proponent of centralization among the Founders, noted in Federalist No. 81 that waging war against the states "would be altogether forced and unwarrantable." At the Constitutional Convention, Hamilton argued, "Can any reasonable man be well disposed toward a government which makes war and carnage the only means of supporting itself?"

To provide some context, three decades before the occupation of Fort Sumter, former secretary of war and then South Carolina Senator John C. Calhoun argued, "Stripped of all its covering, the naked question is, whether ours is a federal or consolidated government; a constitutional or absolute one; a government resting solidly on the basis of the sovereignty of the states, or on the unrestrained will of a majority; a form of government, as in all other unlimited ones, in which injustice, violence, and force must ultimately prevail."

Two decades before the commencement of hostilities between the states, John Quincy Adams wrote, "If the day should ever come (may Heaven avert it!) when the affections of the people of these States shall be alienated from each other ... far better will it be for the people of the disunited States to part in friendship with each other than to be held together by constraint. Then will be the time for reverting to the precedents which occurred at the formation and adoption of the Constitution, to form again a more perfect Union. ... I hold that it is no perjury, that it is no high-treason, but the exercise of a sacred right to offer such a petition."

But the causal case for states' rights is most aptly demonstrated by the words and actions of Gen. Robert E. Lee, who detested slavery and opposed secession. In 1860, however, Gen. Lee declined Lincoln's request that he take command of the Army of the Potomac, saying that his first allegiance was to his home state of Virginia: "I have, therefore, resigned my commission in the army, and save in defense of my native state ... I hope I may never be called on to draw my sword." He would, soon thereafter, take command of the Army of Northern Virginia, rallying his officers with these words: "Let each man resolve to be victorious, and that the right of self-government, liberty and peace shall find him a defender."

In his Gettysburg Address, Lincoln employed lofty rhetoric to conceal the truth of our nation's most costly war -- a war that resulted in the deaths of some 600,000 Americans and the severe disabling of more than 400,000 others. He claimed to be fighting so that "this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth." In fact, Lincoln was ensuring just the opposite by waging an appallingly bloody war while ignoring calls for negotiated peace. It was the "rebels" who were intent on self-government, and it was Lincoln who rejected their right to that end, despite our Founders' clear admonition to the contrary in the Declaration.

Moreover, had Lincoln's actions been subjected to the terms of the Fourth Geneva Convention (the first being codified in 1864), he and his principal military commanders, with Gen. William T. Sherman heading the list, would have been tried for war crimes. This included waging "total war" against not just combatants, but the entire civilian population. It is estimated that Sherman's march to the sea was responsible for the rape and murder of tens of thousands of civilians.

Further solidifying their wartime legacy, Sherman, Gen. Philip Sheridan, and young Brigadier General George Armstrong Custer (whose division blocked Gen. Lee's retreat from Appomattox), spent the next ten years waging unprecedented racial genocide against the Plains Indians.)

Lincoln's war may have preserved the Union geographically (at great cost to the Constitution), but politically and philosophically, the constitutional foundation for a voluntary union was shredded by sword, rifle and cannon.

"Reconstruction" followed the war, and with it an additional period of Southern probation, plunder and misery, leading Robert E. Lee to conclude, "If I had foreseen the use those people designed to make of their victory, there would have been no surrender at Appomattox Courthouse; no sir, not by me. Had I foreseen these results of subjugation, I would have preferred to die at Appomattox with my brave men, my sword in my right hand."

Little reported and lightly regarded in our history books is the way Lincoln abused and discarded the individual rights of Northern citizens. Tens of thousands of citizens were imprisoned (most without trial) for political opposition, or "treason," and their property confiscated. Habeas corpus and, in effect, the entire Bill of Rights was suspended. Newspapers were shut down and legislators detained so they could not offer any vote unfavorable to Lincoln's conquest.

In fact, the Declaration of Independence details remarkably similar abuses by King George to those committed by Lincoln: the "Military [became] independent of and superior to the Civil power"; he imposed taxes without consent; citizens were deprived "in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury"; state legislatures were suspended in order to prevent more secessions; he "plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people ... scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation."

The final analysis...

Chief among the spoils of victory is the privilege of writing the history.

Lincoln said, "Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing."

Lincoln's enduring reputation is the result of his martyrdom. He was murdered on Good Friday and the metaphorical comparisons between Lincoln and Jesus were numerous.

Typical is this observation three days after his death by Parke Godwin, editor of the New York Evening Post: "No loss has been comparable to his. Never in human history has there been so universal, so spontaneous, so profound an expression of a nation's bereavement. [He was] our supremest leader -- our safest counselor -- our wisest friend -- our dear father."

A more thorough and dispassionate reading of history, however, reveals a substantial expanse between his reputation and his character.

"America will never be destroyed from the outside," Lincoln declared. "If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves." Never were truer words spoken.

While the War Between the States concluded in 1865, the battle for states' rights -- the struggle to restore constitutional federalism -- remains spirited, particularly among the ranks of our Patriot readers.

In his inaugural speech, Barack Obama quoted Lincoln: "We are not enemies, but friends.... Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection."

Let us hope that he pays more heed to those words than did Lincoln.

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 16, 2009, 02:48:41 PM

Independence Forever: The 225th Anniversary of the Fourth of July
by Matthew Spalding, Ph.D.
Backgrounder #1451

June 19, 2001 | |

This Fourth of July marks the 225th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. This occasion is a great opportunity to renew our dedication to the principles of liberty and equality enshrined in what Thomas Jefferson called "the declaratory charter of our rights."

As a practical matter, the Declaration of Independence publicly announced to the world the unanimous decision of the American colonies to declare themselves free and independent states, absolved from any allegiance to Great Britain. But its greater meaning--then as well as now--is as a statement of the conditions of legitimate political authority and the proper ends of government, and its proclamation of a new ground of political rule in the sovereignty of the people. "If the American Revolution had produced nothing but the Declaration of Independence," wrote the great historian Samuel Eliot Morrison, "it would have been worthwhile."

Although Congress had appointed a distinguished committee--including John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, and Robert Livingston--the Declaration of Independence is chiefly the work of Thomas Jefferson. By his own account, Jefferson was neither aiming at originality nor taking from any particular writings but was expressing the "harmonizing sentiments of the day," as expressed in conversation, letters, essays, or "the elementary books of public right, as Aristotle, Cicero, Locke, Sidney, etc." Jefferson intended the Declaration to be "an expression of the American mind," and wrote so as to "place before mankind the common sense of the subject, in terms so plain and firm as to command their assent."

The structure of the Declaration of Independence is that of a common law legal document. The ringing phrases of the document's famous second paragraph are a powerful synthesis of American constitutional and republican government theories. All men have a right to liberty only in so far as they are by nature equal, which is to say none are naturally superior, and deserve to rule, or inferior, and deserve to be ruled. Because men are endowed with these rights, the rights are unalienable, which means that they cannot be given up or taken away. And because individuals equally possess these rights, governments derive their just powers from the consent of those governed. The purpose of government is to secure these fundamental rights and, although prudence tells us that governments should not be changed for trivial reasons, the people retain the right to alter or abolish government when it becomes destructive of these ends.

The remainder of the document is a bill of indictment accusing King George III of some 30 offenses, some constitutional, some legal, and some matters of policy. The combined charges against the king were intended to demonstrate a history of repeated injuries, all having the object of establishing "an absolute tyranny" over America. Although the colonists were "disposed to suffer, while Evils are sufferable," the time had come to end the relationship: "But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government."

One charge that Jefferson had included, but Congress removed, was that the king had "waged cruel war against human nature" by introducing slavery and allowing the slave trade into the American colonies. A few delegates were unwilling to acknowledge that slavery violated the "most sacred rights of life and liberty," and the passage was dropped for the sake of unanimity. Thus was foreshadowed the central debate of the American Civil War, which Abraham Lincoln saw as a test to determine whether a nation "conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal" could long endure.

The Declaration of Independence and the liberties recognized in it are grounded in a higher law to which all human laws are answerable. This higher law can be understood to derive from reason--the truths of the Declaration are held to be "self-evident"--but also revelation. There are four references to God in the document: to "the laws of nature and nature's God"; to all men being "endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights"; to "the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions"; and to "the protection of Divine Providence." The first term suggests a deity that is knowable by human reason, but the others--God as creator, as judge, and as providence--are more biblical, and add a theological context to the document. "And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are a gift of God?" Jefferson asked in his Notes on the State of Virginia.

The true significance of the Declaration lies in its trans-historical meaning. Its appeal was not to any conventional law or political contract but to the equal rights possessed by all men and "the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and nature's God" entitled them. What is revolutionary about the Declaration of Independence is not that a particular group of Americans declared their independence under particular circumstances but that they did so by appealing to--and promising to base their particular government on--a universal standard of justice. It is in this sense that Abraham Lincoln praised "the man who, in the concrete pressure of a struggle for national independence by a single people, had the coolness, forecast, and capacity to introduce into a merely revolutionary document, an abstract truth, applicable to all men and all times."

The ringing phrases of the Declaration of Independence speak to all those who strive for liberty and seek to vindicate the principles of self-government. But it was an aged John Adams who, when he was asked to prepare a statement on the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, delivered two words that still convey our great hope every Fourth of July: "Independence Forever."

Matthew Spalding, Ph.D.,is Director of the B. Kenneth Simon Center for American Studies at The Heritage Foundation.

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QUOTATIONS ON THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE
I am well aware of the toil, and blood, and treasure, that it will cost us to maintain this declaration, and support and defend these states. Yet, through all the gloom, I can see the rays of light and glory; I can see that the end is more than worth all the means, and that posterity will triumph.

John Adams, letter to Abigail Adams, July 3, 1776

There! His Majesty can now read my name without glasses. And he can double the reward on my head!

John Hancock (attributed), upon signing the Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776

We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately.

Benjamin Franklin (attributed), at the signing of the
Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776

The flames kindled on the 4th of July 1776, have spread over too much of the globe to be extinguished by the feeble engines of despotism; on the contrary, they will consume these engines and all who work them.

Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Adams, September 12, 1821

With respect to our rights, and the acts of the British government contravening those rights, there was but one opinion on this side of the water. All American whigs thought alike on these subjects. When forced, therefore, to resort to arms for redress, an appeal to the tribunal of the world was deemed proper for our justification. This was the object of the Declaration of Independence. Not to find out new principles, or new arguments, never before thought of, not merely to say things which had never been said before; but to place before mankind the common sense of the subject, in terms so plain and firm as to command their assent, and to justify ourselves in the independent stand we are compelled to take. Neither aiming at originality of principle or sentiment, nor yet copied from any particular and previous writing, it was intended to be an expression of the American mind, and to give to that expression the proper tone and spirit called for by the occasion. All its authority rests then on the harmonizing sentiments of the day, whether expressed in conversation, in letters, printed essays, or in the elementary books of public right, as Aristotle, Cicero, Locke, Sidney, &c.

Thomas Jefferson, letter to Henry Lee, May 8, 1825

Independence Forever.

John Adams, toast for the 50th Anniversary of the
Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1826

I have said that the Declaration of Independence is the ring-bolt to the chain of your nation's destiny; so, indeed, I regard it. The principles contained in that instrument are saving principles. Stand by those principles, be true to them on all occasions, in all places, against all foes, and at whatever cost.

Frederick Douglass, "What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?" July 5, 1852

The assertion that "all men are created equal" was of no practical use in effecting our separation from Great Britain; and it was placed in the Declaration, not for that, but for future use. Its authors meant it to be, thank God, it is now proving itself, a stumbling block to those who in after times might seek to turn a free people back into the hateful paths of despotism. They knew the proneness of prosperity to breed tyrants, and they meant when such should re-appear in this fair land and commence their vocation they should find left for them at least one hard nut to crack.

Abraham Lincoln, speech on the Dred Scott Decision, June 26, 1857

We have besides these men--descended by blood from our ancestors--among us perhaps half our people who are not descendants at all of these men, they are men who have come from Europe--German, Irish, French and Scandinavian--men that have come from Europe themselves, or whose ancestors have come hither and settled here, finding themselves our equals in all things. If they look back through this history to trace their connection with those days by blood, they find they have none, they cannot carry themselves back into that glorious epoch and make themselves feel that they are part of us, but when they look through that old Declaration of Independence they find that those old men say that "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal," and then they feel that that moral sentiment taught in that day evidences their relation to those men, that it is the father of all moral principle in them, and that they have a right to claim it as though they were blood of the blood, and flesh of the flesh of the men who wrote that Declaration, and so they are. That is the electric cord in that Declaration that links the hearts of patriotic and liberty-loving men together, that will link those patriotic hearts as long as the love of freedom exists in the minds of men throughout the world.

Abraham Lincoln, speech at Chicago, Illinois, July 10, 1858

We live in an age of science and of abounding accumulation of material things. These did not create our Declaration. Our Declaration created them. The things of the spirit come first. Unless we cling to that, all our material prosperity, overwhelming though it may appear, will turn to a barren sceptre in our grasp. If we are to maintain the great heritage which has been bequeathed to us, we must be like-minded as the fathers who created it. We must not sink into a pagan materialism. We must cultivate the reverence which they had for the things that are holy. We must follow the spiritual and moral leadership which they showed. We must keep replenished, that they may glow with a more compelling flame, the altar fires before which they worshiped.

Calvin Coolidge, speech on the 150th Anniversary of the
Declaration of Independence, July 5, 1926

Today, 186 years later, that Declaration whose yellowing parchment and fading, almost illegible lines I saw in the past week in the National Archives in Washington is still a revolutionary document. To read it today is to hear a trumpet call. For that Declaration unleashed not merely a revolution against the British, but a revolution in human affairs. . . . The theory of independence is as old as man himself, and it was not invented in this hall. But it was in this hall that the theory became a practice; that the word went out to all, in Thomas Jefferson's phrase, that "the God who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time." And today this Nation--conceived in revolution, nurtured in liberty, maturing in independence--has no intention of abdicating its leadership in that worldwide movement for independence to any nation or society committed to systematic human oppression.

John F. Kennedy, address at Independence Hall, July 4, 1962

When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men would be guaranteed the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. . . . I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal."

Martin Luther King, "I Have A Dream," August 28, 1963

Our Declaration of Independence has been copied by emerging nations around the globe, its themes adopted in places many of us have never heard of. Here is this land, for the first time, it was decided that man is born with certain God-given rights. We the people declared that government is created by the people for their own convenience. Government has no power except those voluntarily granted it by the people. There have been revolutions before and since ours, revolutions that simply exchanged one set of rulers for another. Ours was a philosophical revolution that changed the very concept of government.

Ronald Reagan, address at Yorktown, October 19, 1981

Title: Jefferson
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 17, 2009, 06:45:48 AM

Title: Sundry
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 19, 2009, 06:48:41 AM

"Laws that forbid the carrying of arms ... disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes... Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man."

--Cesare Beccaria, On Crimes and Punishment, quoted by Thomas Jefferson in Commonplace Book, 1774-1776

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"Determine never to be idle. No person will have occasion to complain of the want of time, who never loses any. It is wonderful how much may be done, if we are always doing. And that you may be always doing good, my dear, is the ardent prayer of yours affectionately."

--Thomas Jefferson, letter to Martha Jefferson, 5 May 1787
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"We must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt."

--Thomas Jefferson, letter to Samuel Kercheval, 12 July 1816

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"If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the General Welfare, the Government is no longer a limited one, possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one...." --James Madison

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"For many years now, you and I have been shushed like children and told there are no simple answers to the complex problems which are beyond our comprehension. Well, the truth is, there are simple answers -- they just are not easy ones. The time has come for us to decide whether collectively we can afford everything and anything we think of simply because we think of it. The time has come to run a check to see if all the services government provides were in answer to demands or were just goodies dreamed up for our supposed betterment. The time has come to match outgo to income, instead of always doing it the other way around." --Ronald Reagan

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"Fear is the foundation of most governments; but it is so sordid and brutal a passion, and renders men in whose breasts it predominates so stupid and miserable, that Americans will not be likely to approve of any political institution which is founded on it." --John Adams

===========

"First in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen, he was second to none in humble and enduring scenes of private life. Pious, just humane, temperate, and sincere; uniform dignified, and commanding; his example was as edifying to all around him as were the effects of that example lasting.... The purity of his private charter gave effulgence to his public virtues...."

--John Marshall, official eulogy of George Washington, delivered by Richard Henry Lee, 26 December 1799
========
"His integrity was most pure, his justice the most inflexible I have ever known, no motives of interest or consanguinity, of friendship or hatred, being able to bias his decision. He was indeed, in every sense of the words, a wise, a good, and a great man." --Thomas Jefferson about George Washington
==========

WASHINGTON'S BIRTHDAY
In some circles, today is observed as "Presidents' Day," jointly recognizing Presidents George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, but it is still officially recognized as the anniversary of "Washington's Birthday" -- and that is how we mark the date in our shop. (Washington's actual birthday is 22 February.)

As friend of The Patriot, Matthew Spaulding, a Heritage Foundation scholar, reminds: "Although it was celebrated as early as 1778, and by the early 19th Century was second only to the Fourth of July as a patriotic holiday, Congress did not officially recognize Washington's Birthday as a national holiday until 1870. The Monday Holiday Law in 1968 -- applied to executive branch departments and agencies by Richard Nixon's Executive Order 11582 in 1971 -- moved the holiday from February 22 to the third Monday in February. Section 6103 of Title 5, United States Code, currently designates that legal federal holiday as 'Washington's Birthday.' Contrary to popular opinion, no action by Congress or order by any President has changed 'Washington's Birthday' to 'Presidents' Day'."

In honor of and due respect for our first and (we believe) greatest president, arguably, our history's most outstanding Patriot, we include two quotes from George Washington which best embody his dedication to liberty and God. The first from his First Inaugural Address, 30 April 1789, and the second from his Farewell Address, 19 September 1796.

"The preservation of the sacred fire of liberty, and the destiny of the republican model of government, are justly considered as deeply, perhaps as finally, staked on the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American People."

"Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, Religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of Patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great Pillars of human happiness -- these firmest props of the duties of Men and citizens."
============

"The principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale." --Thomas Jefferson

===========

Title: Washington; Reagan
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 20, 2009, 10:15:05 AM

"A people ... who are possessed of the spirit of commerce, who see and who will pursue their advantages, may achieve almost anything." --George Washington

"The fact is, we'll never build a lasting economic recovery by going deeper into debt at a faster rate than we ever have before." --Ronald Reagan

Title: Richard Henry Lee: An armed people
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 21, 2009, 05:43:04 AM

"[W]hereas, to preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms, and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them; nor does it follow from this, that all promiscuously must go into actual service on every occasion. The mind that aims at a select militia, must be influenced by a truly anti-republican principle; and when we see many men disposed to practice upon it, whenever they can prevail, no wonder true republicans are for carefully guarding against it."

--Richard Henry Lee, Letters from the Federal Farmer, 1788

Title: Select Militia
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on February 21, 2009, 08:06:51 AM

The concept of a "select militia" is one many framers were quite averse to, yet is an issue few are acquainted with today. A select militia is one appointed by a power that be, which Richard Henry Lee and many others saw as a step toward tyranny. Rather, many framers, Anti-Federalists such as Lee in particular, were very much in favor of militias composed by the "whole of the people."

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 23, 2009, 06:37:55 AM

"[W]hen the resolution of enslaving America was formed in Great Britain, the British Parliament was advised by an artful man, - who was governor of Pennsylvania, to disarm the people; that it was the best and most effectual way to enslave them; but that they should not do it openly, but weaken them, and let them sink gradually, by totally disusing and neglecting the militia."

--George Mason, speech in the Virginia Ratifying Convention, 14 June 1778

Title: Webster
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 25, 2009, 10:45:58 AM

Title: J. Adams: arms in the hands of citizens
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 26, 2009, 06:38:53 AM

"To suppose arms in the hands of citizens, to be used at individual discretion, except in private self-defense, or by partial orders of towns, counties or districts of a state, is to demolish every constitution, and lay the laws prostrate, so that liberty can be enjoyed by no man; it is a dissolution of the government. The fundamental law of the militia is, that it be created, directed and commanded by the laws, and ever for the support of the laws."

--John Adams, A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America, 1787-1788

Title: a citizen; J. Adams
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 27, 2009, 07:28:19 AM

"Who are the militia? Are they not ourselves? It is feared, then, that we shall turn our arms each man against his own bosom. Congress have no power to disarm the militia. Their swords, and every other terrible implement of the soldier, are the birthright of an American. ...[T]he unlimited power of the sword is not in the hands of either the federal or state governments, but, where I trust in God it will ever remain, in the hands of the people."

--A Pennsylvanian, The Pennsylvania Gazette, 20 February 1788

"Liberty must at all hazards be supported. We have a right to it, derived from our Maker. But if we had not, our fathers have earned and bought it for us, at the expense of their ease, their estates, their pleasure, and their blood." --John Adams

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Freki on February 27, 2009, 01:50:39 PM

"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
Thomas Jefferson, letter to Chas. Yancey, 1816

Title: Hamilton; Jefferson
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 02, 2009, 11:02:15 AM

"The prosperity of commerce is now perceived and acknowledged by all enlightened statesmen to be the most useful as well as the most productive source of national wealth, and has accordingly become a primary object of its political cares."

--Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 12, 27 November 1787

"Dependence begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition." --Thomas Jefferson

Title: Reagan; Jefferson; Madison; Washington; Madison; Jefferson
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 06, 2009, 05:42:01 AM

Now it doesn't require expropriation or confiscation of private property or business to impose socialism on a people. What does it mean whether you hold the deed ... or the title to your business or property if the government holds the power of life and death over that business or property? And such machinery already exists. The government can find some charge to bring against any concern it chooses to prosecute. Every businessman has his own tale of harassment. Somewhere a perversion has taken place. Our natural, unalienable rights are now considered to be a dispensation of government, and freedom has never been so fragile, so close to slipping from our grasp as it is at this moment." --Ronald Reagan
================
"War is not the best engine for us to resort to; nature has given us one in our commerce, which if properly managed, will be a better instrument for obliging the interested nations of Europe to treat us with justice."

--Thomas Jefferson, letter to Thomas Pickney, 29 May 1797
===============
"[C]ommercial shackles are generally unjust, oppressive and impolitic. ...f industry and labour are left to take their own course, they will generally be directed to those objects which are the most productive, and this in a more certain and direct manner than the wisdom of the most enlightened legislature could point out."

--James Madison, speech to Congress, 9 April 1789
================

"I think all the world would gain by setting commerce at perfect liberty."

--Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Adams, 7 July 1785

===================

"Harmony, liberal intercourse with all Nations, are recommended by policy, humanity and interest. But even our Commercial policy should hold an equal and impartial hand: neither seeking nor granting exclusive favours or preferences; consulting the natural course of things; diffusing and diversifying by gentle means the streams of Commerce, but forcing nothing; establishing with Powers so disposed; in order to give trade a stable course."

--George Washington, Farewell Address, 19 September 1796
====================
"A just security to property is not afforded by that government, under which unequal taxes oppress one species of property and reward another species." --James Madison

=============

"The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it to be always kept alive. ... I like a little rebellion now and then. It is like a storm in the atmosphere." --Thomas Jefferson

Title: Jefferson; Reagan; Paine
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 09, 2009, 06:56:04 AM

"On every unauthoritative exercise of power by the legislature must the people rise in rebellion or their silence be construed into a surrender of that power to them? If so, how many rebellions should we have had already?"

--Thomas Jefferson, Notes on Virginia, Query 12, 1782

"Government can do something for the people only in proportion as it can do something to the people." -- Thomas Jefferson

"This is the real task before us: to reassert our commitment as a nation to a law higher than our own, to renew our spiritual strength. Only by building a wall of such spiritual resolve can we, as a free people, hope to protect our own heritage and make it someday the birthright of all men." --Ronald Reagan

Thomas Paine, (December 19, 1776): "If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may have peace."
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http://www.daybydaycartoon.com/2009/03/01/

Title: Jefferson
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 11, 2009, 06:25:37 AM

"If the present Congress errs in too much talking, how can it be otherwise in a body to which the people send 150 lawyers, whose trade it is to question everything, yield nothing, & talk by the hour? That 150 lawyers should do business together ought not to be expected."

--Thomas Jefferson, autobiography, 1821

Title: Davy Crockett
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 11, 2009, 11:52:30 PM

"We have rights, as individuals, to give as much of our own money as we please to charity; but as members of Congress we have no right so to appropriate a dollar of public money." --American hunter, frontiersman, soldier and politician Davy Crockett (1786-1836)

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 12, 2009, 10:29:33 AM

"The aim of every political constitution is, or ought to be, first to obtain for rulers men who possess most wisdom to discern, and most virture to pursue, the common good of the society; and in the next place, to take the most effectual precautions for keeping them virtuous whilst they continue to hold their public trust."

--Alexander Hamilton or James Madison, Federalist No. 57, 19 February 1788

Title: Several good ones
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 13, 2009, 07:03:02 AM

"If in the opinion of the people the distribution or modification of the constitutional powers be in any particular wrong, let it be corrected by an amendment in the way which the Constitution designates. But let there be no change by usurpation; for though this in one instance may be the instrument of good, it is the customary weapon by which free governments are destroyed. The precedent must always greatly overbalance in permanent evil any partial or transient benefit which the use can at any time yield."

--George Washington, Farewell Address, 1796
===============
The Patriot Post
Friday Digest
13 March 2009
Vol. 09 No. 10

THE FOUNDATION

"It is natural to man to indulge in the illusions of hope. We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth -- and listen to the song of that syren, till she transforms us into beasts." --Patrick Henry

PATRIOT PERSPECTIVE
A word from the wise
By Mark Alexander

As our regular readers know, it is customary for The Patriot Post to augment our advocacy for individual liberty, the restoration of constitutional limits on government and the judiciary, and our promotion of free enterprise, national defense and traditional American values, with the enduring advice of erudite sages, both contemporary and historic.

However, I have a particular affinity for the wisdom of our Founders, those who put their lives and fortunes at acute risk by codifying and supporting our Declaration of Independence and its subordinate guidance, our Constitution.

In regard to the latter, let me be clear: I am NOT referring to the so-called "Living Constitution" as amended by executive licentiousness, congressional avarice and judicial diktat -- the one that politicians have adulterated almost beyond recognition.

Rather, I am referring to our lawful Constitution, that formidable document for which generations of American Patriots in armed service to our country have raised their right hands in solemn oath to "support and defend ... against all enemies, foreign and domestic..."

Though Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid suffer their oaths while toasting Clos Du Mesnil champagne over foie gras hors d'oeuvres and imported tournedos, our uniformed American Patriots pledge their very lives in fulfillment of their oaths.

In fact, since our founding, more than 700,000 of our countrymen have been killed in defense of our Constitution, and millions more have suffered greatly in support of their sacred obligation. Thanks in total measure to their sacrifice, we still have an opportunity to restore our Constitution to its original standing, and reinstate its promise of liberty.

At this moment in our great nation's history, we face trying times and formidable enemies, both "foreign and domestic."

Indeed, in the words of Thomas Paine, "These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman."

On that note, I turn to just four of our Founders for their eternal wisdom in respect to the troubles of their day, and ours.

George Washington:

"We should never despair, our situation before has been unpromising and has changed for the better, so I trust, it will again. If new difficulties arise, we must only put forth new exertions and proportion our efforts to the exigency of the times. ... The name of American, which belongs to you, in your national capacity, must always exalt the just pride of Patriotism, more than any appellation derived from local discriminations. ... It should be the highest ambition of every American to extend his views beyond himself, and to bear in mind that his conduct will not only affect himself, his country, and his immediate posterity; but that its influence may be co-extensive with the world, and stamp political happiness or misery on ages yet unborn. ... The Hand of providence has been so conspicuous in all this, that he must be worse than an infidel that lacks faith, and more than wicked, that has not gratitude enough to acknowledge his obligations. ... [T]he propitious smiles of Heaven, can never be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and right, which Heaven itself has ordained."

John Adams:

"Children should be educated and instructed in the principles of freedom. ... If we suffer [the minds of young people] to grovel and creep in infancy, they will grovel all their lives. ... The foundation of national morality must be laid in private families... How is it possible that Children can have any just Sense of the sacred Obligations of Morality or Religion if, from their earliest Infancy, they learn their Mothers live in habitual Infidelity to their fathers, and their fathers in as constant Infidelity to their Mothers? ... We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other. ... The only foundation of a free Constitution, is pure Virtue, and if this cannot be inspired into our People ... they may change their Rulers, and the forms of Government, but they will not obtain a lasting Liberty. ... A Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty, once lost, is lost forever."

Thomas Jefferson:

"The same prudence which in private life would forbid our paying our own money for unexplained projects, forbids it in the dispensation of the public moneys. ... The multiplication of public offices, increase of expense beyond income, growth and entailment of a public debt, are indications soliciting the employment of the pruning knife. ... We must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. ... The principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale. ... If we can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people, under the pretence of taking care of them, they must become happy. ... I think we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious. ... The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground. ... [A] wise and frugal government...shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government. ... Sometimes it is said that man can not be trusted with government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the forms of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question."

James Madison:

"I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents... If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the General Welfare, the Government is no longer a limited one, possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one, subject to particular exceptions. ... The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite. ... There are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations."

Those who do not understand our history -- mostly those identified as "liberal" in contemporary vernacular -- assume the words of our Founders are as antiquated as the Declaration and Constitution they created. However, students of history understand that both the threats our Founders confronted at the dawn of our nation, and their advice, have endured to this day.

Indeed, to paraphrase Santayana's aphorism, "They who do not know their history are destined to repeat it."

Quote of the week
"Of all the dispositions and habits which least to political prosperity, Religion and morality are indispensible supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of Patriotism who should labor to subvert these great Pillars of human happiness -- these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens. The mere Politician, equally with the pious man ought to respect and to cherish them. ... Let it simply be asked where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths...? Let us with caution indulge the opposition, that morality can be maintained without religion. [R]eason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle." --George Washington

Title: Franklin; Madison; Webster; Reagan
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 16, 2009, 08:43:45 AM

"History affords us many instances of the ruin of states, by the prosecution of measures ill suited to the temper and genius of their people. The ordaining of laws in favor of one part of the nation, to the prejudice and oppression of another, is certainly the most erroneous and mistaken policy. An equal dispensation of protection, rights, privileges, and advantages, is what every part is entitled to, and ought to enjoy... These measures never fail to create great and violent jealousies and animosities between the people favored and the people oppressed; whence a total separation of affections, interests, political obligations, and all manner of connections, by which the whole state is weakened."

--Benjamin Franklin, Emblematical Representations
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THE FOUNDATION
"A good government implies two things; first, fidelity to the object of the government; secondly, a knowledge of the means, by which those objects can be best attained." --James Madison

INSIGHT
"I apprehend no danger to our country from a foreign foe ... Our destruction, should it come at all, will be from another quarter. -- From the inattention of the people to the concerns of their government, from their carelessness and negligence, I must confess that I do apprehend some danger. I fear that they may place too implicit a confidence in their public servants, and fail properly to scrutinize their conduct; that in this way they may be made the dupes of designing men, and become the instruments of their own undoing. Make them intelligent, and they will be vigilant; give them the means of detecting the wrong, and they will apply the remedy." --U.S. Senator Daniel Webster (1782-1852)

THE GIPPER
"When I took the oath of office, I pledged loyalty to only one special interest group -- 'We the People.' Those people -- neighbors and friends, shopkeepers and laborers, farmers and craftsmen -- do not have infinite patience. As a matter of fact, some 80 years ago, Teddy Roosevelt wrote these instructive words in his first message to the Congress: 'The American people are slow to wrath, but when their wrath is once kindled, it burns like a consuming flame.' Well, perhaps that kind of wrath will be deserved if our answer to these serious problems is to repeat the mistakes of the past." --Ronald Reagan

Title: Webster: American history
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 17, 2009, 06:11:21 AM

Title: J. Adams; Jefferson
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 18, 2009, 04:34:40 AM

"Without wishing to damp the ardor of curiosity or influence the freedom of inquiry, I will hazard a prediction that, after the most industrious and impartial researchers, the longest liver of you all will find no principles, institutions or systems of education more fit in general to be transmitted to your posterity than those you have received from your ancestors."

--John Adams, letter to the young men of the Philadelphia, 7 May 1798
==========
"To take from one, because it is thought his own industry and that of his fathers has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers, have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association, the guarantee to everyone the free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it." --Thomas Jefferson

Title: Washington in 1753
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 19, 2009, 05:39:55 AM

"Arbitrary power is most easily established on the ruins of liberty abused to licentiousness."

--George Washington, Circular to the States, 9 May 1753

Title: S. Adams; Hamilton
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 20, 2009, 09:59:38 AM

"Nothing is more essential to the establishment of manners in a State than that all persons employed in places of power and trust must be men of unexceptionable characters." --Samuel Adams

"A fondness for power is implanted, in most men, and it is natural to abuse it, when acquired."

--Alexander Hamilton, The Farmer Refuted, 23 February 1775

Title: Madison: Federalist 48; Patrick Henry; Reagan
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 23, 2009, 04:53:29 AM

"It will not be denied that power is of an encroaching nature and that it ought to be effectually restrained from passing the limits assigned to it. After discriminating, therefore, in theory, the several classes of power, as they may in their nature be legislative, executive, or judiciary, the next and most difficult task is to provide some practical security for each, against the invasion of the others."

--James Madison, Federalist No. 48

"The liberties of a people never were, nor ever will be, secure when the transactions of their rulers may be concealed from them." --Patrick Henry

"The most dangerous myth is the demagoguery that business can be made to pay a larger share, thus relieving the individual. Politicians preaching this are either deliberately dishonest, or economically illiterate, and either one should scare us. Business doesn't pay taxes.... Only people pay taxes, and people pay as consumers every tax that is assessed against a business. Begin with the food and fiber raised in the farm, to the ore drilled in a mine, to the oil and gas from out of the ground, whatever it may be -- through the processing, through the manufacturing, on out to the retailer's license. If the tax cannot be included in the price of the product, no one along that line can stay in business." --Ronald Reagan

Title: Jefferson: Cause and necessity of taking up arms
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 24, 2009, 04:44:40 AM

Title: Wilson: Law and religion
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 26, 2009, 08:32:13 AM

"Far from being rivals or enemies, religion and law are twin sisters, friends, and mutual assistants. Indeed, these two sciences run into each other. The divine law, as discovered by reason and the moral sense, forms an essential part of both."

--James Wilson, law lectures at the University of Pennsylvania

Title: Franklin; Madison
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 27, 2009, 05:40:11 AM

"The ordaining of laws in favor of one part of the nation, to the prejudice and oppression of another, is certainly the most erroneous and mistaken policy. An equal dispensation of protection, rights, privileges, and advantages, is what every part is entitled to, and ought to enjoy."

--Benjamin Franklin, Emblematical Representations, circa 1774

THE FOUNDATION
"The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite." --James Madison, Federalist No. 45

Title: The 10th Amendment; States' Rebellion pending
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 27, 2009, 08:10:43 AM

States Rebellion Pending
By Walter E. Williams

Our Colonial ancestors petitioned and pleaded with King George III to get his boot off their necks. He ignored their pleas, and in 1776, they rightfully declared unilateral independence and went to war. Today it's the same story except Congress is the one usurping the rights of the people and the states, making King George's actions look mild in comparison. Our constitutional ignorance -- perhaps contempt, coupled with the fact that we've become a nation of wimps, sissies and supplicants -- has made us easy prey for Washington's tyrannical forces. But that might be changing a bit. There are rumblings of a long overdue re-emergence of Americans' characteristic spirit of rebellion.

Eight state legislatures have introduced resolutions declaring state sovereignty under the Ninth and 10th amendments to the U.S. Constitution; they include Arizona, Hawaii, Montana, Michigan, Missouri, New Hampshire, Oklahoma and Washington. There's speculation that they will be joined by Alaska, Alabama, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Nevada, Maine and Pennsylvania.

You might ask, "Isn't the 10th Amendment that no-good states' rights amendment that Dixie governors, such as George Wallace and Orval Faubus, used to thwart school desegregation and black civil rights?" That's the kind of constitutional disrespect and ignorance that big-government proponents, whether they're liberals or conservatives, want you to have. The reason is that they want Washington to have total control over our lives. The Founders tried to limit that power with the 10th Amendment, which reads: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

New Hampshire's 10th Amendment resolution typifies others and, in part, reads: "That the several States composing the United States of America, are not united on the principle of unlimited submission to their General (federal) Government; but that, by a compact under the style and title of a Constitution for the United States, and of amendments thereto, they constituted a General Government for special purposes, delegated to that government certain definite powers, reserving, each State to itself, the residuary mass of right to their own self-government; and that whensoever the General Government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force." Put simply, these 10th Amendment resolutions insist that the states and their people are the masters and that Congress and the White House are the servants. Put yet another way, Washington is a creature of the states, not the other way around.

Congress and the White House will laugh off these state resolutions. State legislatures must take measures that put some teeth into their 10th Amendment resolutions. Congress will simply threaten a state, for example, with a cutoff of highway construction funds if it doesn't obey a congressional mandate, such as those that require seat belt laws or that lower the legal blood-alcohol level to .08 for drivers. States might take a lead explored by Colorado.

In 1994, the Colorado Legislature passed a 10th Amendment resolution and later introduced a bill titled "State Sovereignty Act." Had the State Sovereignty Act passed both houses of the legislature, it would have required all people liable for any federal tax that's a component of the highway users fund, such as a gasoline tax, to remit those taxes directly to the Colorado Department of Revenue. The money would have been deposited in an escrow account called the "Federal Tax Fund" and remitted monthly to the IRS, along with a list of payees and respective amounts paid. If Congress imposed sanctions on Colorado for failure to obey an unconstitutional mandate and penalized the state by withholding funds due, say $5 million for highway construction, the State Sovereignty Act would have prohibited the state treasurer from remitting any funds in the escrow account to the IRS. Instead, Colorado would have imposed a $5 million surcharge on the Federal Tax Fund account to continue the highway construction.

The eight state legislatures that have enacted 10th Amendment resolutions deserve our praise, but their next step is to give them teeth.

COPYRIGHT 2009 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.

Title: Fisher Ames
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 31, 2009, 09:36:02 AM

Title: Hamilton; Madison: Federalist 51; Reagan; Jefferson
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 01, 2009, 04:04:52 AM

"Wise politicians will be cautious about fettering the government with restrictions that cannot be observed, because they know that every break of the fundamental laws, though dictated by necessity, impairs that sacred reverence which ought to be maintained in the breast of rulers towards the constitution of a country."

--Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 25, 21 December 1787
====================

"In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself." --James Madison, Federalist No. 51
=========
"When a business or an individual spends more than it makes, it goes bankrupt. When government does it, it sends you the bill. And when government does it for 40 years, the bill comes in two ways: higher taxes and inflation. Make no mistake about it, inflation is a tax and not by accident." --Ronald Reagan
=============
"Determine never to be idle. No person will have occasion to complain of the want of time, who never loses any. It is wonderful how much may be done, if we are always doing."

--Thomas Jefferson, letter to Martha Jefferson, 5 May 1787

Title: Warren
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 02, 2009, 02:38:22 PM

"It is necessary for every American, with becoming energy to endeavor to stop the
dissemination of principles evidently destructive of the cause for which they have
bled. It must be the combined virtue of the rulers and of the people to do this, and
to rescue and save their civil and religious rights from the outstretched arm of
tyranny, which may appear under any mode or form of government."

--Mercy Warren, History of the Rise, Progress, and Termination of the American
Revolution, 1805

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:Patrick Henry 1775
Post by: Freki on April 02, 2009, 08:51:31 PM

The Call to Arms

Patrick Henry

1775

Mr. President, it is natural to man to indulge in the illusions of hope. We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth. Is this the part of wise men, engaged in a great and arduous struggle for liberty? Are we disposed to be of the number of those, who, having eyes to see, see not, and having ears, hear not, the things which so nearly concern their temporal salvation? For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst, and to provide for it.
I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided; and that is the lamp of experience. I know of no way of judging of the future but by the past. Let us not, I beseech you, sir, deceive ourselves longer. Sir, we have done everything that could be done to avert the storm which in now coming on. We have petitioned; we have remonstrated; we have supplicated; we have prostrated ourselves before the throne, and have implored its interposition to arrest the tyrannical hands of the ministry and Parliament. Our petitions have been slighted; our remonstrances have produced additional violence and insult; our supplications have been disregarded; and we have been spurned, with contempt, from the foot of the throne! In vain, after these things, may we indulge the fond hope of peace and reconciliation. There is no longer any room for hope. If we wish to be free -- if we mean to preserve inviolate those inestimable privileges for which we have been so long contending -- if we mean not basely to abandon the noble struggle in which we have been so long engaged, which we have pledged ourselves never to abandon, until the glorious object of our contest shall be obtained -- we must fight! I repeat it, sir, we must fight! An appeal to arms and to God of Hosts is all that is left us!
They tell us, sir, that we are weak -- unable to cope with so formidable an adversary. But when shall we be stronger? Will it be the next week, or next year? Will it be when we are totally disarmed? Shall we acquire the means of effectual resistance by lying supinely on our backs and hugging the delusive phantom of hope, until our enemies shall have bound us hand and foot?
Sir, we are not weak if we make a proper use of those means which the God of nature has placed in our power. Three millions of people armed in the holy cause of liberty, and in such a country as that which we possess, are invincible by any force which our enemy can send against us. Besides, sir, we shall not fight our battles alone. There is a just God who presides over the destines of nations, and who will raise up friends to fight our battles for us. The battle, sir, is not to the stronger alone; it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave.
It is in vain, sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentleman may cry "Peace, peace"-- But there is no peace. The war is actually begun! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace, so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, GIVE ME LIBERTY OR GIVE ME DEATH!!!

Title: Adams; Washington; many more
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 06, 2009, 11:47:56 PM

"Let the pulpit resound with the doctrine and sentiments of religious liberty. Let us hear of the dignity of man's nature, and the noble rank he holds among the works of God... Let it be known that British liberties are not the grants of princes and parliaments."

--John Adams, Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law, 1765

==================

"The spirit of encroachment tends to consolidate the powers of all the departments in one, and thus to create whatever the form of government, a real despotism. A just estimate of that love of power, and proneness to abuse it, which predominates in the human heart is sufficient to satisfy us of the truth of this position."

--George Washington, Farewell Address, 1796
===============

"I want an American character, that the powers of Europe may be convinced we act for ourselves and not for others; this, in my judgment, is the only way to be respected abroad and happy at home." --George Washington
==================

"If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the General Welfare, the Government is no longer a limited one, possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one, subject to particular exceptions."

--James Madison, letter to Edmund Pendleton, 21 January 1792
================
"It is natural to man to indulge in the illusions of hope. We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth -- and listen to the song of that syren, till she transforms us into beasts." --Patrick Henry
==============
Indeed, in the words of Thomas Paine, "These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman."

On that note, I turn to just four of our Founders for their eternal wisdom in respect to the troubles of their day, and ours.

George Washington:

"We should never despair, our situation before has been unpromising and has changed for the better, so I trust, it will again. If new difficulties arise, we must only put forth new exertions and proportion our efforts to the exigency of the times. ... The name of American, which belongs to you, in your national capacity, must always exalt the just pride of Patriotism, more than any appellation derived from local discriminations. ... It should be the highest ambition of every American to extend his views beyond himself, and to bear in mind that his conduct will not only affect himself, his country, and his immediate posterity; but that its influence may be co-extensive with the world, and stamp political happiness or misery on ages yet unborn. ... The Hand of providence has been so conspicuous in all this, that he must be worse than an infidel that lacks faith, and more than wicked, that has not gratitude enough to acknowledge his obligations. ... [T]he propitious smiles of Heaven, can never be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and right, which Heaven itself has ordained."

John Adams:

"Children should be educated and instructed in the principles of freedom. ... If we suffer [the minds of young people] to grovel and creep in infancy, they will grovel all their lives. ... The foundation of national morality must be laid in private families... How is it possible that Children can have any just Sense of the sacred Obligations of Morality or Religion if, from their earliest Infancy, they learn their Mothers live in habitual Infidelity to their fathers, and their fathers in as constant Infidelity to their Mothers? ... We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other. ... The only foundation of a free Constitution, is pure Virtue, and if this cannot be inspired into our People ... they may change their Rulers, and the forms of Government, but they will not obtain a lasting Liberty. ... A Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty, once lost, is lost forever."

Thomas Jefferson:

"The same prudence which in private life would forbid our paying our own money for unexplained projects, forbids it in the dispensation of the public moneys. ... The multiplication of public offices, increase of expense beyond income, growth and entailment of a public debt, are indications soliciting the employment of the pruning knife. ... We must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. ... The principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale. ... If we can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people, under the pretence of taking care of them, they must become happy. ... I think we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious. ... The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground. ... [A] wise and frugal government...shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government. ... Sometimes it is said that man can not be trusted with government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the forms of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question."

James Madison:

"I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents... If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the General Welfare, the Government is no longer a limited one, possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one, subject to particular exceptions. ... The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite. ... There are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations."

=============
"Of all the dispositions and habits which least to political prosperity, Religion and morality are indispensible supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of Patriotism who should labor to subvert these great Pillars of human happiness -- these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens. The mere Politician, equally with the pious man ought to respect and to cherish them. ... Let it simply be asked where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths...? Let us with caution indulge the opposition, that morality can be maintained without religion. [R]eason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle." --George Washington
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"It has ever been my hobby-horse to see rising in America an empire of liberty, and a prospect of two or three hundred millions of freemen, without one noble or one king among them. You say it is impossible. If I should agree with you in this, I would still say, let us try the experiment, and preserve our equality as long as we can."

--John Adams, letter to Count Sarsfield, 3 February 1786
======================
"The most sacred of the duties of a government [is] to do equal and impartial justice to all citizens." --Thomas Jefferson
=======================

Title: VA Bill of Rights
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 09, 2009, 06:55:41 AM

"[R]eligion, or the duty which we owe to our creator, and the manner of discharging it, can be directed only by reason and conviction, not by force or violence; and therefore all men are equally entitled to the free exercise of religion, according to the dictates of conscience; and this is the mutual duty of all to practice Christian forbearance, love, and charity towards each other."

--Virginia Bill of Rights, Article 16, June 12, 1776

Title: Madison
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 10, 2009, 08:15:00 AM

"It is the duty of every man to render to the Creator such homage and such only as he believes to be acceptable to him. This duty is precedent, both in order of time and in degree of obligation, to the claims of Civil Society."

--James Madison, Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments, 1785

Title: Jefferson's Monticello
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 10, 2009, 08:34:47 AM

Jefferson’s Blind Spots and Ideals, in Brick and Mortar

By EDWARD ROTHSTEIN

Published: April 9, 2009

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — Stand in the garden of Monticello here and look back at the home Thomas Jefferson designed, a view made famous by the United States nickel, and you get some hint of how this founding father thought about the new nation taking shape around him. The building invokes reason, proportion and balance, but you stand on a man-made plateau that seems to hover in space, open to the sweep of clouds and the distant mountains. Veneration for antiquity and revolutionary daring are brought together. The home’s allusions to ancient Greece and Rome and to the Renaissance are poised on the brink of a New World.

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Andrew Shurtleff for The New York Times

Thomas Jefferson’s home, Monticello, along with remnants of its slave quarters, is opening a new visitors center on Wednesday in Charlottesville, Va. More Photos »

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Jefferson’s Blind Spots and Ideals

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Times Topics: Thomas Jefferson

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Les Schofer

A garden pavilion at Monticello, Thomas Jefferson’s home. More Photos >

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Les Schofer

The new visitors center at Monticello has 5,200 square feet of exhibitions, many of them interactive. More Photos >

It is a strange sensation. And with a new visitors center just down the slope of this “small hill” (the meaning of “Monticello” in Italian), including the requisite amenities of a cafe and shop along with an education center and 5,200 square feet of exhibitions about Jefferson’s ideas and practices, you can start to put this vista in a larger perspective. It helps too if you combine a Monticello visit (which 450,000 people make every year) with a trip to Lynchburg, Va., once a three-day journey by coach, now a mere hour and a half by car.

That is where, in 1806, as Monticello neared completion, Jefferson began to build Poplar Forest, a more private retreat: a modest octagonal home with a skylight-topped central room shaped in a perfect cube. And let us detour here for a moment. Poplar Forest seeks the same stylistic resonances as Monticello, though in a more intimate context, its geometric core and extravagantly tall windows opening onto rolling fields and hills. “When finished,” Jefferson wrote of this building in 1812, “it will be the best dwelling house in the state, except that of Monticello; perhaps preferable to that, as more proportioned to the faculties of a private citizen.”

In recent years, after being rescued from generations of owners and their modifications, Poplar Forest has been straining for attention, welcoming just 20,000 visitors a year. Now celebrating the 200th anniversary of Jefferson’s first extended stay there, it is displaying an ever-expanding yet refined restoration that began more than 20 years ago. It affords a chance to see Jefferson’s thoughts about space, stripped of all ornament and furnishing. We see bare brick and plaster, the walls’ inner supports for arched windows, the skylights and surrounding panoramic views that in early America must have been a revelation.

Its elegance is as stunning as its impracticalities, its form creating less a place for living than one for contemplation (which is why so many of the home’s owners, over the years, were compelled to make modifications). Restored to original form, the house reflects an ideal, lightly compromised. It seems an echo of Monticello’s larger, more polished expression of that ideal.

These two homes and the four exhibitions inside the $43 million visitors center that opens on Wednesday provide an unusual sense of the tensions within Jefferson’s capacious genius, which embraced agriculture and architecture, political philosophy and engineering. The center’s architects, Ayers/Saint/Gross Architects and Planners, wisely give their subject pride of place and refuse to compete with Monticello itself, instead creating a low-lying quadrangle around a central garden courtyard.

In the exhibitions, Monticello’s chief curator, Susan R. Stein, along with her staff, have shaped a series of thematic explorations that suggest just how often Jefferson seems to have lived at a strange crossroads between the real world and his envisioned ideals. An ideal might be a home that resonates with the glories of antiquity and the beauties of geometric order, or it might be a nation founded on abstract and inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Both might be beyond perfect achievement yet still provide compelling models, requiring compromise but also inspiring transformation and aspiration.

That seems to be the way Jefferson saw it as well. He was never done with either home. And in each, compromises were required. Poplar Forest’s glorious central room — a communal dining room into which a narrow entrance corridor leads — didn’t allow easy access to the kitchens, which had to be reached through a bedroom. The geometry and the extraordinary sense of light and air had a cost.

Monticello, as one exhibition here deftly demonstrates by tracing its evolution and construction, is really Monticello II, a re-envisioning of the entire home, whose main structure was already in place when Jefferson went to Europe in 1784 and had his eyes opened to new possibilities in design. In 1796 he began expanding and reshaping the home. He called Monticello his “essay in architecture,” and you get the sense that he meant “essay” with its French overtones of something attempted, experimented with, transformed. That is the subject of another exhibition here, which explores Jefferson’s use of Monticello as a social and intellectual laboratory, a realm for experimentation in farming and design.

As for national and ethical ideals, here the tension with the real is more intense, as the drubbing Jefferson’s reputation has taken in recent decades shows. After all, Jefferson laid down the foundations of the new country in the Declaration of Independence and codified its vocabulary of equality and liberty, but we know too that just over the edge of Monticello’s plateau was a village of more than 100 enslaved workers, who helped build this house and serve its elaborate meals; one of them — Sally Hemings — probably bore Jefferson’s children. And, as at Poplar Forest, staff archaeologists have uncovered the relics of slave quarters and slave life that even for that modest retreat were extensive.

Such matters were once adduced as proof of Jeffersonian hypocrisy or as an argument about his inflated stature. Now they are part of our understanding, showing the real-world shortcomings against which Jefferson’s ideals sharply jabbed. He may disappoint us, but his vision is so powerful it ends up inspiring anyway. We don’t ignore the contradictions, which were, of course, not his alone; they simply show us how much was required to overcome them.

An important aspect of the new exhibitions here is that the lives of black slaves are inseparable from accounts of Monticello’s domestic life. Jefferson kept such meticulous records, and archaeological finds have been so extensive, that slaves can be described as named individuals with particular responsibilities and family connections; here, as at Poplar Forest, it is clear that some slaves earned money and possessed a small number of precious objects.

In the exhibition about the building of Monticello, we also learn that there were four stonecutters used, two of them “free white workmen” and two enslaved, and that 14 white carpenters were used along with eight black slaves. This attention to enslaved life is not inserted in the exhibition to diminish the nature of Jefferson’s achievements, but to illuminate his world.

At times this theme can have disproportionate emphasis. The imaginative Griffin Discovery Room for children, for example, in which reproductions of objects associated with Jefferson are touchable, too fully divides its attentions between slave life and Jefferson’s life. Elsewhere we miss what used to be taken for granted: a straightforward portrayal of Jefferson’s own life, family and travels. (Much of this narrative has to be pieced together from interactive screen displays.)

And when reaching the core of Jefferson’s ideas and achievements here, there is a tendency to rely too heavily on the latest innovations in museum display (as created by Small Design Firm).

In one gallery, when you step onto an array of thematic ideas on the floor (like religion, government, science or reason), Jefferson’s words relating to the chosen theme playfully assemble themselves on a screen. In another, an ambitious multimedia wall of 21 flat-panel screens with seven touch screens gives a capsule history of Jefferson’s impact on what he called “the boisterous sea of liberty,” with images, quotations and facts cascading into an account of the birth of a nation and the influence of Jefferson’s ideas.

That exhibit overwhelms at first; it takes time to comprehend the sweep of the story without being distracted by the sweep of sensations. The approach also submerges the intellectual power of the narrative; you have to work to piece things together, an unfortunate byproduct of the desire to speak in the video vernacular. But Jefferson’s political ideals are best understood through argument and language rather than image.

Still, if you come to these galleries with the history in mind, their energy can be intoxicating; you sense the scale of Jefferson’s accomplishment and influence even if you don’t always absorb the detail.

At any rate, as Jefferson wrote, “the boisterous sea of liberty is never without a wave.” Which is another way of saying that there is no ideal without the messiness of the real. But what a great thing it is to imagine that ideal! And then to keep coming so close!

Monticello, 931 Thomas Jefferson Parkway, Charlottesville, Va., is open year-round. More information: monticello.org or (434) 984-9822. Poplar Forest is open April through November. More information: poplarforest.org or (434) 525-1806.

Title: George Mason: the Militia
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 10, 2009, 02:10:41 PM

"I ask, Sir, what is the militia? It is the whole people. To disarm the people is the best and most effectual way to enslave them." -- George Mason, coauthor of the 2nd Amendment.

Title: Jefferson to Madison: simplify taxation
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 13, 2009, 09:17:45 AM

"Would it not be better to simplify the system of taxation rather than to spread it over such a variety of subjects and pass through so many new hands."

--Thomas Jefferson, letter to James Madison, 1784

Title: Marshall; Reagan
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 13, 2009, 02:46:31 PM

THE FOUNDATION
"An unlimited power to tax involves, necessarily, a power to destroy; because there is a limit beyond which no institution and no property can bear taxation." --John Marshall

THE GIPPER
"[April 15] is the last day for filing income tax returns -- a day that reminds us that taxpayers pay too much of their earnings to the Federal Government. ... While April 15 serves as a reminder, the people of the United States truly do not need to be reminded. They are victims of inflation, which pushes them into higher tax brackets. They are robbed daily of a better standard of living. They are discouraged from work and investment. ... The choice before us is clear. I strongly feel that the great majority of Americans believe that nothing would better encourage economic growth than leaving more money in the hands of the people who earn it. It's time to stop stripping bare the productive citizens of America and funneling their hard-earned income into the Federal bureaucracy." --Ronald Reagan

Title: Madison: Federalist 10
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 14, 2009, 10:14:58 AM

Title: Capt. John Parker
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 16, 2009, 08:09:11 AM

"Don’t fire unless fired upon. But if they want a war let it begin here."

--Captain John Parker, commander of the militiamen at Lexington, Massachusetts, on sighting British Troops (attributed), 19 April 1775

Title: S. Adams to J. Hancock
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 17, 2009, 10:08:36 AM

"What a glorious morning this is!"

--Samuel Adams to John Hancock at the Battle of Lexington, Massachusetts, 19 April 1775

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 17, 2009, 10:13:05 AM

Second post of the day:

The Americans Who Risked Everything

My father, Rush H. Limbaugh, Jr., delivered this oft-requested address locally a number of times, but it had never before appeared in print until it appeared in The Limbaugh Letter. My dad was renowned for his oratory skills and for his original mind; this speech is, I think, a superb demonstration of both. I will always be grateful to him for instilling in me a passion for the ideas and lives of America's Founders, as well as a deep appreciation for the inspirational power of words which you will see evidenced here:

"Our Lives, Our Fortunes, Our Sacred Honor"

It was a glorious morning. The sun was shining and the wind was from the southeast. Up especially early, a tall bony, redheaded young Virginian found time to buy a new thermometer, for which he paid three pounds, fifteen shillings. He also bought gloves for Martha, his wife, who was ill at home.

Thomas Jefferson arrived early at the statehouse. The temperature was 72.5 degrees and the horseflies weren't nearly so bad at that hour. It was a lovely room, very large, with gleaming white walls. The chairs were comfortable. Facing the single door were two brass fireplaces, but they would not be used today.

The moment the door was shut, and it was always kept locked, the room became an oven. The tall windows were shut, so that loud quarreling voices could not be heard by passersby. Small openings atop the windows allowed a slight stir of air, and also a large number of horseflies. Jefferson records that "the horseflies were dexterous in finding necks, and the silk of stockings was nothing to them." All discussing was punctuated by the slap of hands on necks.

On the wall at the back, facing the president's desk, was a panoply -- consisting of a drum, swords, and banners seized from Fort Ticonderoga the previous year. Ethan Allen and Benedict Arnold had captured the place, shouting that they were taking it "in the name of the Great Jehovah and the Continental Congress!"

Now Congress got to work, promptly taking up an emergency measure about which there was discussion but no dissension. "Resolved: That an application be made to the Committee of Safety of Pennsylvania for a supply of flints for the troops at New York."

Then Congress transformed itself into a committee of the whole. The Declaration of Independence was read aloud once more, and debate resumed. Though Jefferson was the best writer of all of them, he had been somewhat verbose. Congress hacked the excess away. They did a good job, as a side-by-side comparison of the rough draft and the final text shows. They cut the phrase "by a self-assumed power." "Climb" was replaced by "must read," then "must" was eliminated, then the whole sentence, and soon the whole paragraph was cut. Jefferson groaned as they continued what he later called "their depredations." "Inherent and inalienable rights" came out "certain unalienable rights," and to this day no one knows who suggested the elegant change.

A total of 86 alterations were made. Almost 500 words were eliminated, leaving 1,337. At last, after three days of wrangling, the document was put to a vote.

Here in this hall Patrick Henry had once thundered: "I am no longer a Virginian, sir, but an American." But today the loud, sometimes bitter argument stilled, and without fanfare the vote was taken from north to south by colonies, as was the custom. On July 4, 1776, the Declaration of Independence was adopted.

There were no trumpets blown. No one stood on his chair and cheered. The afternoon was waning and Congress had no thought of delaying the full calendar of routine business on its hands. For several hours they worked on many other problems before adjourning for the day.

Much To Lose

What kind of men were the 56 signers who adopted the Declaration of Independence and who, by their signing, committed an act of treason against the crown? To each of you, the names Franklin, Adams, Hancock and Jefferson are almost as familiar as household words. Most of us, however, know nothing of the other signers. Who were they? What happened to them?

I imagine that many of you are somewhat surprised at the names not there: George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, Patrick Henry. All were elsewhere.

Ben Franklin was the only really old man. Eighteen were under 40; three were in their 20s. Of the 56 almost half - 24 - were judges and lawyers. Eleven were merchants, nine were landowners and farmers, and the remaining 12 were doctors, ministers, and politicians.

With only a few exceptions, such as Samuel Adams of Massachusetts, these were men of substantial property. All but two had families. The vast majority were men of education and standing in their communities. They had economic security as few men had in the 18th Century.

Each had more to lose from revolution than he had to gain by it. John Hancock, one of the richest men in America, already had a price of 500 pounds on his head. He signed in enormous letters so that his Majesty could now read his name without glasses and could now double the reward. Ben Franklin wryly noted: "Indeed we must all hang together, otherwise we shall most assuredly hang separately."

Fat Benjamin Harrison of Virginia told tiny Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts: "With me it will all be over in a minute, but you, you will be dancing on air an hour after I am gone."

These men knew what they risked. The penalty for treason was death by hanging. And remember, a great British fleet was already at anchor in New York Harbor.

They were sober men. There were no dreamy-eyed intellectuals or draft card burners here. They were far from hot-eyed fanatics yammering for an explosion. They simply asked for the status quo. It was change they resisted. It was equality with the mother country they desired. It was taxation with representation they sought. They were all conservatives, yet they rebelled.

It was principle, not property, that had brought these men to Philadelphia. Two of them became presidents of the United States. Seven of them became state governors. One died in office as vice president of the United States. Several would go on to be U.S. Senators. One, the richest man in America, in 1828 founded the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. One, a delegate from Philadelphia, was the only real poet, musician and philosopher of the signers. (It was he, Francis Hopkinson not Betsy Ross who designed the United States flag.)

Richard Henry Lee, a delegate from Virginia, had introduced the resolution to adopt the Declaration of Independence in June of 1776. He was prophetic in his concluding remarks: "Why then sir, why do we longer delay? Why still deliberate? Let this happy day give birth to an American Republic. Let her arise not to devastate and to conquer but to reestablish the reign of peace and law.

"The eyes of Europe are fixed upon us. She demands of us a living example of freedom that may exhibit a contrast in the felicity of the citizen to the ever-increasing tyranny which desolates her polluted shores. She invites us to prepare an asylum where the unhappy may find solace, and the persecuted repost.

"If we are not this day wanting in our duty, the names of the American Legislatures of 1776 will be placed by posterity at the side of all of those whose memory has been and ever will be dear to virtuous men and good citizens."

Though the resolution was formally adopted July 4, it was not until July 8 that two of the states authorized their delegates to sign, and it was not until August 2 that the signers met at Philadelphia to actually put their names to the Declaration.

William Ellery, delegate from Rhode Island, was curious to see the signers' faces as they committed this supreme act of personal courage. He saw some men sign quickly, "but in no face was he able to discern real fear." Stephan Hopkins, Ellery's colleague from Rhode Island, was a man past 60. As he signed with a shaking pen, he declared: "My hand trembles, but my heart does not."

"Most Glorious Service"

Even before the list was published, the British marked down every member of Congress suspected of having put his name to treason. All of them became the objects of vicious manhunts. Some were taken. Some, like Jefferson, had narrow escapes. All who had property or families near British strongholds suffered.

· Francis Lewis, New York delegate saw his home plundered -- and his estates in what is now Harlem -- completely destroyed by British Soldiers. Mrs. Lewis was captured and treated with great brutality. Though she was later exchanged for two British prisoners through the efforts of Congress, she died from the effects of her abuse.

· William Floyd, another New York delegate, was able to escape with his wife and children across Long Island Sound to Connecticut, where they lived as refugees without income for seven years. When they came home they found a devastated ruin.

· Philips Livingstone had all his great holdings in New York confiscated and his family driven out of their home. Livingstone died in 1778 still working in Congress for the cause.

· Louis Morris, the fourth New York delegate, saw all his timber, crops, and livestock taken. For seven years he was barred from his home and family.

· John Hart of Trenton, New Jersey, risked his life to return home to see his dying wife. Hessian soldiers rode after him, and he escaped in the woods. While his wife lay on her deathbed, the soldiers ruined his farm and wrecked his homestead. Hart, 65, slept in caves and woods as he was hunted across the countryside. When at long last, emaciated by hardship, he was able to sneak home, he found his wife had already been buried, and his 13 children taken away. He never saw them again. He died a broken man in 1779, without ever finding his family.

· Dr. John Witherspoon, signer, was president of the College of New Jersey, later called Princeton. The British occupied the town of Princeton, and billeted troops in the college. They trampled and burned the finest college library in the country.

· Judge Richard Stockton, another New Jersey delegate signer, had rushed back to his estate in an effort to evacuate his wife and children. The family found refuge with friends, but a Tory sympathizer betrayed them. Judge Stockton was pulled from bed in the night and brutally beaten by the arresting soldiers. Thrown into a common jail, he was deliberately starved. Congress finally arranged for Stockton's parole, but his health was ruined. The judge was released as an invalid, when he could no longer harm the British cause. He returned home to find his estate looted and did not live to see the triumph of the Revolution. His family was forced to live off charity.

· Robert Morris, merchant prince of Philadelphia, delegate and signer, met Washington's appeals and pleas for money year after year. He made and raised arms and provisions which made it possible for Washington to cross the Delaware at Trenton. In the process he lost 150 ships at sea, bleeding his own fortune and credit almost dry.

· George Clymer, Pennsylvania signer, escaped with his family from their home, but their property was completely destroyed by the British in the Germantown and Brandywine campaigns.

· Dr. Benjamin Rush, also from Pennsylvania, was forced to flee to Maryland. As a heroic surgeon with the army, Rush had several narrow escapes.

· John Martin, a Tory in his views previous to the debate, lived in a strongly loyalist area of Pennsylvania. When he came out for independence, most of his neighbors and even some of his relatives ostracized him. He was a sensitive and troubled man, and many believed this action killed him. When he died in 1777, his last words to his tormentors were: "Tell them that they will live to see the hour when they shall acknowledge it [the signing] to have been the most glorious service that I have ever rendered to my country."

· William Ellery, Rhode Island delegate, saw his property and home burned to the ground.

· Thomas Lynch, Jr., South Carolina delegate, had his health broken from privation and exposures while serving as a company commander in the military. His doctors ordered him to seek a cure in the West Indies and on the voyage, he and his young bride were drowned at sea.

· Edward Rutledge, Arthur Middleton, and Thomas Heyward, Jr., the other three South Carolina signers, were taken by the British in the siege of Charleston. They were carried as prisoners of war to St. Augustine, Florida, where they were singled out for indignities. They were exchanged at the end of the war, the British in the meantime having completely devastated their large landholdings and estates.

· Thomas Nelson, signer of Virginia, was at the front in command of the Virginia military forces. With British General Charles Cornwallis in Yorktown, fire from 70 heavy American guns began to destroy Yorktown piece by piece. Lord Cornwallis and his staff moved their headquarters into Nelson's palatial home. While American cannonballs were making a shambles of the town, the house of Governor Nelson remained untouched. Nelson turned in rage to the American gunners and asked, "Why do you spare my home?" They replied, "Sir, out of respect to you." Nelson cried, "Give me the cannon!" and fired on his magnificent home himself, smashing it to bits. But Nelson's sacrifice was not quite over. He had raised $2 million for the Revolutionary cause by pledging his own estates. When the loans came due, a newer peacetime Congress refused to honor them, and Nelson's property was forfeited. He was never reimbursed. He died, impoverished, a few years later at the age of 50.

Lives, Fortunes, Honor

Of those 56 who signed the Declaration of Independence, nine died of wounds or hardships during the war. Five were captured and imprisoned, in each case with brutal treatment. Several lost wives, sons or entire families. One lost his 13 children. Two wives were brutally treated. All were at one time or another the victims of manhunts and driven from their homes. Twelve signers had their homes completely burned. Seventeen lost everything they owned. Yet not one defected or went back on his pledged word. Their honor, and the nation they sacrificed so much to create is still intact.

And, finally, there is the New Jersey signer, Abraham Clark.

He gave two sons to the officer corps in the Revolutionary Army. They were captured and sent to that infamous British prison hulk afloat in New York Harbor known as the hell ship Jersey, where 11,000 American captives were to die. The younger Clarks were treated with a special brutality because of their father. One was put in solitary and given no food. With the end almost in sight, with the war almost won, no one could have blamed Abraham Clark for acceding to the British request when they offered him his sons' lives if he would recant and come out for the King and Parliament. The utter despair in this man's heart, the anguish in his very soul, must reach out to each one of us down through 200 years with his answer: "No."

The 56 signers of the Declaration Of Independence proved by their every deed that they made no idle boast when they composed the most magnificent curtain line in history. "And for the support of this Declaration with a firm reliance on the protection of divine providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor."

My friends, I know you have a copy of the Declaration of Independence somewhere around the house - in an old history book (newer ones may well omit it), an encyclopedia, or one of those artificially aged "parchments" we all got in school years ago. I suggest that each of you take the time this month to read through the text of the Declaration, one of the most noble and beautiful political documents in human history.

There is no more profound sentence than this: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness..."

These are far more than mere poetic words. The underlying ideas that infuse every sentence of this treatise have sustained this nation for more than two centuries. They were forged in the crucible of great sacrifice. They are living words that spring from and satisfy the deepest cries for liberty in the human spirit.

"Sacred honor" isn't a phrase we use much these days, but every American life is touched by the bounty of this, the Founders' legacy. It is freedom, tested by blood, and watered with tears.

- Rush Limbaugh III

Title: Washington: general orders; NC delegate WR Davie
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 20, 2009, 07:56:37 AM

"[T]he hour is fast approaching, on which the Honor and Success of this army, and the safety of our bleeding Country depend. Remember officers and Soldiers, that you are Freemen, fighting for the blessings of Liberty - that slavery will be your portion, and that of your posterity, if you do not acquit yourselves like men."

--George Washington, General Orders, 23 August 1776

"So low and hopeless are the finances of the United States, that, the year before last Congress was obliged to borrow money even, to pay the interest of the principal which we had borrowed before. This wretched resource of turning interest into principal, is the most humiliating and disgraceful measure that a nation could take, and approximates with rapidity to absolute ruin: Yet it is the inevitable and certain consequence of such a system as the existing Confederation." --North Carolina delegate to the Constitutional Convention William Richardson Davie (1756-1820)

Title: John Adams
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 21, 2009, 07:24:42 AM

"But what do we mean by the American Revolution? Do we mean the American war? The Revolution was effected before the war commenced. The Revolution was in the minds and hearts of the people; a change in their religious sentiments, of their duties and obligations... This radical change in the principles, opinions, sentiments, and affections of the people was the real American Revolution."

--John Adams, letter to H. Niles, 13 February 1818

Title: Jefferson to Milligan
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 22, 2009, 06:37:10 AM

"To take from one, because it is thought his own industry and that of his fathers has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers, have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association, the guarantee to everyone the free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it."

--Thomas Jefferson, letter to Joseph Milligan, 6 April 1816

Title: Madison: States' rights, limits on federal power
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 23, 2009, 09:14:58 AM

"The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite."

--James Madison, Federalist No. 45

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 23, 2009, 06:37:14 PM

A post from WT:
=======================

Some argue that since several of the Founding Fathers were Masons, and Masons only require belief in a supreme being, that they were simple deists.

Webster defines deism as: a movement or system of thought advocating natural religion, emphasizing morality, and in the 18th century denying the interference of the Creator with the laws of the universe

While two of the more well known members of our group were influenced by deism, I would not count that as a view held by a large number and surly not a majority.

And while Masons set a minimum, there is nothing that says you cannot hold Christian or Jewish beliefs.

It is a rather long list, but this may help: http://www.adherents.com/gov/Foundin..._Religion.html

For example:

It is generally agreed upon that Washington's beliefs could be described as "deist" during at least part of his life. Deism
for Washington, as with most historical figueres classified as deists, was never an actual religious affiliation, but was a classification of theological belief. As nearly all major political figures from Washington's era can be described as "deists" if a sufficiently broad definition is used an if the correct quotations are selected, classifying Washington as a Deist may not by particularly useful or distinctive.
__________________

Title: Farmer, anti-federalist letter
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 24, 2009, 06:17:32 AM

"Besides, to lay and collect internal taxes in this extensive country must require a great number of congressional ordinances, immediately operation upon the body of the people; these must continually interfere with the state laws and thereby produce disorder and general dissatisfaction till the one system of laws or the other, operating upon the same subjects, shall be abolished."

--Federal Farmer, Antifederalist Letter, 10 October 1787

Title: Reagan
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 27, 2009, 10:44:53 AM

"We maintain our strength in order to deter and defend against aggression -- to preserve freedom and peace. Since the dawn of the atomic age, we've sought to reduce the risk of war by maintaining a strong deterrent and by seeking genuine arms control. 'Deterrence' means simply this: making sure any adversary who thinks about attacking the United States, or our allies, or our vital interests, concludes that the risks to him outweigh any potential gains. Once he understands that, he won't attack. We maintain the peace through our strength; weakness only invites aggression." --Ronald Reagan

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 28, 2009, 05:59:40 AM

"It is a misfortune, inseparable from human affairs, that public measures are rarely investigated with that spirit of moderation which is essential to a just estimate of their real tendency to advance or obstruct the public good; and that this spirit is more apt to be diminished than prompted, by those occasions which require an unusual exercise of it."

--James Madison, Federalist No. 37

Title: Hamilton
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 29, 2009, 06:21:19 AM

Title: Washington; Franklin
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 30, 2009, 09:09:45 AM

"Let me now take a more comprehensive view, and warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the Spirit of Party generally. ... A fire not to be quenched, it demands a uniform vigilance to prevent its bursting into a flame, lest, instead of warming, it should consume."

--George Washington, Farewell Address, 19 September 1796
============
"A republic, if you can keep it." --Benjamin Franklin

Title: Madison
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 01, 2009, 06:46:21 AM

"We have heard of the impious doctrine in the old world, that the people were made for kings, not kings for the people. Is the same doctrine to be revived in the new, in another shape -- that the solid happiness of the people is to be sacrificed to the views of political institutions of a different form? It is too early for politicians to presume on our forgetting that the public good, the real welfare of the great body of the people, is the supreme object to be pursued; and that no form of government whatever has any other value than as it may be fitted for the attainment of this object."

--James Madison, Federalist No. 45

Title: Dickinson
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 04, 2009, 07:02:54 AM

"We may with reverence say, that our Creator designed men for society, because otherwise they cannot be happy. They cannot be happy without freedom; nor free without security; that is, without the absence of fear; nor thus secure, without society. The conclusion is strictly syllogistic—that man cannot be free without society. Of course, they cannot be equally free without society, which freedom produces the greatest happiness."

--John Dickinson, Letters of Fabius, 1788

Title: S. Adams; Reagan; Paine; Jefferson
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 05, 2009, 04:26:24 AM

"In the supposed state of nature, all men are equally bound by the laws of nature, or to speak more properly, the laws of the Creator."

--Samuel Adams, letter to the Legislature of Massachusetts, 17 January 1794

"[L]iberty can be measured by how much freedom Americans have to make their own decisions, even their own mistakes. Government must step in when one's liberties impinge on one's neighbor's. Government must protect constitutional rights, deal with other governments, protect citizens from aggressors, assure equal opportunity, and be compassionate in caring for those citizens who are unable to care for themselves. Our federal system of local-state-national government is designed to sort out on what level these actions should be taken. Those concerns of a national character -- such as air and water pollution that do not respect state boundaries, or the national transportation system, or efforts to safeguard your civil liberties -- must, of course, be handled on the national level. As a general rule, however, we believe that government action should be taken first by the government that resides as close to you as possible." --Ronald Reagan

Thomas Paine, (December 19, 1776): "If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may have peace." And it was Thomas Jefferson who asserted, "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure."

"I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than those attending too small a degree of it." --Thomas Jefferson

Title: Madison
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 06, 2009, 07:26:05 AM

"Distributive justice"? WTF?

"If individuals be not influenced by moral principles; it is in vain to look for public virtue; it is, therefore, the duty of legislators to enforce, both by precept and example, the utility, as well as the necessity of a strict adherence to the rules of distributive justice."

--James Madison in response to Washington's first Inaugural address, 18 May 1789

Title: J. Adams
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 07, 2009, 07:22:14 AM

"t is Religion and Morality alone, which can establish the Principles upon which Freedom can securely stand....The only foundation of a free Constitution, is pure Virtue, and if this cannot be inspired into our People, in a great Measure, than they have it now, They may change their Rulers, and the forms of Government, but they will not obtain a lasting Liberty."

--John Adams, letter to Zabdiel Adams, 21 June 1776

"If men through fear, fraud or mistake, should in terms renounce and give up any essential natural right, the eternal law of reason and the great end of society, would absolutely vacate such renunciation; the right to freedom being the gift of God Almighty, it is not in the power of Man to alienate this gift, and voluntarily become a slave." --John Adams

Title: S. Adams
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 08, 2009, 08:35:03 AM

"Since private and publick Vices, are in Reality, though not always apparently, so nearly connected, of how much Importance, how necessary is it, that the utmost Pains be taken by the Publick, to have the Principles of Virtue early inculcated on the Minds even of children, and the moral Sense kept alive, and that the wise institutions of our Ancestors for these great Purposes be encouraged by the Government. For no people will tamely surrender their Liberties, nor can any be easily subdued, when knowledge is diffusd and Virtue is preservd. On the Contrary, when People are universally ignorant, and debauchd in their Manners, they will sink under their own weight without the Aid of foreign Invaders."

--Samuel Adams, letter to James Warren, 4 November 1775

Title: Jefferson
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 11, 2009, 07:16:37 AM

"Man, once surrendering his reason, has no remaining guard against absurdities the most monstrous, and like a ship without rudder, is the spot of every wind. With such persons, gullability, which they call faith, takes the helm from the hand of reason and the mind becomes a wreck."

Thomas Jefferson, letter to James Smith, December 8, 1822

Title: Hamilton; Webster
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 11, 2009, 09:01:53 AM

"[T]he Constitution ought to be the standard of construction for the laws, and that wherever there is an evident opposition, the laws ought to give place to the Constitution." --Alexander Hamilton

"Hold on, my friends, to the Constitution and to the Republic for which it stands. Miracles do not cluster and what has happened once in 6,000 years, may not happen again. Hold on to the Constitution, for if the American Constitution should fail, there will be anarchy throughout the world." --U.S. Senator Daniel Webster (1782-1852)

Title: T. Paine; and noting a landmark
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 13, 2009, 08:31:10 AM

"Freedom had been hunted round the globe; reason was considered as rebellion; and the slavery of fear had made men afraid to think. But such is the irresistible nature of truth, that all it asks, and all it wants, is the liberty of appearing."

--Thomas Paine, Rights of Man, 1791

Also, with quiet satisfaction I note today that this thread now has over 25,000 reads and one short of 400 posts-- which works out to over 62 reads per post. In that when the thread began it averaged much less (15) for the longest time, that means that current reads per post are much higher.

Together, inspired and informed by what we read here, we shall sally forth and defend the American Creed.

Title: Our 400th post!
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 20, 2009, 03:40:27 AM

"This Government, the offspring of your own choice, uninfluenced and unawed, adopted upon full investigation and mature deliberation, completely free in its principles, in the distribution of its powers, uniting security with energy, and containing within itself a provision for its own amendment, has a just claim to your confidence and your support."

--George Washington, Farewell Address, 1796

Title: Jefferson on the Judiiciary
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 29, 2009, 06:53:17 AM

"The Constitution ... is a mere thing of wax in the hands of the judiciary which they may twist and shape into any form they please."

--Thomas Jefferson, letter to Judge Spencer Roane, September 6, 1819

Title: Story
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 02, 2009, 06:32:57 AM

"The truth is, that, even with the most secure tenure of office, during good behavior, the danger is not, that the judges will be too firm in resisting public opinion, and in defence of private rights or public liberties; but, that they will be ready to yield themselves to the passions, and politics, and prejudices of the day."

--Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution, 1833

Title: Jefferson: restraining judges
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 03, 2009, 03:58:33 AM

"One single object ... [will merit] the endless gratitude of the society: that of restraining the judges from usurping legislation."

--Thomas Jefferson, letter to Edward Livingston, March 25, 1825

Title: Several
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 05, 2009, 04:15:21 AM

"[T]here is not a syllable in the plan under consideration which directly empowers the national courts to construe the laws according to the spirit of the Constitution."

--Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 81, 1788

================
"The Constitution ... is a mere thing of wax in the hands of the judiciary which they may twist and shape into any form they please." --Thomas Jefferson
==============
"As on the one hand, the necessity for borrowing in particular emergencies cannot be doubted, so on the other, it is equally evident that to be able to borrow upon good terms, it is essential that the credit of a nation should be well established." --Alexander Hamilton
==========
"If a nation expects to be ignorant -- and free -- in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." --Thomas Jefferson
============
"The aim of every political constitution is, or ought to be, first to obtain for rulers men who possess most wisdom to discern, and most virture to pursue, the common good of the society; and in the next place, to take the most effectual precautions for keeping them virtuous whilst they continue to hold their public trust."

--Federalist No. 57 (Alexander Hamilton or James Madison), 1788
==========
"His Example is now complete, and it will teach wisdom and virtue to magistrates, citizens, and men, not only in the present age, but in future generations, as long as our history shall be read."

--John Adams, message to the U.S. Senate on George Washington's death, December 19, 1799

===============
"The Supreme Court of the United States is the custodian of our Constitution. Justices of the Supreme Court must not only be jurists of the highest competence; they must be attentive to the specific rights guaranteed in our Constitution and proper role of the courts in our democratic system. ...[J]udges' personal preferences and values should not be part of their constitutional interpretations. The guiding principle of judicial restraint recognizes that under the Constitution it is the exclusive province of the legislatures to enact laws and the role of the courts to interpret them." --Ronald Reagan

Title: Jefferson: Rights of British America, 1774
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 09, 2009, 06:03:44 AM

"A free people [claim] their rights as derived from the laws of nature, and not as the gift of their chief magistrate."

--Thomas Jefferson, Rights of British America, 1774

Title: James Wilson: The Object of government
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 10, 2009, 06:19:56 AM

"Government, in my humble opinion, should be formed to secure and to enlarge the exercise of the natural rights of its members; and every government, which has not this in view, as its principal object, is not a government of the legitimate kind."

--James Wilson, Lectures on Law, 1790

Title: Col. Brooks
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 11, 2009, 08:32:14 AM

"Under all those disadvantages no men ever show more spirit or prudence than ours. In my opinion nothing but virtue has kept our army together through this campaign."

--Colonel John Brooks, letter to a friend, January 5, 1778

Title: Madison; J. Adams
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 15, 2009, 08:20:42 AM

"Justice is the end of government. It is the end of civil society. It ever has been and ever will be pursued until it be obtained, or until liberty be lost in the pursuit."

--James Madison, Federalist No. 51, February 8, 1788
=====================

"The foundation of national morality must be laid in private families. ... How is it possible that Children can have any just Sense of the sacred Obligations of Morality or Religion if, from their earliest Infancy, they learn their Mothers live in habitual Infidelity to their fathers, and their fathers in as constant Infidelity to their Mothers?" --John Adams

Title: Jefferson
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 16, 2009, 05:47:14 AM

"It is the duty of every good citizen to use all the opportunities which occur to him, for preserving documents relating to the history of our country."

--Thomas Jefferson, letter to Hugh P. Taylor, October 4, 1823

Title: Webster
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 17, 2009, 04:28:15 AM

Title: Paine
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 18, 2009, 03:17:48 AM

"As parents, we can have no joy, knowing that this government is not sufficiently lasting to ensure any thing which we may bequeath to posterity: And by a plain method of argument, as we are running the next generation into debt, we ought to do the work of it, otherwise we use them meanly and pitifully. In order to discover the line of our duty rightly, we should take our children in our hand, and fix our station a few years farther into life; that eminence will present a prospect, which a few present fears and prejudices conceal from our sight."

--Thomas Paine, Common Sense, 1776

Title: Wilson
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 22, 2009, 05:42:22 AM

"The first and governing maxim in the interpretation of a statute is to discover the meaning of those who made it."

--James Wilson, Of the Study of Law in the United States, Circa, 1790

Title: Hamilton
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 23, 2009, 06:36:41 AM

"[T]he Constitution ought to be the standard of construction for the laws, and that wherever there is an evident opposition, the laws ought to give place to the Constitution. But this doctrine is not deducible from any circumstance peculiar to the plan of convention, but from the general theory of a limited Constitution."

--Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 81, 1788

Title: J. Adams: Property Rights
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 24, 2009, 05:02:38 AM

"The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the laws of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence. If `Thou shalt not covet' and `Thou shalt not steal' were not commandments of Heaven, they must be made inviolable precepts in every society before it can be civilized or made free."

--John Adams, A Defense of the American Constitutions, 1787

Title: Hamilton
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 26, 2009, 05:03:21 AM

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:Paine
Post by: Freki on June 26, 2009, 06:44:43 AM

Title: Interesting blog on Jefferson
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 27, 2009, 11:41:29 AM

http://kalman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/25/time-wastes-too-fast/?em

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 29, 2009, 07:03:37 AM

"Where liberty dwells, there is my country."

--Benjamin Franklin (attributed), letter to Benjamin Vaughn, March 14, 1783

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:Jefferson on judiciary
Post by: Freki on June 30, 2009, 05:38:42 AM

At the establishment of our constitutions, the judiciary bodies were supposed to be the most helpless and harmless members of the government. Experience, however, soon showed in what way they were to become the most dangerous; that the insufficiency of the means provided for their removal gave them a freehold and irresponsibility in office; that their decisions, seeming to concern individual suitors only, pass silent and unheeded by the public at large; that these decisions, nevertheless, become law by precedent, sapping, by little and little, the foundations of the constitution, and working its change by construction, before any one has perceived that that invisible and helpless worm has been busily employed in consuming its substance. In truth, man is not made to be trusted for life, if secured against all liability to account.

Thomas Jefferson, letter to Monsieur A. Coray, Oct 31, 1823

Title: J. Adams
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 30, 2009, 07:54:32 AM

"Liberty must at all hazards be supported. We have a right to it, derived from our Maker. But if we had not, our fathers have earned and bought it for us, at the expense of their ease, their estates, their pleasure, and their blood."

--John Adams, A Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law, 1765

Title: Washington:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 01, 2009, 06:20:57 AM

"Our cause is noble; it is the cause of mankind!"

--George Washington, letter to James Warren, March 31, 1779

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:Jefferson
Post by: Freki on July 01, 2009, 06:49:11 PM

But with respect to future debt; would it not be wise and just for that nation to declare in the constitution they are forming that neither the legislature, nor the nation itself can validly contract more debt, than they may pay within their own age, or within the term of 19 years.

Thomas Jefferson, September 6, 1789

Title: Paine; Jefferson and music
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 02, 2009, 05:17:31 AM

"The Sun never shined on a cause of greater worth."

--Thomas Paine, Common Sense, 1776
===============================
By BARRYMORE LAURENCE SCHERER
July 4, 1826, was a significant anniversary in America's history. On that 50th jubilee of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, Stephen Foster, who would widely be regarded as the nation's first popular songwriter, was born in Pittsburgh. Meanwhile, in Quincy, Mass., one of the pre-eminent signatories to the Declaration, John Adams, died at age 90. According to tradition, the last words he spoke were "Thomas Jefferson still survives." But his old friend -- and former political rival -- had actually passed away that morning, at 83. And with Jefferson's death the nation lost not just one of its greatest statesmen but one of its cultural leaders.

Jefferson was a true Renaissance man. Law, diplomacy and politics were his profession, but his activities embraced virtually all the liberal arts and sciences: from mathematics and philosophy to economics, archaeology, ornithology, ichthyology, horticulture, architecture, art and music.

Music, however, was Jefferson's particular delight, "an enjoyment, the deprivation of which . . . cannot be calculated," he declared in 1785. From early boyhood, he pursued this "passion of my soul," studying the violin with a teacher in Williamsburg, Va. By the time he matriculated at the College of William and Mary in 1760, his playing was so fluent that he was invited for weekly chamber music gatherings with the royal governor of Virginia. Jefferson even purchased a "kit" -- a slender dance-master's pocket fiddle -- and had a case for it fashioned for his saddle so he could play and practice while traveling.

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Randy Jones
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Cryptologist Cracks Presidential Code Not surprisingly, music played an important role in his courtship of the charming young widow Martha Skelton, another Colonial music lover, who played keyboard instruments and guitar. According to Jefferson family lore, two of Jefferson's amatory rivals encountered one another on Mrs. Skelton's doorstep. While waiting to be received by her, they heard her singing a touching song to her own harpsichord accompaniment in an adjoining room. Then they heard a gentleman sing with her and play a violin obbligato. Knowing that Jefferson was the only violinist in the neighborhood, one suitor said to the other, "We are wasting our time," and they quietly left in defeat. Jefferson married Skelton on new year's day, 1772.

The future president's musical tastes -- which he imparted to his children -- were sophisticated and broadly rooted in popular composers from the 17th through the middle-18th centuries. He deemed Arcangelo Corelli his favorite composer, deeply admired Haydn and had a great love for French and Italian opera. Not surprisingly, violin, chamber and keyboard music formed a major part of his extensive music library, which he cataloged in 1783 and is now housed at the University of Virginia.

Among the volumes and music sheets are sonatas, concertos (with accompanying parts), overtures and other works by Corelli, Haydn, Gluck, Handel, Vivaldi, Pergolesi, Boccherini, Stamitz, Clementi and J.C. Bach (J.S. Bach's youngest son). There are also many works by contemporaneous names less familiar today, among them Padre Martini, Gaetano Pugnani, Ignaz Pleyel and the Italianized German Giovanni Adolfo Hasse. Vocal music abounds, including scores of Handel's "Messiah" and "Alexander's Feast," Handel's Coronation and Funeral Anthems, Haydn's solo cantatas, John Gay's "The Beggar's Opera," Purcell's song collection "Orpheus Brittanicus," and Thomas Arne's operas "Artaxerxes" and "Alfred" (with its finale, "Rule Britannia").

Surprisingly, however, there is scant Mozart. And while there are many solos, duos and trios for violin, cello and keyboard, there are no string quartets.

Jefferson also collected American music, both folk songs and those of emerging composers. To his fellow Declaration signer Francis Hopkinson, who ranks as the first American-born composer of art songs, he wrote in 1789: "Accept my thanks . . . and my daughter's . . . for the book of songs [Hopkinson's "Seven Songs" of c. 1784]. I will not tell you how much they have pleased us, nor how well the last of them merits praise for its pathos, but relate . . . that while my elder daughter was playing it on the harpsichord, I happened to the younger one all in tears. I asked her if she was sick. She said, 'no; but the tune was so mournful.'"

According to Jefferson's granddaughter Ellen Coolidge, whose bedroom at Monticello was above his, the former president could often be heard "humming old tunes, generally Scotch songs but sometimes Italian airs or hymns."

In old age, Jefferson wrote with typical insight that "music is invaluable where a person has an ear," continuing that "it furnishes a delightful recreation for the hours of respite from the cares of the day, and lasts us through life." Certainly, music helped the "Philosopher of Democracy" to bear exceptional responsibilities throughout a career in which he was successively a colonial revolutionary, our ambassador to France, our first secretary of state, our second vice president and one of our greatest chief executives.

Mr. Scherer writes about music and the fine arts for The Journal. He is the author of the award-winning book "A History of American Classical Music" (Sourcebooks, 2007).

Title: Jefferson and ciphers/codes
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 02, 2009, 06:47:22 AM

second post
WSJ

By RACHEL EMMA SILVERMAN
For more than 200 years, buried deep within Thomas Jefferson's correspondence and papers, there lay a mysterious cipher -- a coded message that appears to have remained unsolved. Until now.

The cryptic message was sent to President Jefferson in December 1801 by his friend and frequent correspondent, Robert Patterson, a mathematics professor at the University of Pennsylvania. President Jefferson and Mr. Patterson were both officials at the American Philosophical Society -- a group that promoted scholarly research in the sciences and humanities -- and were enthusiasts of ciphers and other codes, regularly exchanging letters about them.

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University of Pennsylvania Archives

Robert Patterson
In this message, Mr. Patterson set out to show the president and primary author of the Declaration of Independence what he deemed to be a nearly flawless cipher. "The art of secret writing," or writing in cipher, has "engaged the attention both of the states-man & philosopher for many ages," Mr. Patterson wrote. But, he added, most ciphers fall "far short of perfection."

To Mr. Patterson's view, a perfect code had four properties: It should be adaptable to all languages; it should be simple to learn and memorize; it should be easy to write and to read; and most important of all, "it should be absolutely inscrutable to all unacquainted with the particular key or secret for decyphering."

Mr. Patterson then included in the letter an example of a message in his cipher, one that would be so difficult to decode that it would "defy the united ingenuity of the whole human race," he wrote.

There is no evidence that Jefferson, or anyone else for that matter, ever solved the code. But Jefferson did believe the cipher was so inscrutable that he considered having the State Department use it, and passed it on to the ambassador to France, Robert Livingston.

