The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:

[Crafty_Dog]

https://www.history.org/almanack/life/politics/giveme.cfm?fbclid=IwAR2omEPtb5Q_jaZCWNFU4P6fxUc37Bj9qMp0QXTK2Uz-BNZWrlh9BpdJI2k

[Crafty_Dog]

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)

[Crafty_Dog]

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

[Crafty_Dog]

"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 (1805)

[Crafty_Dog]

https://online.hillsdale.edu/courses/constitution-2017/home/course-schedule

[Crafty_Dog]

"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)

[Crafty_Dog]

"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)

[Crafty_Dog]

"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 (1823)

[Crafty_Dog]

 

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.

[Crafty_Dog]

"Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed; as they are in almost every kingdom of Europe." —Noah Webster (1787)

[Crafty_Dog]

"When we are planning for posterity, we ought to remember that virtue is not hereditary." —Thomas Paine (1776)

[Crafty_Dog]

https://www.thehour.com/opinion/article/Why-knowing-Roman-history-is-key-to-preserving-14445569.php

[Crafty_Dog]

"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)

[Crafty_Dog]

"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)

[ccp]

""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)

 

[Crafty_Dog]

I know, I know, , , I really wish he would outgrow that sort of thing , , ,

[Crafty_Dog]

"When we are planning for posterity, we ought to remember that virtue is not hereditary." —Thomas Paine (1776)

[Crafty_Dog]

https://patriotpost.us/alexander/12704?mailing_id=4656&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4656&utm_campaign=alexander&utm_content=body

[Crafty_Dog]

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

[Crafty_Dog]

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

[Crafty_Dog]

"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 (1788)

[DougMacG]

"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/

[Crafty_Dog]

https://mises.org/wire/gun-rights-dont-come-second-amendment#.XizqFV0uyCU.facebook

[Crafty_Dog]

"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 (1790)

[Crafty_Dog]

"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)

[Crafty_Dog]

"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)

[Crafty_Dog]

"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 (1789)

[Crafty_Dog]

"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." —Samuel Adams (1772)

[Crafty_Dog]

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/04/29/north-carolina-county-to-defy-governors-stay-at-home-orders-reopen-businesses/

[Crafty_Dog]

"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 (1822)

[Crafty_Dog]

"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 (1833)

[Crafty_Dog]

https://www.dickmorris.com/thomas-paine-the-real-father-of-american-independence-history-video/?utm_source=dmreports&utm_medium=dmreports&utm_campaign=dmreports

[Crafty_Dog]

"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)

[Crafty_Dog]

"The most sacred of the duties of a government [is] to do equal and impartial justice to all citizens." —Thomas Jefferson (1816)

[ccp]

the Woodson center:

ttps://woodsoncenter.org/2020/02/13/whites-worst-blacks-best-1619-project-ny-times-1776-facts

thinking of donating

[Crafty_Dog]

"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)

[Crafty_Dog]

"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 (1776)

[Crafty_Dog]

"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)

[Crafty_Dog]

"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)

[Crafty_Dog]

"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 (1805)

[Crafty_Dog]

"One single object ... [will merit] the endless gratitude of the society: that of restraining the judges from usurping legislation." —Thomas Jefferson (1825)

[Crafty_Dog]

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

[Crafty_Dog]

"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)

[DougMacG]

"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.

[Crafty_Dog]

"Had every Athenian citizen been a Socrates, every Athenian assembly would still have been a mob." —James Madison (1788)

[DougMacG]

“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.

[ccp]

".“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

[Crafty_Dog]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_BWIZYkIxUg&t=7s

[Crafty_Dog]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qfH7AJOkuIA&t=3s

[Crafty_Dog]

"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 (1776)