The cipher finally met its match in Lawren Smithline, a 36-year-old mathematician. Dr. Smithline has a Ph.D. in mathematics and now works professionally with cryptology, or code-breaking, at the Center for Communications Research in Princeton, N.J., a division of the Institute for Defense Analyses.

A couple of years ago, Dr. Smithline's neighbor, who was working on a Jefferson project at Princeton University, told Dr. Smithline of Mr. Patterson's mysterious cipher.

Dr. Smithline, intrigued, decided to take a look. "A problem like this cipher can keep me up at night," he says. After unlocking its hidden message in 2007, Dr. Smithline articulated his puzzle-solving techniques in a recent paper in the magazine American Scientist and also in a profile in Harvard Magazine, his alma mater's alumni journal.

The "Perfect" Cipher?
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The 1801 letter from Robert Patterson to Thomas Jefferson The code, Mr. Patterson made clear in his letter, was not a simple substitution cipher. That's when you replace one letter of the alphabet with another. The problem with substitution ciphers is that they can be cracked by using what's termed frequency analysis, or studying the number of times that a particular letter occurs in a message. For instance, the letter "e" is the most common letter in English, so if a code is sufficiently long, whatever letter appears most often is likely a substitute for "e."

Because frequency analysis was already well known in the 19th century, cryptographers of the time turned to other techniques. One was called the nomenclator: a catalog of numbers, each standing for a word, syllable, phrase or letter. Mr. Jefferson's correspondence shows that he used several code books of nomenclators. An issue with these tools, according to Mr. Patterson's criteria, is that a nomenclator is too tough to memorize.

Jefferson even wrote about his own ingenious code, a model of which is at his home, Monticello, in Charlottesville, Va. Called the wheel cipher, the device consisted of cylindrical pieces, threaded onto an iron spindle, with letters inscribed on the edge of each wheel in a random order. Users could scramble and unscramble words simply by turning the wheels.

But Mr. Patterson had a few more tricks up his sleeve. He wrote the message text vertically, in columns from left to right, using no capital letters or spaces. The writing formed a grid, in this case of about 40 lines of some 60 letters each.

Then, Mr. Patterson broke the grid into sections of up to nine lines, numbering each line in the section from one to nine. In the next step, Mr. Patterson transcribed each numbered line to form a new grid, scrambling the order of the numbered lines within each section. Every section, however, repeated the same jumbled order of lines.

The trick to solving the puzzle, as Mr. Patterson explained in his letter, meant knowing the following: the number of lines in each section, the order in which those lines were transcribed and the number of random letters added to each line.

The key to the code consisted of a series of two-digit pairs. The first digit indicated the line number within a section, while the second was the number of letters added to the beginning of that row. For instance, if the key was 58, 71, 33, that meant that Mr. Patterson moved row five to the first line of a section and added eight random letters; then moved row seven to the second line and added one letter, and then moved row three to the third line and added three random letters. Mr. Patterson estimated that the potential combinations to solve the puzzle was "upwards of ninety millions of millions."

Thomas Jefferson
After explaining this in his letter, Mr. Patterson wrote, "I presume the utter impossibility of decyphering will be readily acknowledged."

Undaunted, Dr. Smithline decided to tackle the cipher by analyzing the probability of digraphs, or pairs of letters. Certain pairs of letters, such as "dx," don't exist in English, while some letters almost always appear next to a certain other letter, such as "u" after "q".

To get a sense of language patterns of the era, Dr. Smithline studied the 80,000 letter-characters contained in Jefferson's State of the Union addresses, and counted the frequency of occurrences of "aa," "ab," "ac," through "zz."

Dr. Smithline then made a series of educated guesses, such as the number of rows per section, which two rows belong next to each other, and the number of random letters inserted into a line.

To help vet his guesses, he turned to a tool not available during the 19th century: a computer algorithm. He used what's called "dynamic programming," which solves large problems by breaking puzzles down into smaller pieces and linking together the solutions.

The overall calculations necessary to solve the puzzle were fewer than 100,000, which Dr. Smithline says would be "tedious in the 19th century, but doable."

After about a week of working on the puzzle, the numerical key to Mr. Patterson's cipher emerged -- 13, 34, 57, 65, 22, 78, 49. Using that digital key, he was able to unfurl the cipher's text:

"In Congress, July Fourth, one thousand seven hundred and seventy six. A declaration by the Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled. When in the course of human events..."

That, of course, is the beginning -- with a few liberties taken -- to the Declaration of Independence, written at least in part by Jefferson himself. "Patterson played this little joke on Thomas Jefferson," says Dr. Smithline. "And nobody knew until now."

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:Paine
Post by: Freki on July 04, 2009, 06:46:24 AM

Title: New Citizenship Test
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on July 04, 2009, 05:22:35 PM

I got 100%, how 'bout you:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25461301/?GT1=43001

Title: Hamilton
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 06, 2009, 05:56:17 AM

"When occasions present themselves, in which the interests of the people are at variance with their inclinations, it is the duty of the persons whom they have appointed to be the guardians of those interests, to withstand the temporary delusion, in order to give them time and opportunity for more cool and sedate reflection."

--Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 71

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:Jefferson
Post by: Freki on July 06, 2009, 11:59:14 AM

If we can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people, under the pretence of taking care of them, they must become happy.

Thomas Jefferson, letter to Thomas Cooper, Nov 29, 1802

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Boyo on July 06, 2009, 03:18:14 PM

Every age and generation must be free to act for itself, in all cases , as the ages and generations which preceded it. The vanity and presumption of governing beyond the grave , is the most ridiculous and insolent of all tyrannies

Thomas Paine

Boyo

Title: Jefferson, 1775
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 07, 2009, 06:24:41 AM

"It behooves you, therefore, to think and act for yourself and your people. The great principles of right and wrong are legible to every reader; to pursue them requires not the aid of many counselors. The whole art of government consists in the art of being honest. Only aim to do your duty, and mankind will give you credit where you fail."

--Thomas Jefferson, A Summary View of the Rights of British America, 1775

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:Paine
Post by: Freki on July 07, 2009, 08:47:42 PM

Society in every state is a blessing, but government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one; for when we suffer or are exposed to the same miseries by a government, which we might expect in a country without government, our calamity is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer.

Thomas Paine, Common Sense, 1776

Title: S. Adams
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 08, 2009, 07:37:47 AM

"If men of wisdom and knowledge, of moderation and temperance, of patience, fortitude and perseverance, of sobriety and true republican simplicity of manners, of zeal for the honour of the Supreme Being and the welfare of the commonwealth; if men possessed of these other excellent qualities are chosen to fill the seats of government, we may expect that our affairs will rest on a solid and permanent foundation."

--Samuel Adams, letter to Elbridge Gerry, November 27, 1780

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:Madison
Post by: Freki on July 09, 2009, 05:32:28 AM

A just security to property is not afforded by that government, under which unequal taxes oppress one species of property and reward another species.

James Madison, Essay on Property, March 29, 1792

Title: George Mason; Federalist 62
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 09, 2009, 06:33:14 AM

Freki-- ain't that the truth!
===============

"Nothing so strongly impels a man to regard the interest of his constituents, as the certainty of returning to the general mass of the people, from whence he was taken, where he must participate in their burdens."

--George Mason, speech in the Virginia Ratifying Convention, June 17, 1788
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"Every new regulation concerning commerce or revenue; or in any manner affecting the value of the different species of property, presents a new harvest to those who watch the change and can trace its consequences; a harvest reared not by themselves but by the toils and cares of the great body of their fellow citizens." --Federalist No. 62

Title: Parsons
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 10, 2009, 06:43:33 AM

Title: Thomas Paine
Post by: Freki on July 11, 2009, 05:47:19 AM

Title: 2nd post Madison: Tea Party Spirit
Post by: Freki on July 11, 2009, 05:58:13 AM

As the cool and deliberate sense of the community ought in all governments, and actually will in all free governments ultimately prevail over the views of its rulers; so there are particular moments in public affairs, when the people stimulated by some irregular passion, or some illicit advantage, or misled by the artful misrepresentations of interested men, may call for measures which they themselves will afterwards be the most ready to lament and condemn. In these critical moments, how salutary will be the interference of some temperate and respectable body of citizens, in order to check the misguided career, and to suspend the blow mediated by the people against themselves, until reason, justice and truth, can regain their authority over the public mind?

James Madison (likely), Federalist No. 63, 1788

This is what the tea party movement is about!..IMHO
Freki

Title: J. Adams
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 13, 2009, 05:27:59 AM

"If men through fear, fraud or mistake, should in terms renounce and give up any essential natural right, the eternal law of reason and the great end of society, would absolutely vacate such renunciation; the right to freedom being the gift of God Almighty, it is not in the power of Man to alienate this gift, and voluntarily become a slave."

--John Adams, Rights of the Colonists, 1772

Title: Paine
Post by: Freki on July 14, 2009, 07:34:04 PM

Freedom had been hunted round the globe; reason was considered as rebellion; and the slavery of fear had made men afraid to think. But such is the irresistible nature of truth, that all it asks, and all it wants, is the liberty of appearing.

Thomas Paine, Rights of Man, 1791

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 14, 2009, 08:55:42 PM

8-)

Title: Madison: Persons and property
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 15, 2009, 04:13:10 AM

"It is sufficiently obvious, that persons and property are the two great subjects on which Governments are to act; and that the rights of persons, and the rights of property, are the objects, for the protection of which Government was instituted. These rights cannot well be separated."

--James Madison, Speech at the Virginia Convention, December 2, 1829

Title: Re: The American Creed: Jefferson
Post by: Freki on July 15, 2009, 08:21:11 PM

Cherish, therefore, the spirit of our people, and keep alive their attention. Do not be too severe upon their errors, but reclaim them by enlightening them. If once they become inattentive to the public affairs, you and I, and Congress, and Assemblies, Judges, and Governors, shall all become wolves.

Thomas Jefferson, letter to Edward Carrington, January 16, 1787

Title: Re: The American Creed: Jefferson
Post by: Freki on July 16, 2009, 05:26:02 AM

Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves, therefore, are its only safe depositories.

Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, Query 14, 1781

Title: Jefferson, 1826
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 16, 2009, 06:16:03 AM

"All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride legitimately, by the grace of God."

--Thomas Jefferson, letter to Roger C. Weightman, June 24, 1826

Title: Re: The American Creed: Old Ben
Post by: Freki on July 17, 2009, 05:34:26 AM

I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion of the means. I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it. In my youth I traveled much, and I observed in different countries, that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer.

Benjamin Franklin, On the Price of Corn and Management of the Poor, November 1766

Title: Madison, 1792
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 17, 2009, 06:08:36 AM

"As a man is said to have a right to his property, he may be equally said to have a property in his rights. Where an excess of power prevails, property of no sort is duly respected. No man is safe in his opinions, his person, his faculties, or his possessions."

--James Madison, National Gazette Essay, March 27, 1792

Title: Re: The American Creed: Madison
Post by: Freki on July 19, 2009, 06:45:27 PM

But ambitious encroachments of the federal government, on the authority of the State governments, would not excite the opposition of a single State, or of a few States only. They would be signals of general alarm... But what degree of madness could ever drive the federal government to such an extremity.

James Madison, Federalist No. 46, January 29, 1788

Title: Re: The American Creed: Jefferson
Post by: Freki on July 20, 2009, 06:05:27 AM

“Of liberty I would say that, in the whole plenitude of its extent, it is unobstructed action according to our will. But rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add 'within the limits of the law,' because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the right of an individual.” Thomas Jefferson

“I think we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious.” -Thomas Jefferson

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 20, 2009, 06:09:08 AM

"Let justice be done though the heavens should fall."

--John Adams, letter to Elbridge Gerry, December 5, 1777

Title: Washington
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 21, 2009, 06:13:58 AM

"The best and only safe road to honor, glory, and true dignity is justice."

--George Washington letter to Marquis de Lafayette, September 30, 1779

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers: Old Ben
Post by: Freki on July 22, 2009, 04:41:25 AM

Repeal that [welfare] law, and you will soon see a change in their manners. St. Monday and St. Tuesday, will soon cease to be holidays. Six days shalt thou labor, though one of the old commandments long treated as out of date, will again be looked upon as a respectable precept; industry will increase, and with it plenty among the lower people; their circumstances will mend, and more will be done for their happiness by inuring them to provide for themselves, than could be done by dividing all your estates among them.

Benjamin Franklin, letter to Collinson, May 9, 1753

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers: Madison
Post by: Freki on July 23, 2009, 05:44:26 AM

Each State, in ratifying the Constitution, is considered as a sovereign body, independent of all others, and only to be bound by its own voluntary act. In this relation, then, the new Constitution will, if established, be a FEDERAL, and not a NATIONAL constitution.

James Madison, Federalist No. 39, January 1788

Title: Madison; Federalist 51
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 23, 2009, 08:00:26 AM

Good one there from Madison Freki.

"How could a readiness for war in time of peace be safely prohibited, unless we could prohibit, in like manner, the preparations and establishments of every hostile nation?" --James Madison

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"Justice is the end of government. It is the end of civil society. It ever has been and ever will be pursued until it be obtained, or until liberty be lost in the pursuit."

--Federalist No. 51, February 8, 1788

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers: Adams
Post by: Freki on July 25, 2009, 06:17:03 AM

Each individual of the society has a right to be protected by it in the enjoyment of his life, liberty, and property, according to standing laws. He is obliged, consequently, to contribute his share to the expense of this protection; and to give his personal service, or an equivalent, when necessary. But no part of the property of any individual can, with justice, be taken from him, or applied to public uses, without his own consent, or that of the representative body of the people. In fine, the people of this commonwealth are not controllable by any other laws than those to which their constitutional representative body have given their consent.

John Adams, Thoughts on Government, 1776

We have dropped the ball and allowed some laws to pass that threaten the country our founders bleed and fought so hard to create. Property is no longer sacred. The government seems to be able to take it at a whim. I only hope we can work the system to right these mistakes.

Freki

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers: Adams
Post by: Freki on July 27, 2009, 05:25:02 AM

Liberty must at all hazards be supported. We have a right to it, derived from our Maker. But if we had not, our fathers have earned and bought it for us, at the expense of their ease, their estates, their pleasure, and their blood.

John Adams, A Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law, 1765

Title: Federalist 55
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 27, 2009, 06:54:29 AM

Freki: Great to have you adding to the mix.
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"In all very numerous assemblies, of whatever character composed, passion never fails to wrest the sceptre from reason. ... Had every Athenian citizen been a Socrates, every Athenian assembly would still have been a mob." --Federalist No. 55, February 15, 1788

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers: Jefferson
Post by: Freki on July 28, 2009, 05:57:20 AM

Dependence begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition.

Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, Query 19, 1787

It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself. Subject opinion to coercion: whom will you make your inquisitors?

Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, Query 17, 1781

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Crafty I just want to thank you for this forum. I get much more from this than I put in, Thanks to you and all who participate.

Freki

Title: Federalist 57
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 28, 2009, 06:47:53 AM

"The house of representatives ... can make no law which will not have its full operation on themselves and their friends, as well as the great mass of society. This has always been deemed one of the strongest bonds by which human policy can connect the rulers and the people together. It creates between them that communion of interest, and sympathy of sentiments, of which few governments have furnished examples; but without which every government degenerates into tyranny." --Federalist No. 57, February 19, 1788

Title: Coxe
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 29, 2009, 05:43:09 AM

"As our president bears no resemblance to a king so we shall see the Senate has no similitude to nobles." --Tench Coxe, An American Citizen, No. 2, 1787

Title: J. Adams: Thoughts on Govt, meaning of equal
Post by: Freki on July 29, 2009, 06:30:06 AM

It already appears, that there must be in every society of men superiors and inferiors, because God has laid in the constitution and course of nature the foundations of the distinction.

John Adams, Thoughts on Government, 1776

But the the founders said all men were created equal! How can this be? They meant all men are treated equally by the law, not that everyone should have the same things or wealth should be spread around to make it fair. They would have called social justice TYRANY!!!!! "God has laid in the constitution and course of nature the foundations of the distinction." The purpose of the U.S. government was to allow you to pursue your business to the best of your ability without fear of Nobles or powerful men, who are above the law, taking your property or life. Now it is the federal government that seizes property!

IMHO Freki

Title: Founding Sources Cited
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on July 29, 2009, 09:40:18 AM

A former soldier has something to say:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y98HxYbsdBM&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]

Title: Paine: taxation
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 30, 2009, 04:32:47 AM

"If, from the more wretched parts of the old world, we look at those which are in an advanced stage of improvement, we still find the greedy hand of government thrusting itself into every corner and crevice of industry, and grasping the spoil of the multitude. Invention is continually exercised, to furnish new pretenses for revenues and taxation. It watches prosperity as its prey and permits none to escape without tribute." --Thomas Paine, Rights of Man, 1791

Title: Federalist 57
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 31, 2009, 03:11:53 AM

"If it be asked what is to restrain the House of Representatives from making legal discriminations in favor of themselves and a particular class of the society? I answer, the genius of the whole system, the nature of just and constitutional laws, and above all the vigilant and manly spirit which actuates the people of America, a spirit which nourishes freedom, and in return is nourished by it." --Federalist No. 57, February 19, 1788

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers: General Welfare Quotes
Post by: Freki on July 31, 2009, 05:34:27 AM

57 is nice
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In response to the Soldier's speech
=========================

Thomas Jefferson: “Congress has not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare, but only those specifically enumerated.”

James Madison: “With respect to the two words ‘general welfare,’ I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators.”

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers: Jefferson
Post by: Freki on August 02, 2009, 05:35:23 AM

The most sacred of the duties of a government [is] to do equal and impartial justice to all citizens.

Thomas Jefferson, Note in Destutt de Tracy, 1816
===================================

The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.

Thomas Jefferson, letter to Edward Carrington, May 27, 1788
==============================================

The multiplication of public offices, increase of expense beyond income, growth and entailment of a public debt, are indications soliciting the employment of the pruning knife.

Thomas Jefferson, letter to Spencer Roane, March 9, 1821

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers: Adams
Post by: Freki on August 03, 2009, 06:14:20 AM

"They define a republic to be a government of laws, and not of men." --John Adams

John Adams: “The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the laws of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence. If ‘Thou shalt not covet’ and ‘Thou shalt not steal’ were not commandments of Heaven, they must be made inviolable precepts in every society before it can be civilized or made free.

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:Madison Father of the Constituion
Post by: Freki on August 04, 2009, 06:34:32 AM

James Madison: “That is not a just government, nor is property secure under it, where the property which a man has in his personal safety and personal liberty, is violated by arbitrary seizures of one class of citizens for the service of the rest.”

James Madison: If there be a government then which prides itself in maintaining the inviolability of property; which provides that none shall be taken directly even for public use without indemnification to the owner, and yet directly violates the property which individuals have in their opinions, their religion, their persons, and their faculties; nay more, which indirectly violates their property, in their actual possessions, in the labor that acquires their daily subsistence, and in the hallowed remnant of time which ought to relieve their fatigues and soothe their cares, the influence will have been anticipated, that such a government is not a pattern for the United States.

James Madison: A just security to property is not afforded by that government, under which unequal taxes oppress one species of property and reward another species: where arbitrary taxes invade the domestic sanctuaries of the rich, and excessive taxes grind the faces of the poor; where the keenness and competitions of want are deemed an insufficient spur to labor, and taxes are again applied, by an unfeeling policy, as another spur; in violation of that sacred property, which Heaven, in decreeing man to earn his bread by the sweat of his brow, kindly reserved to him, in the small repose that could be spared from the supply of his necessities.

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 06, 2009, 04:10:28 AM

"[T]he government of the United States is a definite government, confined to specified objects. It is not like the state governments, whose powers are more general. Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government." --James Madison

"The ordaining of laws in favor of one part of the nation, to the prejudice and oppression of another, is certainly the most erroneous and mistaken policy. An equal dispensation of protection, rights, privileges, and advantages, is what every part is entitled to, and ought to enjoy." --Benjamin Franklin, Emblematical Representations, 1774

"With respect to the two words 'general welfare,' I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators." --James Madison

"Our struggle for nationhood, our unrelenting fight for freedom, our very existence -- these have all rested on the assurance that you must be free to shape your life as you are best able to, that no one can stop you from reaching higher or take from you the creativity that has made America the envy of mankind." --Ronald Reagan

"We lay it down as a fundamental, that laws, to be just, must give a reciprocation of right; that, without this, they are mere arbitrary rules of conduct, founded in force, and not in conscience." --Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the state of Virginia, 1782

"[W]here there is no law, there is no liberty; and nothing deserves the name of law but that which is certain and universal in its operation upon all the members of the community." --Benjamin Rush, letter to David Ramsay, circa April 1788

"An unlimited power to tax involves, necessarily, a power to destroy; because there is a limit beyond which no institution and no property can bear taxation." --John Marshall

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers: Jefferson
Post by: Freki on August 07, 2009, 05:42:40 AM

The germ of dissolution of our federal government is in the constitution of the federal judiciary; an irresponsible body, (for impeachment is scarcely a scare-crow) working like gravity by night and by day, gaining a little today and a little tomorrow, and advancing its noiseless step like a thief, over the field of jurisdiction, until all shall be usurped from the States, and the government of all be consolidated into one.

Thomas Jefferson, letter to Charles Hammond, Aug 18, 1821

Title: Fisher Ames; Hamilton on curing heresies
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 07, 2009, 07:14:12 AM

Freki: Jefferson was one wise man!

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"I am commonly opposed to those who modestly assume the rank of champions of liberty, and make a very patriotic noise about the people. It is the stale artifice which has duped the world a thousand times, and yet, though detected, it is still successful. I love liberty as well as anybody. I am proud of it, as the true title of our people to distinction above others; but ... I would guard it by making the laws strong enough to protect it." --Fisher Ames, letter to George Richard Minot, 1789

"In politics, as in religion, it is equally absurd to aim at making proselytes by fire and sword. Heresies in either can rarely be cured by persecution." --Alexander Hamilton

Title: Madison: Democracy or Republic?
Post by: Freki on August 10, 2009, 06:50:43 AM

An ELECTIVE DESPOTISM was not the government we fought for; but one which should not only be founded on free principles, but in which the powers of government should be so divided and balanced among several bodies of magistracy, as that no one could transcend their legal limits, without being effectually checked and restrained by the others.

James Madison, Federalist No. 48, February 1, 1788

As there is a degree of depravity in mankind which requires a certain degree of circumspection and distrust: So there are other qualities in human nature, which justify a certain portion of esteem and confidence. Republican government presupposes the existence of these qualities in a higher degree than any other form. Were the pictures which have been drawn by the political jealousy of some among us, faithful likenesses of the human character, the inference would be that there is not sufficient virtue among men for self-government; and that nothing less than the chains of despotism can restrain them from destroying and devouring one another.

James Madison, Federalist No. 55, February 15, 1788

Title: Jefferson; Hamilton; Franklin; Jefferson; Reagan; Jefferson
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 11, 2009, 04:27:22 AM

"Dependence begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition." --Thomas Jefferson, Notes on Virginia, Query 19, 1781

"In politics, as in religion, it is equally absurd to aim at making proselytes by fire and sword. Heresies in either can rarely be cured by persecution." --Alexander Hamilton

"Repeal that [welfare] law, and you will soon see a change in their manners. St. Monday and St. Tuesday, will soon cease to be holidays. Six days shalt thou labor, though one of the old commandments long treated as out of date, will again be looked upon as a respectable precept; industry will increase, and with it plenty among the lower people; their circumstances will mend, and more will be done for their happiness by inuring them to provide for themselves, than could be done by dividing all your estates among them." --Benjamin Franklin, letter to Collinson, 1753

"On every unauthoritative exercise of power by the legislature must the people rise in rebellion or their silence be construed into a surrender of that power to them? If so, how many rebellions should we have had already?" --Thomas Jefferson

"The intellectual establishment [is] so busy demanding more power for government, more bureaucracy, regulation, spending and -- oh, yes -- more and more taxes, they forgot all about the secret of America's success -- opportunity for people, for all the people. ... Will we heed the pessimists' agenda of higher taxes, more bureaucracy, and a bigger welfare state leading us right back to runaway inflation and economic decay, or will we [take the] road toward a true opportunity society of economic growth, more jobs, lower tax rates, and rising take-home pay?" --Ronald Reagan

"Dependence begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition." --Thomas Jefferson, Notes on Virginia, Query 19, 1781

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers: Madison
Post by: Freki on August 11, 2009, 05:34:39 AM

Title: Jefferson: Washington vs. States Rights
Post by: Freki on August 11, 2009, 09:06:36 PM

[T]he States can best govern our home concerns and the general government our foreign ones. I wish, therefore... never to see all offices transferred to Washington, where, further withdrawn from the eyes of the people, they may more secretly be bought and sold at market.
Thomas Jefferson, letter to Judge William Johnson, June 12, 1823

W]hen all government, domestic and foreign, in little as in great things, shall be drawn to Washington as the center of all power, it will render powerless the checks provided of one government on another.
Thomas Jefferson, letter to Charles Hammond, August 18, 1821

Title: Mason: the militia
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 12, 2009, 07:36:49 AM

"Who you ask is the militia? It is the whole people except for a few public officials."
George Mason--Father of the Bill of Rights

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers: Jefferson
Post by: Freki on August 12, 2009, 07:57:37 PM

Honor, justice, and humanity, forbid us tamely to surrender that freedom which we received from our gallant ancestors, and which our innocent posterity have a right to receive from us. We cannot endure the infamy and guilt of resigning succeeding generations to that wretchedness which inevitably awaits them if we basely entail hereditary bondage on them.
Thomas Jefferson, Declaration of the Causes and Necessities of Taking up Arms, July 6, 1775

Title: Washington: letter to the officers, 1783
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 13, 2009, 06:54:23 AM

"Can you then consent to be the only sufferers by this revolution, and retiring from the field, grow old in poverty, wretchedness and contempt? Can you consent to wade through the vile mire of dependency, and owe the miserable remnant of that life to charity, which has hitherto been spent in honor? If you can -- GO -- and carry with you the jest of tories and scorn of whigs -- the ridicule, and what is worse, the pity of the world. Go, starve, and be forgotten!" --George Washington, letter to the Officers of the Army, 1783

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers: Madison
Post by: Freki on August 14, 2009, 05:42:16 AM

It is sufficiently obvious, that persons and property are the two great subjects on which Governments are to act; and that the rights of persons, and the rights of property, are the objects, for the protection of which Government was instituted. These rights cannot well be separated.
James Madison, Speech at the Virginia Convention, December 2, 1829

Title: Jefferson: 1823
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 14, 2009, 06:58:10 AM

"[W]hy give through agents whom we know not, to persons whom we know not, and in countries from which we get no account, where we can do it at short hand, to objects under our eye, through agents we know, and to supply wants we see?" --Thomas Jefferson, letter to Michael Megear, 1823

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Freki on August 14, 2009, 03:17:09 PM

Amen to Jefferson's Quote. I choose when, where, and to whom I give charity, the government has no place in the process.
================================================================

It is a principle incorporated into the settled policy of America, that as peace is better than war, war is better than tribute.
James Madison, letter to the Dey of Algiers, August, 1816

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Freki on August 14, 2009, 09:04:58 PM

I pulled this after listening to the political rant posting of Crafty August 14
=============================================

Since the general civilization of mankind, I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments by those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations. On a candid examination of history we shall find that turbulence, violence, and abuse of power by the majority trampling on the rights of the minority, have produced factions and commotions, which in republics, have more frequently than any other cause produced despotism. If we go over the whole history of the ancient and modern republics, we shall find their destruction to have generally resulted from those causes.

–James Madison, Speech in the Virginia Ratifying Convention on Control of the Military, June 16, 1788 in: History of the Virginia Federal Convention of 1788, vol. 1, p. 130 (H.B. Grigsby ed. 1890).

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:Character doesn't matter?
Post by: Freki on August 16, 2009, 04:38:19 PM

Is there no virtue among us? If there be not, we are in a wretched situation. No theoretical checks-no form of government can render us secure. To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people, is a chimerical idea, if there be sufficient virtue and intelligence in the community, it will be exercised in the selection of these men. So that we do not depend on their virtue, or put confidence in our rulers, but in the people who are to choose them.
James Madison, speech at the Virginia Ratifying Convention, June 20, 1788

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers: Madison
Post by: Freki on August 17, 2009, 06:19:00 AM

Government is instituted to protect property of every sort; as well that which lies in the various rights of individuals, as that which the term particularly expresses. This being the end of government, that alone is a just government which impartially secures to every man whatever is his own.
James Madison, Essay on Property, March 29, 1792

Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm.
James Madison, Federalist No. 10, November 23, 1787

Title: Washington
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 17, 2009, 07:28:32 AM

Good stuff there Freki!
----------------------------------------

"No people can be bound to acknowledge and adore the invisible hand, which conducts the Affairs of men more than the People of the United States. Every step, by which they have advanced to the character of an independent nation, seems to have been distinguished by some token of providential agency." --George Washington, First Inaugural Address, April 30, 1789

Title: Principium Imprimis
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 17, 2009, 09:21:30 AM

Second post of the day

Principium Imprimis -- First Principles
Mark Alexander
From Patriot Post Vol. 09 No. 32; Published 13 August 2009 | Print Email PDF

"Wisdom and knowledge, as well as virtue, diffused generally among the body of the people, being necessary for the preservation of their rights and liberties, and as these depend on spreading the opportunities and advantages of education in the various parts of the country, and among the different orders of people, it shall be the duty of legislators and magistrates...to cherish the interest of literature and the sciences, and all seminaries of them." --John Adams

It's back to business this week, having just returned from two weeks of traveling with my family. This was our fifth road trip to explore America in as many years, and the time we spend together in close quarters, discovering new sites and sharing new adventures, is priceless.

This fortnight was one of respite for me, only in the sense that I leave the laptop at the office and avoid all sources of news for its duration. This allows a much needed-break away from the rigors of current events and policy analysis so I can focus on my family and those along the road. The pace we keep on these trips, however, defies any notion of rest and relaxation.

This was the last of our "Discover America" excursions, having previously visited all other regions of our great nation except Hawaii's beautiful beaches -- and top secret birth certificate repositories. This summer's expedition included Alaska for the first week and Left Coast states for the second.

In Alaska, we flew the summit of Mt. McKinley and had a face to face with a Brown Bear in Denali. We dined at the Talkeetna Roadhouse made famous by that quintessential Alaskan bush pilot, Don Sheldon. I even cracked a few ribs on the ice of Godwin Glacier, having been deposited there during a sharp turn of a dogsled. Adding insult to injury, the musher, my oh-so-funny 10-year-old son, waved good-bye as he and the team sped away. On a more pleasant note, we ran into Sarah Palin's daughters and infant grandson in a Wasilla discount store (I guess they really are just plain folks).

To top it off, we were hosted by the command personnel of the 90th Fighter Squadron at Elmendorf AFB, whose F-22s were engaged in Red Flag Alaska. (Yes, the entire fighter community is concerned about the discontinuation of our only Generation 5 fighter, especially since Russia and China have Gen5 fighters coming up.)

We flew down to Seattle, Washington, where the sunset on Mt. Rainier was spectacular. The Oregon coastal water was COLD, and California's redwoods were even more majestic than I remembered them. We spent two days in San Francisco, including a visit to one of the nation's most liberal antique news outlets, The San Francisco Chronicle, where -- I am not making this up -- the reception desk staff had Fox News on the big screen. My 15-year-old son concluded that he saw enough strange people in San Fran to last a lifetime so, after washing thoroughly, we departed for Yosemite. On the last leg of our trip, we drove from 10,000 feet above sea level in the High Sierra to elevation -282 feet at Badwater, Death Valley, a geographic transition that amazed our kids.

I am pleased to report that we all returned home intact, with the exception of a couple of ribs.

As with our previous trips around the nation, we were heartened to find strong contingents of Patriots everywhere we went -- yes, even in San Francisco. However, my concern about our country's heritage of liberty being squandered by future generations was certainly reaffirmed.

The urban centers of America, and to a lesser extent the rural areas, are littered with young people who are, genuinely, adrift. Many seem to be seeking a mooring they didn't receive during childhood, and they're finding it in destructive personal habits and contemporaneous identity movements, including political movements that are an affront to liberty.

This sad state of affairs, for so many young people, can be attributed to the failure of three institutions -- marriage, church and government education.

There is no question that the most significant contributing factor undermining the social stability of our nation is the dissolution of marriages and consequently, the fracture of traditional family structure.

The malignant culture of divorce is, in my opinion, the greatest national security threat that we face, and it places in peril the legacy of Liberty purchased by our Founders with their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor, and bequeathed to us. Indeed, the effluent of divorce is manifest in the election of politicians like Barack Obama and the cult-like minions who worship him.

The failure of our religious and academic institutions, however, is also a dire threat.

Like millions of young people across the nation, our children, our legacy, will be returning to schools this month -- fortunately, excellent schools with strong faith-based foundations. Unfortunately, most other young people will return to educational warehouses that are mere shadows of what they are intended to be, especially since God has been expelled from the academy.

As I reflect on John Adam's observation about "wisdom and knowledge ... being necessary for the preservation of their rights and liberties," I am reminded that there was no erroneous "separation of church and state" doctrine in his time.

The nation's oldest academic institution, Harvard University, was established in 1636 and named for Puritan minister John Harvard. The university claims that it was "never formally affiliated with a specific religious denomination," though all its presidents were Puritan ministers until 1708. A 1643 college brochure identified Harvard's purpose: "To advance Learning and perpetuate it to Posterity; dreading to leave an illiterate Ministry to the Churches." The university's Charter of 1650 calls for "the education of the English and Indian youth of this Country in knowledge and godliness."

Harvard alumnus John Adams, Class of 1755, wrote in 1776, "It is the duty of all men in society, publicly, and at stated seasons, to worship the SUPREME BEING, the great Creator and Preserver of the universe."

For its part, Yale University was established in 1701 by royal charter as The Collegiate School. This was through the efforts of colonial Congregationalist ministers, who had sought since the 1640s to establish a college in New Haven. The charter was granted for an institution "wherein Youth may be instructed in the Arts and Sciences [and] through the blessing of Almighty God may be fitted for Publick employment both in Church and Civil State."

Yale alumnus Noah Webster, Class of 1778, a devout Christian and outspoken Federalist, considered "education useless without the Bible." In the forward of the 1828 Webster's American Dictionary, he wrote, "In my view, the Christian religion is the most important and one of the first things in which all children, under a free government ought to be instructed.... No truth is more evident to my mind than that the Christian religion must be the basis of any government intended to secure the rights and privileges of a free people."

Princeton University was originally founded in 1746 as the College of New Jersey, and established by royal charter for "the Education of Youth in the Learned Languages and in the Liberal Arts and Sciences." It was unique in that the charter allowed the attendance of "any Person of any religious Denomination whatsoever." The absence of official denominational affiliation or criteria for attendance did not, however, connote the absence of strong denominational ties. To the contrary, Princeton was founded by "New Light" Presbyterians of the Great Awakening for the purpose of training Presbyterian ministers. Jonathan Dickinson, a Presbyterian minister and leader of the Great Awakening of the 1730s, was the school's co-founder and first president.

Princeton alumnus James Madison, Class of 1771, observed, "The belief in a God All Powerful wise and good, is so essential to the moral order of the world and to the happiness of man, that arguments which enforce it cannot be drawn from too many sources nor adapted with too much solicitude to the different characters and capacities impressed with it."

In regard to the exclusion of religious instruction from academia, George Washington said in his Farewell Address (1796): "Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, Religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of Patriotism who should labor to subvert these great Pillars of human happiness - these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens. The mere Politician, equally with the pious man ought to respect and to cherish them. A volume could not trace all their connections with private and public felicity. Let it simply be asked where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation deserts the oaths, which are the instruments of investigation in the Courts of Justice? And let us with caution indulge the opposition, that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that National morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle."

Short of another American Revolution to remove by force the dictators of tyranny who now occupy the thrones of the once proud Party of Jefferson, our nation's liberty cannot long endure the prevailing culture of self-idolatry unless we, as a people, return to our First Principle -- putting God first.

We are sorely in need of a Great Awakening to the Light and Truth, which is the only eternal assurance of Liberty. Indeed, Veritas vos Liberabit -- "The Truth will set you free."

As Thomas Jefferson warned, "Can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are the gift of God?" That conviction is enumerated in the preambles of every state constitution of our Union.

As I think back over the last two weeks, I'm reminded of the immutable examples along my family's "Discover America" path of how God has changed the lives of even the most destitute. The most memorable of these was a young waitress in the small town of Trinidad, California. When she heard we were from Tennessee, she happily proclaimed she was from Alabama. My wife asked what had brought her to California and she said that between the ages of 12 and 18 she had been addicted to methamphetamines and other drugs, but that a family member enrolled her in a faith-based drug treatment service in Eureka, California. There, she met and married her husband, a former gang banger from South Central LA.

"We have been drug-free for more than three years," she told us, "and are now youth pastors in our local church."

Traveling through these United States in recent years, and meeting fellow patriots and citizens from all walks of life, affirms my conviction that if there is to be a peaceful transfer of Liberty to our posterity, then we must return to First Principles. The primacy of constitutional authority must be restored to ensure Liberty, opportunity, prosperity and civil society; the primacy of traditional families and timeless values must be restored as the foundation of our culture; and the primacy of faith must be restored in order to retain the conviction that, as Jefferson put it, our "liberties are the gift of God."

Title: The Founders on Health Care, Autonomy, & More
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on August 17, 2009, 08:03:50 PM

There are a lot of places this speech by British politician Daniel Hannan could be filed but, seeing as he frequently channels the founders and their principles, I thought this speech would best abide here:

Part I
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4IZZvYuG3s&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Efreedomslighthouse%2Ecom%2F2009%2F08%2Fbritish%2Dparliament%2Dmember%2Ddaniel%2Dhannan%2Ehtml&feature=player_embedded#t=568[/youtube]

Part II
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6eNYOm6Hqg&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Efreedomslighthouse%2Ecom%2F2009%2F08%2Fbritish%2Dparliament%2Dmember%2Ddaniel%2Dhannan%2Ehtml&feature=player_embedded#t=596[/youtube]

Part III
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTuEaoicXlQ&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Efreedomslighthouse%2Ecom%2F2009%2F08%2Fbritish%2Dparliament%2Dmember%2Ddaniel%2Dhannan%2Ehtml&feature=player_embedded#t=514[/youtube]

Part IV
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9WKvG9zAhsY&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Efreedomslighthouse%2Ecom%2F2009%2F08%2Fbritish%2Dparliament%2Dmember%2Ddaniel%2Dhannan%2Ehtml&feature=player_embedded#t=381[/youtube]

Part V
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6AsoyEkpeNM&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Efreedomslighthouse%2Ecom%2F2009%2F08%2Fbritish%2Dparliament%2Dmember%2Ddaniel%2Dhannan%2Ehtml&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]

Part VI
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wM4kKXP2SrE&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Efreedomslighthouse%2Ecom%2F2009%2F08%2Fbritish%2Dparliament%2Dmember%2Ddaniel%2Dhannan%2Ehtml&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:Hannan and Madison
Post by: Freki on August 19, 2009, 06:13:44 AM

BbG I pulled this quote from Hannan's speech which I liked very much.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
It is the ideal of the left isn't it? If the motive is good it
doesn't really matter. "I'm wearing the awareness ribbon or the
wristband! So I don't really need to give to the charity, because
everyone can see what a good guy I am." Now when you see it in an
individual, the tendency to be moralistic rather than moral, to care
about having the right opinions about global corporations rather
than live your life properly, it is disagreeable. When you see that
principle elevated to a ruling principle of government it is
tyrannical.
Daniel Hannan, Member of British Parliament, Speaking at the Army and Navy Club August 2009

=================================================================

I own myself the friend to a very free system of commerce, and hold it as a truth, that commercial shackles are generally unjust, oppressive and impolitic — it is also a truth, that if industry and labour are left to take their own course, they will generally be directed to those objects which are the most productive, and this in a more certain and direct manner than the wisdom of the most enlightened legislature could point out.
James Madison, speech to the Congress, April 9, 1789

Title: Re: The American Creed: Madison and Jefferson Checks on goverment
Post by: Freki on August 20, 2009, 12:53:23 PM

A local spirit will infallibly prevail much more in the members of Congress than a national spirit will prevail in the legislatures of the particular States.

James Madison, Federalist No. 46, January 29, 1788

A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions.

James Madison, Federalist No. 51, February 8, 1788

A judiciary independent of a king or executive alone, is a good thing; but independence of the will of the nation is a solecism, at least in a republican government.

Thomas Jefferson, letter to Thomas Ritchie, December 25, 1820

"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."
November 13, 1787, letter to William S. Smith, quoted in Padover's Jefferson On Democracy, ed., 1939

Title: Re: The American Creed: John Adams
Post by: Freki on August 23, 2009, 06:01:23 AM

The only foundation of a free Constitution, is pure Virtue, and if this cannot be inspired into our People, in a great Measure, than they have it now. They may change their Rulers, and the forms of Government, but they will not obtain a lasting Liberty.

John Adams, letter to Zabdiel Adams, June 21, 1776

The rich, the well-born, and the able, acquire and influence among the people that will soon be too much for simple honesty and plain sense, in a house of representatives. The most illustrious of them must, therefore, be separated from the mass, and placed by themselves in a senate; this is, to all honest and useful intents, an ostracism.

John Adams, A Defense of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America, vol 1, 1787

The power needs to move back to the States, Adams is right, we need to change how Senators are elected back to the founders design. IMO Freki

Title: Re: The American Creed: Madison
Post by: Freki on August 24, 2009, 05:50:16 AM

A popular Government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy; or, perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance: And a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.

James Madison, letter to W.T. Barry, August 4, 1822
-----------------------------
Reminds me of town-hall meetings. -Freki
================================================================

Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. The interest of the man must be connected with the constitutional rights of the place.
It may be a reflection on human nature that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. What is
government itself but the greatest of all reflections on human nature?

James Madison, Federalist No. 51, February 8, 1788

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
A lens through which character is shown, how does this reflect on the politicians we have seen lately?- Freki

Title: Re: The American Creed: Jefferson
Post by: Freki on August 25, 2009, 05:33:12 AM

He who is permitted by law to have no property of his own, can with difficulty conceive that property is founded in anything but force.
Thomas Jefferson, January 26, 1788

Title: Re: The American Creed: Alexander Hamilton
Post by: Freki on August 27, 2009, 02:24:05 PM

“The fabric of American empire ought to rest on the solid basis of THE CONSENT OF THE PEOPLE. The streams of national power ought to flow immediately from that pure, original fountain of all legitimate authority.”

Fedrealist Paper 22 Alexander Hamilton

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 27, 2009, 03:56:01 PM

"What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value." --Thomas Paine, The American Crisis, No. 1, 1776

"Honor, justice, and humanity, forbid us tamely to surrender that freedom which we received from our gallant ancestors, and which our innocent posterity have a right to receive from us. We cannot endure the infamy and guilt of resigning succeeding generations to that wretchedness which inevitably awaits them if we basely entail hereditary bondage on them." --Thomas Jefferson

"Can you then consent to be the only sufferers by this revolution, and retiring from the field, grow old in poverty, wretchedness and contempt? Can you consent to wade through the vile mire of dependency, and owe the miserable remnant of that life to charity, which has hitherto been spent in honor? If you can -- GO -- and carry with you the jest of Tories and scorn of Whigs -- the ridicule, and what is worse, the pity of the world. Go, starve, and be forgotten!" --George Washington

"No people can be bound to acknowledge and adore the invisible hand, which conducts the Affairs of men more than the People of the United States. Every step, by which they have advanced to the character of an independent nation, seems to have been distinguished by some token of providential agency." --George Washington, First Inaugural Address, April 30, 1789

"The essence of Government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse." --James Madison

"The pyramid of government-and a republican government may well receive that beautiful and solid form-should be raised to a dignified altitude: but its foundations must, of consequence, be broad, and strong, and deep. The authority, the interests, and the affections of the people at large are the only foundation, on which a superstructure proposed to be at once durable and magnificent, can be rationally erected." --James Wilson, Legislative Department, 1804

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers: Jefferson
Post by: Freki on August 28, 2009, 05:57:37 AM

Excessive taxation will carry reason & reflection to every man's door, and particularly in the hour of election.
Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Taylor, November 26, 1798

Title: Re: 2nd Post: A Reason for Partisan Politics
Post by: Freki on August 28, 2009, 06:25:10 AM

History affords us many instances of the ruin of states, by the prosecution of measures ill suited to the temper and genius of their people. The ordaining of laws in favor of one part of the nation, to the prejudice and oppression of another, is certainly the most erroneous and mistaken policy. An equal dispensation of protection, rights, privileges, and advantages, is what every part is entitled to, and ought to enjoy... These measures never fail to create great and violent jealousies and animosities between the people favored and the people oppressed; whence a total separation of affections, interests, political obligations, and all manner of connections, by which the whole state is weakened.

Benjamin Franklin, Emblematical Representations, Circa 1774
========================================================

But why can't we get along and stop partisan politics? Every time a question arises I find the Founders had already thought of it and pointed their answer out in their writings.

Freki

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 28, 2009, 06:33:38 AM

"It is the manners and spirit of a people which preserve a republic in vigor. A degeneracy in these is a canker which soon eats to the heart of its laws and constitution." --Thomas Jefferson, Notes on Virginia Query 19, 1781

Ain't that the Truth!

Title: Madison on govt deficit spending
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 29, 2009, 05:43:26 AM

"To say that the United States should be answerable for twenty-five millions of dollars without knowing whether the ways and means can be provided, and without knowing whether those who are to succeed us will think with us on the subject, would be rash and unjustifiable. Sir, in my opinion, it would be hazarding the public faith in a manner contrary to every idea of prudence." --James Madison

Title: The Trinity of the American Creed:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 29, 2009, 07:16:29 AM

Dennis Prager
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nn4IH3yng4k

Title: Re: The American Creed: Madison
Post by: Freki on August 31, 2009, 06:17:15 AM

Equal laws protecting equal rights — the best guarantee of loyalty and love of country.

James Madison, letter to Jacob de la Motta, August 1820

Title: Hamilton: Federalist #1
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 01, 2009, 07:40:36 AM

f those men who have overturned the liberties of republics, the greatest number have begun their career by paying an obsequious court to the people; commencing demagogues, and ending tyrants." --Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 1

Title: Patrick Henry
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 01, 2009, 01:59:17 PM

"Mr. President, it is natural to man to indulge in the illusions of hope. We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth, and listen to the song of that siren till she transforms us into beasts. Is this the part of wise men, engaged in a great and arduous struggle for liberty? Are we disposed to be of the number of those who, having eyes, see not, and, having ears, hear not, the things which so nearly concern their temporal salvation? For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst, and to provide for it.

Let us not, I beseech you, sir, deceive ourselves. Sir, we have done everything that could be done to avert the storm which is now coming on. We have petitioned; we have remonstrated; we have supplicated...Our petitions have been slighted; our remonstrances have produced additional violence and insult; our supplications have been disregarded; and we have been spurned, with contempt...In vain, after these things, may we indulge the fond hope of peace and reconciliation. There is no longer any room for hope. If we wish to be free-- if we mean not basely to abandon the noble struggle in which we have been so long engaged--we must fight! I repeat it, sir, we must fight! An appeal to arms and to the God of hosts is all that is left us!"

Patrick Henry, March 23, 1775

Title: Re: The American Creed: Adams
Post by: Freki on September 01, 2009, 06:42:23 PM

"Nip the shoots of arbitrary power in the bud,
is the only maxim which can ever preserve
the liberties of any people."

Quote by: John Adams
(1735-1826) Founding Father, 2nd US President
Source: 'Novanglus', 'Boston Gazette' 06 Feb 1775

Title: Re: The American Creed: Redistibution of Wealth: Jefferson
Post by: Freki on September 01, 2009, 06:48:02 PM

“To take from one, because it is thought his own industry and that of his fathers has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers, have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association, the guarantee to everyone the free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it.” — Thomas Jefferson, letter to Joseph Milligan, April 6, 1816

“A wise and frugal government… shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government.” — Thomas Jefferson, First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1801

“I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.” — Thomas Jefferson

“Congress has not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare, but only those specifically enumerated.” — Thomas Jefferson

Title: Jefferson in 1800
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 02, 2009, 03:58:14 AM

"I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man." --Thomas Jefferson, letter to Benjamin Rush, 1800

Title: Re: The American Creed: Redistribution and General Welfare: Madison
Post by: Freki on September 02, 2009, 05:47:50 AM

“With respect to the two words ‘general welfare,’ I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators.” — James Madison in a letter to James Robertson

In 1794, when Congress appropriated $15,000 for relief of French refugees who fled from insurrection in San Domingo to Baltimore and Philadelphia, James Madison stood on the floor of the House to object saying:

“I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents.” — James Madison, 4 Annals of Congress 179, 1794

“[T]he government of the United States is a definite government, confined to specified objects. It is not like the state governments, whose powers are more general. Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government.” — James Madison

“Wherever the real power in a Government lies, there is the danger of oppression.” — James Madison

“If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the general welfare, the government is no longer a limited one possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one subject to particular exceptions.” James Madison, “Letter to Edmund Pendleton,” — James Madison, January 21, 1792, in The Papers of James Madison, vol. 14, Robert A Rutland et. al., ed (Charlottesvile: University Press of Virginia, 1984).

“An elective despotism was not the government we fought for; but one in which the powers of government should be so divided and balanced among the several bodies of magistracy as that no one could transcend their legal limits without being effectually checked and restrained by the others.” — James Madison, Federalist No. 58, February 20, 1788

“There are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.” — James Madison, speech to the Virginia Ratifying Convention, June 16, 1788

Title: Franklin
Post by: Freki on September 02, 2009, 10:18:22 PM

“When the people find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic.” — Benjamin Franklin

“I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion of the means. I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it.” — Benjamin Franklin

“They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty or safety.” — Benjamin Franklin

“The Constitution only gives people the right to pursue happiness. You have to catch it yourself.” — Benjamin Franklin

Title: John Adams: On Children, 1756
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 03, 2009, 05:51:05 AM

"It should be your care, therefore, and mine, to elevate the minds of our children and exalt their courage; to accelerate and animate their industry and activity; to excite in them an habitual contempt of meanness, abhorrence of injustice and inhumanity, and an ambition to excel in every capacity, faculty, and virtue. If we suffer their minds to grovel and creep in infancy, they will grovel all their lives." --John Adams, Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law, 1756

Title: Madison on Just Goverment and Property
Post by: Freki on September 04, 2009, 07:09:13 AM

Title: Madison
Post by: Freki on September 05, 2009, 06:17:26 AM

In Europe, charters of liberty have been granted by power. America has set the example ... of charters of power granted by liberty. This revolution in the practice of the world, may, with an honest praise, be pronounced the most triumphant epoch of its history, and the most consoling presage of its happiness.

James Madison, National Gazette Essay, January 18, 1792

Title: Madison
Post by: Freki on September 06, 2009, 07:45:03 AM

In forming the Senate, the great anchor of the Government, the questions as they came within the first object turned mostly on the mode of appointment, and the duration of it.
James Madison, letter to Thomas Jefferson, October 24, 1787

Title: Thomas Jefferson
Post by: Freki on September 07, 2009, 06:34:15 AM

Title: Adams
Post by: Freki on September 08, 2009, 05:57:43 AM

Human nature itself is evermore an advocate for liberty. There is also in human nature a resentment of injury, and indignation against wrong. A love of truth and a veneration of virtue. These amiable passions, are the "latent spark"... If the people are capable of understanding, seeing and feeling the differences between true and false, right and wrong, virtue and vice, to what better principle can the friends of mankind apply than to the sense of this difference?

John Adams, the Novanglus, 1775

Title: S. Adams
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 08, 2009, 05:59:17 AM

"No people will tamely surrender their Liberties, nor can any be easily subdued, when knowledge is diffusd and Virtue is preservd. On the Contrary, when People are universally ignorant, and debauchd in their Manners, they will sink under their own weight without the Aid of foreign Invaders." --Samuel Adams, letter to James Warren, 1775

Title: Many entries
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 10, 2009, 09:32:59 AM

"Honor, justice, and humanity, forbid us tamely to surrender that freedom which we received from our gallant ancestors, and which our innocent posterity have a right to receive from us. We cannot endure the infamy and guilt of resigning succeeding generations to that wretchedness which inevitably awaits them if we basely entail hereditary bondage on them." --Thomas Jefferson

"Wisdom and knowledge, as well as virtue, diffused generally among the body of the people, being necessary for the preservation of their rights and liberties, and as these depend on spreading the opportunities and advantages of education in the various parts of the country, and among the different orders of people, it shall be the duty of legislators and magistrates...to cherish the interest of literature and the sciences, and all seminaries of them." --John Adams

"Can you then consent to be the only sufferers by this revolution, and retiring from the field, grow old in poverty, wretchedness and contempt? Can you consent to wade through the vile mire of dependency, and owe the miserable remnant of that life to charity, which has hitherto been spent in honor? If you can -- GO -- and carry with you the jest of Tories and scorn of Whigs -- the ridicule, and what is worse, the pity of the world. Go, starve, and be forgotten!" --George Washington

"The essence of Government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse." --James Madison

"It is natural to man to indulge in the illusions of hope. We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth -- and listen to the song of that syren, till she transforms us into beasts. Is this the part of wise men, engaged in a great and arduous struggle for liberty? ... For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it might cost, I am willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst, and to provide for it." --Patrick Henry

"[W]ith respect to future debt; would it not be wise and just for that nation to declare in the constitution they are forming that neither the legislature, nor the nation itself can validly contract more debt, than they may pay within their own age..." --Thomas Jefferson

"To say that the United States should be answerable for twenty-five millions of dollars without knowing whether the ways and means can be provided, and without knowing whether those who are to succeed us will think with us on the subject, would be rash and unjustifiable. Sir, in my opinion, it would be hazarding the public faith in a manner contrary to every idea of prudence." --James Madison

"The people can never wilfully betray their own interests; but they may possibly be betrayed by the representatives of the people; and the danger will be evidently greater where the whole legislative trust is lodged in the hands of one body of men, than where the concurrence of separate and dissimilar bodies is required in every public act." --Federalist No. 63

"Public affairs go on pretty much as usual: perpetual chicanery and rather more personal abuse than there used to be..." --John Adams

"Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people, who have a right, from the frame of their nature, to knowledge, as their great Creator, who does nothing in vain, has given them understandings, and a desire to know; but besides this, they have a right, an indisputable, unalienable, indefeasible, divine right to that most dreaded and envied kind of knowledge; I mean, of the characters and conduct of their rulers." --John Adams, Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law, 1756

"To cherish and stimulate the activity of the human mind, by multiplying the objects of enterprise, is not among the least considerable of the expedients, by which the wealth of a nation may be promoted." --Alexander Hamilton, Report on Manufactures, 1791

"Cherish, therefore, the spirit of our people, and keep alive their attention. Do not be too severe upon their errors, but reclaim them by enlightening them. If once they become inattentive to the public affairs, you and I, and Congress, and Assemblies, Judges, and Governors, shall all become wolves." --Thomas Jefferson, letter to Edward Carrington, 1787

On Tuesday, community organizer Barack Obama broadcast a televised message to millions of children in the nation's government school bureaucracies. His administration prepared a "Menu of Classroom Activities" for his sycophantic apparatchiks in teaching and administrative positions.

For example, it was suggested that teachers of children in K-6 grades "build background knowledge about the President of the United States by reading books about Barack Obama" or have students "write letters to themselves about what they can do to help the president."

For 7-12th grades, the administration suggests that teachers "post in large print around the classroom notable quotes excerpted from President Obama's speeches on education."

Here are a few suggestions, which were not on the administrations menu of activities.

Activity 1: For K-6th grades, build background knowledge about our God and our country by reading books about our Founders. Have students write letters to Obama so he can learn a little something about how liberty is "endowed by our Creator," and what happens when tyrants anoint themselves as the arbiters of liberty. Start with a quote from Thomas Jefferson: "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. ... Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God."

Activity 2: For 7-12th grades, post in large print around the classroom notable quotes excerpted from our Founders on the subject of education.

For example:

"[W]e ought to deprecate the hazard attending ardent and susceptible minds, from being too strongly, and too early prepossessed in favor of other political systems, before they are capable of appreciating their own." --George Washington

"Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people, who have a right, from the frame of their nature, to knowledge, as their great Creator, who does nothing in vain, has given them understandings, and a desire to know; but besides this, they have a right, an indisputable, unalienable, indefeasible, divine right to that most dreaded and envied kind of knowledge; I mean, of the characters and conduct of their rulers." --John Adams

"Law and liberty cannot rationally become the objects of our love, unless they first become the objects of our knowledge." --James Wilson

"A nation under a well regulated government should permit none to remain uninstructed. It is monarchical and aristocratical government only that requires ignorance for its support." --Thomas Paine

"No people will tamely surrender their Liberties, nor can any be easily subdued, when knowledge is diffused and Virtue is preserved. On the Contrary, when People are universally ignorant, and debauched in their Manners, they will sink under their own weight without the Aid of foreign Invaders." --Samuel Adams

"If a nation expects to be ignorant -- and free -- in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." --Thomas Jefferson

"A popular Government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy; or, perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance: And a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives." --James Madison

Activity 3: Have a class discussion about why Obama attended a very expensive private school in Hawaii, and why he now spends $60,000 annually for his two children to attend private school, but does not support school choice initiatives for students stuck in government institutions?

Obama closed the indoctrination exercise with these words: "At the end of the day, we can have the most dedicated teachers, the most supportive parents and the best schools in the world, and none of it will matter unless all of you fulfill your responsibilities."

However, with few exceptions, we do not have "the most dedicated teachers, the most supportive parents and the best schools in the world," and we don't have them primarily as a consequence of Leftist social policies, which Obama wants to perpetuate. Obama certainly does not have the moral authority to instruct children to "fulfill your responsibilities," until he starts with a few of his own, like his oath to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."

Title: Hamilton: Federalist 34
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 11, 2009, 10:43:45 AM

"To judge from the history of mankind, we shall be compelled to conclude that the fiery and destructive passions of war reign in the human breast with much more powerful sway than the mild and beneficent sentiments of peace; and that to model our political systems upon speculations of lasting tranquillity would be to calculate on the weaker springs of human character." --Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 34, 1788

Title: Thomas Paine Quotes to inspire us for this day of 9/12 protests
Post by: Freki on September 12, 2009, 07:08:09 AM

A little matter will move a party, but it must be something great that moves a nation.

Thomas Paine, Rights of Man, 1792

As parents, we can have no joy, knowing that this government is not sufficiently lasting to ensure any thing which we may bequeath to posterity: And by a plain method of argument, as we are running the next generation into debt, we ought to do the work of it, otherwise we use them meanly and pitifully. In order to discover the line of our duty rightly, we should take our children in our hand, and fix our station a few years farther into life; that eminence will present a prospect, which a few present fears and prejudices conceal from our sight.

Thomas Paine, Common Sense, 1776

But where says some is the King of America? I'll tell you Friend, he reigns above, and doth not make havoc of mankind like the Royal Brute of Britain...let it be brought forth placed on the divine law, the word of God; let a crown be placed thereon, by which the world may know, that so far as we approve of monarchy, that in America THE LAW IS KING.

Thomas Paine, Common Sense, 1776

I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection. 'Tis the business of little minds to shrink; but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles unto death.

Thomas Paine, The American Crisis, No. 1, December 19, 1776

Title: Webster on education, 1790
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 14, 2009, 05:35:27 AM

"It is an object of vast magnitude that systems of education should be adopted and pursued which may not only diffuse a knowledge of the sciences but may implant in the minds of the American youth the principles of virtue and of liberty and inspire them with just and liberal ideas of government and with an inviolable attachment to their own country." --Noah Webster, On Education of Youth in America, 1790

Title: Thomas Paine
Post by: Freki on September 14, 2009, 08:47:20 PM

This quote fits when one considers the war of words ongoing in the political arena today. As I read this I thought of the President's speech to the joint houses of Congress.

Freki

It is the madness of folly, to expect mercy from those who have refused to do justice; and even mercy, where conquest is the object, is only a trick of war; the cunning of the fox is as murderous as the violence of the wolf.

Thomas Paine, The American Crisis, No. 1, December 19, 1776

p.s. It is also Dog Brotherish :-D

Title: Wilson, 1790
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 15, 2009, 04:56:42 AM

Love having you kick in on this thread Freki 8-)
============

"Law and liberty cannot rationally become the objects of our love, unless they first become the objects of our knowledge." --James Wilson, Of the Study of the Law in the United States, 1790

Title: Washington, 1795
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 16, 2009, 08:32:18 AM

"[W]e ought to deprecate the hazard attending ardent and susceptible minds, from being too strongly, and too early prepossessed in favor of other political systems, before they are capable of appreciating their own." --George Washington, letter to the Commissioners of the District of Columbia, 1795

Title: Hamilton 1802
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 17, 2009, 06:26:03 AM

"[T]he present Constitution is the standard to which we are to cling. Under its banners, bona fide must we combat our political foes." --Alexander Hamilton, letter to James Bayard, 1802

Title: Necessity
Post by: Freki on September 17, 2009, 06:58:51 AM

While not one of our founders he knew Old Ben. I think his words shine light on the rhetoric comming out of Washington today.

Freki

"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is argument of tyrants. It is the creed of slaves." William Pitt in the House of Commons November 18, 1783

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on September 17, 2009, 03:26:44 PM

"To argue with a man who has renounced his reason is like giving medicine to the dead." - Thomas Paine in the "The American Crisis"

I've experienced that sensation around here a time or two.

Title: Hamilton 1788
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 18, 2009, 09:10:16 AM

"I trust that the proposed Constitution afford a genuine specimen of representative government and republican government; and that it will answer, in an eminent degree, all the beneficial purposes of society." --Alexander Hamilton, speech to the New York Ratifying Convention, 1788

Title: Samuel Adams
Post by: Freki on September 18, 2009, 06:33:46 PM

"If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen."
Samuel Adams

"If ever time should come, when vain and aspiring men shall possess the highest seats in Government, our country will stand in need of its experienced patriots to prevent its ruin."
Samuel Adams

Title: Adams and Franklin on power and liberty
Post by: Freki on September 21, 2009, 05:25:53 AM

"The jaws of power are always open to devour, and her arm is always stretched out, if possible, to destroy the freedom of thinking, speaking, and writing."
John Adams

"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote!"
Benjamin Franklin

Title: Washington: The impending storm; 1786
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 21, 2009, 06:37:50 AM

"No morn ever dawned more favorable than ours did; and no day was every more clouded than the present! Wisdom, and good examples are necessary at this time to rescue the political machine from the impending storm." --George Washington, letter to James Madison, 1786

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 22, 2009, 04:07:12 AM

"I have lived, Sir, a long time, and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth -- that God governs in the affairs of men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the Ground without his Notice, is it probable that an Empire can rise without his Aid?" --Benjamin Franklin, to Colleagues at the Constitutional Convention

Title: Washington on our times
Post by: Freki on September 22, 2009, 05:20:29 AM

Arbitrary power is most easily established on the ruins of liberty abused to licentiousness.
George Washington

Experience teaches us that it is much easier to prevent an enemy from posting themselves than it is to dislodge them after they have got possession.
George Washington

Firearms are second only to the Constitution in importance; they are the peoples' liberty's teeth.
George Washington

Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.
George Washington

Title: Partick Henry
Post by: Freki on September 23, 2009, 06:59:03 AM

"The liberties of a people never were, nor ever will be, secure, when the transactions of their rulers may be concealed from them."
Patrick Henry, American colonial revolutionary

Remind me about the bills submitted in the middle of the night and rushed to vote!
Freki

Title: Madison
Post by: Freki on September 24, 2009, 05:30:41 AM

Americans have the right and advantage of being armed - unlike the citizens of other countries whose governments are afraid to trust the people with arms.
James Madison

As a man is said to have a right to his property, he may be equally said to have a property in his rights.
James Madison

The class of citizens who provide at once their own food and their own raiment, may be viewed as the most truly independent and happy.
James Madison

Title: P. Henry; Wilson; Hamilton; etc
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 24, 2009, 08:33:53 AM

"The battle, sir, is not to the strong alone; it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave." --Patrick Henry, speech in the Virginia Convention, 1775

"The first and governing maxim in the interpretation of a statute is to discover the meaning of those who made it." --James Wilson, Of the Study of Law in the United States, 1790

"As riches increase and accumulate in few hands, as luxury prevails in society, virtue will be in a greater degree considered as only a graceful appendage of wealth, and the tendency of things will be to depart from the republican standard. This is the real disposition of human nature." --Alexander Hamilton

"[T]here is a degree of depravity in mankind which requires a certain degree of circumspection and distrust." --James Madison

"I think we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious." --Thomas Jefferson

"The executive branch of this government never has, nor will suffer, while I preside, any improper conduct of its officers to escape with impunity." --George Washington

Title: Dickinson & Jefferson
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 25, 2009, 05:21:02 AM

"With hearts fortified with these animating reflections, we most solemnly, before God and the world, declare, that, exerting the utmost energy of those powers, which our beneficent Creator hath graciously bestowed upon us, the arms we have compelled by our enemies to assume, we will, in defiance of every hazard, with unabating firmness and perseverance employ for the preservation of our liberties; being with one mind resolved to die freemen rather than to live as slaves." --John Dickinson and Thomas Jefferson, Declaration of the Cause and Necessity of Taking up Arms, 1775

Title: Madison on property rights
Post by: Freki on September 25, 2009, 05:36:35 AM

The diversity in the faculties of men, from which the rights of property originate, is not less an insuperable obstacle to an uniformity of interests. The protection of these faculties is the first object of government.
James Madison

The personal right to acquire property, which is a natural right, gives to property, when acquired, a right to protection, as a social right.
James Madison

Title: Wise Ben
Post by: Freki on September 26, 2009, 04:32:12 AM

This will be the best security for maintaining our liberties. A nation of well-informed men who have been taught to know and prize the rights which God has given them cannot be enslaved. It is in the religion of ignorance that tyranny begins.
Benjamin Franklin

Title: State's rights quotes
Post by: Freki on September 26, 2009, 07:16:54 PM

“But as the plan of the convention aims only at a partial union or consolidation, the State governments would clearly retain all the rights of sovereignty which they before had, and which were not, by that act, EXCLUSIVELY delegated to the United States.”
–Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 32

“The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite.”
–James Madison, Federalist No. 45

Title: Letter of Samuel Adams
Post by: Freki on September 27, 2009, 04:14:51 PM

http://www.tenthamendmentcenter.com/2009/09/27/freedom-vs-consolidated-government/ (http://www.tenthamendmentcenter.com/2009/09/27/freedom-vs-consolidated-government/)

by Samuel Adams

Editor’s Note: Samuel Adams, American Patriot and Revolutionary Leader, was born on September 27, 1722. In celebration of his birth, we present the following letter, sent by him to Elbridge Gerry, on August 22, 1789.

I wrote to you hastily two days ago, and as hastily ventured an Opinion concerning the Right of Congress to control a Light-house erected on Land belonging to this sovereign and independent State for its own Use and at its own Expense.

I say sovereign and independent, because I think the State retains all the Rights of Sovereignty which it has not expressly parted with to the Congress of the United States–a federal Power instituted solely for the Support of the federal Union.

The Sovereignty of the State extends over every part of its Territory. The federal Constitution expresses the same Idea in Sec. 8, Art. 1.

A Power is therein given to Congress “to exercise like Authority,” that is to exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever, “over all places purchased by the Consent of the Legislature in which the same shall be, for the Erection of Forts, Magazines, and other needful Buildings,” among which Light-houses may be included.

Is it not the plain Conclusion from this Clause in the Compact, that Congress have not the Right to exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever, nor even to purchase or control any part of the Territory within a State for the Erection of needful Buildings unless it has the Consent of its Legislature.

If there are any such Buildings already erected, which operate to the General Welfare of the U S, and Congress by Virtue of the Power vested in them have taken from a State for the general Use, the necessary Means of supporting such Buildings it appears to be reasonable & just that the U S should maintain them; but I think that it follows not from hence, that Congress have a right to exercise any Authority over those buildings even to make Appointments of officers for the immediate Care of them or furnishing them with necessary Supplies. I wish to have your Opinion if you can find Leisure.

I hope Congress, before they adjourn, will take into very serious Consideration the necessary Amendments of the Constitution. Those whom I call the best–the most judicious & disinterested Federalists, who wish for the perpetual Union, Liberty & Happiness of the States & their respective Citizens, many of them if not all are anxiously expecting them.

They wish to see a Line drawn as clearly as may be, between the federal Powers vested in Congress and the distinct Sovereignty of the several States upon which the private & personal Rights of the Citizens depend.

Without such Distinction there will be Danger of the Constitution issuing imperceptibly and gradually into a consolidated Government over all the States; which, although it may be wished for by some was reprobated in the Idea by the highest Advocates for the Constitution as it stood without Amendments.

I am fully persuaded that the population of the U S living in different Climates, of different Education and Manners, and possesed of different Habits & feelings under one consolidated Government can not long remain free, or indeed remain under any kind of Government but despotism.

You will not forget our old Friend Devens, and if you please mention him to Mr R H Lee.

Adieu my dear Friend and believe me to be sincerely yours,

P. S. The joint regards of Mrs A & myself to Mrs Gerry.

Title: Washington
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 28, 2009, 08:59:10 AM

Title: James Garfield 20th Pres.
Post by: Freki on September 29, 2009, 06:11:24 AM

"Now more than ever before, the people are responsible for the character of their Congress. If that body be ignorant, reckless and corrupt, it is because the people tolerate ignorance, recklessness and corruption. If it be intelligent, brave and pure, it is because the people demand these high qualities to represent them in the national legislature.... If the next centennial does not find us a great nation ... it will be because those who represent the enterprise, the culture, and the morality of the nation do not aid in controlling the political forces."
James Garfield, the twentieth president of the United States, 1877

Title: Washington: Conquer or Die, 1776; Paine 1776
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 29, 2009, 06:37:13 AM

We have therefore to resolve to conquer or die: Our won Country's Honor, all call upon us for vigorous and manly exertion, and if we now shamefully fail, we shall become infamous to the whole world. Let us therefore rely upon the goodness of the Cause, and the aid of the supreme Being, in whose hands Victory is, to animate and encourage us to great and noble Actions." --George Washington, General Orders, 1776

"I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection. 'Tis the business of little minds to shrink; but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles unto death." --Thomas Paine, The American Crisis, No. 1, 1776

Title: Muhlenberg, 1776
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 30, 2009, 05:33:54 AM

"There is a time for all things, a time to preach and a time to pray, but those times have passed away. There is a time to fight, and that time has now come." --Peter Muhlenberg, from a Lutheran sermon read at Woodstock, Virginia, 1776

Title: Old Ben
Post by: Freki on September 30, 2009, 09:51:20 AM

"Freedom is not a gift bestowed upon us by other men, but a right that belongs to us by the laws of God and nature."
Benjamin Franklin

"Man will ultimately be governed by God or by tyrants."
Benjamin Franklin

Title: John Adams, 1775
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 01, 2009, 06:53:15 AM

"They define a republic to be a government of laws, and not of men." --John Adams, Novanglus No. 7, 1775

Title: Thomas Pain on our times
Post by: Freki on October 02, 2009, 05:11:57 AM

"I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of the freedom of the people by the gradual and silent encroachment of those in power, than by violent and sudden usurpation."
President James Madison (1751-1836) speech, Virginia Convention, 1788

"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom, must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
Thomas Paine

"It is the duty of the patriot to protect his country from its government."
Thomas Paine

Title: Fisher Ames, 1789
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 02, 2009, 05:16:30 AM

"I am commonly opposed to those who modestly assume the rank of champions of liberty, and make a very patriotic noise about the people. It is the stale artifice which has duped the world a thousand times, and yet, though detected, it is still successful. I love liberty as well as anybody. I am proud of it, as the true title of our people to distinction above others; but ... I would guard it by making the laws strong enough to protect it." --Fisher Ames, letter to George Richard Minot, 1789

Title: Jefferson
Post by: Freki on October 04, 2009, 06:38:22 AM

I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.
Thomas Jefferson

Title: Franklin, 1774
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 05, 2009, 05:13:52 AM

Title: Jefferson on small gov't
Post by: Freki on October 05, 2009, 06:46:50 AM

That government is best which governs the least, because its people discipline themselves.
Thomas Jefferson

My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government.
Thomas Jefferson

Title: Hamilton: Federalist #25, 1787
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 06, 2009, 07:19:22 AM

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 07, 2009, 04:26:51 AM

"We lay it down as a fundamental, that laws, to be just, must give a reciprocation of right; that, without this, they are mere arbitrary rules of conduct, founded in force, and not in conscience." --Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the state of Virginia, 1782

Title: Patrick Henry
Post by: Freki on October 07, 2009, 05:14:27 AM

"The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people, it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government -- lest it come to dominate our lives and interests."
Patrick Henry

Title: Rush, 1788
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 08, 2009, 03:53:15 AM

"[W]here there is no law, there is no liberty; and nothing deserves the name of law but that which is certain and universal in its operation upon all the members of the community." --Benjamin Rush, letter to David Ramsay, 1788

Title: Dwight D. Eisenhower
Post by: Freki on October 08, 2009, 06:18:24 PM

"Every step we take towards making the State our Caretaker of our lives, by that much we move toward making the State our Master."
Dwight D. Eisenhower

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 09, 2009, 08:19:24 AM

"f the public are bound to yield obedience to laws to which they cannot give their approbation, they are slaves to those who make such laws and enforce them." --Candidus in the Boston Gazette, 1772

Title: Jefferson
Post by: Freki on October 12, 2009, 08:09:43 AM

"History, in general, only informs us what bad government is."
Thomas Jefferson (1807)

"The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers."
Thomas Jefferson

Title: James Madison on the Nanny State
Post by: Freki on October 13, 2009, 09:55:06 PM

“I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents.” — James Madison, 4 Annals of Congress 179, 1794

Title: Madison, 1790
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 14, 2009, 03:50:46 AM

"A republic, by which I mean a government in which the scheme of representation takes place, opens a different prospect and promises the cure for which we are seeking." --James Madison, letter to William Hunter, 1790

Title: Hamilton, Federalist #9, 1787
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 15, 2009, 01:09:40 PM

"The regular distribution of power into distinct departments; the introduction of legislative balances and checks; the institution of courts composed of judges holding their offices during good behavior; the representation of the people in the legislature by deputies of their own election... They are means, and powerful means, by which the excellences of republican government may be retained and its imperfections lessened or avoided." --Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 9, 1787

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Tom Stillman on October 16, 2009, 01:50:23 AM

Being the visual creatures we dogs tend to be, I thought I would share this with my brothers. "The Philosophy of Liberty" (animated)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muHg86Mys7I&feature=PlayList&p=F4CA75DE7CE3383E&index=33&playnext=3&playnext_from=PL

Title: Hamilton #71, 1788
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 16, 2009, 04:14:24 AM

"The republican principle demands that the deliberate sense of the community should govern the conduct of those to whom they intrust the management of their affairs; but it does not require an unqualified complaisance to every sudden breeze of passion or to every transient impulse which the people may receive from the arts of men, who flatter their prejudices to betray their interests." --Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 71, 1788

Title: Reagan
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 19, 2009, 08:55:39 AM

"You and I are told we must choose between a left or right, but I suggest there is no such thing as a left or right. There is only an up or down. Up to man's age-old dream -- the maximum of individual freedom consistent with order -- or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism. Regardless of their sincerity, their humanitarian motives, those who would sacrifice freedom for security have embarked on this downward path. Plutarch warned, 'The real destroyer of the liberties of the people is he who spreads among them bounties, donations and benefits.' The Founding Fathers knew a government can't control the economy without controlling people. And they knew when a government sets out to do that, it must use force and coercion to achieve its purpose. So we have come to a time for choosing." --Ronald Reagan

Title: Samuel Williams of Vermont on Marriage
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 20, 2009, 05:42:06 AM

"Every thing useful and beneficial to man, seems to be connected with obedience to the laws of his nature, the inclinations, the duties, and the happiness of individuals, resolve themselves into customs and habits, favourable, in the highest degree, to society. In no case is this more apparent, than in the customs of nations respecting marriage." --Samuel Williams, The Natural and Civil History of Vermont, 1794

Title: George Washington
Post by: Freki on October 20, 2009, 06:06:43 AM

"To be prepared for war is one of the most effective means of preserving peace."
George Washington

Experience teaches us that it is much easier to prevent an enemy from posting themselves than it is to dislodge them after they have got possession.
George Washington

Firearms are second only to the Constitution in importance; they are the peoples' liberty's teeth.
George Washington

Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.
George Washington

Title: Washington;
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 22, 2009, 05:45:48 AM

"The preservation of the sacred fire of liberty, and the destiny of the republican model of government, are justly considered deeply, perhaps as finally, staked on the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people." --George Washington, First Inaugural Address, 1789

"It is a very great mistake to imagine that the object of loyalty is the authority and interest of one individual man, however dignified by the applause or enriched by the success of popular actions." --Samuel Adams

"You and I are told we must choose between a left or right, but I suggest there is no such thing as a left or right. There is only an up or down. Up to man's age-old dream -- the maximum of individual freedom consistent with order -- or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism. Regardless of their sincerity, their humanitarian motives, those who would sacrifice freedom for security have embarked on this downward path. Plutarch warned, 'The real destroyer of the liberties of the people is he who spreads among them bounties, donations and benefits.' The Founding Fathers knew a government can't control the economy without controlling people. And they knew when a government sets out to do that, it must use force and coercion to achieve its purpose. So we have come to a time for choosing." --Ronald Reagan

"The regular distribution of power into distinct departments; the introduction of legislative balances and checks; the institution of courts composed of judges holding their offices during good behavior; the representation of the people in the legislature by deputies of their own election... They are means, and powerful means, by which the excellences of republican government may be retained and its imperfections lessened or avoided." --Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 9, 1787

"More permanent and genuine happiness is to be found in the sequestered walks of connubial life than in the giddy rounds of promiscuous pleasure." --George Washington, letter to the Marquis de la Rourie, 1786

"I have always considered marriage as the most interesting event of one's life, the foundation of happiness or misery." --George Washington, letter to Burwell Bassett, 1785

"The happy State of Matrimony is, undoubtedly, the surest and most lasting Foundation of Comfort and Love; the Source of all that endearing Tenderness and Affection which arises from Relation and Affinity; the grand Point of Property; the Cause of all good Order in the World, and what alone preserves it from the utmost Confusion; and, to sum up all, the Appointment of infinite Wisdom for these great and good Purposes." --Benjamin Franklin, Rules and Maxims for Promoting Matrimonial Happiness, 1730

"[L]et them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it." --Thomas Jefferson

"After having thus successively taken each member of the community in its powerful grasp and fashioned him at will, the supreme power then extends its arm over the whole community. It covers the surface of society with a network of small, complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided; men seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting. Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd." --French historian Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859)

"[A]lthough a republican government is slow to move, yet when once in motion, its momentum becomes irresistible." --Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Francis C. Gray, 1815

Title: Thomas Jefferson
Post by: Freki on October 22, 2009, 08:23:45 PM

"The States should be left to do whatever they can do as well as the federal government"

Thomas Jefferson.

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Freki on October 23, 2009, 06:01:57 AM

An unlimited power to tax involves, necessarily, a power to destroy; because there is a limit beyond which no institution and no property can bear taxation.
John Marshall, McCullough v. Maryland, 1819

And it is no less true, that personal security and private property rest entirely upon the wisdom, the stability, and the integrity of the courts of justice.
Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution, 1833

Another not unimportant consideration is, that the powers of the general government will be, and indeed must be, principally employed upon external objects, such as war, peace, negotiations with foreign powers, and foreign commerce. In its internal operations it can touch but few objects, except to introduce regulations beneficial to the commerce, intercourse, and other relations, between the states, and to lay taxes for the common good. The powers of the states, on the other hand, extend to all objects, which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, and liberties, and property of the people, and the internal order, improvement, and prosperity of the state.
Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution, 1833

Besides, to lay and collect internal taxes in this extensive country must require a great number of congressional ordinances, immediately operation upon the body of the people; these must continually interfere with the state laws and thereby produce disorder and general dissatisfaction till the one system of laws or the other, operating upon the same subjects, shall be abolished.
Federal Farmer, Antifederalist Letter, October 10, 1787

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 23, 2009, 08:18:50 AM

"Keep your eyes wide open before marriage, half shut afterwards." --Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard's Almanack, 1738

Title: George Washington
Post by: Freki on October 26, 2009, 05:48:34 AM

Title: J. Adams: National Morality
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 26, 2009, 06:55:05 AM

"The foundation of national morality must be laid in private families. ... How is it possible that Children can have any just Sense of the sacred Obligations of Morality or Religion if, from their earliest Infancy, they learn their Mothers live in habitual Infidelity to their fathers, and their fathers in as constant Infidelity to their Mothers?" --John Adams, Diary, 1778

Title: S. Adams, 1780
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 27, 2009, 06:58:45 AM

"Religion in a Family is at once its brightest Ornament & its best Security." --Samuel Adams, letter to Thomas Wells, 1780

Title: The 10 Cannots
Post by: Freki on October 27, 2009, 07:52:33 AM

Not a founding father but in their spirit. Mr.William J. H. Boetcker, a Presbyterian minister, wrote a pamphlet entitled "Lincoln on Limitations" which lead to these being attributed to Lincoln.

The 10 Cannots

1. You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift.
2. You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong
3. You cannot help the poor man by destroying the rich.
4. You cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatred.
5. You cannot build character and courage by taking away man's initiative and independence.
6. You cannot help small men by tearing down big men.
7. You cannot lift the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer.
8. You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than your income.
9. You cannot establish security on borrowed money.
10 You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they will not do for themselves.

1942 by William J. H. Boetcker, a Presbyterian minister

Title: Wilson 1791
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 29, 2009, 06:25:57 AM

"It is the duty of parents to maintain their children decently, and according to their circumstances; to protect them according to the dictates of prudence; and to educate them according to the suggestions of a judicious and zealous regard for their usefulness, their respectability and happiness." --James Wilson, Lectures on Law, 1791

Title: Thomas Paine
Post by: Freki on November 02, 2009, 05:07:35 AM

If, from the more wretched parts of the old world, we look at those which are in an advanced stage of improvement, we still find the greedy hand of government thrusting itself into every corner and crevice of industry, and grasping the spoil of the multitude. Invention is continually exercised, to furnish new pretenses for revenues and taxation. It watches prosperity as its prey and permits none to escape without tribute.

Thomas Paine, Rights of Man, 1791

Society in every state is a blessing, but government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one; for when we suffer or are exposed to the same miseries by a government, which we might expect in a country without government, our calamity is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer.

Thomas Paine, Common Sense, 1776

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Freki on November 03, 2009, 04:38:45 PM

“History records that the money changers have used every form of abuse, intrigue, deceit, and violent means possible to maintain their control over governments by controlling money and its issuance.” President James Madison (1809 to 1817)

Thomas Jefferson said to John Taylor in 1816 that: “I sincerely believe that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies…”.

Title: Old Ben
Post by: Freki on November 04, 2009, 04:46:14 AM

Words may show a man's wit but actions his meaning.
Benjamin Franklin

Title: James Madison
Post by: Freki on November 05, 2009, 05:27:32 AM

Where an excess of power prevails, property of no sort is duly respected. No man is safe in his opinions, his person, his faculties, or his possessions.
James Madison

Title: 2nd Amendment Quotes
Post by: Freki on November 06, 2009, 01:00:06 PM

“While the people have property, arms in their hands, and only a spark of noble spirit, the most corrupt Congress must be mad to form any project of tyranny.” (Rev. Nicholas Collin, Fayetteville [NC] Gazette, October 12, 1789)

“The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government.” (Thomas Jefferson)

“Who are the militia? Are they not ourselves? . . . Congress has no power to disarm the militia. Their swords, and every other terrible implement of the soldier, are the birthright of an American . . . [T]he unlimited power of the sword is not in the hands of either the federal or state governments, but, where I trust in God it will ever remain, in the hands of the people.” (Tench Coxe, ally of James Madison and member of the Continental Congress, Freeman’s Journal, February 20, 1778)

Coxe also said, “As civil rulers, not having their duty to the people duly before them, may attempt to tyrannize, and as the military forces which must be occasionally raised to defend our country, might pervert their power to the injury of their fellow-citizens, the people are confirmed by the next article [the Second Amendment] in their right to keep and bear their private arms.” (Remarks on the First Part of the Amendments to the Federal Constitution, Philadelphia Federal Gazette, June 18, 1789)

“f circumstances should at any time oblige the government to form an army of any magnitude that army can never be formidable to the liberties of the people while there is a large body of citizens, little, if at all, inferior to them in discipline and the use of arms, who stand ready to defend their own rights and those of their fellow-citizens.” (Alexander Hamilton, The Federalist Papers, Number 29)

Title: Adams and Old Ben
Post by: Freki on November 09, 2009, 08:48:39 AM

"If ever time should come, when vain and aspiring men shall possess the highest seats in Government, our country will stand in need of its experienced patriots to prevent its ruin."
Samuel Adams

This will be the best security for maintaining our liberties. A nation of well-informed men who have been taught to know and prize the rights which God has given them cannot be enslaved. It is in the religion of ignorance that tyranny begins.
Benjamin Franklin

Title: Thomas Paine
Post by: Freki on November 10, 2009, 05:47:57 AM

As parents, we can have no joy, knowing that this government is not sufficiently lasting to ensure any thing which we may bequeath to posterity: And by a plain method of argument, as we are running the next generation into debt, we ought to do the work of it, otherwise we use them meanly and pitifully. In order to discover the line of our duty rightly, we should take our children in our hand, and fix our station a few years farther into life; that eminence will present a prospect, which a few present fears and prejudices conceal from our sight.

Thomas Paine, Common Sense, 1776

Title: Limited Gov't and General Welfare
Post by: Freki on November 12, 2009, 05:24:18 AM

Title: Many entries
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 13, 2009, 09:33:31 AM

"Human Felicity is produced not so much by great Pieces of good Fortune that seldom happen, as by little Advantages that occur every Day." --Benjamin Franklin, Autobiography, 1771

"Strive to be the greatest man in your country, and you may be disappointed. Strive to be the best and you may succeed: he may well win the race that runs by himself." --Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard's Almanack, 1747

"Gentlemen, you will permit me to put on my spectacles, for I have grown not only gray, but almost blind in the service of my country." --George Washington, upon fumbling for his glasses before delivering the Newburgh Address, 1783

"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom, must, like men, undergo the fatigues of supporting it." --Thomas Paine, The Crisis, No. 4, 1777

"Determine never to be idle. No person will have occasion to complain of the want of time, who never loses any. It is wonderful how much may be done, if we are always doing. And that you may be always doing good, my dear, is the ardent prayer of yours affectionately." --Thomas Jefferson, letter to Martha Jefferson, 1787

"And as to the Cares, they are chiefly what attend the bringing up of Children; and I would ask any Man who has experienced it, if they are not the most delightful Cares in the World; and if from that Particular alone, he does not find the Bliss of a double State much greater, instead of being less than he expected." --Benjamin Franklin, Reply to a Piece of Advice

"[T]he importance of piety and religion; of industry and frugality; of prudence, economy, regularity and an even government; all ... are essential to the well-being of a family." --Samuel Adams, letter to Thomas Wells, 1780

"Labor to keep alive in your breast that little spark of celestial fire called conscience." --George Washington, The Rules of Civility, 1748

"It is of great importance to set a resolution, not to be shaken, never to tell an untruth. There is no vice so mean, so pitiful, so contemptible; and he who permits himself to tell a lie once, finds it much easier to do it a second and a third time, till at length it becomes habitual; he tells lies without attending to it, and truths without the world's believing him. This falsehood of the tongue leads to that of the heart, and in time depraves all its good disposition." --Thomas Jefferson, letter to Peter Carr, 1785

Title: Thomas Paine
Post by: Freki on November 14, 2009, 05:43:59 AM

Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.

Thomas Paine, The American Crisis, No. 1, December 19, 1776

We fight not to enslave, but to set a country free, and to make room upon the earth for honest men to live in.

Thomas Paine, The American Crisis, No. 4, September 11, 1777

When we are planning for posterity, we ought to remember that virtue is not hereditary.

Thomas Paine, Common Sense, 1776

What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value.

Thomas Paine, The American Crisis, No. 1, December 19, 1776

Title: Wilson, 1791
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 16, 2009, 06:59:16 AM

"In planning, forming, and arranging laws, deliberation is always becoming, and always useful." --James Wilson, Lectures on Law, 1791

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 17, 2009, 08:14:25 AM

"This country and this people seem to have been made for each other, and it appears as if it was the design of Providence that an inheritance so proper and convenient for a band of brethren, united to each other by the strongest of ties, should never be split into a number of unsocial, jealous, and alien sovereignties." --John Jay, Federalist No. 2

Title: Montgomery Estate
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 17, 2009, 09:40:46 AM

A Revolutionary War Widow's Estate Becomes a Preservation Battleground

Robert Stolarik for The New York Times
Montgomery Place, a house and a 434-acre estate held by one family for
generations, is now owned by Historic Hudson Valley, a nonprofit group.

By STEPHANIE STROM

Published: November 16, 2009
ANNANDALE-ON-HUDSON, N.Y. - In the mid-1980s J. Dennis Delafield and his
cousins faced a hard fact: They could no longer afford to maintain the
estate established in 1802 by their distant ancestor, Janet Livingston
Montgomery, widow of Gen. Richard Montgomery, a hero of the Revolutionary
War.

A view of the Hudson and the Catskills from Montgomery Place, an estate
established by Janet Livingston Montgomery in 1802.

"It was eating us up alive," Mr. Delafield said of Montgomery Place, a
majestic house overlooking the Hudson River that is but one small part of
the 434-acre property here. "We had to let it go, though it broke our
hearts."

They decided to turn the house and its grounds, with working orchards and
more than a dozen outbuildings, into a museum. So they sold it to what is
now Historic Hudson Valley, a nonprofit group founded by John D. Rockefeller
Jr. that owns Washington Irving's house, Sunnyside, in Tarrytown, N.Y., and
several other properties.

"We made a bargain sale in the belief that that way the house would be
protected," Mr. Delafield said.

Now, though, Mr. Delafield and others are worried about the fate of
Montgomery Place. The house was closed to the public in 2006 - though the
grounds were available for weddings, photo shoots and other events - until
August, when it was hastily reopened for four hours on Fridays after a state
official began inquiring about its status. Under the terms of a state
financing package, the house must be open at least 12 days a year.

Rumors have run rampant this fall that Historic Hudson Valley plans to sell
the house, vexing public officials who have sought definitive information
from the group's leader, Waddell W. Stillman. "I've dealt with him on a
number of occasions, and I've never felt we always got the full story," said
Marcus J. Molinaro, the New York state assemblyman who represents the area.

In a recent interview at Montgomery Place, Mr. Stillman denied that the
organization's board planned to sell all or any part of the property. "We
have not discussed a sale," he said.

However, minutes of board meetings obtained by The New York Times make it
clear that the board discussed just that on several occasions. "Mr. Herbert
E. Nass asked whether we could sell Montgomery Place in parts, and whether
doing so could yield a better price over time," the minutes of a March 10
meeting state.

At the same meeting the board chairman, Michael Hegarty, raised concerns
about rebuilding the organization's endowment, which like many others was
hard hit by the economic downturn. "To do this, Mr. Hegarty believes we must
consider the sale of assets, such as the president's house adjacent to the
Philipsburg Manor" - another of the organization's historic houses - "and
some or perhaps all of the property at Montgomery Place," the minutes say.

The board even formed a committee to explore "existing conditions and
constraints" at Montgomery Place; at a June meeting its members described
several potential buyers, according to notes by board members.

Asked about the discrepancy, Mr. Stillman said the minutes represented "old
news." "The board's March meeting coincided exactly with the nadir in the
financial markets," he wrote in an e-mail message. "Everyone was distressed
about the decline in our endowment, and economic prospects were grim. A
wide-ranging discussion ensued about the sale of assets, including
Montgomery Place, and nothing was decided or acted upon, then or since."

"The topic is no longer on the board's agenda," he wrote.

A draft resolution to offer to sell some of the land to a state agency that
holds an easement on part of the estate had been floated for consideration
at a meeting on Wednesday.

Mr. Stillman said the resolution had not been considered by or proposed to
the board and would not be taken up on Wednesday. He also said the reopening
of the house on Fridays was unrelated to the state official's inquiries.

Mr. Stillman, who joined Historic Hudson Valley in 1992, said his group
could not afford the $500,000 in annual operating costs for Montgomery
Place, let alone pay for necessary renovations. Nor would it be possible to
reopen the house next year, as originally planned, he said. Indeed, he said,
the decision to buy the house in the first place had been a bad one. "We
broke some of the textbook rules for not getting ahead of yourself," he
said. "We didn't have the money to buy it, we didn't have the money to
maintain it, and we way underestimated how much it would take to restore
it."

==============

Page 2 of 2)

But several former board members, led by the Wall Street financier Richard
Jenrette, said they had proposed ways to support Montgomery Place, including
offers to help Historic Hudson Valley cover some costs.

Because of its continuous ownership by descendants of Mrs. Montgomery,
Montgomery Place is a rare example of an intact Hudson Valley estate.
Alexander Jackson Davis, the influential 19th-century architect who designed
many of the area's prominent houses, redesigned Montgomery and designed
several other structures on the property. The landscape architect Andrew
Jackson Downing provided advice on the design of the grounds and designed
one garden himself.

The house plays an important role in the community, too, Mr. Molinaro said,
attracting tourists and helping to educate students in the area's history.

Mr. Jenrette has proposed that Historic Hudson Valley donate the property to
the Classical American Homes Preservation Trust, a foundation to which he
has donated six historic houses. He and others have offered to create a
friends group to raise money to support Montgomery Place. Most recently, he
and John S. Dyson, another former board member and a venture capitalist,
offered to put up $100,000 a year for five years to keep it open. "We think
we can get at least another $100,000 to match that, and if we could create a
friends group, we could raise a lot more money," Mr. Jenrette said.

In a meeting earlier this month, however, Mr. Stillman and Mr. Hegarty
rejected that offer. Mr. Stillman said in the interview that he did not want
to create another nonprofit group that would do the same thing as Historic
Hudson Valley.

In addition to owning three other historic houses and a church in the
region, Historic Hudson Valley recently broke ground on a regional history
center in Pocantico Hills, N.Y., on nine acres donated by Laurance
Rockefeller.

The center will provide offices for the organization, as well as space for
scholars and researchers seeking access to its extensive archives and
records.

Mr. Stillman envisions creating a digital archive of the contents of
Historic Hudson Valley's houses to provide virtual tours and other
activities to attract a new breed of tourists.

Although the group does not yet have the $15 million it needs to build the
center, it began construction last month because it would otherwise lose a
$6 million grant from a state financing agency.

In their meetings, according to the minutes obtained by The Times, Historic
Hudson Valley board members discussed their concerns that public officials
and others would assume they were using proceeds from the sale of Montgomery
Place to finance the construction of the center.

"They will deny that, but money is fungible," said John H. Dobkin, a
preservation expert who was the organization's executive director from 1984
to 2000. "They'll say it's to replenish the endowment, but you don't sell a
unique asset like Montgomery Place to do that."

As chairman of the New York Genealogical and Biographical Society, Mr.
Stillman put through a plan ending that organization's membership structure,
selling its historic home and handing over its archives to the New York
Public Library, keeping only a digitized version of them. "Historic house
museums are in the same place as classical music orchestras," he said.

Historic Hudson Valley's endowment fell to $45 million last spring from
about $70 million and now stands at roughly $49 million, according to Rob
Schweitzer, spokesman for the organization.

By the standards of organizations supporting historic homes, that is a
handsome sum even at its depleted level. The Classical American Homes trust,
for example, operates six houses with $9 million in liquid assets.

"There's a pact between nonprofits and the people because we extend to them
certain tax benefits and, in the case of Historic Hudson Valley, millions of
dollars in public grants," Mr. Molinaro, the assemblyman, said.

"If they have a desire to divest of this asset, they certainly shouldn't
benefit financially from all that public investment."

Title: Jefferson
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 18, 2009, 05:44:23 AM

"Adore God. Reverence and cherish your parents. Love your neighbor as yourself, and your country more than yourself. Be just. Be true. Murmur not at the ways of Providence. So shall the life into which you have entered be the portal to one of eternal and ineffable bliss." --Thomas Jefferson, letter to Thomas Jefferson Smith, 1825

Title: Washington:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 19, 2009, 08:05:40 AM

"[T]he great Searcher of human hearts is my witness, that I have no wish, which aspires beyond the humble and happy lot of living and dying a private citizen on my own farm." --George Washington, letter to Charles Pettit, 1788

Title: Jefferson
Post by: Freki on November 20, 2009, 08:23:47 AM

"I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around [the banks] will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs." -

Thomas Jefferson, Letter to the Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin (1802)

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. Jefferson

To compel a man to furnish funds for the propagation of ideas he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical. Jefferson

Title: Franklin; Madison; Pulaski
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 25, 2009, 04:32:02 AM

"Wish not so much to live long as to live well." --Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard's Almanack, 1746
===================
"It is the duty of every man to render to the Creator such homage, and such only, as he believes to be acceptable to him. This duty is precedent both in order of time and degree of obligation, to the claims of Civil Society. Before any man can be considered as a member of Civil Society, he must be considered as a subject of the Governor of the Universe." --James Madison, A Memorial and Remonstrance, 1785
---------------

Revolutionary War hero becomes honorary US citizen

In this June 23, 2005, file photo a carving of Brig. Gen. Casimir Pulaski is shown on the 54-foot … .By WILLIAM C. MANN, Associated Press Writer William C. Mann, Associated Press Writer – Fri Nov 6, 9:48 pm ET

WASHINGTON – Finally, Gen. Casimir Pulaski became an American citizen on Friday, 230 years after the Polish nobleman died fighting for the as yet-unborn United States.

President Barack Obama signed a joint resolution of the Senate and the House that made Pulaski an honorary citizen.

Pulaski's contribution to the American colonies' effort to leave the British Empire began with a flourish. He wrote a letter to Gen. George Washington, the Revolution's leader, with the declaration: "I came here, where freedom is being defended, to serve it, and to live or die for it."

Democratic Rep. Dennis Kucinich, a Polish-American, had been pushing for the honorary citizenship since 2005. He lives in Cleveland, which has many other citizens of Polish extraction.

"Pulaski made the ultimate sacrifice for this country, and he deserves nothing but the highest honor and recognition for his service," Kucinich said then.

Washington had heard of the young Pole from Benjamin Franklin, an urbane traveler who had been Washington's first ambassador to France. Franklin told Washington of Pulaski's exploits that had made him "renowned throughout Europe for the courage and bravery he displayed in defense of his country's freedom."

The revolutionaries' top general let the young nobleman hire onto the brash fight against the European superpower, and Pulaski made a name for himself as a skilled horseman, eventually to be known as the "father of the American cavalry."

He died before the British were driven away. In October 1779, he led a cavalry assault to save the important Southern port of Savannah, Ga., was wounded and taken aboard the American ship USS Wasp. He died at sea two days later.

Americans have honored Pulaski throughout the last two centuries. Counties and streets are named for him.

In 1929 Congress declared Oct. 11 to be Pulaski Day in the United States, a largely forgotten holiday in much of the country. The Continental Congress suggested that a monument be erected in honor of Pulaski, and in 1825 it finally was erected in Savannah.

Title: Virginia Bill of Rights 1776
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 27, 2009, 06:21:55 AM

Title: Washington and others
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 02, 2009, 04:57:55 AM

"No country upon earth ever had it more in its power to attain these blessings than United America. Wondrously strange, then, and much to be regretted indeed would it be, were we to neglect the means and to depart from the road which Providence has pointed us to so plainly; I cannot believe it will ever come to pass." --George Washington, letter to Benjamin Lincoln, 1788

"I hope, some day or another, we shall become a storehouse and granary for the world." --George Washington, letter to Marquis de Lafayette, 1788

Title: Washington
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 03, 2009, 03:59:38 AM

"We are either a United people, or we are not. If the former, let us, in all maters of general concern act as a nation, which have national objects to promote, and a national character to support. If we are not, let us no longer act a farce by pretending to it." --George Washington, letter to James Madison, 1785

Title: Paine
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 04, 2009, 05:02:12 AM

"The cause of America is in a great measure the cause of all mankind." --Thomas Paine, Common Sense, 1776

Title: Sundry
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 09, 2009, 04:07:31 AM

"The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred
as the laws of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice
to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence." --John Adams

"Every man who loves peace, every man who loves his country, every man who loves liberty ought to have it ever before his eyes that he may cherish in his heart a due attachment to the Union of America and be able to set a due value on the means of preserving it." --James Madison, Federalist No. 41

"We are firmly convinced, and we act on that conviction, that with nations as with individuals our interests soundly calculated will ever be found inseparable from our moral duties, and history bears witness to the fact that a just nation is trusted on its word when recourse is had to armaments and wars to bridle others." --Thomas Jefferson, Second Inaugural Address, 1805

"Let the American youth never forget, that they possess a noble inheritance, bought by the toils, and sufferings, and blood of their ancestors; and capacity, if wisely improved, and faithfully guarded, of transmitting to their latest posterity all the substantial blessings of life, the peaceful enjoyment of liberty, property, religion, and independence." --Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution, 1833

Title: Madison; Federalist 14
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 10, 2009, 07:09:10 AM

"Is it not the glory of the people of America, that whilst they have paid a decent regard to the opinions of former times and other nations, they have not suffered a blind veneration for antiquity, for custom, or for names, to overrule the suggestions of their own good sense, the knowledge of their own situation, and the lessons of their own experience? To this manly spirit, posterity will be indebted for the possession, and the world for the example of the numerous innovations displayed on the American theatre, in favor of private rights and public happiness." --James Madison, Federalist No. 14

Title: Jefferson 1801
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 11, 2009, 09:14:11 AM

Title: Constitution.org
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on December 11, 2009, 09:27:41 AM

A resource containing links to many founding documents:

http://www.constitution.org/

Title: Madison; Federalist 14
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 13, 2009, 07:34:50 AM

Title: Noah Webster, 1787
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 14, 2009, 06:37:58 AM

Title: Patriot Post Brief
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 14, 2009, 08:38:54 AM

Brief · Monday, December 14, 2009

The Foundation
"In questions of power, then, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution." --Thomas Jefferson

Liberty
"I reread ['Atlas Shrugged'] recently and was stunned. It was as if [Ayn] Rand had seen the future. Writing half a century ago, she predicted today's explosion of big government in shockingly accurate detail. The 'Preservation of Livelihood Law.' The 'Equalization of Opportunity Law.' The 'Steel Unification Plan.' Don't these sound like laws passed by the current Congress? All were creations of Rand's villain, Wesley Mouch, the evil bureaucrat who regulates business and eventually drives the productive people out of business. Who is today's Wesley Mouch? Barney Frank? Chris Dodd. Tim Geithner? ... 'Atlas' is still a big bestseller today. This year, it reached as high as NO. 15 on Amazon's bestseller list. Pretty amazing. Clearly there's some magic in 'Atlas Shrugged.' The Library of Congress once asked readers which books made the biggest difference in their lives. 'Atlas' came in second, after the Bible. ... The embrace of freer markets has lifted more people out of the misery of poverty than any other system -- ever. The World Bank says that in just the last 30 years, half a billion people who once lived on less than $1.25 a day have moved out of poverty. But now, Wesley Mouch -- I mean, Congress and the bureaucrats -- tell us they are going to 'fix' capitalism, as if their previous 'fixes' didn't hamstring the free market and create the problems they propose to solve. Who are they kidding? Rand had it right. She learned it the hard way in Soviet Russia. What makes a country work is leaving people free -- free to take risks, to invent things -- and to keep the rewards of their work. Critics say Ayn Rand promotes selfishness. I call it 'enlightened self interest.' When free people act in their own self-interest, society prospers." --columnist John Stossel

Insight
"The [U.S.] Constitution is a limitation on the government, not on private individuals ... it does not prescribe the conduct of private individuals, only the conduct of the government ... it is not a charter for government power, but a charter of the citizen's protection against the government." --author and philosopher Ayn Rand (1905-1982)

Bill of Rights Anniversary
Tomorrow, Dec. 15, is the 218th anniversary of the adoption of the Bill of Rights, the first 10 Amendments to our Constitution, as ratified in 1791.

The Bill of Rights was inspired by three remarkable documents: John Locke's 1689 thesis, Two Treatises of Government, regarding the protection of "property" (in the Latin context, proprius, or one's own "life, liberty and estate"); in part from the Virginia Declaration of Rights authored by George Mason in 1776 as part of that state's Constitution; and, of course, in part from our Declaration of Independence authored by Thomas Jefferson.

Read in context, the Bill of Rights is both an affirmation of innate individual rights and a clear delineation on constraints upon the central government. As oft trampled and abused as the Bill of Rights is, Patriots should remain vigilant in the fight for our rights.

Title: Jefferson to Washington, 1796
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 16, 2009, 05:28:50 AM

"One loves to possess arms, though they hope never to have occasion for them." --Thomas Jefferson, letter to George Washington, 1796

Title: Catching up
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 24, 2009, 06:07:06 AM

Sorry I fell behind on this thread!

"[T]he only foundation for a useful education in a republic is to be laid in religion. Without this there can be no virtue, and without virtue there can be no liberty, and liberty is the object and life of all republican governments." --Benjamin Rush, On the Mode of Education Proper in a Republic, 1806

"National defense is one of the cardinal duties of a statesman." --John Adams

"There is but one straight course, and that is to seek truth and pursue it steadily." --George Washington

"I think all the world would gain by setting commerce at perfect liberty." --Thomas Jefferson

"[A] wise and frugal government ... shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government." --Thomas Jefferson

"A strong body makes the mind strong. As to the species of exercises, I advise the gun. While this gives moderate exercise to the body, it gives boldness, enterprise and independence to the mind. Games played with the ball, and others of that nature, are too violent for the body and stamp no character on the mind. Let your gun therefore be your constant companion of your walks." --Thomas Jefferson, letter to Peter Carr, 1785

"We established however some, although not all its [self-government] important principles. The constitutions of most of our States assert, that all power is inherent in the people; that they may exercise it by themselves, in all cases to which they think themselves competent, (as in electing their functionaries executive and legislative, and deciding by a jury of themselves, in all judiciary cases in which any fact is involved,) or they may act by representatives, freely and equally chosen; that it is their right and duty to be at all times armed." --Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Cartwright, 1824

The Foundation
"The essence of Government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse." --James Madison

"[W]hereas, to preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms, and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them; nor does it follow from this, that all promiscuously must go into actual service on every occasion. The mind that aims at a select militia, must be influenced by a truly anti-republican principle; and when we see many men disposed to practice upon it, whenever they can prevail, no wonder true republicans are for carefully guarding against it." --Federal Farmer, Antifederalist Letter, No.18

"Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect every one who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are inevitably ruined." --Patrick Henry, speech in the Virginia Ratifying Convention, 1778

"O sir, we should have fine times, indeed, if, to punish tyrants, it were only sufficient to assemble the people! Your arms, wherewith you could defend yourselves, are gone; and you have no longer an aristocratical, no longer a democratical spirit. Did you ever read of any revolution in a nation, brought about by the punishment of those in power, inflicted by those who had no power at all?" --Patrick Henry, speech in the Virginia Ratifying Convention, 1778

Title: Luke
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 25, 2009, 08:16:38 AM

"In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration when Quirinius was governor of Syria. And all went to be registered, each to his own town. And Joseph also went up from Galilee, from the town of Nazareth, to Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and lineage of David, to be registered with Mary, his betrothed, who was with child. And while they were there, the time came for her to give birth. And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling cloths and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn." --Luke 2:1-7

Title: George Mason and Zacharia Johnson, VA convention 1788;
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 29, 2009, 06:06:11 AM

"[W]hen the resolution of enslaving America was formed in Great Britain, the British Parliament was advised by an artful man, - who was governor of Pennsylvania, to disarm the people; that it was the best and most effectual way to enslave them; but that they should not do it openly, but weaken them, and let them sink gradually, by totally disusing and neglecting the militia." --George Mason, speech in the Virginia Ratifying Convention, 1788

"[T]he people are not to be disarmed of their weapons. They are left in full possession of them." --Zacharia Johnson, speech in the Virginia Ratifying Convention, 1788

Title: Virginia Resolution of 1798, James Madison
Post by: Freki on December 30, 2009, 06:48:31 AM

That this Assembly doth explicitly and peremptorily declare, that it views the powers of the federal government, as resulting from the compact, to which the states are parties; as limited by the plain sense and intention of the instrument constituting the compact; as no further valid that they are authorized by the grants enumerated in that compact; and that in case of a deliberate, palpable, and dangerous exercise of other powers, not granted by the said compact, the states who are parties thereto, have the right, and are in duty bound, to interpose for arresting the progress of the evil, and for maintaining within their respective limits, the authorities, rights and liberties appertaining to them.

Virginia Resolution of 1798, James Madison

Title: Madison; Federalist 46
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 31, 2009, 08:30:54 AM

"Besides the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation, the existence of subordinate governments, to which the people are attached and by which the militia officers are appointed, forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition, more insurmountable than any which a simple government of any form can admit of." --James Madison, Federalist No. 46

Title: Hamilton, Federalist 29
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 01, 2010, 04:37:46 AM

"If a well-regulated militia be the most natural defense of a free country, it ought certainly to be under the regulation and at the disposal of that body which is constituted the guardian of the national security. If standing armies are dangerous to liberty, an efficacious power over the militia in the same body ought, as far as possible, to take away the inducement and the pretext to such unfriendly institutions. If the federal government can command the aid of the militia in those emergencies which call for the military arm in support of the civil magistrate, it can the better dispense with the employment of a different kind of force. If it cannot avail itself of the former, it will be obliged to recur to the latter. To render an army unnecessary will be a more certain method of preventing its existence than a thousand prohibitions upon paper." --Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 29

Title: Jefferson on debt in 1816
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 05, 2010, 05:05:16 AM

"We must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt." --Thomas Jefferson, letter to Samuel Kercheval, 1816

Title: Various
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 09, 2010, 06:54:37 AM

"As on the one hand, the necessity for borrowing in particular emergencies cannot be doubted, so on the other, it is equally evident that to be able to borrow upon good terms, it is essential that the credit of a nation should be well established." --Alexander Hamilton, Report on Public Credit, 1790

"The whole of that Bill [of Rights] is a declaration of the right of the people at large or considered as individuals... t establishes some rights of the individual as unalienable and which consequently, no majority has a right to deprive them of." --Albert Gallatin, letter to Alexander Addison, 1789

"There is something so far-fetched and so extravagant in the idea of danger to liberty from the militia that one is at a loss whether to treat it with gravity or with raillery; whether to consider it as a mere trial of skill, like the paradoxes of rhetoricians; as a disingenuous artifice to instil prejudices at any price; or as the serious." --Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 29

"The multiplication of public offices, increase of expense beyond income, growth and entailment of a public debt, are indications soliciting the employment of the pruning knife." --Thomas Jefferson, letter to Spencer Roane, 1821

"[A] rigid economy of the public contributions and absolute interdiction of all useless expenses will go far towards keeping the government honest and unoppressive." --Thomas Jefferson, letter to Marquis de Lafayette, 1823

Title: Washington, 1793: discharge of the public debt.
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 11, 2010, 05:20:00 AM

"No pecuniary consideration is more urgent, than the regular redemption and discharge of the public debt: on none can delay be more injurious, or an economy of time more valuable." --George Washington, Message to the House of Representatives, 1793

Title: James Madison
Post by: Freki on January 11, 2010, 06:24:35 AM

In the Virginia Resolution of 1798, James Madison wrote of the principle of interposition:

That this Assembly doth explicitly and peremptorily declare, that it views the powers of the federal government, as resulting from the compact, to which the states are parties; as limited by the plain sense and intention of the instrument constituting the compact; as no further valid that they are authorized by the grants enumerated in that compact; and that in case of a deliberate, palpable, and dangerous exercise of other powers, not granted by the said compact, the states who are parties thereto, have the right, and are in duty bound(emphasis added), to interpose for arresting the progress of the evil, and for maintaining within their respective limits, the authorities, rights and liberties appertaining to them.

Title: Jefferson to Eppes, 1813
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 12, 2010, 05:15:28 AM

"It is a wise rule and should be fundamental in a government disposed to cherish its credit, and at the same time to restrain the use of it within the limits of its faculties, never to borrow a dollar without laying a tax in the same instant for paying the interest annually, and the principal within a given term; and to consider that tax as pledged to the creditors on the public faith." --Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Wayles Eppes, 1813

Title: Jefferson to Madison, 1789
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 13, 2010, 04:19:34 AM

Title: Madison on debt, to Congress, 1790
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 14, 2010, 05:54:05 AM

Title: Jefferson to Taylor, 1816
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 15, 2010, 06:46:08 AM

"The principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale." --Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Taylor, 1816

Title: MLK: I have a dream; Reagan
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 18, 2010, 08:46:17 AM

http://patriotpost.us/historic/documents/80/

Letter from jail:

http://patriotpost.us/historic/documents/81/

=============

"In 1968 Martin Luther King was gunned down by a brutal assassin, his life cut short at the age of 39. But those 39 short years had changed America forever. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 had guaranteed all Americans equal use of public accommodations, equal access to programs financed by federal funds, and the right to compete for employment on the sole basis of individual merit. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 had made certain that from then on black Americans would get to vote. But most important, there was not just a change of law; there was a change of heart. The conscience of America had been touched. Across the land, people had begun to treat each other not as blacks and whites, but as fellow Americans. ... Now our nation has decided to honor Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. by setting aside a day each year to remember him and the just cause he stood for. We've made historic strides since Rosa Parks refused to go to the back of the bus. As a democratic people, we can take pride in the knowledge that we Americans recognized a grave injustice and took action to correct it. And we should remember that in far too many countries, people like Dr. King never have the opportunity to speak out at all." --Ronald Reagan

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: G M on January 19, 2010, 05:20:57 AM

As I like to point out, MLK was a republican.

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 23, 2010, 07:40:22 AM

"A penny saved is twopence clear." --Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard's Almanack, 1737

"He that goes a borrowing goes a sorrowing." --Benjamin Franklin, writings, 1758

"The same prudence which in private life would forbid our paying our own money for unexplained projects, forbids it in the dispensation of the public moneys." --Thomas Jefferson, letter to Shelton Gilliam, 1808

"I think we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious." --Thomas Jefferson, letter to William Ludlow, 1824

"The God who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time; the hand of force may destroy, but cannot disjoin them." --Thomas Jefferson, Summary View of the Rights of British America, 1774

Title: Federalist 62
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 25, 2010, 09:45:32 AM

Title: Madison: VA Ratification Convention 1788
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 26, 2010, 09:13:40 AM

Title: Washington, 1790; Justice Joseph Story
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 29, 2010, 05:57:45 AM

"[A] good moral character is the first essential in a man, and that the habits contracted at your age are generally indelible, and your conduct here may stamp your character through life. It is therefore highly important that you should endeavor not only to be learned but virtuous." --George Washington, letter to Steptoe Washington, 1790

"The duty imposed upon him to take care, that the laws be faithfully executed, follows out the strong injunctions of his oath of office, that he will 'preserve, protect, and defend the constitution.' The great object of the executive department is to accomplish this purpose; and without it, be the form of government whatever it may, it will be utterly worthless for offence, or defence; for the redress of grievances, or the protection of rights; for the happiness, or good order, or safety of the people." --Justice Joseph Story

Title: Early draft of C. found
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 02, 2010, 09:28:39 AM

http://www.philly.com/philly/news/nation_world/20100202_Early_draft_of_the_Constitution_found_in_Phila_.html
Early draft of the Constitution found in Phila.
By Edward Colimore

Inquirer Staff Writer

Researcher Lorianne Updike Toler was intrigued by the centuries-old document at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania.

On the back of a treasured draft of the U.S. Constitution was a truncated version of the same document, starting with the familiar words: "We The People. . . ."

They had been scribbled upside down by one of the Constitution's framers, James Wilson, in the summer of 1787. The cursive continued, then abruptly stopped, as if pages were missing.

A mystery, Toler thought, until she examined other Wilson papers from the Historical Society's vault in Philadelphia and found what appeared to be the rest of the draft, titled "The Continuation of the Scheme."

The document - one of 21 million in the Historical Society's collection - was known to scholars, but probably should have been placed with the other drafts, said constitutional scholar John P. Kaminski, director of the Center for the Study of the American Constitution in the history department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

"This was the kind of moment historians dream about," said Toler, 30, a lawyer and founding president of the Constitutional Sources Project (www.ConSource.org), a nonprofit organization, based in Washington, that promotes an understanding of and access to U.S. Constitution documents.

"This was national scripture, a piece of our Constitution's history," she said of her find in November. "It was difficult to keep my hands from trembling."

As other researchers "realized what was happening, there was a sort of hushed awe that settled over the reading room," Toler said. "One of them said the hair on her arms stood on end."

Two drafts of the Constitution in Wilson's hand had been separated from his papers long ago. One of them included the beginning of still another draft and was apparently seen as part of a single working version, instead of a separate draft.

Toler said "The Continuation of the Scheme," including its provisions about the executive and judiciary branches, completes that draft, making it a third.

She "found a document that was sort of buried in its right place, but not taken out by an archivist for special treatment," said Kaminski, the constitutional scholar. "This is a valuable document. It is in Wilson's hand, and it was in Wilson's papers, where it should have been."

With so many historical documents "going online, you don't have that kind of discovery in an archives," he added. "I can understand why [Toler] would be excited."

For Nathan Raab, a member of the Board of Councilors of the Historical Society, the documents are reminders "of the great depth of the archives there and the emotional power of holding a piece of history in your hand."

"The Continuation of the Scheme" and countless other documents had been evaluated by scholars decades ago before being carefully filed away at the Historical Society at 13th and Locust Streets.

"Perhaps this one should have been placed with the other drafts," said Lee Arnold, senior director of the library and collections at the Historical Society. "We may do that, but no decision has been made.

"We want to look at it more thoroughly," he said. "In the end, though, [the document] is perfectly fine."

The drafts of the Constitution in Wilson's hand were removed from his other papers and placed in Mylar and acid-free folios and have been occasionally displayed.

"The Continuation of the Scheme" document "was safe and preserved, but not given the prominence," said Kaminski, chief editor of the book The Documentary History of the Ratification of the Constitution.

"Wilson was a great man and one of the great founders and should be respected for that," he said. "We owe him our gratitude for the role he played."

Wilson, who lived in Philadelphia, was selected July 24, 1787, with four other members of the Constitutional Convention to serve on the Committee of Detail.

The committee - which also had John Rutledge, Edmund Randolph, Nathaniel Gorham, and Oliver Ellsworth - used 28 resolutions passed by members of the convention to flesh out the Constitution.

They finished their work and presented it Aug. 6, 1787, to the Constitutional Convention. It included Wilson's famous "We the People" beginning.

Seeing the framers' drafts and thought processes leading up to that point was especially thrilling to Toler, who is studying at Oxford University, where she is seeking a doctorate in U.S. history and specializing in constitutional legal history.

"The Constitution may be the most important document written in modern history," said Toler. "It is the longest-standing written constitution and the basis for most of the constitutions in the world."

After finding the draft, "I felt like an actor in the movie National Treasure, but [actor] Nicolas Cage was nowhere to be found," Toler added.

"However, what I found was a national treasure - the real national treasure."

Title: Request for help
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 02, 2010, 09:37:26 AM

second post of AM:

Woof All:

When I was a boy, we had Washington's Birthday and Lincoln's Birthday as school holidays. Depending on how the dates worked out, this sometimes resulted in a 3 or 4 day weekend. Every year as these dates rolled around we were taught about these two men and what they had done.

Then these holidays somehow became known as "President's Weekend". My sense of things is that a lot less teaching of these two President's lives and deeds was done.

Now in California, in part due to we the idiots who elected the idiots in Sacramento who have bankrupted our state, my childen have the week off :-o and it is called "Ski Week" or some such thing.

So for my children, I have decided to post about these two men on the front page of our site on the days around their birthdays. For Lincoln, the Gettysburg Address is an easy call. For Washington I would like to ask for suggestions. First inaugural (sp?) address? Final inaugural address? Letter from Valley Forge (I may not have the name of this right)? Or?
In all cases, URLs will be appreciated.

Thank you,
Marc

Title: Articles of Confederation
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 03, 2010, 05:43:12 AM

http://www.usconstitution.net/articles.html

The Articles of Confederation

Agreed to by Congress November 15, 1777; ratified and in force, March 1, 1781.
Preamble

To all to whom these Presents shall come, we the undersigned Delegates of the States affixed to our Names send greeting.

Articles of Confederation and perpetual Union between the States of New Hampshire, Massachusetts bay, Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia.

Article I. The Stile of this Confederacy shall be "The United States of America."

Article II. Each state retains its sovereignty, freedom, and independence, and every power, jurisdiction, and right, which is not by this Confederation expressly delegated to the United States, in Congress assembled.

Article III. The said States hereby severally enter into a firm league of friendship with each other, for their common defense, the security of their liberties, and their mutual and general welfare, binding themselves to assist each other, against all force offered to, or attacks made upon them, or any of them, on account of religion, sovereignty, trade, or any other pretense whatever.

Article IV. The better to secure and perpetuate mutual friendship and intercourse among the people of the different States in this Union, the free inhabitants of each of these States, paupers, vagabonds, and fugitives from justice excepted, shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of free citizens in the several States; and the people of each State shall free ingress and regress to and from any other State, and shall enjoy therein all the privileges of trade and commerce, subject to the same duties, impositions, and restrictions as the inhabitants thereof respectively, provided that such restrictions shall not extend so far as to prevent the removal of property imported into any State, to any other State, of which the owner is an inhabitant; provided also that no imposition, duties or restriction shall be laid by any State, on the property of the United States, or either of them.

If any person guilty of, or charged with, treason, felony, or other high misdemeanor in any State, shall flee from justice, and be found in any of the United States, he shall, upon demand of the Governor or executive power of the State from which he fled, be delivered up and removed to the State having jurisdiction of his offense.

Full faith and credit shall be given in each of these States to the records, acts, and judicial proceedings of the courts and magistrates of every other State.

Article V. For the most convenient management of the general interests of the United States, delegates shall be annually appointed in such manner as the legislatures of each State shall direct, to meet in Congress on the first Monday in November, in every year, with a power reserved to each State to recall its delegates, or any of them, at any time within the year, and to send others in their stead for the remainder of the year.

No State shall be represented in Congress by less than two, nor more than seven members; and no person shall be capable of being a delegate for more than three years in any term of six years; nor shall any person, being a delegate, be capable of holding any office under the United States, for which he, or another for his benefit, receives any salary, fees or emolument of any kind.

Each State shall maintain its own delegates in a meeting of the States, and while they act as members of the committee of the States.

In determining questions in the United States in Congress assembled, each State shall have one vote.

Freedom of speech and debate in Congress shall not be impeached or questioned in any court or place out of Congress, and the members of Congress shall be protected in their persons from arrests or imprisonments, during the time of their going to and from, and attendance on Congress, except for treason, felony, or breach of the peace.

Article VI. No State, without the consent of the United States in Congress assembled, shall send any embassy to, or receive any embassy from, or enter into any conference, agreement, alliance or treaty with any King, Prince or State; nor shall any person holding any office of profit or trust under the United States, or any of them, accept any present, emolument, office or title of any kind whatever from any King, Prince or foreign State; nor shall the United States in Congress assembled, or any of them, grant any title of nobility.

No two or more States shall enter into any treaty, confederation or alliance whatever between them, without the consent of the United States in Congress assembled, specifying accurately the purposes for which the same is to be entered into, and how long it shall continue.

No State shall lay any imposts or duties, which may interfere with any stipulations in treaties, entered into by the United States in Congress assembled, with any King, Prince or State, in pursuance of any treaties already proposed by Congress, to the courts of France and Spain.

No vessel of war shall be kept up in time of peace by any State, except such number only, as shall be deemed necessary by the United States in Congress assembled, for the defense of such State, or its trade; nor shall any body of forces be kept up by any State in time of peace, except such number only, as in the judgement of the United States in Congress assembled, shall be deemed requisite to garrison the forts necessary for the defense of such State; but every State shall always keep up a well-regulated and disciplined militia, sufficiently armed and accoutered, and shall provide and constantly have ready for use, in public stores, a due number of filed pieces and tents, and a proper quantity of arms, ammunition and camp equipage.

No State shall engage in any war without the consent of the United States in Congress assembled, unless such State be actually invaded by enemies, or shall have received certain advice of a resolution being formed by some nation of Indians to invade such State, and the danger is so imminent as not to admit of a delay till the United States in Congress assembled can be consulted; nor shall any State grant commissions to any ships or vessels of war, nor letters of marque or reprisal, except it be after a declaration of war by the United States in Congress assembled, and then only against the Kingdom or State and the subjects thereof, against which war has been so declared, and under such regulations as shall be established by the United States in Congress assembled, unless such State be infested by pirates, in which case vessels of war may be fitted out for that occasion, and kept so long as the danger shall continue, or until the United States in Congress assembled shall determine otherwise.

Article VII. When land forces are raised by any State for the common defense, all officers of or under the rank of colonel, shall be appointed by the legislature of each State respectively, by whom such forces shall be raised, or in such manner as such State shall direct, and all vacancies shall be filled up by the State which first made the appointment.

Article VIII. All charges of war, and all other expenses that shall be incurred for the common defense or general welfare, and allowed by the United States in Congress assembled, shall be defrayed out of a common treasury, which shall be supplied by the several States in proportion to the value of all land within each State, granted or surveyed for any person, as such land and the buildings and improvements thereon shall be estimated according to such mode as the United States in Congress assembled, shall from time to time direct and appoint.

The taxes for paying that proportion shall be laid and levied by the authority and direction of the legislatures of the several States within the time agreed upon by the United States in Congress assembled.

Article IX. The United States in Congress assembled, shall have the sole and exclusive right and power of determining on peace and war, except in the cases mentioned in the sixth article — of sending and receiving ambassadors — entering into treaties and alliances, provided that no treaty of commerce shall be made whereby the legislative power of the respective States shall be restrained from imposing such imposts and duties on foreigners, as their own people are subjected to, or from prohibiting the exportation or importation of any species of goods or commodities whatsoever — of establishing rules for deciding in all cases, what captures on land or water shall be legal, and in what manner prizes taken by land or naval forces in the service of the United States shall be divided or appropriated — of granting letters of marque and reprisal in times of peace — appointing courts for the trial of piracies and felonies committed on the high seas and establishing courts for receiving and determining finally appeals in all cases of captures, provided that no member of Congress shall be appointed a judge of any of the said courts.

The United States in Congress assembled shall also be the last resort on appeal in all disputes and differences now subsisting or that hereafter may arise between two or more States concerning boundary, jurisdiction or any other causes whatever; which authority shall always be exercised in the manner following. Whenever the legislative or executive authority or lawful agent of any State in controversy with another shall present a petition to Congress stating the matter in question and praying for a hearing, notice thereof shall be given by order of Congress to the legislative or executive authority of the other State in controversy, and a day assigned for the appearance of the parties by their lawful agents, who shall then be directed to appoint by joint consent, commissioners or judges to constitute a court for hearing and determining the matter in question: but if they cannot agree, Congress shall name three persons out of each of the United States, and from the list of such persons each party shall alternately strike out one, the petitioners beginning, until the number shall be reduced to thirteen; and from that number not less than seven, nor more than nine names as Congress shall direct, shall in the presence of Congress be drawn out by lot, and the persons whose names shall be so drawn or any five of them, shall be commissioners or judges, to hear and finally determine the controversy, so always as a major part of the judges who shall hear the cause shall agree in the determination: and if either party shall neglect to attend at the day appointed, without showing reasons, which Congress shall judge sufficient, or being present shall refuse to strike, the Congress shall proceed to nominate three persons out of each State, and the secretary of Congress shall strike in behalf of such party absent or refusing; and the judgement and sentence of the court to be appointed, in the manner before prescribed, shall be final and conclusive; and if any of the parties shall refuse to submit to the authority of such court, or to appear or defend their claim or cause, the court shall nevertheless proceed to pronounce sentence, or judgement, which shall in like manner be final and decisive, the judgement or sentence and other proceedings being in either case transmitted to Congress, and lodged among the acts of Congress for the security of the parties concerned: provided that every commissioner, before he sits in judgement, shall take an oath to be administered by one of the judges of the supreme or superior court of the State, where the cause shall be tried, 'well and truly to hear and determine the matter in question, according to the best of his judgement, without favor, affection or hope of reward': provided also, that no State shall be deprived of territory for the benefit of the United States.

All controversies concerning the private right of soil claimed under different grants of two or more States, whose jurisdictions as they may respect such lands, and the States which passed such grants are adjusted, the said grants or either of them being at the same time claimed to have originated antecedent to such settlement of jurisdiction, shall on the petition of either party to the Congress of the United States, be finally determined as near as may be in the same manner as is before prescribed for deciding disputes respecting territorial jurisdiction between different States.

Title: AoC part 2
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 03, 2010, 05:43:56 AM

The United States in Congress assembled shall also have the sole and exclusive right and power of regulating the alloy and value of coin struck by their own authority, or by that of the respective States — fixing the standards of weights and measures throughout the United States — regulating the trade and managing all affairs with the Indians, not members of any of the States, provided that the legislative right of any State within its own limits be not infringed or violated — establishing or regulating post offices from one State to another, throughout all the United States, and exacting such postage on the papers passing through the same as may be requisite to defray the expenses of the said office — appointing all officers of the land forces, in the service of the United States, excepting regimental officers — appointing all the officers of the naval forces, and commissioning all officers whatever in the service of the United States — making rules for the government and regulation of the said land and naval forces, and directing their operations.

The United States in Congress assembled shall have authority to appoint a committee, to sit in the recess of Congress, to be denominated 'A Committee of the States', and to consist of one delegate from each State; and to appoint such other committees and civil officers as may be necessary for managing the general affairs of the United States under their direction — to appoint one of their members to preside, provided that no person be allowed to serve in the office of president more than one year in any term of three years; to ascertain the necessary sums of money to be raised for the service of the United States, and to appropriate and apply the same for defraying the public expenses — to borrow money, or emit bills on the credit of the United States, transmitting every half-year to the respective States an account of the sums of money so borrowed or emitted — to build and equip a navy — to agree upon the number of land forces, and to make requisitions from each State for its quota, in proportion to the number of white inhabitants in such State; which requisition shall be binding, and thereupon the legislature of each State shall appoint the regimental officers, raise the men and cloath, arm and equip them in a solid- like manner, at the expense of the United States; and the officers and men so cloathed, armed and equipped shall march to the place appointed, and within the time agreed on by the United States in Congress assembled. But if the United States in Congress assembled shall, on consideration of circumstances judge proper that any State should not raise men, or should raise a smaller number of men than the quota thereof, such extra number shall be raised, officered, cloathed, armed and equipped in the same manner as the quota of each State, unless the legislature of such State shall judge that such extra number cannot be safely spread out in the same, in which case they shall raise, officer, cloath, arm and equip as many of such extra number as they judge can be safely spared. And the officers and men so cloathed, armed, and equipped, shall march to the place appointed, and within the time agreed on by the United States in Congress assembled.

The United States in Congress assembled shall never engage in a war, nor grant letters of marque or reprisal in time of peace, nor enter into any treaties or alliances, nor coin money, nor regulate the value thereof, nor ascertain the sums and expenses necessary for the defense and welfare of the United States, or any of them, nor emit bills, nor borrow money on the credit of the United States, nor appropriate money, nor agree upon the number of vessels of war, to be built or purchased, or the number of land or sea forces to be raised, nor appoint a commander in chief of the army or navy, unless nine States assent to the same: nor shall a question on any other point, except for adjourning from day to day be determined, unless by the votes of the majority of the United States in Congress assembled.

The Congress of the United States shall have power to adjourn to any time within the year, and to any place within the United States, so that no period of adjournment be for a longer duration than the space of six months, and shall publish the journal of their proceedings monthly, except such parts thereof relating to treaties, alliances or military operations, as in their judgement require secrecy; and the yeas and nays of the delegates of each State on any question shall be entered on the journal, when it is desired by any delegates of a State, or any of them, at his or their request shall be furnished with a transcript of the said journal, except such parts as are above excepted, to lay before the legislatures of the several States.

Article X. The Committee of the States, or any nine of them, shall be authorized to execute, in the recess of Congress, such of the powers of Congress as the United States in Congress assembled, by the consent of the nine States, shall from time to time think expedient to vest them with; provided that no power be delegated to the said Committee, for the exercise of which, by the Articles of Confederation, the voice of nine States in the Congress of the United States assembled be requisite.

Article XI. Canada acceding to this confederation, and adjoining in the measures of the United States, shall be admitted into, and entitled to all the advantages of this Union; but no other colony shall be admitted into the same, unless such admission be agreed to by nine States.

Article XII. All bills of credit emitted, monies borrowed, and debts contracted by, or under the authority of Congress, before the assembling of the United States, in pursuance of the present confederation, shall be deemed and considered as a charge against the United States, for payment and satisfaction whereof the said United States, and the public faith are hereby solemnly pledged.

Article XIII. Every State shall abide by the determination of the United States in Congress assembled, on all questions which by this confederation are submitted to them. And the Articles of this Confederation shall be inviolably observed by every State, and the Union shall be perpetual; nor shall any alteration at any time hereafter be made in any of them; unless such alteration be agreed to in a Congress of the United States, and be afterwards confirmed by the legislatures of every State.

And Whereas it hath pleased the Great Governor of the World to incline the hearts of the legislatures we respectively represent in Congress, to approve of, and to authorize us to ratify the said Articles of Confederation and perpetual Union. Know Ye that we the undersigned delegates, by virtue of the power and authority to us given for that purpose, do by these presents, in the name and in behalf of our respective constituents, fully and entirely ratify and confirm each and every of the said Articles of Confederation and perpetual Union, and all and singular the matters and things therein contained: And we do further solemnly plight and engage the faith of our respective constituents, that they shall abide by the determinations of the United States in Congress assembled, on all questions, which by the said Confederation are submitted to them. And that the Articles thereof shall be inviolably observed by the States we respectively represent, and that the Union shall be perpetual.

In Witness whereof we have hereunto set our hands in Congress. Done at Philadelphia in the State of Pennsylvania the ninth day of July in the Year of our Lord One Thousand Seven Hundred and Seventy-Eight, and in the Third Year of the independence of America.

On the part and behalf of the State of New Hampshire:
Josiah Bartlett
John Wentworth Junr. August 8th 1778

On the part and behalf of The State of Massachusetts Bay:
John Hancock
Samuel Adams
Elbridge Gerry
Francis Dana
James Lovell
Samuel Holten

On the part and behalf of the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations:
William Ellery
Henry Marchant
John Collins

On the part and behalf of the State of Connecticut:
Roger Sherman
Samuel Huntington
Oliver Wolcott
Titus Hosmer
Andrew Adams

On the Part and Behalf of the State of New York:
James Duane
Francis Lewis
Wm Duer
Gouv Morris

On the Part and in Behalf of the State of New Jersey, November 26, 1778.
Jno Witherspoon
Nath. Scudder

On the part and behalf of the State of Pennsylvania:
Robt Morris
Daniel Roberdeau
John Bayard Smith
William Clingan
Joseph Reed 22nd July 1778

On the part and behalf of the State of Delaware:
Tho Mckean February 12, 1779
John Dickinson May 5th 1779
Nicholas Van Dyke

On the part and behalf of the State of Maryland:
John Hanson March 1 1781
Daniel Carroll

On the Part and Behalf of the State of Virginia:
Richard Henry Lee
John Banister
Thomas Adams
Jno Harvie
Francis Lightfoot Lee

On the part and Behalf of the State of No Carolina:
John Penn July 21st 1778
Corns Harnett
Jno Williams

On the part and behalf of the State of South Carolina:
Henry Laurens
William Henry Drayton
Jno Mathews
Richd Hutson
Thos Heyward Junr

On the part and behalf of the State of Georgia:
Jno Walton 24th July 1778
Edwd Telfair
Edwd Langworthy

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 04, 2010, 08:46:05 AM

The Reagan Model for Restoration
"No man can well doubt the propriety of placing a president of the United States under the most solemn obligations to preserve, protect, and defend the constitution." --Joseph Story

Commander and ChiefThis week, we observe the anniversary of Ronald Wilson Reagan's birthday -- Reagan Day as it is known around our office.

Ronald Reagan was, and remains, the North Star of the last great conservative revolution -- and the next -- if more Republicans will abide by their oaths to Support and Defend our Constitution and abide by their own political party platform.

At the most recent Republican National Committee confab, some members proposed a "Unity Principle for Support of Candidates" resolution, which identified 10 conservative principles, at least eight of which Republican candidates must support in order to receive RNC funding.

The measure failed, perhaps because more than a few of the current crop of politicos who call themselves "Republican" could not pass muster.

Subsequent to that failed motion, some Leftist intellectuals (an oxymoron, I know, but play along) opined that, based on Reagan's record, not even he would have passed the test.

Of course, as Leftists are prone to do, they are contorting the record so it will comport with their hypothesis, or as Reagan said famously, "The trouble with our liberal friends is not that they're ignorant; it's just that they know so much that isn't so."

What is clear about the Reagan record is that he both campaigned and governed on our First Principles, Constitutional Rule of Law and the basic tenets of Essential Liberty.

Unfortunately, at no time did President Reagan have Republican majorities in both the House and Senate, much less a super majority. Because of this, his conservative credentials were sometimes undermined by the opposition. This is most notable in the House's failure to abide by negotiated government spending cuts to social programs commensurate with the tax cuts and increased defense spending that Reagan enacted.

Reagan resurrected supply-side economics -- the real-world-tested fiscal policy that reductions in tax rates and government spending will invigorate the private sector economy, elevate GDP, resulting, ironically, in additional tax revenues even at the lower rates of taxation. But the principle works best only if reduced tax rates are accompanied by comparable reductions in government spending.

Democrats refused to cut spending, all while belittling Reagan's efforts as "trickle-down economics."

However, supply-side economics is so powerful that even though Democrat-controlled House budgets led to record deficits, Reagan's economic policies resulted in the largest peacetime economic surge in American history. This, of course, is in stark contrast to the "trickle-up poverty" of the current administration's past, present and proposed "economic recovery" plans.

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Trickle Up Poverty sticker
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Typical of great statesmen, Ronald Reagan took no credit for our nation's economic recovery under his tenure. He was called "The Great Communicator" because of his ability to remind us of our nation's values, its character, its soul and its confidence, a far cry from the incessant apologizing and the political chicanery that characterize the Obama presidency.

"I wasn't a great communicator," President Reagan said in his farewell address, "but I communicated great things, and they didn't spring full bloom from my brow, they came from the heart of a great nation -- from our experience, our wisdom, and our belief in the principles that have guided us for two centuries."

And what were those principles?

Back in 1964, shortly after Reagan parted ways with the Democrat Party ("I did not leave the Democrat Party. The Democrat Party left me."), he delivered a timeless challenge to conservatives entitled "A Time for Choosing": "You and I are told we must choose between a left or right," Reagan said, "but I suggest there is no such thing as a left or right, There is only an up or down. Up to man's age-old dream -- the maximum of individual freedom consistent with order -- or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism."

In 1977, Reagan outlined a plan for "The New Republican Party," stating, "The principles of conservatism are sound because they are based on what men and women have discovered through experience in not just one generation or a dozen, but in all the combined experience of mankind. When we conservatives say that we know something about political affairs, and what we know can be stated as principles, we are saying that the principles we hold dear are those that have been found, through experience, to be ultimately beneficial for individuals, for families, for communities and for nations -- found through the often bitter testing of pain, or sacrifice and sorrow."

He continued: "We, the members of the New Republican Party, believe that the preservation and enhancement of the values that strengthen and protect individual freedom, family life, communities and neighborhoods and the liberty of our beloved nation should be at the heart of any legislative or political program presented to the American people.

"Families must continue to be the foundation of our nation. Families -- not government programs -- are the best way to make sure our children are properly nurtured, our elderly are cared for, our cultural and spiritual heritages are perpetuated, our laws are observed and our values are preserved. ... We fear the government may be powerful enough to destroy our families; we know that it is not powerful enough to replace them.

"Extreme taxation, excessive controls, oppressive government competition with business ... frustrated minorities and forgotten Americans are not the products of free enterprise. They are the residue of centralized bureaucracy, of government by a self-anointed elite.

"Our party must be based on the kind of leadership that grows and takes its strength from the people. ... And our cause must be to rediscover, reassert and reapply America's spiritual heritage to our national affairs. Then with God's help we shall indeed be as a city upon a hill with the eyes of all people upon us."

In his 1981 inaugural address, President Reagan assured the nation: "The economic ills we suffer ... will not go away in days, weeks, or months, but they will go away. They will go away because we, as Americans, have the capacity now, as we have had in the past, to do whatever needs to be done to preserve this last and greatest bastion of freedom. In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem."

Ronald Wilson Reagan appealed to the best in us.

His final words at the 1992 Republican convention reflect that appeal: "And whatever else history may say about me when I'm gone, I hope it will record that I appealed to your best hopes, not your worst fears, to your confidence rather than your doubts. My dream is that you will travel the road ahead with liberty's lamp guiding your steps and opportunity's arm steadying your way. My fondest hope for each one of you -- and especially for young people -- is that you will love your country, not for her power or wealth, but for her selflessness and her idealism. May each of you have the heart to conceive, the understanding to direct, and the hand to execute works that will make the world a little better for your having been here. May all of you as Americans never forget your heroic origins, never fail to seek divine guidance, and never lose your natural, God-given optimism. And finally, my fellow Americans, may every dawn be a great new beginning for America and every evening bring us closer to that shining city upon a hill."

On the other hand, Barack Hussein Obama appeals to the worst in his constituents -- their fears, doubts, dependence on the state, greed and envy, brokenness, pessimism and sense of helplessness. He has twisted JFK's inaugural appeal to read: "Ask what your country can do for you, not what you can do for your country."

Ronald Reagan provided a timeless template for the restoration of our nation's economic and moral prosperity, and a return to First Principles and the Rule of Law. Once again, it is time for action, time to choose.

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 05, 2010, 03:30:21 PM

Tomorrow, Sat the 6th, is President Reagan's 99th birthday. Happy Birthday President Reagan. Thank you for everything.

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 08, 2010, 05:33:35 AM

"Your love of liberty -- your respect for the laws -- your habits of industry -- and your practice of the moral and religious obligations, are the strongest claims to national and individual happiness." --George Washington, letter to the residents of Boston, 1789

"Nothing is more certain than that a general profligacy and corruption of manners make a people ripe for destruction. A good form of government may hold the rotten materials together for some time, but beyond a certain pitch, even the best constitution will be ineffectual, and slavery must ensue." --John Witherspoon, The Dominion of Providence Over the Passions of Men, 1776

"It is the manners and spirit of a people which preserve a republic in vigor. A degeneracy in these is a canker which soon eats to the heart of its laws and constitution." --Thomas Jefferson, Notes on Virginia Query 19, 1781

"The public cannot be too curious concerning the characters of public men." --Samuel Adams, letter to James Warren, 1775

"[N]either the wisest constitution nor the wisest laws will secure the liberty and happiness of a people whose manners are universally corrupt." --Samuel Adams, essay in The Public Advertiser, 1749

"In selecting men for office, let principle be your guide. Regard not the particular sect or denomination of the candidate - look to his character...." --Noah Webster, Letters to a Young Gentleman Commencing His Education, 1789

"If we can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people, under the pretence of taking care of them, they must become happy." --Thomas Jefferson, letter to Thomas Cooper, 1802

"No compact among men ... can be pronounced everlasting and inviolable, and if I may so express myself, that no Wall of words, that no mound of parchment can be so formed as to stand against the sweeping torrent of boundless ambition on the one side, aided by the sapping current of corrupted morals on the other." --George Washington, draft of first Inaugural Address, 1789

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 15, 2010, 08:30:27 AM

Washington's Birthday
In some circles, today is observed as "Presidents' Day," jointly recognizing Presidents George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, but it is still officially recognized as the anniversary of "Washington's Birthday" -- and that is how we mark the date in our shop. (Washington's actual birthday is next Monday, February 22.)

As friend of The Patriot, Matthew Spalding, a Heritage Foundation scholar, reminds: "Although it was celebrated as early as 1778, and by the early 19th Century was second only to the Fourth of July as a patriotic holiday, Congress did not officially recognize Washington's Birthday as a national holiday until 1870. The Monday Holiday Law in 1968 -- applied to executive branch departments and agencies by Richard Nixon's Executive Order 11582 in 1971 -- moved the holiday from February 22 to the third Monday in February. Section 6103 of Title 5, United States Code, currently designates that legal federal holiday as 'Washington's Birthday.' Contrary to popular opinion, no action by Congress or order by any President has changed 'Washington's Birthday' to 'Presidents' Day.'"

In honor of and with due respect for our first and (we believe) greatest president, arguably our nation's most outstanding Patriot, we include two quotes from George Washington which best embody his dedication to liberty and God. The first from his First Inaugural Address, April 30, 1789, and the second from his Farewell Address, September 19, 1796.

"The preservation of the sacred fire of liberty, and the destiny of the republican model of government, are justly considered as deeply, perhaps as finally, staked on the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American People."

"Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, Religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of Patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great Pillars of human happiness -- these firmest props of the duties of Men and citizens."
==============
"Two centuries ago, King George III was told that President George Washington, who had eight years earlier turned down the opportunity to be the king of the United States, was planning to give up the presidency at the conclusion of his second term and return to his farm in Mount Vernon. The astonished monarch, who had lost a war to General Washington, said, 'If he does that, he will be the greatest man in the world.' Washington did, and he was. Does anything more clearly illustrate how far we have fallen in 210 years?" --columnist Burt Prelutsky
=========
By JOHN R. MILLER
Published: February 14, 2010
CIVILIAN control of the military is a cherished principle in American government. It was President Obama who decided to increase our involvement in Afghanistan, and it is Congress that will decide whether to appropriate the money to carry out his decision. It is the president and Congress, not the military, that will decide whether our laws should be changed to allow gays and lesbians to serve in our armed forces. The military advises, but the civilian leadership decides.

Yet if not for the actions of George Washington, whose birthday we celebrate, sort of, this month, America might have moved in a very different direction.

In early 1783, with Revolutionary War victory in sight but peace uncertain, Washington and the Continental Army bivouacked at Newburgh, N.Y. Troops were enraged by Congress’s failure to provide promised back pay and pensions. Rumors of mutiny abounded.

On March 10, an anonymous letter appeared, calling for a meeting of all officers the next day to discuss the grievances. Within hours came a second anonymous letter, in which the writer, later revealed as Maj. John Armstrong Jr., an aide to top Gen. Horatio Gates, urged the troops, while still in arms, to either disengage from British troops, move out West and “mock” the Congress, or march on Philadelphia and seize the government.

When Washington learned of the letters, he quickly called for the meeting to be held instead on March 15 — to give time, he said, for “mature deliberation” of the issues. He ordered General Gates to preside and asked for a report, giving the impression that a friend of the instigators would run the show and that Washington himself wouldn’t even attend. He spent the next few days planning his strategy and lining up allies.

But just as the meeting of approximately 500 officers came to order, Washington strode into the hall and asked permission to speak. He said he understood their grievances and would continue to press them. He said that many congressmen supported their claims, but that Congress moved slowly. And he warned that to follow the letter writer would only serve the British cause.

The officers had heard all this before — the letter writer had even warned against heeding Washington’s counsel of “more moderation and longer forbearance.” The crowd rustled and murmured with discontent. Washington then opened a letter from a sympathetic congressman, but soon appeared to grow distracted. As his men wondered what was wrong, Washington pulled out a pair of glasses, which even his officers had never seen before. “Gentlemen,” he said, “you must pardon me, for I have grown not only gray but blind in the service of my country.”

The officers were stunned. Many openly wept. Their mutinous mood gave way immediately to affection for their commander.

After finishing the letter, Washington appealed to the officers’ “patient virtue” and praised the “glorious example you have exhibited to mankind.” He then strode from the hall. His appearance probably lasted less than 15 minutes.

An officer quickly made a motion to thank the commander for his words and appoint a committee — all trusted Washington aides — to prepare a resolution carrying out the general’s wishes. The motion passed, and the committee soon returned with a resolution damning the anonymous letter and pledging faith in Congress. The resolution was adopted by roaring acclamation and the meeting adjourned.

This wasn’t the end of the Army’s intransigence: several weeks later, Pennsylvania militiamen marched on Philadelphia and forced Congress to flee to Princeton, N.J. But with the story from Newburgh fresh in their minds, the mutineers quickly developed second thoughts and went home. True to his word, Washington pursued the Army’s grievances, though with mixed results — Congress voted a lump-sum pension payment and disbanded the force.

Given Washington’s near universal popularity, word of his speech spread rapidly, and civilian control of the military soon became a central priority in the formation of the young Republic. Six years later the new country adopted a Constitution that implicitly recognized civilian control.

But powerful armies often make their own rules, and many nations have succumbed to military control despite strong constitutions. In the United States, it was the story of Newburgh and Washington’s iconic status in our early years that so firmly established a tradition of civilian control in the minds of both our military and civilians. That tradition continues, a testament to our first, finest and most political general.

John R. Miller, a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute and a visiting scholar at the Institute of Governmental Studies at the University of California at Berkeley, is working on a book on George Washington and the Newburgh conspiracy.

Title: Sundry
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 16, 2010, 07:41:03 AM

"Let each citizen remember at the moment he is offering his vote that he is not making a present or a compliment to please an individual -- or at least that he ought not so to do; but that he is executing one of the most solemn trusts in human society for which he is accountable to God and his country." --Samuel Adams, in the Boston Gazette, 1781

"Citizens by birth or choice of a common country, that country has a right to concentrate your affections. The name of American, which belongs to you, in your national capacity, must always exalt the just pride of Patriotism, more than any appellation derived from local discriminations." --George Washington, Farewell Address, 1796

"Nothing is more essential to the establishment of manners in a State than that all persons employed in places of power and trust must be men of unexceptionable characters." --Samuel Adams, letter to James Warren, 1775

"[T]he first transactions of a nation, like those of an individual upon his first entrance into life make the deepest impression, and are to form the leading traits in its character." --George Washington, letter to John Armstrong, 1788

The citizens of the United States of America have the right to applaud themselves for having given to mankind examples of an enlarged and liberal policy worthy of imitation. All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship. It is now no more that toleration is spoken of as if it were by the indulgence of one class of citizens that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights, for happily the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens in giving it on all occasions their effectual support." --George Washington, letter to the Hebrew Congregation of Newport, Rhode Island, 1790

Title: Franklin on Trade, 1774
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 17, 2010, 10:35:35 AM

"No nation was ever ruined by trade, even seemingly the most disadvantageous." --Benjamin Franklin and George Whaley, Principles of Trade, 1774

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 23, 2010, 06:29:16 AM

I just noticed this book report of more than a year ago on the Books thread and paste it here:

=======
The Trouble With Thomas Jefferson
The eloquent Founder's original sin

Damon W. Root | January 2009 Print Edition

The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family, by Annette Gordon-Reed, New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 800 pages, $35

In 1775 the English essayist and lexicographer Samuel Johnson wrote a spirited political pamphlet titled Taxation No Tyranny. His subject was the loud and increasingly aggressive rhetoric coming from the American colonies, where criticism of British economic policy was giving way to calls for popular revolution. “How is it,” Johnson retorted, “that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of Negroes?”

It’s still a good question. Perhaps no one illustrates the paradox better than Thomas Jefferson. The celebrated author of the Declaration of Independence, which famously declares that “all men are created equal” and are born with the inalienable rights to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” Jefferson was also a slaveholder, a man whose livelihood was rooted in the subjugation of hundreds of human beings, including members of his wife’s family and his own.

At the center of Jefferson’s tangled, frequently horrifying web of blood and bondage were two women: Elizabeth Hemings and her daughter Sarah, better known as Sally. Elizabeth, the daughter of an African slave and an English sea captain, was the slave mistress of a Virginia slave owner and broker named John Wayles. Sally Hemings was the youngest of their six children. Wayles also had children from his three marriages, including a daughter named Martha. Sally Hemings, in other words, was Martha Wayles’ half-sister. At her father’s death in 1773, Martha inherited his human property, including Elizabeth and Sally Hemings. In 1772 Martha married Thomas Jefferson. Thus the Hemingses came to Monticello.

In 1782 Martha died from complications after giving birth to her sixth child with Jefferson. Among those with him at her deathbed were Elizabeth and Sally Hemings, who then was 9 years old. Edmund Bacon, one of Jefferson’s overseers at Monticello, reported that as Martha lay dying she asked her husband not to remarry. “Holding her hand, Mr. Jefferson promised her solemnly that he would never marry again,” Bacon recalled. “And he never did.”

That doesn’t mean Jefferson became celibate. In 1789, while serving as U.S. envoy in Paris, he almost certainly began a four-decade-long relationship with his late wife’s half-sister. (In addition to the oral testimony of numerous Hemings family members, the evidence for their relationship includes DNA tests conducted in 1998 establishing that a Jefferson family male fathered Sally Hemings’ son Eston.) At this point Sally Hemings was 16.

It was an affair the historian Edmund S. Morgan has called a “monogamous spousal relationship.” In her extraordinary new book The Hemingses of Monticello, Annette Gordon-Reed, a professor of history at Rutgers University and a professor of law at New York Law School, uses a more specific term: concubine, which Virginia law defined at the time as a woman living with a man who was not her husband. If Sally Hemings were white, we might describe her relationship with Jefferson as a common-law marriage. But as Gordon-Reed reminds us, “Any black woman who lived with a white man could only have been his concubine. It was legally impossible to be anything else.”

This relationship apparently lasted until Jefferson’s death in 1826, by which time Hemings had given birth to seven of his children, four of whom survived into adulthood. In his will, Jefferson formally emancipated two of them, James Madison Hemings and Thomas Eston Hemings. The other two, William Beverly Hemings and Harriet Hemings, simply left Monticello on their own in the early 1820s to live—“pass”—as white. (All three males, it’s worth noting, were named after men Jefferson knew or admired, a common practice among Virginia’s planter elites.) Eight years after Jefferson’s death, his daughter Martha Randolph quietly freed Sally Hemings, who was then 53 years old. Why didn’t Jefferson emancipate her too? “Formally freeing Hemings,” Gordon-Reed observes, “while also emancipating two people obviously young enough to be their children, would have told the story of his life over the past thirty-eight years quite well.”

Among the many achievements of Gordon-Reed’s compelling, if slightly repetitive, book is her vivid illumination of these previously hidden lives. She persuasively argues that Hemings exacted a promise from Jefferson that proved no less momentous than the one he had granted his dying wife. In essence, 16-year-old Hemings, who was pregnant with Jefferson’s child and working as his domestic “servant” in Paris, chose to return to America with him, rather than remain in France, where she could have formally received her freedom. (By law any slave that set foot on French soil was automatically free.) She did so because Jefferson promised to emancipate her children when they became adults—a promise he kept. In exchange, she lived as his concubine. “Like other enslaved people when the all too rare chance presented itself,” Gordon-Reed writes, “Hemings seized her moment and used the knowledge of her rights to make a decision based upon what she thought was best for her as a woman, family member, and a potential mother in her specific circumstances.”

Jefferson apparently cared for Sally Hemings and their children, and he clearly treated members of her family (some of who were also his deceased wife’s family) with much consideration. Elizabeth Hemings, for instance, became something of a revered matriarch. Her sons Robert and James (brothers to Sally Hemings and Martha Jefferson) received instruction in the skilled trades of barbering and cooking, respectively.

Both were permitted to work for private wages, and both enjoyed relative freedom of movement outside of Monticello—so long as they came running at their master’s command, of course. “Despite their status on the law books,” Gordon-Reed writes, “Jefferson treated them, to a degree, as if they were lower-class white males.” Eventually, Jefferson freed them both.

But let’s not draw too rosy a picture. As part of the marriage settlement for his sister Anna, Jefferson handed over the slave Nancy Hemings (another of Elizabeth Hemings’ offspring, though not by John Wayles) and her two children. When Anna’s husband decided to sell these three slaves, Nancy Hemings implored Jefferson to buy them back so they could remain together as a family. Jefferson bought Nancy, an expert weaver, and her young daughter, but refused to buy her son. The family was split apart. “No matter how ‘close’ the Hemingses were to Jefferson, no matter that he viewed some of them in a different light and did not subject them to certain hardships,” Gordon-Reed writes, “their family remained a commodity that could be sold or exchanged at his will.”

Which brings us back to Samuel Johnson and his quip about slaveholders yelping for liberty. Does the fact that Thomas Jefferson owned slaves—probably including his own children—negate the wonderful things he wrote about inalienable rights in the Declaration of Independence? To put it another way, why should anyone listen to what Master Jefferson (or other slaveholding Founders) had to say about liberty and equality?

It’s important to remember that the idea of inalienable rights didn’t start or stop in the year 1776. The historian Gordon S. Wood, in his superb 1991 book The Radicalism of the American Revolution, argues that “to focus, as we are apt to do, on what the Revolution did not accomplish—highlighting and lamenting its failure to abolish slavery and change fundamentally the lot of women—is to miss the great significance of what it did accomplish.” In Wood’s view, by destroying monarchical rule and replacing it with republicanism, the American revolutionaries “made possible the anti-slavery and women’s rights movements of the nineteenth century and in fact all our current egalitarian thinking.” They upended “their societies as well as their governments…only they did not know—they could scarcely have imagined—how much of their society they would change.”

As evidence, consider two very different figures whose lives intersected with slavery in the 19th century: the abolitionist Frederick Douglass and the pro-slavery politician John C. Calhoun. An escaped slave and self-taught author and orator, Douglass understood better than most just how potent the Declaration’s promise of inalienable rights could be. “Would you have me argue that man is entitled to liberty? That he is the rightful owner of his own body?” Douglass would demand of his mostly white audiences. “There is not a man beneath the canopy of heaven that does not know that slavery is wrong for him.”

Calhoun, by contrast, believed the Declaration’s assertion that “all men are created equal” was “the most dangerous of all political error.” As he put it in an 1848 speech, “For a long time it lay dormant; but in the process of time it began to germinate, and produce its poisonous fruits.” This false notion of equality, Calhoun continued, “had strong hold on the mind of Mr. Jefferson…which caused him to take an utterly false view of the subordinate relation of the black to the white race in the South; and to hold, in consequence, that the former, though utterly unqualified to possess liberty, were as fully entitled to both liberty and equality as the latter.”

Think about what Calhoun is saying here. The idea that “all men are created equal” has slowly developed in the American consciousness, producing the “poisonous fruits” of the anti-slavery movement. Jefferson may or may not have intended such an outcome; he certainly did little actively to bring it about, though he did denounce slavery and its brutalizing impact on white society. But the libertarian ideas that inspired Jefferson, the ones coursing through the Declaration of Independence and later through the Constitution, nonetheless did bring it about. Douglass welcomed that result; Calhoun despised it.

That’s why Jefferson’s words matter. In spite of his despicable actions, he gave eloquent and resounding voice to the ideas that have been at the forefront of human liberty for hundreds of years. That members of the Hemings family may have heard such rhetoric while they lived in bondage further highlights the tragedy of their terrible situation. Thanks to Annette Gordon-Reed, these forgotten and silent individuals at least have the opportunity to register their own verdicts on this shameful period.

Damon W. Root is an associate editor of reason.

Title: trade, commerce
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 23, 2010, 06:32:38 AM

second post of the day:
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"I think all the world would gain by setting commerce at perfect liberty." --Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Adams, 1785

"Harmony, liberal intercourse with all Nations, are recommended by policy, humanity and interest. But even our Commercial policy should hold an equal and impartial hand: neither seeking nor granting exclusive favours or preferences; consulting the natural course of things; diffusing and diversifying by gentle means the streams of Commerce, but forcing nothing; establishing with Powers so disposed; in order to give trade a stable course." --George Washington, Farewell Address, 1796

"Measures which serve to abridge the free competition of foreign Articles, have a tendency to occasion an enhancement of prices." --Alexander Hamilton, Report on Manufactures, 1791

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 24, 2010, 05:36:23 AM

"Industry is increased, commodities are multiplied, agriculture and manufacturers flourish: and herein consists the true wealth and prosperity of a state." --Alexander Hamilton, Report on a National Bank, 1790

Title: Jefferson, 1797
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 25, 2010, 04:43:02 AM

"War is not the best engine for us to resort to; nature has given us one in our commerce, which if properly managed, will be a better instrument for obliging the interested nations of Europe to treat us with justice." --Thomas Jefferson, letter to Thomas Pickney, 1797

Title: Hamilton, Federalist 12
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 01, 2010, 04:48:01 AM

Title: Franklin
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 02, 2010, 06:09:31 AM

"It is very imprudent to deprive America of any of her privileges. If her commerce and friendship are of any importance to you, they are to be had on no other terms than leaving her in the full enjoyment of her rights." --Benjamin Franklin, Political Observances

Title: Madison on General Welfare clause in 1792
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 04, 2010, 04:25:01 PM

Title: Whittle on Lincoln
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on March 08, 2010, 05:58:11 AM

Photo heavy, inspiring piece:

http://pajamasmedia.com/ejectejecteject/2010/03/05/imperishable/

Title: Jefferson on "general welfare" concept
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 08, 2010, 06:32:47 AM

"It would reduce the whole instrument to a single phrase, that of instituting a Congress with power to do whatever would be for the good of the United States; and as they would be the sole judges of the good or evil, it would be also a power to do whatever evil they please. Certainly no such universal power was meant to be given them. It [the Constitution] was intended to lace them up straightly within the enumerated powers and those without which, as means, these powers could not be carried into effect." --Thomas Jefferson, Opinion on a National Bank, 1791

Title: Madison on the Legislative Department, Federalist 48
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 09, 2010, 05:09:13 AM

"The legislative department is everywhere extending the sphere of its activity and drawing all power into its impetuous vortex." --James Madison, Federalist No. 48

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 10, 2010, 08:14:02 AM

"First in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen, he was second to none in humble and enduring scenes of private life. Pious, just humane, temperate, and sincere; uniform dignified, and commanding; his example was as edifying to all around him as were the effects of that example lasting; correct throughout, vice shuddered in his presence and virtue always felt his fostering hand. The purity of his private charter gave effulgence to his public virtues." --John Marshall, official eulogy of George Washington, delivered by Richard Henry Lee, 1799

"Every new regulation concerning commerce or revenue; or in any manner affecting the value of the different species of property, presents a new harvest to those who watch the change and can trace its consequences; a harvest reared not by themselves but by the toils and cares of the great body of their fellow citizens. This is a state of things in which it may be said with some truth that laws are made for the few not for the many." --Federalist No. 62

"One hundred and seventy-three despots would surely be as oppressive as one." --James Madison, Federalist No. 48

"We are not to consider ourselves, while here, as at church or school, to listen to the harangues of speculative piety; we are here to talk of the political interests committed to our charge." --Fisher Ames, speech in the United States House of Representatives, 1789

Title: Madison: Federalist 55
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 11, 2010, 03:14:57 AM

"Had every Athenian citizen been a Socrates, every Athenian assembly would still have been a mob." --James Madison, Federalist No. 55

Title: Jefferson: autobiography, 1821
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 12, 2010, 05:53:48 AM

Title: Jefferson, Query 12, 1782
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 15, 2010, 06:00:21 AM

Title: MAdison, #46
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 17, 2010, 04:54:38 AM

Title: Ben Franklin, 1784
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 18, 2010, 05:35:03 AM

"But they have two other Rights; those of sitting when they please, and as long as they please, in which methinks they have the advantage of your Parliament; for they cannot be dissolved by the Breath of a Minister, or sent packing as you were the other day, when it was your earnest desire to have remained longer together." --Benjamin Franklin, letter to William Strahan, 1784

Title: Hamilton 1802
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 22, 2010, 06:57:36 AM

Title: Thomas Jefferson
Post by: Freki on March 22, 2010, 04:48:34 PM

Thomas Jefferson: “Whensoever the General Government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force”

“When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.”

Title: Did Thomas Jefferson get stoned?
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 23, 2010, 04:10:50 AM

Did Thomas Jefferson get stoned?

"1806 July "I remember seeing in your greenhouse a plant of a couple of feet
height in a pot the fragrance of which (from its gummy bud if I recollect
rightly) was peculiarly agreeable to me..." (Jefferson to W.Hamilton,
Betts, Garden Book, 323)"

Title: John Adams 1776; Jefferson resource
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 24, 2010, 04:31:44 AM

"A constitution founded on these principles introduces knowledge among the people, and inspires them with a conscious dignity becoming freemen; a general emulation takes place, which causes good humor, sociability, good manners, and good morals to be general. That elevation of sentiment inspired by such a government, makes the common people brave and enterprising. That ambition which is inspired by it makes them sober, industrious, and frugal." --John Adams, Thoughts on Government, 1776

All things Thomas Jefferson
http://guides.lib.virginia.edu/content.php?pid=77323

Title: Patrick Henry, 1775
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 24, 2010, 04:47:11 AM

"Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God. I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!" --Patrick Henry, Speech to the Virginia Convention, March 23, 1775

Title: Hamilton, 1788 to NY Ratifying Convention
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 25, 2010, 08:23:27 AM

Title: Hamilton, Federalist 34
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 01, 2010, 05:34:17 AM

"Constitutions of civil government are not to be framed upon a calculation of existing exigencies, but upon a combination of these with the probable exigencies of ages, according to the natural and tried course of human affairs. Nothing, therefore, can be more fallacious than to infer the extent of any power, proper to be lodged in the national government, from an estimate of its immediate necessities." --Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 34

Title: Madison: Federalist 57
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 02, 2010, 05:05:32 AM

"The aim of every political constitution is, or ought to be, first to obtain for rulers men who possess most wisdom to discern, and most virtue to pursue, the common good of the society; and in the next place, to take the most effectual precautions for keeping them virtuous whilst they continue to hold their public trust." --James Madison, Federalist No. 57

Title: Madison: 1834
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 05, 2010, 06:39:12 AM

"You give me a credit to which I have no claim in calling me 'the writer of the Constitution of the United States.' This was not, like the fabled Goddess of Wisdom, the offspring of a single brain. It ought to be regarded as the work of many heads and many hands." --James Madison, letter to William Cogswell, 1834

Title: Madison on our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 06, 2010, 06:28:39 AM

"Whatever may be the judgement pronounced on the competency of the architects of the Constitution, or whatever may be the destiny of the edifice prepared by them, I feel it a duty to express my profound and solemn conviction ... that there never was an assembly of men, charged with a great and arduous trust, who were more pure in their motives, or more exclusively or anxiously devoted to the object committed to them." --James Madison

Title: Washington to Madison 1786
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 12, 2010, 04:53:44 AM

Title: The Blood of Patriots & Tyrants: The Tea Party's Founders
Post by: Freki on April 13, 2010, 07:15:04 AM

I thought this PJTV Video: " The Blood of Patriots & Tyrants: The Tea Party's Founders" was interesting and hope you do too.

http://www.pjtv.com/v/3353

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 13, 2010, 12:21:07 PM

Good one Freki.

Happy Birthday Thomas Jefferson!

"Jealousy, and local policy mix too much in all our public councils for the good government of the Union. In a words, the confederation appears to me to be little more than a shadow without the substance...." --George Washington, letter to James Warren, 1785

"A local spirit will infallibly prevail much more in the members of Congress than a national spirit will prevail in the legislatures of the particular States." --James Madison, Federalist No. 46

"Next Monday the Convention in Virginia will assemble; we have still good hopes of its adoption here: though by no great plurality of votes. South Carolina has probably decided favourably before this time. The plot thickens fast. A few short weeks will determine the political fate of America for the present generation, and probably produce no small influence on the happiness of society through a long succession of ages to come." --George Washington, letter to Marquis de Lafayette, 1788

"[G]iving [Congress] a distinct and independent power to do any act they please which may be good for the Union, would render all the preceding and subsequent enumerations of power completely useless. It would reduce the whole [Constitution] to a single phrase, that of instituting a Congress with power to do whatever would be for the good of the United States; and as sole judges of the good or evil, it would be also a power to do whatever evil they please. Certainly, no such universal power was meant to be given them." --Thomas Jefferson

"The battle, sir, is not to the strong alone; it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave. ... t is now too late to retire from the contest. There is no retreat but in submission and slavery! Our chains are forged! Their clanking may be heard on the plains of Boston! The war is inevitable -- and let it come! I repeat it, sir, let it come!" --Patrick Henry

"Honor, justice, and humanity, forbid us tamely to surrender that freedom which we received from our gallant ancestors, and which our innocent posterity have a right to receive from us. We cannot endure the infamy and guilt of resigning succeeding generations to that wretchedness which inevitably awaits them if we basely entail hereditary bondage on them." --Thomas Jefferson

"In questions of power, then, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution." --Thomas Jefferson, fair copy of the drafts of the Kentucky Resolutions of 1798

"If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the General Welfare, the Government is no longer a limited one, possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one." --James Madison

"It is impossible for the man of pious reflection not to perceive in it [the Constitution] a finger of that Almighty hand which has been so frequently and signally extended to our relief in the critical stages of the revolution." --James Madison, Federalist No. 37

"If it be asked, What is the most sacred duty and the greatest source of our security in a Republic? The answer would be, An inviolable respect for the Constitution and Laws - the first growing out of the last." --Alexander Hamilton

"In the formation of our constitution the wisdom of all ages is collected -- the legislators are antiquity are consulted, as well as the opinions and interests of the millions who are concerned. It short, it is an empire of reason." --Noah Webster, An Examination into the Leading Principles of the Federal Constitution, 1787

"It is the duty of all Nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey his will, to be grateful for his benefits, and humbly to implore his protection and favors." --George Washington

"It has been said that all Government is an evil. It would be more proper to say that the necessity of any Government is a misfortune. This necessity however exists; and the problem to be solved is, not what form of Government is perfect, but which of the forms is least imperfect." --James Madison

"The example of changing a constitution by assembling the wise men of the state, instead of assembling armies, will be worth as much to the world as the former examples we had give them. The constitution, too, which was the result of our deliberation, is unquestionably the wisest ever yet presented to men." --Thomas Jefferson, letter to David Humphreys, 1789

"The deliberate union of so great and various a people in such a place, is without all partiality or prejudice, if not the greatest exertion of human understanding, the greatest single effort of national deliberation that the world has ever seen." --John Adams, quoted in a letter from Rufus King to Theophilus Parsons, 1788

"Whatever enables us to go to war, secures our peace." --Thomas Jefferson

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 15, 2010, 08:04:42 AM

"An unlimited power to tax involves, necessarily, a power to destroy; because there is a limit beyond which no institution and no property can bear taxation." --Justice John Marshall, McCullough v. Maryland, 1819

Title: Jefferson: Construction of Constitution leads to blank paper
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 21, 2010, 05:57:25 AM

"Our peculiar security is in the possession of a written Constitution. Let us not make it a blank paper by construction." --Thomas Jefferson, letter to Wilson Nicholas, 1803

Title: Thomas Jefferson
Post by: Freki on April 22, 2010, 10:20:07 AM

Dependence begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition.
Thomas Jefferson

Do not bite at the bait of pleasure, till you know there is no hook beneath it.
Thomas Jefferson

Do you want to know who you are? Don't ask. Act! Action will delineate and define you.
Thomas Jefferson

Title: Washington: Consolidation of Power
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 23, 2010, 04:15:21 PM

Title: Jefferson
Post by: Freki on April 27, 2010, 05:03:51 AM

“….To consider the judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions is a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy. Our judges are as honest as other men and not more so. They have with others the same passions for party, for power, and the privilege of their corps…and their power is more dangerous as they are in office for life and not responsible, as the other functionaries are, to the elective control. The Constitution has erected no such tribunal, knowing that to whatever hands confided, with the corruption of time and party, its members would become despots….”

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 28, 2010, 04:26:00 AM

==========
"On every question of construction carry ourselves back to the time when the Constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit manifested in the debates and instead of trying what meaning may be squeezed out of the text or invented against it, conform to the probable one in which it was passed." --Thomas Jefferson, letter to William Johnson, 1823
==========
"[T]he true key for the construction of everything doubtful in a law is the intention of the law-makers. This is most safely gathered from the words, but may be sought also in extraneous circumstances provided they do not contradict the express words of the law." --Thomas Jefferson, letter to Albert Gallatin, 1808

=========
"The construction applied ... to those parts of the Constitution of the United States which delegate Congress a power ... ought not to be construed as themselves to give unlimited powers, nor a part to be so taken as to destroy the whole residue of that instrument." --Thomas Jefferson, Draft Kentucky Resolutions, 1798

==========
"[T]he Constitution ought to be the standard of construction for the laws, and that wherever there is an evident opposition, the laws ought to give place to the Constitution. But this doctrine is not deducible from any circumstance peculiar to the plan of convention, but from the general theory of a limited Constitution." --Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 81

========
"What a glorious morning this is!" --Samuel Adams, to John Hancock at the Battle of Lexington, Massachusetts, 1775
============
"The first and governing maxim in the interpretation of a statute is to discover the meaning of those who made it." --James Wilson, Of the Study of Law in the United States, 1790

=====
"The plain import of the clause is, that congress shall have all the incidental and instrumental powers, necessary and proper to carry into execution all the express powers. It neither enlarges any power specifically granted; nor is it a grant of any new power to congress. But it is merely a declaration for the removal of all uncertainty, that the means of carrying into execution those, otherwise granted, are included in the grant." --Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution, 1833

======

"All of us who were engaged in the struggle must have observed frequent instances of superintending providence in our favor. To that kind providence we owe this happy opportunity of consulting in peace on the means of establishing our future national felicity. And have we now forgotten that powerful friend? Or do we imagine that we no longer need his assistance? I have lived, Sir, a long time, and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth-that God governs in the affairs of men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the Ground without his Notice, is it probable that an Empire can rise without his Aid?" --Benjamin Franklin, To Colleagues at the Constitutional Convention

Title: Paine, Henry, Madison, and , , ,
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 05, 2010, 04:47:26 AM

"These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman." --Thomas Paine, The American Crisis, No. 1, 1776

"The battle, sir, is not to the strong alone; it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave. ... t is now too late to retire from the contest. There is no retreat but in submission and slavery! Our chains are forged! Their clanking may be heard on the plains of Boston! The war is inevitable -- and let it come! I repeat it, sir, let it come!" --Patrick Henry

"If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the General Welfare, the Government is no longer a limited one, possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one." --James Madison

"By exclusive property, the productions of the earth and the means of subsistence are secured and preserved, as well as multiplied. What belongs to no one is wasted by every one. What belongs to one man in particular is the object of his economy and care." --James Wilson

"I think we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious." --Thomas Jefferson

"It has been said that all Government is an evil. It would be more proper to say that the necessity of any Government is a misfortune. This necessity however exists; and the problem to be solved is, not what form of Government is perfect, but which of the forms is least imperfect." --James Madison

"On every unauthoritative exercise of power by the legislature must the people rise in rebellion or their silence be construed into a surrender of that power to them? If so, how many rebellions should we have had already?" --Thomas Jefferson

"An unlimited power to tax involves, necessarily, a power to destroy; because there is a limit beyond which no institution and no property can bear taxation." --John Marshall

"Whatever enables us to go to war, secures our peace." --Thomas Jefferson

"There are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations." --James Madison

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 06, 2010, 06:02:02 AM

Title: P. Henry 1775
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 07, 2010, 08:31:46 AM

"The battle, sir, is not to the strong alone; it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave." --Patrick Henry, speech at the Virginia Convention, 1775

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Freki on May 10, 2010, 08:36:42 AM

Not a founder but a good quote

"Feudalism, serfdom, slavery, all tyrannical institutions, are merely the most vigorous kind to rule, springing out of, and necessarily to, a bad state of man. The progress from these is the same in all cases -- less government." --British author and philosopher Herbert Spencer (1820-1903)

Title: Washington: General Orders 1776
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 10, 2010, 07:57:03 PM

Washington

"We have therefore to resolve to conquer or die: Our won Country's Honor, all call upon us for vigorous and manly exertion, and if we now shamefully fail, we shall become infamous to the whole world. Let us therefore rely upon the goodness of the Cause, and the aid of the supreme Being, in whose hands Victory is, to animate and encourage us to great and noble Actions." --George Washington, General Orders, 1776

Title: John Paul Jones
Post by: Freki on May 11, 2010, 05:21:57 AM

"I wish to have no connection with any ship that does not sail fast; for I intend to go in harm's way." --John Paul Jones, letter to M. Le Ray de Chaumont, 1778

Title: Thomas Paine/ William Pen/Jefferson/Declaration of Independence
Post by: Freki on May 11, 2010, 07:24:10 AM

so far as we approve of monarchy, that in America the law is king. For as in absolute governments the king is law, so in free countries the law ought to be king; and there ought to be no other.

Thomas Paine, Common Sense

“It is certain that the most natural and human government is that of consent, for that binds freely, … when men hold their liberty by true obedience to rules of their own making.”, William Penn

Kentucky Resolutions of 1798, where Thomas Jefferson wrote, “whensoever the general government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force”

The Declaration of Independence, our foundational document says,
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

The Constitution is the "King" of the land by the consent of the people. It is the people who ultimately determine the constitutionality of a law, and when the Federal Gov't oversteps its bounds we withhold our consent. This is guaranteed in the 10th Amendment. Freki 2010

Title: Paine
Post by: Freki on May 12, 2010, 09:39:12 AM

"I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection. 'Tis the business of little minds to shrink; but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles unto death." --Thomas Paine, The Crisis, No. 1, 1776

Title: Jefferson
Post by: Freki on May 13, 2010, 10:00:32 AM

"[T]he opinion which gives to the judges the right to decide what laws are constitutional and what not ... would make the judiciary a despotic branch. ... [T]he germ of dissolution of our federal government is ... the federal Judiciary ... working like gravity by night and by day, gaining a little today and a little tomorrow, and advancing its noiseless step like a thief, over the field of jurisdiction, until all shall be usurped. ... They are construing our constitution from a co-ordination of a general and special government to a general and supreme one alone." --Thomas Jefferson

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: G M on May 13, 2010, 11:21:12 AM

TJ's rant would carry a bit more weight if he hadn't written this in between trips to the slaves' quarters. Where does fcuking your slaves fall into the continuum of despotism?

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Freki on May 13, 2010, 12:30:55 PM

What?, you are going to use a typical liberal tactic? If you want a bigger government which controls your life then say so, but to attack a founding father's reputation in an attempt to tear down his statement because you disagree with his stance doesn't do you credit.

Just FYI the Jefferson Foundation did the DNA test and concluded Jefferson did father Heming's children, but they failed to publish the doctor's report, who was in charge of verifying the DNA evidence, which stated the evidence was to circumstantial to draw a conclusion. Further the Jefferson Heritage Society which has more academic clout than the Foundation has looked at the evidence and concluded the charges are almost certainly false. Jefferson's overseer Edmund Bacon is on record stating Jefferson did not father Sally's children but had seen another white man leave Sally's bedchamber on many a morning. These charges were originally leveled by James T Callender in 1802. He had an axe to grind with Jefferson, who passed him over for the appointment to postmaster of Richmond, Virgina. Callender was a noted political hatchet journalist of the period.

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: G M on May 13, 2010, 12:38:30 PM

It's not a liberal tactic to point out the flaws in individuals such as the slave owning founding fathers. So then if TJ wasn't screwing his slaves, then the slavery bit isn't that big of a deal?

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: G M on May 13, 2010, 12:41:11 PM

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/jefferson/true/

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Freki on May 13, 2010, 12:54:58 PM

It is a liberal tactic to attack the messenger and not the message. What does slavery have to do with the judiciary whittling away the constitution? You are attacking the messenger.

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: G M on May 13, 2010, 01:22:03 PM

No, I am placing ideas expressed by TJ in the proper context. He was a flesh and blood human with flaws and a lack of insight demonstrated by his ownership of slaves while advocating ideals of freedom. The constitution wasn't delivered on tablets from a burning bush, and no matter how much hemp might have been consumed by the founding fathers, I doubt very much they could envision issues related to search and seizure for the US in 2010.

This does not mean that I endorse that the constitution means what ever the agenda is for a left wing jurist's personal political viewpoints at any given moment. Rather than worshipping idols with feet of clay, understand that the big picture is the balance between the greater good and individual freedoms based on pragmatic realism, not ivory tower dreams of a golden past that never was.

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 13, 2010, 05:36:28 PM

Well, that was unexpected :-o

Feet of clay or not, we are a Republic and the Supreme Law is our Consitution.

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: G M on May 13, 2010, 08:16:32 PM

I don't dispute that point, I just disagree with citing quotes from the founders as if they are holy verses. I doubt they intended them to be taken as such.

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 13, 2010, 09:08:41 PM

Well, I do confess that for me that taken in their totality they are holy verses; I think our FF were divinely inspired.

Title: Peter Muhlenberg
Post by: Freki on May 14, 2010, 06:57:32 AM

Title: Adams
Post by: Freki on May 17, 2010, 05:26:01 AM

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: G M on May 17, 2010, 07:40:27 AM

Quote from: Crafty_Dog on May 13, 2010, 09:08:41 PM

Well, I do confess that for me that taken in their totality they are holy verses; I think our FF were divinely inspired.

I think if they had stood up and freed their slaves against their own economic best interest, you'd have a stronger arguement for divine inspiration.

Title: G. Mason
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 17, 2010, 10:17:16 AM

1) Many were against slavery, but had to compromise politically

2) Even those hypocritical on this point were divinely inspired-- they just didn't live up to it.
============

"Nothing so strongly impels a man to regard the interest of his constituents, as the certainty of returning to the general mass of the people, from whence he was taken, where he must participate in their burdens." --George Mason

Title: Adams
Post by: Freki on May 18, 2010, 05:55:48 AM

"Remember democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide." --John Adams, letter to John Taylor, 1814

Title: Madison/Jefferson
Post by: Freki on May 19, 2010, 05:45:45 AM

Argument for a republic

"[D]emocracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security, or the rights of property; and have, in general, been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths." --James Madison, Federalist No. 10, 1787

Nature of the republic

"A wise and frugal government, which shall leave men free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned - this is the sum of good government."- Thomas Jefferson

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on May 19, 2010, 12:12:56 PM

Nothing is so essential to the preservation of our republican government as a periodical rotation. Nothing so strongly impels a man to regard the interest of his constituents, as the certainty of returning to the general mass of the people, from whence he was taken, where he must participate in their burdens.” –George Mason

Title: J. Adams
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 25, 2010, 08:37:27 AM

"Children should be educated and instructed in the principles of freedom." --John Adams, Defense of Constitutions, 1787

Title: James Wilson
Post by: Freki on May 27, 2010, 05:54:43 AM

"Law and liberty cannot rationally become the objects of our love, unless they first become the objects of our knowledge." --James Wilson, Of the Study of the Law in the United States, 1790

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 27, 2010, 06:13:15 AM

"[D]emocracy will soon degenerate into an anarchy, such an anarchy that every man will do what is right in his own eyes and no man's life or property or reputation or liberty will be secure, and every one of these will soon mould itself into a system of subordination of all the moral virtues and intellectual abilities, all the powers of wealth, beauty, wit and science, to the wanton pleasures, the capricious will, and the execrable cruelty of one or a very few." --John Adams, An Essay on Man's Lust for Power, 1763

"The known propensity of a democracy is to licentiousness which the ambitious call, and ignorant believe to be liberty." --Fisher Ames, speech in the Massachusetts Ratifying Convention, 1788

"No one more sincerely wishes the spread of information among mankind than I do, and none has greater confidence in its effect towards supporting free and good government." --Thomas Jefferson, letter to Trustees for the Lottery of East Tennessee College, 1810

"To all of which is added a selection from the elementary schools of subjects of the most promising genius, whose parents are too poor to give them further education, to be carried at the public expense through the college and university. The object is to bring into action that mass of talents which lies buried in poverty in every country, for want of the means of development, and thus give activity to a mass of mind, which, in proportion to our population, shall be double or treble of what it is in most countries." --Thomas Jefferson, letter to Jose Correa de Serra, 1817

"Knowledge is, in every country, the surest basis of public happiness." --George Washington, First Annual Message, 1790

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Freki on May 27, 2010, 11:49:22 AM

"With hearts fortified with these animating reflections, we most solemnly, before God and the world, declare, that, exerting the utmost energy of those powers, which our beneficent Creator hath graciously bestowed upon us, the arms we have compelled by our enemies to assume, we will, in defiance of every hazard, with unabating firmness and perseverance employ for the preservation of our liberties; being with one mind resolved to die freemen rather than to live as slaves." --Declaration of the Cause and Necessity of Taking up Arms, July 6, 1775

Title: The Reason Why........Jefferson
Post by: Freki on May 27, 2010, 11:52:52 AM

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: G M on May 27, 2010, 11:56:28 AM

TJ railing against hereditary bondage....

Wow.

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Freki on May 28, 2010, 07:03:58 AM

"It should be your care, therefore, and mine, to elevate the minds of our children and exalt their courage; to accelerate and animate their industry and activity; to excite in them an habitual contempt of meanness, abhorrence of injustice and inhumanity, and an ambition to excel in every capacity, faculty, and virtue. If we suffer their minds to grovel and creep in infancy, they will grovel all their lives." --John Adams, Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law, 1756

Title: Heston on the 2nd and the founders
Post by: Freki on May 28, 2010, 07:14:53 AM

Heston on the 2nd and the founders

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wp8Q7biFHoY[/youtube]

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 02, 2010, 05:40:43 AM

"The best service that can be rendered to a Country, next to that of giving it liberty, is in diffusing the mental improvement equally essential to the preservation, and the enjoyment of the blessing." --James Madison, letter to Littleton Dennis Teackle, 1826

"It is an object of vast magnitude that systems of education should be adopted and pursued which may not only diffuse a knowledge of the sciences but may implant in the minds of the American youth the principles of virtue and of liberty and inspire them with just and liberal ideas of government and with an inviolable attachment to their own country." --Noah Webster, On Education of Youth in America, 1790

"Our own Country's Honor, all call upon us for a vigorous and manly exertion, and if we now shamefully fail, we shall become infamous to the whole world. Let us therefore rely upon the goodness of the Cause, and the aid of the supreme Being, in whose hands Victory is, to animate and encourage us to great and noble Actions - The Eyes of all our Countrymen are now upon us, and we shall have their blessings, and praises, if happily we are the instruments of saving them from the Tyranny mediated against them. Let us therefore animate and encourage each other, and shew the whole world, that a Freeman contending for Liberty on his own ground is superior to any slavish mercenary on earth." --George Washington, General Orders, 1776

"It should be your care, therefore, and mine, to elevate the minds of our children and exalt their courage; to accelerate and animate their industry and activity; to excite in them an habitual contempt of meanness, abhorrence of injustice and inhumanity, and an ambition to excel in every capacity, faculty, and virtue. If we suffer their minds to grovel and creep in infancy, they will grovel all their lives." --John Adams, Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law, 1756

Title: Madison, 1822
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 03, 2010, 04:04:57 AM

Title: Samuel Adams
Post by: Freki on June 03, 2010, 06:58:19 AM

“It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people’s minds.” – Samuel Adams

Title: Madison, 1822
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 04, 2010, 05:50:20 AM

"What spectacle can be more edifying or more seasonable, than that of Liberty and Learning, each leaning on the other for their mutual & surest support?" --James Madison, letter to W.T. Barry, 1822

Title: Madison, Jefferson
Post by: Freki on June 06, 2010, 05:52:15 AM

“I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments by those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.”
–James Madison

“Resolved, That the General Assembly of Virginia, doth unequivocally express a firm resolution to maintain and defend the Constitution of the United States, and the Constitution of this State, against every aggression either foreign or domestic … That this Assembly doth explicitly and peremptorily declare, that it views the powers of the federal government, as resulting from the compact, to which the states are parties; as limited by the plain sense and intention of the instrument constituting the compact; as no further valid than they are authorized by the grants enumerated in that compact; and that in case of deliberate, palpable, and dangerous exercise of other powers, not granted by the said compact, the states who are parties thereto, have the right, and are in duty bound, to interpose for arresting the progress of the evil, and for maintaining within their respective limits, the authorities, rights and liberties appertaining to them.” –James Madison

RESOLVED: That the principle and construction contended for by sundry of the state legislatures, that the general government is the exclusive judge of the extent of the powers delegated to it, stop nothing short of despotism; since the discretion of those who administer the government, and not the constitution, would be the measure of their powers: That the several states who formed that instrument, being sovereign and independent, have the unquestionable right to judge of its infraction; and that a nullification, by those sovereignties, of all unauthorized acts done under colour of that instrument, is the rightful remedy.” Thomas Jefferson

Title: Samuel Adams
Post by: Freki on June 07, 2010, 04:56:22 AM

"No people will tamely surrender their Liberties, nor can any be easily subdued, when knowledge is diffusd and Virtue is preservd. On the Contrary, when People are universally ignorant, and debauchd in their Manners, they will sink under their own weight without the Aid of foreign Invaders." --Samuel Adams, letter to James Warren, 1775

Title: Franklin, 1749: Education of Youth
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 08, 2010, 03:56:50 AM

"The good Education of Youth has been esteemed by wise Men in all Ages, as the surest Foundation of the Happiness both of private Families and of Common-wealths. Almost all Governments have therefore made it a principal Object of their Attention, to establish and endow with proper Revenues, such Seminaries of Learning, as might supply the succeeding Age with Men qualified to serve the Publick with Honour to themselves, and to their Country." --Benjamin Franklin, Proposals Relating to the Education of Youth in Pennsylvania, 1749

Title: Washington 1795
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 09, 2010, 05:40:44 AM

Title: Jefferson, 1818
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 10, 2010, 05:11:47 AM

"To give to every citizen the information he needs for the transaction of his own business; To enable him to calculate for himself, and to express and preserve his ideas, his contracts and accounts, in writing; To improve, by reading, his morals and faculties; To understand his duties to his neighbors and country, and to discharge with competence the functions confided to him by either; To know his rights; to exercise with order and justice those he retains; to choose with discretion the fiduciary of those he delegates; and to notice their conduct with diligence, with candor, and judgment; And, in general, to observe with intelligence and faithfulness all the social relations under which he shall be placed." --Thomas Jefferson, Report of the Commissioners for the University of Virginia, 1818

Title: Jefferson
Post by: Freki on June 10, 2010, 06:03:56 AM

“Our country is too large to have all its affairs directed by a single government. Public servants at such a distance, and from under the eye of their constituents, must, from the circumstance of distance, be unable to administer and overlook all the details necessary for the good government of the citizens; and the same circumstance, by rendering detection impossible to their constituents, will invite public agents to corruption, plunder and waste.” –Thomas Jefferson to Gideon Granger, 1800

Title: Jefferson
Post by: Freki on June 11, 2010, 06:14:24 AM

"Cherish, therefore, the spirit of our people, and keep alive their attention. Do not be too severe upon their errors, but reclaim them by enlightening them. If once they become inattentive to the public affairs, you and I, and Congress, and Assemblies, Judges, and Governors, shall all become wolves." --Thomas Jefferson, letter to Edward Carrington, 1787

Title: Washington
Post by: Freki on June 14, 2010, 06:08:44 AM

"The Army (considering the irritable state it is in, its suffering and composition) is a dangerous instrument to play with." --George Washington, letter to Alexander Hamilton, 1783

Title: Hamilton
Post by: Freki on June 15, 2010, 06:08:00 AM

"Let us recollect that peace or war will not always be left to our option; that however moderate or unambitious we may be, we cannot count upon the moderation, or hope to extinguish the ambition of others." --Alexander Hamilton

Title: Adams
Post by: Freki on June 16, 2010, 05:51:12 AM

"Wisdom and knowledge, as well as virtue, diffused generally among the body of the people, being necessary for the preservation of their rights and liberties, and as these depend on spreading the opportunities and advantages of education in the various parts of the country, and among the different orders of people, it shall be the duty of legislators and magistrates ... to cherish the interest of literature and the sciences, and all seminaries of them." --John Adams, Thoughts on Government, 1776

Title: Adams
Post by: Freki on June 17, 2010, 05:34:50 AM

"Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people, who have a right, from the frame of their nature, to knowledge, as their great Creator, who does nothing in vain, has given them understandings, and a desire to know; but besides this, they have a right, an indisputable, unalienable, indefeasible, divine right to that most dreaded and envied kind of knowledge; I mean, of the characters and conduct of their rulers." --John Adams, Dissertation on Canon and Feudal Law, 1765

Title: Washington
Post by: Freki on June 18, 2010, 05:48:50 AM

“If in the opinion of the People the distribution or modification of the Constitutional powers be in any particular wrong,let it be corrected by an amendment in the way which the Constitution designates. But let there be no change by usurpation; for though this, in one instance, may be the instrument of good, it is the customary weapon by which free governments are destroyed.”

George Washington

Title: Jefferson
Post by: Freki on June 19, 2010, 04:38:33 AM

All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride legitimately, by the grace of God.

Thomas Jefferson, letter to Roger C. Weightman, June 24, 1826

Title: Madison
Post by: Freki on June 20, 2010, 12:39:55 PM

A just security to property is not afforded by that government, under which unequal taxes oppress one species of property and reward another species.

James Madison, Essay on Property, March 29, 1792

Title: Washington
Post by: Freki on June 21, 2010, 05:10:08 AM

"Promote then as an object of primary importance, Institutions for the general diffusion of knowledge. In proportion as the structure of a government gives force to public opinion, it is essential that public opinion should be enlightened." --George Washington, Farewell Address, 1796

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Freki on June 22, 2010, 04:32:07 AM

"Enlighten the people, generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like spirits at the dawn of day." --Thomas Jefferson, letter to Dupont de Nemours, 1816

Title: Jefferson
Post by: Freki on June 23, 2010, 05:42:28 AM

"Cherish, therefore, the spirit of our people, and keep alive their attention. Do not be too severe upon their errors, but reclaim them by enlightening them." --Thomas Jefferson, letter to Edward Carrington, 1787

Title: Madison
Post by: Freki on June 24, 2010, 06:16:50 AM

As a man is said to have a right to his property, he may be equally said to have a property in his rights. Where an excess of power prevails, property of no sort is duly respected. No man is safe in his opinions, his person, his faculties, or his possessions.

James Madison, National Gazette Essay, March 27, 1792

Title: Madison, Jefferson
Post by: Freki on June 24, 2010, 09:30:12 AM

"The people of the U.S. owe their Independence & their liberty, to the wisdom of descrying in the minute tax of 3 pence on tea, the magnitude of the evil comprised in the precedent. Let them exert the same wisdom, in watching against every evil lurking under plausible disguises, and growing up from small beginnings." --James Madison

Thomas Jefferson wrote, "To take from one, because it is thought his own industry and that of his fathers has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers, have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association, the guarantee to everyone the free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it."

Title: Adams
Post by: Freki on June 25, 2010, 06:12:20 AM

"The dons, the bashaws, the grandees, the patricians, the sachems, the nabobs, call them by what names you please, sigh and groan and fret, and sometimes stamp and foam and curse, but all in vain. The decree is gone forth, and it cannot be recalled, that a more equal liberty than has prevailed in other parts of the earth must be established in America." --John Adams, letter to Patrick Henry, 1776

Title: Washington
Post by: Freki on June 28, 2010, 07:45:59 AM

"[A] good moral character is the first essential in a man.... It is therefore highly important that you should endeavor not only to be learned but virtuous." --George Washington

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Freki on June 29, 2010, 06:04:23 AM

"I rejoice in a belief that intellectual light will spring up in the dark corners of the earth; that freedom of enquiry will produce liberality of conduct; that mankind will reverse the absurd position that the many were, made for the few; and that they will not continue slaves in one part of the globe, when they can become freemen in another." --George Washington, draft of First Inaugural Address, 1789

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Freki on July 01, 2010, 04:38:40 AM

"Our unalterable resolution would be to be free. They have attempted to subdue us by force, but God be praised! in vain. Their arts may be more dangerous then their arms. Let us then renounce all treaty with them upon any score but that of total separation, and under God trust our cause to our swords." --Samuel Adams, letter to James Warren, 1776

Title: Adams
Post by: Freki on July 04, 2010, 10:40:17 AM

“ The general principles upon which the Fathers achieved independence were the general principals of Christianity… I will avow that I believed and now believe that those general principles of Christianity are as eternal and immutable as the existence and attributes of God.”
• “[July 4th] ought to be commemorated as the day of deliverance by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty.”
–John Adams in a letter written to Abigail on the day the Declaration was approved by Congress

Title: The Americans who risked everything
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 04, 2010, 11:22:15 AM

The Americans Who Risked Everything

My father, Rush H. Limbaugh, Jr., delivered this oft-requested address locally a number of times, but it had never before appeared in print until it appeared in The Limbaugh Letter. My dad was renowned for his oratory skills and for his original mind; this speech is, I think, a superb demonstration of both. I will always be grateful to him for instilling in me a passion for the ideas and lives of America's Founders, as well as a deep appreciation for the inspirational power of words which you will see evidenced here:

"Our Lives, Our Fortunes, Our Sacred Honor"

It was a glorious morning. The sun was shining and the wind was from the southeast. Up especially early, a tall bony, redheaded young Virginian found time to buy a new thermometer, for which he paid three pounds, fifteen shillings. He also bought gloves for Martha, his wife, who was ill at home.

Thomas Jefferson arrived early at the statehouse. The temperature was 72.5 degrees and the horseflies weren't nearly so bad at that hour. It was a lovely room, very large, with gleaming white walls. The chairs were comfortable. Facing the single door were two brass fireplaces, but they would not be used today.

The moment the door was shut, and it was always kept locked, the room became an oven. The tall windows were shut, so that loud quarreling voices could not be heard by passersby. Small openings atop the windows allowed a slight stir of air, and also a large number of horseflies. Jefferson records that "the horseflies were dexterous in finding necks, and the silk of stockings was nothing to them." All discussing was punctuated by the slap of hands on necks.

On the wall at the back, facing the president's desk, was a panoply -- consisting of a drum, swords, and banners seized from Fort Ticonderoga the previous year. Ethan Allen and Benedict Arnold had captured the place, shouting that they were taking it "in the name of the Great Jehovah and the Continental Congress!"

Now Congress got to work, promptly taking up an emergency measure about which there was discussion but no dissension. "Resolved: That an application be made to the Committee of Safety of Pennsylvania for a supply of flints for the troops at New York."

Then Congress transformed itself into a committee of the whole. The Declaration of Independence was read aloud once more, and debate resumed. Though Jefferson was the best writer of all of them, he had been somewhat verbose. Congress hacked the excess away. They did a good job, as a side-by-side comparison of the rough draft and the final text shows. They cut the phrase "by a self-assumed power." "Climb" was replaced by "must read," then "must" was eliminated, then the whole sentence, and soon the whole paragraph was cut. Jefferson groaned as they continued what he later called "their depredations." "Inherent and inalienable rights" came out "certain unalienable rights," and to this day no one knows who suggested the elegant change.

A total of 86 alterations were made. Almost 500 words were eliminated, leaving 1,337. At last, after three days of wrangling, the document was put to a vote.

Here in this hall Patrick Henry had once thundered: "I am no longer a Virginian, sir, but an American." But today the loud, sometimes bitter argument stilled, and without fanfare the vote was taken from north to south by colonies, as was the custom. On July 4, 1776, the Declaration of Independence was adopted.

There were no trumpets blown. No one stood on his chair and cheered. The afternoon was waning and Congress had no thought of delaying the full calendar of routine business on its hands. For several hours they worked on many other problems before adjourning for the day.

Much To Lose

What kind of men were the 56 signers who adopted the Declaration of Independence and who, by their signing, committed an act of treason against the crown? To each of you, the names Franklin, Adams, Hancock and Jefferson are almost as familiar as household words. Most of us, however, know nothing of the other signers. Who were they? What happened to them?

I imagine that many of you are somewhat surprised at the names not there: George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, Patrick Henry. All were elsewhere.

Ben Franklin was the only really old man. Eighteen were under 40; three were in their 20s. Of the 56 almost half - 24 - were judges and lawyers. Eleven were merchants, nine were landowners and farmers, and the remaining 12 were doctors, ministers, and politicians.

With only a few exceptions, such as Samuel Adams of Massachusetts, these were men of substantial property. All but two had families. The vast majority were men of education and standing in their communities. They had economic security as few men had in the 18th Century.

Each had more to lose from revolution than he had to gain by it. John Hancock, one of the richest men in America, already had a price of 500 pounds on his head. He signed in enormous letters so that his Majesty could now read his name without glasses and could now double the reward. Ben Franklin wryly noted: "Indeed we must all hang together, otherwise we shall most assuredly hang separately."

Fat Benjamin Harrison of Virginia told tiny Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts: "With me it will all be over in a minute, but you, you will be dancing on air an hour after I am gone."

These men knew what they risked. The penalty for treason was death by hanging. And remember, a great British fleet was already at anchor in New York Harbor.

They were sober men. There were no dreamy-eyed intellectuals or draft card burners here. They were far from hot-eyed fanatics yammering for an explosion. They simply asked for the status quo. It was change they resisted. It was equality with the mother country they desired. It was taxation with representation they sought. They were all conservatives, yet they rebelled.

It was principle, not property, that had brought these men to Philadelphia. Two of them became presidents of the United States. Seven of them became state governors. One died in office as vice president of the United States. Several would go on to be U.S. Senators. One, the richest man in America, in 1828 founded the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. One, a delegate from Philadelphia, was the only real poet, musician and philosopher of the signers. (It was he, Francis Hopkinson not Betsy Ross who designed the United States flag.)

Richard Henry Lee, a delegate from Virginia, had introduced the resolution to adopt the Declaration of Independence in June of 1776. He was prophetic in his concluding remarks: "Why then sir, why do we longer delay? Why still deliberate? Let this happy day give birth to an American Republic. Let her arise not to devastate and to conquer but to reestablish the reign of peace and law.

"The eyes of Europe are fixed upon us. She demands of us a living example of freedom that may exhibit a contrast in the felicity of the citizen to the ever-increasing tyranny which desolates her polluted shores. She invites us to prepare an asylum where the unhappy may find solace, and the persecuted repost.

"If we are not this day wanting in our duty, the names of the American Legislatures of 1776 will be placed by posterity at the side of all of those whose memory has been and ever will be dear to virtuous men and good citizens."

Though the resolution was formally adopted July 4, it was not until July 8 that two of the states authorized their delegates to sign, and it was not until August 2 that the signers met at Philadelphia to actually put their names to the Declaration.

William Ellery, delegate from Rhode Island, was curious to see the signers' faces as they committed this supreme act of personal courage. He saw some men sign quickly, "but in no face was he able to discern real fear." Stephan Hopkins, Ellery's colleague from Rhode Island, was a man past 60. As he signed with a shaking pen, he declared: "My hand trembles, but my heart does not."

"Most Glorious Service"

Even before the list was published, the British marked down every member of Congress suspected of having put his name to treason. All of them became the objects of vicious manhunts. Some were taken. Some, like Jefferson, had narrow escapes. All who had property or families near British strongholds suffered.

· Francis Lewis, New York delegate saw his home plundered -- and his estates in what is now Harlem -- completely destroyed by British Soldiers. Mrs. Lewis was captured and treated with great brutality. Though she was later exchanged for two British prisoners through the efforts of Congress, she died from the effects of her abuse.

· William Floyd, another New York delegate, was able to escape with his wife and children across Long Island Sound to Connecticut, where they lived as refugees without income for seven years. When they came home they found a devastated ruin.

· Philips Livingstone had all his great holdings in New York confiscated and his family driven out of their home. Livingstone died in 1778 still working in Congress for the cause.

· Louis Morris, the fourth New York delegate, saw all his timber, crops, and livestock taken. For seven years he was barred from his home and family.

· John Hart of Trenton, New Jersey, risked his life to return home to see his dying wife. Hessian soldiers rode after him, and he escaped in the woods. While his wife lay on her deathbed, the soldiers ruined his farm and wrecked his homestead. Hart, 65, slept in caves and woods as he was hunted across the countryside. When at long last, emaciated by hardship, he was able to sneak home, he found his wife had already been buried, and his 13 children taken away. He never saw them again. He died a broken man in 1779, without ever finding his family.

· Dr. John Witherspoon, signer, was president of the College of New Jersey, later called Princeton. The British occupied the town of Princeton, and billeted troops in the college. They trampled and burned the finest college library in the country.

· Judge Richard Stockton, another New Jersey delegate signer, had rushed back to his estate in an effort to evacuate his wife and children. The family found refuge with friends, but a Tory sympathizer betrayed them. Judge Stockton was pulled from bed in the night and brutally beaten by the arresting soldiers. Thrown into a common jail, he was deliberately starved. Congress finally arranged for Stockton's parole, but his health was ruined. The judge was released as an invalid, when he could no longer harm the British cause. He returned home to find his estate looted and did not live to see the triumph of the Revolution. His family was forced to live off charity.

· Robert Morris, merchant prince of Philadelphia, delegate and signer, met Washington's appeals and pleas for money year after year. He made and raised arms and provisions which made it possible for Washington to cross the Delaware at Trenton. In the process he lost 150 ships at sea, bleeding his own fortune and credit almost dry.

· George Clymer, Pennsylvania signer, escaped with his family from their home, but their property was completely destroyed by the British in the Germantown and Brandywine campaigns.

· Dr. Benjamin Rush, also from Pennsylvania, was forced to flee to Maryland. As a heroic surgeon with the army, Rush had several narrow escapes.

· John Martin, a Tory in his views previous to the debate, lived in a strongly loyalist area of Pennsylvania. When he came out for independence, most of his neighbors and even some of his relatives ostracized him. He was a sensitive and troubled man, and many believed this action killed him. When he died in 1777, his last words to his tormentors were: "Tell them that they will live to see the hour when they shall acknowledge it [the signing] to have been the most glorious service that I have ever rendered to my country."

· William Ellery, Rhode Island delegate, saw his property and home burned to the ground.

· Thomas Lynch, Jr., South Carolina delegate, had his health broken from privation and exposures while serving as a company commander in the military. His doctors ordered him to seek a cure in the West Indies and on the voyage, he and his young bride were drowned at sea.

· Edward Rutledge, Arthur Middleton, and Thomas Heyward, Jr., the other three South Carolina signers, were taken by the British in the siege of Charleston. They were carried as prisoners of war to St. Augustine, Florida, where they were singled out for indignities. They were exchanged at the end of the war, the British in the meantime having completely devastated their large landholdings and estates.

· Thomas Nelson, signer of Virginia, was at the front in command of the Virginia military forces. With British General Charles Cornwallis in Yorktown, fire from 70 heavy American guns began to destroy Yorktown piece by piece. Lord Cornwallis and his staff moved their headquarters into Nelson's palatial home. While American cannonballs were making a shambles of the town, the house of Governor Nelson remained untouched. Nelson turned in rage to the American gunners and asked, "Why do you spare my home?" They replied, "Sir, out of respect to you." Nelson cried, "Give me the cannon!" and fired on his magnificent home himself, smashing it to bits. But Nelson's sacrifice was not quite over. He had raised $2 million for the Revolutionary cause by pledging his own estates. When the loans came due, a newer peacetime Congress refused to honor them, and Nelson's property was forfeited. He was never reimbursed. He died, impoverished, a few years later at the age of 50.

Lives, Fortunes, Honor

Of those 56 who signed the Declaration of Independence, nine died of wounds or hardships during the war. Five were captured and imprisoned, in each case with brutal treatment. Several lost wives, sons or entire families. One lost his 13 children. Two wives were brutally treated. All were at one time or another the victims of manhunts and driven from their homes. Twelve signers had their homes completely burned. Seventeen lost everything they owned. Yet not one defected or went back on his pledged word. Their honor, and the nation they sacrificed so much to create is still intact.

And, finally, there is the New Jersey signer, Abraham Clark.

He gave two sons to the officer corps in the Revolutionary Army. They were captured and sent to that infamous British prison hulk afloat in New York Harbor known as the hell ship Jersey, where 11,000 American captives were to die. The younger Clarks were treated with a special brutality because of their father. One was put in solitary and given no food. With the end almost in sight, with the war almost won, no one could have blamed Abraham Clark for acceding to the British request when they offered him his sons' lives if he would recant and come out for the King and Parliament. The utter despair in this man's heart, the anguish in his very soul, must reach out to each one of us down through 200 years with his answer: "No."

The 56 signers of the Declaration Of Independence proved by their every deed that they made no idle boast when they composed the most magnificent curtain line in history. "And for the support of this Declaration with a firm reliance on the protection of divine providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor."

My friends, I know you have a copy of the Declaration of Independence somewhere around the house - in an old history book (newer ones may well omit it), an encyclopedia, or one of those artificially aged "parchments" we all got in school years ago. I suggest that each of you take the time this month to read through the text of the Declaration, one of the most noble and beautiful political documents in human history.

There is no more profound sentence than this: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness..."

These are far more than mere poetic words. The underlying ideas that infuse every sentence of this treatise have sustained this nation for more than two centuries. They were forged in the crucible of great sacrifice. They are living words that spring from and satisfy the deepest cries for liberty in the human spirit.

"Sacred honor" isn't a phrase we use much these days, but every American life is touched by the bounty of this, the Founders' legacy. It is freedom, tested by blood, and watered with tears.

- Rush Limbaugh III

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Freki on July 06, 2010, 07:45:30 AM

"When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness." --Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776

Title: William Ellery
Post by: Freki on July 07, 2010, 05:29:21 AM

To live content with small means, to seek elegance rather than luxury, and refinement rather than fashion, to be worthy, not respectable, and wealthy, not rich, to study hard, think quietly, talk gently, act frankly, to listen to stars and birds, to babes and sages, with open heart, to bear all cheerfully, do all bravely, await occasions, hurry never, in a word to let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious, grow up through the common, this is to be my symphony.
William Ellery (signer of Declaration)

Title: Franklin:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 07, 2010, 05:43:29 AM

"And as to the Cares, they are chiefly what attend the bringing up of Children; and I would ask any Man who has experienced it, if they are not the most delightful Cares in the World; and if from that Particular alone, he does not find the Bliss of a double State much greater, instead of being less than he expected." --Benjamin Franklin, Reply to a Piece of Advice

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Freki on July 08, 2010, 05:26:51 AM

"The foundation of national morality must be laid in private families. ... How is it possible that Children can have any just Sense of the sacred Obligations of Morality or Religion if, from their earliest Infancy, they learn their Mothers live in habitual Infidelity to their fathers, and their fathers in as constant Infidelity to their Mothers?" --John Adams, Diary, 1778

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Freki on July 09, 2010, 05:32:36 AM

The truth is, all might be free if they valued freedom, and defended it as they ought.
Samuel Adams Essay in the Boston Gazette, October 14, 1771

"Religion in a Family is at once its brightest Ornament & its best Security." --Samuel Adams, letter to Thomas Wells, 1780

Title: Patrick Henry
Post by: Freki on July 11, 2010, 05:44:19 AM

It cannot be emphasized too strongly or too often that this great nation was founded, not by religionists, but by Christians; not on religions, but on the gospel of Jesus Christ! For this very reason peoples of other faiths have been afforded asylum, prosperity, and freedom of worship here.
Patrick Henry

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Freki on July 12, 2010, 05:18:00 AM

I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents.
James Madison

"What is it that affectionate parents require of their Children; for all their care, anxiety, and toil on their accounts? Only that they would be wise and virtuous, Benevolent and kind." --Abigail Adams, letter to John Quincy Adams, 1783

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Freki on July 12, 2010, 05:38:17 AM

Thomas Jefferson said: “The majority, oppressing an individual, is guilty of a crime, abuses its strength, and by acting on the law of the strongest breaks up the foundations of society.”

John Adams advised, “Remember democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.”

Benjamin Franklin warned, “When the people find they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic.”

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Freki on July 13, 2010, 06:12:53 AM

Title: Thomas Jefferson
Post by: Freki on July 14, 2010, 05:36:20 AM

When all government, domestic and foreign, in little as in great things, shall be drawn to Washington as the center of all power, it will render powerless the checks provided of one government on another, and will become as venal and oppressive as the government from which we separated." Thomas Jefferson

Congress has not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare but only those specifically enumerated." Thomas Jefferson

Title: Hamilton
Post by: Freki on July 15, 2010, 05:46:02 AM

"...there is no position which depends on clearer principles, than that every act of a delegated authority contrary to the tenor of the commission under which it is exercised, is void. No legislative act, therefore, contrary to the Constitution, can be valid. To deny this, would be to affirm that the deputy is greater than his principle; that the servant is above the master; that the representatives of the people are superior to the people themselves; that men, acting by virtue of powers, may do not only what their powers do not authorize, but what they forbid."

Alexander Hamilton Federalist #78

Title: Thomas Paine, Common Sense 1776
Post by: Freki on July 16, 2010, 05:14:33 AM

Title: Richard Henry Lee
Post by: Freki on July 17, 2010, 05:44:17 AM

When the resolution of enslaving America was formed in Great Britain, the British Parliament was advised by an artful man, who was governor of Pennsylvania, to disarm the people; that it was the best and most effectual way to enslave them; but that they should not do it openly, but weaken them, and let them sink gradually...I ask, who are the militia? They consist A militia, when properly formed, are in fact the people themselves ... and include all men capable of bearing arms."

The Constitution shall never be construed to prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms.

Richard Henry Lee
(1732 - 1794)
Richard Henry Lee (January 20, 1732 – June 19, 1794) was an American statesman from Virginia best known for the motion in the Second Continental Congress calling for the colonies' independence from Great Britain. His famous resolution of June 1776 led to the United States Declaration of Independence, which Lee signed. He also served a one-year term as the President of the Continental Congress, and was a U.S. Senator from Virginia from 1789 to 1792, serving during part of that time as one of the first Presidents pro tempore.

Title: Hamilton
Post by: Freki on July 19, 2010, 05:53:57 AM

"The great leading objects of the federal government, in which revenue is concerned, are to maintain domestic peace, and provide for the common defense. In these are comprehended the regulation of commerce that is, the whole system of foreign intercourse; the support of armies and navies, and of the civil administration." --Alexander Hamilton, remarks to the New York Ratifying Convention, 1788

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Freki on July 20, 2010, 06:11:46 AM

"In the first place, it is to be remembered, that the general government is not to be charged with the whole power of making and administering laws. Its jurisdiction is limited to certain enumerated objects, which concern all the members of the republic, but which are not to be attained by the separate provisions of any." --James Madison, Federalist No. 14, 1787

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Freki on July 21, 2010, 05:38:56 AM

"Were we directed from Washington when to sow, and when to reap, we should soon want bread." --Thomas Jefferson, autobiography, 1821

Title: Jefferson
Post by: Freki on July 21, 2010, 07:36:43 AM

“The principle and construction contended for that the general government is the exclusive judge of the extent of the powers delegated to it, stop nothing short of despotism – since the discretion of those who administer the government, and not the constitution, would be the measure of their powers: That the several states who formed that instrument, being sovereign and independent, have the unquestionable right to judge of its infraction, and that a NULLIFICATION by those sovereignties, of all unauthorized acts done under color of that instrument, is the rightful remedy.” Thomas Jefferson

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 21, 2010, 08:56:11 AM

Whoa!

Title: James Madison
Post by: Freki on July 22, 2010, 06:06:09 AM

I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents.
James Madison
(1751 - 1836)
James Madison (March 16, 1751 - June 28, 1836) was an American politician and political philosopher who served as the fourth President of the United States (1809-1817), and one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. Considered to be the "Father of the Constitution", he was the principal author of the document. In 1788, he wrote over a third of the Federalist Papers, still the most influential commentary on the Constitution. The first President to have served in the United States Congress, he was a leader in the 1st United States Congress, drafted many basic laws and was responsible for the first ten amendments to the Constitution (said to be based on the Virginia Declaration of Rights), and thus is also known as the "Father of the Bill of Rights". As a political theorist, Madison's most distinctive belief was that the new republic needed checks and balances to protect individual rights from the tyranny of the majority.

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Freki on July 23, 2010, 06:37:56 AM

"While the constitution continues to be read, and its principles known, the states, must, by every rational man, be considered as essential component parts of the union; and therefore the idea of sacrificing the former to the latter is totally inadmissible." --Alexander Hamilton, speech to the New York Ratifying Convention, 1788

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: prentice crawford on July 23, 2010, 07:39:45 PM

"Almost everything appertaining to the circumstances of a Nation has been absorbed and confounded under the general and mysterious word Government. Though it avoids taking to its account the errors it commits, and the mischiefs it occasions, it fails not to arrogate to itself whatever has the appearance of prosperity. It robs industry of its honours, by pedantically making itself the cause of its effects; and purloins from the general character of man, the merits that appertain to him as a social being."

Rights of Man, Thomas Paine 1791

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Freki on July 25, 2010, 05:47:28 AM

nice PC

"Excessive taxation ... will carry reason and reflection to every man's door, and particularly in the hour of election." --Thomas Jefferson

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Freki on July 26, 2010, 05:35:59 AM

"It becomes all therefore who are friends of a Government based on free principles to reflect, that by denying the possibility of a system partly federal and partly consolidated, and who would convert ours into one either wholly federal or wholly consolidated, in neither of which forms have individual rights, public order, and external safety, been all duly maintained, they aim a deadly blow at the last hope of true liberty on the face of the Earth." --James Madison, Notes on Nullification

Title: Samuel Adams
Post by: Freki on July 27, 2010, 05:42:28 AM

Among the natural rights of the Colonists are these: First, a right to life; Secondly, to liberty; Thirdly, to property; together with the right to support and defend them in the best manner they can. These are evident branches of, rather than deductions from, the duty of self-preservation, commonly called the first law of nature.
-= The Rights of the Colonists, November 20, 1772 =-

Samuel Adams
(1722 - 1803)
Samuel Adams (September 27 [O.S. September 16] 1722 – October 2, 1803) was a statesman, political philosopher, and one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. As a politician in colonial Massachusetts, Adams was a leader of the movement that became the American Revolution, and was one of the architects of the principles of American republicanism that shaped the political culture of the United States.

Title: Hamilton
Post by: Freki on July 27, 2010, 05:43:54 AM

2nd post

"This balance between the National and State governments ought to be dwelt on with peculiar attention, as it is of the utmost importance. It forms a double security to the people. If one encroaches on their rights they will find a powerful protection in the other. Indeed, they will both be prevented from overpassing their constitutional limits by a certain rivalship, which will ever subsist between them." --Alexander Hamilton, speech to the New York Ratifying Convention, 1788

Title: Madison
Post by: Freki on July 28, 2010, 05:25:35 AM

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Freki on July 30, 2010, 05:14:39 AM

"The operations of the federal government will be most extensive and important in times of war and danger; those of the State governments, in times of peace and security." --James Madison, Federalist No. 45

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Freki on August 02, 2010, 04:48:05 AM

"Each State, in ratifying the Constitution, is considered as a sovereign body, independent of all others, and only to be bound by its own voluntary act. In this relation, then, the new Constitution will, if established, be a FEDERAL, and not a NATIONAL constitution." --James Madison, Federalist No. 39

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Freki on August 04, 2010, 05:15:20 AM

"So that the executive and legislative branches of the national government depend upon, and emanate from the states. Every where the state sovereignties are represented; and the national sovereignty, as such, has no representation." --Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution, 1833

"The state governments have a full superintendence and control over the immense mass of local interests of their respective states, which connect themselves with the feelings, the affections, the municipal institutions, and the internal arrangements of the whole population. They possess, too, the immediate administration of justice in all cases, civil and criminal, which concern the property, personal rights, and peaceful pursuits of their own citizens." --Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution, 1833

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Freki on August 05, 2010, 02:55:28 PM

"In the next place, the state governments are, by the very theory of the constitution, essential constituent parts of the general government. They can exist without the latter, but the latter cannot exist without them." --Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution, 1833

"Another not unimportant consideration is, that the powers of the general government will be, and indeed must be, principally employed upon external objects, such as war, peace, negotiations with foreign powers, and foreign commerce. In its internal operations it can touch but few objects, except to introduce regulations beneficial to the commerce, intercourse, and other relations, between the states, and to lay taxes for the common good. The powers of the states, on the other hand, extend to all objects, which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, and liberties, and property of the people, and the internal order, improvement, and prosperity of the state." --Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution, 1833

Title: Thomas Paine
Post by: Freki on August 07, 2010, 05:24:32 AM

Title: Thomas Paine
Post by: Freki on August 09, 2010, 05:00:42 AM

The preservation of a free Government requires not merely, that the metes and bounds which separate each department of power be invariably maintained; but more especially that neither of them be suffered to overleap the great Barrier which defends the rights of the people. The Rulers who are guilty of such an encroachment, exceed the commission from which they derive their authority, and are Tyrants. The People who submit to it are governed by laws made neither by themselves nor by an authority derived from them, and are slaves.
-= 1785 - Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Freki on August 11, 2010, 05:52:11 AM

"I consider the foundation of the Constitution as laid on this ground that 'all powers not delegated to the United States, by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states or to the people.' To take a single step beyond the boundaries thus specially drawn around the powers of Congress, is to take possession of a boundless field of power, not longer susceptible of any definition." --Thomas Jefferson, Opinion on the Constitutionality of a National Bank, 1791

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Freki on August 12, 2010, 06:23:08 AM

"The proposed Constitution, so far from implying an abolition of the State governments, makes them constituent parts of the national sovereignty, by allowing them a direct representation in the Senate, and leaves in their possession certain exclusive and very important portions of sovereign power. This fully corresponds, in every rational import of the terms, with the idea of a federal government." --Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 9

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Freki on August 13, 2010, 05:44:55 AM

"There is one transcendant advantage belonging to the province of the State governments... --I mean the ordinary administration of criminal and civil justice." --Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 17

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Freki on August 16, 2010, 05:59:31 AM

"But as the plan of the convention aims only at a partial union or consolidation, the State governments would clearly retain all the rights of sovereignty which they before had, and which were not, by that act, EXCLUSIVELY delegated to the United States." --Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 32

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: ccp on August 16, 2010, 04:00:23 PM

Freki,
How do you know all these quotes?

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Freki on August 17, 2010, 05:39:09 AM

"But ambitious encroachments of the federal government, on the authority of the State governments, would not excite the opposition of a single State, or of a few States only. They would be signals of general alarm... But what degree of madness could ever drive the federal government to such an extremity." --James Madison, Federalist No. 46

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Freki on August 18, 2010, 05:22:47 AM

"[H]is was the singular destiny and merit, of leading the armies of his country successfully through an arduous war, for the establishment of its independence; of conducting its councils through the birth of a government, new in its forms and principles, until it had settled down into a quite and orderly train; and of scrupulously obeying the laws through the whole of his career, civil and military, of which the history of the world furnishes no other example." --Thomas Jefferson, on George Washington in a letter to Dr. Walter Jones, 1814

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Freki on August 19, 2010, 05:39:33 AM

Title: Adams
Post by: Freki on August 20, 2010, 06:26:12 AM

We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.

John Adams: Address to the Military, October 11, 1798

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Freki on August 20, 2010, 09:23:00 AM

"The latent causes of faction are thus sown in the nature of man." --James Madison, Federalist No. 10

Title: Sundry
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 23, 2010, 06:08:30 AM

"His person, you know, was fine, his stature exactly what one would wish, his deportment easy, erect and noble." --Thomas Jefferson, on George Washington in a letter to Dr. Walter Jones, 1814

"His temper was excellent, and he generally observed decorum in debate. On one or two occasions I have seen him angry, and his anger was terrible; those who witnessed it, were not disposed to rouse it again." --Thomas Jefferson, on Patrick Henry, 1824

"Every person seems to acknowledge his greatness. He blends together the profound politician with the scholar." --William Pierce, on James Madison, 1787

Title: Franklin
Post by: Freki on August 23, 2010, 06:09:10 AM

I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion of the means. I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it. In my youth I traveled much, and I observed in different countries, that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer.
-= On the Price of Corn and Management of the Poor, November 1766 =-

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Freki on August 25, 2010, 05:35:17 AM

"Eloquence has been defined to be the art of persuasion. If it included persuasion by convincing, Mr. Madison was the most eloquent man I ever heard." --Patrick Henry, on James Madison, 1790

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Freki on August 26, 2010, 06:52:36 AM

"f you speak of solid information and sound judgement, Colonel Washington is, unquestionably the greatest man on that floor." --Patrick Henry, on George Washington, 1775

The ingredients which constitute energy in the Executive are, first, unity; secondly, duration; thirdly, an adequate provision for its support; fourthly, competent powers. ... The ingredients which constitute safety in the republican sense are, first, a due dependence on the people, secondly, a due responsibility. Alexander Hamilton: Federalist No. 70, March 14, 1788

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Freki on August 27, 2010, 05:46:14 AM

In questions of power then let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution. Thomas Jefferson: Kentucky Resolutions - 1798

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Freki on August 30, 2010, 06:01:17 AM

"He was certainly one of the most learned men of the age. It may be said of him as has been said of others that he was a 'walking Library,' and what can be said of but few such prodigies, that the Genius of Philosophy ever walked hand in hand with him." --James Madison, on Thomas Jefferson in a letter to Samuel Harrison Smith, 1826

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Freki on August 31, 2010, 06:16:47 AM

"Some talked, some wrote, and some fought to promote and establish it, but you and Mr. Jefferson thought for us all. I never take a retrospect of the years 1775 and 1776 without associating your opinions and speeches and conversations with all the great political, moral, and intellectual achievements of the Congress of those memorable years." --Benjamin Rush, to John Adams, 1812

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Freki on September 01, 2010, 06:21:21 AM

Title: Samuel Adams
Post by: Freki on September 01, 2010, 06:40:15 AM

Neither the wisest constitution nor the wisest laws will secure the liberty and happiness of a people whose manners are universally corrupt.
-= Essay in the Public Advertiser, 1749 =

Title: Washington
Post by: Freki on September 01, 2010, 09:10:54 AM

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Freki on September 02, 2010, 09:37:51 AM

"It does not take a majority to prevail ... but rather an irate, tireless minority, keen on setting brushfires of freedom in the minds of men." --Samuel Adams

Title: George Washington
Post by: Freki on September 03, 2010, 07:00:30 AM

If we desire to insult, we must be able to repel it; if we desire to secure peace, one of the most powerful instruments of our rising prosperity, it must be known, that we are at all times ready for War.

George Washington: Annual Message, December 1793

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Freki on September 07, 2010, 06:27:55 AM

"[A] wise and frugal government ... shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government." --Thomas Jefferson

Title: Jefferson
Post by: Freki on September 08, 2010, 06:40:07 AM

Honour, justice, and humanity, forbid us tamely to surrender that freedom which we received from our gallant ancestors, and which our innocent posterity have a right to receive from us. We cannot endure the infamy and guilt of resigning succeeding generations to that wretchedness which inevitably awaits them, if we ba...sely entail hereditary bondage upon them.

Thomas Jefferson

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Freki on September 09, 2010, 05:54:03 AM

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Freki on September 10, 2010, 05:44:24 AM

"It is the duty of every man to render to the Creator such homage, and such only, as he believes to be acceptable to him. This duty is precedent both in order of time and degree of obligation, to the claims of Civil Society. Before any man can be considered as a member of Civil Society, he must be considered as a subject of the Governor of the Universe." --James Madison, A Memorial and Remonstrance, 1785

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Freki on September 10, 2010, 06:21:53 AM

Madison said in 1791 that the “necessary and proper clause” was “in fact merely declaratory of what would have resulted by unavoidable implication, as the appropriate, and, as it were, technical means of executing those powers. In this sense it has been explained by the friends of the Constitution, and ratified by the State Conventions.”

...
perhaps the most ardent nationalist of the founding period, James Wilson of Pennsylvania, had this to say about the enumerated powers of the Constitution during the Pennsylvania ratifying convention of 1787:

They found themselves embarrassed with another, of peculiar delicacy and importance. I mean that of drawing a proper line between the national government and the governments of the several states. It was easy to discover a proper and satisfactory principle on the subject. Whatever object of government is confined, in its operation and effects, within the bounds of a particular state, should be considered as belonging to the government of that state; whatever object of government extends, in its operation or effects, beyond the bounds of a particular state, should be considered as belonging to the government of the United States. But though this principle be sound and satisfactory, its application to particular cases would be accompanied with much difficult, because, in its application, room must be allowed for great discretionary latitude of construction of the principle. In order to lessen or remove the difficulty arising from discretionary construction on this subject, an enumeration of particular instances, in which the application of the principle ought to take place, has been attempted with much industry and care. It is only a mathematical science that a line can be described with mathematical precision. But I flatter myself that, upon the strictest investigation, the enumeration will be found to be safe and unexceptionable, and accurate, too, in as great a degree as accuracy can be expected in a subject of this nature [emphasis added].

Both quoted from this article: http://www.tenthamendmentcenter.com/2010/08/08/rewriting-history/

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Freki on September 11, 2010, 04:32:21 PM

Title: Samuel Adams
Post by: Freki on September 13, 2010, 05:55:51 AM

It has been observed, that "education has a greater influence on manners, than human laws can have." Human laws excite fears and apprehensions, least crimes committed may be detected and punished: But a virtuous education is calculated to reach and influence the heart, and to prevent crimes. A very judicious writer, has quoted Plato, who in shewing what care for the security of States ought to be taken of the education of youth, speaks of it as almost sufficient to supply the place both of Legislation and Administration. Such an education, which leads the youth beyond mere outside shew, will impress their minds with a profound reverence of the Deity, universal benevolence, and a warm attachment and affection towards their country. It will excite in them a just regard to Divine Revelation, which informs them of the original character and dignity of Man; and it will inspire them with a sense of true honor, which consists in conforming as much as possible, their principles, habits, and manners to that original character. It will enlarge their powers of mind, and prompt them impartially to search for truth in the consideration of every subject that may employ their thoughts; and among other branches of knowledge, it will instruct them in the skill of political architecture and jurisprudence; and qualify them to discover any error, if there should be such, in the forms and administration of Governments, and point out the method of correcting them.

Samuel Adams: Address to Massachusetts Legislature as Governor, January 17, 1794

Title: Samuel Adams
Post by: Freki on September 14, 2010, 05:07:09 AM

Title: James Madison
Post by: Freki on September 15, 2010, 05:40:53 AM

A universal peace, it is to be feared, is in the catalogue of events, which will never exist but in the imaginations of visionary philosophers, or in the breasts of benevolent enthusiasts.

James Madison

James Madison
(1751 - 1836)
James Madison (March 16, 1751 - June 28, 1836) was an American politician and political philosopher who served as the fourth President of the United States (1809-1817), and one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. Considered to be the "Father of the Constitution", he was the principal author of the document. In 1788, he wrote over a third of the Federalist Papers, still the most influential commentary on the Constitution. The first President to have served in the United States Congress, he was a leader in the 1st United States Congress, drafted many basic laws and was responsible for the first ten amendments to the Constitution (said to be based on the Virginia Declaration of Rights), and thus is also known as the "Father of the Bill of Rights". As a political theorist, Madison's most distinctive belief was that the new republic needed checks and balances to protect individual rights from the tyranny of the majority.

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Freki on September 16, 2010, 05:33:07 AM

"And have we now forgotten that powerful Friend? or do we imagine we no longer need its assistance? I have lived, Sir, a long time; and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this Truth, that God governs in the Affairs of Men. And if a Sparrow cannot fall to the Ground without his Notice, is it probable that an Empire can rise without his Aid?" --Benjamin Franklin, Motion for Prayers in the Constitutional Convention, 1787

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Freki on September 16, 2010, 07:29:46 AM

If we can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them, they must become happy.

Thomas Jefferson

Title: Thomas Paine
Post by: Freki on September 20, 2010, 06:19:57 AM

If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may have peace.
-= The American Crisis, No. 1, December 19, 1776
Thomas Paine

Title: Thomas Paine
Post by: Freki on September 21, 2010, 05:44:59 AM

If, from the more wretched parts of the old world, we look at those which are in an advanced stage of improvement, we still find the greedy hand of government thrusting itself into every corner and crevice of industry, and grasping the spoil of the multitude. Invention is continually exercised, to furnish new pretenses for revenues and taxation. It watches prosperity as its prey and permits none to escape without tribute.
Rights of Man, 1791

Thomas Paine
(1737 - 1809)
Thomas Paine (January 29, 1737 – June 8, 1809) was a British pamphleteer, revolutionary, radical, inventor, intellectual, and one of the Founding Fathers of the United States.[1] He lived and worked in Britain until age 37, when he emigrated to the British American colonies, in time to participate in the American Revolution. His principal contributions were the powerful, widely-read pamphlet Common Sense (1776), advocating colonial America's independence from the Kingdom of Great Britain, and The American Crisis (1776–1783), a pro-revolutionary pamphlet series.

Title: Sundry; States Rights, God, others
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 27, 2010, 04:52:56 AM

Our thanks to Freki for having handled the responsibility of this thread for so long, but now other matters call upon him:
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"[T]he importance of piety and religion; of industry and frugality; of prudence, economy, regularity and an even government; all ... are essential to the well-being of a family." --Samuel Adams, letter to Thomas Wells, 1780
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"As parents, we can have no joy, knowing that this government is not sufficiently lasting to ensure any thing which we may bequeath to posterity: And by a plain method of argument, as we are running the next generation into debt, we ought to do the work of it, otherwise we use them meanly and pitifully. In order to discover the line of our duty rightly, we should take our children in our hand, and fix our station a few years farther into life; that eminence will present a prospect, which a few present fears and prejudices conceal from our sight." --Thomas Paine, Common Sense, 1776
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"The great leading objects of the federal government, in which revenue is concerned, are to maintain domestic peace, and provide for the common defense. In these are comprehended the regulation of commerce that is, the whole system of foreign intercourse; the support of armies and navies, and of the civil administration." --Alexander Hamilton, remarks to the New York Ratifying Convention, 1788

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"Were we directed from Washington when to sow, and when to reap, we should soon want bread." --Thomas Jefferson, autobiography, 1821
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"While the constitution continues to be read, and its principles known, the states, must, by every rational man, be considered as essential component parts of the union; and therefore the idea of sacrificing the former to the latter is totally inadmissible." --Alexander Hamilton, speech to the New York Ratifying Convention, 1788
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"This balance between the National and State governments ought to be dwelt on with peculiar attention, as it is of the utmost importance. It forms a double security to the people. If one encroaches on their rights they will find a powerful protection in the other. Indeed, they will both be prevented from overpassing their constitutional limits by a certain rivalship, which will ever subsist between them." --Alexander Hamilton, speech to the New York Ratifying Convention, 1788
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"[T]he States can best govern our home concerns and the general government our foreign ones. I wish, therefore ... never to see all offices transferred to Washington, where, further withdrawn from the eyes of the people, they may more secretly be bought and sold at market." --Thomas Jefferson, letter to Judge William Johnson, 1823
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"In the next place, the state governments are, by the very theory of the constitution, essential constituent parts of the general government. They can exist without the latter, but the latter cannot exist without them." --Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution, 1833

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"When you assemble from your several counties in the Legislature, were every member to be guided only by the apparent interest of his county, government would be impracticable. There must be a perpetual accomodation and sacrifice of local advantage to general expediency." --Alexander Hamilton, Speech at the New York Ratifying Convention, 1788
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"The true test is, whether the object be of a local character, and local use; or, whether it be of general benefit to the states. If it be purely local, congress cannot constitutionally appropriate money for the object. But, if the benefit be general, it matters not, whether in point of locality it be in one state, or several; whether it be of large, or of small extent." --Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution, 1833

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"I consider the foundation of the Constitution as laid on this ground that 'all powers not delegated to the United States, by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states or to the people.' To take a single step beyond the boundaries thus specially drawn around the powers of Congress, is to take possession of a boundless field of power, not longer susceptible of any definition." --Thomas Jefferson, Opinion on the Constitutionality of a National Bank, 1791

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"The proposed Constitution, so far from implying an abolition of the State governments, makes them constituent parts of the national sovereignty, by allowing them a direct representation in the Senate, and leaves in their possession certain exclusive and very important portions of sovereign power. This fully corresponds, in every rational import of the terms, with the idea of a federal government." --Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 9
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"There is one transcendant advantage belonging to the province of the State governments... --I mean the ordinary administration of criminal and civil justice." --Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 17

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"But as the plan of the convention aims only at a partial union or consolidation, the State governments would clearly retain all the rights of sovereignty which they before had, and which were not, by that act, EXCLUSIVELY delegated to the United States." --Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 32
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"But ambitious encroachments of the federal government, on the authority of the State governments, would not excite the opposition of a single State, or of a few States only. They would be signals of general alarm... But what degree of madness could ever drive the federal government to such an extremity." --James Madison, Federalist No. 46

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"[H]is was the singular destiny and merit, of leading the armies of his country successfully through an arduous war, for the establishment of its independence; of conducting its councils through the birth of a government, new in its forms and principles, until it had settled down into a quite and orderly train; and of scrupulously obeying the laws through the whole of his career, civil and military, of which the history of the world furnishes no other example." --Thomas Jefferson, on George Washington in a letter to Dr. Walter Jones, 1814
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"Well known to be the greatest philosopher of the present age; -- all the operations of nature he seems to understand, --the very heavens obey him, and the Clouds yield up their Lightning to be imprisoned in his rod." --William Pierce, on Benjamin Franklin, 1787

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"He was certainly one of the most learned men of the age. It may be said of him as has been said of others that he was a 'walking Library,' and what can be said of but few such prodigies, that the Genius of Philosophy ever walked hand in hand with him." --James Madison, on Thomas Jefferson in a letter to Samuel Harrison Smith, 1826
==============

"Some talked, some wrote, and some fought to promote and establish it, but you and Mr. Jefferson thought for us all. I never take a retrospect of the years 1775 and 1776 without associating your opinions and speeches and conversations with all the great political, moral, and intellectual achievements of the Congress of those memorable years." --Benjamin Rush, to John Adams, 1812

==========

"His integrity was most pure, his justice the most inflexible I have ever known, no motives of interest or consanguinity, of friendship or hatred, being able to bias his decision. He was indeed, in every sense of the words, a wise, a good, and a great man." --Thomas Jefferson, on George Washington in a letter to Dr. Walter Jones, 1814
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"Perhaps the strongest feature in his character was prudence, never acting until every circumstance, every consideration, was maturely weighed; refraining if he saw a doubt, but, when once decided, going through with his purpose, whatever obstacles opposed." --Thomas Jefferson, on George Washington in a letter to Dr. Walter Jones, 1814

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"Hamilton was indeed a singular character. Of acute understanding, disinterested, honest, and honorable in all private transactions, amiable in society, and duly valuing virtue in private life, yet so bewitched & perverted by the British example, as to be under thoro' conviction that corruption was essential to the government of a nation." --Thomas Jefferson, on Alexander Hamilton in The Anas
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"[He] will live in the memory and gratitude of the wise & good, as a luminary of Science, as a votary of liberty, as a model of patriotism, and as a benefactor of human kind." --James Madison, on Thomas Jefferson in a letter to Nicholas P. Trist, 1826

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"I have sometimes asked myself whether my country is the better for my having lived at all? I do not know that it is. I have been the instrument of doing the following things; but they would have been done by others; some of them, perhaps, a little better." --Thomas Jefferson, 1800

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"It is the duty of every man to render to the Creator such homage, and such only, as he believes to be acceptable to him. This duty is precedent both in order of time and degree of obligation, to the claims of Civil Society. Before any man can be considered as a member of Civil Society, he must be considered as a subject of the Governor of the Universe." --James Madison, A Memorial and Remonstrance, 1785

===========

"I have lived, Sir, a long time; and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this Truth, that God governs in the Affairs of Men. And if a Sparrow cannot fall to the Ground without his Notice, is it probable that an Empire can rise without his Aid?" --Benjamin Franklin, Motion for Prayers in the Constitutional Convention, 1787
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"The belief in a God All Powerful wise and good, is so essential to the moral order of the world and to the happiness of man, that arguments which enforce it cannot be drawn from too many sources nor adapted with too much solicitude to the different characters and capacities impressed with it." --James Madison, letter to Frederick Beasley, 1825

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"A State, I cheerfully admit, is the noblest work of Man: But Man, himself, free and honest, is, I speak as to this world, the noblest work of God…." --James Wilson, Chisholm v. Georgia, 1793
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"It is the duty of all men in society, publicly, and at stated seasons, to worship the SUPREME BEING, the great Creator and Preserver of the universe. And no subject shall be hurt, molested, or restrained, in his person, liberty, or estate, for worshipping GOD in the manner most agreeable to the dictates of his own conscience; or for his religious profession or sentiments; provided he doth not disturb the public peace, or obstruct others in their religious worship." --John Adams, Thoughts on Government, 1776

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"To grant that there is a supreme intelligence who rules the world and has established laws to regulate the actions of his creatures; and still to assert that man, in a state of nature, may be considered as perfectly free from all restraints of law and government, appears to a common understanding altogether irreconcilable. Good and wise men, in all ages, have embraced a very dissimilar theory. They have supposed that the deity, from the relations we stand in to himself and to each other, has constituted an eternal and immutable law, which is indispensably obligatory upon all mankind, prior to any human institution whatever. This is what is called the law of nature....Upon this law depend the natural rights of mankind." --Alexander Hamilton
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"I now make it my earnest prayer, that God would have you, and the State over which you preside, in his holy protection, that he would incline the hearts of the Citizens to cultivate a spirit of subordination and obedience to Government, to entertain a brotherly affection and love for one another, for their fellow Citizens of the United States at large, and particularly for their brethren who have served in the Field, and finally, that he would most graciously be pleased to dispose us all, to do Justice, to love mercy, and to demean ourselves with that Charity, humility and pacific temper of mind, which were the Characteristicks of the Divine Author of our blessed Religion, and without an humble imitation of whose example in these things, we can never hope to be a happy Nation." --George Washington, circular letter of farewell to the Army, 1783
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"It is the duty of all Nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey his will, to be grateful for his benefits, and humbly to implore his protection and favors." --George Washington, Thanksgiving Proclamation, 1789

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"Stability in government is essential to national character and to the advantages annexed to it, as well as to that repose and confidence in the minds of the people, which are among the chief blessings of civil society." --James Madison, Federalist No. 37, 1788

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"The instrument by which [government] must act are either the AUTHORITY of the laws or FORCE. If the first be destroyed, the last must be substituted; and where this becomes the ordinary instrument of government there is an end to liberty! "--Alexander Hamilton, Tully, No. 3, 1794

Title: Paine:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 28, 2010, 04:58:23 AM

"Society in every state is a blessing, but government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one; for when we suffer or are exposed to the same miseries by a government, which we might expect in a country without government, our calamity is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer." --Thomas Paine, Common Sense, 1776

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Freki on September 29, 2010, 06:13:30 AM

In politics, as in religion, it is equally absurd to aim at making proselytes by fire and sword. Heresies in either can rarely be cured by persecution.

Alexander Hamilton: Federalist No. 1, October 27, 1787

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"The great desideratum in Government is so to modify the sovereignty as that it may be sufficiently neutral between different parts of the Society to controul one part from invading the rights of another, and at the same time sufficiently controuled itself, from setting up an interest adverse to that of the entire Society." --James Madison, letter to Thomas Jefferson, 1787

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Freki on September 30, 2010, 05:29:22 AM

The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground." --Thomas Jefferson, letter to E. Carrington, 1788

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Freki on October 01, 2010, 05:57:54 AM

"If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place, oblige it to control itself." --James Madison, Federalist No. 51, 1788

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Freki on October 04, 2010, 06:14:18 AM

"[A] wise and frugal government...shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government." --Thomas Jefferson, First Inaugural Address, 1801

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Freki on October 05, 2010, 07:06:59 AM

"It has been said that all Government is an evil. It would be more proper to say that the necessity of any Government is a misfortune. This necessity however exists; and the problem to be solved is, not what form of Government is perfect, but which of the forms is least imperfect." --James Madison, 1833

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Freki on October 06, 2010, 06:11:48 AM

"The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it to be always kept alive. It will often be exercised when wrong, but better so than not to be exercised at all. I like a little rebellion now and then. It is like a storm in the atmosphere." --Thomas Jefferson, letter to Abigail Adams, 1787

Title: Jefferson
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 08, 2010, 07:59:50 AM

"The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only legitimate object of good government." --Thomas Jefferson, letter to The Republican Citizens of Washington County, Maryland, 1809

Title: VERY relevant today
Post by: G M on October 08, 2010, 08:19:08 AM

http://claytonecramer.blogspot.com/2010/10/if-you-want-to-understand-what-makes.html

If You Want To Understand What Makes This Recession Continue
Ask the authors of Federalist 62. First, the problem of the health care reform bill that came to 2700 pages:

It will be of little avail to the people, that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man, who knows what the law is to-day, can guess what it will be to-morrow. Law is defined to be a rule of action; but how can that be a rule, which is little known, and less fixed?

The following paragraph explains why people like George Soros always back Democrats:

Another effect of public instability is the unreasonable advantage it gives to the sagacious, the enterprising, and the moneyed few over the industrious and uniformed mass of the people. Every new regulation concerning commerce or revenue, or in any way affecting the value of the different species of property, presents a new harvest to those who watch the change, and can trace its consequences; a harvest, reared not by themselves, but by the toils and cares of the great body of their fellow-citizens. This is a state of things in which it may be said with some truth that laws are made for the few, not for the many.

And why employers are reluctant to hire right now:

In another point of view, great injury results from an unstable government. The want of confidence in the public councils damps every useful undertaking, the success and profit of which may depend on a continuance of existing arrangements. What prudent merchant will hazard his fortunes in any new branch of commerce when he knows not but that his plans may be rendered unlawful before they can be executed? What farmer or manufacturer will lay himself out for the encouragement given to any particular cultivation or establishment, when he can have no assurance that his preparatory labors and advances will not render him a victim to an inconstant government? In a word, no great improvement or laudable enterprise can go forward which requires the auspices of a steady system of national policy.

The things you find, preparing for class!

Title: Hamilton Federalist 65, 1788
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 08, 2010, 10:00:29 AM

GM: Indeed!

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"If mankind were to resolve to agree in no institution of government, until every part of it had been adjusted to the most exact standard of perfection, society would soon become a general scene of anarchy, and the world a desert." --Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 65, 1788

Title: John Adams 1770
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 12, 2010, 09:32:13 AM

"Human government is more or less perfect as it approaches nearer or diverges farther from the imitation of this perfect plan of divine and moral government." --John Adams, 1770

Title: George Washington 1776
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 13, 2010, 06:31:58 AM

"To form a new Government, requires infinite care, and unbounded attention; for if the foundation is badly laid the superstructure must be bad." --George Washington, letter to John Augustine Washington, 1776

Title: Franklin, 1730; respect for religion
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 14, 2010, 05:51:37 AM

"That wise Men have in all Ages thought Government necessary for the Good of Mankind; and, that wise Governments have always thought Religion necessary for the well ordering and well-being of Society, and accordingly have been ever careful to encourage and protect the Ministers of it, paying them the highest publick Honours, that their Doctrines might thereby meet with the greater Respect among the common People." --Benjamin Franklin, On that Odd Letter of the Drum, 1730

Title: Jefferson to J. Adams 1813: Natural Aristocracy
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 15, 2010, 06:00:16 AM

"The natural aristocracy I consider as the most precious gift of nature for the instruction, the trusts, and government of society. And indeed it would have been inconsistent in creation to have formed man for the social state, and not to have provided virtue and wisdom enough to manage the concerns of the society. May we not even say that that form of government is the best which provides the most – for a pure selection of these natural aristoi into the offices of government?" --Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Adams, 1813

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Freki on October 21, 2010, 06:21:23 AM

"Governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed." --Declaration of Independence, 1776

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Freki on October 26, 2010, 06:44:33 AM

"The true principle of government is this - make the system compleat in its structure; give a perfect proportion and balance to its parts; and the powers you give it will never affect your security." --Alexander Hamilton, Remarks in the New York Ratifying Convention, 1788

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Freki on October 27, 2010, 05:02:54 AM

"The history of ancient and modern republics had taught them that many of the evils which those republics suffered arose from the want of a certain balance, and that mutual control indispensable to a wise administration. They were convinced that popular assemblies are frequently misguided by ignorance, by sudden impulses, and the intrigues of ambitious men; and that some firm barrier against these operations was necessary. They, therefore, instituted your Senate." --Alexander Hamilton, speech to the New York Ratifying Convention, 1788

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Freki on October 28, 2010, 05:32:37 AM

"It may be considered as an objection inherent in the principle, that as every appeal to the people would carry an implication of some defect in the government, frequent appeals would in great measure deprive the government of that veneration which time bestows on every thing, and without which perhaps the wisest and freest governments would not possess the requisite stability." --James Madison, Federalist No. 49, 1788

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Freki on October 29, 2010, 06:36:42 AM

"If there is a form of government, then, whose principle and foundation is virtue, will not every sober man acknowledge it better calculated to promote the general happiness than any other form?" --John Adams, Thoughts on Government, 1776

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Freki on November 01, 2010, 04:52:18 AM

How much more do they deserve our reverence and praise, whose lives are devoted to the formation of institutions, which, when they and their children are mingled in the common dust, may continue to cherish the principles and the practice of liberty in perpetual freshness and vigor." --Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution, 1833

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Freki on November 02, 2010, 06:10:57 AM

Government is instituted for the common good; for the protection, safety, prosperity, and happiness of the people; and not for profit, honor, or private interest of any one man, family, or class of men; therefore, the people alone have an incontestable, unalienable, and indefeasible right to institute government; and to reform, alter, or totally change the same, when their protection, safety, prosperity, and happiness require it." --John Adams, Thoughts on Government, 1776

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Freki on November 03, 2010, 08:53:25 AM

"The Grecians and Romans were strongly possessed of the spirit of liberty but not the principle, for at the time they were determined not to be slaves themselves, they employed their power to enslave the rest of mankind." --Thomas Paine, The American Crisis, No. 5, 1778

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Freki on November 04, 2010, 08:51:37 AM

"If our country, when pressed with wrongs at the point of the bayonet, had been governed by its heads instead of its hearts, where should we have been now? Hanging on a gallows as high as Haman's." --Thomas Jefferson, letter to Maria Cosway, 1786

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Freki on November 05, 2010, 06:26:33 AM

"Wisely, therefore, do they consider union and a good national government as necessary to put and keep them in such a situation as, instead of inviting war, will tend to repress and discourage it. That situation consists in the best possible state of defense, and necessarily depends on the government, the arms, and the resources of the country." --John Jay, Federalist No. 4

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Freki on November 08, 2010, 05:39:10 AM

"The diversity in the faculties of men from which the rights of property originate, is not less an insuperable obstacle to a uniformity of interests. The protection of these faculties is the first object of government." --James Madison, Federalist No. 10, 1787

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Freki on November 09, 2010, 08:43:35 AM

"t is the reason alone, of the public, that ought to control and regulate the government." --James Madison, Federalist No. 49, 1788

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Freki on November 10, 2010, 05:41:47 AM

"The essence of Government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse." --James Madison, speech in the Virginia constitutional convention, 1829

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Freki on November 11, 2010, 05:54:57 AM

"No government, any more than an individual, will long be respected without being truly respectable; nor be truly respectable, without possessing a certain portion of order and stability." --Alexander Hamilton and James Madison, Federalist No. 62, 1788

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Freki on November 12, 2010, 06:53:29 AM

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Freki on November 16, 2010, 06:06:04 AM

"Every child in America should be acquainted with his own country. He should read books that furnish him with ideas that will be useful to him in life and practice. As soon as he opens his lips, he should rehearse the history of his own country." --Noah Webster, On the Education of Youth in America, 1788

"Without wishing to damp the ardor of curiosity or influence the freedom of inquiry, I will hazard a prediction that, after the most industrious and impartial researchers, the longest liver of you all will find no principles, institutions or systems of education more fit in general to be transmitted to your posterity than those you have received from your ancestors." --John Adams, letter to the young men of the Philadelphia, 1798

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Freki on November 17, 2010, 06:18:56 AM

"History will also give Occasion to expatiate on the Advantage of Civil Orders and Constitutions, how Men and their Properties are protected by joining in Societies and establishing Government; their Industry encouraged and rewarded, Arts invented, and Life made more comfortable: The Advantages of Liberty, Mischiefs of Licentiousness, Benefits arising from good Laws and a due Execution of Justice. Thus may the first Principles of sound Politicks be fix'd in the Minds of Youth." --Benjamin Franklin, Proposals Relating to the Education of Youth in Pensilvania, 1749

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Freki on November 18, 2010, 05:53:11 AM

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Freki on November 19, 2010, 06:56:09 AM

"If it be asked, what is to restrain the House of Representatives from making legal discriminations in favor of themselves and a particular class of the society? I answer, the genius of the whole system, the nature of just and constitutional laws, and above all the vigilant and manly spirit which actuates the people of America, a spirit which nourishes freedom, and in return is nourished by it." --James Madison, Federalist No. 57, 1788

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Freki on November 24, 2010, 05:21:14 AM

"Such will be the relation between the House of Representatives and their constituents. Duty, gratitude, interest, ambition itself, are the cords by which they will be bound to fidelity and sympathy with the great mass of the people." --James Madison, Federalist No. 57, 1788

Title: Reagan
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 29, 2010, 08:51:44 AM

"We warned of things to come, of the danger inherent in unwarranted government involvement in things not its proper province. What we warned against has come to pass. And today more than two-thirds of our citizens are telling us, and each other, that social engineering by the federal government has failed. The Great Society is great only in power, in size and in cost. And so are the problems it set out to solve. Freedom has been diminished and we stand on the brink of economic ruin. Our task now is not to sell a philosophy, but to make the majority of Americans, who already share that philosophy, see that modern conservatism offers them a political home. We are not a cult, we are members of a majority. Let's act and talk like it. The job is ours and the job must be done. If not by us, who? If not now, when?" --Ronald Reagan

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Freki on November 30, 2010, 05:48:46 AM

"There is a certain enthusiasm in liberty, that makes human nature rise above itself, in acts of bravery and heroism." --Alexander Hamilton, The Farmer Refuted, 1775

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Freki on December 01, 2010, 08:06:25 AM

"Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. The interest of the man must be connected with the constitutional rights of the place. It may be a reflection on human nature that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. What is government itself but the greatest of all reflections on human nature?" --James Madison, Federalist No. 51, 1788

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Freki on December 02, 2010, 05:58:49 AM

"Human nature itself is evermore an advocate for liberty. There is also in human nature a resentment of injury, and indignation against wrong. A love of truth and a veneration of virtue. These amiable passions, are the 'latent spark.' ... If the people are capable of understanding, seeing and feeling the differences between true and false, right and wrong, virtue and vice, to what better principle can the friends of mankind apply than to the sense of this difference?" --John Adams, the Novanglus, 1775

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Freki on December 03, 2010, 05:32:09 AM

"And you will, by the dignity of your conduct, afford occasion for posterity to say, when speaking of the glorious example you have exhibited to mankind, had this day been wanting, the world had never seen the last stage of perfection to which human nature is capable of attaining." --George Washington, The Newburgh Address, 1783

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Freki on December 06, 2010, 08:27:13 AM

"We must take human nature as we find it, perfection falls not to the share of mortals." --George Washington, letter to John Jay, 1786

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Freki on December 07, 2010, 05:18:31 AM

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Freki on December 08, 2010, 07:50:06 AM

"As there is a degree of depravity in mankind which requires a certain degree of circumspection and distrust: So there are other qualities in human nature, which justify a certain portion of esteem and confidence. Republican government presupposes the existence of these qualities in a higher degree than any other form. Were the pictures which have been drawn by the political jealousy of some among us, faithful likenesses of the human character, the inference would be that there is not sufficient virtue among men for self-government; and that nothing less than the chains of despotism can restrain them from destroying and devouring one another." --James Madison, Federalist No. 55, 1788

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Freki on December 09, 2010, 08:08:31 AM

"There are certain social principles in human nature, from which we may draw the most solid conclusions with respect to the conduct of individuals and of communities. We love our families more than our neighbors; we love our neighbors more than our countrymen in general. The human affections, like solar heat, lose their intensity as they depart from the centre... On these principles, the attachment of the individual will be first and for ever secured by the State governments. They will be a mutual protection and support." --Alexander Hamilton, speech at the New York Ratifying Convention, 1788

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Freki on December 10, 2010, 06:54:47 AM

"In a society under the forms of which the stronger faction can readily unite and oppress the weaker, anarchy may as truly be said to reign as in a state of nature." --James Madison, Federalist No. 52, 1788

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Freki on December 13, 2010, 01:10:18 PM

"Were the pictures which have been drawn by the political jealousy of some among us faithful likenesses of the human character, the inference would be, that there is not sufficient virture among men for self-government; and that nothing less than the chains of despotism can restrain them from destroying and devouring one another." --James Madison, Federalist No. 55, 1788

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Freki on December 14, 2010, 06:21:51 AM

"Born in other countries, yet believing you could be happy in this, our laws acknowledge, as they should do, your right to join us in society, conforming, as I doubt not you will do, to our established rules. That these rules shall be as equal as prudential considerations will admit, will certainly be the aim of our legislatures, general and particular." --Thomas Jefferson, letter to Hugh White, 1801

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Freki on December 15, 2010, 07:23:52 AM

"Strangers are welcome because there is room enough for them all, and therefore the old inhabitants are not jealous of them; the laws protect them sufficiently so that they have no need of the patronage of great men; and every one will enjoy securely the profits of his Industry. But if he does not bring a fortune with him, he must work and be industrious to live." --Benjamin Franklin, Those Who Would Remove to America, 1784

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Freki on December 17, 2010, 06:47:29 AM

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Freki on December 21, 2010, 08:00:31 AM

"But if we are to be told by a foreign power ... what we shall do, and what we shall not do, we have independence yet to seek, and have contended hitherto for very little." --George Washington, letter to Alexander Hamilton, 1796

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Freki on December 22, 2010, 07:20:37 AM

"My ardent desire is, and my aim has been ... to comply strictly with all our engagements foreign and domestic; but to keep the United States free from political connections with every other country. To see that they may be independent of all, and under the influence of none. In a word, I want an American character, that the powers of Europe may be convinced we act for ourselves and not for others; this, in my judgment, is the only way to be respected abroad and happy at home." --George Washington, letter to Partick Henry, 1775

Title: Washington, Farewell Address 1796
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 24, 2010, 07:40:54 AM

"There can be no greater error than to expect, or calculate upon real favours from Nation to Nation. 'Tis an illusion which experience must cure, which a just pride ought to discard." --George Washington, Farewell Address, 1796

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Freki on January 03, 2011, 06:06:31 AM

"I have been happy ... in believing that ... whatever follies we may be led into as to foreign nations, we shall never give up our Union, the last anchor of our hope, and that alone which is to prevent this heavenly country from becoming an arena of gladiators." --Thomas Jefferson, letter to Elbridge Gerry, 1797

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Freki on January 04, 2011, 07:29:52 AM

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Freki on January 05, 2011, 06:10:14 AM

"[H]onesty will be found on every experiment, to be the best and only true policy; let us then as a Nation be just." --George Washington, Circular letter to the States, 1783

Title: The Chronicle
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 05, 2011, 09:31:10 AM

The Foundation
"[T]he present Constitution is the standard to which we are to cling. Under its banners, bona fide must we combat our political foes -- rejecting all changes but through the channel itself provides for amendments." --Alexander Hamilton

Editorial Exegesis

Boehner to have the Constitution read aloud"For the last decade, presidents and Congresses representing both major political parties have caused federal spending, regulation, and debt to explode as never before, with a result that the central government is in truly dire financial shape even as its power to control the most minute details of American daily life has never been greater. ... [W]e think incoming Speaker of the House John Boehner has been unjustly criticized in some, mostly liberal, precincts for his decision to open the 112th Congress with a public reading of the Constitution. Aside from the sad fact that the reading will likely be the closest encounter many lawmakers have ever had with the actual words of the document, the occasion will be a happy one because it will also provide citizens across the country with an opportunity to join Congress in examining and discussing the words of our founding document. Comparing the words of the Constitution to the actions of our leaders in recent years will surely make clear the enduring wisdom of James Madison's warning that 'there are more instances of the abridgment of freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments by those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.' Talking seriously about this condition is the first step to remedying it, just as Madison and the rest of the Founders intended." --The Washington Examiner

Dezinformatsia
Deliberate ignorance: "[Reading the Constitution aloud in Congress is] a gimmick. I mean, you can say two things about it. One, is that it has no binding power on anything. And two, the issue of the Constitution is not that people don't read the text and think they're following. The issue of the Constitution is that the text is confusing because it was written more than 100 years ago and what people believe it says differs from person to person and differs depending on what they want to get done." --Washington Post blogger Ezra Klein

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Freki on January 06, 2011, 06:11:02 AM

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Freki on January 10, 2011, 07:19:36 AM

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Freki on January 11, 2011, 07:58:29 PM

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Freki on January 12, 2011, 07:09:21 AM

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Freki on January 14, 2011, 06:44:07 AM

"With hearts fortified with these animating reflections, we most solemnly, before God and the world, declare, that, exerting the utmost energy of those powers, which our beneficent Creator hath graciously bestowed upon us, the arms we have compelled by our enemies to assume, we will, in defiance of every hazard, with unabating firmness and perseverance employ for the preservation of our liberties; being with one mind resolved to die freemen rather than to live as slaves." --John Dickinson & Thomas Jefferson, Declaration of the Cause and Necessity of Taking up Arms, 1775

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Freki on January 19, 2011, 06:45:14 AM

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Freki on January 25, 2011, 05:43:25 AM

"In the first place, it is to be remembered, that the general government is not to be charged with the whole power of making and administering laws: its jurisdiction is limited to certain enumerated objects, which concern all the members of the republic, but which are not to be attained by the separate provisions of any." --James Madison, Federalist No. 14, 1787

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Freki on January 26, 2011, 06:03:56 AM

"There exists in the economy and course of nature an indissoluble union between virtue and happiness … we ought to be no less persuaded that the propitious smiles of Heaven can never be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and right which Heaven itself has ordained." --George Washington, First Inaugural Address, 1789

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Freki on January 27, 2011, 06:35:45 AM

"No experiment can be more interesting than that we are now trying, and which we trust will end in establishing the fact, that man may be governed by reason and truth. Our first object should therefore be, to leave open to him all the avenues to truth. The most effectual hitherto found, is the freedom of the press. It is, therefore, the first shut up by those who fear the investigation of their actions." --Thomas Jefferson, letter to Judge John Tyler, 1804

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Freki on January 31, 2011, 06:46:26 AM

"It is … [the citizens] choice, and depends upon their conduct, whether they will be respectable and prosperous, or contemptable and miserable as a Nation. This is the time of their political probation; this is the moment when the eyes of the World are turned upon them." --George Washington, Letter to the Governors, 1783

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Freki on February 01, 2011, 09:20:49 AM

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Freki on February 02, 2011, 06:43:01 AM

"One of the most essential branches of English liberty is the freedom of one's house. A man's house is his castle." --James Otis, On the Writs of Assistance, 1761

Property tax?

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Freki on February 03, 2011, 06:41:07 AM

"What is to be the consequence, in case the Congress shall misconstrue this part [the necessary and proper clause] of the Constitution and exercise powers not warranted by its true meaning, I answer the same as if they should misconstrue or enlarge any other power vested in them...the success of the usurpation will depend on the executive and judiciary departments, which are to expound and give effect to the legislative acts; and in a last resort a remedy must be obtained from the people, who can by the elections of more faithful representatives, annul the acts of the usurpers." --James Madison, Federalist No. 44

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Freki on February 05, 2011, 06:14:20 AM

"Poverty wants some things, luxury many things, avarice all things."-Benjamin Franklin

Title: Declaration of Independence
Post by: bigdog on February 07, 2011, 03:56:08 AM

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xcHF9tEWGVA[/youtube]

This was one of my favorite parts of the Super Bowl.

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Freki on February 07, 2011, 07:13:03 AM

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: DougMacG on February 07, 2011, 07:57:02 AM

BD, That was beautiful and I had missed it trying to avoid the 14 day pre-game show.

In the context of today, I feel very much like I live in the pre-Declaration United States, ruled with a heavy hand from afar than the model of liberty and limited government that they pledged their lives and fortunes to begin.

Title: Re: Declaration of Independence
Post by: G M on February 07, 2011, 09:15:31 AM

Quote from: bigdog on February 07, 2011, 03:56:08 AM

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xcHF9tEWGVA[/youtube]

This was one of my favorite parts of the Super Bowl.

It was the best part. A reminder that freedom, and silly things like sports are thing we have because people stood up and stand up for this nation today.

Title: Best Nat'l Anthem rendition
Post by: G M on February 07, 2011, 09:23:45 AM

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1QmeEdFOSc[/youtube]

I still get chills and tear up a little seeing this. Too bad Whitney threw her talent away.

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 08, 2011, 12:08:12 PM

My personal favorite is Aretha Franklin's rendition preceding Thomas Hearns fighting for (and winning) the Light Heavy Weight title from Dennis Andries in Detroit.

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Freki on February 10, 2011, 08:03:34 AM

"My ardent desire is, and my aim has been ... to comply strictly with all our engagements foreign and domestic; but to keep the United States free from political connections with every other Country. To see that they may be independent of all, and under the influence of none. In a word, I want an American character, that the powers of Europe may be convinced we act for ourselves and not for others; this, in my judgment, is the only way to be respected abroad and happy at home." --George Washington, letter to Patrick Henry, 1775

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Freki on February 11, 2011, 06:38:41 AM

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Freki on February 15, 2011, 05:46:48 AM

"It is a wise rule and should be fundamental in a government disposed to cherish its credit, and at the same time to restrain the use of it within the limits of its faculties, 'never to borrow a dollar without laying a tax in the same instant for paying the interest annually, and the principal within a given term; and to consider that tax as pledged to the creditors on the public faith.'" --Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Wayles Eppes, 1813

"I have been happy... in believing that... whatever follies we may be led into as to foreign nations, we shall never give up our Union, the last anchor of our hope, and that alone which is to prevent this heavenly country from becoming an arena of gladiators." --Thomas Jefferson, letter to Elbridge Gerry, 1797

"As on the one hand, the necessity for borrowing in particular emergencies cannot be doubted, so on the other, it is equally evident that to be able to borrow upon good terms, it is essential that the credit of a nation should be well established." --Alexander Hamilton, Report on Public Credit, 1790

"My ardent desire is, and my aim has been ... to comply strictly with all our engagements foreign and domestic; but to keep the United States free from political connections with every other Country. To see that they may be independent of all, and under the influence of none. In a word, I want an American character, that the powers of Europe may be convinced we act for ourselves and not for others; this, in my judgment, is the only way to be respected abroad and happy at home." --George Washington, letter to Patrick Henry, 1775

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Freki on February 19, 2011, 06:18:36 AM

"Be courteous to all, but intimate with few, and let those few be well tried before you give them your confidence; true friendship is a plant of slow growth, and must undergo and withstand the shocks and adversity before it is entitled to the appellation." --George Washington, Letter to Bushrod Washington, 1783

"The constitution of the United States is to receive a reasonable interpretation of its language, and its powers, keeping in view the objects and purposes, for which those powers were conferred. By a reasonable interpretation, we mean, that in case the words are susceptible of two different senses, the one strict, the other more enlarged, that should be adopted, which is most consonant with the apparent objects and intent of the Constitution." --Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution, 1833

Title: WSJ: The Original American Idol
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 19, 2011, 02:06:49 PM

By JOHN R. MILLER
Today we merge Washington's birthday with the birthdays of other presidents and submerge them all in clothing and appliance sales. But it was not always so. Americans in past centuries celebrated Washington's birthday as a winter version of the Fourth of July.

Americans in Cambridge, Williamsburg, Richmond and Milton, Conn., were already celebrating Washington's birthday even before the end of the Revolutionary War. After his death in 1799, hundreds of cities and towns held birthday events. Such celebrations briefly abated in the early 1800s, as John Adams and Thomas Jefferson were, while admiring of Washington, also envious of the awe in which Americans held him.

By the 100th anniversary of Washington's birth in 1832, however, celebrations were once again held throughout the land. Pealing church bells, sermons, fireworks, marching bands and songs about Washington were all part of a holiday embraced without official sanction. Businesses closed, Washington's picture hung in school houses, and Feb. 22 was a day of national rejoicing.

Throughout the 19th century, activist groups of all stripes used Washington's birthday to further their causes. Antislavery activists claimed Washington since he had freed his slaves. Immigration supporters claimed him as a stalwart of religious, political and economic refugees. Advocates of Indian rights noted that after defeating the Iroquois in Revolutionary War battles, Washington restored their land and maintained their reservations. Striking Massachusetts shoemakers invoked his name as that of the first great American rebel. Temperance supporters praised his prudence, but given his fondness for Madeira, the connection there was less clear.

View Full Image

The Gallery Collection/Corbis

A portrait of George Washington
.In 1880, Congress and President Chester Arthur proclaimed Washington's birthday as an official national holiday, but the 20th century saw a gradual ebbing of public interest. As our country grew, new heroes emerged.

In 1968, the public-employee unions, seeking a three-day weekend, convinced Congress to move the commemoration of Washington's birthday to the third Monday in February. This eventually led to what we now call Presidents Day, which marks the birthday not only of Washington but of Lincoln and all other presidents. By celebrating every birthday, we effectively celebrate none.

Washington's contemporaries hailed his Revolutionary War victories at Trenton and Yorktown, but they honored him more for risking his fame, fortune and life in taking on military responsibilities for which he wasn't paid—and then giving up command to return to his farm and family. The young American citizenry esteemed him for bringing together and presiding over the Constitutional Convention, but they honored him more for his steadfastness in holding the colonies together and facing down potential insurrectionists who might have seized the government and made him a military dictator. And while they appreciated him returning to public service as president, they honored him more for leaving an office that many expected him to hold for life.

Americans in the 18th and 19th centuries were unaware of, but they would not have been surprised by, what King George III supposedly said upon hearing that Washington, after winning the Revolutionary War, had refused to be king: "If that is true, he must be the greatest man in the world."

Today we expect our leaders to seek and hold power, to take credit for their accomplishments, to demonstrate empathy, and to be facile with their written and spoken words, either their own or those of a speechwriter. Like the great Greek and Roman leaders, however, Washington was ambitious but learned to control it. He was too proud, in a good sense, to take credit.

Washington took advice from privates and generals, citizens and cabinet members, but his reserve kept them from feeling that they were his friends. When pressed to orate—as in his farewell toast to his officers or when he returned his sword to Congress after the Revolutionary War—Washington uttered some fine phrases, but he didn't give a single speech to the Continental Congresses. The delegates chose him anyway as commanding general and gave him far-reaching powers. He also gave no speech to the Constitutional Convention, yet his presence moved the delegates to choose a presidential form of government, largely because they knew he would serve as the first chief executive.

Likewise, Washington was an able but not elegant writer. He never composed an essay on religious freedom. But his custom of attending church services of different Christian denominations, and his letter to the Jewish congregation of Newport, R.I., helped bring fractious religious groups together in the new country. He never wrote an essay on the evils of slavery. But by emancipating his slaves after his death and providing for their support and education, he set an example noted repeatedly in succeeding decades.

In the early republic, Americans idolized virtues molded and displayed over the years. Today we seem excited by new persons and talents every month.

Our ancestors expected that America would produce other great leaders. But they celebrated Washington's birthday because, as the Connecticut Courant observed in 1791, "Many a private man might make a great president; but will there ever be a President who will make so great a man as WASHINGTON?"

Mr. Miller, a former U.S. Ambassador at Large and visiting scholar at the University of California at Berkeley's Institute of Governmental Studies, is a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute. He is writing a book about Washington and civilian supremacy over the military.

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Freki on February 22, 2011, 07:59:05 AM

"I entirely concur in the propriety of resorting to the sense in which the Constitution was accepted and ratified by the nation. In that sense alone it is the legitimate Constitution. And if that is not the guide in expounding it, there may be no security for a consistent and stable, more than for a faithful exercise of its powers. If the meaning of the text be sought in the changeable meaning of the words composing it, it is evident that the shape and attributes of the Government must partake of the changes to which the words and phrases of all living languages are constantly subject. What a metamorphosis would be produced in the code of law if all its ancient phraseology were to be taken in its modern sense. And that the language of our Constitution is already undergoing interpretations unknown to its founder, will I believe appear to all unbiassed Enquirers into the history of its origin and adoption." --James Madison, letter to Henry Lee, 1824

"The people can never willfully betray their own interests: But they may possibly be betrayed by the representatives of the people; and the danger will be evidently greater where the whole legislative trust is lodged in the hands of one body of men, than where the concurrence of separate and dissimilar bodies is required in every public act." --James Madison, Federalist No. 63, 1788

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Freki on February 24, 2011, 07:12:56 PM

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Freki on February 25, 2011, 06:24:16 AM

"It behooves you, therefore, to think and act for yourself and your people. The great principles of right and wrong are legible to every reader; to pursue them requires not the aid of many counselors. The whole art of government consists in the art of being honest. Only aim to do your duty, and mankind will give you credit where you fail." --Thomas Jefferson, A Summary View of the Rights of British America, 1775

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Freki on February 28, 2011, 06:27:15 AM

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Freki on March 02, 2011, 06:24:42 AM

"There is no good government but what is republican. That the only valuable part of the British constitution is so; for the true idea of a republic is 'an empire of laws, and not of men.' That, as a republic is the best of governments, so that particular arrangement of the powers of society, or in other words, that form of government which is best contrived to secure an impartial and exact execution of the law, is the best of republics." --John Adams, Thoughts on Government, 1776

"The regular distribution of power into distinct departments; the introduction of legislative balances and checks; the institution of courts composed of judges holding their offices during good behavior; the representation of the people in the legislature by deputies of their own election... They are means, and powerful means, by which the excellences of republican government may be retained and its imperfections lessened or avoided." --Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 9, 1787

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Freki on March 02, 2011, 09:12:53 AM

Happy 175th Texas Independence Day!!!!!!

“When a government has ceased to protect the lives, liberty and property of the people, from whom its legitimate powers are derived, and for the advancement of whose happiness it was instituted…[it] becomes an instrument in the hands of evil rulers for their oppression.” – Richard Ellis, The Texas Declaration of Independence,1836

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Freki on March 07, 2011, 05:48:34 AM

"It is so difficult to draw a clear line of separation between the abuse and the wholesome use of the press, that as yet we have found it better to trust the public judgment, rather than the magistrate, with the discrimination between truth and falsehood. And hitherto the public judgment has performed that office with wonderful correctness." --Thomas Jefferson to M. Pictet, 1803

"Republics are created by the virtue, public spirit, and intelligence of the citizens. They fall, when the wise are banished from the public councils, because they dare to be honest, and the profligate are rewarded, because they flatter the people, in order to betray them." --Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution, 1833

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Freki on March 08, 2011, 05:36:54 AM

"A general dissolution of principles and manners will more surely overthrow the liberties of America than the whole force of the common enemy. While the people are virtuous they cannot be subdued; but when once they lose their virtue then will be ready to surrender their liberties to the first external or internal invader." --Samuel Adams, letter to James Warren, 1779

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Freki on March 09, 2011, 05:17:03 AM

"In Europe, charters of liberty have been granted by power. America has set the example … of charters of power granted by liberty. This revolution in the practice of the world, may, with an honest praise, be pronounced the most triumphant epoch of its history, and the most consoling presage of its happiness." --James Madison, National Gazette Essay, 1792

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Freki on March 10, 2011, 06:47:42 AM

"What was the primary and principal object in the institution of government? Was it -- I speak of the primary and principal object -- was it to acquire new rights by a human establishment? Or was it, by human establishment, to acquire new security for the possession or the recovery of those rights, to the enjoyment or acquisition of which we were previously entitled by the immediate gift, or by the unerring law, of our all-wise and all-beneficent Creator? The latter, I presume, was the case…" --James Wilson, 1790

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Freki on March 11, 2011, 06:05:10 AM

"[A]ll are subject by nature to equal laws of morality, and in society have a right to equal laws for their government, yet no two men are perfectly equal in person, property, understanding, activity, and virtue, or ever can be made so by any power less than that which created them … all are subject by nature to equal laws of morality, and in society have a right to equal laws for their government." --John Adams, Discourse on Davila—XV, 1776

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Freki on March 18, 2011, 05:56:06 AM

"I am not among those who fear the people. They, and not the rich, are our dependence for continued freedom. And to preserve their independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude." --Thomas Jefferson

"It is natural to man to indulge in the illusions of hope. We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth -- and listen to the song of that syren, till she transforms us into beasts. Is this the part of wise men, engaged in a great and arduous struggle for liberty? Are we disposed to be of the number of those, who having eyes, see not, and having ears, hear not, the things which so nearly concern their temporal salvation? For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it might cost, I am willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst, and to provide for it." --Patrick Henry, speech in the Virginia Convention, 1775

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Freki on March 22, 2011, 06:15:29 AM

"If we resort for a criterion to the different principles on which different forms of government are established, we may define a republic to be, or at least may bestow that name on, a government which derives all its powers directly or indirectly from the great body of the people, and is administered by persons holding their offices during pleasure for a limited period, or during good behavior." --James Madison, Federalist No. 39

"[D]emocracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security, or the rights of property; and have, in general, been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths." --James Madison, Federalist No. 10, 1787

Title: Charles Carroll
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 25, 2011, 03:30:29 AM

Celebrated by his countrymen as a leading member of America’s Founding Fathers, especially as his long life surpassed those of his contemporaries, Charles Carroll (1737-1832) is long overdue for an historical appreciation.
For, of the men who founded the United States, it is unfortunate that only a few still figure in the hearts and minds of those of their countrymen who still care about the past: Washington, Jefferson, Adams, Franklin, and Hamilton. The rest of these gallant men—not all of them equally important but all equally brave, having risked their property, including their necks, as traitors to the Crown—inhabit an historical shadow land clapped shut between the covers of dusty books disintegrating on university library shelves. Judging by the execrable state of American public education, that vast cauldron of political correctness, the average text-messaging child would be hard pressed to name the patriots just mentioned, let alone explain their individual significance to America's founding.

A thumbnail sketch of Carroll’s life proves that he is not a figure for either historian or thoughtful reader to thumb his nose at. A bastard son later legally recognized and made heir of colonial America’s wealthiest family, he was an aristocratic Catholic classically educated in France by Jesuits, from whom he learned an orthodox Christian defense of overthrowing one’s government. And from his youth to late middle-age, he was intimately engaged in the birthing and rearing of a young nation, though he often preferred working behind the scenes and within the newspapers as a propagandist in the best sense of the word: propagating the truth with clarity and conviction—two qualities abounding in this fine biography.

The only Catholic signer of the Declaration of Independence, he also was the last surviving member of a brave group of men who risked their lives and fortunes to defend the freedoms they once enjoyed as Englishmen before George III, influenced by asinine advisors, began treating the colonials as second-class subjects. And he died a celebrated statesman and patriot, despite the stubborn, sometimes vitriolic anti-Catholicism of his times. Indeed, Charles Carroll was a deeply Catholic Christian, increasingly open about his faith as his lengthy years progressed. Yet his faith was expressed with a certain reserve that separated the tiny core of English Catholics in early America from their fellow faithful who came from countries spared the persecution of a Protestant majority.

The Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI), America's premier purveyor of conservative thought in academia and public life, heroically works to correct historical ignorance. In its "Lives of the Founders" series, ISI Books, the publication wing of ISI, pays filial homage to Founding Fathers under-served by historians guilty either of scholarly neglect or abuse borne of ideological bias.

Charles Carroll, for example, has suffered from neglect more than abuse, though one could aver that the neglect stems from left-leaning historians uninterested in writing about Founding Fathers who lack radical chic, real or imagined. (A perennial favorite is Thomas Paine, the revolutionary pamphleteer who sealed his fame with "Common Sense" before falling out of vogue with his viciously anti-Christian tracts.) Were it not for the astute new appreciation of this "forgotten Founder" by Bradley Birzer, history professor at Hillsdale College, Carroll might remain best remembered for two things: being the only Catholic to sign the Declaration of Independence, and persevering into his tenth decade, the last signer to die.

None of his contemporaries would have considered him a mere side note, however, which is why the virtue of Birzer's book rests not upon novelty, but truth. The prose is strong yet graceful, the historical scholarship thoroughly engaging (there is a veritable treasure trove of early Americana drawn from original documents), and the personal portraits are rendered with the same luminosity with which Sir Joshua Reynolds painted the portrait of a young Charles Carroll, featured on the cover of the handsomely-designed dust jacket.

Indeed, Professor Birzer paints a portrait of the man in full with a depth that, rather than drowning the reader in detail, invites him to inspect the subject further. This is a portrait of Charles Carroll as known by his deeds as well as his personal life and character.

As for his deeds, he was pivotal to his beloved native Maryland, signing the Declaration of Independence and later ratifying the U.S. Constitution. He also was pivotal in dislodging, through politicking and the press, laws as well as attitudes that prevented Catholics and other Christians from enjoying full religious and political liberty.

A conservative of the mind as well as the heart, his similarity to Edmund Burke, whom he knew during his London days studying the law, is profound. Both championed the timeless and true, as manifested within time and place, kith and kin. For them, a “citizen of the world” was a sorry specimen of deracinated humanity, attached to everything and, therefore, nothing. Both were wary of abstract rights, pure democracy, and utopian idealism -- experiments which, from the French Revolution on, have been dragged back down to earth with bloody thuds, killing millions. Whereas Burke continues to influence conservative thought to this day, Carroll himself directly influenced an admiring houseguest, Alexis de Tocqueville. The young Frenchman’s magisterial Democracy in America spurns sugar-coating the dangers inherent in that form of government that was best expressed in ancient Athens—and that, not too well.

As for his personal life and character, Professor Birzer shows Carroll to be a man of strong, steadfast character who stuck to principle and showed himself smart and courageous in the political realm. In private, however, his aristocratic detachment must have made life less than charming for his family: at least for the son who died of alcoholism and the wife who, after bearing his children and dying young, seems to have died in a pain deeper and more hurtful than the pain dulled by the opium addiction she acquired during her illness.

Yet, Professor Birzer shows how Charles Carroll mellowed with age and deepened in personal understanding as decade passed into decade till he died in his tenth to great outpourings of national mourning. The reasons for such mourning deserve to be known once again—indeed, known even more deeply, this generation of Americans having no nostalgic connection to those among the first.

Matthew A. Rarey, a journalist living in Chicago, graduated from St. John’s College in Annapolis, where Charles Carroll spent much of his life. Any visitor to this most English of American cities will be imbued with the presence of Carroll, whose ancestral home is located next door to the Catholic church, steps up the street from the harbor.

Title: The Imperial Presidency
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on March 30, 2011, 07:15:04 AM

Have yet to see further discussion of this, but when it occurs I'll be following it:

Eric Posner, Guest-Blogging About Executive Unbound: After the Madisonian Republic
Eugene Volokh • March 21, 2011 1:16 am

I’m delighted to report that Prof. Eric Posner (University of Chicago) — who had blogged with us a few years ago — will be visiting again this week, to blog about his and Prof. Adrian Vermeule’s new book, Executive Unbound: After the Madisonian Republic. Here is Eric’s very brief summary:

The book argues that the Madisonian system of separation of powers has eroded beyond recognition and been replaced with a system of executive primacy (which others have called the “imperial presidency”) in which Congress and the courts play only a marginal role. Most scholars who have recognized this development have called for a return to the Madisonian system, but we believe that the rise of the executive has resulted from a recognition among political elites that only a powerful executive can address the economic and security challenges of modern times.

Not a thesis to make anyone happy, on the left or right.

But you’ll hear much more detail on the subject this coming week.

http://volokh.com/2011/03/21/eric-posner-guest-blogging-about-executive-unbound-after-the-madisonian-republic/

Title: Tyranny Ends Legitimacy
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on March 30, 2011, 07:35:15 AM

2nd post.

Tyrannical “governments” are not genuine governments
David Kopel • March 18, 2011 2:07 am

Some background sources for the principle in our Declaration of Independence that tyrannical “governments” are merely a large-scale form of organized crime, rather than real governments:

In the views of the American Founders: Don B. Kates, The Second Amendment and the Ideology of Self-Protection, 9 Cconstitutional Commentary 87 (1992) (Founders saw no fundamental distinction between individual self-defense against criminals and collective self-defense against criminal governments).

Algernon Sidney, Discourses Concerning Government, ed., Thomas G. West (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1996), ch. 3, sect. 46, p. 574 (To be subject to a tyrant is little different from being under the power of a pirate). Sidney, who was executed for treason in 1683 by the wicked Stuart regime, was venerated by the English and Americans as one of the greatest martyrs of liberty. Thomas Jefferson listed Sidney (along with Aristotle, Cicero, and John Locke) as one of the four major sources of the American consensus on rights and liberties which was expressed in the Declaration of Independence.

Philo of Alexandria (approx. 20 B.C. – 50 A.D.). One of the greatest Jewish legal scholars of antiquity, Philo wrote about the Jewish law in Alexandria, Egypt, during the period when Egypt and Israel were both under Roman rule. Much of Philo’s treatise aimed to show that Jewish law from the Bible was consistent with Roman law. Erwin R. Goodenough, The Jurisprudence of the Jewish Courts in Egypt: Legal Adminsitration by the Jews Under the Early Roman Empire as Describes by Philo Judeaus 230–31 (The Lawbook Exchange 2002; reprint of 1929 translation) (A petty thief is no different in principle from a tyrant who steals the resources of his nation, or nation which plunders another nation. In other words, all forms of theft are merely variations on a single type of attack on society: an assault on the right of ownership of private property.)

Mencius (approx. about 371–289 B.C.), the most influential developer of Confucian thought: “Now the way feudal lords take from the people is no different from robbery.” Mencius, transl. D.C. Lau (N.Y.: Penguin, 1970), book 5, part B. Accordingly, killing a tyrant is very different from killing a legitimate king, which would be immoral: “A man who mutilates benevolence is a mutilator, while one who cripples rightness is a crippler. He who is both a mutilator and a crippler is an ‘outcast.’ I have heard of the punishment of the ‘outcast Tchou’ [an emperor who was overthrown], but I have not heard of any regicide.” Ibid., book 1, part B, item 8. Unlike the other authors cited in this post, the philosophy of Mencius was not known to the American Founders directly, nor was it known indirectly through other philosophers. Mencius did, however, express the same principles of Natural Law which the Founders believed to be universal. (More by Kopel on Mencius here.)

John of Salisbury. Author of Policraticus (approx. 1159), the most influential Western book written between the sixth century and the thirteenth. To rule tyrannically is necessarily to perpetrate treason, and therefore a tyrant may be slain:

(I)t is not only permitted, but it is also equitable and just to slay tyrants. For he who receives the sword deserves to perish by the sword.
But ‘receives’ is to be understood to pertain to he who has rashly usurped that which is not his, not to he who receives what he uses from the power of God. He who receives power from God serves the laws and is the slave of justice and right. He who usurps power suppresses justice and places the laws beneath his will. Therefore, justice is deservedly armed against those who disarm the law, and the public power treats harshly those who endeavour to put aside the public hand. And, although there are many forms of high treason, none of them is so serious as that which is executed against the body of justice itself. Tyranny is, therefore, not only a public crime, but if this can happen, it is more than public. For if all prosecutors may be allowed in the case of high treason, how much more are they allowed when there is oppression of laws which should themselves command emperors? Surely no one will avenge a public enemy, and whoever does not prosecute him transgresses against himself and against the whole body of the earthly republic.

Jofhn of Salisbury, Policraticus 25 (Cary J. Nederman ed. and trans., Cambridge Univ. Press 1990) (approx. 1159). (My essay on the book is here.)

Augustine of Hippo. The most influential Christian philosopher since the closing of the canon: “If justice be taken away...what are governments but great bands of robbers?” Augustine, Concerning the City of God Against the Pagans 139 (Henry Bettenson trans., Penguin, book 4, 1984) (translation from 1467 manuscript; originally written in early 5th century ). To illustrate the point, Augustine used a story attributed to Cicero:

Indeed, that was an apt and true reply which was given to Alexander the Great by a pirate who had been seized. For when that king had asked the man what he meant by keeping hostile possession of the sea, he answered with bold pride, “What thou meanest by seizing the whole earth; but because I do it with a petty ship, I am called a robber, whilst thou who dost it with a great fleet art styled emperor.”

“All tyrants reach a miserable end,” wrote John of Salisbury. He was not universally right, at least in the sense that he meant, listing various tyrants who died violently; Stalin, Lenin, and Mao died of natural causes. But his words are coming true in Libya. How long will Gaddafi’s mercenaries from Chad, Niger, and Syria be willing to endanger their own lives in attempting to resist the overwhelming might of air forces and navies which are better-armed, and superior in every respect?

http://volokh.com/2011/03/18/tyrannical-governments-are-not-genuine-governments/

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Freki on April 05, 2011, 05:46:10 AM

"Strive to be the greatest man in your country, and you may be disappointed. Strive to be the best and you may succeed: he may well win the race that runs by himself." --Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard's Almanack, 1747

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Freki on April 06, 2011, 09:52:37 AM

"The first and governing maxim in the interpretation of a statute is to discover the meaning of those who made it." --James Wilson, Of the Study of Law in the United States, 1790

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Freki on April 07, 2011, 08:40:39 AM

"It is sufficiently obvious, that persons and property are the two great subjects on which Governments are to act; and that the rights of persons, and the rights of property, are the objects, for the protection of which Government was instituted. These rights cannot well be separated." --James Madison, Speech at the Virginia Convention, 1829

Title: Mona Charen on Hamilton
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 08, 2011, 06:05:41 AM

His face adorns the $10 bill, but as Richard Brookhiser, host of "Rediscovering Alexander Hamilton" (airing on PBS April 11), finds when conducting a quick street canvas -- many Americans cannot identify him.

"Washington has a monument," Brookhiser intones. "Jefferson has a memorial. It's often said that New York City is Hamilton's monument."

That would be more than enough for any man, yet, as this engrossing film from producer Michael Pack makes clear, it doesn't quite do justice to the genius of Hamilton. First secretary of the Treasury, a drafter of the Constitution, author of two-thirds of the Federalist Papers, and father of the U.S. economy, Hamilton was also the prototype of the self-made American success -- the original Horatio Alger hero, and then some.

Unlike the planters, wealthy merchants, and successful lawyers from established families who comprised the other founders, Hamilton was born in the Virgin Islands, "the bastard brat of a Scotch peddler," as John Adams sneered in one of his less charitable moments. (To be fair, Hamilton could be lacerating about Adams, too.)

He was a bastard -- but some brat. At age 11, orphaned and penniless, Hamilton found work in a St. Croix counting house. There he learned that strong application could yield advancement. He was so gifted at administration that his boss was willing to leave the 14-year-old Alexander in full charge of the business when he left for four months.

Also in St. Croix, Hamilton saw the suffering of slaves, forced to work endless hours in the scorching sun harvesting sugar cane. The camera lingers on the lanky, bamboo-shaped stalks. Most slaves, Brookhiser notes, "died within seven years." Hamilton became a fervent and lifelong opponent of slavery.

So prodigious were his talents that a few of the merchants on St. Croix sponsored his emigration to the colonies to further his education. He was 16. Within the next two decades, he would serve as deputy to Gen. George Washington, achieve glory in battle himself, excel at the law, and, from nothing, create for his adopted country its first monetary system, its first fiscal system, its first accounting system, and its first central bank. He also founded the Coast Guard, the Customs Service, and the New York Post. In a touching moment, the film captures the ritual in which newly minted Coast Guard officers -- to this day -- salute the grave of the service's founder.

Historical documentarians face a problem -- no footage. Most resort to long pans of period paintings, or linger over photographs and sunsets, or throw in the occasional actors in period costume marching off to battle, along with talking heads. There's nothing wrong with that style (Ken Burns, the master of the genre, has a great new film on Prohibition coming in October). But this film takes a different approach, setting itself firmly in the contemporary world -- the world that Hamilton did so much to create.

Brookhiser travels from a prison in the Virgin Islands, where he chats with women who, like Hamilton's mother, are behind bars, to the People's Court for a re-enactment of one of Hamilton's famous law cases, to the hectic streets of New York City, pulsing with business. He and Bernard-Henri Levi play-act the meeting between Hamilton and Talleyrand. He chats with Larry Flynt about the sex scandal that nearly ended Hamilton's career, and with former gang members about the touchy matter of honor, which did end his life.

To appreciate Hamilton fully, it's necessary to set the stage, as Brookhiser and historian Ron Chernow do, explaining that after the Revolution, the United States was an economic cripple, deeply in debt, its currencies nearly worthless as a result of inflation.

"We were," says Chernow, "the deadbeat of world finance. We were like a Third World country." Hamilton steered the new republic toward solvency. (We could use him now!)

Unlike the other founders, Chernow notes, who had mainly "pre-capitalist worldviews" with a strong bias toward agriculture, and who tended to see commerce and manufacturing as "corrupting influences," Hamilton foresaw that the United States could become a great trading nation. From his earliest days in the St. Croix counting house, doing business with people from around the world speaking many languages, Hamilton understood that wealth is created by trade and commerce, not just from the soil.

Hamilton was an economic wizard, but also a profound political philosopher, a deep-dyed patriot, a gifted administrator who served as Washington's informal "prime minister" during the first president's term -- and also a human being with weaknesses and foibles. He spoke brilliantly, the film reminds us, but sometimes too much. He might have bitten his tongue a bit more on the subject of Vice President Aaron Burr. But he did not, and the film takes us, reluctantly but inexorably, to the dueling ground at Weehawken, N.J., where we feel anew that day's terrible toll.

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Freki on April 08, 2011, 06:40:22 AM

"Whoever attentively considers the different departments of power must perceive, that, in a government in which they are separated from each other, the judiciary, from the nature of its functions, will always be the least dangerous to the political rights of the Constitution; because it will be least in a capacity to annoy or injure them." --Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 78, 1788

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Freki on April 13, 2011, 06:21:40 AM

"The same prudence which in private life would forbid our paying our own money for unexplained projects, forbids it in the dispensation of the public moneys." --Thomas Jefferson, letter to Shelton Gilliam, 1808

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Freki on April 14, 2011, 06:54:07 AM

"Energy in government is essential to that security against external and internal danger and to that prompt and salutary execution of the laws which enter into the very definition of good government. Stability in government is essential to national character and to the advantages annexed to it, as well as to that repose and confidence in the minds of the people, which are among the chief blessings of civil society." --James Madison, Federalist No. 37, 1788

Title: Wilson 1791
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 25, 2011, 03:36:09 PM

"In observations on this subject, we hear the legislature mentioned as the people's representatives. The distinction, intimated by concealed implication, through probably, not avowed upon reflection, is, that the executive and judicial powers are not connected with the people by a relation so strong or near or dear. But is high time that we should chastise our prejudices; and that we should look upon the different parts of government with a just and impartial eye." --James Wilson, Lectures on Law, 1791

Title: Noah Webster 1788
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 26, 2011, 05:35:15 AM

"The virtues of men are of more consequence to society than their abilities; and for this reason, the heart should be cultivated with more assiduity than the head." --Noah Webster, On the Education of Youth in America, 1788

Title: RH Lee 1786 ; James Madison 1824
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 27, 2011, 08:47:32 AM

"It is certainly true that a popular government cannot flourish without virtue in the people." --Richard Henry Lee, letter to Colonel Martin Pickett, 1786

"I entirely concur in the propriety of resorting to the sense in which the Constitution was accepted and ratified by the nation. In that sense alone it is the legitimate Constitution. And if that is not the guide in expounding it, there may be no security." --James Madison, letter to Henry Lee, 1824

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 10, 2011, 12:06:43 PM

"I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power." --Thomas Jefferson, letter to William Charles Jarvis, 1820

"It is natural to man to indulge in the illusions of hope. We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth -- and listen to the song of that syren, till she transforms us into beasts. Is this the part of wise men, engaged in a great and arduous struggle for liberty? Are we disposed to be of the number of those, who having eyes, see not, and having ears, hear not, the things which so nearly concern their temporal salvation? For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it might cost, I am willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst, and to provide for it." --Patrick Henry, speech in the Virginia Convention, 1775

"Freedom had been hunted round the globe; reason was considered as rebellion; and the slavery of fear had made men afraid to think. But such is the irresistible nature of truth, that all it asks, and all it wants, is the liberty of appearing." --Thomas Paine, Rights of Man, 1791

"t is a common observation here that our cause is the cause of all mankind, and that we are fighting for their liberty in defending our own." --Benjamin Franklin

"The only foundation of a free Constitution, is pure virtue, and if this cannot be inspired into our people, in a greater measure than they have it now, they may change their rulers, and the forms of government, but they will not obtain a lasting liberty." --John Adams, letter to Zabdiel Adams, 1776

"I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection. 'Tis the business of little minds to shrink; but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles unto death." --Thomas Paine, The Crisis, no 1, 1776

"It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself." --Thomas Jefferson

"If individuals be not influenced by moral principles; it is in vain to look for public virtue; it is, therefore, the duty of legislators to enforce, both by precept and example, the utility, as well as the necessity of a strict adherence to the rules of distributive justice." --James Madison, in response to Washington's first Inaugural address, 1789

Title: Tench Coxe, 1787
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 11, 2011, 06:02:56 AM

"As our president bears no resemblance to a king so we shall see the Senate has no similitude to nobles. First, not being hereditary, their collective knowledge, wisdom, and virtue are not precarious. For by these qualities alone are they to obtain their offices, and they will have none of the peculiar qualities and vices of those men who possess power merely because their father held it before them." --Tench Coxe, An American Citizen, No. 2, 1787

Title: Jefferson 1785: Virtue
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 12, 2011, 06:12:11 AM

"Give up money, give up fame, give up science, give the earth itself and all it contains rather than do an immoral act. And never suppose that in any possible situation, or under any circumstances, it is best for you to do a dishonorable thing, however slightly so it may appear to you... From the practice of the purest virtue, you may be assured you will derive the most sublime comforts in every moment of life, and in the moment of death." --Thomas Jefferson, letter to Peter Carr, 1785

Title: Washington, First Inaugural Address 1789
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 13, 2011, 05:43:51 AM

"The foundations of our national policy will be laid in the pure and immutable principles of private morality, and the preeminence of free government be exemplified by all the attributes which can win the affections of its citizens, and command the respect of the world." --George Washington, First Inaugural Address, 1789

Title: Madison 1790
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 17, 2011, 07:58:26 AM

"Nothing is so contagious as opinion, especially on questions which, being susceptible of very different glosses, beget in the mind a distrust of itself." --James Madison, letter to Benjamin Rush, 1790

"[The President] is the dignified, but accountable magistrate of a free and great people. The tenure of his office, it is true, is not hereditary; nor is it for life: but still it is a tenure of the noblest kind: by being the man of the people, he is invested; by continuing to be the man of the people, his investiture will be voluntarily, and cheerfully, and honourably renewed." --James Wilson, Lectures on Law, 1791

Title: Wilson, The Study of Law, 1790
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 19, 2011, 09:09:50 AM

"Law and liberty cannot rationally become the objects of our love, unless they first become the objects of our knowledge." --James Wilson, Of the Study of the Law in the United States, 1790

Title: J. Adams, 1756
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 20, 2011, 08:56:28 AM

"It should be your care, therefore, and mine, to elevate the minds of our children and exalt their courage; to accelerate and animate their industry and activity; to excite in them an habitual contempt of meanness, abhorrence of injustice and inhumanity, and an ambition to excel in every capacity, faculty, and virtue. If we suffer their minds to grovel and creep in infancy, they will grovel all their lives." --John Adams, Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law, 1756

Title: Sam Adams, 1775
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 23, 2011, 04:35:06 AM

"No people will tamely surrender their liberties, nor can any be easily subdued, when knowledge is diffusd and virtue is preservd. On the contrary, when people are universally ignorant, and debauchd in their manners, they will sink under their own weight without the aid of foreign Invaders." --Samuel Adams, letter to James Warren, 1775

Title: S. Adams 1781: the vote; Madison, Federalist 39, a republic
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 25, 2011, 06:22:56 AM

"Let each citizen remember at the moment he is offering his vote that he is not making a present or a compliment to please an individual - or at least that he ought not so to do; but that he is executing one of the most solemn trusts in human society for which he is accountable to God and his country." --Samuel Adams, in the Boston Gazette, 1781

"If we resort for a criterion to the different principles on which different forms of government are established, we may define a republic to be, or at least may bestow that name on, a government which derives all its powers directly or indirectly from the great body of the people, and is administered by persons holding their offices during pleasure for a limited period, or during good behavior." --James Madison, Federalist No. 39

Title: Madison, Federalist 41
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 26, 2011, 07:33:12 AM

"Every man who loves peace, every man who loves his country, every man who loves liberty ought to have it ever before his eyes that he may cherish in his heart a due attachment to the Union of America and be able to set a due value on the means of preserving it." --James Madison, Federalist No. 41.

Title: Hamilton, Federalist 78-- the Judiciary
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 27, 2011, 08:48:03 AM

Title: Re: Hamilton, Federalist 78-- the Judiciary
Post by: bigdog on May 27, 2011, 11:44:58 AM

Quote from: Crafty_Dog on May 27, 2011, 08:48:03 AM

"Whoever attentively considers the different departments of power must perceive, that, in a government in which they are separated from each other, the judiciary, from the nature of its functions, will always be the least dangerous to the political rights of the Constitution; because it will be least in a capacity to annoy or injure them." --Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 78, 1788

The reason for Hamilton's argument is important: the judiciary has neither the purse of Congress nor the sword of the president.

Title: Thomas Paine, Common Sense 1776
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 30, 2011, 07:37:38 AM

"Now is the seedtime of continental union, faith and honor. The least fracture now, will be like a name engraved with the point of a pin on the tender rind of a young oak; the wound would enlarge with the tree, and posterity read in it full grown characters." --Thomas Paine, Common Sense, 1776

Title: Rush 1806
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 31, 2011, 06:00:35 AM

"[T]he only foundation for a useful education in a republic is to be laid in religion. Without this there can be no virtue, and without virtue there can be no liberty, and liberty is the object and life of all republican governments." --Benjamin Rush, On the Mode of Education Proper in a Republic, 1806

Title: Ben Rush - "father" of American psychiatry
Post by: ccp on May 31, 2011, 11:32:08 AM

Rush, Benjamin
Rush, Benjamin 1760 (1746-1813) was a physician, teacher, and man of affairs who played a dramatic role in the early history of his country, his college, and his profession. A man of contradictions, he practiced and taught the backward medical art of bloodletting, yet was far ahead of his time in the care of the mentally ill. He was a vigorous foe of slavery and capital punishment, an advocate of better education for women and of free public schools. More than any other person he was responsible for bringing John Witherspoon to America as Princeton's sixth president.
He lost his father when he was six, and was brought up by his mother who kept a grocery shop in Philadelphia to help support and educate her seven children. When he was eight, he entered an academy conducted by his uncle, Samuel Finley (later president of Princeton) at Nottingham, Maryland, where he made such progress that on entering Princeton five years later he was admitted to the junior class; he graduated in 1760 when he was not quite fifteen.

Although of a pious nature, he did not think he would make a good minister. President Davies was inclined to think he should take up the law, but his uncle, Dr. Finley, persuaded him to study medicine with Dr. John Redmond in Philadelphia. He served an apprenticeship with Dr. Redmond for almost six years and attended the first lectures of Dr. John Morgan and Dr. William Shippen, Jr. 1754 in the newly formed medical department of the College of Philadelphia (later the University of Pennsylvania).

In the summer of 1766, when he was twenty, he sat up every night for several weeks with Dr. Finley, then president of the College, during his last illness, and ``finally performed the distressing office of closing his eyes.'' That fall he went to Edinburgh, Scotland, then the medical center of the world, where after two years of study, and some heroic experiments with emetics on his own person for his doctoral thesis on the digestion of food in the stomach, received his M.D. degree.

While in Scotland he rendered his alma mater an incalculable service, when in cooperation with Richard Stockton, a trustee, he persuaded John Witherspoon to come to America as Princeton's president. Stockton's authority and dignity were indispensable to the mission, but it was Rush's confident, audacious, and engaging youth that won the day. From Edinburgh, twenty-one-year-old Rush wrote forty-four-year-old Witherspoon ``your talents have been in some measure buried, but at Princeton they will be called into action, and the evening of your life will be much more effulgent than your brightest meridian days have been.'' When Witherspoon felt obliged to decline because of his wife's fear of leaving home -- the very mention of going to America made her physically ill -- Rush asked Witherspoon ``And must poor Nassau Hall be ruined?'' and ``Will you then suffer your sun to set so soon?'' A little later he urged Witherspoon to reconsider the Princeton invitation and offered to help him make another appeal to his wife. Soon, on Witherspoon's invitation, Rush spent several days with the Witherspoons at their home in Paisley. Shortly afterward a friend of Witherspoon wrote to Richard Stockton in Princeton that ``to Mr. Witherspoon's great satisfaction, his wife has at last given a calm hearing to Mr. Rush, argued the Matter with him, and received a satisfying Answer to all her objections; so that now she is willing if the Doctor is rechosen . . . to go with him without Grudge.'' Witherspoon was re-elected in due course and he and Mrs. Witherspoon came to America in August 1768.

Rush spent the following year in London, where he attended medical lectures, and in Paris. In London he was on friendly terms with Benjamin Franklin, and at Benjamin West's dined with Sir Joshua Reynolds, who in turn had him to dinner with Samuel Johnson and Oliver Goldsmith. In Paris he met Diderot, who gave him a letter of introduction to David Hume.

Soon after his return home Rush was appointed to a chair of chemistry in the College of Philadelphia's medical department, thus becoming at the age of twenty-three the first professor of chemistry in America. He built up a large private practice, at first among the poor, but he found time to further other interests. He published a pamphlet on the iniquity of the slave trade, and helped organize the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery and the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage, the first antislavery society in America; he later became its president. In the growing quarrel between the colonies and the mother country, he associated with such leaders as Thomas Paine, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson. It was on his urging that Thomas Paine wrote a strong tract on behalf of complete American independence to which he gave the title, suggested by Rush, Common Sense.

In the summer of 1775 while visiting President Witherspoon and Richard Stockton in Princeton, he met Stockton's sixteen-year-old daughter, Julia. The following January, a few days after his thirtieth birthday, he and Julia were married by the Reverend President Witherspoon. Less than seven months later, the bridegroom, who had been elected a delegate to the Continental Congress from Pennsylvania, joined his father-in-law and Dr. Witherspoon, both delegates from New Jersey, in signing the Declaration of Independence.

While Surgeon-General of the Middle Department of the Army during the Revolution, Rush became outraged by the conditions he found in army hospitals and, failing to get the remedial action he sought from the director general, Dr. Shippen (his former teacher), he sent a protest to General Washington, accusing Dr. Shippen of maladministration. Washington referred the protest to Congress, which ruled in favor of Shippen, and Rush resigned his commission. Rush lost confidence in Washington's ability and became associated indirectly with the Conway cabal to replace him; later he deeply regretted this action, and supported Washington politically.

Returning to Philadelphia, Rush resumed his practice, his teaching, and his humanitarian endeavors. At the medical school of the College of Philadelphia, he added courses on the theory and practice of medicine to his lectures in chemistry, and became the most admired teacher of medicine in Philadelphia, then the medical center of America. All told, he taught more than three thousand medical students, who carried his influence to every corner of the growing nation.

Rush founded the Philadelphia Dispensary for the relief of the poor, the first of its kind in the United States, and for many years gave it hours of service without pay. He also founded Dickinson College, was one of the charter trustees of Franklin College (later Franklin and Marshall), and -- being persuaded of the importance of removing ``the present disparity which subsists between the sexes in the degrees of their education and knowledge'' -- became an ardent incorporator of the Young Ladies Academy in Philadelphia.

He worked heroically during the yellow fever epidemic of 1793; although he was severely censured for his stubborn reliance on bloodletting, his account of the epidemic published the following year won him recognition by several European learned societies.

His greatest contributions to medical science were the reforms he instituted in the care of the mentally ill during his thirty years of service as a senior physician at the Pennsylvania Hospital. In the words of one of his biographers, Dr. Carl Binger, a psychiatrist, ``he took on heroic stature,'' substituting kindness and compassion for cruelty, and replacing routine reliance on archaic procedures by careful clinical observation and study. The year before he died, he published Medical Inquiries and Observations upon the Diseases of the Mind, the first textbook on psychiatry in America, which Dr. Binger called ``the crowning achievement of his professional life.''

Benjamin and Julia Rush had thirteen children; one of them, Richard Rush 1797, served as cabinet officer or ambassador under four presidents.

In 1837 some of Rush's former students founded a medical college in Chicago, which they named for him. The American Psychiatric Association, whose official seal bears Rush's portrait, placed a bronze plaque at his grave in Philadelphia in 1965, designating him the ``Father of American Psychiatry.''

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From Alexander Leitch, A Princeton Companion, copyright Princeton University Press (1978).
Go to Search A Princeton Companion

Title: Wilson, 1791 Parents' duties to children
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 01, 2011, 08:07:59 AM

Thank you for that CCP.

"It is the duty of parents to maintain their children decently, and according to their circumstances; to protect them according to the dictates of prudence; and to educate them according to the suggestions of a judicious and zealous regard for their usefulness, their respectability and happiness." --James Wilson, Lectures on Law, 1791

Title: Madison 1835 on his fellow Founding Fathers
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 02, 2011, 06:18:33 AM

Title: Jefferson, 1781; Liberty from God
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 03, 2011, 07:49:38 AM

Title: Noah Webster 1788
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 06, 2011, 06:29:18 AM

Title: Madison, 1792 Universal Peace
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 07, 2011, 09:14:35 AM

"A universal peace, it is to be feared, is in the catalogue of events, which will never exist but in the imaginations of visionary philosophers, or in the breasts of benevolent enthusiasts." --James Madison, essay in the National Gazette, 1792

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Freki on June 08, 2011, 05:46:18 AM

"The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the laws of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence. If 'Thou shalt not covet' and 'Thou shalt not steal' were not commandments of Heaven, they must be made inviolable precepts in every society before it can be civilized or made free." --John Adams, A Defense of the American Constitutions, 1787

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 08, 2011, 06:47:54 AM

Good to have you back with us Freki :-)

Title: John Adams, Inaugural Address 1797
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 09, 2011, 03:07:22 PM

"We should be unfaithful to ourselves if we should ever lose sight of the danger to our liberties if anything partial or extraneous should infect the purity of our free, fair, virtuous, and independent elections." --John Adams, Inaugural Address, 1797

Title: Re: John Adams, Inaugural Address 1797
Post by: G M on June 09, 2011, 04:24:01 PM

Quote from: Crafty_Dog on June 09, 2011, 03:07:22 PM

"We should be unfaithful to ourselves if we should ever lose sight of the danger to our liberties if anything partial or extraneous should infect the purity of our free, fair, virtuous, and independent elections." --John Adams, Inaugural Address, 1797

In that vein (no pun intended), shouldn't we demand that our elected officials disclose everyone they'd twittered a c*ck picture to, as that more than donations might influence how a congressman votes?

Title: Jefferson on the judiciary 1821
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 10, 2011, 09:59:21 AM

"The great object of my fear is the federal judiciary. That body, like gravity, ever acting, with noiseless foot, and unalarming advance, gaining ground step by step, and holding what it gains, is ingulfing insidiously the special governments into the jaws of that which feeds them." --Thomas Jefferson, letter to Judge Spencer Roane, 1821

Title: Jefferson gets testy with the press 1805
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 13, 2011, 04:16:44 AM

"During the course of administration, and in order to disturb it, the artillery of the press has been levelled against us, charged with whatsoever its licentiousness could devise or dare. These abuses of an institution so important to freedom and science are deeply to be regretted, inasmuch as they tend to lessen its usefulness and to sap its safety." --Thomas Jefferson, Second Inaugural Address, 1805

Title: John Adams: US of 2011 is fuct
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 14, 2011, 08:50:09 AM

"We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." --John Adams, Address to the Military , 1798

Title: Madison 1822 Freedom of Religion from Government
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 15, 2011, 06:14:57 AM

"We are teaching the world the great truth that governments do better without kings and nobles than with them. The merit will be doubled by the other lesson that religion flourishes in greater purity, without than with the aid of government." --James Madison, letter to Edward Livingston, 1822

Title: Franklin 1774
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 16, 2011, 05:06:42 AM

Title: Jefferson 1813 Cherish credit, pay off debts.
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 20, 2011, 05:34:19 AM

Title: Jefferson, first Inaugural address 1801
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 22, 2011, 07:28:11 AM

"All, too, will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will to be rightful must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression." --Thomas Jefferson, First Inaugural Address, 1801

Title: Hamilton: Natural Right 1775
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 23, 2011, 07:22:24 AM

"The fundamental source of all your errors, sophisms and false reasonings is a total ignorance of the natural rights of mankind. Were you once to become acquainted with these, you could never entertain a thought, that all men are not, by nature, entitled to a parity of privileges. You would be convinced, that natural liberty is a gift of the beneficent Creator to the whole human race, and that civil liberty is founded in that; and cannot be wrested from any people, without the most manifest violation of justice." --Alexander Hamilton, The Farmer Refuted, 1775

Title: Jefferson 1803
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 24, 2011, 04:47:19 AM

Title: J. Adams 1787 on the nature of the Senate
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 28, 2011, 08:33:22 AM

"The rich, the well-born, and the able, acquire and influence among the people that will soon be too much for simple honesty and plain sense, in a house of representatives. The most illustrious of them must, therefore, be separated from the mass, and placed by themselves in a senate; this is, to all honest and useful intents, an ostracism." --John Adams, A Defense of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America, vol 1 , 1787

Title: Washington: Farewell Address 1796
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 29, 2011, 08:00:32 AM

Title: S. Adams, 1781
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 30, 2011, 09:23:31 AM

Title: Jefferson 1791
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 01, 2011, 07:35:13 AM

"It would reduce the whole instrument to a single phrase, that of instituting a Congress with power to do whatever would be for the good of the United States; and as they would be the sole judges of the good or evil, it would be also a power to do whatever evil they please. Certainly no such universal power was meant to be given them. [The Constitution] was intended to lace them up straightly within the enumerated powers and those without which, as means, these powers could not be carried into effect." --Thomas Jefferson, Opinion on a National Bank, 1791

Title: John Jay: Federalist 4; Jefferson on credit 1813; Hamilton 1775
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 04, 2011, 06:36:27 AM

"But the safety of the people of America against dangers from foreign force depends not only on their forbearing to give just causes of war to other nations, but also on their placing and continuing themselves in such a situation as not to invite hostility or insult; for it need not be observed that there are pretended as well as just causes of war." --John Jay, Federalist No. 4

"It is a wise rule and should be fundamental in a government disposed to cherish its credit, and at the same time to restrain the use of it within the limits of its faculties, 'never to borrow a dollar without laying a tax in the same instant for paying the interest annually, and the principal within a given term; and to consider that tax as pledged to the creditors on the public faith.'" --Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Wayles Eppes, 1813

"The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for, among old parchments, or musty records. They are written, as with a sun beam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of the divinity itself; and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power." --Alexander Hamilton, The Farmer Refuted, 1775

"As our president bears no resemblance to a king so we shall see the Senate has no similitude to nobles. First, not being hereditary, their collective knowledge, wisdom, and virtue are not precarious. For by these qualities alone are they to obtain their offices, and they will have none of the peculiar qualities and vices of those men who possess power merely because their father held it before them." --Tench Coxe, An American Citizen, No. 2, 1787

"Liberty is a word which, according as it is used, comprehends the most good and the most evil of any in the world. Justly understood it is sacred next to those which we appropriate in divine adoration; but in the mouths of some it means anything, which enervate a necessary government; excite a jealousy of the rulers who are our own choice, and keep society in confusion for want of a power sufficiently concentered to promote good." --Oliver Ellsworth, A Landholder, No. III, 1787

Title: Madison VA ratifying convention 1788; Hamilton on the Tenth, NY rat'g convention
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 06, 2011, 04:59:34 AM

"There are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations." --James Madison, speech at the Virginia Ratifying Convention, 1788

"This balance between the National and State governments ought to be dwelt on with peculiar attention, as it is of the utmost importance. It forms a double security to the people. If one encroaches on their rights they will find a powerful protection in the other. Indeed, they will both be prevented from overpassing their constitutional limits by a certain rivalship, which will ever subsist between them." --Alexander Hamilton, speech to the New York Ratifying Convention, 1788

Title: Catching up
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 17, 2011, 09:20:52 AM

"The steady character of our countrymen is a rock to which we may safely moor; and notwithstanding the efforts of the papers to disseminate early discontents, I expect that a just, dispassionate and steady conduct, will at length rally to a proper system the great body of our country. Unequivocal in principle, reasonable in manner, we shall be able I hope to do a great deal of good to the cause of freedom & harmony." --Thomas Jefferson, letter to Elbridge Gerry, 1801

"[W]here there is no law, there is no liberty; and nothing deserves the name of law but that which is certain and universal in its operation upon all the members of the community." --Benjamin Rush, letter to David Ramsay, 1788

"Men must be ready, they must pride themselves and be happy to sacrifice their private pleasures, passions and interests, nay, their private friendships and dearest connections, when they stand in competition with the rights of society." --John Adams, letter to Mercy Warren, 1776

"A fondness for power is implanted, in most men, and it is natural to abuse it, when acquired." --Alexander Hamilton, The Farmer Refuted, 1775

"The spirit of encroachment tends to consolidate the powers of all the departments in one, and thus to create whatever the form of government, a real despotism. A just estimate of that love of power, and proneness to abuse it, which predominates in the human heart is sufficient to satisfy us of the truth of this position." --George Washington, Farewell Address, 1796

Title: Madison, Federalist 14; 1787
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 18, 2011, 07:33:12 AM

Title: Jefferson on Reason in 1822
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 19, 2011, 08:58:31 AM

"Man, once surrendering his reason, has no remaining guard against absurdities the most monstrous, and like a ship without rudder, is the sport of every wind. With such persons, gullibility, which they call faith, takes the helm from the hand of reason and the mind becomes a wreck." --Thomas Jefferson, letter to James Smith, 1822

Title: Washington, 1790: letter to people of South Carolina
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 21, 2011, 07:21:13 AM

Title: John Adams on clean elections, 1797
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 22, 2011, 05:03:25 AM

"In the midst of these pleasing ideas we should be unfaithful to ourselves if we should ever lose sight of the danger to our liberties if anything partial or extraneous should infect the purity of our free, fair, virtuous, and independent elections." --John Adams, Inaugural Address, 1797

Title: Caatching up!
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 07, 2011, 11:05:26 AM

Sorry-- been out of town for a few weeks!
===========

"The aim of every political constitution is, or ought to be, first to obtain for rulers men who possess most wisdom to discern, and most virtue to pursue, the common good of the society; and in the next place, to take the most effectual precautions for keeping them virtuous whilst they continue to hold their public trust." --James Madison, Federalist No. 57, 1788

"Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed; as they are in almost every kingdom of Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any band of regular troops that can be, on any pretence, raised in the United States." --Noah Webster, An Examination of the Leading Principles of the Federal Constitution, 1787

"No morn ever dawned more favorable than ours did; and no day was every more clouded than the present! Wisdom, and good examples are necessary at this time to rescue the political machine from the impending storm." --George Washington, letter to James Madison, 1786

"I suppose, indeed, that in public life, a man whose political principles have any decided character and who has energy enough to give them effect must always expect to encounter political hostility from those of adverse principles." --Thomas Jefferson, letter to Richard M. Johnson, 1808

"A constitution founded on these principles introduces knowledge among the people, and inspires them with a conscious dignity becoming freemen; a general emulation takes place, which causes good humor, sociability, good manners, and good morals to be general. That elevation of sentiment inspired by such a government, makes the common people brave and enterprising. That ambition which is inspired by it makes them sober, industrious, and frugal." --John Adams, Thoughts on Government, 1776

"But with respect to future debt; would it not be wise and just for that nation to declare in the constitution they are forming that neither the legislature, nor the nation itself can validly contract more debt, than they may pay within their own age, or within the term of 19 years." --Thomas Jefferson, letter to James Madison, 1789

"It is the duty of parents to maintain their children decently, and according to their circumstances; to protect them according to the dictates of prudence; and to educate them according to the suggestions of a judicious and zealous regard for their usefulness, their respectability and happiness." --James Wilson, Lectures on Law, 1791

"The Constitution ... is a mere thing of wax in the hands of the judiciary which they may twist and shape into any form they please." --Thomas Jefferson, letter to Judge Spencer Roane, 1819

"Nothing is more certain than that a general profligacy and corruption of manners make a people ripe for destruction. A good form of government may hold the rotten materials together for some time, but beyond a certain pitch, even the best constitution will be ineffectual, and slavery must ensue." --John Witherspoon, The Dominion of Providence Over the Passions of Men, 1776

"Would it not be better to simplify the system of taxation rather than to spread it over such a variety of subjects and pass through so many new hands." --Thomas Jefferson, letter to James Madison, 1784

"The eyes of the world being thus on our Country, it is put the more on its good behavior, and under the greater obligation also, to do justice to the Tree of Liberty by an exhibition of the fine fruits we gather from it." --James Madison, letter to James Monroe, 1824

Title: Madison 1787; Jefferson 1813
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 09, 2011, 08:15:14 AM

"No man is allowed to be a judge in his own cause, because his interest would certainly bias his judgment, and, not improbably, corrupt his integrity." --James Madison, Federalist No. 10, 1787

"An honest man can feel no pleasure in the exercise of power over his fellow citizens....There has never been a moment of my life in which I should have relinquished for it the enjoyments of my family, my farm, my friends & books." --Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Melish, 1813

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 10, 2011, 07:42:20 AM

"We have heard of the impious doctrine in the old world, that the people were made for kings, not kings for the people. Is the same doctrine to be revived in the new, in another shape - that the solid happiness of the people is to be sacrificed to the views of political institutions of a different form? It is too early for politicians to presume on our forgetting that the public good, the real welfare of the great body of the people, is the supreme object to be pursued; and that no form of government whatever has any other value than as it may be fitted for the attainment of this object." --James Madison, Federalist No. 45

Title: Paine, 1776
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 12, 2011, 04:52:41 AM

"Not all the treasures of the world, so far as I believe, could have induced me to support an offensive war, for I think it murder; but if a thief breaks into my house, burns and destroys my property, and kills or threatens to kill me, or those that are in it, and to 'bind me in all cases whatsoever' to his absolute will, am I to suffer it?" --Thomas Paine, The American Crises, No. 1, 1776

Title: Washington to Hebrew Congregation 1790.
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 15, 2011, 03:29:13 AM

"The citizens of the United States of America have the right to applaud themselves for having given to mankind examples of an enlarged and liberal policy worthy of imitation. All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship. It is now no more that toleration is spoken of as if it were by the indulgence of one class of citizens that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights, for happily the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens in giving it on all occasions their effectual support." --George Washington, letter to the Hebrew Congregation of Newport, Rhode Island, 1790

Title: Jefferson on property 1788
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 17, 2011, 07:42:07 AM

"He who is permitted by law to have no property of his own, can with difficulty conceive that property is founded in anything but force." --Thomas Jefferson, to Bancroft, 1788

Title: Ben Franklin on the First Amendment
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 18, 2011, 02:01:19 PM

"If by the liberty of the press were understood merely the liberty of discussing the propriety of public measures and political opinions, let us have as much of it as you please: But if it means the liberty of affronting, calumniating and defaming one another, I, for my part, own myself willing to part with my share of it, whenever our legislators shall please so to alter the law and shall chearfully consent to exchange my liberty of abusing others for the privilege of not being abused myself." --Benjamin Franklin, An Account of the Supremest Court of Judicature in Pennsylvania, viz. The Court of the Press, 1789

Title: Jefferson, 1824
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 19, 2011, 11:15:33 AM

"I should consider the speeches of Livy, Sallust, and Tacitus, as preeminent specimens of logic, taste and that sententious brevity which, using not a word to spare, leaves not a moment for inattention to the hearer. Amplification is the vice of modern oratory." --Thomas Jefferson, letter to David Harding, 1824

Title: Story on Justice: 1833
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 22, 2011, 07:09:19 AM

"Without justice being freely, fully, and impartially administered, neither our persons, nor our rights, nor our property, can be protected. And if these, or either of them, are regulated by no certain laws, and are subject to no certain principles, and are held by no certain tenure, and are redressed, when violated, by no certain remedies, society fails of all its value; and men may as well return to a state of savage and barbarous independence." --Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution, 1833

Title: Book review: Ethan Allen of Vermont
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 22, 2011, 12:53:45 PM

By ROBERT K. LANDERS
By 1771, a conflict over frontier settlements in what is today Vermont had begun to turn violent. Colonial officials in New York, eager to profit from making land grants in the territory between Lake Champlain and the Connecticut River, refused to recognize grants already made there by the New Hampshire colony. The Hampshire settlers themselves, meanwhile, were determined to hold on to their property and not pay twice for it. Ethan Allen, a major property owner in the region known as the New Hampshire Grants, emerged as the leader of the opposition to New York's efforts.

In June 1771, getting word that a New York surveyor was running lines in the woods 20 miles away, Allen and some of his followers went to the scene. Dressed as Indians, with soot-blackened faces, they threatened to kill the "Yorker"—who fled with his crew. Later that year, Allen formally organized the "Green Mountain Boys" to defend the Hampshire settlements and scotch any New York-backed settlements. He and his "boys" torched fences and haystacks as warnings to New York settlers reluctant to leave; in October, the Green Mountain Boys burned down the cabin of a Yorker who refused to depart.

In "Ethan Allen," historian Willard Sterne Randall cites the behavior by the nascent folk hero and his men—who in extreme cases flogged defiant Yorkers—and links it with "the tactics of intimidation used by ten thousand Sons of Liberty in the period before the Revolution" to raise "an unsettling question: was America founded, at least in part, on terrorism?" Mr. Randall does not attempt an answer, however.

The author and his publisher call Ethan Allen a "founding father," presumably to appeal to all those readers with a seemingly insatiable appetite for books about those so designated, but if Allen was a founding father, it was of Vermont, not of the United States. Still, by my reading of Mr. Randall's exhaustively researched and insightful (but overly long) biography, Allen did make two significant contributions to the war for independence, each the result, directly or indirectly, of his recklessness.

View Full Image
.Ethan Allen
By Willard Sterne Randall
(Norton, 617 pages, $35)
.The first was what many considered a premature attack on Britain's Fort Ticonderoga in May 1775. Even after the battles at Lexington and Concord the preceding month, most delegates to the Second Continental Congress were not ready to cut America loose from Britain, continuing to express hope for reconciliation with the mother country. But after years of armed struggle against New York's royal governors and sheriffs over the New Hampshire Grants, 37-year-old Ethan Allen—tall, muscular and "a commanding figure in his forest green greatcoat and sheared beaver tricorn hat"—and his Green Mountain Boys were ready to fight for independence.

Thinking that if Fort Ticonderoga at Lake Champlain were wrested from the British, it could serve as a base for a rapid invasion and capture of Quebec, Allen was glad to accept the request of "patriots" in the Connecticut and Massachusetts colonies that he (and Benedict Arnold) lead a surprise attack on the huge but lightly defended facility. With only 83 frontiersmen, Allen took the fort without a shot being fired. Ticonderoga's real value proved to be its cannon and mortars, which in the coming winter Gen. George Washington's artillery commander, Henry Knox, would famously transport to Boston, overcoming the many formidable obstacles presented by terrain and weather.

Thanks to the bloodless fort seizure, Ethan Allen became the first American hero of the war, appearing in triumph before the Continental Congress in June 1775. Even the conservative delegates from New York, whose royal officials had branded him an outlaw and put a price on his head, joined the unanimous vote urging that the Green Mountain Boys be transformed into the Green Mountain Regiment, with Allen to be made a colonel in the Continental Army.

Allen's other important contribution to the Revolution was his best-selling wartime memoir of the harsh treatment he'd endured as a British prisoner for 32 months. In September 1775, while serving as a scout inside Canada, he joined in a rash plan to attack Montreal; counting on support that never materialized, Allen wound up a captive. If he expected to be treated as an officer and a gentleman, he was soon disappointed, for the British looked on him as a common criminal. "A Narrative of the Captivity of Colonel Ethan Allen," published in 1779, "riveted a populace still at war and instilled a patriotic feeling into a beleaguered people," Mr. Randall writes.

As a deist who had rejected Christianity, Allen felt no obligation to love his enemies. After his release in a prisoner exchange and return home to the new republic of Vermont in 1778, he led an official drive to ferret out loyalists (including his own brother Levi, even though Levi had tried to aid him when he was held captive), drive them away and confiscate their property. Allen went after Yorkers as well as loyalists. Mr. Randall notes: "To Allen, it was all the same."

A loose cannon if ever there was one, Allen during the war also engaged in secret talks with the British in Canada to obtain an agreement on prisoner exchanges with Vermont, arranging a ceasefire that averted British attacks on the shores of Lake Champlain. In those talks he explored the possibility of a separate peace for Vermont, using the threat of that to try to get Congress, despite New York's opposition, to admit Vermont into the Union. Allen strung the British along for nearly two years, and even after Yorktown, frustrated by Congress's latest refusal to admit Vermont to the Union, he wrote to British commander Frederick Haldimand: "I Shall do Every thing in my Power to render this State a British province." But by then, Mr. Randall relates, Haldimand had begun to grasp "that he had been duped." Vermont finally became a state in 1791, two years after Allen's death.

Mr. Landers, a former reporter at Congressional Quarterly's Editorial Research Reports, is the author of
"An Honest Writer: The Life and Times of James T. Farrell."

Title: Washington, to PA, 1789
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 23, 2011, 08:28:40 AM

"It should be the highest ambition of every American to extend his views beyond himself, and to bear in mind that his conduct will not only affect himself, his country, and his immediate posterity; but that its influence may be co-extensive with the world, and stamp political happiness or misery on ages yet unborn." --George Washington, letter to the Legislature of Pennsylvania, 1789

Title: Wilson, 1791
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 24, 2011, 08:21:42 AM

"In observations on this subject, we hear the legislature mentioned as the people's representatives. The distinction, intimated by concealed implication, through probably, not avowed upon reflection, is, that the executive and judicial powers are not connected with the people by a relation so strong or near or dear. But is high time that we should chastise our prejudices; and that we should look upon the different parts of government with a just and impartial eye." --James Wilson, Lectures on Law, 1791

Title: Washington, 1788
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 25, 2011, 09:46:59 AM

"No country upon earth ever had it more in its power to attain these blessings than United America. Wondrously strange, then, and much to be regretted indeed would it be, were we to neglect the means and to depart from the road which Providence has pointed us to so plainly; I cannot believe it will ever come to pass." --George Washington, letter to Benjamin Lincoln, 1788

Title: John Adams to Abigail Adams, 1780
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 26, 2011, 08:48:06 AM

"I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history and naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain." --John Adams, letter to Abigail Adams, 1780

Title: Washington to Lafayette 1785
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 30, 2011, 06:38:08 AM

"Democratical States must always feel before they can see: it is this that makes their Governments slow, but the people will be right at last." --George Washington, letter to Marquis de Lafayette, 1785

Title: Madison to Monroe, 1786 on the limits of the principle of majority rule
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 31, 2011, 05:18:30 AM

"There is no maxim in my opinion which is more liable to be misapplied, and which therefore needs elucidation than the current one that the interest of the majority is the political standard of right and wrong.... In fact it is only reestablishing under another name and a more specious form, force as the measure of right...." --James Madison, letter to James Monroe, 1786

Title: Webster 1789
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 01, 2011, 05:24:30 AM

"In selecting men for office, let principle be your guide. Regard not the particular sect or denomination of the candidate -- look to his character..." --Noah Webster, Letters to a Young Gentleman Commencing His Education, 1789

Title: Jefferson, 1795
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 05, 2011, 08:06:07 AM

"In our private pursuits it is a great advantage that every honest employment is deemed honorable. I am myself a nail-maker." --Thomas Jefferson, Jean Nicolas DÈmeunier, 1795

Title: Jefferson: The construction of laws, 1823
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 06, 2011, 04:59:02 AM

Title: Madison to the Dey of Algiers, 1816
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 06, 2011, 10:28:05 AM

"It is a principle incorporated into the settled policy of America, that as peace is better than war, war is better than tribute." --James Madison, letter to the Dey of Algiers, 1816

Title: Washington on moral character, 1790
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 07, 2011, 08:04:30 AM

Title: Washington on conscience 1748; S. Adams on corrupt manners 1749
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 09, 2011, 05:53:26 AM

"Labor to keep alive in your breast that little spark of celestial fire called conscience." --George Washington, The Rules of Civility, 1748

"[N]either the wisest constitution nor the wisest laws will secure the liberty and happiness of a people whose manners are universally corrupt." --Samuel Adams, essay in The Public Advertiser, 1749

Title: Jefferson to his wife 1787
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 12, 2011, 06:10:31 AM

"Determine never to be idle. No person will have occasion to complain of the want of time, who never loses any. It is wonderful how much may be done, if we are always doing." --Thomas Jefferson, letter to Martha Jefferson, 1787

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: bigdog on September 14, 2011, 03:49:12 AM

Which founding father are you?

http://www.constitutioncenter.org/FoundersQuiz/

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 14, 2011, 06:14:19 AM

James Madison

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: bigdog on September 14, 2011, 06:20:42 AM

Quote from: Crafty_Dog on September 14, 2011, 06:14:19 AM

James Madison

Me too. Great minds, sir.

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: G M on September 14, 2011, 06:28:11 AM

Madison here too.

Title: Washington: Never despair 1777
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 14, 2011, 07:43:22 AM

I would not have guessed that the three of us have the same , , , avatar. :lol:

===================

"We should never despair, our situation before has been unpromising and has changed for the better, so I trust, it will again. If new difficulties arise, we must only put forth new exertions and proportion our efforts to the exigency of the times." --George Washington, letter to Philip Schuyler, 1777

Title: Re: Washington: Never despair 1777
Post by: bigdog on September 14, 2011, 11:10:03 AM

Quote from: Crafty_Dog on September 14, 2011, 07:43:22 AM

I would not have guessed that the three of us have the same , , , avatar. :lol:

===================

I am honered to be in such distinguished company.

Title: Story: Commentaries on the Constitution 1833
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 16, 2011, 12:50:24 PM

Title: Several days of quotes
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 22, 2011, 04:51:41 AM

"History by apprising [citizens] of the past will enable them to judge of the future; it will avail them of the experience of other times and other nations; it will qualify them as judges of the actions and designs of men; it will enable them to know ambition under every disguise it may assume; and knowing it, to defeat its views." --Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, Query 14, 1781

"We are either a United people, or we are not. If the former, let us, in all maters of general concern act as a nation, which have national objects to promote, and a national character to support. If we are not, let us no longer act a farce by pretending to it." --George Washington, letter to James Madison, 1785

"The steady character of our countrymen is a rock to which we may safely moor; and notwithstanding the efforts of the papers to disseminate early discontents, I expect that a just, dispassionate and steady conduct, will at length rally to a proper system the great body of our country. Unequivocal in principle, reasonable in manner, we shall be able I hope to do a great deal of good to the cause of freedom & harmony." --Thomas Jefferson, letter to Elbridge Gerry, 1801

"No pecuniary consideration is more urgent, than the regular redemption and discharge of the public debt: on none can delay be more injurious, or an economy of time more valuable." --George Washington, Message to the House of Representatives, 1793

"There is not a more important and fundamental principle in legislation, than that the ways and means ought always to face the public engagements; that our appropriations should ever go hand in hand with our promises. To say that the United States should be answerable for twenty-five millions of dollars without knowing whether the ways and means can be provided, and without knowing whether those who are to succeed us will think with us on the subject, would be rash and unjustifiable." --James Madison, Speech in Congress, 1790

"The principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale." --Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Taylor, 1816

Title: Hamilton, Federalist 35, 1788
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 23, 2011, 10:07:40 AM

"There is no part of the administration of government that requires extensive information and a thorough knowledge of the principles of political economy, so much as the business of taxation. The man who understands those principles best will be least likely to resort to oppressive expedients, or sacrifice any particular class of citizens to the procurement of revenue." --Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 35, 1788

Title: Two from Jefferson on General Welfare clause, others
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 06, 2011, 05:58:05 AM

"If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the General Welfare, the Government is no longer a limited one, possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one, subject to particular exceptions." --James Madison, letter to Edmund Pendleton, 1792

"It would reduce the whole instrument to a single phrase, that of instituting a Congress with power to do whatever would be for the good of the United States; and as they would be the sole judges of the good or evil, it would be also a power to do whatever evil they please. Certainly no such universal power was meant to be given them. [The Constitution] was intended to lace them up straightly within the enumerated powers and those without which, as means, these powers could not be carried into effect." --Thomas Jefferson, Opinion on a National Bank, 1791

"Citizens by birth or choice of a common country, that country has a right to concentrate your affections. The name of American, which belongs to you, in your national capacity, must always exalt the just pride of Patriotism, more than any appellation derived from local discriminations." --George Washington, Farewell Address, 1796

"[E]ven our Commercial policy should hold an equal and impartial hand: neither seeking nor granting exclusive favours or preferences; consulting the natural course of things; diffusing and diversifying by gentle means the streams of Commerce, but forcing nothing; establishing with Powers so disposed; in order to give trade a stable course." --George Washington, Farewell Address, 1796

"War is not the best engine for us to resort to; nature has given us one in our commerce, which if properly managed, will be a better instrument for obliging the interested nations of Europe to treat us with justice." --Thomas Jefferson, letter to Thomas Pickney, 1797

"It is very imprudent to deprive America of any of her privileges. If her commerce and friendship are of any importance to you, they are to be had on no other terms than leaving her in the full enjoyment of her rights." --Benjamin Franklin, Political Observations

"If the present Congress errs in too much talking, how can it be otherwise in a body to which the people send 150 lawyers, whose trade it is to question everything, yield nothing, & talk by the hour? That 150 lawyers should do business together ought not to be expected." --Thomas Jefferson, Autobiography, 1821

"On every unauthoritative exercise of power by the legislature must the people rise in rebellion or their silence be construed into a surrender of that power to them? If so, how many rebellions should we have had already?" --Thomas Jefferson, Notes on Virginia, Query 12, 1782

Title: On the Constitution
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 12, 2011, 10:24:00 AM

"[T]he present Constitution is the standard to which we are to cling. Under its banners, bona fide must we combat our political foes -- rejecting all changes but through the channel itself provides for amendments." --Alexander Hamilton, letter to James Bayard, 1802

"A constitution founded on these principles introduces knowledge among the people, and inspires them with a conscious dignity becoming freemen; a general emulation takes place, which causes good humor, sociability, good manners, and good morals to be general. That elevation of sentiment inspired by such a government, makes the common people brave and enterprising. That ambition which is inspired by it makes them sober, industrious, and frugal." --John Adams, Thoughts on Government, 1776

"In questions of power, then, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution." --Thomas Jefferson, fair copy of the drafts of the Kentucky Resolutions of 1798

"If it be asked, What is the most sacred duty and the greatest source of our security in a Republic? The answer would be, An inviolable respect for the Constitution and Laws -- the first growing out of the last. ... A sacred respect for the constitutional law is the vital principle, the sustaining energy of a free government." --Alexander Hamilton, Essay in the American Daily Advertiser, 1794

Title: Washington 1786
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 14, 2011, 04:19:39 AM

Title: Madison puts Jefferson straight
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 14, 2011, 04:29:48 AM

"The first and governing maxim in the interpretation of a statute is to discover the meaning of those who made it." --James Wilson, Of the Study of Law in the United States, 1790

------------------
WSJ:

By THOMAS FLEMING
'We demand the forgiveness of all debts." After several days of listening to the Occupy Wall Street protesters, I had begun to lose all hope of grasping exactly what they wanted, beyond some sort of "change." I was almost relieved to hear this endorsement of a solution to a specific problem, especially pertinent to protesters in their age group who owe millions of dollars to the federal government for the money they borrowed to go to college.

Many of the protesters who demand relief from college loans, of course, want to divert attention from their personal benefit—so they've escalated it to an overall cancellation of every debt in the country, from home mortgages to the red ink on credit cards.

Did they know, on this point, they were echoing Thomas Jefferson? If so, these protesters and their sympathizers might want to think twice.

Enlarge Image

CloseAssociated Press

Do protesters know that they're echoing Thomas Jefferson?
.Debt forgiveness was not original with Jefferson, who enunciated it in a letter to his favorite correspondent, James Madison, on Sept. 6, 1789, when the French Revolution was picking up steam in Paris. Since 1784, Jefferson had been America's ambassador to France. There he had an on-the-ground view of the emergence of the historic upheaval, which he totally endorsed. The forgiveness of all debts was one of the early demands of the rebels, who declared, as Jefferson wrote in his letter, that "The earth belongs to the living."

This struck Jefferson, who was already in considerable debt back in America, as a brilliant idea. (He would die owing the equivalent of a million modern dollars.) He rushed to communicate the idea to his favorite political disciple.

Madison already had pushed through the Virginia legislature a bill by Jefferson to end the Anglican (Episcopal) Church's status as the state's established religion. Perhaps Tom thought another year of dexterous politicking by the canny Madison could turn Monticello's ledgers from red to black.

Jefferson's letter was enthusiastic, even giddy. Not only should debts be forfeited by every generation, he wrote Madison, but all the acts of government, from a constitution to the most trivial laws. By his calculations, a generation completed its career every 19 years. Thereafter, a new debtless generation would take charge, ruled by a new majority, ready and eager to create its own laws.

In a masterpiece of understatement, James Morton Smith, the editor of "The Republic of Letters," a three-volume collection of their correspondence, says Madison's reply to Jefferson's proposal was "a severe test of their friendship." Point by point, the younger man demolished Jefferson's silliness with polite but irrefutable logic.

Every generation should write its own constitution? Having just emerged from a bruising, exhausting two-year struggle to write and ratify the American charter, Madison thought repeating this task would create "pernicious factions" that would repeatedly deadlock, leaving the nation with no government at all during such "interregnums."

The earth belongs to the living? This, Madison remarked, referred to the earth "in its natural state only." It omitted the crucial importance of the improvements made by the dead, from which the living benefit. The same was true for debts, many of which were contracted by governments and individuals to "benefit posterity as well as the living generation." There was, Madison thought, "a foundation in the nature of things" for the descent of obligations from one generation to another. "Mutual good is promoted by it."

Madison closed by diplomatically suggesting that the United States, just beginning its career under the new Constitution, was not ready for such "philosophical legislation." It would take a long time for the "sublime truths" of philosophy to become visible "to the naked eye of the ordinary politician." Although I am sure Madison did not intend it, those closing words come close to sarcasm.

Jefferson never mentioned the idea again to Madison or anyone else.

Mr. Fleming, a former president of the Society of American Historians, is the author, most recently, of "The Intimate Lives of the Founding Fathers" (Smithsonian, 2009).

Title: Jefferson 1803
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 17, 2011, 05:18:21 AM

"Our peculiar security is in the possession of a written Constitution. Let us not make it a blank paper by construction." --Thomas Jefferson, letter to Wilson Nicholas, 1803

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 18, 2011, 09:54:05 AM

"The construction applied ... to those parts of the Constitution of the United States which delegate Congress a power ... ought not to be construed as themselves to give unlimited powers, nor a part to be so taken as to destroy the whole residue of that instrument." --Thomas Jefferson, Draft Kentucky Resolutions, 1798

Title: Adams on Lust for Power 1763
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 19, 2011, 08:25:36 AM

Title: Re: Adams on Lust for Power 1763
Post by: Hello Kitty on October 19, 2011, 04:43:02 PM

Quote from: Crafty_Dog on October 19, 2011, 08:25:36 AM

"[D]emocracy will soon degenerate into an anarchy, such an anarchy that every man will do what is right in his own eyes and no man's life or property or reputation or liberty will be secure, and every one of these will soon mould itself into a system of subordination of all the moral virtues and intellectual abilities, all the powers of wealth, beauty, wit and science, to the wanton pleasures, the capricious will, and the execrable cruelty of one or a very few." --John Adams, An Essay on Man's Lust for Power, 1763

Guro, To whom was John Adams referring and addressing? The American colonies as ruled by the British?

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 19, 2011, 05:40:27 PM

Well, the date shows this was written 13 years before the Declaration of Independence. I take it as a early statement of the American Creed why we are a republic and not a democracy.

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Hello Kitty on October 19, 2011, 05:48:24 PM

Quote from: Crafty_Dog on October 19, 2011, 05:40:27 PM

Well, the date shows this was written 13 years before the Declaration of Independence. I take it as a early statement of the American Creed why we are a republic and not a democracy.

That's an important distinction. Thank you.

I think that many people these days aren't aware of what that distinction is or that it exists.

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Hello Kitty on October 19, 2011, 05:53:22 PM

For everyone's benefit:

In a Democracy, The individual, and any group of individuals composing any minority, have no protection against the unlimited power of The majority. It is a case of majority over man.

A Republic, on the other hand, has a very different purpose and an entirely different form, or system, of government. Its purpose is to control The majority strictly, as well as all others among the people, primarily to protect The individual’s God given, unalienable rights and therefore for the protection of the rights of The minority, of all minorities, and the liberties of people in general.

The definition of a Republic is: a constitutionally limited government of the representative type, created by a written Constitution--adopted by the people and changeable (from its original meaning) by them only by its amendment, with its powers divided between three separate Branches: Executive, Legislative and Judicial.

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: bigdog on October 19, 2011, 06:44:30 PM

DF,
Forgive me, but I've not heard the definition of republic that you offer below. May I ask for the dictionary, or other source, where you found it? Thank you.

Quote from: DF on October 19, 2011, 05:53:22 PM

For everyone's benefit:

In a Democracy, The individual, and any group of individuals composing any minority, have no protection against the unlimited power of The majority. It is a case of majority over man.

A Republic, on the other hand, has a very different purpose and an entirely different form, or system, of government. Its purpose is to control The majority strictly, as well as all others among the people, primarily to protect The individual’s God given, unalienable rights and therefore for the protection of the rights of The minority, of all minorities, and the liberties of people in general.

The definition of a Republic is: a constitutionally limited government of the representative type, created by a written Constitution--adopted by the people and changeable (from its original meaning) by them only by its amendment, with its powers divided between three separate Branches: Executive, Legislative and Judicial.

Title: More on the flaws of democracy-- Madison, Federalist 10, 1787
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 20, 2011, 05:51:49 AM

"[D]emocracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security, or the rights of property; and have, in general, been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths." --James Madison, Federalist No. 10, 1787

Title: Jefferson, Public Education 1817
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 24, 2011, 08:50:12 AM

"To all of which is added a selection from the elementary schools of subjects of the most promising genius, whose parents are too poor to give them further education, to be carried at the public expense through the college and university. The object is to bring into action that mass of talents which lies buried in poverty in every country, for want of the means of development, and thus give activity to a mass of mind, which, in proportion to our population, shall be double or treble of what it is in most countries." --Thomas Jefferson, letter to Jose Correa de Serra, 1817

Title: Washington, First Annual Message 1790
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 25, 2011, 06:50:36 AM

"Knowledge is, in every country, the surest basis of public happiness." --George Washington, First Annual Message, 1790

Title: Hamilton, Federalist 1, 1787
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 26, 2011, 07:54:19 AM

"Of those men who have overturned the liberties of republics, the greatest number have begun their career by paying an obsequious court to the people, commencing demagogues and ending tyrants." --Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 1, 1787

Title: Hanging with BF Forever 1776
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 27, 2011, 02:02:52 PM

"We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately." --Benjamin Franklin, at the signing of the Declaration of Independence, 1776

Title: Jefferson on the Dec. of Ind., 1825
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 28, 2011, 08:14:55 AM

"This was the object of the Declaration of Independence. Not to find out new principles, or new arguments, never before thought of, not merely to say things which had never been said before; but to place before mankind the common sense of the subject, in terms so plain and firm as to command their assent, and to justify ourselves in the independent stand we are compelled to take. Neither aiming at originality of principle or sentiment, nor yet copied from any particular and previous writing, it was intended to be an expression of the American mind, and to give to that expression the proper tone and spirit called for by the occasion." --Thomas Jefferson, letter to Henry Lee, 1825

Title: Jefferson to Adams 1821:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 31, 2011, 11:47:25 AM

"[T]he flames kindled on the 4 of July 1776, have spread over too much of the globe to be extinguished by the feeble engines of despotism; on the contrary, they will consume these engines and all who work them." --Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Adams, 1821

Title: T. Paine:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 01, 2011, 08:42:38 AM

"Everything that is right or reasonable pleads for separation. The blood of the slain, the weeping voice of nature cries; tis time to part." --Thomas Paine, Common Sense, 1776

Title: The turbulent spectacle of democracy: Madison 1787, Federalist 10
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 03, 2011, 10:32:18 AM

Title: Re: The turbulent spectacle of democracy: Madison 1787, Federalist 10
Post by: G M on November 03, 2011, 10:32:51 AM

Quote from: Crafty_Dog on November 03, 2011, 10:32:18 AM

"[D]emocracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security, or the rights of property; and have, in general, been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths." --James Madison, Federalist No. 10, 1787

Oakland?

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on November 03, 2011, 10:43:27 AM

RIOT, n. A popular entertainment given to the military by innocent bystanders.

Ambrose Bierce
The Devil's Dictionary

Title: John Adams on Property 1787
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 03, 2011, 06:04:03 PM

"The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the laws of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence. If 'Thou shalt not covet' and 'Thou shalt not steal' were not commandments of Heaven, they must be made inviolable precepts in every society before it can be civilized or made free." --John Adams, 1787

Title: Washington 1784
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 04, 2011, 06:09:35 AM

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: c - Shadow Dog on November 04, 2011, 08:53:57 AM

that quote is impossible to follow, it can be read too many ways

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 04, 2011, 11:23:11 AM

Not the best of sentence structure, but I see only one reading:

The only pre-eminence is that "annexed to legal office".

What else are you seeing?

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: c - Shadow Dog on November 04, 2011, 01:44:28 PM

in context i am helped greatly.

http://www.familytales.org/dbDisplay.php?id=ltr_thj1398 (http://www.familytales.org/dbDisplay.php?id=ltr_thj1398)

TO General Washington.

Annapolis, April 16, 1784.

Dear Sir,

I received your favor of April the 8th, by Colonel Harrison, The subject of it is interesting, and, so far as you have stood connected with it, has been matter of anxiety to me; because, whatever may be the ultimate fate of the institution of the Cincinnati, as, in its course, it draws to it some degree of disapprobation, I have wished to see you standing on ground separated from it, and that the character which will be handed to future ages at the head of our Revolution, may, in no instance, be compromitted in subordinate altercations. The subject has been at the point of my pen in every letter I have written to you, but has been still restrained by the reflection that you had among your friends more able counsellors, and, in yourself, one abler than them all. Your letter has now rendered a duty what was before a desire, and I cannot better merit your confidence than by a full and free communication of facts and sentiments, as far as they have come within my observation. When the army was about to be disbanded, and the officers to take final leave, perhaps never again to meet, it was natural for men who had accompanied each other through so many scenes of hardship, of difficulty and danger, who, in a variety of instances, must have been rendered mutually dear by those aids and good offices, to which their situations had given occasion, it was natural, I say, for these to seize with fondness any proposition which promised to bring them together again, at certain and regular periods. And this, I take for granted, was the origin and object of this institution: and I have no suspicion that they foresaw, much less intended, those mischiefs which exist perhaps in the forebodings of politicians only. I doubt, however, whether in its execution, it would be found to answer the wishes of those who framed it, and to foster those friendships it was intended to preserve. The members would be brought together at their annual assemblies no longer to encounter a common enemy, but to encounter one another in debate and sentiment. For something, I suppose, is to be done at these meetings, and, however unimportant, it will suffice to produce difference of opinion, contradiction, and irritation. The way to make friends quarrel is to put them in disputation under the public eye. An experience of near twenty years has taught me, that few friendships stand this test, and that public assemblies where every one is free to act and speak, are the most powerful looseners of the bands of private friendship. I think, therefore, that this institution would fail in its principal object, the perpetuation of the personal friendships contracted through the war.

The objections of those who are opposed to the institution shall be briefly sketched. You will readily fill them up. They urge that it is against the Confederation--against the letter of some of our constitutions--against the spirit of all of them;--that the foundation on which all these are built, is the natural equality of man, the denial of every pre-eminence but that annexed to legal office, and, particularly, the denial of a pre-eminence by birth; that however, in their present dispositions, citizens might decline accepting honorary instalments[sp.]into the order; but a time, may come, when a change of dispositions would render these flattering, when a well directed distribution of them might draw into the order all the men of talents, of office, and wealth, and in this case, would probably procure an ingraftment into the government; that in this, they will be supported by their foreign members, and the wishes and influence of foreign courts; that experience has shown that the hereditary branches of modern governments are the patrons of privilege and prerogative, and not of the natural rights of the people, whose oppressors they generally are: that besides these evils, which are remote, others may take place more immediately; that a distinction is kept up between the civil and military, which it is for the happiness of both to obliterate; that when the members assemble the, will be proposing to do something, and what that something may be, will depend on actual circumstances; that being an organized body, under habits of subordination, the first obstruction to enterprise will be already surmounted; that the moderation and virtue of a single character have probably prevented this Revolution from being closed as most others have been, by a subversion of that liberty it was intended to establish; that he is not immortal, and his successor, or some of his successors, may be led by false calculation into a less certain road to glory.

What are the sentiments of Congress on this subject, and what line they will pursue, can only be stated, conjecturally. Congress as a body, if left to themselves, will in my opinion say nothing on the subject. They may, however, be forced into a declaration by instructions from some of the States, or by other incidents. Their sentiments, if forced from them, will be unfriendly to the institution. If permitted to pursue their own path, they will check it by side-blows whenever it comes in their way, and in competitions for office, on equal or nearly equal ground, will give silent preferences to those who are not of the fraternity. My reasons for thinking this are, 1. The grounds on which they lately declined the foreign order proposed to be conferred on some of our citizens. 2. The fourth of the fundamental articles of constitution for the new States. I enclose you the report; it has been considered by Congress, recommitted and reformed by a committee, according to sentiments expressed on other parts of it, but the principle referred to, having not been controverted at all, stands in this as in the original report; it is not yet confirmed by Congress. 3. Private conversations on this subject with the members. Since the receipt of your letter I have taken occasion to extend these; not, indeed, to the military members, because, being of the order, delicacy forbade it, but to the others pretty generally; and, among these, I have as yet found but one who is not opposed to the institution, and that with an anguish of mind, though covered under a guarded silence which I have not seen produced by any circumstance before. I arrived at Philadelphia before the separation of the last Congress, and saw there and at Princeton some of its members not now in delegation. Burke's piece happened to come out at that time, which occasioned this institution to be the subject of conversation. I found the same impressions made on them which their successors have received. I hear from other quarters that it is disagreeable, generally, to such citizens as have attended to it, and, therefore, will probably be so to all, when any circumstance shall present it to the notice of all.

This, Sir, is as faithful an account of sentiments and facts as I am able to give you. You know the extent of the circle within which my observations are at present circumscribed, and can estimate how far, as forming a part of the general opinion, it may merit notice, or ought to influence your particular conduct.

It now remains to pay obedience to that part of your letter, which requests sentiments on the most eligible measures to be pursued by the society, at their next meeting. I must be far from pretending to be a judge of what would, in fact, be the most, eligible measures for the society. I can only give you the opinions of those with whom I have conversed, and who, as I have before observed, are unfriendly to it. They lead to these conclusions. 1. If the society proceed according to its institution, it will be better to make no applications to Congress on that subject, or any other, in their associated character. 2. If they should propose to modify it, so as to render it unobjectionable, I think it would not be effected without such a modification as would amount almost to annihilation: for such would it be to part with its inheritability, its organization, and its assemblies. 3. If they shall be disposed to discontinue the whole, it would remain with them to determine whether they would choose it to be done by their own act only, or by a reference of the matter to Congress, which would infallibly produce a recommendation of total discontinuance.

You will be sensible, Sir, that these communications are without reserve. I supposed such to be your wish, and mean them but as materials, with such others as you may collect, for your better judgment to work on. I consider the whole matter as between ourselves alone, having determined to take no active part in this or any thing else, which may lead to altercation, or disturb that quiet and tranquillity of mind, to which I consign the remaining portion of my life. I have been thrown back by events, on a stage where I had never more thought to appear. It is but for a time, however, and as a day-laborer, free to withdraw, or be withdrawn at will. While I remain, I shall pursue in silence the path of right, but in every situation, public or private, I shall be gratified by all occasions of rendering you service, and of convincing you there is no one, to whom your reputation and happiness are dearer than to, Sir,

your most obedient

and most humble servant,

Th: Jefferson.

Title: Wilson, Duties & rights of Parents, 1791
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 07, 2011, 06:45:38 AM

Title: 1000 posts
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 07, 2011, 06:54:32 AM

It has been a few years since I began this thread, which with some pride I note I began before the advent of the Tea Party. :lol:

For a long time the thread quiety bubbled along with a rather humble read-to-post ratio-- somewhere around 14. I see that it is now about 77!-- which given that it had to offset the lower numbers of the early era means our current ratio is somewhere distinctly above that.

This speaks to a hunger for the timeless message of our Founding Fathers who gave us this exceptional republic founded upon the American Creed. It is up to us to keep it such!

The Adventure continues!

Title: Thomas Paine 1776
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 08, 2011, 06:29:04 AM

Title: Madison, Federalist 14, 1787 Get this!
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 09, 2011, 08:16:16 AM

Title: Jefferson on fascism, 1821
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 10, 2011, 06:32:24 AM

"Were we directed from Washington when to sow, and when to reap, we should soon want bread." --Thomas Jefferson, Autobiography, 1821

Title: Jefferson 1821 on dangers of power concentrating in Washington
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 11, 2011, 04:28:32 AM

"[W]hen all government, domestic and foreign, in little as in great things, shall be drawn to Washington as the center of all power, it will render powerless the checks provided of one government on another." --Thomas Jefferson, letter to Charles Hammond, 1821

Title: Jefferson 1823
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 16, 2011, 01:44:17 PM

Title: Hamilton, NY Ratifying Convention 1788
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 23, 2011, 04:51:30 PM

"When you assemble from your several counties in the Legislature, were every member to be guided only by the apparent interest of his county, government would be impracticable. There must be a perpetual accomodation and sacrifice of local advantage to general expediency." --Alexander Hamilton, speech at the New York Ratifying Convention, 1788

Title: Washington, Thanksgiving Proclamation 1789
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 24, 2011, 09:59:13 AM

"It is the duty of all Nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey his will, to be grateful for his benefits, and humbly to implore his protection and favors." --George Washington, Thanksgiving Proclamation, 1789

Title: Big catch up post
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 06, 2011, 04:32:29 AM

Sorry I've fallen behind here folks. I now play catch up:

"Remember democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide." --John Adams, letter to John Taylor, 1814

"The State governments possess inherent advantages, which will ever give them an influence and ascendancy over the National Government, and will for ever preclude the possibility of federal encroachments. That their liberties, indeed, can be subverted by the federal head, is repugnant to every rule of political calculation." --Alexander Hamilton, speech to the New York Ratifying Convention, 1788

"The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite." --James Madison, Federalist No. 45

"The operations of the federal government will be most extensive and important in times of war and danger; those of the State governments, in times of peace and security." --James Madison, Federalist No. 45, 1788

"So that the executive and legislative branches of the national government depend upon, and emanate from the states. Every where the state sovereignties are represented; and the national sovereignty, as such, has no representation." --Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution, 1833

"The state governments have a full superintendence and control over the immense mass of local interests of their respective states, which connect themselves with the feelings, the affections, the municipal institutions, and the internal arrangements of the whole population. They possess, too, the immediate administration of justice in all cases, civil and criminal, which concern the property, personal rights, and peaceful pursuits of their own citizens." --Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution, 1833

"Another not unimportant consideration is, that the powers of the general government will be, and indeed must be, principally employed upon external objects, such as war, peace, negotiations with foreign powers, and foreign commerce. In its internal operations it can touch but few objects, except to introduce regulations beneficial to the commerce, intercourse, and other relations, between the states, and to lay taxes for the common good. The powers of the states, on the other hand, extend to all objects, which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, and liberties, and property of the people, and the internal order, improvement, and prosperity of the state." --Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution, 1833

"The true test is, whether the object be of a local character, and local use; or, whether it be of general benefit to the states. If it be purely local, congress cannot constitutionally appropriate money for the object. But, if the benefit be general, it matters not, whether in point of locality it be in one state, or several; whether it be of large, or of small extent." --Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution, 1833

"I consider the foundation of the Constitution as laid on this ground that 'all powers not delegated to the United States, by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states or to the people.' To take a single step beyond the boundaries thus specially drawn around the powers of Congress, is to take possession of a boundless field of power, not longer susceptible of any definition." --Thomas Jefferson, Opinion on the Constitutionality of a National Bank, 1791

"But ambitious encroachments of the federal government, on the authority of the State governments, would not excite the opposition of a single State, or of a few States only. They would be signals of general alarm. ... But what degree of madness could ever drive the federal government to such an extremity." --James Madison, Federalist No. 46, 1788

"And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with his wrath? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep for ever." --Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, Query 18, 1781

"I have lived, sir, a long time; and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth, that God governs in the affairs of men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without his notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without his aid?" --Benjamin Franklin, Motion for Prayers in the Constitutional Convention, 1787

"The belief in a God All Powerful wise and good, is so essential to the moral order of the world and to the happiness of man, that arguments which enforce it cannot be drawn from too many sources nor adapted with too much solicitude to the different characters and capacities impressed with it." --James Madison, letter to Frederick Beasley, 1825

"A State, I cheerfully admit, is the noblest work of man: But man, himself, free and honest, is, I speak as to this world, the noblest work of God." --James Wilson, Chisholm v. Georgia, 1793

"It is the duty of all men in society, publicly, and at stated seasons, to worship the SUPREME BEING, the great Creator and Preserver of the universe. And no subject shall be hurt, molested, or restrained, in his person, liberty, or estate, for worshipping GOD in the manner most agreeable to the dictates of his own conscience; or for his religious profession or sentiments; provided he doth not disturb the public peace, or obstruct others in their religious worship." --John Adams, Thoughts on Government, 1776

Title: Washington: Farewell to the Army 1783
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 07, 2011, 08:20:22 AM

"I now make it my earnest prayer, that God would have you, and the state over which you preside, in his holy protection, that he would incline the hearts of the citizens to cultivate a spirit of subordination and obedience to government, to entertain a brotherly affection and love for one another, for their fellow citizens of the United States at large, and particularly for their brethren who have served in the field, and finally, that he would most graciously be pleased to dispose us all, to do justice, to love mercy, and to demean ourselves with that charity, humility and pacific temper of mind, which were the characteristicks of the Divine Author of our blessed religion, and without an humble imitation of whose example in these things, we can never hope to be a happy nation." --George Washington, circular letter of farewell to the Army, 1783

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: JDN on December 07, 2011, 08:44:45 PM

"Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence." -- John Adams, 'Argument in Defense of the Soldiers in the Boston Massacre Trials', December 1770.

Title: Washington to a Jewish congregation 1790
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 10, 2011, 05:00:21 AM

"May the father of all mercies scatter light, and not darkness, upon our paths, and make us in all our several vocations useful here, and in His own due time and way everlastingly happy." --George Washington, letter to the Hebrew Congregation in Newport, 1790

Title: Alexander Hamilton 1794
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 13, 2011, 07:47:51 AM

"The instrument by which [government] must act are either the AUTHORITY of the laws or FORCE. If the first be destroyed, the last must be substituted; and where this becomes the ordinary instrument of government there is an end to liberty!" --Alexander Hamilton, Tully, No. 3, 1794

Title: T. Paine, Common Sense 1776
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 14, 2011, 05:55:34 AM

"Society in every state is a blessing, but government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one; for when we suffer or are exposed to the same miseries by a government, which we might expect in a country without government, our calamity is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer." --Thomas Paine, Common Sense, 1776

Title: Madison, Federalist 51, 1788
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 16, 2011, 08:19:21 AM

Title: Three Madison, one Jefferson
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 20, 2011, 09:33:40 AM

"Stability in government is essential to national character and to the advantages annexed to it, as well as to that repose and confidence in the minds of the people, which are among the chief blessings of civil society." --James Madison, Federalist No. 37, 1788

"The great desideratum in Government is, so to modify the sovereignty as that it may be sufficiently neutral between different parts of the Society to controul one part from invading the rights of another, and at the same time sufficiently controuled itself, from setting up an interest adverse to that of the entire Society." --James Madison, letter to Thomas Jefferson, 1787

"[A] wise and frugal government ... shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government." --Thomas Jefferson, First Inaugural Address, 1801

"It has been said that all Government is an evil. It would be more proper to say that the necessity of any Government is a misfortune. This necessity however exists; and the problem to be solved is, not what form of Government is perfect, but which of the forms is least imperfect." --James Madison, 1833

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 26, 2011, 07:21:25 PM

"And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with his wrath? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep for ever." --Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, Query 18, 1781

"As our president bears no resemblance to a king so we shall see the Senate has no similitude to nobles. First, not being hereditary, their collective knowledge, wisdom, and virtue are not precarious. For by these qualities alone are they to obtain their offices, and they will have none of the peculiar qualities and vices of those men who possess power merely because their father held it before them." --Tench Coxe, An American Citizen, No. 2, 1787

"The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it to be always kept alive. It will often be exercised when wrong, but better so than not to be exercised at all. I like a little rebellion now and then. It is like a storm in the atmosphere." --Thomas Jefferson, letter to Abigail Adams, 1787

"The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only legitimate object of good government." --Thomas Jefferson, letter to The Republican Citizens of Washington County, Maryland, 1809

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 27, 2011, 05:56:18 AM

"How prone all human institutions have been to decay; how subject the best-formed and most wisely organized governments have been to lose their check and totally dissolve; how difficult it has been for mankind, in all ages and countries, to preserve their dearest rights and best privileges, impelled as it were by an irresistible fate of despotism." --James Monroe, speech in the Virginia Ratifying Convention, 1788

Title: Franklin, 1730
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 30, 2011, 06:18:38 AM

"That wise men have in all ages thought government necessary for the good of mankind; and, that wise governments have always thought religion necessary for the well ordering and well-being of society, and accordingly have been ever careful to encourage and protect the ministers of it, paying them the highest public honours, that their doctrines might thereby meet with the greater respect among the common people." --Benjamin Franklin, On that Odd Letter of the Drum, 1730

Title: Jefferson to Adams 1813; Washington 1776
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 02, 2012, 04:00:07 AM

"The natural aristocracy I consider as the most precious gift of nature for the instruction, the trusts, and government of society. And indeed it would have been inconsistent in creation to have formed man for the social state, and not to have provided virtue and wisdom enough to manage the concerns of the society. May we not even say that that form of government is the best which provides the most - for a pure selection of these natural aristoi into the offices of government?" --Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Adams, 1813

"To form a new Government, requires infinite care, and unbounded attention; for if the foundation is badly laid the superstructure must be bad." --George Washington, letter to John Augustine Washington, 1776

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 05, 2012, 04:22:42 AM

"The freedom and happiness of man ... [are] the sole objects of all legitimate government." --Thomas Jefferson, letter to Thaddeus Kosciusko, 1810

"A good government implies two things; first, fidelity to the objects of the government; secondly, a knowledge of the means, by which those objects can be best attained." --Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution, 1833

"The pyramid of government-and a republican government may well receive that beautiful and solid form-should be raised to a dignified altitude: but its foundations must, of consequence, be broad, and strong, and deep. The authority, the interests, and the affections of the people at large are the only foundation, on which a superstructure proposed to be at once durable and magnificent, can be rationally erected." --James Wilson

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 06, 2012, 04:59:43 AM

"This I hope will be the age of experiments in government, and that their basis will be founded in principles of honesty, not of mere force." --Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Adams, 1796

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: JDN on January 08, 2012, 08:43:21 AM

While Jefferson referred to "Nature's God" in the Declaration of Independence, he preferred to keep his personal beliefs to himself, a reticence that lined up with his philosophy of individual freedom and religious tolerance. In "Notes," he put it this way: "It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg."

Title: Prescient understatement from Madison, Federalist 49, 1788
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 10, 2012, 06:13:51 AM

Title: J. Adams, 1776
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 11, 2012, 09:03:51 AM

"If there is a form of government, then, whose principle and foundation is virtue, will not every sober man acknowledge it better calculated to promote the general happiness than any other form?" --John Adams, Thoughts on Government, 1776

Title: John Adams, 1776
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 12, 2012, 09:08:19 AM

"Government is instituted for the common good; for the protection, safety, prosperity, and happiness of the people; and not for profit, honor, or private interest of any one man, family, or class of men; therefore, the people alone have an incontestable, unalienable, and indefeasible right to institute government; and to reform, alter, or totally change the same, when their protection, safety, prosperity, and happiness require it." --John Adams, Thoughts on Government, 1776

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: JDN on January 14, 2012, 08:51:29 PM

Quote from: prentice crawford on January 14, 2012, 03:48:40 PM

Woof,
I wonder if the Founding Fathers, intended us to report to the government how often we exercised any of our rights? A Federal Judge has ruled that the government can force gun store owners to report anyone that buys more than one gun at a time to them. So does this mean that on a whim of government intrusion into the lives of law abiding citizens, that they can now require us to fill out a form and turn it in to them anytime we go to church more than once a week, or say something negative about the government more than twice in the same day? If it applies to the Second Amendment it applies to all of them.
We the People, need to wake up and understand that the attacks on the Second Amendment, are attacks on all of our rights protected by the Constitution.
P.C.

:? :? :?

Title: Re: Government form required for free speech!
Post by: prentice crawford on January 14, 2012, 09:49:16 PM

Woof,
I wonder if the Founding Fathers, intended us to report to the government how often we exercised any of our rights? A Federal Judge has ruled that the government can force gun store owners to report anyone that buys more than one gun at a time to them. So does this mean that on a whim of government intrusion into the lives of law abiding citizens, that they can now require us to fill out a form and turn it in to them anytime we go to church more than once a week, or say something negative about the government more than twice in the same day? If it applies to the Second Amendment it applies to all of them.
We the People, need to wake up and understand that the attacks on the Second Amendment, are attacks on all of our rights protected by the Constitution.
P.C.

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 14, 2012, 10:39:10 PM

Please take this to the Issues in the American Creed/Constitutional Law thread.

Title: Jefferson 1786
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 17, 2012, 06:41:30 AM

"If our country, when pressed with wrongs at the point of the bayonet, had been
governed by its heads instead of its hearts, where should we have been now? Hanging
on a gallows as high as Haman's." --Thomas Jefferson, letter to Maria Cosway, 1786

Title: Ten entries
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 26, 2012, 06:22:52 AM

"Men, to act with vigour and effect, must have time to mature measures, and judgment and experience, as to the best method of applying them. They must not be hurried on to their conclusions by the passions, or the fears of the multitude. They must deliberate, as well as resolve." --Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution, 1833

"How much more do they deserve our reverence and praise, whose lives are devoted to the formation of institutions, which, when they and their children are mingled in the common dust, may continue to cherish the principles and the practice of liberty in perpetual freshness and vigour." --Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution, 1833

"The Grecians and Romans were strongly possessed of the spirit of liberty but not the principle, for at the time they were determined not to be slaves themselves, they employed their power to enslave the rest of mankind." --Thomas Paine, The American Crisis, No. 5, 1778

"Wisely, therefore, do they consider union and a good national government as necessary to put and keep them in such a situation as, instead of inviting war, will tend to repress and discourage it. That situation consists in the best possible state of defense, and necessarily depends on the government, the arms, and the resources of the country." --John Jay, Federalist No. 4

"The diversity in the faculties of men from which the rights of property originate, is not less an insuperable obstacle to a uniformity of interests. The protection of these faculties is the first object of government." --James Madison, Federalist No. 10, 1787

"t is the reason alone, of the public, that ought to control and regulate the government." --James Madison, Federalist No. 49, 1788

"The essence of Government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse." --James Madison, speech in the Virginia constitutional convention, 1829

"History by apprising [citizens] of the past will enable them to judge of the future; it will avail them of the experience of other times and other nations; it will qualify them as judges of the actions and designs of men; it will enable them to know ambition under every disguise it may assume; and knowing it, to defeat its views." --Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, Query 14, 1781

"Every child in America should be acquainted with his own country. He should read books that furnish him with ideas that will be useful to him in life and practice. As soon as he opens his lips, he should rehearse the history of his own country." --Noah Webster, On the Education of Youth in America, 1788

"Without wishing to damp the ardor of curiosity or influence the freedom of inquiry, I will hazard a prediction that, after the most industrious and impartial researchers, the longest liver of you all will find no principles, institutions or systems of education more fit in general to be transmitted to your posterity than those you have received from your ancestors." --John Adams, letter to the young men of the Philadelphia, 1798

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 31, 2012, 06:16:35 AM

"A morsel of genuine history is a thing so rare as to be always valuable." --Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Adams, 1817

"History affords us many instances of the ruin of states, by the prosecution of measures ill suited to the temper and genius of their people. The ordaining of laws in favor of one part of the nation, to the prejudice and oppression of another, is certainly the most erroneous and mistaken policy. An equal dispensation of protection, rights, privileges, and advantages, is what every part is entitled to, and ought to enjoy... These measures never fail to create great and violent jealousies and animosities between the people favored and the people oppressed; whence a total separation of affections, interests, political obligations, and all manner of connections, by which the whole state is weakened." --Benjamin Franklin, Emblematical Representations

"History will also give occasion to expatiate on the advantage of civil orders and constitutions, how men and their properties are protected by joining in societies and establishing government; their industry encouraged and rewarded, arts invented, and life made more comfortable: The advantages of liberty, mischiefs of licentiousness, benefits arising from good laws and a due execution of justice. Thus may the first principles of sound politics be fixed in the minds of youth." --Benjamin Franklin, Proposals Relating to the Education of Youth in Pennsylvania, 1749

Title: Good site on Ben Franklin
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 01, 2012, 07:49:34 AM

http://www.pbs.org/benfranklin/index.html

Title: Madison, Federalist 57, 1788
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 01, 2012, 07:52:39 AM

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: JDN on February 07, 2012, 07:10:08 AM

Thomas Jefferson, in a 1789 letter to James Madison, once said that every constitution “naturally expires at the end of 19 years” because “the earth belongs always to the living generation.”

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 07, 2012, 09:56:02 AM

Well, that's not what was passed.

"There is a certain enthusiasm in liberty, that makes human nature rise above itself, in acts of bravery and heroism." --Alexander Hamilton, The Farmer Refuted, 1775

Title: Madison, Federalist 51
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 08, 2012, 06:24:33 AM

Title: Madison, Federalist 55, 1788
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 14, 2012, 07:15:22 AM

"As there is a degree of depravity in mankind which requires a certain degree of circumspection and distrust: So there are other qualities in human nature, which justify a certain portion of esteem and confidence. Republican government presupposes the existence of these qualities in a higher degree than any other form. Were the pictures which have been drawn by the political jealousy of some among us, faithful likenesses of the human character, the inference would be that there is not sufficient virtue among men for self-government; and that nothing less than the chains of despotism can restrain them from destroying and devouring one another." --James Madison, Federalist No. 55, 1788

Title: Madison, Federalist 52, 1788
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 15, 2012, 08:07:17 AM

Title: Jefferson, letter to Hugh White 1801
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 16, 2012, 07:13:12 AM

Title: Franklin: Immigration 1784
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 17, 2012, 07:03:08 AM

"Strangers are welcome because there is room enough for them all, and therefore the old inhabitants are not jealous of them; the laws protect them sufficiently so that they have no need of the patronage of great men; and every one will enjoy securely the profits of his industry. But if he does not bring a fortune with him, he must work and be industrious to live." --Benjamin Franklin, Those Who Would Remove to America, 1784

Title: Washington's Birthday
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 20, 2012, 08:33:53 AM

"Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness." --George Washington

"The bosom of America is open to receive not only the opulent and respectable stranger, but the oppressed and persecuted of all nations and religions; whom we shall welcome to a participation of all our rights and privileges, if by decency and propriety of conduct they appear to merit the enjoyment." --George Washington, Address to the Members of the Volunteer Association of Ireland, 1783

Title: Washington on discharge of the public debt, 1793
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 21, 2012, 07:20:06 AM

"No pecuniary consideration is more urgent, than the regular redemption and discharge of the public debt: on none can delay be more injurious, or an economy of time more valuable." --George Washington, Message to the House of Representatives, 1793

Title: Jefferson, the judiciary is an irresponsible body 1821
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 22, 2012, 05:54:09 AM

"It has long, however, been my opinion, and I have never shrunk from its expression ... that the germ of dissolution of our federal government is in the constitution of the federal Judiciary; an irresponsible body, (for impeachment is scarcely a scare-crow) working like gravity by night and by day, gaining a little today and a little tomorrow, and advancing its noiseless step like a thief, over the field of jurisdiction, until all shall be usurped from the States, and the government of all be consolidated into one." --Thomas Jefferson, letter to Charles Hammond, 1821

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: ccp on February 22, 2012, 12:48:21 PM

Coincidence you post quote from T. Jefferson. while looking around the webiste of the National Muesem of African American History and Culture I came across this photo of "Jefferson", aka Isaac Granger who died a free man in the 1840s and hence this photo of him exists. He, his two brothers, and parents were slaves of Jefferson:

http://www.slaveryatmonticello.org/slavery-at-monticello/enslaved-families-monticello/granger-family

Question posed:

"how could the author of the Declaration of Independence have also been a slave owner?"

I don't know how to answer that except that the Declaration can be seen as aspirational and since no one was or is perfect we all strive to live up to its stated goal.

Title: The Real Washington
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 23, 2012, 10:24:56 AM

Alexander's Essay – February 23, 2012
The Model for Presidential Character -- George Washington
The REAL President's Day
"A few short weeks will determine the political fate of America for the present generation, and probably produce no small influence on the happiness of society through a long succession of ages to come." --George Washington (1788)

George Washington's birthday (February 22, 1732) was spontaneously celebrated nationally from the date of his death in 1799 until 1879, when Congress officially established the observance. In 1971, however, the celebration was changed from the date of his birthday to the third Monday in February, and with that change arose the generic "Presidents' Day."
Consistent with the degradation of civic knowledge since then, most Americans know little about Washington beyond his standing as our first president, and his having accepted responsibility for chopping down a cherry tree when confronted by his father. Of course, that "I cannot tell a lie" cherry tree tale is a legend, but what it portrays of Washington's character is not.
Today, the once-reverent observance of George Washington has devolved into a holiday that lumps Washington together with more recent presidential featherweights like Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and Barack Hussein Obama. The comparison is laughable, but given the implications, it is also appalling.
In this election year, we Patriots should take a moment to refresh our knowledge of the character attributes we seek in a president. Moreover, as the foundation of our nation, built by Washington and our other Founders and defended by generations of American Patriots since, is being undermined by the current generation of political oppressors, I encourage you to share this knowledge with others.
Perhaps no group is more in need of a proper understanding of American Liberty than those whose civic knowledge has been severely disabled by academic oppressors.
For example, consider how intellectually disabled a generation of students mentored by Mount Holyoke "presidential historian" Joseph Ellis must be, given his assertion in Time Magazine this week that "[Washington] began the political tradition that produced a Union victory in the Civil War, the Federal Reserve Board, Social Security, Medicare, and most recently, Obamacare. He had no patience in his own time with a states' rights interpretation of the Constitution and would have found the conservative agenda of the modern Republican Party and its Tea Party allies a repudiation of all he stood for."
Of course, Time's editors failed to issue a disclaimer noting that their esteemed source is a fraud and fabricator. In 2001, the Boston Globe revealed that Ellis had been telling his spellbound young students tall tales of his involvement in the civil rights movement in the South, of his valor as a combat platoon leader in Vietnam, and of his later activities as an intrepid anti-war leader at Yale. All lies.
Setting all this aside, however, Ellis and his cadres of historical revisionists have but one goal -- to subvert our Constitution and render it nothing more than what Thomas Jefferson described as "a mere thing of wax ... which they may twist and shape into any form they please."
Post Your Opinion: What are you doing to promote civic education for young Americans?
George Washington, and every president since, has sworn to uphold our Constitution, as prescribed in Article II, Section 1, which specifies: "Before he enter on the Execution of his Office, he shall take the following Oath or Affirmation: 'I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.'"
Unfortunately for our Republic and for the future of Liberty, too many of them have forsaken that oath in exchange for partisan power.
Washington, however, was steadfast in his devotion and obedience to our Constitution, and his presidential character is a model for all generations.
He was chosen by unanimous decision of the Second Continental Congress as Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army in 1775, by delegates as President of the Constitutional Convention in 1787, and as our first national president by the electoral colleges of 1789 and 1792.
Despite modernist revision, it is evident through his own words, and those who knew him well, that Washington was a devoted Christian and demonstrated the character and humility according to his convictions. Though he was a strong proponent of religious liberty, it is his Christian spirit, which fortified his standing as the greatest political leader in history.

Washington astride Traveller
After having the new Declaration of Independence read to his troops, General Washington ordered chaplains for every regiment with the prescription that "every officer and man, will endeavour so to live, and act, as becomes a Christian Soldier, defending the dearest Rights and Liberties of his country."
After the harsh winter of Valley Forge in 1778, he wrote, "While we are zealously performing the duties of good citizens and soldiers, we certainly ought not to be inattentive to the higher duties of religion. To the distinguished character of Patriot, it should be our highest glory to add the more distinguished character of Christian."
At the time, Reverend Henry Muhlenberg of a Lutheran church near Valley Forge wrote, "I heard a fine example today, namely, that His Excellency General Washington rode around among his army yesterday and admonished each and every one to fear God, to put away the wickedness that has set in and become so general, and to practice the Christian virtues."
At the conclusion of the Revolutionary War, George III heard that Washington was voluntarily laying down his sword to return to his beloved family and farm, and responded, "If he does that, he will be the greatest man in the world." And, of course, Washington did.
In 1783, Washington wrote the 13 governors of the several states, "I now make it my earnest prayer, that God would have you, and that state over which you preside, in His holy protection; that He would incline the hearts of the citizens to cultivate a spirit of subordination and obedience to government; to entertain a brotherly affection and love for one another, for their fellow-citizens of the United States at large, and particularly for their brethren who have served in the field; and finally, that He would most graciously be pleased to dispose us all to justice, to love mercy, and to demean ourselves with that charity, humility and pacific temper of mind which were the characteristics of the Divine Author of our blessed religion, and without an humble imitation of whose examples in these things, we can never hope to be a happy nation. I have the Honor to be, with much esteem and respect, Sir, your Excellency's most obedient and most humble servant."
As president in 1789, Washington wrote, "No man who is profligate in his morals, or a bad member of the civil community, can possibly be a true Christian."
His Thanksgiving proclamation declared, "It is the duty of all Nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey his will, to be grateful for his benefits, and humbly to implore his protection and favor."
To gain real insight into Washington as president, it would be sufficient to read his First Inaugural Address, delivered on April 30, 1789, and his Farewell Address of September 19, 1796. These two addresses embody the real George Washington, and the true spirit of a Patriot.
Post Your Opinion: What other presidents were outstanding models of national character?
In the former, he stated, "The preservation of the sacred fire of liberty, and the destiny of the republican model of government, are justly considered as deeply, perhaps as finally, staked on the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American People."
In the latter, he wrote, "The basis of our political systems is the right of the people to make and to alter their Constitutions of Government. But the Constitution which at any time exists, till changed by an explicit and authentic act of the whole people, is sacredly obligatory upon all. The very idea of the power and the right of the people to establish Government presupposes the duty of every individual to obey the established Government."
He made plain in his Farewell, "Of all the dispositions and habits, which lead to political prosperity, Religion and Morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of Patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of Men and Citizens. The mere Politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect and to cherish them. A volume could not trace all their connexions with private and public felicity. ... Let us with caution indulge the supposition, that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect, that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle."

Title: Read this one with care
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 24, 2012, 07:16:33 AM

"I consider the government of the United States as interdicted by the constitution from intermeddling with religious institutions, their doctrines, discipline, or exercises. This results not only from the provision that no law shall be made respecting the establishment or free exercise of religion, but from that also which reserves to the States the powers not delegated to the United States. Certainly, no power to prescribe any religious exercise or to assume authority in any religious discipline has been delegated to the general government. It must then rest with the States." --Thomas Jefferson, letter to Samuel Miller, 1808

Title: Returning "Presidents' Day" to "Washington's Birthday"; Franklin
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 28, 2012, 06:18:48 AM

http://thehill.com/homenews/house/212913-presidents-day-should-be-all-about-george-lawmakers-say

"A man may, if he know not how to save, keep his nose to the grindstone, and die not worth a groat at last." --Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richards Almanack, 1742

Title: Jefferson to Adams 1817
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 29, 2012, 07:09:05 AM

"Men of energy of character must have enemies; because there are two sides to every question, and taking one with decision, and acting on it with effect, those who take the other will of course be hostile in proportion as they feel that effect." --Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Adams, 1817

Title: Jefferson: 1781
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 01, 2012, 07:09:20 AM

"It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself. Subject opinion to coercion: whom will you make your inquisitors?" --Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, Query 17, 1781

Title: GW 1776
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 02, 2012, 07:23:45 AM

"We have therefore to resolve to conquer or die: Our won country's honor, all call upon us for vigorous and manly exertion, and if we now shamefully fail, we shall become infamous to the whole world. Let us therefore rely upon the goodness of the cause, and the aid of the supreme being, in whose hands victory is, to animate and encourage us to great and noble actions." --George Washington, 1776

Title: Madison, 1798 Virginia Resolutions
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 05, 2012, 04:31:01 AM

"The right of freely examining public characters and measures, and of free communication among the people thereon ... has ever been justly deemed the only effectual guardian of every other right." --James Madison, Virginia Resolutions, 1798

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 07, 2012, 08:14:07 AM

"All see, and most admire, the glare which hovers round the external trappings of elevated office. To me there is nothing in it, beyond the lustre which may be reflected from its connection with a power of promoting human felicity." --George Washington, letter to Catherine Macaulay Graham, 1790

Title: Washington to Lafayette 1785
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 08, 2012, 06:21:23 AM

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 12, 2012, 07:21:35 AM

"My confidence is that there will for a long time be virtue and good sense enough in our countrymen to correct abuses." --Thomas Jefferson, letter to Edward Rutledge, 1788

Title: Madison, Fed #44, 1788
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 13, 2012, 06:43:55 AM

"What is to be the consequence, in case the Congress shall misconstrue this part [the necessary and proper clause] of the Constitution and exercise powers not warranted by its true meaning, I answer the same as if they should misconstrue or enlarge any other power vested in them ... the success of the usurpation will depend on the executive and judiciary departments, which are to expound and give effect to the legislative acts; and in a last resort a remedy must be obtained from the people, who can by the elections of more faithful representatives, annul the acts of the usurpers." --James Madison, Federalist No. 44, 1788

Title: President Washington
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 14, 2012, 07:52:39 AM

"The executive branch of this government never has, nor will suffer, while I preside, any improper conduct of its officers to escape with impunity." --George Washington, letter to Gouverneur Morris, 1795

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 15, 2012, 05:18:01 AM

"To cherish and stimulate the activity of the human mind, by multiplying the objects of enterprise, is not among the least considerable of the expedients, by which the wealth of a nation may be promoted." --Alexander Hamilton, Report on Manufactures, 1791

Title: Jefferson letter to E. Coles 1814
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 16, 2012, 06:47:19 AM

"I had always hoped that the younger generation receiving their early impressions after the flame of liberty had been kindled in every breast ... would have sympathized with oppression wherever found, and proved their love of liberty beyond their own share of it." --Thomas Jefferson, letter to Edward Coles, 1814

Title: Story, 1833
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 19, 2012, 05:49:27 AM

"Republics are created by the virtue, public spirit, and intelligence of the citizens. They fall, when the wise are banished from the public councils, because they dare to be honest, and the profligate are rewarded, because they flatter the people, in order to betray them." --Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution, 1833

Title: Jefferson on God and Natural Rights, 1774
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 20, 2012, 03:44:49 AM

"The God who gave us life gave us liberty at the same time; the hand of force may destroy, but cannot disjoin them." --Thomas Jefferson, Rights of British America, 1774

Title: Franklin, 1789- death and taxes
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 21, 2012, 07:48:01 AM

Title: John Jay, Federalist 2, 1787
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 22, 2012, 05:29:51 AM

"To all general purposes we have uniformly been one people each individual citizen everywhere enjoying the same national rights, privileges, and protection. As a nation we have made peace and war; as a nation we have vanquished our common enemies; as a nation we have formed alliances, and made treaties, and entered into various compacts and conventions with foreign states." --John Jay, Federalist No. 2, 1787

Title: Thomas Paine, Rights of Man 1792
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 26, 2012, 07:41:55 AM

"A little matter will move a party, but it must be something great that moves a nation." --Thomas Paine, Rights of Man, 1792

Title: B. Rush on Law 1788
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 30, 2012, 08:07:57 AM

Title: Jefferson on Reason 1822
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 02, 2012, 07:45:53 AM

Title: J. Adams in 1776
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 04, 2012, 06:38:07 AM

"Objects of the most stupendous magnitude, and measure in which the lives and liberties of millions yet unborn are intimately interested, are now before us. We are in the very midst of a revolution the most complete, unexpected and remarkable of any in the history of nations." --John Adams, letter to William Cushing, 1776

Title: Hamilton on the Judiciary Federalist 78, 1778
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 05, 2012, 09:06:14 AM

Title: Jefferson 1785
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 06, 2012, 10:02:53 AM

"Give up money, give up fame, give up science, give the earth itself and all it contains rather than do an immoral act. And never suppose that in any possible situation, or under any circumstances, it is best for you to do a dishonorable thing, however slightly so it may appear to you... From the practice of the purest virtue, you may be assured you will derive the most sublime comforts in every moment of life, and in the moment of death." --Thomas Jefferson, letter to Peter Carr, 1785

Title: Hamilton: Fed 21, Consumption Taxes
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 09, 2012, 08:56:58 AM

"It is a singular advantage of taxes on articles of consumption that they contain in their own nature a security against excess. They prescribe their own limit, which cannot be exceeded without defeating the end purposed -- that is, an extension of the revenue." --Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 21

Title: Well, you can't always be right
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 10, 2012, 04:24:54 AM

"It will not be too strong to say, that there will be a constant probability of seeing the station [of President] filled by characters pre-eminent for ability and virtue." --Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 68, 1788

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 12, 2012, 04:25:42 AM

Title: J Adams: Thoughts on Govt.
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 20, 2012, 03:30:06 AM

Title: Jefferson: Republicanism
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 23, 2012, 06:57:53 AM

"If, then, the control of the people over the organs of their government be the
measure of its republicanism, and I confess I know no other measure, it must be
agreed that our governments have much less of republicanism than ought to have been
expected; in other words, that the people have less regular control over their
agents, than their rights and their interests require." --Thomas Jefferson, letter
to John Taylor, 1816

Title: Hamilton, Federalist 31, 1788
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 24, 2012, 03:55:25 PM

"In disquisitions of every kind there are certain primary truths, or first
principles, upon which all subsequent reasoning must depend." --Alexander Hamilton,
Federalist No. 31, 1788

Title: Madison, 1829, Persons and Property
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 02, 2012, 06:19:27 AM

"It is sufficiently obvious, that persons and property are the two great subjects on which Governments are to act; and that the rights of persons, and the rights of property, are the objects, for the protection of which Government was instituted. These rights cannot well be separated." --James Madison, Speech at the Virginia Convention, 1829

Title: Jefferson 1826
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 03, 2012, 06:33:37 AM

"All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride legitimately, by the grace of God." --Thomas Jefferson, letter to Roger C. Weightman, 1826

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 04, 2012, 09:05:40 AM

Title: Reagan
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 07, 2012, 02:32:29 PM

"An opportunity society awaits us. We need only believe in ourselves and give men and women of faith, courage, and vision the freedom to build it. Let others run down America and seek to punish success. Let them call you greedy for not wanting government to take more and more of your earnings. Let them defend their tombstone society of wage and price guidelines, mandatory quotas, tax increases, planned shortages, and shared sacrifices. We want no part of that mess, thank you very much." --Ronald Reagan

Title: Washington, First Inaugural Address, 1789
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 08, 2012, 06:39:40 AM

"There exists in the economy and course of nature, an indissoluble union between virtue and happiness; between duty and advantage; between the genuine maxims of an honest and magnanimous policy, and the solid rewards of public prosperity and felicity; since we ought to be no less persuaded that the propitious smiles of Heaven can never be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and right, which Heaven itself has ordained." --George Washington, First Inaugural Address, 1789

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 09, 2012, 08:43:00 AM

Title: Madison
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 09, 2012, 06:29:33 PM

"But the mild voice of reason, pleading the cause of an enlarged and permanent interest, is but too often drowned, before public bodies as well as individuals, by the clamors of an impatient avidity for immediate and immoderate gain." --James Madison

Title: S. Adams, 1772 Life, Liberty, Property, & Defense thereof; B Franklin: Felicity
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 10, 2012, 10:31:05 AM

"Among the natural rights [of the people] are these: first, a right to life; secondly, to liberty; thirdly to property; together with the right to support and defend them in the best manner they can." --Samuel Adams (1772)

"Human felicity is produced not so much by great pieces of good fortune that seldom happen, as by little advantages that occur every day." --Benjamin Franklin, Autobiography, 1771

Title: Madison on Property, 1792
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 11, 2012, 09:08:40 AM

"A just security to property is not afforded by that government, under which unequal taxes oppress one species of property and reward another species." --James Madison, Essay on Property, 1792

Title: Reagan; state control of private property is a form of socialism
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 14, 2012, 09:48:44 AM

"t doesn't require expropriation or confiscation of private property or business to impose socialism on a people. What does it mean whether you hold the deed or the title to your business or property if the government holds the power of life and death over that business or property? Such machinery already exists. The government can find some charge to bring against any concern it chooses to prosecute. Every businessman has his own tale of harassment. Somewhere a perversion has taken place. Our natural, inalienable rights are now considered to be a dispensation of government, and freedom has never been so fragile, so close to slipping from our grasp as it is at this moment." --Ronald Reagan

Title: Jefferson, First Inaugural Addresss, 1801
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 16, 2012, 05:49:38 AM

"Sometimes it is said that man can not be trusted with government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the forms of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question." --Thomas Jefferson, First Inaugural Address, 1801

Title: Hamilton, taxes, Federalist 35
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 17, 2012, 08:35:50 AM

Title: Nathan Hale
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 24, 2012, 05:31:34 AM

"I am not influenced by the expectation of promotion or pecuniary reward. I wish to be useful, and every kind of service necessary for the public good, become honorable by being necessary." --Nathan Hale, remark to Captain William Hull, who had attempted to dissuade him from volunteering for a spy mission for General Washington, 1776

Title: Madison, 1788
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 25, 2012, 05:47:15 AM

"The legislative department is everywhere extending the sphere of its activity and drawing all power into its impetuous vortex." --James Madison, Federalist No. 48, 1788

Title: Washington to Madison, 1788
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 28, 2012, 08:06:09 AM

"The consciousness of having discharged that duty which we owe to our country is superior to all other considerations." --George Washington, letter to James Madison, 1788

Title: Jefferson, Constitutional Construction, 1823
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 29, 2012, 08:32:44 AM

"On every question of construction carry ourselves back to the time when the Constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit manifested in the debates and instead of trying what meaning may be squeezed out of the text or invented against it, conform to the probable one in which it was passed." --Thomas Jefferson, letter to William Johnson, 1823

Title: S. Adams, Voting, 1781
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 01, 2012, 08:08:32 AM

Title: Story 1833; Jefferson
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 04, 2012, 06:41:40 AM

"Let the American youth never forget, that they possess a noble inheritance, bought by the toils, and sufferings, and blood of their ancestors; and capacity, if wisely improved, and faithfully guarded, of transmitting to their latest posterity all the substantial blessings of life, the peaceful enjoyment of liberty, property, religion, and independence." --Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution, 1833

"The multiplication of public offices, increase of expense beyond income, growth and entailment of a public debt, are indications soliciting the employment of the pruning knife." --Thomas Jefferson

Title: Madison on the General Welfare clause 1792
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 06, 2012, 06:41:27 AM

Title: Hamilton, Federalist 1, 1787
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 08, 2012, 08:27:58 AM

Title: Ash heap of history: Reagan - 30 years ago
Post by: DougMacG on June 08, 2012, 10:02:13 AM

Credits to Wash Post and Steven Hayward at Powerline for covering this.

"Today is the 30th anniversary of Reagan’s famous address in Westminster Hall, London, where he outraged fashionable opinion with his argument that it was Communism that would end up “on the ash heap of history.”

Read it here: http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2002/06/reagans-westminster-speech

Some video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Z4kP0qURm98

Title: Madison 1790
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 13, 2012, 09:52:44 AM

Title: Jefferson 1824
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 14, 2012, 09:07:09 AM

"I think we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious." --Thomas Jefferson, letter to William Ludlow, 1824

Title: Jefferson to Cooper 1802
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 15, 2012, 10:21:58 AM

"If we can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people, under the pretence of taking care of them, they must become happy." --Thomas Jefferson, letter to Thomas Cooper, 1802

Title: Candidus 1772
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 18, 2012, 09:51:25 AM

"f the public are bound to yield obedience to laws to which they cannot give their approbation, they are slaves to those who make such laws and enforce them." --Candidus, in the Boston Gazette, 1772

Title: J. Adams, 1776
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 20, 2012, 07:17:18 AM

Title: Gallatin on The Bill of Rights, 1789
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 21, 2012, 12:11:08 PM

"The whole of that Bill [of Rights] is a declaration of the right of the people at large or considered as individuals... t establishes some rights of the individual as unalienable and which consequently, no majority has a right to deprive them of." --Albert Gallatin, letter to Alexander Addison, 1789

Title: Muhlenberg, a time to fight 1776
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 22, 2012, 01:01:25 PM

Title: Col. Joseph Reed 1775
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 25, 2012, 06:26:27 AM

"I have no notion of being hanged for half treason. When a subject draws his sword against his prince, he must cut his way through, if he means afterward to sit down in safety." --Colonel Joseph Reed, to Mr. Pettit, 1775

Title: Beccaria quoted by Jefferson re the carrying of arms
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 27, 2012, 06:55:27 AM

Title: George Mason, 1788: motives of a legislator
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 28, 2012, 08:06:50 AM

"Nothing so strongly impels a man to regard the interest of his constituents, as the certainty of returning to the general mass of the people, from whence he was taken, where he must participate in their burdens." --George Mason, speech in the Virginia Ratifying Convention, 1788

Title: Jefferson, excessive taxation 1798
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 29, 2012, 07:53:56 AM

"Excessive taxation ... will carry reason and reflection to every man's door, and particularly in the hour of election." --Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Taylor, 1798

Title: Madison 1834
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 03, 2012, 08:16:59 AM

Title: J. Adams 1788
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 04, 2012, 09:25:08 AM

"The deliberate union of so great and various a people in such a place, is without all partiality or prejudice, if not the greatest exertion of human understanding, the greatest single effort of national deliberation that the world has ever seen." --John Adams, quoted in a letter from Rufus King to Theophilus Parsons, 1788

Title: Jefferson, debt, 1816
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 09, 2012, 08:40:37 AM

"The principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale." --Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Taylor, 1816

Title: T. Paine, 1776
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 12, 2012, 10:02:49 AM

"Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly; it is dearness only that gives everything its value. I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress and grow brave by reflection. 'Tis the business of little minds to shrink; but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles unto death." --Thomas Paine in The American Crisis, 1776

Title: B. Rush 1786-- We've only begun.
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 13, 2012, 06:34:21 AM

"The American war is over; but this far from being the case with the American revolution. On the contrary, nothing but the first act of the drama is closed. It remains yet to establish and perfect our new forms of government, and to prepare the principles, morals, and manners of our citizens for these forms of government after they are established and brought to perfection." --Benjamin Rush, letter to Price, 1786

Title: Jefferson, 1816: Taking from one to give to others
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 15, 2012, 01:43:49 PM

"To take from one, because it is thought his own industry and that of his fathers has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers, have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association, the guarantee to everyone the free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it." --Thomas Jefferson, letter to Joseph Milligan, 1816

Title: Patrick Henry VA Ratifying Convention 1788; Reagan on guns
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 16, 2012, 08:22:01 AM

"Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect every one who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are inevitably ruined." --Patrick Henry, speech in the Virginia Ratifying Convention, 1788

"The gun has been called the great equalizer, meaning that a small person with a gun is equal to a large person, but it is a great equalizer in another way, too. It insures that the people are the equal of their government whenever that government forgets that it is servant and not master of the governed." --Ronald Reagan

Title: Ben Franklin: Poor Richard's almanack, 1746
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 17, 2012, 03:27:09 AM

"Wish not so much to live long as to live well." --Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard's Almanack, 1746

Title: Washington, draft of first inaugural address 1789
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 19, 2012, 08:54:37 AM

Title: Madison, Federalist 46, 1788
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 26, 2012, 04:32:30 AM

"Besides the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation, the existence of subordinate governments, to which the people are attached and by which the militia officers are appointed, forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition, more insurmountable than any which a simple government of any form can admit of." --James Madison, Federalist No. 46, 1788

Title: Washington: How to enslave the people 1788
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 27, 2012, 06:55:02 AM

"[W]hen the resolution of enslaving America was formed in Great Britain, the British Parliament was advised by an artful man, - who was governor of Pennsylvania, to disarm the people; that it was the best and most effectual way to enslave them; but that they should not do it openly, but weaken them, and let them sink gradually, by totally disusing and neglecting the militia." --George Mason, speech in the Virginia Ratifying Convention, 1788

Title: T. Paine, Common Sense, 1776
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 30, 2012, 07:11:56 AM

"Now is the seedtime of continental union, faith and honor. The least fracture now, will be like a name engraved with the point of a pin on the tender rind of a young oak; the wound would enlarge with the tree, and posterity read in it full grown characters." --Thomas Paine, Common Sense, 1776

Title: B Franklin, 1742
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 31, 2012, 08:41:43 AM

"A man may, if he know not how to save, keep his nose to the grindstone, and die not wirth a groat at last." --Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard's Almanack, 1742

Title: J. Adams: national morality, 1778
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 01, 2012, 09:04:06 AM

"The foundation of national morality must be laid in private families. ... How is it possible that children can have any just sense of the sacred obligations of morality or religion if, from their earliest infancy, they learn their mothers live in habitual infidelity to their fathers, and their fathers in as constant infidelity to their mothers?" --John Adams, Diary, 1778

Title: Washsington, first inaugural 1789
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 02, 2012, 09:24:18 AM

"[T]here exists in the economy and course of nature, an indissoluble union between virtue and happiness; between duty and advantage; between the genuine maxims of an honest and magnanimous policy, and the solid rewards of public prosperity and felicity." --George Washington, First Inaugural Address, 1789

Title: Webster 1788
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 04, 2012, 12:07:12 PM

"The virtues of men are of more consequence to society than their abilities; and for this reason, the heart should be cultivated with more assiduity than the head." --Noah Webster, On the Education of Youth in America, 1788

Title: Jefferson, Notes on VA, 1781
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 06, 2012, 07:04:57 AM

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 20, 2012, 03:38:11 AM

"How prone all human institutions have been to decay; how subject the best-formed
and most wisely organized governments have been to lose their check and totally
dissolve; how difficult it has been for mankind, in all ages and countries, to
preserve their dearest rights and best privileges, impelled as it were by an
irresistible fate of despotism." --James Monroe, speech in the Virginia Ratifying
Convention, 1788

Title: Jefferson, 1781: Dependence
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 24, 2012, 05:28:24 AM

"Dependence begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and
prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition." --Thomas Jefferson, Notes on
Virginia, Query 19, 1781

Title: Thomas Paine, Why we fight
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 27, 2012, 07:56:22 AM

"We fight not to enslave, but to set a country free, and to make room upon the earth
for honest men to live in." --Thomas Paine, The Crisis, no. 4, 1777

Title: Three from Jefferson
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 29, 2012, 09:31:14 AM

“Difference of opinion leads to enquiry, and enquiry to truth; and that, I am sure, is the ultimate and sincere object of us both. We both value too much the freedom of opinion sanctioned by our Constitution, not to cherish its exercise even where in opposition to ourselves.” ~Thomas Jefferson

"The republican is the only form of government which is not eternally at open or
secret war with the rights of mankind." --Thomas Jefferson, Letter to William
Hunter, 1790

"[A] wise and frugal government ... shall restrain men from injuring one another,
shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and
improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned.
This is the sum of good government." --Thomas Jefferson

Title: Madison, Federalist 44, 1788, the necessary and proper clause
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 30, 2012, 09:27:36 AM

927

"What is to be the consequence, in case the Congress shall misconstrue this part
[the necessary and proper clause] of the Constitution and exercise powers not
warranted by its true meaning, I answer the same as if they should misconstrue or
enlarge any other power vested in them ... the success of the usurpation will depend
on the executive and judiciary departments, which are to expound and give effect to
the legislative acts; and in a last resort a remedy must be obtained from the
people, who can by the elections of more faithful representatives, annul the acts of
the usurpers." --James Madison, Federalist No. 44, 1788

Title: Re: Our Founding Fathers: "annul the acts of the usurpers"
Post by: DougMacG on August 30, 2012, 04:26:33 PM

"...and in a last resort a remedy must be obtained from the people, who can by the elections of more faithful representatives, annul the acts of the usurpers."

Prescient! Exactly what I took from the Ryan speech.

Title: John Adams, 1818: the nature of the American Revolution
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 31, 2012, 05:59:05 AM

"But what do we mean by the American Revolution? Do we mean the American war? The
Revolution was effected before the war commenced. The Revolution was in the minds
and hearts of the people; a change in their religious sentiments, of their duties
and obligations... This radical change in the principles, opinions, sentiments, and
affections of the people was the real American Revolution." --John Adams, letter to
H. Niles, 1818

Title: Jefferson, the necessity of taking up arms 1775
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 03, 2012, 09:12:51 AM

"With hearts fortified with these animating reflections, we most solemnly, before
God and the world, declare, that, exerting the utmost energy of those powers, which
our beneficent Creator hath graciously bestowed upon us, the arms we have compelled
by our enemies to assume, we will, in defiance of every hazard, with unabating
firmness and perseverance employ for the preservation of our liberties; being with
one mind resolved to die freemen rather than to live as slaves." --John Dickinson
and Thomas Jefferson, Declaration of the Cause and Necessity of Taking up Arms, 1775

Title: B. Franklin; J. Adams, Democracy and the lust for power 1763; more
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 04, 2012, 07:44:34 AM

"Work as if you were to live 100 Years, Pray as if you were to die To-morrow."
--Benjamin Franklin

"[D]emocracy will soon degenerate into an anarchy, such an anarchy that every man
will do what is right in his own eyes and no man's life or property or reputation or
liberty will be secure, and every one of these will soon mould itself into a system
of subordination of all the moral virtues and intellectual abilities, all the powers
of wealth, beauty, wit and science, to the wanton pleasures, the capricious will,
and the execrable cruelty of one or a very few." --John Adams, An Essay on Man's
Lust for Power, 1763

Title: Jefferson: History, 1781
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 05, 2012, 06:49:32 AM

Title: Jefferson, Head vs. Heart 1786
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 10, 2012, 08:42:34 AM

Title: Witherspoon, 1776
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 11, 2012, 05:00:53 AM

"There is not a single instance in history in which civil liberty was lost, and religious liberty preserved entire. If therefore we yield up our temporal property, we at the same time deliver the conscience into bondage." --John Witherspoon, The Dominion of Providence Over the Passions of Men, 1776

Title: Sounds like we are fuct
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 12, 2012, 04:55:30 AM

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 13, 2012, 06:24:41 AM

"The state governments have a full superintendence and control over the immense mass of local interests of their respective states, which connect themselves with the feelings, the affections, the municipal institutions, and the internal arrangements of the whole population. They possess, too, the immediate administration of justice in all cases, civil and criminal, which concern the property, personal rights, and peaceful pursuits of their own citizens." --Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution, 1833

Title: Washington
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 14, 2012, 06:32:17 AM

"My policy has been, and will continue to be, while I have the honor to remain in the administration of the government, to be upon friendly terms with, but independent of, all the nations of the earth. To share in the broils of none. To fulfil our own engagements. To supply the wants, and be carriers for them all: Being thoroughly convinced that it is our policy and interest to do so." --George Washington, letter to Gouverneur Morris, 1795

Title: Happy Constitution Day!
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 17, 2012, 09:00:57 AM

Brief • September 17, 2012
The Foundation
"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America." --preamble of the Constitution of the United States of America
Constitution Day 2012

The U.S. Constitution
Today, Sept. 17, 2012, marks the 225th anniversary of the signing of our Constitution at the Philadelphia (Constitution) Convention in 1787. The best way to honor the day might be to read it. It's up to "We the People" to hold our elected representatives accountable for failing to honor their oaths.

Mark Alexander has an extensive archive of columns on the Constitution as it relates to various subjects over the years. Don't miss it!

Essential Liberty

"Monday, Sept. 17, marks the 225th anniversary of the signing of the nation's second great founding document, the Constitution that provides Americans with limited government. ... The Constitution was drafted more than 11 years after the Declaration. The United States had won independence but was struggling under the weak Articles of Confederation. The Founding Fathers wanted to draft a document that would provide an effective but carefully limited federal government. Through a series of compromises, they did just that. They designed three branches of government -- legislative, executive and judicial -- that would check each other. If one tried to usurp too much power, the others would have an interest in bringing it back into line. Just as competition brings down prices in economics, competition would tend to keep any particular branch of government from acquiring too much power. ... The Constitution has held up well for more than two centuries, with only occasional modifications (the 27 amendments) through the years. Of course, people used to be a bit more serious about the idea that the Constitution said what it meant and meant what it said. Any 21st-century celebration of the Constitution should take note that the country is no longer keeping faith with its constitutional principles. Today, most 'laws' actually are rules and regulations enacted by bureaucrats in government agencies, not statutes passed by elected lawmakers. Even when Congress does pass legislation, such as the Dodd-Frank financial reform law or Obamacare, lawmakers leave many blanks and expect rule-makers to fill them in. That means the bureaucracy, peopled with federal 'experts,' essentially exists as an unelected fourth branch of government. ... Our constitutional framework of limited government requires a president who will actively use his granted powers but also recognize the strict limits on those powers. After the Constitution was complete, Benjamin Franklin noted that it made the country 'a republic, if you can keep it.' This Constitution Day, let's honor the framers and respect their work by changing America's course -- and returning to our constitutional roots." --Heritage Foundation President Ed Feulner

Also see http://blog.heritage.org/2012/09/14/10-steps-to-save-the-constitution/

Title: Jefferson's Second Inaugural Address, 1805
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 18, 2012, 06:44:12 AM

"We are firmly convinced, and we act on that conviction, that with nations as with individuals our interests soundly calculated will ever be found inseparable from our moral duties, and history bears witness to the fact that a just nation is trusted on its word when recourse is had to armaments and wars to bridle others." --Thomas Jefferson, Second Inaugural Address, 1805

Title: Madison, Federalist 14, 1787
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 19, 2012, 05:53:14 AM

Title: Washington, 1788
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 20, 2012, 06:30:43 AM

"No country upon earth ever had it more in its power to attain these blessings than United America. Wondrously strange, then, and much to be regretted indeed would it be, were we to neglect the means and to depart from the road which Providence has pointed us to so plainly; I cannot believe it will ever come to pass." --George Washington, letter to Benjamin Lincoln, 1788

Title: John Adams: 1808
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 21, 2012, 04:05:16 AM

"Our obligations to our country never cease but with our lives." --John Adams, letter to Benjamin Rush, 1808

Title: Jefferson on the general welfare clause, 1791
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 24, 2012, 09:32:45 AM

"They are not to do anything they please to provide for the general welfare, but only to lay taxes for that purpose. To consider the latter phrase not as describing the purpose of the first, but as giving a distinct and independent power to do any act they please which may be good for the Union, would render all the preceding and subsequent enumerations of power completely useless. It would reduce the whole instrument to a single phrase, that of instituting a Congress with power to do whatever would be for the good of the United States; and as they would be the sole judges of the good or evil, it would be also a power to do whatever evil they please...Certainly no such universal power was meant to be given them. It was intended to lace them up straightly within the enumerated powers and those without which, as means, these powers could not be carried into effect." --Thomas Jefferson, Opinion on a National Bank, 1791

Title: Adams, 1765
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 26, 2012, 06:57:47 AM

Title: S. Adams, 1775
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 27, 2012, 05:23:40 AM

"No people will tamely surrender their liberties, nor can any be easily subdued, when knowledge is diffusd and virtue is preserved. On the contrary, when people are universally ignorant, and debauchd in their manners, they will sink under their own weight without the aid of foreign invaders." --Samuel Adams, letter to James Warren, 1775

Title: What would our Founding Fathers say today?
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 27, 2012, 11:33:29 AM

http://thenewfounders.net/

Title: Jefferson, 1823, on States Rights
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 28, 2012, 04:35:59 AM

Title: The role of Arisototle and Augustine
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 01, 2012, 07:41:12 AM

http://www.colsoncenter.org/the-center/columns/indepth/18537-aristotle-and-augustine

Title: Madison, 1816: Peace, War, Tribute
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 01, 2012, 08:14:30 AM

second post of morning

"It is a principle incorporated into the settled policy of America, that as peace is better than war, war is better than tribute." --James Madison, letter to the Dey of Algiers, 1816

Title: Washington, first inaugural 1789
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 02, 2012, 05:08:51 AM

Title: Wasshington, First Inaugural 1789
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 05, 2012, 08:38:13 AM

Title: Jefferson, First Inaugural Address 1801
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 08, 2012, 10:15:41 AM

Title: Adams on electoral process, Inaugural Address 1797
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 09, 2012, 08:27:14 AM

Title: Story, commentaries, 1833
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 10, 2012, 06:23:22 AM

Title: Hamilton, War and Peace, Federalist 34, 1788
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 11, 2012, 11:09:31 AM

Title: Madison: Universal Peace 1792
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 12, 2012, 06:59:47 AM

Title: Adams: Thoughts on Government, 1776
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 17, 2012, 03:34:36 AM

Title: Jefferson 1820
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 18, 2012, 06:27:10 AM

Title: Madison, Federalist 46 on encroachments by Feds on authority of States
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 19, 2012, 06:18:53 AM

"[A]mbitious encroachments of the federal government, on the authority of the State governments, would not excite the opposition of a single State, or of a few States only. They would be signals of general alarm." --James Madison, Federalist No. 46, 1788

Title: George Washington
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 19, 2012, 09:21:47 AM

"There is but one straight course, and that is to seek truth and pursue it steadily, , , We should never despair, our Situation before has been unpromising and has changed for the better, so I trust, it will again. If new difficulties arise, we must only put forth new Exertions and proportion our Efforts to the exigency of the times."

Title: Patrick Henry to the VA convention, 1775
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 22, 2012, 09:47:31 AM

"It is natural to man to indulge in the illusions of hope. We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth - and listen to the song of that syren, till she transforms us into beasts. Is this the part of wise men, engaged in a great and arduous struggle for liberty? Are we disposed to be of the number of those, who having eyes, see not, and having ears, hear not, the things which so nearly concern their temporal salvation? For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it might cost, I am willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst, and to provide for it." --Patrick Henry, speech in the Virginia Convention, 1775

Title: Samuel Adams, Character, 1775
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 23, 2012, 07:37:49 AM

Title: Washington; John Adams
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 24, 2012, 08:11:52 AM

"No compact among men ... can be pronounced everlasting and inviolable, and if I may so express myself, that no Wall of words, that no mound of parchment can be so formed as to stand against the sweeping torrent of boundless ambition on the one side, aided by the sapping current of corrupted morals on the other." --George Washington, draft of first Inaugural Address, 1789

"If the people are capable of understanding, seeing and feeling the differences between true and false, right and wrong, virtue and vice, to what better principle can the friends of mankind apply than to the sense of this difference?" --John Adams

Title: Washington, discharge of debt, message to the House of Reps 1793
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 25, 2012, 07:16:00 AM

"No pecuniary consideration is more urgent, than the regular redemption and discharge of the public debt: on none can delay be more injurious, or an economy of time more valuable." --George Washington, Message to the House of Representatives, 1793

Title: Jefferson, personal hatred, 1808
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 26, 2012, 08:52:39 AM

"It has been a source of great pain to me to have met with so many among [my] opponents who had not the liberality to distinguish between political and social opposition; who transferred at once to the person, the hatred they bore to his political opinions." --Thomas Jefferson, letter to Richard M. Johnson, 1808

Title: Adams, 1786
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 29, 2012, 04:24:32 AM

"It has ever been my hobby-horse to see rising in America an empire of liberty, and a prospect of two or three hundred millions of freemen, without one noble or one king among them. You say it is impossible. If I should agree with you in this, I would still say, let us try the experiment, and preserve our equality as long as we can. A better system of education for the common people might preserve them long from such artificial inequalities as are prejudicial to society, by confounding the natural distinctions of right and wrong, virtue and vice." --John Adams, letter to Count Sarsfield, 1786

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 30, 2012, 08:15:56 AM

Title: Thomas Paine, "The Crisis" 1776
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 31, 2012, 08:43:40 AM

Title: Washington; the trappings of office 1790
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 01, 2012, 07:13:01 AM

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 02, 2012, 08:21:43 AM

"If we move in mass, be it ever so circuitously, we shall attain our object; but if we break into squads, everyone pursuing the path he thinks most direct, we become an easy conquest to those who can now barely hold us in check." --Thomas Jefferson, letter to William Duane, 1811

Title: S. Adams on the vote, 1781
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 06, 2012, 06:49:40 AM

Title: Washington on courage in the face of bad times 1777
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 07, 2012, 08:07:47 AM

"We should never despair, our situation before has been unpromising and has changed for the better, so I trust, it will again. If new difficulties arise, we must only put forth new exertions and proportion our efforts to the exigency of the times." --George Washington, letter to Philip Schuyler, 1777

Title: Ben Franklin, Pride:1771
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 09, 2012, 06:39:59 AM

"In reality there is perhaps no one of our natural passions so hard to subdue as
pride. Disguise it, struggle with it, beat it down, stifle it, mortify it as much as
one pleases, it is still alive, and will now and then peek out and show itself."
--Benjamin Franklin, Autobiography, 1771

Title: Madison, Ways and Means, 1790
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 12, 2012, 06:02:32 AM

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on November 13, 2012, 04:16:15 PM

Liberty and democracy are eternal enemies, and every one knows it who has ever given any sober reflection to the matter. A democratic state may profess to venerate the name, and even pass laws making it officially sacred, but it simply cannot tolerate the thing. In order to keep any coherence in the governmental process, to prevent the wildest anarchy in thought and act, the government must put limits upon the free play of opinion. In part, it can reach that end by mere propaganda, by the bald force of its authority — that is, by making certain doctrines officially infamous. But in part it must resort to force, i.e., to law. One of the main purposes of laws in a democratic society is to put burdens upon intelligence and reduce it to impotence. Ostensibly, their aim is to penalize anti-social acts; actually their aim is to penalize heretical opinions. At least ninety-five Americans out of every 100 believe that this process is honest and even laudable; it is practically impossible to convince them that there is anything evil in it. In other words, they cannot grasp the concept of liberty. Always they condition it with the doctrine that the state, i.e., the majority, has a sort of right of eminent domain in acts, and even in ideas — that it is perfectly free, whenever it is so disposed, to forbid a man to say what he honestly believes. Whenever his notions show signs of becoming "dangerous," ie, of being heard and attended to, it exercises that prerogative. And the overwhelming majority of citizens believe in supporting it in the outrage. Including especially the Liberals, who pretend — and often quite honestly believe — that they are hot for liberty. They never really are. Deep down in their hearts they know, as good democrats, that liberty would be fatal to democracy — that a government based upon shifting and irrational opinion must keep it within bounds or run a constant risk of disaster. They themselves, as a practical matter, advocate only certain narrow kinds of liberty — liberty, that is, for the persons they happen to favor. The rights of other persons do not seem to interest them. If a law were passed tomorrow taking away the property of a large group of presumably well-to-do persons — say, bondholders of the railroads — without compensation and without even colorable reason, they would not oppose it; they would be in favor of it. The liberty to have and hold property is not one they recognize. They believe only in the liberty to envy, hate and loot the man who has it.

H.L. Mencken, "Liberty and Democracy" in the Baltimore Evening Sun (13 April 1925), also in A Second Mencken Chrestomathy : New Selections from the Writings of America's Legendary Editor, Critic, and Wit (1994) edited by Terry Teachout, p. 35

Title: Hamilton, 1793:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 14, 2012, 06:37:40 AM

"Foreign influence is truly the Grecian horse to a republic. We cannot be too careful to exclude its influence." --Alexander Hamilton, Pacificus, No. 6, 1793

Title: Gettysburg Address
Post by: bigdog on November 19, 2012, 04:01:06 PM

In honor of the 149th anniversary:

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Title: Masonic Deism
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 21, 2012, 02:08:35 PM

http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Acropolis/2216/Ephrata_Presentation/59_Ephrata.htm

Title: Thanksgiving 1789
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 22, 2012, 07:44:11 AM

"I do recommend and assign Thursday ... next to be devoted by the People of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being, who is the beneficent Author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be." --George Washington, 1789

Title: Madison letter to Monroe, 1824
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 23, 2012, 05:20:36 AM

"The eyes of the world being thus on our Country, it is put the more on its good behavior, and under the greater obligation also, to do justice to the Tree of Liberty by an exhibition of the fine fruits we gather from it." --James Madison, letter to James Monroe, 1824

Title: Joesph Warren, Boston Massacre Oration, 1775
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 26, 2012, 04:32:03 AM

"Our country is in danger, but not to be despaired of. Our enemies are numerous and powerful; but we have many friends, determining to be free, and heaven and earth will aid the resolution. On you depend the fortunes of America. You are to decide the important question, on which rest the happiness and liberty of millions yet unborn. Act worthy of yourselves." --Joseph Warren, Boston Massacre Oration, 1775

Title: Jefferson's Socializing as a political tool
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 26, 2012, 04:36:48 AM

Socializing as a Political Tool
By JON MEACHAM
NYT
Published: November 25, 2012

IN this hour of reflexive partisan division, with Americans frustrated by Washington’s seeming inability to address significant fiscal questions, among other issues, an inevitable question arises: Can President Obama do anything to create enough good will to pass some lasting reforms?

Here is a modest proposal, one drawn from the presidency of another tall, cool, cerebral politician-writer: use the White House and the president’s personal company to attempt to weave attachments and increase a sense of common purpose in the capital. Dinners with the president — or breakfast or lunch or coffee or drinks or golf — won’t create a glorious bipartisan Valhalla, but history suggests that at least one of our greatest presidents mastered the means of entertaining to political effect.

During both of his terms, on the eve of each Congressional session, President Thomas Jefferson warned friends that, in our vernacular, he was about to go offline. “As Congress will meet this day week, we begin now to be in the bustle of preparation,” he wrote a family member. “When that begins, between the occupations of business and of entertainment, I shall become an unpunctual correspondent.”

Hours that Jefferson might have devoted to seeing friends in Washington or to writing letters were to be consumed instead by his pursuit of a fairly constant campaign of using his social hours — and particularly his dinner table — as a way of making the rougher edges of politics smooth. He believed that sociability was essential to republicanism. Men who liked and respected and enjoyed one another were more likely to cultivate the virtuous habits that would truly enable the nation’s citizens to engage in “the pursuit of happiness.” An affectionate man living in harmony with his neighbors was more likely to understand the mutual sacrifices of opinion necessary to a republic’s success.

In late 1801, Jefferson’s Washington routine had settled into what he called “a steady and uniform course.” He began the day working at his writing table, doing paperwork and receiving callers from early morning until midday; that gave him, he figured, “an interval of 4 hours for riding, dining and a little unbending.” At noon he tried to leave the President’s House for a ride or a walk before returning at about 4, when he became “engaged with company.” He entertained constantly, handsomely and with a purpose. Guests were entranced anew by his “easy, candid and gentle manners.”

Jefferson’s dinner campaigns were intensely practical. He believed in constant conversation between the president and lawmakers, for “if the members are to know nothing but what is important enough to be put in a public message,” Jefferson wrote, “it becomes a government of chance and not of design.” The Jefferson strategy largely worked. In the Jefferson years, from 1801 to 1809, Republicans were heard to acknowledge that “the President’s dinners had silenced them” at moments when they were inclined to vote against the administration.

Entertaining also softened his foes. The Federalist Senator William Plumer of New Hampshire had begun his Washington career with predictably harsh views of Jefferson. Early on, Plumer dismissed Jefferson as the leader of a “feeble, nerveless administration.” As the years passed, Plumer’s opinion of the president, formed at close quarters, evolved from hostility to respect: “The more critically and impartially I examine the character and conduct of Mr. Jefferson the more favorably I think of his integrity,” he wrote in 1806.

Yet Jefferson could be ruthless about the use of his limited time in power. To create an ethos of supra-partisan civility would have required bringing politicians of opposing views together under his aegis. Jefferson had only four or eight years to impress himself on the country and was unwilling to waste any of those hours presiding over arguments, even polite ones, between differing factions at his table.

He chose, then, to use dinner at the President’s House to put himself and his own agenda at the center of things. He ended the more formal arrangements common to Presidents Washington and Adams, forbidding seating by precedence — he preferred “pell-mell,” or the more democratic practice of having guests sit where they chose. The gentle creation of disorder at dinner magnified his own strengths as a conversationalist.

Jefferson was under no utopian illusions about the efficacy of political entertaining. He knew that interests would always clash; as his presidential years went by, his goal was to ameliorate party differences, not eliminate them, since elimination was impossible. As he put it, though, “the ground of liberty is to be gained by inches.” So is the ground of governing, as we may hope the incumbent president realizes when his second term begins in earnest.

Jon Meacham is the author of “Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power.”

Title: Thomas Paine 1776; John Marshall on the power to tax
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 28, 2012, 05:29:45 AM

"It is the madness of folly, to expect mercy from those who have refused to do justice; and even mercy, where conquest is the object, is only a trick of war; the cunning of the fox is as murderous as the violence of the wolf." --Thomas Paine, The American Crisis, No. 1, 1776

"An unlimited power to tax involves, necessarily, a power to destroy; because there is a limit beyond which no institution and no property can bear taxation." --John Marshall

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 30, 2012, 06:50:53 AM

"Speak seldom, but to important subjects, except such as particularly relate to your constituents, and, in the former case, make yourself perfectly master of the subject." --George Washington, Public Speaking, 1787

Title: POTH: Finkelman on Thomas Jefferson and his slaves
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 01, 2012, 09:11:41 AM

THOMAS JEFFERSON is in the news again, nearly 200 years after his death — alongside a high-profile biography by the journalist Jon Meacham comes a damning portrait of the third president by the independent scholar Henry Wiencek.

We are endlessly fascinated with Jefferson, in part because we seem unable to reconcile the rhetoric of liberty in his writing with the reality of his slave owning and his lifetime support for slavery. Time and again, we play down the latter in favor of the former, or write off the paradox as somehow indicative of his complex depths.

Neither Mr. Meacham, who mostly ignores Jefferson’s slave ownership, nor Mr. Wiencek, who sees him as a sort of fallen angel who comes to slavery only after discovering how profitable it could be, seem willing to confront the ugly truth: the third president was a creepy, brutal hypocrite.

Contrary to Mr. Wiencek’s depiction, Jefferson was always deeply committed to slavery, and even more deeply hostile to the welfare of blacks, slave or free. His proslavery views were shaped not only by money and status but also by his deeply racist views, which he tried to justify through pseudoscience.

There is, it is true, a compelling paradox about Jefferson: when he wrote the Declaration of Independence, announcing the “self-evident” truth that all men are “created equal,” he owned some 175 slaves. Too often, scholars and readers use those facts as a crutch, to write off Jefferson’s inconvenient views as products of the time and the complexities of the human condition.

But while many of his contemporaries, including George Washington, freed their slaves during and after the revolution — inspired, perhaps, by the words of the Declaration — Jefferson did not. Over the subsequent 50 years, a period of extraordinary public service, Jefferson remained the master of Monticello, and a buyer and seller of human beings.

Rather than encouraging his countrymen to liberate their slaves, he opposed both private manumission and public emancipation. Even at his death, Jefferson failed to fulfill the promise of his rhetoric: his will emancipated only five slaves, all relatives of his mistress Sally Hemings, and condemned nearly 200 others to the auction block. Even Hemings remained a slave, though her children by Jefferson went free.

Nor was Jefferson a particularly kind master. He sometimes punished slaves by selling them away from their families and friends, a retaliation that was incomprehensibly cruel even at the time. A proponent of humane criminal codes for whites, he advocated harsh, almost barbaric, punishments for slaves and free blacks. Known for expansive views of citizenship, he proposed legislation to make emancipated blacks “outlaws” in America, the land of their birth. Opposed to the idea of royal or noble blood, he proposed expelling from Virginia the children of white women and black men.

Jefferson also dodged opportunities to undermine slavery or promote racial equality. As a state legislator he blocked consideration of a law that might have eventually ended slavery in the state.

As president he acquired the Louisiana Territory but did nothing to stop the spread of slavery into that vast “empire of liberty.” Jefferson told his neighbor Edward Coles not to emancipate his own slaves, because free blacks were “pests in society” who were “as incapable as children of taking care of themselves.” And while he wrote a friend that he sold slaves only as punishment or to unite families, he sold at least 85 humans in a 10-year period to raise cash to buy wine, art and other luxury goods.

Destroying families didn’t bother Jefferson, because he believed blacks lacked basic human emotions. “Their griefs are transient,” he wrote, and their love lacked “a tender delicate mixture of sentiment and sensation.”

Jefferson claimed he had “never seen an elementary trait of painting or sculpture” or poetry among blacks and argued that blacks’ ability to “reason” was “much inferior” to whites’, while “in imagination they are dull, tasteless, and anomalous.” He conceded that blacks were brave, but this was because of “a want of fore-thought, which prevents their seeing a danger till it be present.”

A scientist, Jefferson nevertheless speculated that blackness might come “from the color of the blood” and concluded that blacks were “inferior to the whites in the endowments of body and mind.”

Jefferson did worry about the future of slavery, but not out of moral qualms. After reading about the slave revolts in Haiti, Jefferson wrote to a friend that “if something is not done and soon done, we shall be the murderers of our own children.” But he never said what that “something” should be.

In 1820 Jefferson was shocked by the heated arguments over slavery during the debate over the Missouri Compromise. He believed that by opposing the spread of slavery in the West, the children of the revolution were about to “perpetrate” an “act of suicide on themselves, and of treason against the hopes of the world.”

If there was “treason against the hopes of the world,” it was perpetrated by the founding generation, which failed to place the nation on the road to liberty for all. No one bore a greater responsibility for that failure than the master of Monticello.

Paul Finkelman, a visiting professor in legal history at Duke Law School, is a professor at Albany Law School and the author of “Slavery and the Founders: Race and Liberty in the Age of Jefferson.”

Title: Webster, 1788 the American child; Patrick Henry, 1775
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 01, 2012, 09:36:13 AM

second post of day

"Every child in America should be acquainted with his own country. He should read books that furnish him with ideas that will be useful to him in life and practice. As soon as he opens his lips, he should rehearse the history of his own country." --Noah Webster, On the Education of Youth in America, 1788

"The battle, sir, is not to the strong alone; it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave." --Patrick Henry, speech in the Virginia Convention, 1775

Title: Richard Henry Lee, 1786:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 03, 2012, 06:10:27 AM

"It is certainly true that a popular government cannot flourish without virtue in the people." --Richard Henry Lee, letter to Colonel Martin Pickett, 1786

Title: Madison on unequal taxes 1792
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 05, 2012, 07:11:45 AM

"A just security to property is not afforded by that government, under which unequal taxes oppress one species of property and reward another species." --James Madison, Essay on Property, 1792

Title: John Adams, 1772, Freedom is inalienable
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 06, 2012, 05:36:44 AM

Title: Mercy Warren, 1805
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 10, 2012, 06:28:10 AM

"It is necessary for every American, with becoming energy to endeavor to stop the dissemination of principles evidently destructive of the cause for which they have bled. It must be the combined virtue of the rulers and of the people to do this, and to rescue and save their civil and religious rights from the outstretched arm of tyranny, which may appear under any mode or form of government." --Mercy Warren, History of the Rise, Progress, and Termination of the American Revolution, 1805

Title: Benjamin Rush to John Adams, 1811: Morals and Religion
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 11, 2012, 08:21:09 AM

Title: James Wilson, 1790: of law and liberty
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 12, 2012, 05:15:06 AM

"Law and liberty cannot rationally become the objects of our love, unless they first become the objects of our knowledge." --James Wilson, Of the Study of the Law in the United States, 1790

Title: Nathan Hale, 1776
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 14, 2012, 02:16:42 PM

Title: Tench Coxe, 1787
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 17, 2012, 09:10:43 AM

Title: T. Paine: The Crisis, 1777 the fatigue of supporting freedom
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 18, 2012, 08:44:12 AM

"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom, must, like men, undergo the fatigues of supporting it." --Thomas Paine, The Crisis, no. 4, 1777

Title: Jefferson, 1st inaugural address, 1801, rights of the minority
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 19, 2012, 07:30:16 AM

Title: Federal Farmer, Antifederalist letter, 1787
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 21, 2012, 07:56:18 AM

"[W]hereas, to preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms, and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them; nor does it follow from this, that all promiscuously must go into actual service on every occasion. The mind that aims at a select militia, must be influenced by a truly anti-republican principle; and when we see many men disposed to practice upon it, whenever they can prevail, no wonder true republicans are for carefully guarding against it." --Federal Farmer, Antifederalist Letter, No. 18, 1787

Title: J. Adams: Thoughts on goverrnment 1776
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 26, 2012, 07:08:04 AM

Title: Washington, Rules of Civility, 1748
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 27, 2012, 08:41:48 AM

"Labor to keep alive in your breast that little spark of celestial fire called conscience." --George Washington, The Rules of Civility, 1748

Title: Noah Webster: the virtues of men, 1788
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 28, 2012, 07:30:23 AM

"The virtues of men are of more consequence to society than their abilities; and for this reason, the heart should be cultivated with more assiduity than the head." --Noah Webster, On the Education of Youth in America, 1788

Title: Z. Johnson, VA ratifying convention, right to bear arms
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 31, 2012, 10:20:38 AM

"[T]he people are not to be disarmed of their weapons. They are left in full possession of them." --Zacharia Johnson, speech in the Virginia Ratifying Convention, 1788

Title: James Warren 1779
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 01, 2013, 10:40:16 AM

"A general dissolution of principles and manners will more surely overthrow the liberties of America than the whole force of the common enemy. While the people are virtuous they cannot be subdued; but when once they lose their virtue then will be ready to surrender their liberties to the first external or internal invader." --Samuel Adams, letter to James Warren, 1779

Title: Jefferson on taxing the rich
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 02, 2013, 09:12:51 AM

Title: VA Ratifying Convention on the right to bear arms, 1778
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 02, 2013, 10:40:56 AM

"That the people have a right to keep and bear arms; that a well-regulated militia, composed of the body of the people trained to arms, is the proper, natural, and safe defence of a free state; that standing armies, in time of peace, are dangerous to liberty, and therefore ought to be avoided, as far as the circumstances and protection of the community will admit; and that, in all cases, the military should be under strict subordination to, and governed by, the civil power." --Recommended Bill of Rights from the Virginia Ratifying Convention, 1778

Title: T. Paine, The American Crisis 1776; Jefferson on parasitic govt.
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 03, 2013, 12:03:11 PM

"Let it be told to the future world, that in the depth of winter, when nothing but hope and virtue could survive, the city and the country, alarmed at one common danger, came forth to meet and to repulse it." --Thomas Paine (The American Crisis, No. 1, 1776)

"I think we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious." --Thomas Jefferson, letter to William Ludlow, 1824

Title: G. Mason, VA Ratifying convention, 1788: neglecting the militia
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 08, 2013, 08:33:28 AM

"[W]hen the resolution of enslaving America was formed in Great Britain, the British Parliament was advised by an artful man, - who was governor of Pennsylvania, to disarm the people; that it was the best and most effectual way to enslave them; but that they should not do it openly, but weaken them, and let them sink gradually, by totally disusing and neglecting the militia." --George Mason, speech in the Virginia Ratifying Convention, 1788

Title: Patrick Henry, VA Ratifying Convention, 1788
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 09, 2013, 09:04:27 AM

"O sir, we should have fine times, indeed, if, to punish tyrants, it were only sufficient to assemble the people! Your arms, wherewith you could defend yourselves, are gone; and you have no longer an aristocratical, no longer a democratical spirit. Did you ever read of any revolution in a nation, brought about by the punishment of those in power, inflicted by those who had no power at all?" --Patrick Henry, speech in the Virginia Ratifying Convention, 1788

Title: Jefferson on State Constitutions
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 09, 2013, 02:59:05 PM

second post of the day:

The constitutions of most of our States assert, that all power is inherent in the people; that they may exercise it by themselves, in all cases to which they think themselves competent, (as in electing their functionaries executive and legislative, and deciding by a jury of themselves, in all judiciary cases in which any fact is involved,) or they may act by representatives, freely and equally chosen; that it is their right and duty to be at all times armed; that they are entitled to freedom of person, freedom of religion, freedom of property, and freedom of the press."

-- Thomas Jefferson

pp.46 - 47, "The Living Thoughts of Thomas Jefferson, Presented by John Dewey", Fawcett Publications, Inc., Greenwich, Conn.

Title: Madison: If laws be so voluminous , , , Federalist 62, 1788
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 10, 2013, 08:50:33 AM

Title: George Mason, VA Ratifying Convention 1788
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 11, 2013, 09:24:12 AM

"I ask, Sir, what is the militia? It is the whole people. To disarm the people is the best and most effectual way to enslave them." --George Mason, Speech at the Virginia Ratifying Convention, 1788

Title: Richard Lee on the Militia
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 14, 2013, 09:36:31 AM

"A militia when properly formed are in fact the people themselves ... and include... all men capable of bearing arms. ... The mind that aims at a select militia, must be influenced by a truly anti-republican principle." --Richard Lee, Federal Farmer LIII

Title: Josiah Quincy Jr.: Thoughts on Standing Armies, 1774
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 17, 2013, 08:59:27 AM

"No free government was ever founded or ever preserved its liberty, without uniting the characters of the citizen and soldier in those destined for the defence of the state.... Such are a well regulated militia, composed of the freeholders, citizen and husbandman, who take up arms to preserve their property, as individuals, and their rights as freemen." --Josiah Quincy, Jr., Thoughts on Standing Armies, 1774

Title: Madison: the right to replace the government 1793
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 18, 2013, 06:50:16 AM

"If there be a principle that ought not to be questioned within the United States, it is, that every nation has a right to abolish an old government and establish a new one. This principle is not only recorded in every public archive, written in every American heart, and sealed with the blood of a host of American martyrs; but is the only lawful tenure by which the United States hold their existence as a nation." --James Madison, Helevidius, No. 3, 1793

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 21, 2013, 01:04:43 PM

"[T]he mild voice of reason, pleading the cause of an enlarged and permanent interest, is but too often drowned, before public bodies as well as individuals, by the clamors of an impatient avidity for immediate and immoderate gain." --James Madison, Federalist No. 42, 1788

"If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the General Welfare, the Government is no longer a limited one, possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one, subject to particular exceptions." --James Madison, letter to Edmund Pendleton, 1792

"A militia when properly formed are in fact the people themselves ... and include... all men capable of bearing arms. ... The mind that aims at a select militia, must be influenced by a truly anti-republican principle." --Richard Lee, Federal Farmer LIII

Title: Washington: Reciporcal checks, Farewell Address 1796
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 22, 2013, 08:06:32 AM

"The necessity of reciprocal checks in the exercise of political power, by dividing and distributing it into different depositories, and constituting each the guardian of the public weal against invasions by the others, has been evinced by experiments ancient and modern, some of them in our country and under our own eyes." --George Washington, Farewell Address, 1796

Title: Noah Webster: History of the US
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 23, 2013, 08:56:58 AM

"f the citizens neglect their duty and place unprincipled men in office, the government will soon be corrupted. ... If a republican government fails to secure public prosperity and happiness, it must be because the citizens neglect the Divine commands, and elect bad men to make and administer the laws." --Noah Webster, History of the United States

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 25, 2013, 09:42:45 AM

"The power of making war often prevents it, and in our case would give efficacy to our desire of peace."
--Thomas Jefferson, letter to George Washington, 1788

Title: Ben Franklin on the limits of free speech
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 29, 2013, 05:07:26 AM

Not sure how I feel about this one , , ,

"If by the liberty of the press were understood merely the liberty of discussing the propriety of public measures and political opinions, let us have as much of it as you please: But if it means the liberty of affronting, calumniating and defaming one another, I, for my part, own myself willing to part with my share of it, whenever our legislators shall please so to alter the law and shall chearfully consent to exchange my liberty of abusing others for the privilege of not being abused myself." --Benjamin Franklin, 1789

Title: Witherspoon
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 30, 2013, 08:49:13 AM

"Is it reasonable to expect wisdom from the ignorant? Fidelity from the profligate? Assiduity and application to public business from men of a dissipated life? Is it reasonable to commit the management of public revenue to one who has wasted his own patrimony? Those, therefore, who pay no regard to religion and sobriety in the persons whom they send to the legislature of any State are guilty of the greatest absurdity and will soon pay dear for their folly." --John Witherspoon, A Sermon Delivered at Public Thanksgiving after Peace

Title: Franklin
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 31, 2013, 07:00:22 AM

"Strangers are welcome because there is room enough for them all, and therefore the old inhabitants are not jealous of them; the laws protect them sufficiently so that they have no need of the patronage of great men; and every one will enjoy securely the profits of his industry. But if he does not bring a fortune with him, he must work and be industrious to live." --Benjamin Franklin, Those Who Would Remove to America, 1784

Title: Almost like Adams saw America 2013
Post by: G M on February 04, 2013, 05:09:03 PM

"Corruption, like a cancer … eats faster and faster every hour. The revenue creates pensioners, and the pensioners urge for more revenue. The people grow less steady, spirited, and virtuous, the seekers more numerous and more corrupt, and every day increases the circles of their dependents and expectants, until virtue, integrity, public spirit, simplicity, and frugality become the objects of ridicule and scorn, and vanity, luxury, floppery, selfishness, meanness, and downright venality swallow up the whole of society." - President John Adams

Title: Washington on connubial bliss vs. promiscuous pleasure
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 05, 2013, 09:14:13 AM

"More permanent and genuine happiness is to be found in the sequestered walks of connubial life than in the giddy rounds of promiscuous pleasure." --George Washington, letter to the Marquis de la Rourie, 1786

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 07, 2013, 09:01:19 AM

Title: Madison on debt, 1790
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 08, 2013, 08:27:43 AM

"I regret, as much as any member, the unavoidable weight and duration of the burdens to be imposed; having never been a proselyte to the doctrine, that public debts are public benefits. I consider them, on the contrary, as evils which ought to be removed as fast as honor and justice will permit."
--James Madison, Debates in the House of Representatives on the First Report on Public Credit, 1790

Title: S. Adams, a State of the Rights of the Colonists, 1772
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 13, 2013, 08:13:42 AM

"Let us consider, brethren, we are struggling for our best birthrights and inheritance, which being infringed, renders all our blessings precarious in their enjoyments, and, consequently triffling in their value. Let us disappoint the Men who are raising themselves on the ruin of this Country. Let us convince every invader of our freedom, that we will be as free as the constitution our fathers recognized, will justify."
--Samuel Adams, A State of the Rights of the Colonists, 1772

Title: Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man 1791
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 18, 2013, 09:52:05 AM

"If, from the more wretched parts of the old world, we look at those which are in an advanced stage of improvement, we still find the greedy hand of government thrusting itself into every corner and crevice of industry, and grasping the spoil of the multitude. Invention is continually exercised, to furnish new pretenses for revenue and taxation. It watches prosperity as its prey and permits none to escape without tribute."
--Thomas Paine, Rights of Man, 1791

Title: Washington to Warren, 1779
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 21, 2013, 08:22:18 AM

"Our conflict is not likely to cease so soon as every good man would wish. The measure of iniquity is not yet filled; and unless we can return a little more to first principles, and act a little more upon patriotic ground, I do not know when it will -- or -- what may be the issue of the contest. Speculation -- peculation -- engrossing -- forestalling -- with all their concomitants, afford too many melancholy proofs of the decay of public virtue; and too glaring instances of its being the interest and desire of too many, who would wish to be thought friends, to continue the war."
--George Washington, letter to James Warren, 1779

Title: J. Adams to Mercy Warren, 1776
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 26, 2013, 08:11:22 AM

"Men must be ready, they must pride themselves and be happy to sacrifice their private pleasures, passions and interests, nay, their private friendships and dearest connections, when they stand in competition with the rights of society."
--John Adams, letter to Mercy Warren, 1776

Title: Coolidge on the 150th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 26, 2013, 02:52:14 PM

President Coolidge may not have been a FF, but in that this speech is about the American Creed I post it here:

http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=408

Title: Wilson, 1790
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 28, 2013, 07:09:01 AM

"The opinion has been very general, that, in order to obtain the blessings of a good government, a sacrifice must be made of a part of our natural liberty. I am much inclined to believe, that, upon examination, this opinion will prove to be fallacious."
--James Wilson, Lectures on Law, 1790

Title: Washington's 5th annual message, 1793
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 01, 2013, 06:50:14 AM

Title: S.Adams 1776
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 04, 2013, 06:26:04 AM

"How strangely will the Tools of a Tyrant pervert the plain Meaning of Words!"

--Samuel Adams, 1776

Title: Madison
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 04, 2013, 04:34:20 PM

"The right of freely examining public characters and measures, and of free
communication among the people thereon ... has ever been justly deemed the
only effectual guardian of every other right." --James Madison

Title: Roger Sherman, 1789 on the President's power of appointment
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 05, 2013, 04:48:54 AM

"If the president alone was vested with the power of appointing all officers, and
was left to select a council for himself, he would be liable to be deceived by
flatterers and pretenders to patriotism."

--Roger Sherman, 1789

Title: Jefferson on the judiciary, 1820
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 06, 2013, 05:53:35 AM

"The judiciary of the United States is the subtle corps of sappers and miners
constantly working under ground to undermine the foundations of our confederated
fabric. They are construing our constitution from a co-ordination of a general and
special government to a general and supreme one alone."

--Thomas Jefferson, letter to Thomas Ritchie, 1820

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: bigdog on March 06, 2013, 06:50:31 AM

This comes from a former president who suspended a term of the SCOTUS and when toe to toe with his hated cousin, the CJ. I understand the point of the post, but hardly unbiased.

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 06, 2013, 11:27:26 AM

Fair enough! Yet with what we have seen of judicial activism/imperialism TJ is not without merit as well :-)

Title: Noah Webster, Education of Youth 1790
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 07, 2013, 07:45:45 AM

My, how things have changed!

"But while property is considered as the basis of the freedom of the American
yeomanry, there are other auxiliary supports; among which is the information of the
people. In no country, is education so general -- in no country, have the body of
the people such a knowledge of the rights of men and the principles of government.
This knowledge, joined with a keen sense of liberty and a watchful jealousy, will
guard our constitutions and awaken the people to an instantaneous resistance of
encroachments."

--Noah Webster, On Education of Youth in America, 1790

Title: Madison, Federalist 14, 1787
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 11, 2013, 05:42:40 AM

"In the first place, it is to be remembered, that the general government is not to
be charged with the whole power of making and administering laws. Its jurisdiction
is limited to certain enumerated objects, which concern all the members of the
republic, but which are not to be attained by the separate provisions of any."

--James Madison, Federalist Paper XIV, 1787

Title: Paine, The Rights of Man 1791
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 12, 2013, 10:54:20 AM

"A Constitution is not the act of a Government, but of a people constituting a government, and a government without a constitution is a power without right."
--Thomas Paine, Rights of Man, 1791

Title: Hamilton on betrayal by the govt., Federalist 28, 1787
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 13, 2013, 08:13:43 AM

"If the representatives of the people betray their constituents, there is then no resource left but in the exertion of that original right of self-defense which is paramount to all positives forms of government, and which against the usurpations of the national rulers, may be exerted with infinitely better prospect of success than against those of the rulers of an individual state."
--Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 28, 1787

Title: Madison on separation of powers, 1788
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 21, 2013, 08:13:53 AM

"An elective despotism was not the government we fought for; but one in which the powers of government should be so divided and balanced among the several bodies of magistracy as that no one could transcend their legal limits without being effectually checked and restrained by the others."
--James Madison, Federalist No. 58, 1788

Title: Washington, Farewell Address 1796: Consolidation of power
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 26, 2013, 05:17:40 AM

Title: James Monroe, VA Ratifying Convention, 1788
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 28, 2013, 09:00:07 AM

"How prone all human institutions have been to decay; how subject the best-formed and most wisely organized governments have been to lose their check and totally dissolve; how difficult it has been for mankind, in all ages and countries, to preserve their dearest rights and best privileges, impelled as it were by an irresistible fate of despotism."
--James Monroe, speech in the Virginia Ratifying Convention, 1788

Title: Jefferson, 1786
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 02, 2013, 03:37:36 AM

Title: J. Adams 1775
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 03, 2013, 08:16:47 AM

"They define a republic to be a government of laws, and not of men."
--John Adams, Novanglus No. 7, 1775

Title: Jefferson, 1801: character of countrymen
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 04, 2013, 07:57:32 AM

Title: Hamilton, 1794: Authority, Force
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 09, 2013, 05:30:25 AM

"The instrument by which it [government] must act are either the AUTHORITY of the laws or FORCE. If the first be destroyed, the last must be substituted; and where this becomes the ordinary instrument of government there is an end to liberty!"
--Alexander Hamilton, Tully, No. 3, 1794

Title: Jefferson, 1823: The meaning of laws
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 11, 2013, 05:00:08 AM

Title: Madison to Monroe, 1786 on the misapplication of majority rule.
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 12, 2013, 09:51:46 AM

Title: Washington's call to arms in 1776
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 15, 2013, 06:35:50 AM

"Our own Country's Honor, all call upon us for a vigorous and manly exertion, and if we now shamefully fail, we shall become infamous to the whole world. Let us therefore rely upon the goodness of the Cause, and the aid of the supreme Being, in whose hands Victory is, to animate and encourage us to great and noble Actions - The Eyes of all our Countrymen are now upon us, and we shall have their blessings, and praises, if happily we are the instruments of saving them from the Tyranny mediated against them. Let us therefore animate and encourage each other, and shew the whole world, that a Freeman contending for Liberty on his own ground is superior to any slavish mercenary on earth."
--George Washington, General Orders, 1776

Title: Ben Franklin; Emblematical Representations
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 16, 2013, 04:02:10 AM

Title: Elbridge Gerry, 1789: The Militia
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 17, 2013, 04:47:11 AM

"What, sir, is the use of militia? It is to prevent the establishment of a standing army, the bane of liberty... Whenever Government means to invade the rights and liberties of the people, they always attempt to destroy the militia, in order to raise an army upon their ruins."
--Elbridge Gerry, 1789

Title: Madison, Federalist 41, 1788
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 19, 2013, 08:43:55 AM

Title: Washington 1775
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 23, 2013, 06:52:23 AM

"When we assumed the Soldier, we did not lay aside the Citizen; and we shall most sincerely rejoice with you in the happy hour when the establishment of American Liberty, upon the most firm and solid foundations shall enable us to return to our Private Stations in the bosom of a free, peacefully and happy Country."
--George Washington, address to the New York Legislature, 1775

Title: Jefferson, 1805 Second Inaugural
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 23, 2013, 10:45:30 AM

"We are firmly convinced, and we act on that conviction, that with nations as with individuals our interests soundly calculated will ever be found inseparable from our moral duties, and history bears witness to the fact that a just nation is trusted on its word when recourse is had to armaments and wars to bridle others."
--Thomas Jefferson, Second Inaugural Address, 1805

Title: Hamilton, Federalist 34, 1788
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 24, 2013, 06:37:59 AM

Title: Thomas Paine, The American Crisis, 1776
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 25, 2013, 06:42:40 AM

Title: Noah WEbster, Education of Youth, 1788
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 26, 2013, 06:08:56 AM

"Every child in America should be acquainted with his own country. He should read books that furnish him with ideas that will be useful to him in life and practice. As soon as he opens his lips, he should rehearse the history of his own country; he should lisp the praise of liberty, and of those illustrious heroes and statesmen, who have wrought a revolution in her favor."
--Noah Webster, On the Education of Youth in America, 1788

Title: George Mason, VA Ratifying Convention, 1788
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 01, 2013, 08:45:22 AM

"Those gentlemen, who will be elected senators, will fix themselves in the federal town, and become citizens of that town more than of your state."
--George Mason, speech in the Virginia Ratifying Convention, 1788

Title: Washington's farewell to the Army 1783
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 02, 2013, 08:51:26 AM

"I now make it my earnest prayer, that God would have you, and the State over which you preside, in his holy protection, that he would incline the hearts of the Citizens to cultivate a spirit of subordination and obedience to Government, to entertain a brotherly affection and love for one another, for their fellow Citizens of the United States at large, and particularly for their brethren who have served in the Field, and finally, that he would most graciously be pleased to dispose us all, to do Justice, to love mercy, and to demean ourselves with that Charity, humility and pacific temper of mind, which were the Characteristicks of the Divine Author of our blessed Religion, and without an humble imitation of whose example in these things, we can never hope to be a happy Nation."
--George Washington, circular letter of farewell to the Army, 1783

Title: No Separation of God and People
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 05, 2013, 07:40:20 PM

Alabama 1901, Preamble We the people of the State of Alabama , invoking the favor and guidance of Almighty God, do ordain and establish the following Constitution..
Alaska 1956, Preamble We, the people of Alaska , grateful to God and to those who founded our nation and pioneered this great land.
Arizona 1911, Preamble We, the people of the State of Arizona , grateful to Almighty God for our liberties, do ordain this Constitution...
Arkansas 1874, Preamble We, the people of the State of Arkansas , grateful to Almighty God for the privilege of choosing our own form of government...
California 1879, Preamble We, the People of the State of California , grateful to Almighty God for our freedom...
Colorado 1876, Preamble We, the people of Colorado , with profound reverence for the Supreme Ruler of Universe...
Connecticut 1818, Preamble. The People of Connecticut, acknowledging with gratitude the good Providence of God in permitting them to enjoy.
Delaware 1897, Preamble Through Divine Goodness all men have, by nature, the rights of worshipping and serving their Creator according to the dictates of their consciences...
Florida 1885, Preamble We, the people of the State of Florida , grateful to Almighty God for our constitutional liberty, establish this Constitution...
Georgia 1777, Preamble We, the people of Georgia , relying upon protection and guidance of Almighty God, do ordain and establish this Constitution...
Hawaii 1959, Preamble We , the people of Hawaii , Grateful for Divine Guidance ... Establish this Constitution.
Idaho 1889, Preamble We, the people of the State of Idaho , grateful to Almighty God for our freedom, to secure its blessings.
Illinois 1870, Preamble We, the people of the State of Illinois, grateful to Almighty God for the civil , political and religious liberty which He hath so long permitted us to enjoy and looking to Him for a blessing on our endeavors.
Indiana 1851, Preamble We, the People of the State of Indiana , grateful to Almighty God for the free exercise of the right to choose our form of government.
Iowa 1857, Preamble We, the People of the St ate of Iowa , grateful to the Supreme Being for the blessings hitherto enjoyed, and feeling our dependence on Him for a continuation of these blessings, establish this Constitution.
Kansas 1859, Preamble We, the people of Kansas , grateful to Almighty God for our civil and religious privileges establish this Constitution.
Kentucky 1891, Preamble.. We, the people of the Commonwealth are grateful to Almighty God for the civil, political and religious liberties..
Louisiana 1921, Preamble We, the people of the State of Louisiana , grateful to Almighty God for the civil, political and religious liberties we enjoy.
Maine 1820, Preamble We the People of Maine acknowledging with grateful hearts the goodness of the Sovereign Ruler of the Universe in affording us an opportunity .. And imploring His aid and direction.
Maryland 1776, Preamble We, the people of the state of Maryland , grateful to Almighty God for our civil and religious liberty...
Massachusetts 1780, Preamble We...the people of Massachusetts, acknowledging with grateful hearts, the goodness of the Great Legislator of the Universe In the course of His Providence, an opportunity and devoutly imploring His direction
Michigan 1908, Preamble. We, the people of the State of Michigan , grateful to Almighty God for the blessings of freedom, establish this Constitution.
Minnesota, 1857, Preamble We, the people of the State of Minnesota, grateful to God for our civil and religious liberty, and desiring to perpetuate its blessings:
Mississippi 1890, Preamble We, the people of Mississippi in convention assembled, grateful to Almighty God, and invoking His blessing on our work.
Missouri 1845, Preamble We, the people of Missouri , with profound reverence for the Supreme Ruler of the Universe, and grateful for His goodness . Establish this Constitution...
Montana 1889, Preamble. We, the people of Montana , grateful to Almighty God for the blessings of liberty establish this Constitution ..
Nebraska 1875, Preamble We, the people, grateful to Almighty God for our freedom . Establish this Constitution.
Nevada 1864, Preamble We the people of the State of Nevada , grateful to Almighty God for our freedom, establish this Constitution...
New Hampshire 1792, Part I. Art. I. Sec. V Every individual has a natural and unalienable right to worship God according to the dictates of his own conscience.
New Jersey 1844, Preamble We, the people of the State of New Jersey, grateful to Almighty God for civil and religious liberty which He hath so long permitted us to enjoy, and looking to Him for a blessing on our endeavors.
New Mexico 1911, Preamble We, the People of New Mexico, grateful to Almighty God for the blessings of liberty..
New York 1846, Preamble We, the people of the State of New York, grateful to Almighty God for our freedom, in order to secure its blessings.
North Carolina 1868, Preamble We the people of the State of North Carolina, grateful to Almighty God, the Sovereign Ruler of Nations, for our civil, political, and religious liberties, and acknowledging our dependence upon Him for the continuance of those...
North Dakota 1889, Preamble We , the people of North Dakota, grateful to Almighty God for the blessings of civil and religious liberty, do ordain...
Ohio 1852, Preamble We the people of the state of Ohio, grateful to Almighty God for our freedom, to secure its blessings and to promote our common.
Oklahoma 1907, Preamble Invoking the guidance of Almighty God, in order to secure and perpetuate the blessings of liberty, establish this
Oregon 1857, Bill of Rights, Article I Section 2. All men shall be secure in the Natural right, to worship Almighty God according to the dictates of their consciences
Pennsylvania 1776, Preamble We, the people of Pennsylvania, grateful to Almighty God for the blessings of civil and religious liberty, and humbly invoking His guidance....
Rhode Island 1842, Preamble. We the People of the State of Rhode Island grateful to Almighty God for the civil and religious liberty which He hath so long permitted us to enjoy, and looking to Him for a blessing...
South Carolina, 1778, Preamble We, the people of he State of South Carolina grateful to God for our liberties, do ordain and establish this Constitution.
South Dakota 1889, Preamble We, the people of South Dakota, grateful to Almighty God for our civil and religious liberties ...
Tennessee 1796, Art. XI..III. That all men have a natural and indefeasible right to worship Almighty God according to the dictates of their conscience...
Texas 1845, Preamble We the People of the Republic of Texas, acknowledging, with gratitude, the grace and beneficence of God.
Utah 1896, Preamble Grateful to Almighty God for life and liberty, we establish this Constitution.
Vermont 1777, Preamble Whereas all government ought to enable the individuals who compose it to enjoy their natural rights, and other blessings which the Author of Existence has bestowed on man ..
Virginia 1776, Bill of Rights, XVI Religion, or the Duty which we owe our Creator can be directed only by Reason and that it is the mutual duty of all to practice Christian Forbearance, Love and Charity towards each other
Washington 1889, Preamble We the People of the State of Washington, grateful to the Supreme Ruler of the Universe for our liberties, do ordain this Constitution
West Virginia 1872, Preamble Since through Divine Providence we enjoy the blessings of civil, political and religious liberty, we, the people of West Virginia reaffirm our faith in and constant reliance upon God ...
Wisconsin 1848, Preamble We, the people of Wisconsin, grateful to Almighty God for our freedom, domestic tranquility...
Wyoming 1890, Preamble We, the people of the State of Wyoming, grateful to God for our civil, political, and religious liberties, establish this Constitution...

Title: Re: No Separation of God and People
Post by: DougMacG on May 06, 2013, 06:26:11 AM

This is good to see recognized in all the constitutions at the state level. If there was a separation between man and God, it would be an artificial, man-made one.

Title: J. Story, 1833
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 06, 2013, 06:44:53 AM

Title: Jefferson, 1785: Never tell a lie
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 07, 2013, 05:38:45 AM

Title: Jefferson, 1791
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 08, 2013, 07:58:24 AM

"It would reduce the whole instrument to a single phrase, that of instituting a Congress with power to do whatever would be for the good of the United States; and as they would be the sole judges of the good or evil, it would be also a power to do whatever evil they please. ... Certainly no such universal power was meant to be given them. It [the Constitution] was intended to lace them up straightly within the enumerated powers and those without which, as means, these powers could not be carried into effect."
--Thomas Jefferson, Opinion on a National Bank, 1791

Title: James Wilson: Knowledge of law and liberty
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 09, 2013, 06:48:51 AM

"Illustrious examples are displayed to our view, that we may imitate as well as admire. Before we can be distinguished by the same honors, we must be distinguished by the same virtues. What are those virtues? They are chiefly the same virtues, which we have already seen to be descriptive of the American character -- the love of liberty, and the love of law. But law and liberty cannot rationally become the objects of our love, unless they first become the objects of our knowledge."
--James Wilson, Of the Study of the Law in the United States

Title: Madison, Federalist 14, 1787
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 10, 2013, 04:41:08 AM

"Happily for America, happily, we trust, for the whole human race, they pursued a new and more noble course. They accomplished a revolution which has no parallel in the annals of human society. They reared the fabrics of governments which have no model on the face of the globe."
--James Madison, Federalist No. 14, 1787

Title: T. Paine, Rights of Man 1791
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 13, 2013, 08:25:02 AM

Title: Jefferson on the Judiciary 1821
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 14, 2013, 09:09:25 AM

"The germ of dissolution of our federal government is in the constitution of the federal judiciary; an irresponsible body, (for impeachment is scarcely a scare-crow) working like gravity by night and by day, gaining a little today and a little tomorrow, and advancing its noiseless step like a thief, over the field of jurisdiction, until all shall be usurped from the States, and the government of all be consolidated into one."
--Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Charles Hammond, 1821

Title: Joseph Warren, Boston Massacre Oration, 1775
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 15, 2013, 09:22:39 AM

"No longer could we reflect, with generous pride, on the heroic actions of our American forefathers ... if we, but for a moment entertain the thought of giving up our liberty."
--Joseph Warren, Boston Massacre Oration, 1775

Title: Washington, Truth, 1795
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 16, 2013, 06:08:40 AM

"There is but one straight course, and that is to seek truth and pursue it steadily."
--George Washington, letter to Edmund Randolph, 1795

Title: Thomas Paine, American Crisis 1776
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 17, 2013, 10:15:06 AM

"Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph."
--Thomas Paine, American Crisis, No. 1, 1776

659

Title: Candidus, 1772
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 21, 2013, 05:09:15 AM

"f the public are bound to yield obedience to laws to which they cannot give their approbation, they are slaves to those who make such laws and enforce them."
--Candidus, in the Boston Gazette, 1772

Title: Thomas Jefferson: Two Centuries On, a Cryptologist Cracks a Presidential Code
Post by: C-Kumu Dog on May 21, 2013, 11:57:11 PM

The Jefferson Disk:

First invented by Thomas Jefferson in 1795, this cipher did not become well-known and was independently invented by Commandant Etienne Bazeries, the conqueror of the Great Cipher, a century later. The system was used by the United States Army from 1923 until 1942 as the M-94.

The Jefferson disk, or wheel cypher as Thomas Jefferson named it, also known as the Bazeries Cylinder, is a cipher system using a set of wheels or disks, each with the 26 letters of the alphabet arranged around their edge. The order of the letters is different for each disk and is usually scrambled in some random way. Each disk is marked with a unique number. A hole in the centre of the disks allows them to be stacked on an axle. The disks are removable and can be mounted on the axle in any order desired. The order of the disks is the cipher key, and both sender and receiver must arrange the disks in the same predefined order. Jefferson's device had 36 disks. [Kahn, p. 194]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jefferson_disk

Two Centuries On, a Cryptologist Cracks a Presidential Code
Unlocking This Cipher Wasn't Self-Evident; Algorithms and Educated Guesses

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124648494429082661.html

For more than 200 years, buried deep within Thomas Jefferson's correspondence and papers, there lay a mysterious cipher -- a coded message that appears to have remained unsolved. Until now.

The cryptic message was sent to President Jefferson in December 1801 by his friend and frequent correspondent, Robert Patterson, a mathematics professor at the University of Pennsylvania. President Jefferson and Mr. Patterson were both officials at the American Philosophical Society -- a group that promoted scholarly research in the sciences and humanities -- and were enthusiasts of ciphers and other codes, regularly exchanging letters about them.

Enlarge Image

University of Pennsylvania Archives
Robert Patterson

In this message, Mr. Patterson set out to show the president and primary author of the Declaration of Independence what he deemed to be a nearly flawless cipher. "The art of secret writing," or writing in cipher, has "engaged the attention both of the states-man & philosopher for many ages," Mr. Patterson wrote. But, he added, most ciphers fall "far short of perfection."

To Mr. Patterson's view, a perfect code had four properties: It should be adaptable to all languages; it should be simple to learn and memorize; it should be easy to write and to read; and most important of all, "it should be absolutely inscrutable to all unacquainted with the particular key or secret for decyphering."

Mr. Patterson then included in the letter an example of a message in his cipher, one that would be so difficult to decode that it would "defy the united ingenuity of the whole human race," he wrote.

There is no evidence that Jefferson, or anyone else for that matter, ever solved the code. But Jefferson did believe the cipher was so inscrutable that he considered having the State Department use it, and passed it on to the ambassador to France, Robert Livingston.

The cipher finally met its match in Lawren Smithline, a 36-year-old mathematician. Dr. Smithline has a Ph.D. in mathematics and now works professionally with cryptology, or code-breaking, at the Center for Communications Research in Princeton, N.J., a division of the Institute for Defense Analyses.

A couple of years ago, Dr. Smithline's neighbor, who was working on a Jefferson project at Princeton University, told Dr. Smithline of Mr. Patterson's mysterious cipher.

Dr. Smithline, intrigued, decided to take a look. "A problem like this cipher can keep me up at night," he says. After unlocking its hidden message in 2007, Dr. Smithline articulated his puzzle-solving techniques in a recent paper in the magazine American Scientist and also in a profile in Harvard Magazine, his alma mater's alumni journal.

The "Perfect" Cipher?

View Graphics

The 1801 letter from Robert Patterson to Thomas Jefferson
The code, Mr. Patterson made clear in his letter, was not a simple substitution cipher. That's when you replace one letter of the alphabet with another. The problem with substitution ciphers is that they can be cracked by using what's termed frequency analysis, or studying the number of times that a particular letter occurs in a message. For instance, the letter "e" is the most common letter in English, so if a code is sufficiently long, whatever letter appears most often is likely a substitute for "e."

Because frequency analysis was already well known in the 19th century, cryptographers of the time turned to other techniques. One was called the nomenclator: a catalog of numbers, each standing for a word, syllable, phrase or letter. Mr. Jefferson's correspondence shows that he used several code books of nomenclators. An issue with these tools, according to Mr. Patterson's criteria, is that a nomenclator is too tough to memorize.

Jefferson even wrote about his own ingenious code, a model of which is at his home, Monticello, in Charlottesville, Va. Called the wheel cipher, the device consisted of cylindrical pieces, threaded onto an iron spindle, with letters inscribed on the edge of each wheel in a random order. Users could scramble and unscramble words simply by turning the wheels.

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But Mr. Patterson had a few more tricks up his sleeve. He wrote the message text vertically, in columns from left to right, using no capital letters or spaces. The writing formed a grid, in this case of about 40 lines of some 60 letters each.

Then, Mr. Patterson broke the grid into sections of up to nine lines, numbering each line in the section from one to nine. In the next step, Mr. Patterson transcribed each numbered line to form a new grid, scrambling the order of the numbered lines within each section. Every section, however, repeated the same jumbled order of lines.

The trick to solving the puzzle, as Mr. Patterson explained in his letter, meant knowing the following: the number of lines in each section, the order in which those lines were transcribed and the number of random letters added to each line.

The key to the code consisted of a series of two-digit pairs. The first digit indicated the line number within a section, while the second was the number of letters added to the beginning of that row. For instance, if the key was 58, 71, 33, that meant that Mr. Patterson moved row five to the first line of a section and added eight random letters; then moved row seven to the second line and added one letter, and then moved row three to the third line and added three random letters. Mr. Patterson estimated that the potential combinations to solve the puzzle was "upwards of ninety millions of millions."

THOMAS JEFFERSON

After explaining this in his letter, Mr. Patterson wrote, "I presume the utter impossibility of decyphering will be readily acknowledged."

Undaunted, Dr. Smithline decided to tackle the cipher by analyzing the probability of digraphs, or pairs of letters. Certain pairs of letters, such as "dx," don't exist in English, while some letters almost always appear next to a certain other letter, such as "u" after "q".

To get a sense of language patterns of the era, Dr. Smithline studied the 80,000 letter-characters contained in Jefferson's State of the Union addresses, and counted the frequency of occurrences of "aa," "ab," "ac," through "zz."

Dr. Smithline then made a series of educated guesses, such as the number of rows per section, which two rows belong next to each other, and the number of random letters inserted into a line.

To help vet his guesses, he turned to a tool not available during the 19th century: a computer algorithm. He used what's called "dynamic programming," which solves large problems by breaking puzzles down into smaller pieces and linking together the solutions.

The overall calculations necessary to solve the puzzle were fewer than 100,000, which Dr. Smithline says would be "tedious in the 19th century, but doable."

After about a week of working on the puzzle, the numerical key to Mr. Patterson's cipher emerged -- 13, 34, 57, 65, 22, 78, 49. Using that digital key, he was able to unfurl the cipher's text:

"In Congress, July Fourth, one thousand seven hundred and seventy six. A declaration by the Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled. When in the course of human events..."

That, of course, is the beginning -- with a few liberties taken -- to the Declaration of Independence, written at least in part by Jefferson himself. "Patterson played this little joke on Thomas Jefferson," says Dr. Smithline. "And nobody knew until now."

Write to Rachel Emma Silverman at rachel.silverman@wsj.com

Title: Jefferson's Cipher for Lewis
Post by: C-Kumu Dog on May 21, 2013, 11:58:52 PM

This article is a 3 page article, probably better to read it at the direct link as it includes examples of how it was used.

Jefferson's Cipher for Lewis
http://lewis-clark.org/content/content-article.asp?ArticleID=2222

Title: Hamilton
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 22, 2013, 03:35:59 AM

"The propriety of a law, in a constitutional light, must always be determined by the nature of the powers upon which it is founded."
--Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 33, 1788

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 24, 2013, 05:28:49 PM

"No experiment can be more interesting than that we are now trying, and which we
trust will end in establishing the fact, that man may be governed by reason and
truth. Our first object should therefore be, to leave open to him all the avenues to
truth. The most effectual hitherto found, is the freedom of the press. It is,
therefore, the first shut up by those who fear the investigation of their actions."

--Thomas Jefferson, Letter to John Tyler, 1804

Title: Jefferson on the causes and necessities of taking up arms
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 27, 2013, 06:35:51 AM

Title: Benjamin Rush 1788
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 28, 2013, 03:46:33 PM

"[W]here there is no law, there is no liberty; and nothing deserves the name of law
but that which is certain and universal in its operation upon all the members of the
community."

--Benjamin Rush, Letter to David Ramsay, 1788

Title: Jefferson, drafts of the Kentucky Resolutions 1798
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 29, 2013, 08:06:16 PM

"In questions of power, then, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind
him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution."

--Thomas Jefferson, fair copy of the drafts of the Kentucky Resolutions of 1798

Title: B. Franklin info to those who would remove to America 1782
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 30, 2013, 05:19:03 AM

"The almost general mediocrity of fortune that prevails in America obliging its
people to follow some business for subsistence, those vices, that arise usually from
idleness, are in a great measure prevented. Industry and constant employment are
great preservatives of the morals and virtue of a nation. Hence bad examples to
youth are more rare in America, which must be a comfortable consideration to
parents. To this may be truly added, that serious religion, under its various
denominations, is not only tolerated, but respected and practiced."

--Benjamin Franklin, Information to Those Who Would Remove to America, 1782

Title: Madison, Fed 51, 1788 on Justice, Jefferson on Freedom of Press 1804
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 01, 2013, 07:25:12 AM

"Justice is the end of government. It is the end of civil society. It ever has been
and ever will be pursued until it be obtained, or until liberty be lost in the
pursuit."

--James Madison, Federalist No. 51, 1788

"No experiment can be more interesting than that we are now trying, and which we
trust will end in establishing the fact, that man may be governed by reason and
truth. Our first object should therefore be, to leave open to him all the avenues to
truth. The most effectual hitherto found, is the freedom of the press. It is,
therefore, the first shut up by those who fear the investigation of their actions."

--Thomas Jefferson, Letter to John Tyler, 1804

Title: T. Paine 1776
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 03, 2013, 04:38:51 AM

"No country can be called free which is governed by an absolute power; and it
matters not whether it be an absolute royal power or an absolute legislative power,
as the consequences will be the same to the people."

--Thomas Paine, Four Letters on Interesting Subjects, 1776

Title: J. Story, 1833 on the Executive
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 05, 2013, 11:03:00 AM

"On the other hand, the duty imposed upon him [the president] to take care, that the
laws be faithfully executed, follows out the strong injunctions of his oath of
office, that he will "preserve, protect, and defend the constitution." The great
object of the executive department is to accomplish this purpose; and without it, be
the form of government whatever it may, it will be utterly worthless for offence, or
defence; for the redress of grievances, or the protection of rights; for the
happiness, or good order, or safety of the people."

--Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution, 1833

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 13, 2013, 03:40:49 AM

"I suppose, indeed, that in public life, a man whose political principles have any
decided character and who has energy enough to give them effect must always expect
to encounter political hostility from those of adverse principles."

--Thomas Jefferson, letter to Richard M. Johnson, 1808

"The most perfect freedom consists in obeying the dictates of right reason, and
submitting to natural law. When a man goes beyond or contrary to the law of nature
and reason, he becomes the slave of base passions and vile lusts; he introduces
confusion and disorder into society, and brings misery and destruction upon himself.
This, therefore, cannot be called a state of freedom, but a state of the vilest
slavery and the most dreadful bondage. The servants of sin and corruption are
subjected to the worst kind of tyranny in the universe. Hence we conclude that where
licentiousness begins, liberty ends."

--Samuel West, On the Right to Rebel Against Governors, 1776

Title: Jefferson on debt
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 15, 2013, 03:12:35 AM

"The fore horse of this frightful team is public debt. Taxation follow that, and in
its turn wretchedness and oppression."

--Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Samuel Kerchival, 1816

Title: Hamilton on Govt overstepping bounds of its authority; Federalist 33, 1788
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 16, 2013, 11:13:07 AM

"If the federal government should overpass the just bounds of its authority and make
a tyrannical use of its powers, the people, whose creature it is, must appeal to the
standard they have formed, and take such measures to redress the injury done to the
Constitution as the exigency may suggest and prudence justify."

--Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 33, 1788

Title: Re: Hamilton on Govt overstepping bounds of its authority; Federalist 33, 1788
Post by: bigdog on June 16, 2013, 05:27:45 PM

Quote from: Crafty_Dog on June 16, 2013, 11:13:07 AM

"If the federal government should overpass the just bounds of its authority and make
a tyrannical use of its powers, the people, whose creature it is, must appeal to the
standard they have formed, and take such measures to redress the injury done to the
Constitution as the exigency may suggest and prudence justify."

--Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 33, 1788

More from Hamilton: http://www.lawfareblog.com/2013/06/william-galston-on-the-nsa-controversies

Title: Story: Flinching judges
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 18, 2013, 08:04:19 AM

"The truth is, that, even with the most secure tenure of office, during good behavior, the danger is not, that the judges will be too firm in resisting public opinion, and in defence of private rights or public liberties; but, that they will be ready to yield themselves to the passions, and politics, and prejudices of the day."
--Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution, 1833

Title: Jefferson 1824: state constitutions, power is of the people
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 19, 2013, 07:05:04 AM

"The constitutions of most of our States assert that all power is inherent in the people; that they may exercise it by themselves in all cases to which they think themselves competent, or they may act by representatives, freely and equally chosen; that it is their right and duty to be at all times armed; that they are entitled to freedom of person, freedom of religion, freedom of property, and freedom of the press."
--Thomas Jefferson, Letter to John Cartwright, 1824

Title: Hamilton 1802
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 20, 2013, 08:04:05 AM

"The safety of a republic depends essentially on the energy of a common national sentiment; on a uniformity of principles and habits; on the exemption of the citizens from foreign bias and prejudice; and on that love of country which will almost invariably be found to be closely connected with birth, education, and family. The opinion advanced in the Notes on Virginia is undoubtedly correct, that foreigners will generally be apt to bring with them attachments to the persons they have left behind; to the country of their nativity; and to its particular customs and manners. They will also entertain opinions on government congenial with those under which they have lived; or if they should be led hither from a preference to ours, how extremely unlikely is it that they will bring with them that temperate love of liberty, so essential to real republicanism?"
--Alexander Hamilton, From the New York Evening Post: an Examination of the President's Message, Continued, No. VIII, 1802

Title: J. Story
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 24, 2013, 08:58:25 AM

"Constitutions are not designed for metaphysical or logical subtleties, for niceties of expression, for critical propriety, for elaborate shades of meaning, or for the exercise of philosophical acuteness or judicial research. They are instruments of a practical nature, founded on the common business of human life, adapted to common wants, designed for common use, and fitted for common understandings."
--Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States

Title: Jefferson on the judiciary 1823
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 25, 2013, 07:17:58 AM

"At the establishment of our constitutions, the judiciary bodies were supposed to be the most helpless and harmless members of the government. Experience, however, soon showed in what way they were to become the most dangerous; that the insufficiency of the means provided for their removal gave them a freehold and irresponsibility in office; that their decisions, seeming to concern individual suitors only, pass silent and unheeded by the public at large; that these decisions, nevertheless, become law by precedent, sapping, by little and little, the foundations of the constitution, and working its change by construction, before any one has perceived that that invisible and helpless worm has been busily employed in consuming its substance. In truth, man is not made to be trusted for life, if secured against all liability to account."
--Thomas Jefferson, letter to Monsieur A. Coray, 1823

Marc: Of course, this begs the question of what would be the outcome of no judicial review , , ,

Title: J. Adams on judges, 1776
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 26, 2013, 05:20:51 AM

"[J]udges ... should be always men of learning and experience in the laws, of exemplary morals, great patience, calmness, coolness, and attention. Their minds should not be distracted with jarring interests; they should not be dependent upon any man, or body of men."
--John Adams, Thoughts on Government, 1776

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 27, 2013, 08:45:42 AM

"Public virtue cannot exist in a nation without private, and public virtue is the only foundation of republics. There must be a positive passion for the public good, the public interest, honour, power and glory, established in the minds of the people, or there can be no republican government, nor any real liberty: and this public passion must be superiour to all private passions."
--John Adams, letter to Mercy Warren, 1776

Title: J. Story: Commentaries on the C.
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 28, 2013, 09:03:53 AM

"Temporary delusions, prejudices, excitements, and objects have irresistible influence in mere questions of policy. And the policy of one age may ill suit the wishes or the policy of another. The constitution is not subject to such fluctuations. It is to have a fixed, uniform, permanent construction. It should be, so far at least as human infirmity will allow, not dependent upon the passions or parties of particular times, but the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever."
--Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution

Title: Washington, Madison, Hamilton; Madison;
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 29, 2013, 07:56:46 PM

"It is ... [the citizens] choice, and depends upon their conduct, whether they will be respectable and prosperous, or contemptable and miserable as a Nation. This is the time of their political probation; this is the moment when the eyes of the World are turned upon them."
--George Washington, Letter to the Governors, 1783

"If individuals be not influenced by moral principles; it is in vain to look for public virtue; it is, therefore, the duty of legislators to enforce, both by precept and example, the utility, as well as the necessity of a strict adherence to the rules of distributive justice."
--James Madison, in response to Washington's first Inaugural address, 1789

"The safety of a republic depends essentially on the energy of a common national sentiment; on a uniformity of principles and habits; on the exemption of the citizens from foreign bias and prejudice; and on that love of country which will almost invariably be found to be closely connected with birth, education, and family. The opinion advanced in the Notes on Virginia is undoubtedly correct, that foreigners will generally be apt to bring with them attachments to the persons they have left behind; to the country of their nativity; and to its particular customs and manners. They will also entertain opinions on government congenial with those under which they have lived; or if they should be led hither from a preference to ours, how extremely unlikely is it that they will bring with them that temperate love of liberty, so essential to real republicanism?"
--Alexander Hamilton, From the New York Evening Post: an Examination of the President's Message, Continued, No. VIII, 1802

Title: Jefferson (Written when Bill of Rights applied only to the Federal government)
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 01, 2013, 07:49:32 AM

"I consider the government of the United States as interdicted by the Constitution from intermeddling with religious institutions, their doctrines, discipline, or exercises. This results not only from the provision that no law shall be made respecting the establishment or free exercise of religion, but from that also which reserves to the States the powers not delegated to the United States. Certainly, no power to prescribe any religious exercise or to assume authority in any religious discipline has been delegated to the General Government. It must then rest with the States."
--Thomas Jefferson, letter to Samuel Miller, 1808

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 03, 2013, 07:55:01 AM

"Very many and very meritorious were the worthy patriots who assisted in bringing back our government to its republican tack. To preserve it in that, will require unremitting vigilance."
--Thomas Jefferson, Letter to William Berry, 1822

Title: President Coolidge 1926
Post by: DougMacG on July 03, 2013, 08:04:50 AM

It was not because it was proposed to establish a new nation, but because it was proposed to establish a nation on new principles, that July 4, 1776, has come to be regarded as one of the greatest days in history. Great ideas do not burst upon the world unannounced. They are reached by a gradual development over a length of time usually proportionate to their importance. This is especially true of the principles laid down in the Declaration of Independence. Three very definite propositions were set out in its preamble regarding the nature of mankind and therefore of government. These were the doctrine that all men are created equal, that they are endowed with certain inalienable rights, and that therefore the source of the just powers of government must be derived from the consent of the governed.

If no one is to be accounted as born into a superior station, if there is to be no ruling class, and if all possess rights which can neither be bartered away nor taken from them by any earthly power, it follows as a matter of course that the practical authority of the Government has to rest on the consent of the governed. While these principles were not altogether new in political action, and were very far from new in political speculation, they had never been assembled before and declared in such a combination. But remarkable as this may be, it is not the chief distinction of the Declaration of Independence. . . .

It was the fact that our Declaration of Independence containing these immortal truths was the political action of a duly authorized and constituted representative public body in its sovereign capacity, supported by the force of general opinion and by the armies of Washington already in the field, which makes it the most important civil document in the world.

- From President Calvin Coolidge's "Address at the Celebration of the 150th Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence" in Philadelphia, July 5, 1926

Title: Jefferson on the Declaration of Independence, 1825
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 04, 2013, 06:28:43 AM

Title: Washington on friendship, 17,83
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 05, 2013, 08:00:14 AM

Title: Madison: too many laws
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 05, 2013, 11:49:42 AM

"It will be of little avail to the people, that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man, who knows what the law is to-day, can guess what it will be to-morrow." --James Madison

Title: Washington, farewell address, foreign affairs, 1796
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 08, 2013, 04:11:40 AM

"The great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is, in extending our commercial relations to have with them as little political connection as possible."
--George Washington, Farewell Address, 1796

Title: John Adams to the First Brigade of the Third Division of the MA Militia 1798
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 09, 2013, 10:09:17 AM

"But should the people of America once become capable of that deep simulation towards one another, and towards foreign nations, which assumes the language of justice and moderation while it is practicing iniquity and extravagance and displays in the most captivating manner the charming pictures of candor, frankness, and sincerity, while it is rioting in rapine and insolence, this country will be the most miserable habitation in the world; because we have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."
--John Adams, To the Officers of the First Brigade of the Third Division of the Militia of Massachusetts, 1798

Title: Washington, Farewall Address, Constitutional modification, 1796
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 10, 2013, 08:06:59 AM

Title: Sundry Founding Fathers on gun rights
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 10, 2013, 04:27:39 PM

Collection of quotes from the Founders, on the right to keep, and bear arms. http://www.americangunowner.com/the-armed-citizenry---historical-statements.html

Title: Tench Coxe: Who are the militia? 1788
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 11, 2013, 07:46:14 AM

Title: Madison to Jefferson, 1787
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 12, 2013, 06:41:00 AM

"t is more convenient to prevent the passage of a law, than to declare it void after it has passed."
--James Madison, to Thomas Jefferson, 1787

Title: Wilson: Law & Liberty, 1790
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 15, 2013, 07:23:06 AM

Title: Samuel West, Right to Rebel, 1776
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 16, 2013, 07:26:36 AM

"It is our duty to endeavor always to promote the general good; to do to all as we would be willing to be done by were we in their circumstances; to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly before God. These are some of the laws of nature which every man in the world is bound to observe, and which whoever violates exposes himself to the resentment of mankind, the lashes of his own conscience, and the judgment of Heaven. This plainly shows that the highest state of liberty subjects us to the law of nature and the government of God."
--Samuel West, On the Right to Rebel Against Governors, 1776

Title: T. Paine on the Constitution 1805
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 17, 2013, 08:17:28 AM

"A constitution defines and limits the powers of the government it creates. It therefore follows, as a natural and also a logical result, that the governmental exercise of any power not authorized by the constitution is an assumed power, and therefore illegal."
--Thomas Paine, Constitutions, Governments, and Charters, 1805

Title: Madison, address to the States 1783
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 18, 2013, 10:39:04 AM

"If justice, good faith, honor, gratitude and all the other qualities which ennoble the character of a nation and fulfill the ends of government be the fruits of our establishments, the cause of liberty will acquire a dignity and lustre, which it has never yet enjoyed, and an example will be set, which cannot but have the most favourable influence on the rights on Mankind. If on the other side, our governments should be unfortunately blotted with the reverse of these cardinal and essential virtues, the great cause which we have engaged to vindicate, will be dishonored and betrayed; the last and fairest experiment in favor of the rights of human nature will be turned against them; and their patrons and friends exposed to be insulted and silenced by the votaries of tyranny and usurpation."
--James Madison, Address to the States, 1783

Title: Jefferson: Never be idle, 1787
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 19, 2013, 10:35:40 AM

"Determine never to be idle. No person will have occasion to complain of the want of time, who never loses any. It is wonderful how much may be done, if we are always doing."
--Thomas Jefferson, letter to Martha Jefferson, 1787

Title: Jefferson, the Kentucky Resolutions, 1799
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 22, 2013, 08:16:22 AM

"Free government is founded in jealousy, and not in confidence; it is jealousy and not confidence which prescribes limited constitutions, to bind down those whom we are obliged to trust with power."
--Thomas Jefferson, The Kentucky Resolutions, 1799

Title: Thomas Paine: Common Sense 1776
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 23, 2013, 07:55:51 AM

"When we are planning for posterity, we ought to remember that virtue is not hereditary."
--Thomas Paine, Common Sense, 1776

Title: J. Adams: Dissertion on the Canon and Feudal Law, 1756
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 24, 2013, 06:59:36 AM

"It should be your care, therefore, and mine, to elevate the minds of our children and exalt their courage; to accelerate and animate their industry and activity; to excite in them an habitual contempt of meanness, abhorrence of injustice and inhumanity, and an ambition to excel in every capacity, faculty, and virtue. If we suffer their minds to grovel and creep in infancy, they will grovel all their lives."
--John Adams, Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law, 1756

Title: Ben Franklin on Welfare, 1753
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 25, 2013, 04:26:24 AM

"Repeal that [welfare] law, and you will soon see a change in their manners. St. Monday and St. Tuesday, will soon cease to be holidays. Six days shalt thou labor, though one of the old commandments long treated as out of date, will again be looked upon as a respectable precept; industry will increase, and with it plenty among the lower people; their circumstances will mend, and more will be done for their happiness by inuring them to provide for themselves, than could be done by dividing all your estates among them."
--Benjamin Franklin, letter to Collinson, 1753

Title: James Wilson: Lectures on Law, 1791
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 26, 2013, 06:46:00 AM

Title: Federal Farmer: Anti-Federalist newsletter
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 29, 2013, 07:14:21 AM

Title: John Adams: Dissertation on Canon and Feudal Law 1765
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 30, 2013, 07:55:57 AM

"Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people, who have a right, from the frame of their nature, to knowledge, as their great Creator, who does nothing in vain, has given them understandings, and a desire to know; but besides this, they have a right, an indisputable, unalienable, indefeasible, divine right to that most dreaded and envied kind of knowledge; I mean, of the characters and conduct of their rulers."
--John Adams, Dissertation on Canon and Feudal Law, 1765

Title: Samuel Adams, 1775
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 31, 2013, 07:09:02 AM

"No people will tamely surrender their Liberties, nor can any be easily subdued, when knowledge is diffused and Virtue is preserved. On the Contrary, when People are universally ignorant, and debauchd in their Manners, they will sink under their own weight without the Aid of foreign Invaders."
--Samuel Adams, letter to James Warren, 1775

Title: Madison: Federalist 14, 1787
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 01, 2013, 06:46:53 AM

Title: Ben Franklin: Emblematical Representations
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 02, 2013, 09:05:52 AM

Title: J. Adams: Dissertion on the Canon and Feudal Law, 1756
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 05, 2013, 09:05:34 AM

"It should be your care, therefore, and mine, to elevate the minds of our children and exalt their courage; to accelerate and animate their industry and activity; to excite in them an habitual contempt of meanness, abhorrence of injustice and inhumanity, and an ambition to excel in every capacity, faculty, and virtue. If we suffer their minds to grovel and creep in infancy, they will grovel all their lives."

--John Adams, Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law, 1756

Title: Ben Franklin: Education, 1745
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 06, 2013, 08:20:18 AM

"The good Education of Youth has been esteemed by wise Men in all Ages, as the surest Foundation of the Happiness both of private Families and of Common-wealths. Almost all Governments have therefore made it a principal Object of their Attention, to establish and endow with proper Revenues, such Seminaries of Learning, as might supply the succeeding Age with Men qualified to serve the Publick with Honour to themselves, and to their Country."
--Benjamin Franklin, Proposals Relating to the Education of Youth in Pensilvania, 1749

Title: Jefferson to Carrington, 1787
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 07, 2013, 05:43:16 AM

Cherish, therefore, the spirit of our people, and keep alive their attention. Do not be too severe upon their errors, but reclaim them by enlightening them. If once they become inattentive to the public affairs, you and I, and Congress, and Assemblies, Judges, and Governors, shall all become wolves."
--Thomas Jefferson, letter to Edward Carrington, 1787

Title: Jefferson, Report for the U. of VA 1818
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 08, 2013, 06:48:47 AM

"To give to every citizen the information he needs for the transaction of his own business; To enable him to calculate for himself, and to express and preserve his ideas, his contracts and accounts, in writing; To improve, by reading, his morals and faculties; To understand his duties to his neighbors and country, and to discharge with competence the functions confided to him by either; To know his rights; to exercise with order and justice those he retains; to choose with discretion the fiduciary of those he delegates; and to notice their conduct with diligence, with candor, and judgment; And, in general, to observe with intelligence and faithfulness all the social relations under which he shall be placed."
--Thomas Jefferson, Report of the Commissioners for the University of Virginia, 1818

Title: Noah Webster: Education of Youth, 1790
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 09, 2013, 08:45:45 AM

"It is an object of vast magnitude that systems of education should be adopted and pursued which may not only diffuse a knowledge of the sciences but may implant in the minds of the American youth the principles of virtue and of liberty and inspire them with just and liberal ideas of government and with an inviolable attachment to their own country."
--Noah Webster, On Education of Youth in America, 1790

Title: T. Paine
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 12, 2013, 10:05:05 AM

"Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph." --Thomas Paine

Title: James Wilson: Renewal by Constitution 1791
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 13, 2013, 07:20:09 AM

"There is not in the whole science of politics a more solid or a more important maxim than this -- that of all governments, those are the best, which, by the natural effect of their constitutions, are frequently renewed or drawn back to their first principles."
--James Wilson, Lectures on Law, 1791

Title: Madison, Federalist 10, 1787: Unequal taxes; abridgment of freedom
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 14, 2013, 08:28:11 AM

"The apportionment of taxes on the various descriptions of property is an act which seems to require the most exact impartiality; yet there is, perhaps, no legislative act in which greater opportunity and temptation are given to a predominant party to trample on the rules of justice. Every shilling which they overburden the inferior number is a shilling saved to their own pockets."

–James Madison, Federalist No. 10, 1787

"There are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations." --James Madison

Title: T. Paine on Moderation, 1792
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 15, 2013, 09:13:00 AM

"Moderation in temper is always a virtue; but moderation in principle, is a species of vice."
–Thomas Paine, Letter Addressed to the Addressers on the Late Proclamation, 1792

Title: Washington letter to Madison
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 16, 2013, 05:30:42 AM

"No morn ever dawned more favorable than ours did; and no day was every more clouded than the present! Wisdom, and good examples are necessary at this time to rescue the political machine from the impending storm."

–George Washington, letter to James Madison, 1786

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 25, 2013, 10:44:06 PM

"Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed; as they are in
almost every kingdom of Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce
unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed, and
constitute a force superior to any band of regular troops that can be, on any
pretence, raised in the United States."

–Noah Webster, An Examination of the Leading Principles of the Federal
Constitution, 1787

============

"The instability of our laws is really an immense evil. I think it would be
well to provide in our constitutions that there shall always be a twelve-month
between the ingross-ing a bill & passing it: that it should then be offered to
its passage without changing a word: and that if circum-stances should be
thought to require a speedier passage, it should take two thirds of both
houses instead of a bare majority."

–Thomas Jefferson, Letter to James Madison, 1787

=========================

Title: Paine on govt. debt, 1776
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 26, 2013, 04:19:49 AM

"As parents, we can have no joy, knowing that this government is not
sufficiently lasting to ensure any thing which we may bequeath to posterity:
And by a plain method of argument, as we are running the next generation into
debt, we ought to do the work of it, otherwise we use them meanly and
pitifully. In order to discover the line of our duty rightly, we should take
our children in our hand, and fix our station a few years farther into life;
that eminence will present a prospect, which a few present fears and
prejudices conceal from our sight."

–Thomas Paine, Common Sense, 1776

Title: Franklin, 1766 on Aiding the Poor
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 28, 2013, 10:06:55 AM

"I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion of the means. I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it. In my youth I travelled much, and I observed in different countries, that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer."
–Benjamin Franklin, On the Price of Corn and Management of the Poor, 1766

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 29, 2013, 08:23:32 AM

"The power of the people pervading the proposed system, together with the strong confederation of the states, will form an adequate security against every danger that has been apprehended."
–John Dickinson, Letters of Fabius, 1788

Title: John Jay
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 30, 2013, 05:00:18 AM

Title: MLK
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 02, 2013, 03:34:38 PM

Martin Luther King Jr.: "What I'm saying to you this morning, my friends: Even if it falls your lot to be a street sweeper, go out and sweep streets like Michelangelo painted pictures! Sweep streets like Handel and Beethoven composed music. Sweep streets like Shakespeare wrote poetry. Sweep streets so well that all the host of heaven and earth will have to pause and say, 'Here lived a great street sweeper who swept his job well!' If you can't be a pine on the top of a hill, be a scrub in the valley, but be the best little scrub on the side of the rill. Be a bush if you can't be a tree. If you can't be a highway, just be a trail. If you can't be a sun, be a star. It isn't by size that you win or you fail; be the best at whatever that you are!"

Title: Paine, 1776
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 03, 2013, 06:23:37 AM

Title: Washington, First inaurgual address, 1789
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 04, 2013, 07:09:04 AM

"[T]he propitious smiles of Heaven, can never be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and right, which Heaven itself has ordained."
–George Washington, First Inaugural Address, 1789

Title: Parsons, the Esses Result, 1778
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 05, 2013, 06:25:53 AM

"We have duties, for the discharge of which we are accountable to our Creator and benefactor, which no human power can cancel. What those duties are, is determinable by right reason, which may be, and is called, a well informed conscience. What this conscience dictates as our duty, is so; and that power which assumes a control over it, is an usurper; for no power can be pleaded to justify the control, as any consent in this case is void."
–Theophilus Parsons, The Essex Result, 1778

Title: Madison, Second Inaugural, 1813
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 06, 2013, 09:53:30 AM

"To render the justice of the war on our part the more conspicuous, the reluctance to commence it was followed by the earliest and strongest manifestations of a disposition to arrest its progress. The sword was scarcely out of the scabbard before the enemy was apprised of the reasonable terms on which it would be resheathed."
–James Madison, Second Inaugural Address, 1813

Title: Jefferson on spending cuts, 1821
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 09, 2013, 06:30:20 AM

"The multiplication of public offices, increase of expense beyond income, growth and entailment of a public debt are indications soliciting the employment of the pruning knife."
–Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Spencer Roane, 1821

Title: J. Wilson, 1804: Law of nature and of revelation
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 10, 2013, 07:05:07 AM

"The law of nature and the law of revelation are both Divine: they flow, though in different channels, from the same adorable source. It is indeed preposterous to separate them from each other."
--James Wilson, Law of Nature, 1804

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 11, 2013, 07:56:01 AM

"Is the relinquishment of the trial by jury and the liberty of the press necessary for your liberty? Will the abandonment of your most sacred rights tend to the security of your liberty? Liberty, the greatest of all earlthy blessings -- give us that precious jewel, and you may take every things else! ... Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect every one who approaches that jewel."
–Patrick Henry, Speech to the Virginia Convention, 1788

Title: J. Adams on bi-cameral legislature 1776
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 12, 2013, 08:12:16 AM

"A single assembly is liable to all the vices, follies, and frailties of an individual; subject to fits of humor, starts of passion, flights of enthusiasm, partialities, or prejudice, and consequently productive of hasty results and absurd judgments. And all these errors ought to be corrected and defects supplied by some controlling power."
–John Adams, Thoughts on Government, 1776

Title: John Jay, Federalist-4: War
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 13, 2013, 06:02:15 AM

"It is too true, however disgraceful it may be to human nature, that the nations in general will make war whenever they have a prospect of getting anything by it, nay that absolute monarchs, will often make war when their nations are to get nothing by it, but for purposes and objects merely personal."
–John Jay, Federalist No. 4, 1787

Title: Joseph Story on the rule of law, 1833
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 16, 2013, 06:09:47 AM

"Without justice being freely, fully, and impartially administered, neither our persons, nor our rights, nor our property, can be protected. And if these, or either of them, are regulated by no certain laws, and are subject to no certain principles, and are held by no certain tenure, and are redressed, when violated, by no certain remedies, society fails of all its value; and men may as well return to a state of savage and barbarous independence."
–Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution, 1833

Title: Jefferson, on Charity, 1823
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 17, 2013, 08:21:50 AM

"It is a duty certainly to give our sparings to those who want; but to see also that they are faithfully distributed, and duly apportioned to the respective wants of those receivers. And why give through agents whom we know not, to persons whom we know not, and in countries from which we get no account, where we can do it at short hand, to objects under our eye, through agents we know, and to supply wants we see?"
–Thomas Jefferson, letter to Michael Megear, 1823

Title: Remeber the Anti-Federalists
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 17, 2013, 11:16:50 AM

second post

http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/constitution-day-remember-anti-federalists

Title: Washington: Farewell Address 1796
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 19, 2013, 09:43:10 AM

"Sympathy for the favorite nation, facilitating the illusion of an imaginary common interest in cases where no real common interest exists, and infusing into one the enmities of the other, betrays the former into a participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter without adequate inducement or justification."
–George Washington, Farewell Address, 1796

Title: Marhsall: Marbury v. MAdison
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 23, 2013, 07:15:46 AM

"It is emphatically the province and duty of the Judicial Department to say what the law is. Those who apply the rule to particular cases must, of necessity, expound and interpret that rule. If two laws conflict with each other, the Courts must decide on the operation of each. So, if a law be in opposition to the Constitution, if both the law and the Constitution apply to a particular case, so that the Court must either decide that case conformably to the law, disregarding the Constitution, or conformably to the Constitution, disregarding the law, the Court must determine which of these conflicting rules governs the case. This is of the very essence of judicial duty. If, then, the Courts are to regard the Constitution, and the Constitution is superior to any ordinary act of the Legislature, the Constitution, and not such ordinary act, must govern the case to which they both apply."
–John Marshall, Marbury v. Madison, 1803

Title: George Mason, VA Ratifying Convention
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 25, 2013, 04:26:10 AM

"Nothing so strongly impels a man to regard the interest of his constituents,
as the certainty of returning to the general mass of the people, from whence
he was taken, where he must participate in their burdens."

–George Mason, speech in the Virginia Ratifying Convention, 1788

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 27, 2013, 06:09:11 AM

"The natural cure for an ill-administration, in a popular or representative
constitution, is a change of men."

–Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 21, 1787

Title: Jefferson: First Inaugural, 1801
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 30, 2013, 11:46:52 AM

Title: Madison: Money and the General Welfare
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 01, 2013, 10:01:13 AM

Title: Washington to Madison, 1785
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 02, 2013, 06:16:49 AM

"We are either a United people, or we are not. If the former, let us, in all matters of general concern act as a nation, which have national objects to promote, and a national character to support. If we are not, let us no longer act a farce by pretending to it."
–George Washington, letter to James Madison, 1785

Title: J. Adams: The anarchy of democracy
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 03, 2013, 05:44:25 AM

Title: Daniel Webster
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 06, 2013, 07:39:43 AM

"There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters."
-Daniel Webster

Title: Fisher Ames: MA Ratifying Convention 1788
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 07, 2013, 07:02:45 AM

"The known propensity of a democracy is to licentiousness which the ambitious call, and ignorant believe to be liberty."
–Fisher Ames, speech in the Massachusetts Ratifying Convention, 1788

Title: Jefferson to John Taylor, 1816
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 08, 2013, 10:11:37 AM

"The principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale."
--Thomas Jefferson,letter to John Taylor, 1816

Title: Jefferson to Plumer, 1816
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 11, 2013, 07:00:26 AM

"I ... place economy among the first and most important of republican virtues, and public debt as the greatest of the dangers to be feared. ... Taxation follows that, and in its turn wretchedness and oppression." --Thomas Jefferson, Letter to William Plumer, 1816

Title: Madison to Hunter 1790
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 15, 2013, 08:40:03 AM

Title: Madison on excess of power 1792
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 16, 2013, 08:05:03 AM

"Where an excess of power prevails, property of no sort is duly respected. No man is safe in his opinions, his person, his faculties, or his possessions." --James Madison, essay in the National Gazette, 1792

Title: The faces of some who were there
Post by: ccp on October 17, 2013, 03:02:32 AM

One was supposedly Washington's favorite drummer:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2356524/Faces-American-revolution-Amazing-early-photographs-document-heroes-War-Independence-later-years.html

Title: Franklin, 1738
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 17, 2013, 05:31:25 AM

"Sell not virtue to purchase wealth, nor liberty to purchase power." --Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard's Almanack, 1738

Title: Samuel Adams 1776
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 18, 2013, 08:31:11 AM

"If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude than the animated contest of freedom, go from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains sit lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen!" --Samuel Adams, speech to the State House in Philadelphia, 1776

Title: Washington: Our C. requires a moral people
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 21, 2013, 09:03:23 AM

"The blessed Religion revealed in the word of God will remain an eternal and awful monument to prove that the best Institution may be abused by human depravity; and that they may even, in some instances be made subservient to the vilest purposes. Should, hereafter, those incited by the lust of power and prompted by the Supineness or venality of their Constituents, overleap the known barriers of this Constitution and violate the unalienable rights of humanity: it will only serve to shew, that no compact among men (however provident in its construction and sacred in its ratification) can be pronounced everlasting an inviolable, and if I may so express myself, that no Wall of words, that no mound of parchm[en]t can be so formed as to stand against the sweeping torrent of boundless ambition on the one side, aided by the sapping current of corrupted morals on the other."
–George Washington, fragments of the Draft First Inaugural Address, 1789

Title: Madison, 1787 preventing bad law better than voiding it
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 22, 2013, 08:08:36 AM

"t is more convenient to prevent the passage of a law, than to declare it void after it has passed." --James Madison, 1787

Title: Joseph Story: Commentaries, 1833
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 23, 2013, 09:38:08 AM

Title: Madison: Federalist 51
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 24, 2013, 09:28:22 AM

"In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place, oblige it to control itself." --James Madison, Federalist No. 51

Title: Washington
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 25, 2013, 09:04:38 AM

"The best means of forming a manly, virtuous, and happy people will be found in the right education of youth. Without this foundation, every other means, in my opinion, must fail." --George Washington, letter to George Chapman, 1784

Title: T. Paine, Common Sense 1776
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 28, 2013, 08:32:24 AM

"Now is the seedtime of continental union, faith and honor. The least fracture now, will be like a name engraved with the point of a pin on the tender rind of a young oak; the wound would enlarge with the tree, and posterity read in it full grown characters." --Thomas Paine, Common Sense, 1776

Title: Ben Franklin letter to T. Cushing, 1774.
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 29, 2013, 06:55:08 AM

"Those who think themselves injured by their rulers are sometimes, by a mild and prudent answer, convinced of their error. But where complaining is a crime, hope becomes despair." --Benjamin Franklin, Letter to Thomas Cushing, 1774

Title: Samuel Adams 1748
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 30, 2013, 08:19:07 AM

"It is a very great mistake to imagine that the object of loyalty is the authority and interest of one individual man, however dignified by the applause or enriched by the success of popular actions." --Samuel Adams, Loyalty and Sedition, essay in The Advertiser, 1748

Title: Washington: First Inaugural, 1789
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 01, 2013, 08:56:30 AM

Title: John Adams, the foundation of a free Constitution, 1776
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 04, 2013, 06:18:50 AM

"The only foundation of a free Constitution, is pure Virtue, and if this cannot be inspired into our People, in a great Measure, than they have it now. They may change their Rulers, and the forms of Government, but they will not obtain a lasting Liberty." --John Adams, letter to Zabdiel Adams, 1776

Title: Jefferson, first inaugural 1801
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 06, 2013, 07:37:53 AM

FOUNDER'S QUOTE DAILY
"Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others?" --Thomas Jefferson, First Inaugural Address, 1801

Title: Washington to the people of SC, 1790
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 12, 2013, 09:37:30 AM

Title: Madison, law for the few, not the many
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 13, 2013, 09:51:04 AM

"Every new regulation concerning commerce or revenue ... presents a new harvest to those who watch the change and can trace its consequences; a harvest reared not by themselves but by the toils and cares of the great body of their fellow citizens. This is a state of things in which it may be said with some truth that laws are made for the few not for the many." --James Madison

Title: The right to bear arms
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 13, 2013, 02:45:10 PM

"A free people ought not only to be armed and disciplined, but they should have sufficient arms and ammunition to maintain a status of independence from any who might attempt to abuse them, which would include their own government.” — George Washington

"Congress have no power to disarm the militia. Their swords, and every other terrible implement of the soldier, are the birth-right of an American. . . The unlimited power of the sword is not in the hands of either the federal or state governments, but, where I trust in God it will ever remain, in the hands of the people.” — Tench Coxe

"If you have given up your militia, and Congress shall refuse to arm them, you have lost every thing. Your existence will be precarious, because you depend on others, whose interests are not affected by your infelicity." — Patrick Henry

"The Constitution preserves the advantage of being armed which Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation, where the Government are afraid to trust their people with arms." — John Adams

"What, Sir, is the use of a militia? It is to prevent the establishment of a standing army, the bane of liberty. . . Whenever Governments mean to invade the rights and liberties of the people, they always attempt to destroy the militia, in order to raise an army upon their ruins." — Elbridge Gerry

“It is always dangerous to the liberties of the people to have an army stationed among them, over which they have no control ... The Militia is composed of free Citizens. There is therefore no danger of their making use of their Power to the destruction of their own Rights, or suffering others to invade them..” — Samuel Adams

"Experience hath shown, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny." — Thomas Jefferson

"If the representatives of the people betray their constituents, there is then no recourse left but in the exertion of that original right of self-defense..." — Alexander Hamilton

"That the people have a Right to mass and to bear arms; that a well regulated militia composed of the Body of the people, trained to arms, is the proper natural and safe defense of a free State..." — George Mason

“To preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them.” — Richard Henry Lee

“... the Constitution does not say Government shall decree the right to keep and bear arms. The Constitution says 'The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed..” — Ronald Reagan

““Arms discourage and keep the invader and plunderer in awe, and preserve order in the world as well as property... Horrid mischief would ensue were the law-abiding deprived of the use of them.” — Thomas Paine

“Today we need a nation of minutemen; citizens who are not only prepared to take up arms, but citizens who regard the preservation of freedom as a basic purpose of their daily life and who are willing to consciously work and sacrifice for that freedom.” — John F. Kennedy

“The ultimate authority resides in the people, and that if the federal government got too powerful and overstepped its authority, then the people would develop plans of resistance and resort to arms.” — James Madison

"This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or exercise their revolutionary right to overthrow it.” — Abraham Lincoln

Title: Daniel Webster; Destruction from within
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 15, 2013, 03:00:07 PM

Daniel Webster

“There is no nation on earth powerful enough to accomplish our overthrow. Our destruction, should it come at all, will be from another quarter: from the inattention of the people to the concerns of their government, from their carelessness and negligence. I must confess that I do apprehend some danger. I fear that they may place too implicit a confidence in their public servants and fail properly to scrutinize their conduct; that in this way they may be made the dupes of designing men and become the instruments of their own undoing.”

Title: Founding Fathers: Madison on Obamacare in Federalist 62
Post by: DougMacG on November 15, 2013, 09:07:17 PM

The internal effects of a mutable policy are still more calamitous. It poisons the blessing of liberty itself. It will be of little avail to the people, that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man, who knows what the law is to-day, can guess what it will be tomorrow. Law is defined to be a rule of action; but how can that be a rule, which is little known, and less fixed?

Another effect of public instability is the unreasonable advantage it gives to the sagacious, the enterprising, and the moneyed few over the industrious and uniformed mass of the people. Every new regulation concerning commerce or revenue, or in any way affecting the value of the different species of property, presents a new harvest to those who watch the change, and can trace its consequences; a harvest, reared not by themselves, but by the toils and cares of the great body of their fellow-citizens. This is a state of things in which it may be said with some truth that laws are made for the few, not for the many.

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2013/11/james-madison-on-obamacare.php

Title: Madison, Federalist 62, 1788
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 19, 2013, 09:00:49 AM

Title: Thomas Jefferson
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 19, 2013, 03:16:06 PM

Thomas Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson was a very remarkable man who started learning very early in life and never stopped.

At 5, began studying under his cousin's tutor.

At 9, studied Latin, Greek and French.

At 14, studied classical literature and additional languages.

At 16, entered the College of William and Mary. Also could write in Greek with one hand while writing the same in Latin with the other.

At 19, studied Law for 5 years starting under George Wythe.

At 23, started his own law practice.

At 25, was elected to the Virginia House of Burgesses.

At 31, wrote the widely circulated "Summary View of the Rights of British America ? And retired from his law practice.

At 32, was a Delegate to the Second Continental Congress.

At 33, wrote the Declaration of Independence .

At 33, took three years to revise Virginia 's legal code and wrote a Public Education bill and a statute for Religious Freedom.

At 36, was elected the second Governor of Virginia succeeding Patrick Henry.

At 40, served in Congress for two years.

At 41, was the American minister to France and negotiated commercial treaties with European nations along with Ben Franklin and John Adams.

At 46, served as the first Secretary of State under George Washington.

At 53, served as Vice President and was elected president of the American Philosophical Society.

At 55, drafted the Kentucky Resolutions.

At 57, was elected the third president of the United States .

At 60, obtained the Louisiana Purchase doubling the nation's size.

At 61, was elected to a second term as President.

At 65, retired to Monticello .

At 80, helped President Monroe shape the Monroe Doctrine.

At 81, almost single-handedly created the University of Virginia and served as its first president.

At 83, died on the 50th anniversary of the Signing of the Declaration of Independence along with John Adams.

Thomas Jefferson knew because he himself studied the previous failed attempts at government. He understood actual history, the nature of God, his laws and the nature of man. That happens to be way more than what most understand today. Jefferson really knew his stuff. A voice from the past to lead us in the future:

John F. Kennedy held a dinner in the white House for a group of the brightest minds in the nation at that time. He made this statement: "This is perhaps the assembly of the most intelligence ever to gather at one time in the White House with the exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone."

"When we get piled upon one another in large cities, as in Europe, we shall become as corrupt as Europe ."
-- Thomas Jefferson

"The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not."
-- Thomas Jefferson

"It is incumbent on every generation to pay its own debts as it goes. A principle which if acted on would save one-half the wars of the world."
-- Thomas Jefferson

"I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them."
-- Thomas Jefferson

"My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government."
-- Thomas Jefferson

"No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms."
-- Thomas Jefferson

"The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government."
-- Thomas Jefferson

"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."
-- Thomas Jefferson

"To compel a man to subsidize with his taxes the propagation of ideas which he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical."
-- Thomas Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson said in 1802:

"I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies.

If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around the banks will deprive the people of all property - until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered."

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 21, 2013, 09:54:08 AM

"It should be the highest ambition of every American to extend his views beyond himself, and to bear in mind that his conduct will not only affect himself, his country, and his immediate posterity; but that its influence may be co-extensive with the world, and stamp political happiness or misery on ages yet unborn." --George Washington, letter to the Legislature of Pennsylvania, 1789

Title: Madison, property rights, 1792
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 22, 2013, 04:03:29 AM

"Government is instituted to protect property of every sort; as well that which lies in the various rights of individuals, as that which the term particularly expresses. This being the end of government, that alone is a just government which impartially secures to every man whatever is his own." --James Madison, Essay on Property, 1792

Title: Jefferson, notes on the State of VA, 1781
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 22, 2013, 05:39:53 AM

second post

"The time to guard against corruption and tyranny, is before they shall have gotten hold on us. It is better to keep the wolf out of the fold, than to trust to drawing his teeth and talons after he shall have entered." --Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, Query 13, 1781

Title: Jefferson to J. Milligan, 1816
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 25, 2013, 07:19:53 AM

"To take from one because it is thought that his own industry and that of his father's has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association, the guarantee to every one of a free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it." --Thomas Jefferson, letter to Joseph Milligan, 1816

Title: Re: Jefferson to J. Milligan, 1816
Post by: DougMacG on November 25, 2013, 07:49:26 AM

Quote from: Crafty_Dog on November 25, 2013, 07:19:53 AM

"To take from one because it is thought that his own industry and that of his father's has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association, the guarantee to every one of a free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it." --Thomas Jefferson, letter to Joseph Milligan, 1816

Profound! I would like to save and remember that.

Title: Ben Franklin says we are fuct
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 26, 2013, 09:27:26 AM

nly a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters." --Benjamin Franklin, 1787

Title: James Monroe in the VA Ratifying Convention 1788
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 27, 2013, 10:28:24 AM

Title: The origins of Thanksgiving
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 28, 2013, 10:35:09 AM

http://patriotpost.us/pages/284

Title: Why we have a constitutional republic
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 29, 2013, 09:46:05 AM

Title: MLK
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 01, 2013, 09:57:34 AM

"The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy." - Dr. Martin Luther King.

Title: Jefferson
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 02, 2013, 09:25:49 AM

"I would rather be exposed to the inconveniencies attending too much liberty than those attending too small a degree of it." --Thomas Jefferson

Title: J. Story, the Constitution 1833
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 03, 2013, 10:17:13 AM

Title: Reagan, Paine, and Burke
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 03, 2013, 06:52:35 PM

WSJ

Reagan and the Roots of Conservatism
The Gipper was more of a Thomas Paine man than a Burkean.

By
William A. Galston
Dec. 3, 2013 7:13 p.m. ET

If Ronald Reagan was not a conservative, there is no modern American conservatism. But if Yuval Levin's provocative new book, "The Great Debate: Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine, and the Birth of Left and Right," is correct, Reagan was anything but a conservative on what Mr. Levin regards as the most fundamental division between left and right—Burke's and Paine's rival conceptions of political change.

In his 1776 pamphlet "Common Sense," Paine famously proclaimed that "we have it in our power to begin the world over again." Burke, whom Mr. Levin regards as the progenitor of conservatism, saw the future as inextricably linked to the past and present. Abrupt or revolutionary change begins with social destruction and ends in self-destruction. Change that improves the world is rooted in respect for the tacit wisdom of the present. A true patriot and wise politician, Burke wrote, "always considers how he shall make the most of the existing materials of his country," a thought that Mr. Levin summarizes as "we do not have it in our power to begin the world over again."

This brings us to Ronald Reagan, whose attitude toward change was more like Paine's than Burke's. Reagan often quoted Paine's "we have it in our power" affirmation and did so in one of the most systematic statements of his creed—his acceptance speech at the 1980 Republican convention.

This detail is symptomatic of a larger truth: In its politically relevant form, modern American conservatism does not embody a theory of incremental change. On the contrary, conservatives from Reagan to the present day have been moved by the belief that America is headed in the wrong direction and needs to reverse course. Ever-growing government must shrink; the encouragement of risk-taking must replace the expansion of publicly provided security; the relentless growth of laws and regulations must yield to the rebirth of individual liberty.

The point is not whether contemporary conservatism is right or wrong, but rather that it is radical, not Burkean.

In fact, it is hard to be both an American and a follower of Burke. As Mr. Levin acknowledges, Burke rejects the theory of natural rights at the heart of the Declaration of Independence, and he denies that society is a contract that the people may alter when it ceases to secure those rights. In Burke's view, Mr. Levin suggests, the early Americans "merely sought to continue and preserve the traditions of the English constitution and the privileges they had always enjoyed." If that had been the case, the first two paragraphs of the Declaration would have been superfluous.

As Mr. Levin shows, Burke saw a limited role for reason in political life. Indeed, he argued that "political problems do not primarily concern truth or falsehood." America's Founders, who based their argument for independence on self-evident truths, disagreed with Burke. The authors of the Federalist essays in the 1780s argued that "the science of politics, . . . like most other sciences, has received great improvement," such that they understood principles that theorists and statesmen of previous epochs grasped imperfectly or not at all.

Burke was skeptical, Mr. Levin says, about the ability of human beings to reason directly about abstract principles. That would mean that the deepest anti-Burkean of all was our greatest president, the founder of the Republican Party. In 1859, Abraham Lincoln wrote: "All honor to Jefferson —to the man who, in the concrete pressure of a struggle for national independence by a single people, had the coolness, forecast, and capacity to introduce into a merely revolutionary document, an abstract truth, applicable to all men and all times." In this respect, among many others, today's conservatives follow Lincoln, not Burke. The two Americans whose understanding of our founding most closely resembled Burke's were Stephen Douglas and Chief Justice Roger B. Taney.

Rejecting a politics of individual choice, Burke emphasizes instead the unchosen obligations that structure social life. Although he was familiar with the fact of social mobility, it was hardly central to his vision. Society as he saw it consists of ranks and orders, hierarchies and obligations, connected by sentiments of fear, awe and reverence. Since the withering of the Virginia aristocracy in the early 19th century, the dominant sentiment of American society has been social equality. Today's conservatives embrace the ideal of equal opportunity as firmly as today's liberals; the rival ideologies differ about the means to that end, not the end itself.

None of this is to say that Burke is irrelevant to contemporary politics. His insistence on the political centrality of passion and imagination is an essential corrective to theories that find room only for reason and self-interest. There are, as Burke said, abuses of liberty and pathologies of choice. There are limits to our ability to foresee the consequences of our policies, and therefore reasons for caution. As Mr. Levin suggests, there is room for Burkean practice if not Burkean theory.

Burke might just do as the source for a revived British conservatism. But for their theoretical inspiration, American conservatives will have to look elsewhere

Title: Washington, First inaurgual address, 1789
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 04, 2013, 07:38:44 AM

"The propitious smiles of Heaven can never be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and right, which Heaven itself has ordained." --George Washington, First Inaugural Address, 1789

Title: Washington bulletproof
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 05, 2013, 09:19:44 AM

Bulletproof: George Washington protected by powerful dispensations of Providence
http://www.examiner.com/article/bulletproof-george-washington-protected-by-powerful-dispensations-of-providence

Ben Franklin said:

"The longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth, that God governs in the affairs of men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without His notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without His aid?"

An example of God governing in the affairs of our young nation is a story you might never have heard about George Washington. According to historian David Barton these are stories no longer found in the text books of our nation's classrooms.

Two events we'll be examining happened around the time of the French and Indian War which was from 1754–1763. The French and Indian War occurred twenty years before the American Revolution.

Both the French and British were at odds over land in this new world, which would eventually become America. Specifically, the area of contention was in present-day Ohio, and both the English and French had laid claims to it.

In 1753, the Virginia Governor Robert Dinwiddie appointed George Washington, at age 21, to deliver a message to the French. Washington was to deliver this message to the French garrison at Fort Le Boeuf near Lake Erie. The message demanded an immediate French withdrawal from the Ohio Country.

Washington and his eight-man party made the long trek from Virginia on October 3, 1753. He and his party reached the fort on December 12. Jacques Legardeur de Saint-Pierre, graciously received Washington and his party. Saint-Pierre invited Washington to dine with him.

Saint-Pierre was presented with the letter to which he responded "As to the Summons you send me to retire; I do not think myself obliged to obey it." He noted that France's claim to the Ohio Country was superior due to René-Robert Cavelier and Sieur de La Salle's exploration of the area almost a century earlier.

Washington left Fort Le Boeuf early on December 16. On Washington's return trip to Virginia, he and one of his guides, Christopher Gist, went ahead of the other men. They desired to reach the governor quickly with the news of the French refusal to leave the Ohio Country.

It was during this time that Washington and Gist lost their canoe to the icy river rapids. Eventually, they arrived at Murdering Town, near Evans City, which was 30 miles north of Pittsburgh. In need of a guide they met an Indian who agreed to show them the fastest route to the forks of the Ohio River.

After leading the weary Washington and Gist for a few miles, the Indian guide ran ahead to a clearing. He then turned and fired his musket at Washington, near point-blank range (reportedly about 15 feet) and missed. The guide was seized by Gist and was about to be killed, but Washington prevented Gist from taking his life.

They later released the Indian after dark. Washington and Gist traveled through the night because they were concerned the Indian would return with reinforcements. This was one of the first times that Washington was spared, and certainly it would stand to reason the hand of God played a part in his protection.

One of the next reported instances of Washington being bullet-proof came when he was a 23-year-old colonel serving under General Edward Braddock. Since the claim of the disputed territories could not be solved diplomatically the British sent Braddock to resolve the issue.

Braddock's intention was to rout the French from the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers. Washington and the Virginia militia joined Braddock, and they set out with 1300 troops to expel the French from Fort Duquesne.

It was July 9, 1755; Washington and Braddock were only seven miles from the fort when they were ambushed by a combined force of French and Indians. The British and Virginia militia were being fired upon from both sides.

After a grueling two hours of battle 714 of the 1300 British and American troops had been shot down. Meanwhile, the French and Indian force only lost around 30. History tells us that 86 British and American officers in that battle were killed, even General Braddock was mortally wounded.

Washington was the only officer who had not been shot from off his horse. After this resounding defeat, he gathered his remaining men and retreated to Fort Cumberland in western Maryland, arriving there on July 17, 1755.

The following day, Washington wrote a letter to his family telling them about the Battle of the Monongahela. After the battle he told them, he removed his jacket and found four bullet holes in it but yet a single bullet hadn't even graze him. Several horses had been shot out from under him, but he was not harmed. This is when he said:

By the all-powerful dispensations of Providence, I have been protected beyond all human probability or expectation.’

Washington acknowledged without a doubt that God’s hand was upon him, and God had protected him throughout the battle. However, the best part of this story is yet to come. It was 15 years later in 1770; Washington returned to the same Pennsylvania woods where the battle had taken place.

It's said an old Indian chief came from a great distance because he heard that Washington had returned to the battle site. The chief sat down with Washington and had a face-to-face over a council fire. This is when the chief said he'd been a leader in the Battle of Monongahela 15 years earlier. The chief then said he had instructed his braves to single out and shoot down the officers.

Washington had been singled out specifically by the chief, and he fired 17 different times trying to kill him. This chief believed that Washington was under the care of the Great Spirit, and as such he told his braves to quit firing upon him. He then told Washington:

I have traveled a long and weary path that I might see the young warrior of the great battle…. I am come to pay homage to the man who is the particular favorite of Heaven, and who can never die in battle.

Perhaps you'll agree after reading these accounts that God's hand played an important part in the life of Washington and the birth of our great nation.

If you would like to receive an email when new articles are published please consider subscribing by clicking the blue subscribe link near the bottom or this article. If you would like to read more articles by the Christianity Examiner, you can go here.

Title: Patrick Henry 1778
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 09, 2013, 08:19:20 AM

Title: John Adams, 1770
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 10, 2013, 08:50:59 AM

"Human government is more or less perfect as it approaches nearer or diverges farther from the imitation of this perfect plan of divine and moral government." --John Adams, draft of a Newspaper Communication, 1770

Title: Hamilton, Federalist 35
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 11, 2013, 08:32:43 AM

"Necessity, especially in politics, often occasions false hopes, false reasonings and a system of measures, correspondently erroneous." --Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 35, 1788

Title: Washington Farewell Address 1796
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 12, 2013, 09:24:49 AM

FOUNDER'S QUOTE DAILY
"[T]he jealousy of a free people ought to be constantly awake; since history and experience prove that foreign influence is one of the most baneful foes of Republican Government." --George Washington, Farewell Address, 1796

Title: Hamilton 1794
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 13, 2013, 09:04:36 AM

"A sacred respect for the constitutional law is the vital principle, the sustaining energy of a free government." --Alexander Hamilton, Essay in the American Daily Advertiser, 1794

Title: Jefferson, notes on the State of VA, 1781/ Madison on human nature
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 16, 2013, 06:12:49 AM

Title: Hamilton on concentration of wealth, 1788
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 17, 2013, 08:45:54 AM

"As riches increase and accumulate in few hands, as luxury prevails in society, virtue will be in a greater degree considered as only a graceful appendage of wealth, and the tendency of things will be to depart from the republican standard. This is the real disposition of human nature; it is what neither the honorable member nor myself can correct. It is a common misfortunate that awaits our State constitution, as well as all others." --Alexander Hamilton, speech to the New York Ratifying Convention, 1788

I would note that

a) the concentration of wealth has greatly increased under the economic fascism of the "progressive" economics of the current administration.
b) the alleged increase in concentration under Reagan was due to those in high brackets who were hiding the money in tax shelters (which made sense at the 70% rate prior to Reagan) allowed that money to be "seen" by the tax code as rates went down under Reagan. Thus the data appeared to show an increase in concentration when in fact "the rich" were actually paying more.

Title: Record of Rights at National Archives
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 17, 2013, 09:03:15 AM

Second post

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/17/arts/design/records-of-rights-at-the-national-archives.html?hpw&rref=arts&pagewanted=all&_r=0

Title: Madison, 1790; Patrick Henry
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 18, 2013, 04:38:20 AM

"There is not a more important and fundamental principle in legislation, than that the ways and means ought always to face the public engagements; that our appropriations should ever go hand in hand with our promises." --James Madison, Speech in Congress, 1790

"The battle, sir, is not to the strong alone; it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave." --Patrick Henry

Title: J. Story on the rule of law, 1833
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 19, 2013, 09:17:40 AM

Title: Washington invokes God, 1790
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 20, 2013, 07:31:06 AM

Title: Jefferson, 1781 the manners and spirit of a people
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 07, 2014, 08:59:45 AM

"It is the manners and spirit of a people which preserve a republic in vigor. A degeneracy in these is a canker which soon eats to the heart of its laws and constitution." --Thomas Jefferson (1781)

Title: Washington; Samuel West: Religion, Natural Law
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 09, 2014, 04:33:41 PM

"Let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle." --George Washington (Farewell Address, 1796)

"The most perfect freedom consists in obeying the dictates of right reason, and submitting to natural law. When a man goes beyond or contrary to the law of nature and reason, he becomes the slave of base passions and vile lusts; he introduces confusion and disorder into society, and brings misery and destruction upon himself. This, therefore, cannot be called a state of freedom, but a state of the vilest slavery and the most dreadful bondage." --Samuel West (1776)

Title: Samuel Adams
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 10, 2014, 09:10:38 AM

"He therefore is the truest friend to the liberty of his country who tries most to promote its virtue, and who, so far as his power and influence extend, will not suffer a man to be chosen into any office of power and trust who is not a wise and virtuous man... The sum of all is, if we would most truly enjoy this gift of Heaven, let us become a virtuous people." --Samuel Adams

Title: Story
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 13, 2014, 09:04:23 AM

Title: Washington on Friendship
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 15, 2014, 09:47:00 AM

Title: A letter from Thomas Jefferson
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 15, 2014, 10:24:00 AM

http://www.let.rug.nl/usa/presidents/thomas-jefferson/letters-of-thomas-jefferson/jefl279.php

To William Ludlow Monticello, September 6,1824
The Letters of Thomas Jefferson SIR,

-- The idea which you present in your letter of July 30th, of the progress of society from its rudest state to that it has now attained, seems conformable to what may be probably conjectured. Indeed, we have under our eyes tolerable proofs of it. Let a philosophic observer commence a journey from the savages of the Rocky Mountains, eastwardly towards our sea-coast. These he would observe in the earliest stage of association living under no law but that of nature, subscribing and covering themselves with the flesh and skins of wild beasts. He would next find those on our frontiers in the pastoral state, raising domestic animals to supply the defects of hunting. Then succeed our own semi-barbarous citizens, the pioneers of the advance of civilization, and so in his progress he would meet the gradual shades of improving man until he would reach his, as yet, most improved state in our seaport towns. This, in fact, is equivalent to a survey, in time, of the progress of man from the infancy of creation to the present day. I am eighty-one years of age, born where I now live, in the first range of mountains in the interior of our country. And I have observed this march of civilization advancing from the sea coast, passing over us like a cloud of light, increasing our knowledge and improving our condition, insomuch as that we are at this time more advanced in civilization here than the seaports were when I was a boy. And where this progress will stop no one can say. Barbarism has, in the meantime, been receding before the steady step of amelioration; and will in time, I trust, disappear from the earth. You seem to think that this advance has brought on too complicated a state of society, and that we should gain in happiness by treading back our steps a little way. I think, myself, that we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious. I believe it might be much simplified to the relief of those who maintain it. Your experiment seems to have this in view. A society of seventy families, the number you name, may very possibly be governed as a single family, subsisting on their common industry, and holding all things in common. Some regulators of the family you still must have, and it remains to be seen at what period of your increasing population your simple regulations will cease to be sufficient to preserve order, peace, and justice. The experiment is interesting;

I shall not live to see its issue, but I wish it success equal to your hopes, and to yourself and society prosperity and happiness.

Title: Hamilton: Why government?
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 16, 2014, 09:09:58 AM

"Why has government been instituted at all? Because the passions of men will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice without constraint." --Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 15, 1787

Title: Roger Sherman to John Adams
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 17, 2014, 09:24:38 AM

"If the president alone was vested with the power of appointing all officers, and was left to select a council for himself, he would be liable to be deceived by flatterers and pretenders to patriotism." --Roger Sherman, to John Adams, 1789

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 20, 2014, 09:12:18 AM

"The foundation on which all [constitutions] are built is the natural equality of man, the denial of every preeminence but that annexed to legal office, and particularly the denial of a preeminence by birth." --Thomas Jefferson, letter to George Washington, 1784
MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. DAY

"I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.' ... I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. ... And if America is to be a great nation this must become true." --Martin Luther King Jr.

=============

For the record we pre-date Glenn Beck in counting MLK as a Founding Father.

Title: George Mason: Lust for power, 1788
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 21, 2014, 09:20:53 AM

"[C]onsidering the natural lust for power so inherent in man, I fear the thirst of power will prevail to oppress the people." --George Mason, speech at the Virginia Ratifying Convention, 1788

Title: Madison, on Nullification, 1834
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 22, 2014, 10:11:12 AM

Title: Noah Webster; election of the unprincipled
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 23, 2014, 09:36:51 AM

Title: John Adams, 1775
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 24, 2014, 09:42:32 AM

"If the people are capable of understanding, seeing and feeling the differences between true and false, right and wrong, virtue and vice, to what better principle can the friends of mankind apply than to the sense of this difference?" --John Adams, the Novanglus, 1775

Title: Madison, Federalist 51, 1788
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 27, 2014, 09:56:15 AM

Title: Jefferson, 1784
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 28, 2014, 10:02:15 AM

"It behooves every man who values liberty of conscience for himself, to resist invasions of it in the case of others." --Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, 1784

Title: Story, commentaries, Executive power, 1833
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 29, 2014, 09:49:02 AM

"A feeble executive implies a feeble execution of the government. A feeble execution is but another phrase for a bad execution; and a government ill executed, whatever may be its theory, must, in practice, be a bad government." --Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution, 1833

Title: Madison: Helevidius 3, 1793
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 30, 2014, 09:19:09 AM

Title: John Adams on Property, 1787
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 03, 2014, 09:17:40 AM

"The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the law of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence." --John Adams, Defence of the Constitutions of the Government of the United States, 1787

Title: T. Paine, Rights of Man 1791
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 04, 2014, 09:20:40 AM

"A little matter will move a party, but it must be something great that moves a nation." --Thomas Paine, Rights of Man, 1791

Title: Jefferson to Adams, 1821
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 05, 2014, 09:45:56 AM

"I will not believe our labors are lost. I shall not die without a hope that light and liberty are on a steady advance." --Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Adams, 1821

Title: Madison, report of the VA Resolutions
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 06, 2014, 09:55:49 AM

"It will be remembered, that a frequent recurrence to fundamental principles is solemnly enjoined by most of the state constitutions, and particularly by our own, as a necessary safeguard against the danger of degeneracy, to which republics are liable, as well as other governments, though in a less degree than others." --James Madison, Report of the Virginia Resolutions

Title: Thomas Paine: Common Sense
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 07, 2014, 06:31:17 PM

"Is the power who is jealous of our prosperity, a proper power to govern us?
Whoever says No, to this question, is an Independent for independency means no
more than this, whether we shall make our own laws, or, whether the King, the
greatest enemy this continent hath, or can have, shall tell us there shall be
no laws but such as I like." --Thomas Paine, Common Sense, 1776

Title: I hope he means this metaphorically , , ,
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 13, 2014, 10:05:01 AM

"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." --Thomas Jefferson, letter to William S. Smith, 1787

Title: Marshall: McCulloch v. Maryland, 1819
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 14, 2014, 08:58:28 AM

"hould Congress, under the pretext of executing its powers, pass laws for the accomplishment of objects not entrusted to the government, such [acts are] not the law of the land." --John Marshall, McCulloch v. Maryland, 1819

Title: Washington: Are we a united people? 1785
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 17, 2014, 01:15:20 PM

"We are either a United people, or we are not. If the former, let us, in all matters of general concern act as a nation, which have national objects to promote, and a national character to support. If we are not, let us no longer act a farce by pretending to it." --George Washington, letter to James Madison, 1785

Title: John Adams on Equality, 1776
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 18, 2014, 09:46:04 AM

Title: Washington Farewell Address, 1796 Concentration of power in one branch
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 19, 2014, 09:21:50 AM

Title: John Adams, on public and private virtue, 1776
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 20, 2014, 09:45:38 AM

"Public virtue cannot exist in a nation without private, and public virtue is the only foundation of republics. There must be a positive passion for the public good, the public interest, honor, power and glory, established in the minds of the people, or there can be no republican government, nor any real liberty: and this public passion must be superior to all private passions." --John Adams, letter to Mercy Warren, 1776

Title: Madison on States Rights in the Federalist Papers
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 24, 2014, 08:43:43 AM

Title: John Adams on Judges, 1776
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 25, 2014, 09:49:15 AM

Title: T. Paine, Rights of Man 1791
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 26, 2014, 10:04:25 AM

Title: Jefferson, Secon Inaugural 1805
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 27, 2014, 10:01:25 AM

Title: Samuel Adams 1771
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 28, 2014, 04:41:43 PM

"The truth is, all might be free if they valued freedom, and defended it as
they ought." --Samuel Adams, Essay in the Boston Gazette, 1771

Title: Jefferson on Natural Law 1774
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 03, 2014, 08:52:19 AM

"A free people [claim] their rights as derived from the laws of nature, and
not as the gift of their chief magistrate." --Thomas Jefferson, Rights of
British America, 1774

Title: Theory of the Dec. of Ind. and the Constitution
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 03, 2014, 11:38:46 AM

http://online.hillsdale.edu/course/con101/part02/part02/lecture

Title: Madison, 1822
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 04, 2014, 10:18:17 AM

"Knowledge will forever govern ignorance: And a people who mean to be their
own Governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives."
--James Madison, letter to W.T. Barry, 1822

Title: Washington: Farewell Address 1796
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 05, 2014, 03:42:14 PM

"But let there be no change by usurpation; for though this, in one instance,
may be the instrument of good, it is the customary weapon by which free
governments are destroyed." --George Washington, Farewell Address, 1796

Title: Wilson on statutory interpretation 1790
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 11, 2014, 10:12:32 AM

"The first and governing maxim in the interpretation of a statute is to discover the meaning of those who made it." --James Wilson, Of the Study of Law in the United States, 1790

Title: Madison on Finance, 1788
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 12, 2014, 09:06:25 AM

"[T]he most productive system of finance will always be the least burdensome." --James Madison, Federalist No. 39, 1788

Title: J. ADams: virtue and the Constitution 1776
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 13, 2014, 06:06:41 PM

"The only foundation of a free Constitution, is pure Virtue, and if this cannot be inspired into our People, in a greater Measure than they have it now, they may change their Rulers, and the forms of Government, but they will not obtain a lasting Liberty." --John Adams, letter to Zabdiel Adams, 1776

Title: J Adams, thoughts on govt, 1776
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 14, 2014, 09:10:22 AM

Title: Story on Consitutional Interpretation 1833
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 17, 2014, 09:02:48 AM

THE FOUNDATION
"The constitution of the United States is to receive a reasonable interpretation of its language, and its powers, keeping in view the objects and purposes, for which those powers were conferred. By a reasonable interpretation, we mean, that in case the words are susceptible of two different senses, the one strict, the other more enlarged, that should be adopted, which is most consonant with the apparent objects and intent of the Constitution." --Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution, 1833

Title: Jefferson did not like the judiciary 1820
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 18, 2014, 09:12:01 AM

"The judiciary of the United States is the subtle corps of sappers and miners constantly working under ground to undermine the foundations of our confederated fabric. They are construing our constitution from a co-ordination of a general and special government to a general and supreme one alone." --Thomas Jefferson, letter to Thomas Ritchie, 1820

Title: Hamilton: Interests at Variance with Inclinations
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 19, 2014, 09:19:41 AM

Title: Hamilton on self-defense from betrayal by government
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 20, 2014, 09:14:55 AM

"If the representatives of the people betray their constituents, there is then no recourse left but in the exertion of that original right of self-defense which is paramount to all positive forms of government." –Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 28, 1787

Title: Madison: Persons & Property 1829
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 25, 2014, 09:18:18 AM

"It is sufficiently obvious, that persons and property are the two great subjects on which Governments are to act; and that the rights of persons, and the rights of property, are the objects, for the protection of which Government was instituted. These rights cannot well be separated." --James Madison, Speech at the Virginia Convention, 1829

Title: Jefferson: repository of the ultimate powers, 1820
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 26, 2014, 10:13:53 AM

Title: Washington, General Orders, 1776
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 27, 2014, 12:09:33 PM

"We have therefore to resolve to conquer or die: Our won Country's Honor, all call upon us for vigorous and manly exertion, and if we now shamefully fail, we shall become infamous to the whole world. Let us therefore rely upon the goodness of the Cause, and the aid of the supreme Being, in whose hands Victory is, to animate and encourage us to great and noble Actions." --George Washington, General Orders, 1776

Title: Mercy Warren: Rise, Progress, and Termination of the American Revolution 1805
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 28, 2014, 09:20:04 AM

"It is necessary for every American, with becoming energy to endeavor to stop the dissemination of principles evidently destructive of the cause for which they have bled. It must be the combined virtue of the rulers and of the people to do this, and to rescue and save their civil and religious rights from the outstretched arm of tyranny, which may appear under any mode or form of government." --Mercy Warren, History of the Rise, Progress, and Termination of the American Revolution, 1805

Title: Madison to Jefferson: Invasion of property rights, 1788
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 01, 2014, 09:28:23 AM

"The invasion of private rights is chiefly to be apprehended, not from acts of Government contrary to the sense of its constituents, but from acts in which the Government is the mere instrument of the major number of the Constituents." --James Madison, letter to Thomas Jefferson, 1788

Title: Madison 1788
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 02, 2014, 09:36:32 AM

"[T]he success of the usurpation will depend on the executive and judiciary departments, which are to expound and give effect to the legislative acts; and in a last resort a remedy must be obtained from the people, who can by the elections of more faithful representatives, annul the acts of the usurpers." --James Madison, Federalist No. 44, 1788

Title: Jefferson says Scalia is right
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 03, 2014, 02:22:44 PM

"On every question of construction carry ourselves back to the time when the
Constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit manifested in the debates and
instead of trying what meaning may be squeezed out of the text or invented
against it, conform to the probable one in which it was passed." --Thomas
Jefferson, letter to William Johnson, 1823

Title: Adams: Address to military 1798-- The C. requires a moral and religious people
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 08, 2014, 04:01:44 PM

Title: Samuel Adams 1776
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 09, 2014, 09:42:20 AM

"How strangely will the tools of a tyrant pervert the plain meaning of words!" --Samuel Adams, to John Pitts, 1776

Title: Frannklin 1766
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 10, 2014, 09:42:29 AM

"There is no country in the world where so many provisions are established for them; so many hospitals to receive them when they are sick or lame, founded and maintained by voluntary charities; so many alms-houses for the aged of both sexes, together with a solemn general law made by the rich to subject their estates to a heavy tax for the support of the poor. Under all these obligations, are our poor modest, humble, and thankful; and do they use their best endeavours to maintain themselves, and lighten our shoulders of this burthen?" --Benjamin Franklin, On the Price of Corn, and Management of the Poor, London Chronicle, 1766

Title: Paine
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 11, 2014, 09:52:02 AM

"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom, must, like men, undergo the fatigues of supporting it." --Thomas Paine

Title: Ben Franklin, 1795: Liberty and safety
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 14, 2014, 02:34:18 PM

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." --Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1795

Title: John Marshall: McCullough v. Maryland 1819
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 15, 2014, 09:54:58 AM

"An unlimited power to tax involves, necessarily, a power to destroy; because there is a limit beyond which no institution and no property can bear taxation." --John Marshall, McCullough v. Maryland, 1819

Title: SAmuel Adams, 1748: Loyalty and Sedition
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 16, 2014, 09:03:58 AM

Title: Thomas Paine, debt to our children 1776
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 17, 2014, 09:02:26 AM

Title: Madison, Justice and Liberty, Federalist 51
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 18, 2014, 09:23:05 AM

Title: John Adams, inferiors and superiors 1776
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 21, 2014, 09:13:25 AM

Title: Ben Franklin: The End of the Republic; Jefferson on Honesty
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 22, 2014, 09:24:30 AM

""When the people find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic."" - Ben Franklin.

"It is of great importance to set a resolution, not to be shaken, never to tell an untruth. There is no vice so mean, so pitiful, so contemptible; and he who permits himself to tell a lie once, finds it much easier to do it a second and a third time, till at length it becomes habitual; he tells lies without attending to it, and truths without the world's believing him. This falsehood of the tongue leads to that of the heart, and in time depraves all its good disposition." --Thomas Jefferson, letter to Peter Carr, 1785

Title: Sam Adams on the vote, 1781; Paine on Moderation 1792
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 23, 2014, 04:27:09 PM

Title: Washington, Farewell Address, 1796 on foreign influence
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 24, 2014, 09:28:58 AM

"Against the insidious wiles of foreign influence ... the jealousy of a free people ought to be constantly awake; since history and experience prove that foreign influence is one of the most baneful foes of Republican Government." --George Washington, Farewell Address, 1796

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 25, 2014, 08:52:51 AM

"One single object ... [will merit] the endless gratitude of the society: that of restraining the judges from usurping legislation." --Thomas Jefferson, letter to Edward Livingston, 1825

Title: J. Story; State Governments, 1833
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 29, 2014, 11:33:24 AM

Title: Hamilton on Neutrality, Federalist 11, 1787
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 01, 2014, 10:02:08 AM

"The rights of neutrality will only be respected when they are defended by an adequate power. A nation, despicable by its weakness, forfeits even the privilege of being neutral." --Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 11, 1787

Title: "One rule only: be friends at the end of the day"
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 02, 2014, 10:17:05 AM

Title: Wilson, Teach your children well 1791
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 05, 2014, 09:45:42 AM

Title: American Creed: Federalist Papers, No. 47, Distribution of Power
Post by: DougMacG on May 06, 2014, 08:48:04 AM

"The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, selfappointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny."

- James Madison, The Federalist Papers, No. 47: The Particular Structure of the New Government and the Distribution of Power Among Its Different Parts

http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed47.asp

Title: Re: American Creed: Federalist Papers, No. 47, Distribution of Power
Post by: G M on May 06, 2014, 09:04:40 AM

Quote from: DougMacG on May 06, 2014, 08:48:04 AM

"The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, selfappointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny."

- James Madison, The Federalist Papers, No. 47: The Particular Structure of the New Government and the Distribution of Power Among Its Different Parts

http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed47.asp

Almost like the founders foresaw Obama.

Title: Webster on the importance of virtue, 1788
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 06, 2014, 09:19:01 AM

"The virtues of men are of more consequence to society than their abilities; and for this reason, the heart should be cultivated with more assiduity than the head." --Noah Webster, On the Education of Youth in America, 1788

Title: J. Story on State Governments, 1833:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 08, 2014, 06:50:13 PM

"The state governments have a full superintendence and control over the immense mass of local interests of their respective states, which connect themselves with the feelings, the affections, the municipal institutions, and the internal arrangements of the whole population. They possess, too, the immediate administration of justice in all cases, civil and criminal, which concern the property, personal rights, and peaceful pursuits of their own citizens." --Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution, 1833

Title: Incomplete Collection of the Journals of the Continental Congress
Post by: bigdog on May 12, 2014, 08:33:43 PM

So damn cool!!!!!

http://www.constitution.org/uslaw/cont-cong/journals.html

Title: John Adams, thoughts on govt. 1776
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 14, 2014, 09:02:15 AM

Nice find BD.

"[T]hat form of government which is best contrived to secure an impartial and exact execution of the laws, is the best of republics." --John Adams, Thoughts on Government, 1776

Title: Witherspoon: Interface of civil and religious freedom, 1776
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 16, 2014, 09:08:44 AM

Title: T. Paine, First Principles: 1791
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 19, 2014, 12:40:50 PM

"He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself." --Thomas Paine, Dissertation on First Principles of Government, 1791

Title: Patrick Henry: VA Convention 1775
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 20, 2014, 09:20:21 AM

"It is natural to man to indulge in the illusions of hope. We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth -- and listen to the song of that syren, till she transforms us into beasts. Is this the part of wise men, engaged in a great and arduous struggle for liberty? Are we disposed to be of the number of those, who having eyes, see not, and having ears, hear not, the things which so nearly concern their temporal salvation? For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it might cost, I am willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst, and to provide for it." --Patrick Henry, speech in the Virginia Convention, 1775

Title: Hamilton, the Farmer Refuted, 1775
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 21, 2014, 10:23:10 AM

"The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for, among old parchments, or musty records. They are written, as with a sun beam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of the divinity itself; and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power." --Alexander Hamilton, The Farmer Refuted, 1775

Title: Jefferson: Notes on the State of VA 1781
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 22, 2014, 10:27:31 AM

"Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves, therefore, are its only safe depositories." --Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, Query XIV, 1781

Title: Hamilton on foreign influence 1793
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 27, 2014, 09:37:48 AM

"Foreign influence is truly the Grecian horse to a republic. We cannot be too careful to exclude its influence." --Alexander Hamilton, Pacificus, No. 6, 1793

Title: George Mason on The Militia
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 29, 2014, 09:44:58 AM

"I ask, Sir, what is the militia? It is the whole people. To disarm the people is the best and most effectual way to enslave them." --George Mason, Speech During Virginia's Convention to Ratify the Constitution, 1788

Title: Hamilton on the Constitution, 1802
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 30, 2014, 09:11:01 AM

Title: J. Wilson: The Law of Nature, 1791
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 06, 2014, 09:43:04 AM

"The law of nature is universal. For it is true, not only that all men are equally subject to the command of their Maker; but it is true also, that the law of nature, having its foundation in the constitution and state of man, has an essential fitness for all mankind, and binds them without distinction." --James Wilson, Lectures on Law, 1791

Title: Madison, legislative usurpations 1788
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 12, 2014, 10:50:52 AM

"[T]he danger from legislative usurpations, which, by assembling all power in the same hands, must lead to the same tyranny as is threatened by executive usurpations." --James Madison, Federalist No. 48, 1788

Title: John Witherspoon 1776
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 17, 2014, 03:31:37 PM

"Nothing is more certain than that a general profligacy and corruption of manners make a people ripe for destruction. A good form of government may hold the rotten materials together for some time, but beyond a certain pitch, even the best constitution will be ineffectual, and slavery must ensue." --John Witherspoon, The Dominion of Providence Over the Passions of Men, 1776

Title: Madison, 1786: Democracy= might makes right
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 24, 2014, 12:43:57 PM

Title: Jefferson, 1823: The Two Anchors of the Union
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 27, 2014, 10:28:36 AM

"[T]o preserve the republican form and principles of our Constitution and cleave to the salutary distribution of powers which that [the Constitution] has established ... are the two sheet anchors of our Union. If driven from either, we shall be in danger of foundering." --Thomas Jefferson, letter to Judge William Johnson, 1823

Title: Jefferson, fair draft of the KY Resolutions 1798
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 01, 2014, 10:12:08 AM

"In questions of power, then, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution." --Thomas Jefferson, fair copy of the drafts of the Kentucky Resolutions of 1798

Title: Declaration of Independence
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 04, 2014, 07:28:34 AM

http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/declaration_transcript.html

Title: John Dickinson, 1776: Natural Rights come from God
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 09, 2014, 09:04:18 AM

"Kings or parliaments could not give the rights essential to happiness... We claim them from a higher source -- from the King of kings, and Lord of all the earth. They are not annexed to us by parchments and seals. They are created in us by the decrees of Providence, which establish the laws of our nature. They are born with us; exist with us; and cannot be taken from us by any human power, without taking our lives." --John Dickinson, An Address to the Committee of Correspondence in Barbados, 1766

Title: Joseph Story, Commentaries, 1833; Rush on Rule of Law, 1788
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 15, 2014, 10:17:53 PM

"Let the American youth never forget, that they possess a noble inheritance, bought by the toils, and sufferings, and blood of their ancestors; and capacity, if wisely improved, and faithfully guarded, of transmitting to their latest posterity all the substantial blessings of life, the peaceful enjoyment of liberty, property, religion, and independence." --Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution, 1833

"[W]here there is no law, there is no liberty; and nothing deserves the name of law but that which is certain and universal in its operation upon all the members of the community." --Benjamin Rush, Letter to David Ramsay, 1788

Title: Washington: Senators will be citizens of "the federal town" more than home state
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 17, 2014, 09:40:38 AM

"Those gentlemen, who will be elected senators, will fix themselves in the federal town, and become citizens of that town more than of your state." --George Mason, speech in the Virginia Ratifying Convention, 1788

Title: Madison on Universal Peace, 1792
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 21, 2014, 09:01:39 AM

Title: Madison, Fed 62, 1788 -- too many laws
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 23, 2014, 08:44:55 AM

Title: Hamilton on lasting tranquility, Fed 34, 1788
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 24, 2014, 10:14:37 AM

"To model our political system upon speculations of lasting tranquility, is to calculate on the weaker springs of the human character." --Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 34, 1788

Title: Jefferson: The spirit of resistance 1787
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 29, 2014, 09:52:19 AM

"What country can preserve its liberties, if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms." --Thomas Jefferson, Letter to William Stephens Smith, 1787

Title: Jefferson on how and to whom to give charity 1823
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 30, 2014, 09:30:25 AM

"It is a duty certainly to give our sparings to those who want; but to see also that they are faithfully distributed, and duly apportioned to the respective wants of those receivers. And why give through agents whom we know not, to persons whom we know not, and in countries from which we get no account, where we can do it at short hand, to objects under our eye, through agents we know, and to supply wants we see?" --Thomas Jefferson, letter to Michael Megear, 1823

Title: John Dickinson, 1776: Natural Rights 2.0
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 31, 2014, 09:37:49 AM

"[Rights] are not annexed to us by parchments and seals. They are created in us by the decrees of Providence, which establish the laws of our nature. They are born with us; exist with us; and cannot be taken from us by any human power, without taking our lives. In short, they are founded on the immutable maxims of reason and justice." --John Dickinson, A Warning to the Colonies (Of the Right to Freedom; and of Traitors), 1766

Title: Paine, 1776, the mercy of the enemy
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 01, 2014, 02:37:54 PM

Title: SAm Adams, 1772
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 04, 2014, 08:48:10 PM

"Let us consider, brethren, we are struggling for our best birthrights and inheritance, which being infringed, renders all our blessings precarious in their enjoyments, and, consequently triffling in their value. Let us disappoint the Men who are raising themselves on the ruin of this Country. Let us convince every invader of our freedom, that we will be as free as the constitution our fathers recognized, will justify." --Samuel Adams, A State of the Rights of the Colonists, 1772

Title: Elbridge Gerry: The Militia
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 07, 2014, 10:13:54 AM

"Whenever Government means to invade the rights and liberties of the people, they always attempt to destroy the militia, in order to raise an army upon their ruins." --Elbridge Gerry, Debate, United States House of Representatives, 1789

Title: John to Abigail Adams, 1780
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 08, 2014, 09:55:28 AM

"I must study politics and war, that our sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. Our sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history and naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry and porcelain." --John Adams, letter to Abigail Adams, 1780

Title: Hamilton, the passions of war, Federalist 34, 1788
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 11, 2014, 10:01:31 AM

Title: Washington and the Quakers 1789
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 12, 2014, 04:44:51 PM

"The liberty enjoyed by the people of these states of worshiping Almighty God agreeably to their conscience, is not only among the choicest of their blessings, but also of their rights." --George Washington, to the Annual meeting of Quakers, 1789

Title: Sam Adams, 1749
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 18, 2014, 02:29:35 PM

"[N]either the wisest constitution nor the wisest laws will secure the liberty
and happiness of a people whose manners are universally corrupt." --Samuel
Adams, essay in The Public Advertiser, 1749

Title: Madison, no man to judge his own cause
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 20, 2014, 08:04:07 AM

"No man is allowed to be a judge in his own cause, because his interest would certainly bias his judgment, and, not improbably, corrupt his integrity." --James Madison, Federalist No. 10, 1787

Title: Fisher Ames: Freedom of the Press, 1807
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 21, 2014, 11:01:25 AM

"We are, heart and soul, friends to the freedom of the press. It is however, the prostituted companion of liberty, and somehow or other, we know not how, its efficient auxiliary. It follows the substance like its shade; but while a man walks erect, he may observe that his shadow is almost always in the dirt. It corrupts, it deceives, it inflames. ... It is a precious pest, and a necessary mischief, and there would be no liberty without it." --Fisher Ames, Review of the Pamphlet on the State of the British Constitution, 1807

Title: Madison: War is better than Tribute
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 23, 2014, 06:48:02 AM

"It is a principle incorporated into the settled policy of America, that as peace is better than war, war is better than tribute." --James Madison, letter to the Dey of Algiers, 1816

Title: Jefferson: Dependence begets , , , 1781
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 25, 2014, 09:11:00 AM

"Dependence begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition." --Thomas Jefferson, Notes on Virginia, Query 19, 1781

Title: Jefferson, 1775: Do your duty and , , ,
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 26, 2014, 10:16:56 AM

"The great principles of right and wrong are legible to every reader; to pursue them requires not the aid of many counselors. The whole art of government consists in the art of being honest. Only aim to do your duty, and mankind will give you credit where you fail." --Thomas Jefferson, A Summary View of the Rights of British America, 1775

Title: Hamilton, 1791
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 27, 2014, 09:52:27 AM

"Experience teaches, that men are often so much governed by what they are accustomed to see and practice, that the simplest and most obvious improvements ... are adopted with hesitation, reluctance, and slow gradations. The spontaneous transition to new pursuits, in a community long habituated to different ones, may be expected to be attended with proportionably greater difficulty." --Alexander Hamilton, Report on Manufactures, 1791

Title: John Adams, Property Rights 1776
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 28, 2014, 11:49:29 AM

THE FOUNDATION
"[N]o part of the property of any individual can, with justice, be taken from him, or applied to public uses, without his own consent, or that of the representative body of the people. In fine, the people of this commonwealth are not controllable by any other laws than those to which their constitutional representative body have given their consent." --John Adams, Thoughts on Government, 1776

Title: Hamilton, 1791
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 01, 2014, 11:19:09 AM

"To cherish and stimulate the activity of the human mind, by multiplying the objects of enterprise, is not among the least considerable of the expedients, by which the wealth of a nation may be promoted." --Alexander Hamilton, Report on Manufactures, 1791

Title: Sam Adams as "Candidus", 1776
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 02, 2014, 09:56:07 AM

"Shame on the men who can court exemption from present trouble and expense at the price of their own posterity's liberty!" --Samuel Adams ("Candidus"), 1776

Title: John Adams, National Defense, 1815
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 03, 2014, 09:06:51 AM

"National defense is one of the cardinal duties of a statesman." --John Adams, letter to James Lloyd, 1815

Title: William Paterson: Lesse v Dorrance 1795
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 04, 2014, 09:26:58 AM

"What is a Constitution? It is the form of government, delineated by the mighty hand of the people, in which certain first principles of fundamental law are established. The Constitution is certain and fixed; it contains the permanent will of the people, and is the supreme law of the land; it is paramount to the power of the Legislature, and can be revoked or altered only by the authority that made it." --William Paterson, VanHorne's Lessee v. Dorrance, 1795

Title: S. Adams on Virtue
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 05, 2014, 09:13:35 AM

"It is not possible that any state should long remain free, where Virtue is not supremely honored." --Samuel Adams, Letter to Joseph Warren, 1775

Title: Jefferson, 18787 Never be idle
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 08, 2014, 10:23:04 AM

"Determine never to be idle. No person will have occasion to complain of the want of time, who never loses any. It is wonderful how much may be done, if we are always doing. And that you may be always doing good, my dear, is the ardent prayer of yours affectionately." --Thomas Jefferson, letter to Martha Jefferson, 1787

Title: Jefferson: Separation of Powers 1821
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 09, 2014, 08:55:04 PM

"t is not by the consolidation, or concentration of powers, but by their distribution, that good government is effected. Were not this great country already divided into states, that division must be made, that each might do for itself what concerns itself directly, and what it can so much better do than a distant authority." --Thomas Jefferson, Autobiography, 1821

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 10, 2014, 09:21:19 AM

"When divorces can be summoned to the aid of levity, of vanity, or of avarice, a state of marriage frequently becomes a state of war or strategem." --James Wilson, Lectures on Law, 1791

Title: Washington, 5th Annual Message 1793; "Let us resolve"; Madison: govt limited
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 13, 2014, 10:35:43 PM

"There is a rank due to the United States, among nations, which will be withheld, if not absolutely lost, by the reputation of weakness. If we desire to avoid insult, we must be able to repel it; if we desire to secure peace, one of the most powerful instruments of our rising prosperity, it must be known that we are at all times ready for war." --George Washington, Fifth Annual Message, 1793

"We have therefore to resolve to conquer or die. ... Let us therefore rely upon the goodness of the Cause, and the aid of the supreme Being, in whose hands Victory is, to animate and encourage us to great and noble actions." --George Washington (1776)

"[T]his is not an indefinite government deriving its powers from the general terms prefixed to the specified powers -- but, a limited government tied down to the specified powers, which explain and define the general terms." --James Madison, Speech in Congress, 1792

Title: Washington to PAtrick Henry 1795
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 15, 2014, 09:16:43 AM

"I want an American character, that the powers of Europe may be convinced we act for ourselves and not for others; this, in my judgment, is the only way to be respected abroad and happy at home." --George Washington, letter to Patrick Henry, 1795

Title: Fisher Ames, Essay on Equality 1801
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 16, 2014, 09:19:05 AM

"Liberty is not to be enjoyed, indeed it cannot exist, without the habits of just subordination; it consists, not so much in removing all restraint from the orderly, as in imposing it on the violent." --Fisher Ames, Essay on Equality, 1801

Title: Constitution Day
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 17, 2014, 12:24:25 PM

"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America." --Preamble to the Constitution, George Washington and the Delegates to the Constitutional Convention, September 17, 1787

Title: Preamble to the Bill of Rights
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 17, 2014, 05:27:28 PM

And an even more important preamble and part of the Constitution that pertains more to us today: The preamble to the Bill of Rights. (Please note the second paragraph that 'explicitly' states the reason these rights are being added to the Constitution before final ratification by the States.

====================================================

Congress of the United States
begun and held at the City of New-York, on
Wednesday the fourth of March, one thousand seven hundred and eighty nine.

THE Conventions of a number of the States, having at the time of their adopting the Constitution, expressed a desire, in order to prevent misconstruction or abuse of its powers, that further declaratory and restrictive clauses should be added: And as extending the ground of public confidence in the Government, will best ensure the beneficent ends of its institution.

RESOLVED by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America, in Congress assembled, two thirds of both Houses concurring, that the following Articles be proposed to the Legislatures of the several States, as amendments to the Constitution of the United States, all, or any of which Articles, when ratified by three fourths of the said Legislatures, to be valid to all intents and purposes, as part of the said Constitution; viz.

ARTICLES in addition to, and Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America, proposed by Congress, and ratified by the Legislatures of the several States, pursuant to the fifth Article of the original Constitution.

Title: Hamilton on ill-administration, Fed #21, 1787
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 18, 2014, 01:15:32 PM

"The natural cure for an ill-administration, in a popular or representative constitution, is a change of men." --Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 21, 1787

9508

Title: Washington, First Inaugural, 1789
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 19, 2014, 09:12:29 AM

Title: Three entries
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 23, 2014, 09:18:25 AM

Catching up!

"[W]e still find the greedy hand of government thrusting itself into every corner and crevice of industry, and grasping the spoil of the multitude. Invention is continually exercised, to furnish new pretenses for revenues and taxation. It watches prosperity as its prey and permits none to escape without tribute." --Thomas Paine, Rights of Man, 1791

"With those who wish to think amiss of me, I have learned to be perfectly indifferent; but where I know a mind to be ingenuous, and to need only truth to set it to rights, I cannot be passive." --Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Abigail Adams, 1804

"How could a readiness for war in time of peace be safely prohibited, unless we could prohibit, in like manner, the preparations and establishments of every hostile nation?" --James Madison (1788)

Title: Ben Franklin, 1722 (!)
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 26, 2014, 10:34:57 AM

"Without freedom of thought there can be no such thing as wisdom; and no such thing as public liberty, without freedom of speech." --Benjamin Franklin, writing as Silence Dogood, No. 8, 1722

Title: Jefferson, disposition to war 1817
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 29, 2014, 09:17:53 AM

"I hope it is practicable, by improving the mind and morals of society, to lessen the disposition to war; but of its abolition I despair." --Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Noah Worcester, 1817

Title: Madison against central planning 1789
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 30, 2014, 10:10:50 AM

"f industry and labour are left to take their own course, they will generally be directed to those objects which are the most productive, and this in a more certain and direct manner than the wisdom of the most enlightened legislature could point out." --James Madison, speech to Congress, 1789

Title: The Fourth Branch of Government
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 02, 2014, 12:39:40 PM

http://imprimis.hillsdale.edu/current?hsCtaTracking=91f6f006-b1e0-48e4-92c9-ee54f541ec40|a1273ad3-9cbf-4db5-b513-672aecee09f2&utm_campaign=Imprimis&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-81maHb_Aa2ZclxHsMWFMpxU-CyhixURUFnK94JSArKjqddCZZ39lBZ355x425jIxuY5lH2TwioBk9f_C3u8LY1Wuv7Ow&utm_content=14325273&utm_source=hs_email&utm_medium=email&_hsmi=14325273

A good starting point for discussing this extremely important issue, but IMHO quite lacking in that it fails to discuss the SCOTUS jurisprudence justifying bureaucratic action, be it quasi-legislative or quasi-judicial.

Title: Madison 1823
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 03, 2014, 08:51:50 AM

"The people of the U.S. owe their Independence & their liberty, to the wisdom of descrying in the minute tax of 3 pence on tea, the magnitude of the evil comprized in the precedent. Let them exert the same wisdom, in watching agst every evil lurking under plausible disguises, and growing up from small beginnings." --James Madison, Detached Memoranda, 1823

Title: Wilson, 1791, First Principles
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 08, 2014, 09:51:40 AM

There is not in the whole science of politics a more solid or a more important maxim than this -- that of all governments, those are the best, which, by the natural effect of their constitutions, are frequently renewed or drawn back to their first principles." --James Wilson, Lectures on Law, 1791

Title: Washington: Draft of first Inaugural, 1789
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 10, 2014, 09:11:29 AM

"No compact among men ... can be pronounced everlasting and inviolable, and if I may so express myself, that no wall of words, that no mound of parchment can be so formed as to stand against the sweeping torrent of boundless ambition on the one side, aided by the sapping current of corrupted morals on the other." --George Washington, draft of first Inaugural Address, 1789

Title: Jefferson, 1823: Judiciary is the most dangerous of the branches.
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 12, 2014, 02:04:26 PM

"At the establishment of our constitutions, the judiciary bodies were supposed to be the most helpless and harmless members of the government. Experience, however, soon showed in what way they were to become the most dangerous... In truth, man is not made to be trusted for life, if secured against all liability to account." --Thomas Jefferson, letter to Monsieur A. Coray, 1823

Title: Hamilton, Federalist #1, 1787
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 13, 2014, 09:27:56 AM

"In politics, as in religion, it is equally absurd to aim at making proselytes by fire and sword. Heresies in either can rarely be cured by persecution." --Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 1, 1787

Title: Jefferson: Reason and Faith, 1822
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 14, 2014, 10:03:21 AM

Title: Monroe's First Inagural 1817
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 22, 2014, 05:30:31 PM

"Let us by wise and constitutional measures promote intelligence among the people as the best means of preserving our liberties." --James Monroe, First Inaugural Address, 1817

Title: Re: The American Creed: Leadership
Post by: DougMacG on October 23, 2014, 04:17:40 AM

A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way. - John Calvin Maxwell

Title: Wilson on Equality 1791
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 23, 2014, 10:59:12 AM

"When we say, that all men are equal; we mean not to apply this equality to their virtues, their talents, their dispositions, or their acquirements." --James Wilson, Man as a Member of Society, 1791

Title: Jefferson, 1813: power over fellow citizens
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 24, 2014, 09:13:29 AM

"An honest man can feel no pleasure in the exercise of power over his fellow citizens." --Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Melish, 1813

Title: Madison on Federalism and State Sovereignty, 1788
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 28, 2014, 09:45:20 AM

Title: Madison: Why we are not a democracy
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 29, 2014, 10:37:08 AM

"[In a democracy] a common passion or interest will, in almost every case , be felt by a majority of the whole; a communication and concert results from the form of government itself; and there is nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party or an obnoxious individual." --James Madison, Federalist No. 10, 1787

Title: Madison: The encroaching nature of power
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 31, 2014, 09:22:30 AM

"It will not be denied that power is of an encroaching nature and that it ought to be effectually restrained from passing the limits assigned to it." --James Madison, Federalist No. 48, 1788

Title: Reagan We meant to change a nation and instead we changed the world
Post by: DougMacG on November 03, 2014, 06:21:23 AM

Please give The Gipper 5 minutes of your time this election season:

http://radixnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/Reagan-Farewell-Address.mp4?_=1

http://radixnews.com/2014/11/02/ronald-reagan-meant-change-nation-instead-changed-world/

Title: Samuel Adams: Character, 1775
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 03, 2014, 09:25:22 AM

Doug:

I need those words today. Thank you.

===============================

"Nothing is more essential to the establishment of manners in a State than that all persons employed in places of power and trust must be men of unexceptionable characters." --Samuel Adams, letter to James Warren, 1775

Title: Joseph Warren, Boston Massacre Oration, 1775
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 08, 2014, 04:55:06 PM

"On you depend the fortunes of America. You are to decide the important question, on which rest the happiness and liberty of millions yet unborn. Act worthy of yourselves." --Joseph Warren, Boston Massacre Oration, 1775

Title: John Adams: Why we need a Senate 1776
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 10, 2014, 09:04:40 AM

Title: Jefferson: Natural Law, 1781
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 12, 2014, 12:46:06 PM

"The error seems not sufficiently eradicated, that the operations of the mind, as well as the acts of the body, are subject to the coercion of the laws. But our rulers can have authority over such natural rights only as we have submitted to them. The rights of conscience we never submitted, we could not submit. We are answerable for them to our God. The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others." --Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, Query XVII, 1781

Title: Hamilton: Why government? 1787
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 13, 2014, 12:38:53 PM

"Why has government been instituted at all? Because the passions of men will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice without constraint." --Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 15, 1787

Title: Hamilton: The nature of sovereign power
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 14, 2014, 09:27:03 AM

"There is in the nature of sovereign power an impatience of control, that disposes those who are invested with the exercise of it, to look with an evil eye upon all external attempts to restrain or direct its operations." --Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 15, 1787

Title: Jefferson, Taking up Arms 1775
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 15, 2014, 04:09:42 PM

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 24, 2014, 03:07:00 PM

Title: Samuel Adams: universally corrupt manners
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 25, 2014, 10:03:59 AM

"[N]either the wisest constitution nor the wisest laws will secure the liberty and happiness of a people whose manners are universally corrupt." --Samuel Adams, essay in The Public Advertiser, 1749

Title: Pilgrims' earliest communal farming failed miserably, private property succeeded
Post by: DougMacG on November 28, 2014, 07:43:08 AM

William Bradford, Governor of the Plymouth Colony, reports that, at that time, he and his advisers considered “how they might raise as much corn as they could, and obtain a better crop than they had done, that they might not still thus languish in misery.” And “after much debate of things,” he then adds, they chose to abandon communal property, deciding that “they should set corn every man for his own particular” and assign “to every family a parcel of land, according to the proportion of their number, for that end.”

The results, he tells us, were gratifying in the extreme, “for it made all hands very industrious” and “much more corn was planted than otherwise would have been.” Even “the women now went willingly into the field, and took their little ones with them to set corn; which before would allege weakness and inability; whom to have compelled would have been thought great tyranny and oppression.”

Moreover, he observes, “the experience that was had in this common course and condition, tried sundry years . . . amongst godly and sober men, may well evince the vanity of that conceit of Plato’s and other ancients applauded by some of later times . . . that the taking away of property and bringing in community into a commonwealth would make them happy and flourishing.” In practice, America’s first socialist experiment “was found to breed much confusion and discontent and retard much employment that would have been to their benefit and comfort.”

Professor Paul Rahe, writing at Powerline, 2009
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2014/11/americas-first-socialist-republic-3.php

Title: Story 1833, across the generations
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 03, 2014, 10:20:23 AM

"How much more do they deserve our reverence and praise, whose lives are devoted to the formation of institutions, which, when they and their children are mingled in the common dust, may continue to cherish the principles and the practice of liberty in perpetual freshness and vigor." --Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution, 1833

Title: Jefferson, 1823: Law and common sense
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 04, 2014, 05:44:03 PM

Title: Re: Jefferson, 1823: Law and common sense
Post by: DougMacG on December 05, 2014, 08:19:24 AM

"Laws are made for men of ordinary understanding and should, therefore, be construed by the ordinary rules of common sense. Their meaning is not to be sought for in metaphysical subtleties which may make anything mean everything or nothing at pleasure." --Thomas Jefferson, letter to William Johnson, 1823

This is why I don't hold the views of the experts much higher than our views on important Supreme Court cases. For one thing, the experts do not always get it right. Often they attempt to use "metaphysical subtleties" to arrive at contorted opinions of the law or constitution. Tests like strict scrutiny, intermediate scrutiny, rational basis, and adhering to precedent are useful to a point. Also valid is for a citizen to read the facts, law, article or amendment in question and apply common sense to it.

Title: John Adams, 1776
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 05, 2014, 09:20:05 AM

"The only foundation of a free Constitution, is pure virtue, and if this cannot be inspired into our people, in a great measure, than they have it now, they may change their rulers, and the forms of government, but they will not obtain a lasting Liberty." --John Adams, letter to Zabdiel Adams, 1776

Title: Hamilton, Federalist 34, 1788: War and Peace
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 09, 2014, 09:29:45 AM

Title: Sphere of the States, sphere of the Feds
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 11, 2014, 02:20:06 PM

Title: Jefferson calls for time lapse before law kicks in
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 12, 2014, 09:33:15 AM

The prescience of our Founding Fathers was truly extraordinary.

"The instability of our laws is really an immense evil. I think it would be well to provide in our constitutions that there shall always be a twelve-month between the ingross-ing a bill & passing it: that it should then be offered to its passage without changing a word: and that if circumstances should be thought to require a speedier passage, it should take two thirds of both houses instead of a bare majority." --Thomas Jefferson, Letter to James Madison, 1787

Title: Madison: The encroaching nature of power
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 16, 2014, 09:45:18 AM

Title: Jefferson 1775
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 19, 2014, 02:54:21 AM

"It behooves you, therefore, to think and act for yourself and your people. The great principles of right and wrong are legible to every reader; to pursue them requires not the aid of many counselors. The whole art of government consists in the art of being honest. Only aim to do your duty, and mankind will give you credit where you fail." --Thomas Jefferson, A Summary View of the Rights of British America, 1775

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 22, 2014, 10:19:51 AM

Title: Madison: Laws must apply to legislature too
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 05, 2015, 09:43:51 AM

"If this spirit shall ever be so far debased, as to tolerate a law not obligatory on the legislature, as well as on the people, the people will be prepared to tolerate any thing but liberty." --James Madison, Federalist 57, 1788

Title: Hamilton: 1787
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 07, 2015, 09:41:45 AM

"To judge from the conduct of the opposite parties, we shall be led to conclude that they will mutually hope to evince the justness of their opinions, and to increase the number of their converts by the loudness of the declamations and by the bitterness of their invectives." --Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 1, 1787

Title: John Adams: Power is dangerous 1769
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 13, 2015, 09:23:32 AM

"Power in any form ... when directed only by human wisdom and benevolence is dangerous." --John Adams, An Attempt to Land a Bishop in America, 1769

Title: Martin Luther King
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 19, 2015, 09:21:25 AM

http://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=smEqnnklfYs

Title: Paine on discretionary power
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 02, 2015, 10:15:08 AM

"We repose an unwise confidence in any government, or in any men, when we invest them officially with too much, or an unnecessary quantity of, discretionary power." --Thomas Paine, Serious Address to the People of Philadelphia, 1778

Title: Jefferson on the Constitution 1803
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 07, 2015, 10:33:12 AM

"Our peculiar security is in the possession of a written Constitution. Let us not make it a blank paper by construction." --Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Wilson Nicholas, 1803

Title: Madison, Federalist 10: Liberty and Faction
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 13, 2015, 08:56:02 AM

"Liberty is to faction, what air is to fire, an aliment without which it instantly expires. But it could not be a less folly to abolish liberty, which is essential to political life, because it nourishes faction, than it would be to wish the annihilation of air, which is essential to animal life, because it imparts to fire its destructive agency." --James Madison, Federalist No. 10, 1787

Title: Anti-Federalist Letter 1787
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 21, 2015, 08:27:06 PM

Title: Samuel Adams, Freedom of Religion 1772
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 24, 2015, 09:20:40 AM

"As neither reason requires, nor religion permits the contrary, every man living in or out of a state of civil society, has a right peaceably and quietly to worship God according to the dictates of his conscience." --Samuel Adams, A State of the Rights of the Colonists, 1772

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 25, 2015, 08:34:56 AM

"A question arises whether all the powers of government, legislative, executive, and judicial, shall be left in this body? I think a people cannot be long free, nor ever happy, whose government is in one assembly." --John Adams, Thoughts On Government, 1776

Title: Washibngton, Farewell Address, Separation of Powers 1796
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 05, 2015, 06:22:20 AM

Title: Hamilton: 1787, Federalist #1
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 06, 2015, 05:36:11 AM

Title: Story, 1833
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 11, 2015, 09:15:21 AM

Title: Jefferson on the Judiciary, 1821
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 12, 2015, 06:26:54 PM

"The germ of dissolution of our federal government is in the constitution of the federal judiciary; an irresponsible body, (for impeachment is scarcely a scare-crow) working like gravity by night and by day, gaining a little today and a little tomorrow, and advancing its noiseless step like a thief, over the field of jurisdiction, until all shall be usurped from the States, and the government of all be consolidated into one." --Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Charles Hammond, 1821

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 13, 2015, 10:22:25 AM

"When men exercise their reason coolly and freely, on a variety of distinct questions, they inevitably fall into different opinions, on some of them. When they are governed by a common passion, their opinions if they are so to be called, will be the same." --James Madison, Federalist No. 50, 1788

Title: Madison: Reason and Passion
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 17, 2015, 10:59:21 AM

Title: Ben Franklin on Obama
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 18, 2015, 02:07:02 PM

“He that falls in love with himself will have no rivals.” --Benjamin Franklin (1758)

Title: Jefferson: Mobs are cankerous sores
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 20, 2015, 10:58:34 AM

"The mobs of the great cities add just so much to the support of pure
government as sores do to the strength of the human body. It is the manners
and spirit of a people which preserve a republic in vigor. A degeneracy in
these is a canker which soon eats to the heart of its laws and constitution."
--Thomas Jefferson, Notes on Virginia, Query XIX, 1782

Title: On this day in 1775, "Give me liberty or give me death!" Patrick Henry
Post by: DougMacG on March 23, 2015, 07:28:15 PM

On this day in 1775, 240 years ago, Patrick Henry gave his powerful "Give me liberty or give me death!" speech. In Colonial Williamsburg.
http://www.history.org/almanack/life/politics/giveme.cfm

Title: Washington Farewell Address: Sense of religious obligation is indespensable
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 24, 2015, 09:04:43 AM

"Where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of
religious obligation desert the oaths which are the instruments of
investigation in courts of justice?" --George Washington, Farewell Address,
1796

Title: John Adams: Property, Marriage 1814
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 25, 2015, 02:38:22 PM

"As long as property exists, it will accumulate in individuals and families.
As long as marriage exists, knowledge, property and influence will accumulate
in families." --John Adams, letter to Thomas Jefferson, 1814

Title: John Adams on the Militia
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 07, 2015, 10:15:19 AM

"The fundamental law of the militia is, that it be created, directed and commanded by the laws, and ever for the support of the laws." --John Adams, A Defense of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America, 1787

Title: Washington; Paine
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 08, 2015, 10:32:02 AM

"At this auspicious period, the United States came into existence as a nation; and if their citizens should not be completely free and happy, the fault will be entirely their own." --George Washington, Letter to the Governors, 1783

"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom, must, like men, undergo the fatigues of supporting it." --Thomas Paine

Title: Story, 1833
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 13, 2015, 09:36:17 AM

Title: Jefferson on taxes, 1784
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 15, 2015, 06:25:18 PM

"Would it not be better to simplify the system of taxation rather than to spread it over such a variety of subjects and pass through so many new hands." —Thomas Jefferson, letter to James Madison, 1784

Title: Jefferson channels Washington, 1785
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 21, 2015, 09:49:10 AM

Title: Samuel Adams on Virtue, 1775.
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 22, 2015, 06:57:52 PM

"We may look up to armies for defense, but virtue is our best security. It is not possible that any state should long remain free, where virtue is not supremely honored." —Samuel Adams, Letter to Joseph Warren, 1775

Title: John Adams to his wife 1800
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 08, 2015, 10:20:42 AM

"I pray heaven to bestow the best of blessing on this house, and on all that shall hereafter inhabit it. May none but honest and wise men ever rule under this roof!" —John Adams, letter to his wife Abigail, 1800

Title: Madison: No man to judge his own cause
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 13, 2015, 10:16:22 AM

"No man is allowed to be a judge in his own cause, because his interest would certainly bias his judgment, and, not improbably, corrupt his integrity." —James Madison, Federalist No. 10, 1787

Title: Washington: Citizen Soldier 1775.
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 13, 2015, 08:30:32 PM

Armed Forces Day 2015
Honoring American Patriots
By Mark Alexander • May 13, 2015
"When we assumed the Soldier, we did not lay aside the Citizen; and we shall most sincerely rejoice with you in the happy hour when the establishment of American Liberty, upon the most firm and solid foundations shall enable us to return to our Private Stations in the bosom of a free, peacefully and happy Country." —George Washington (1775)

Title: Story, 1833
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 20, 2015, 10:00:33 AM

"Men, to act with vigor and effect, must have time to mature measures, and judgment and experience, as to the best method of applying them. They must not be hurried on to their conclusions by the passions, or the fears of the multitude. They must deliberate, as well as resolve." —Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution, 1833

Title: John Adams on Happiness 1776
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 26, 2015, 08:38:55 AM

"[A]ll speculative politicians will agree, that the happiness of society is the end of government, as all divines and moral philosophers will agree that the happiness of the individual is the end of man. From this principle it will follow that the form of government which communicates ease, comfort, security, or, in one word, happiness, to the greatest numbers of persons, and in the greatest degree, is the best." —John Adams, Thoughts on Government, 1776

Title: Washington: Peace through Strength
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 28, 2015, 08:32:08 AM

Title: Hamilton, Primary Truths, Fed. 31, 1788: Jeffferson- the manners and the spirits
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 03, 2015, 10:01:24 AM

“The mobs of the great cities add just so much to the support of pure government as sores do to the strength of the human body. It is the manners and spirit of a people, which preserve a republic in vigor. A degeneracy in these is a canker which soon eats to the heart of its laws and constitution.” —Thomas Jefferson (1787)

"In disquisitions of every kind there are certain primary truths, or first principles, upon which all subsequent reasoning must depend." —Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 31, 1788

Title: Madison: The general interest vs. the special interests
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 04, 2015, 12:24:06 PM

Title: Madison on Separation of Powers, 1788
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 11, 2015, 08:30:47 AM

"The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny." —James Madison, Federalist No. 47, 1788

Title: John Marshall on Marriage, 1823
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 26, 2015, 09:51:02 AM

"All know and feel ... the sacredness of the connection between husband and wife. All know that the sweetness of social intercourse, the harmony of society, the happiness of families, depend on that mutual partiality which they feel, or that delicate forbearance which they manifest towards each other." —John Marshall, Sexton v. Wheaton, 1823

Title: Hamilton, Federalist 34, 1788
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 30, 2015, 10:03:08 AM

Title: Wilson, 1791 on Judges
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 02, 2015, 08:16:27 PM

"Every prudent and cautious judge ... will remember, that his duty and his business is, not to make the law, but to interpret and apply it." —James Wilson, Lectures on Law, 1791

Title: John Adams: The meaning of the American Revolution 1813
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 03, 2015, 09:02:01 AM

"But what do we mean by the American Revolution? Do we mean the American war? The Revolution was effected before the war commenced. The Revolution was in the minds and hearts of the people; a change in their religious sentiments, of their duties and obligations. ... This radical change in the principles, opinions, sentiments, and affections of the people was the real American Revolution." —John Adams (1813)

Title: Jefferson 1816; the proper limits of power
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 07, 2015, 03:03:07 PM

"Our legislators are not sufficiently apprized of the rightful limits of their power; that their true office is to declare and enforce only our natural rights and duties, and to take none of them from us." —Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Francis W. Gilmer, 1816

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 08, 2015, 10:19:56 AM

"History affords us many instances of the ruin of states, by the prosecution of measures ill suited to the temper and genius of their people." —Benjamin Franklin, Emblematical Representations, 1774

Title: S. Williams on Marriage 1794
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 08, 2015, 12:01:15 PM

second post of the day

"Every thing useful and beneficial to man, seems to be connected with obedience to the laws of his nature, the inclinations, the duties, and the happiness of individuals, resolve themselves into customs and habits, favourable, in the highest degree, to society. In no case is this more apparent, than in the customs of nations respecting marriage." --Samuel Williams (1794)

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 16, 2015, 01:26:53 PM

"If virtue and knowledge are diffused among the people, they will never be
enslaved. This will be their great security." —Samuel Adams, letter to James
Warren, 1779

Title: Witherspoon
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 17, 2015, 01:38:08 PM

"Nothing is more certain than that a general profligacy and corruption of
manners make a people ripe for destruction. A good form of government may hold
the rotten materials together for some time, but beyond a certain pitch, even
the best constitution will be ineffectual, and slavery must ensue." —John
Witherspoon, The Dominion of Providence Over the Passions of Men, 1776

Title: Jefferson 1782
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 22, 2015, 09:07:55 AM

"We lay it down as a fundamental, that laws, to be just, must give a reciprocation of right; that, without this, they are mere arbitrary rules of conduct, founded in force, and not in conscience" —Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the state of Virginia, 1782

Title: Jefferson: If the poeple become inattentive 1787
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 27, 2015, 10:43:32 AM

"If [the People] become inattentive to the public affairs, you and I, and Congress, and Assemblies, Judges, and Governors, shall all become wolves." —Thomas Jefferson, letter to Edward Carrington, 1787

Title: Washington, Farewewll Address
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 28, 2015, 09:45:17 AM

"In proportion as the structure of a government gives force to public opinion, it is essential that public opinion should be enlightened." —George Washington, Farewell Address, 1796

Title: Washington, 1796
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 29, 2015, 01:01:52 PM

"Guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism." —George Washington (1796)

Title: James Monroe on the preservation of rights over time, 1788
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 31, 2015, 09:00:13 AM

"How prone all human institutions have been to decay; how subject the best-formed and most wisely organized governments have been to lose their check and totally dissolve; how difficult it has been for mankind, in all ages and countries, to preserve their dearest rights and best privileges, impelled as it were by an irresistible fate of despotism." —James Monroe, speech in the Virginia Ratifying Convention, 1788

Title: Washington Farewell Address 1796
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 05, 2015, 09:04:29 AM

"The spirit of encroachment tends to consolidate the powers of all the departments in one, and thus to create whatever the form of government, a real despotism." —George Washington, Farewell Address, 1796

Title: Washington, first Inaugural 1789
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 06, 2015, 10:49:54 AM

Title: John Adams on Virtue in 1776
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 10, 2015, 12:05:05 PM

"Public virtue cannot exist in a nation without private, and public virtue is the only foundation of republics. There must be a positive passion for the public good, the public interest, honor, power and glory, established in the minds of the people, or there can be no republican government, nor any real liberty: and this public passion must be superior to all private passions." —John Adams, letter to Mercy Warren, 1776

Title: Fisher Ames on licentiousness and liberty
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 12, 2015, 09:24:34 AM

"The known propensity of a democracy is to licentiousness which the ambitious call, and ignorant believe to be liberty." —Fisher Ames, speech in the Massachusetts Ratifying Convention, 1788

Title: Jefferson on the Judiciary, 1823
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 13, 2015, 09:31:21 AM

Title: Washington, first Inaugural draft 1789
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 14, 2015, 12:06:09 PM

"No compact among men ... can be pronounced everlasting and inviolable, and if I may so express myself, that no wall of words, that no mound of parchment can be so formed as to stand against the sweeping torrent of boundless ambition on the one side, aided by the sapping current of corrupted morals on the other." —George Washington, draft of first Inaugural Address, 1789

Title: John Adams: Thoughts on Govt. 1776
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 19, 2015, 09:27:37 AM

Title: Joseph Warren after the Battle of Lexington
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 28, 2015, 01:18:39 PM

"Nevertheless, to the persecution and tyranny of his cruel ministry we will not tamely submit — appealing to Heaven for the justice of our cause, we determine to die or be free." —Joseph Warren, American account of the Battle of Lexington, 1775

Title: Wshington on religion and morality
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 02, 2015, 12:06:03 PM

"Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, Religion and morality are indispensible supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of Patriotism who should labor to subvert these great Pillars of human happiness — these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens. ... Let it simply be asked where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths..." —President George Washington (1796)

Title: Story, 1833 on the need to have time to deliberate
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 08, 2015, 09:17:43 AM

Title: Patrick Henry
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 05, 2015, 03:17:37 PM

Title: Madison, 1816 War better than Tribute
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 06, 2015, 02:16:25 PM

"It is a principle incorporated into the settled policy of America, that as peace is better than war, war is better than tribute." —James Madison, 1816

Title: Hamilton, 1775 enthusiasm for liberty
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 07, 2015, 01:00:21 PM

“There is a certain enthusiasm in liberty, that makes human nature rise above itself, in acts of bravery and heroism.” —Alexander Hamilton (1775)

Title: Washington: Pursue Truth 1795
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 22, 2015, 11:41:10 AM

"There is but one straight course, and that is to seek truth and pursue it steadily." —George Washington, 1795

Title: Hamilton 1788
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 13, 2015, 09:22:41 AM

And this is why our Founding Fathers gave us a constitutional republic, and not a democracy.

"It is an unquestionable truth, that the body of the people in every country desire sincerely its prosperity. But it is equally unquestionable that they do not possess the discernment and stability necessary for systematic government. To deny that they are frequently led into the grossest of errors, by misinformation and passion, would be a flattery which their own good sense must despise." —Alexander Hamilton, 1788

Title: Martin Luther King: WOW!!!
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 24, 2015, 06:40:36 PM

https://www.facebook.com/lovebeingblack/videos/10152912033031928/?pnref=story

Title: Our Declaration of Independence
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 24, 2015, 12:06:54 AM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4uE-tqe0xsQ

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 11, 2016, 06:36:01 PM

Good post, wrong thread. Please post on "Rants and Interesting Thought Pieces"

Title: Interesting Discussion of our Declaration of Independence
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 18, 2016, 08:15:41 AM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cS-tshQ9sys

Title: Washington: Licentiousness leads to arbitrary power
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 18, 2016, 09:57:20 AM

Second post

"Arbitrary power is most easily established on the ruins of liberty abused to licentiousness." —George Washington (1783)

Title: Noah Webster: 1787
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 13, 2017, 06:42:24 PM

Title: MLK (remastered)
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 14, 2018, 10:10:44 PM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vP4iY1TtS3s

Title: MLK today?
Post by: ccp on January 15, 2018, 05:03:38 AM

I tried to search the web for any thoughts about what MLK would think about today and nearly all of it is that he would (of course agree with today's Democrat Party Blacks)

notice how there is not any questions about the destruction of the Black family with regards to progressive policies.

Everything wrong with Black America is due to White racism. I say not true:

http://www.charlotteobserver.com/living/religion/article55088210.html

Not sure MLK would agree with the Democrat hack from Georgia Rep. Lewis

who like many continue to endlessly yell racism at every corner and turn :

http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2018/01/14/dr-alveda-king-counters-trump-racism-claims-slams-facebook/

Title: MLK: A Knock at Midnight
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 16, 2018, 11:24:52 AM

https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/king-papers/documents/knock-midnight-0

Title: Washington's Farewell Address
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 19, 2018, 10:42:08 AM

http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/washing.asp

Happy Birthday to the Father of our Country!

Title: Madison 1788 on being armed
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 09, 2018, 10:07:09 AM

"Besides the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation, the existence of subordinate governments, to which the people are attached and by which the militia officers are appointed, forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition, more insurmountable than any which a simple government of any form can admit of." —James Madison (1788)

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 16, 2018, 08:15:49 AM

TTT!

Title: Witherspoon 1776
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 15, 2018, 12:46:16 PM

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 04, 2018, 09:34:34 AM

TTT!!!

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 17, 2018, 08:08:03 AM

TTT

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 14, 2018, 11:55:48 AM

TTT

Title: Jefferson 1816
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 25, 2018, 09:38:05 AM

"If a nation expects to be ignorant — and free — in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." —Thomas Jefferson (1816)

Title: Samuel Adams 1781
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 31, 2018, 11:44:28 AM

"Let each citizen remember at the moment he is offering his vote that he is not making a present or a compliment to please an individual — or at least that he ought not so to do; but that he is executing one of the most solemn trusts in human society for which he is accountable to God and his country." —Samuel Adams (1781)

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 10, 2018, 05:40:35 AM

TTT

Title: Jefferson 1801
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 11, 2018, 02:56:23 AM

"It is proper you should understand what I deem the essential principles of our government… Equal and exact justice to all men, of whatever persuasion, religious or political." —Thomas Jefferson (1801)

Title: Re: Jefferson 1801
Post by: DougMacG on December 11, 2018, 05:41:24 AM

Quote from: Crafty_Dog on December 11, 2018, 02:56:23 AM

"It is proper you should understand what I deem the essential principles of our government… Equal and exact justice to all men, of whatever persuasion, religious or political." —Thomas Jefferson (1801)

This couldn't be more prescient for what is needed today. Imagine equal political justice! Sorry Mr. Jefferson, we have fallen far short on the most basic of principles for governing free people. See FBI, Mueller and VDH article today.

Title: Hamilton 1775
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 04, 2019, 11:47:20 AM

"A fondness for power is implanted, in most men, and it is natural to abuse it, when acquired." —Alexander Hamilton (1775)

Title: Jefferson 1801 immigrants becoming Americans, 1798 parts not greater than whole
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 25, 2019, 08:21:00 AM

"Born in other countries, yet believing you could be happy in this, our laws acknowledge, as they should do, your right to join us in society, conforming, as I doubt not you will do, to our established rules." —Thomas Jefferson (1801)

"The construction applied ... to those parts of the Constitution of the United States which delegate Congress a power ... ought not to be construed as themselves to give unlimited powers, nor a part to be so taken as to destroy the whole residue of that instrument." —Thomas Jefferson (1798)

Title: Madison on Power 1788
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 08, 2019, 09:30:34 AM

"It will not be denied that power is of an encroaching nature and that it ought to be effectually restrained from passing the limits assigned to it." —James Madison (1788)

Title: George Washington and Hemp
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 09, 2019, 04:21:23 PM

https://www.thevintagenews.com/2018/08/15/george-washington-hemp/

Title: Re: George Washington and Hemp
Post by: DougMacG on February 10, 2019, 10:25:00 AM

Quote from: Crafty_Dog on February 09, 2019, 04:21:23 PM

https://www.thevintagenews.com/2018/08/15/george-washington-hemp/

"George Washington was not growing the strain of hemp that we would recognize as marijuana today"

0.3%THC won't bring in much revenue in a Colorado recreational dispensary today where nearly 100 times that concentration is expected.

OTOH, it is amazing to think of the intricacies of the explorer ships and Navies operating not only before internal combustion engines but sailing before nylon ropes and fishing before nylon nets.

Title: Letter from George Washington surfaces
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 11, 2019, 03:40:12 PM

https://www.foxnews.com/science/george-washington-letter-on-god-and-the-constitution-surfaces

Title: Madison on Property 1792
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 01, 2019, 10:03:09 AM

"A just security to property is not afforded by that government, under which unequal taxes oppress one species of property and reward another species." —James Madison (1792)

Title: Re: Madison on Property 1792
Post by: DougMacG on March 02, 2019, 05:50:09 AM

Quote from: Crafty_Dog on March 01, 2019, 10:03:09 AM

"A just security to property is not afforded by that government, under which unequal taxes oppress one species of property and reward another species." —James Madison (1792)

The study of economic freedom is perhaps the only science that has moved backwards over the last couple of hundred years in our general level of understanding.

Title: Ben Franklin: Don't tread on me
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 11, 2019, 02:43:29 PM

I observed on one of the drums belonging to the marines now raising, there was painted a Rattle-Snake, with this modest motto under it, "Don't tread on me." As I know it is the custom to have some device on the arms of every country, I supposed this may have been intended for the arms of America; and as I have nothing to do with public affairs, and as my time is perfectly my own, in order to divert an idle hour, I sat down to guess what could have been intended by this uncommon device – I took care, however, to consult on this occasion a person who is acquainted with heraldry, from whom I learned, that it is a rule among the learned of that science "That the worthy properties of the animal, in the crest-born, shall be considered," and, "That the base ones cannot have been intended;" he likewise informed me that the ancients considered the serpent as an emblem of wisdom, and in a certain attitude of endless duration – both which circumstances I suppose may have been had in view. Having gained this intelligence, and recollecting that countries are sometimes represented by animals peculiar to them, it occurred to me that the Rattle-Snake is found in no other quarter of the world besides America, and may therefore have been chosen, on that account, to represent her.

But then "the worldly properties" of a Snake I judged would be hard to point out. This rather raised than suppressed my curiosity, and having frequently seen the Rattle-Snake, I ran over in my mind every property by which she was distinguished, not only from other animals, but from those of the same genus or class of animals, endeavoring to fix some meaning to each, not wholly inconsistent with common sense.

I recollected that her eye excelled in brightness, that of any other animal, and that she has no eye-lids. She may therefore be esteemed an emblem of vigilance. She never begins an attack, nor, when once engaged, ever surrenders: She is therefore an emblem of magnanimity and true courage. As if anxious to prevent all pretensions of quarreling with her, the weapons with which nature has furnished her, she conceals in the roof of her mouth, so that, to those who are unacquainted with her, she appears to be a most defenseless animal; and even when those weapons are shown and extended for her defense, they appear weak and contemptible; but their wounds however small, are decisive and fatal. Conscious of this, she never wounds 'till she has generously given notice, even to her enemy, and cautioned him against the danger of treading on her.

Was I wrong, Sir, in thinking this a strong picture of the temper and conduct of America? The poison of her teeth is the necessary means of digesting her food, and at the same time is certain destruction to her enemies. This may be understood to intimate that those things which are destructive to our enemies, may be to us not only harmless, but absolutely necessary to our existence. I confess I was wholly at a loss what to make of the rattles, 'till I went back and counted them and found them just thirteen, exactly the number of the Colonies united in America; and I recollected too that this was the only part of the Snake which increased in numbers. Perhaps it might be only fancy, but, I conceited the painter had shown a half formed additional rattle, which, I suppose, may have been intended to represent the province of Canada.

'Tis curious and amazing to observe how distinct and independent of each other the rattles of this animal are, and yet how firmly they are united together, so as never to be separated but by breaking them to pieces. One of those rattles singly, is incapable of producing sound, but the ringing of thirteen together, is sufficient to alarm the boldest man living.

The Rattle-Snake is solitary, and associates with her kind only when it is necessary for their preservation. In winter, the warmth of a number together will preserve their lives, while singly, they would probably perish. The power of fascination attributed to her, by a generous construction, may be understood to mean, that those who consider the liberty and blessings which America affords, and once come over to her, never afterwards leave her, but spend their lives with her. She strongly resembles America in this, that she is beautiful in youth and her beauty increaseth with her age, "her tongue also is blue and forked as the lightning, and her abode is among impenetrable rocks."

Benjamin Franklin
Pennsylvania Journal
December, 1775

Title: Madison on power in 1829
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 12, 2019, 10:36:42 AM

"The essence of Government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse." —James Madison (1829)

Title: Glen Beck: Our Black Founding Fathers
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 16, 2019, 08:49:41 PM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCsBqbE-RZE

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: ccp on March 18, 2019, 10:20:54 AM

as some of you may also have seen when Mark Levin asked Bob Bennett where does he think the US will go *after* Trump and he side stepped the answer and said in the beltway and California the establishment is pushing for socialism
but when he goes out and actually talks to people he gets a different vibe and he gets comfort from Church and his family.

Bob did not otherwise answer with any optimism . Same as Thomas Sowell recently

We on this board are not optimistic

Many of the Republicans are not up to the job

Of note I thought is interesting the Bennett blames himself for sitting idly by while leftist indoctrination metastasized in our education system . Could he have done more?
Maybe but not by himself. Oddly Lindsay Graham has seem to awakened and when he fights he does good.

Too bad he was not like this 10 yrs ago when I realized what was coming.

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: DougMacG on March 18, 2019, 10:24:19 AM

*Bill* Bennett
https://www.conservativereview.com/news/mark-levin-bill-bennett-discuss-left-warped-public-education-young-american-minds/

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: ccp on March 18, 2019, 03:49:44 PM

Thanks Doug

yes
Bill (William ) not his lib Clinton attorney brother Bob . :-o

Title: Hamilton 1794 Respect the Constitution
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 08, 2019, 09:05:26 AM

"If it be asked, What is the most sacred duty and the greatest source of our security in a Republic? The answer would be, An inviolable respect for the Constitution and Laws — the first growing out of the last... A sacred respect for the constitutional law is the vital principle, the sustaining energy of a free government." —Alexander Hamilton (1794)

Title: Re: Hamilton 1794 Respect the Constitution
Post by: DougMacG on April 08, 2019, 11:06:10 AM

Quote from: Crafty_Dog on April 08, 2019, 09:05:26 AM

"If it be asked, What is the most sacred duty and the greatest source of our security in a Republic? The answer would be, An inviolable respect for the Constitution and Laws — the first growing out of the last... A sacred respect for the constitutional law is the vital principle, the sustaining energy of a free government." —Alexander Hamilton (1794)

"An inviolable respect for the Constitution and Laws"?

Democrats today openly reject enforcement of basic federal laws, oppose the constitutional method for electing the President, reject Bill of Rights amendments without amending and openly propose putting Leftist legislators in robes. Once again, the future of the Republic will be on the ballot.

Title: Justice Scalia: A Nation Under God
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 10, 2019, 01:43:04 PM

https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2019/04/a-nation-under-god?fbclid=IwAR2vSi_Lz3yWVstldguvjV-mp7T7XnUIT_N9hg0vJomK_IYhvHF3FS5UX28

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 11, 2019, 01:59:28 PM

"The most sacred of the duties of a government [is] to do equal and impartial justice to all citizens." —Thomas Jefferson (1816)

Title: The Character of George Washington
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 11, 2019, 04:35:45 PM

second post

https://imprimis.hillsdale.edu/the-character-of-george-washington/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=stripes&utm_content=04102019&fbclid=IwAR0OO1T8GeLXKnZft8TFwUzIXyyoS6arKONczs_JF_Fv4pNfClcj4xINHho

Title: Jefferson 1808 personal animus
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 24, 2019, 12:19:12 PM

Title: Madison 1816 "War is better than tribute"
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 13, 2019, 10:11:03 AM

"It is a principle incorporated into the settled policy of America, that as peace is better than war, war is better than tribute." —James Madison (1816)

Title: Hamilton on the Judiciary 1788
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 29, 2019, 09:17:40 AM

"[The Judicial Branch] may truly be said to have neither FORCE nor WILL, but merely judgment; and must ultimately depend upon the aid of the executive arm even for the efficacy of its judgments." —Alexander Hamilton (1788)

Title: Patrick Henry
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 02, 2019, 07:51:12 AM

https://www.history.org/almanack/life/politics/giveme.cfm?fbclid=IwAR2omEPtb5Q_jaZCWNFU4P6fxUc37Bj9qMp0QXTK2Uz-BNZWrlh9BpdJI2k

Title: Madison on rent seekers 1788
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 02, 2019, 09:45:41 AM

second post of the day

"Every new regulation concerning commerce or revenue, or in any way affecting the value of the different species of property, presents a new harvest to those who watch the change, and can trace its consequences; a harvest, reared not by themselves, but by the toils and cares of the great body of their fellow-citizens. This is a state of things in which it may be said with some truth that laws are made for the FEW, not for the MANY." —James Madison (1788)

Title: George Will: The Declaration of Independence Illuminates the Constitution
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 05, 2019, 09:58:53 PM

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/07/declaration-of-independence-illuminates-constitution/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=NR%20Daily%20Monday%20through%20Friday%202019-07-04&utm_term=NRDaily-Smart

Title: Jefferson: The artillery of the press
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 10, 2019, 04:22:59 PM

Title: Hillsdale's Intro to our Constitution
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 14, 2019, 05:32:24 PM

https://online.hillsdale.edu/courses/constitution-2017/home/course-schedule

Title: George Washington
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 16, 2019, 12:57:22 PM

"No Wall of words ... can be so formed as to stand against the sweeping torrent of boundless ambition on the one side, aided by the sapping current of corrupted morals on the other." —George Washington (1789)

Title: Patrick Henry
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 29, 2019, 10:20:49 AM

"We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth — and listen to the song of that syren, till she transforms us into beasts." —Patrick Henry (1775)

Title: Jefferson 1823 Constitutional construction
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 31, 2019, 11:56:14 AM

Title: WSJ: John Locke breaks his silence
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 30, 2019, 08:45:49 PM

John Locke Breaks His Silence
A new manuscript is located in Maryland. But do Americans care what the philosopher has to say?
By Jason Willick
Aug. 30, 2019 5:44 pm ET

John Locke has a new article out, although he died in 1704. When England’s King Charles II discovered a failed 1683 assassination plot against himself and his brother, he beheaded the plotters and started arresting opponents. Among the targets was Locke, who knew some of the conspirators but likely wasn’t involved. Fearing for his life, Locke fled to the Netherlands. Before leaving, he deposited several manuscripts with Edward Clarke, a member of Parliament and trusted friend.

One of those manuscripts has only now been discovered—in the Annapolis, Md., library of St. John’s College. This month it was published for the first time, in the Cambridge Historical Journal, by independent scholar J.C. Walmsley and Cambridge University fellow Felix Waldmann.

The title of the work, written in 1667 or 1668, is “Reasons for Tolerateing Papists Equally with Others.” Mr. Walmsley tells me that when he came across the title in a 1928 book catalog, it seemed “very unlikely that this was actually a real thing that Locke had actually written.” In one of Locke’s most famous works—the 1689 “Letter Concerning Toleration,” which helped shape the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution—he had taken a liberal view of religious tolerance for Protestant sects persecuted by the Anglican Church, but excluded Catholics and atheists.

Mr. Walmsley’s research revealed that there was a single manuscript with the title “Reasons for Tolerateing Papists Equally With Others” in the St. John’s collection. Librarians there sent him an electronic copy, and he immediately recognized Locke’s handwriting. He plugged the text into search engines and found that no one had ever quoted or printed it before. He flew to Maryland to examine it in person.

John Locke (1632-1704). Photo: Hulton Archive/Getty Images

Messrs. Walmsley and Waldmann found that the manuscript likely remained in the hands of Edward Clarke’s descendants until 1922, when it “was consigned to Sotheby’s . ” It changed hands several times, they report, before a New Yorker named Henry MacDonald presented it to St. John’s “at a time we cannot determine.”

Why St. John’s? The scholars can only speculate. Mr. Waldmann thinks it may have to do with Maryland’s founding by Lord Baltimore as a haven for persecuted Catholics. The manuscript shows Locke weighing the question of toleration for Catholics with more solicitude than in any of his other writings. He considers whether “Papists can be supposd to be as good subjects as others” and wrote that “If abilitys alone ought to prefer men to imployment”—that is, under a meritocracy—“Papists are to be tolerated.” This was a radical sentiment in England at the time.

In the piece’s lengthier second part, Locke arrives at his well-known position that toleration of Catholics is impossible. The reason, he suggests, isn’t religious but political: It “is not the difference of their opinion in religion, or of their ceremonys in worship,” that justifies persecution of Catholics, Locke writes, “but their dangerous & factious tenents in reference to the state.” Locke feared that Catholics’ “subjection to a forraigne infallible power”—the pope—meant they could not be loyal to the British government.

Locke was not an “abstracted philosopher contemplating at a distance from political events,” Mr. Waldmann says. He was an active player in the religious and political controversies of the British Restoration. His philosophy evolved against the backdrop of religious wars in Britain and across Europe after the Protestant Reformation. He had seen the bloodshed that followed when the state concerned itself not only with protecting citizens’ life, liberty and property but also with the salvation of their souls.

The American Founders took Locke’s views to heart. They banned the establishment of a national church, though that was the norm in Europe. They drew even more heavily on Locke’s “Second Treatise of Government,” which Thomas Jefferson paraphrased at length in the Declaration of Independence. Yet today Locke seems to be falling out of fashion. Progressives have lost much of their interest in the Western canon; for some of them, the most significant thing about Locke is that he had a financial interest in the slave trade.

Conservatives are also turning against Locke. Two acclaimed 2018 books—“Why Liberalism Failed” by Patrick Deneen and “The Virtue of Nationalism” by Yoram Hazony —assail Locke at length for being too disconnected from tradition and too focused on individual autonomy.

Claire Arcenas, a historian at the University of Montana, tells me Locke’s American interpreters have appealed to him for different purposes in different contexts. Locke wrote before the rise of modern capitalism, but some in the early 20th century presented Locke “as a kind of proto-socialist” because of his writings on labor. In the Cold War, conservatives emphasized Locke’s “commitments to private property” as evidence of his “proto-capitalist” views. In 2014, historian Michael Lind argued that 21st century Western populists are drawing without knowing it on Locke’s idea of popular sovereignty. Ms. Arcenas says “to think about who Locke is right now is probably different than who Locke was five years ago and who he will be in five years.”

It’s an indicator of how far Locke has faded from view that the discovery of an original Locke manuscript has so far gone without mention in the major press. “Imagine if you had the standard edition of Shakespeare ’s ‘Hamlet,’ ” Mr. Waldmann says, “and then Craig [Walmsley] goes out and finds a lost act to the play.” One reason for the quiet reception is that the free-market right that embraced Locke in the 20th century is beleaguered, and the leftward drift of mainstream culture has made critiques of Western society more prestigious than efforts to understand its foundations.

The manuscript’s journey from England to the U.S. 250 years after its composition, Mr. Waldmann says, is “symbolic of Locke’s reception in that era in the 20th century.” He was a giant of American liberal democracy standing against totalitarian rivals. Today he is metaphorically in exile. His literal exile from England lasted only six years—in 1689, after the Glorious Revolution, he returned to England on the same boat as Queen Mary. Perhaps this discovery of a piece of his thought heralds a similarly swift return in the American imagination.

Mr. Willick is an assistant editorial features editor at the Journal.

Title: Webster, 1787: Armed People
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 03, 2019, 09:40:45 AM

"Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed; as they are in almost every kingdom of Europe." —Noah Webster (1787)

Title: Thomas Paine
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 12, 2019, 09:11:39 PM

"When we are planning for posterity, we ought to remember that virtue is not hereditary." —Thomas Paine (1776)

Title: The influence of Roman History
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 18, 2019, 01:15:51 PM

https://www.thehour.com/opinion/article/Why-knowing-Roman-history-is-key-to-preserving-14445569.php

Title: Mason on British thought to disarm Americans
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 25, 2019, 12:10:57 PM

"When the resolution of enslaving America was formed in Great Britain, the British Parliament was advised ... to disarm the people; that it was the best and most effectual way to enslave them; but that they should not do it openly, but weaken them, and let them sink gradually." —George Mason (1788)

Title: 1808 Jefferson on encountering hostility
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 24, 2019, 09:39:24 AM

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: ccp on October 24, 2019, 11:00:26 AM

""I suppose, indeed, that in public life, a man whose political principles have any decided character and who has energy enough to give them effect must always expect to encounter political hostility from those of adverse principles." —Thomas Jefferson (1808)"

Yes , and somehow I suspect he did not include adding in the next sentence that one should call those dissenters "human scum"
(at least in public)

:wink:

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 24, 2019, 12:15:43 PM

I know, I know, , , I really wish he would outgrow that sort of thing , , ,

Title: Thomas Paine 1776 on Virtue
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 08, 2019, 08:57:27 AM

"When we are planning for posterity, we ought to remember that virtue is not hereditary." —Thomas Paine (1776)

Title: PP: George Washington
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 14, 2019, 07:07:12 PM

https://patriotpost.us/alexander/12704?mailing_id=4656&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4656&utm_campaign=alexander&utm_content=body

Title: The Making of American Exceptionalism
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 25, 2019, 03:26:58 PM

https://www.nationalreview.com/podcasts/give-me-liberty-the-making-of-american-exceptionalism/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=NR%20Daily%20Monday%20through%20Friday%202019-11-25&utm_term=NRDaily-Smart

Title: The Making of American Exceptionalism
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 01, 2019, 07:14:51 AM

Title: Madison: Ambition 1788
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 09, 2019, 11:07:26 AM

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers: Ben Franklin, taxes, suppression
Post by: DougMacG on January 29, 2020, 08:08:30 AM

"The more the people are discontented with the oppression of taxes, the greater the need the prince has of money to distribute among his partisans and pay the troops that are to suppress all resistance and enable him to plunder at pleasure."
https://fee.org/articles/17-benjamin-franklin-quotes-on-tyranny-liberty-and-rights/

Title: Natural Law
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 29, 2020, 03:04:12 PM

https://mises.org/wire/gun-rights-dont-come-second-amendment#.XizqFV0uyCU.facebook

Title: Washington 1790
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 03, 2020, 12:11:23 PM

Title: Jefferson: 1801
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 05, 2020, 09:00:28 PM

"The Constitution on which our Union rests, shall be administered by me [as President] according to the safe and honest meaning contemplated by the plain understanding of the people of the United States at the time of its adoption — a meaning to be found in the explanations of those who advocated, not those who opposed it, and who opposed it merely lest the construction should be applied which they denounced as possible." —Thomas Jefferson (1801)

Title: Hamilton 1788
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 17, 2020, 10:55:37 AM

"It is an unquestionable truth, that the body of the people in every country desire sincerely its prosperity. But it is equally unquestionable that they do not possess the discernment and stability necessary for systematic government. To deny that they are frequently led into the grossest of errors, by misinformation and passion, would be a flattery which their own good sense must despise." —Alexander Hamilton (1788)

Title: Washington 1789
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 25, 2020, 09:21:26 AM

Title: Samuel Adams 1772 Natural Law
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 28, 2020, 04:03:37 PM

Title: North Carolina Constitution
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 29, 2020, 04:17:59 PM

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/04/29/north-carolina-county-to-defy-governors-stay-at-home-orders-reopen-businesses/

Title: Madison 1822
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 12, 2020, 05:44:07 PM

Title: Story 1833
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 15, 2020, 12:49:42 PM

Title: Dick Morris on Thomas Paine
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 23, 2020, 09:41:49 AM

https://www.dickmorris.com/thomas-paine-the-real-father-of-american-independence-history-video/?utm_source=dmreports&utm_medium=dmreports&utm_campaign=dmreports

Title: Patrick Henry 1775
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 27, 2020, 05:46:45 PM

"Are we disposed to be of the number of those, who having eyes, see not, and having ears, hear not, the things which so nearly concern their temporal salvation? For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it might cost, I am willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst, and to provide for it." —Patrick Henry (1775)

Title: Jefferson, 1816
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 29, 2020, 11:19:56 AM

"The most sacred of the duties of a government [is] to do equal and impartial justice to all citizens." —Thomas Jefferson (1816)

Title: as seen on Mark Levin (1619 Project)
Post by: ccp on June 08, 2020, 02:58:50 PM

the Woodson center:

ttps://woodsoncenter.org/2020/02/13/whites-worst-blacks-best-1619-project-ny-times-1776-facts

thinking of donating

Title: Fisher Ames on Freedom of the Press
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 07, 2020, 09:58:52 AM

"We are, heart and soul, friends to the freedom of the press. It is however, the prostituted companion of liberty, and somehow or other, we know not how, its efficient auxiliary." —Fisher Ames (1807)

Title: John Adams 1776 Virtue is the Foundation
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 27, 2020, 09:43:52 AM

Title: Benjamin Rush 1788 Law and Liberty
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 28, 2020, 11:01:02 AM

"Where there is no law, there is no liberty; and nothing deserves the name of law but that which is certain and universal in its operation upon all the members of the community." —Benjamin Rush (1788)

Title: Madison 1787
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 30, 2020, 09:31:23 AM

"The great desideratum in Government is, so to modify the sovereignty as that it may be sufficiently neutral between different parts of the Society to controul one part from invading the rights of another, and at the same time sufficiently controuled itself, from setting up an interest adverse to that of the entire Society." —James Madison (1787)

Title: Jefferson cranky with the press
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 23, 2020, 09:17:32 AM

Title: Jefferson restraining judges 1825
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 28, 2020, 11:30:14 AM

"One single object ... [will merit] the endless gratitude of the society: that of restraining the judges from usurping legislation." —Thomas Jefferson (1825)

Title: Morris: Would Jefferson have sided with the North or the South?
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 09, 2020, 03:13:16 AM

https://www.dickmorris.com/would-jefferson-have-sided-with-the-north-or-the-south-in-the-civil-war-history-video/?utm_source=dmreports&utm_medium=dmreports&utm_campaign=dmreports

Title: Madison: 1787
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 02, 2021, 06:21:09 PM

Title: Re: Madison: 1787
Post by: DougMacG on February 03, 2021, 07:29:39 AM

Quote from: Crafty_Dog on February 02, 2021, 06:21:09 PM

"The great desideratum in Government is, so to modify the sovereignty as that it may be sufficiently neutral between different parts of the Society to controul one part from invading the rights of another, and at the same time sufficiently controuled itself, from setting up an interest adverse to that of the entire Society." —James Madison (1787)

A government that would sufficiently control itself "from setting up an interest adverse to that of the entire Society".

- Brilliant, and it worked for 200+ years, until the enemy within learned to successfully unleash group interests against the general interests of the nation, and the whole thing came tumbling down.

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 05, 2021, 06:57:35 PM

"Had every Athenian citizen been a Socrates, every Athenian assembly would still have been a mob." —James Madison (1788)

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: DougMacG on February 10, 2021, 07:25:10 AM

“Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech.”
– Benjamin Franklin, Silence Dogood, the Busy‑Body, and Early Writings

“Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves.”
– Henry David Thoreau
“Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom, must, like men, undergo the fatigues of supporting it.”
– Thomas Paine, The Crisis, no. 4, September 11, 1777

“Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.”
– George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman

“Without Freedom of Thought, there can be no such Thing as Wisdom; and no such Thing as public Liberty, without Freedom of Speech; which is the Right of every Man, as far as by it, he does not hurt or control the Right of another: And this is the only Check it ought to suffer, and the only Bounds it ought to know.”
– Benjamin Franklin, The New-England Courant, July 9, 1722

“A state which dwarfs its men, in order that they may be more docile instruments in its hands even for beneficial purposes–will find that with small men no great thing can really be accomplished.”
– John Stuart Mill, On Liberty

“The ideal Government of all reflective men, from Aristotle onward, is one which lets the individual alone – one which barely escapes being no government at all.”
– H. L. Mencken, A Mencken Chrestomathy

“Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.”
– John F. Kennedy, Inaugural Address, January 20, 1961

“Even despotism does not produce its worst effects, so long as individuality exists under it; and whatever crushes individuality is despotism, by whatever name it may be called, and whether it professes to be enforcing the will of God or the injunctions of men.”
– John Stuart Mill, On Liberty

“Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government’s purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.”
– Louis D. Brandeis, Olmstead v. U.S., 277 U.S. 438 (1928) (dissenting)

“I would die to preserve the law upon a solid foundation; but take away liberty, and the foundation is destroyed.”
– Alexander Hamilton, A Full Vindication of the Measures of Congress, December 15, 1774

“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
– Benjamin Franklin, Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Benjamin Franklin

“Liberty, once lost, is lost forever.”
– John Adams, Letter to Abigail Adams, July 17, 1775

“Those who deny freedom to others, deserve it not for themselves”
– Abraham Lincoln, Complete Works – Volume XII

“Don’t interfere with anything in the Constitution. That must be maintained, for it is the only safeguard of our liberties. And not to Democrats alone do I make this appeal, but to all who love these great and true principles.”
– Abraham Lincoln, Speech at Kalamazoo, Michigan, August 27th, 1856

“I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it.”
– Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Archibald Stuart, December 23, 1971

“Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it on to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.”
– Ronald Reagan, Encroaching Control, March 30, 1961

“Liberty, when it begins to take root, is a plant of rapid growth. The checks he endeavors to give it, however warrantable by ancient usage, will, more than probably, kindle a flame which may not easily be extinguished”
– George Washington, Letter to James Madison, March 2, 1788

“The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is it’s natural manure.”
– Thomas Jefferson, Letter to William Stephens Smith, November 13,1787

https://blog.libertasbella.com/liberty-quotes/

- Today I question the George Washington quote, second from the last, that liberty is a tree of rapid growth...not easily extinguished.

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: ccp on February 10, 2021, 08:07:59 AM

".“Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government’s purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.”
– Louis D. Brandeis, Olmstead v. U.S., 277 U.S. 438 (1928) (dissenting)"

And Brandeis was a Jewish liberal Democrat
too

and the Left of course knows this and that is why the are teaching the "woke" religion in kindergarten now

Title: George Washington's slaves and views on slavery
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 20, 2021, 07:28:30 AM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_BWIZYkIxUg&t=7s

Title: Jefferson on Slavery
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 20, 2021, 09:15:29 PM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qfH7AJOkuIA&t=3s

Title: Paine: 1776
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 27, 2021, 10:40:03 AM

Title: Noonan on Jefferson and Adams
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 05, 2021, 06:07:23 AM

How Two Great Friends Overcame Politics
Adams and Jefferson met in 1775 and came apart in 1789. A forgotten man brought them together.

By Peggy Noonan
July 1, 2021 6:32 pm ET

America is a sharply divided place. The conservative world is divided, marked by the continued estrangement of old friends. There is the divide over Donald Trump, and the connected division between those open to conspiracism and those not. There are divides between those quietly fighting over policies that will determine the Republican Party’s future meaning and purpose, its reason for being, and between those who differ—polite word!—on the right moral attitude, after 1/6, toward the former president.

So let’s take a look at the historian Gordon Wood’s superb “Friends Divided: John Adams and Thomas Jefferson ” (2017), the story of two great men whose deep friendship was sundered over politics and later repaired.

They met in Philadelphia in the Continental Congress in 1775 and invented a nation together in 1776. What allies they were, how brilliantly they worked, in spite of differences in temperament, personality, cast of mind and background. Adams of Massachusetts was hearty, frank, abrupt. He was ardent, a brilliant, highly educated man who found it difficult to conceal his true thoughts. His background was plain New England. He made his own way in the world.

Jefferson of course was an aristocrat, a member of Virginia’s landed gentry. He let the game come to him. Mr. Wood quotes a eulogist, who said Jefferson “kept at all times such a command over his temper that no one could discover the workings of his soul.” He was serene.

Adams tended to erupt. But once past his awkwardness and shyness he was jovial and warm. Jefferson, in Mr. Wood’s words, “used his affability to keep people at a distance.” Their mutual friend Dr. Benjamin Rush said Adams was “a stranger to dissimulation.” No one ever said that of Jefferson.

In the Continental Congress Adams found Jefferson so frank and decisive on the issue of independence “that he soon seized upon my heart.” Jefferson would tell Daniel Webster that Adams in those days was a “Colossus.” He was “not graceful, not elegant, not always fluent.” But in debate he’d come out “with a power, both of thought and of expression which moved us from our seats.”

Their friendship deepened in the late 1770s and ’80s, when both were diplomats representing the new nation in Europe. Abigail Adams captivated Jefferson; she was so intelligent, well-read and politically astute he called her “one of the most estimable characters on earth.” Abigail told Jefferson her husband had no closer friend. Jefferson was “the only person with whom my companion could associate with perfect freedom, and unreserve.” When Jefferson was made minister to France and Adams to Britain, their families parted. Jefferson wrote to say it left him “in the dumps.”

Jefferson later told James Madison that while Adams was vain, that was “all the ill” that could be said of him. He was a man of “rigorous honesty,” “profound in his views,” and “he is so amiable, that I pronounce you will love him if ever you become acquainted with him.”

What blew them apart? The French Revolution. Other things too but 1789 was at the heart of it. They disagreed on what it was (a continuation of 1776, said Jefferson; a perversion of 1776, said Adams) and what it would produce (a Continent drowning in blood, said Adams, who could see a Napoleon coming; a global flowering of the spirit of liberty, thought Jefferson, who seems to have mistaken Robespierre for Paul Revere ). When the revolution’s ferocity was revealed in the Terror, Adams threw it in Jefferson’s face: “In France anarchy had done more mischief in one night than all the despotism of their kings had ever done in 20 or 30 years.”

If it hadn’t been for the revolution, they might have gotten through the other strains in store. There were many. Adams became the second president, served one term, ran for re-election and was defeated by Vice President Jefferson in the brutal, rancorous 1800 election.

They disengaged, brooded (mostly Adams) and said bitter things in letters to others (mostly Jefferson).

What saved their friendship? Their friend Benjamin Rush, another great though insufficiently remembered founder. He and Adams had a long correspondence. In 1809, as Jefferson’s second presidential term ended, Adams teasingly asked Rush if he’d had any dreams about Jefferson. Rush had a lot of dreams and often shared them. Months later he reported he did have a dream, about “one of the most extraordinary events” of 1809, “the renewal of the friendship” of Adams and Jefferson. In the dream Adams wrote a short note congratulating Jefferson on his retirement.

“A Dream again!” Adams responded. “It may be Prophecy.”

Rush wrote to Jefferson to soften him up. You loved Adams, he said. Of all the evils of politics, none were so great “as the dissolution of friendships.”

Rush then told Adams to forget what had separated them—explanations are required of lovers, he said, “but are never so between divided friends.”

On New Year’s Day 1812, Adams sent Jefferson a friendly letter. Jefferson wrote back right away, what he later called a “rambling gossiping epistle.” And so their great dialogue recommenced.

They wrote faithfully for 14 years, 158 letters, on everything—what they were reading, who they saw, political philosophy, a thought they’d just had. At one point Adams said: “You and I ought not to die, before We have explained ourselves to each other.” They did their best. Adams would bring up the French Revolution. Jefferson would dodge and share his thoughts on the religious beliefs of the Shawnee Tribe. Adams remembered their history. “I look back with rapture to those golden days” when Virginia and Massachusetts “acted together like a band of brothers.”

They were writing for themselves but also, they knew, for history. They knew who they were.

And so it continued, a great pouring out, until the summer of 1826, the Jubilee summer when the entire country would celebrate the 50th anniversary of what had happened in Philadelphia on July 4.

Both men were near the end of their lives. Both held on for the great day. Wood reports Jefferson woke the night of the 3rd and asked if it was the 4th yet. His doctor said it soon would be. Early the next morning he woke again and called for his servants. Just after noon he died.

At the same time Adams, 500 miles to the north, lay dying. A memoir by Abigail’s nephew William Cranch, chief judge of the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, reports that Adams awoke on the Fourth to bells ringing and cannon booming. The celebrations had begun. Asked if he knew what day it was he said yes, “It is the glorious 4th of July—God bless it—God bless you all.” According to legend, just before he died at 6 p.m., he awoke and said, “Thomas Jefferson survives.”

What drove their reconciliation? A tenderness, toward history and toward themselves. They knew what their friendship had been. They had lived through and to a significant degree driven a world-historical event, the invention of America. They had shared that moment and it had been the great moment of their lives, greater than their presidencies, greater than what followed. They had been geniuses together.

As the Fourth explodes around us we should take some inspiration from the story of an old estrangement healed. We’re all trying to repair something. May you have a Benjamin Rush.

Title: DOI set slavery on path to extinction
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 05, 2021, 07:48:10 AM

https://amac.us/the-graph-that-shatters-crt-july-4-1776-set-slavery-on-the-path-to-worldwide-extinction/

Title: Our Founding Fathers Fight Against Slavery
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 31, 2021, 04:35:04 PM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0SRJmPpZbTI&t=1s

Title: How could the Founding Fathers have done better?
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 04, 2021, 02:00:50 PM

https://amgreatness.com/2021/08/03/how-could-the-founders-have-done-better/

Title: Marc F. Denny defines the American Creed
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 04, 2021, 05:30:40 PM

American Creed= Free minds, free markets, freedom of speech, freedom of and freedom from religion, freedom of contract, right of self-defense (hence guns and knives, etc) property rights, privacy, all connected with responsibility for the disrespect for the rights of others. All this from our Creator, not the State nor majority vote.

==============

BTW it appears that I have scored today a gig as Adjunct Professor teaching Constitutional Law. The Adventure continues!

Title: Re: Marc F. Denny defines the American Creed
Post by: G M on August 04, 2021, 06:37:19 PM

Quote from: Crafty_Dog on August 04, 2021, 05:30:40 PM

American Creed= Free minds, free markets, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of contract, right of self-defense (hence guns and knives, etc) property rights, privacy, all connected with responsibility for the disrespect for the rights of others. All this from our Creator, not the State nor majority vote.

==============

BTW it appears that I have scored today a gig as Adjunct Professor teaching Constitutional Law. The Adventure continues!

Nice!

Title: Re: Marc F. Denny defines the American Creed
Post by: DougMacG on August 04, 2021, 08:06:10 PM

Quote from: Crafty_Dog on August 04, 2021, 05:30:40 PM

American Creed= Free minds, free markets, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of contract, right of self-defense (hence guns and knives, etc) property rights, privacy, all connected with responsibility for the disrespect for the rights of others. All this from our Creator, not the State nor majority vote.

==============

BTW it appears that I have scored today a gig as Adjunct Professor teaching Constitutional Law. The Adventure continues!

This is great! Congratulations! A ray of hope for the next generation!

Title: Justice Scalia on Originalism: My mission is to be right, not influential.
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 05, 2021, 06:27:57 PM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XUnI3gaEmGY

Scalia and Breyer in 2009
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmv5Tz7w5pk

Title: Hamilton
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 02, 2022, 03:51:57 AM

Hamilton’s choices were key America’s success abroad

Advocacy on commercial economy, navy set up U.S.

By Rebecca Munson

Editor’s note: This is one in a series examining the Constitution and Federalist Papers in today’s America.

Alexander Hamilton’s relentless insistence on a set of national institutions — a commercial economy, a navy of respectable weight and a central bank — laid the foundation for modern American global hegemony. These institutions fostered the internal health of the young republic and prepared the country to engage successfully in the international arena.

Hamilton had a quick ability to recognize how these institutions would be integral to the success of the new republic. Together, they would provide the infrastructure for the United States to effectively protect itself and project power abroad.

From the beginning, Americans were torn about the level of effort they should put toward engaging abroad. Wishful thinking about avoiding what Thomas Jefferson famously dubbed “entangling alliances” was rampant during ratification debates. Many Americans believed that avoiding alliances and refusing to partake in the habitual hatred or habitual fondness toward other countries would help avoid war. These sentiments are still alive today. But not only is an isolationist stance difficult to maintain, it also was never embraced in the way many people imagine. As early as the 18th century, a precarious geopolitical environment was forcing America to consider how she would deal with foreign influence in the New World. Throughout the 19th century, the United States actively pursued both westward expansion and international commercial opportunities. Hamilton believed that both versions of expansion were good and thought — as Machiavelli had 300 years earlier — that successful republics were naturally expansionist.

The Founders assumed their principles of self-governance would spread internationally and the United States would come to dominate the New World. But none of them was seeking to build a traditional empire. Even the Monroe Doctrine was an attempt to avoid ensnarement in Old World rivalries, without capping America’s own regional influence.

During the Constitutional Convention, Hamilton was irritated with the hesitancy of other delegates to think beyond state sovereignty. The Federalist case for ratification of the Constitution hinged on convincing anti-Federalist skeptics that an agrarian economy and weak federal institutions might jeopardize liberty rather than protect it.

Hamilton’s insistence on a commercial economy and an energetic government was criticized — then as now — as antithetical to the liberty for which the colonists had just fought a bloody and successful war.

Advocates for an energetic commercialism found their voice in James Madison’s Federalist No. 10, in which commercialism is espoused as vital for preserving liberty. Madison argued that a healthy economy creates the kinds of political divisions and factions needed to ensure that no one group gains a majority voting bloc. Instead of a singular poor class and singular wealthy class, the disunity that stems from people possessing different types and degrees of property is precisely what prevents a majority from forming and using their voting power to tyrannize the few.

There was, however, a certain kind of faction Hamilton feared would be concerned by a robust American economy. That “faction” was the Europeans. To cure this, the states needed both the unity a constitution would provide and a navy to protect them and project their preferences.

Without a strong navy, Hamilton feared the fruits of America’s “unequaled spirit of enterprise,” extolled in Federalist No. 11 as “an inexhaustible mine of national wealth,” would become “prey to the wanton intermeddlings of all nations at war with each other.” The unhappy result would be foreign powers “clipping the wings by which we might soar to a dangerous greatness.” Yet “with wisdom” (a national defense) “this same enterprise might make admiration and envy of the world.”

Despite his belief in financial institutions, Hamilton rejected the hypothesis that financial ties have “a tendency to soften the manners of men” and produce peace. Instead, in Federalist No. 6, Hamilton asked a simple question: “Have they [great powers] in fact pursued it?” Of course not. Nations involved in commerce still warred with each other all the time.

Hamilton knew “the rights of neutrality will only be respected when they are defended by an adequate power.” In Federalist No. 11, he contended that a navy would force competitors to set a price “not only upon our friendship, but upon our neutrality.”

This is also why Hamilton wanted a central bank that would inoculate the new nation from any need to borrow from European powers. Financial stability went hand-in-hand with national security.

Hamilton saw an independent industrial base — one that could supply the necessities of war — as a critical source of American power. He was an unapologetic advocate for an executive endowed with enough power to make wartime decisions.

He was, finally, a gifted administrator. By the time he left the Treasury Department in 1795, most of what Hamilton called “my commercial system” had been established. Hamilton’s mark on American government and the international financial system is undeniable. It was his economic program that led to the eventual transfer of the world’s financial center from London to New York. It was his conception of a commercial economy that led to American economic supremacy and victory in two world wars.

Victory in those wars resulted in the opening needed to create a world order based on American revolutionary principles of liberty.

Hamilton’s vision of a strong economy, a strong navy and a strong government helped realize the Founders’ vision of American republicanism spread throughout the world.

• Rebecca Munson is associate professor and department chair in the Helms School of Government at Liberty University.

Title: Have not watched this yet
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 25, 2022, 04:44:37 PM

https://www.bitchute.com/video/XW25uii5Y8uD/?fbclid=IwAR3VGEO75wDM-h97P49F7R5c2KkPCs_Pq9oQ-uktXbBIA5iP4pORZc4bByA

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 01, 2022, 10:24:00 AM

Little-known influences that shaped our founding

When we don’t know history, false narratives emerge

By Nicholas Giordano

Due to a failed education system that pushes ideology and indoctrination, many Americans are unaware of our rich and unique history — a history that exemplifi es why America is an exceptional nation. When we don’t know our history, false narratives begin to emerge like the 1619 Project, pedaling the lie that our founders were nothing more than rich white men from England who wanted to preserve the institution of slavery.

America’s real history begins with the Boston Massacre and the decision to craft the Declaration of Independence. The Declaration would convey our desire to be free from England and define the core American political philosophies, including life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Thomas Jefferson is synonymous with the Declaration. To a lesser degree, some may think of Benjamin Franklin and John Adams. Contrary to what has been taught, there are many unknown names from a diverse set of backgrounds that shaped our founding.

Unfortunately, most Americans have never heard of Filippo Mazzei who played a critical role in America’s founding. Mazzei, an Italian merchant, befriended Jefferson. In 1773, Mazzei traveled to America and quickly took up the cause of independence.

Mazzei and Jefferson would regularly discuss politics, sharing their ideas on how true liberty could go from the theoretical and instituted into practice. In 1774, Mazzei published an article in the Virginia Gazette and wrote, “Tutti gli uomini sono per natura egualmente liberi e indipendenti. Quest’ eguaglianza e neccessaria per costituire un governo libero.” Jefferson translated Mazzei’s work: “All men are by nature equally free and independent. This equality is necessary in order to create a free government.” The idea would become a central part of the American creed and illustrates Mazzei’s influence on the Declaration.

What makes this so remarkable is that Italians weren’t considered white until the turn of the 20th century, and it would take nearly 200 years for Congress to recognize Mazzei’s contribution. However, Mazzei’s contributions go beyond the Declaration, and his story is one of the many contributions that are never taught, intentionally perpetuating the false narratives of an evil and racist nation. Few could recognize the names Capt. Richard Taliaferro, Capt. Ferdinando Finizzi and Capt. Francesco Vigo, all playing integral roles throughout the American Revolution.

Hispanics also contributed to the cause of independence. For example, Gen. Bernardo Galvez’s victories on the battlefield were essential to eliminating British naval presence in the Gulf of Mexico. The contributions of other Hispanics like Gov. Luis de Unzaga and Lt. Jordi Mesquida also remain relatively unknown. Few Americans are aware that in the lead-up to America’s independence, a Black man, Crispus Attucks was the first casualty when he was shot and killed in the Boston Massacre. How many of us know that 5,000 Black American patriots took up the cause of independence against the British, particularly the integrated 1st Rhode Island Regiment, which earned a reputation for bravery and ferocity? What about other Black patriots, like James Armistead, who served as a spy and double agent, or Peter Salem, best known for killing Major John Pitcairn at the Battle of Bunker Hill, or Phillis Wheatley whose literary talent influenced George Washington and Benjamin Franklin? What about Lancaster Hill, Prince Hall and others, demanding America live up to the principles laid out in the Declaration and abolish the institution of slavery?

Reducing our founding to a bunch of old rich white men is a lie and does a disservice to the countless others that have contributed to this great nation. It’s odd that those who complain the loudest of whitewashing history are the same people who have controlled academia and curriculums for nearly a century. This Independence Day all Americans should make a commitment to reacquaint themselves with our country’s vibrant history.

Nicholas Giordano is a full-time tenured professor of political science and the host of “The P.A.S. Re-port Podcast.

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 12, 2022, 08:55:26 AM

On being a constitutional people

Convention’s gift that keeps on giving

By David Marion

The spirited debate provoked by the Supreme Court’s rulings in the abortion, religion, EPA and gun regulation cases has become disturbingly toxic due to a failure to understand how and why the Constitution allocates governmental power to promote the “safety and happiness” of the American people.

This summer marks the 235th anniversary of the Philadelphia convention that produced the United States Constitution. Alexander Hamilton hit the proverbial nail on the head when he declared that “all mankind” would be the beneficiary if the American people established a republic that was true to the principles of the Constitution.

The decision to declare independence from Great Britain, and the reasoning behind that decision, initiated what George Washington called a “glorious cause” for the American people. At the heart of that cause was the decision to be a constitutional people, that is, the decision to constitutionalize the American way of life or the way in which Americans would govern themselves and live their lives.

The Constitution was designed to establish a specific kind of republic that would nurture a distinctive “way of life” for the American people (such as a love of liberty, a commitment to fair play and due process of law, creative ingenuity and moderating common sense, and a large dose of what Washington called “republican manners”). If things worked out as intended, then the Constitution was expected to give Americans a realistic shot at living in a decent and competent democracy.

In a republic where the people are the sovereign body, being a constitutional people requires more than a commitment to abide by the terms of the Constitution —although that is enormously important. In no other type of political community are civic education and specifically constitutional literacy so important as in a democratic republic.

Being a unique constitutional people requires general agreement about what the constitutional order (e.g., America) stands for or should stand for and what it means to be a member of that constitutional order (e.g., an American). To say that the American people in 2022 are deeply divided about such matters is an understatement, and the impact of this division on the health of the nation should be profoundly disturbing to liberals as well as conservatives.

Constitutionally literate citizens should understand the difference between deciphering Congress’ authority to regulate interstate commerce and the president’s commander-in-chief powers on the one hand and addressing the dayto- day challenges involved in reducing poverty, pollution, drug addiction and crime on the other.

When Americans look to appellate courts like the United States Supreme Court to make public policy, they are no longer thinking like the founders’ constitutional people. Constitutionally literate Americans should understand who decides what (how powers are allocated) and why (the reasoning or logic behind the allocation of powers). Understanding and addressing the complex causes of crime, poverty, health crises and pollution should be expected of legislative and executive officials, not judges — applying laws to specific cases should be the work of judges.

Americans expect a great deal from the government, and they are impatient when gratification is delayed. A Constitution that entrusts governing to a diverse group of legislative and executive officials is not designed for “jiffy lube” policy-making —but at its best, it will be good for deliberation, negotiation and coalition-building, and fair and sensible decision-making.

The alternative to constitutional politics is power politics or the advancement of political agendas by exercises of pure will and force. Power politics is more “sexy” and alluring than constitutional politics since it plays on the passions and promises something approximating quick gratification. A rights-oriented and commercial culture is fertile soil for power politics (give me what I want when I want it politics) that prioritizes outcomes over principled reasoning.

A failure to embrace the boundaries and necessary patience associated with constitutional politics opens the door to the machinations and divisiveness of persons of low and self-serving ambitions. For obvious reasons, the disposition to engage in constitutional politics must be carefully nurtured and protected since it is hard to cultivate and difficult to restore when lost.

The American people should be proud of what they have pulled off since the 1780s, thanks in no small part to the enduring genius of the Constitution, but worried about what the future holds. Public officials, educators and journalists, among other persons who shape public opinion, need to understand what George Washington appreciated about the fragility of constitutional politics.

If constitutional politics falls out of favor with the principal shapers of public opinion, and especially if the American people succumb to the deceptive promises of purveyors of power politics, then all bets are off when it comes to preserving competence and decency in the nation entrusted to our care by the delegates who labored to craft the Constitution in the hot Philadelphia summer of 1787.

David Marion is Elliot Professor emeri-tus of government and a faculty fellow with the Wilson Center for Leadership in the Public Interest at Hampden-Syd-ney College.

Title: American Creed: Founding Fathers: Ben Franklin
Post by: DougMacG on September 01, 2022, 08:45:59 AM

"it is necessary for me to be extremely frugal for some time, till I have paid what I owe."

- Ben Franklin at a very young age wrote a short list that he called his "Plan for Future Conduct" to be successful in life. This was point 1. Walter Isaacson Biography of Benjamin Franklin.

Title: desecration
Post by: ccp on September 29, 2022, 06:17:35 AM

https://www.breitbart.com/entertainment/2022/09/28/lizzo-plays-james-madisons-200-year-old-crystal-flute-on-loan-from-library-of-congress-while-twerking/

but wait he owned slaves ......

how insulting to patriots .......of all the people to be allowed the honor to play this antique instrument.......

Title: Re: desecration
Post by: G M on September 29, 2022, 09:14:33 PM

Quote from: ccp on September 29, 2022, 06:17:35 AM

https://www.breitbart.com/entertainment/2022/09/28/lizzo-plays-james-madisons-200-year-old-crystal-flute-on-loan-from-library-of-congress-while-twerking/

but wait he owned slaves ......

how insulting to patriots .......of all the people to be allowed the honor to play this antique instrument.......

https://media.gab.com/cdn-cgi/image/width=1050,quality=100,fit=scale-down/system/media_attachments/files/116/889/565/original/f5870a4fc7d1816d.jpg

(https://media.gab.com/cdn-cgi/image/width=1050,quality=100,fit=scale-down/system/media_attachments/files/116/889/565/original/f5870a4fc7d1816d.jpg)

Title: The Cause and Necessity of Taking Up Arms
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 27, 2023, 04:45:53 AM

From "A Declaration by the Representatives of the United Colonies of North-America, Now Met in Congress at Philadelphia, Setting Forth the Causes and Necessity of Their Taking Up Arms," 1775:

Our cause is just. Our union is perfect. Our internal resources are great, and, if necessary, foreign assistance is undoubtedly attainable. — We gratefully acknowledge, as signal instances of the Divine favour towards us, that his Providence would not permit us to be called into this severe controversy, until we were grown up to our present strength, had been previously exercised in warlike operation, and possessed of the means of defending ourselves. With hearts fortified with these animating reflections, we most solemnly, before God and the world, declare, that, exerting the utmost energy of those powers, which our beneficent Creator hath graciously bestowed upon us, the arms we have been compelled by our enemies to assume, we will, in defiance of every hazard, with unabating firmness and perseverance, employ for the preservation of our liberties; being with one mind resolved to die freemen rather than to live slaves.

Lest this declaration should disquiet the minds of our friends and fellow-subjects in any part of the empire, we assure them that we mean not to dissolve that union which has so long and so happily subsisted between us, and which we sincerely wish to see restored. — Necessity has not yet driven us into that desperate measure, or induced us to excite any other nation to war against them. — We have not raised armies with ambitious designs of separating from Great-Britain, and establishing independent states. We fight not for glory or for conquest. We exhibit to mankind the remarkable spectacle of a people attacked by unprovoked enemies, without any imputation or even suspicion of offence. They boast of their privileges and civilization, and yet proffer no milder conditions than servitude or death.

==================

MARC: I am not calling for such now, simply noting that this is at the core of the American Creed.

Title: The influence of Sir Isaac Newton
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 14, 2023, 05:43:30 AM

https://www.theepochtimes.com/ideas-that-formed-the-constitution-part-17-sir-isaac-newton_5045935.html?utm_source=Opinion&src_src=Opinion&utm_campaign=opinion-2023-02-13&src_cmp=opinion-2023-02-13&utm_medium=email&est=XGW%2FsFksd1emgR1AJKoKlfHiaRIVenpwbmBjUl3m%2B1Y8bC1DF%2FN6Dyh1ivehkvzmPK1j

Title: Re: The American Creed, "The American Way"
Post by: DougMacG on February 06, 2024, 11:05:36 AM

One further point on American Creed, our children didn't grow up watching Superman but what he was fighting for was "truth, justice and the American Way".

Superman re-runs today say copyright 1957 but the expression goes all the way to the radio show in 1940.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truth,_Justice,_and_the_American_Way

What was the "American Way"? It looks very much like Crafty's definition of American Creed, and includes nothing we would today call "woke".

Title: Re: The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 08, 2024, 01:37:48 PM

Amen!