Conservative Quotes
Terrorism And September 11, 2001
"It is sad that being a good patriot often means being the enemy of the rest of mankind." --Voltaire
"It is easy to see that when republican virtue fails, slavery ensues." --Thomas Paine
"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. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen." --Samuel Adams
"The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground." --Thomas Jefferson
“Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government and form a new one. This is a most valuable and sacred right- a right which we hope will liberate the world.” --Abraham Lincoln
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." --David Hume
"I believe there are more instances of the freedoms of the people being abridged through gradual and silent encroachments by those in power, than by violent and sudden usurpation." --James Madison, during the Virginia Convention on Ratification of the U.S. Constitution, June 16, 1788
"They that can give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." --Dr. Benjamin Franklin
"The object and practice of liberty lies in the limitation of governmental power." --Douglass MacArthur
"The state is not armed with superior wit or honesty, but with superior physical strength. I was not born to be forced. I will breathe air after my own fashion. Let us see who is the strongest." --Henry David Thoreau
"...[T]here can be no truly moral choice unless that choice is made in freedom; similarly, there can be no really firmly grounded and consistent defense of freedom unless that defense is rooted in moral principle." --Murray N. Rothbard
"Blandishments will not fascinate us, nor the threats of a 'halter' intimidate. For, under God, we are determined that wheresoever, whensoever, or howsoever we shall be called to make our exit, we will die free men." --Josiah Quincy, Observations on the Boston Port Bill, 1774
"Whoever lays a hand on me to govern me is a usurper and a tyrant, and I declare him my enemy." --Anonymous
"For in a Republic, who is "the country?" Is it the Government which is for the moment in the saddle? Why, the Government is merely a servant--merely a temporary servant; it cannot be its prerogative to determine what is right and what is wrong, and decide who is a patriot and who isn't. Its function is to obey orders, not originate them." --Mark Twain
"In order to become the master, the politician poses as the servant." --General Charles de Gaulle
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." - The First Amendment of the United States Constitution
"The real object of the First Amendment was not to countenance, much less to advance Mahometanism, or Judaism, or infidelity by prostrating Christianity; but to exclude all rivalry among Christian sects and to prevent any national ecclesiastical establishment which should give to a hierarchy (a denominational council) the exclusive patronage ot the national government." This quote was by Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story in his COMMENTARIES ON THE CONSTITUTION, 1833.
THE FIRST AMENDMENT
When the First Amendment is mentioned, most people will think, or say, separation of church and state or freedom of religion. Others will say freedom of speech and still others will say freedom of the press. Well, you may think, it’s all of these things and more, or is it? With emphasis, it has responsibilities and certain restrictions. So let’s examine it, with original intent, and what it has become.
The First Amendment has six parts:
1) Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion,
2) Or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;
3) Or abridging the freedom of speech,
4) Or of the press;
5) Or the right of the people peaceably to assemble,
6) And to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
First, let us examine part one. The key words are an establishment. What is “an establishment?” Webster’s Dictionary states that an establishment is a public or private institution, an established order of society, a group of social, economic and political leaders who form a ruling class and a controlling group. Ironically, just above establishment is the definition of established church (1660). It is defined as a church recognized by law as the official church of a nation and supported by civil authority. Please keep this definition and date in mind. Just like an eating establishment, it is a formally organized effort of whatever the intended course may be. In the case of The First Amendment, formally organized religions, or sects, as they were honorably referred to then, were Baptists, Lutherans, Presbyterians, Quakers and so on. From the 1600’s through about the late 1780’s, there was a system of state-ordered tithes that taxed citizens and gave to whatever sect was established in that state, and attendance was mandatory in some places! As an example, Virginia taxed for Anglicans (Church of England), although other sects greatly outnumbered them. It appears the Anglicans had a very good lobby at the state house! The famed Virginia Bill of Religious Liberty, or sometimes called the Virginia Statute, stopped this practice of state-ordered religious taxation. This effort was championed by James Madison, called the “Father of the Constitution,” and Thomas Jefferson, known as the primary author of the DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE, and both future presidents.
There were many other colonies, and, after independence, states, which ceased religious taxation before Virginia ended the practice in its state. We don’t have religious taxation today supporting an establishment of religion; however, the meaning of the first part of the First Amendment has been twisted and maligned. Let us briefly examine this. Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story, in his COMMENTARIES ON THE CONSTITUTION, 1833, states very clearly: “The real object of the First Amendment was not to countenance, much less to advance Mahometanism, or Judaism, or infidelity by prostrating Christianity; but to exclude all rivalry among Christian sects and to prevent any national ecclesiastical establishment which should give to a hierarchy (a denominational council) the exclusive patronage of the national government.” Please note the words any national ecclesiastical establishment as Justice Story has detailed. To make this even more dramatic and crystal clear, James Madison’s proposed wordings for the First Amendment stated, “The civil rights of none shall be abridged on account of religious belief or worship, nor shall any national religion be established, nor shall the full and equal rights of conscience be in any manner, nor on any pretext infringed.” I believe national religion has the same meaning as an establishment of religion, and leaves this quite clear. Also consider the established church definition with what Justice Story stated and put all three together. Obviously, Madison’s verbiage of the First Amendment was not adopted.
The above is so clear and easily understood that it is beyond me why we must continue this explanation, but it must be further explained because of what “enlightened liberal revisionists” have done to the First Amendment, and the rest of the CONSTITUTION. You have heard, or you will hear, about the wall of separation between church and state as these revisionists will grab on to anything they can to squash religion. The Thomas Jefferson statement about “…building a wall of separation between church and state,” was made in a speech in 1802, thirteen years after the Constitutional Convention, and the importance has been greatly overrated. I say this, to begin the discussion on Jefferson’s statement, because the term “separation of church and state” or “wall of separation between church and state” does not appear, not even once, anywhere, in the CONSTITUTION or BILL OF RIGHTS, nor can even an implication be found!!! During the Constitutional Convention, Jefferson was in France serving as U.S. Minister and did not hold any other office whatsoever. In fact, the Reverend Dr. Joseph Priestly sent him a copy of a letter he was preparing to publish on Jefferson, crediting him with being a major influence in framing the CONSTITUTION. Jefferson replied on June 19, 1802, and asked Dr. Priestly to correct the error: “One passage in the paper you enclosed me must be corrected. It is the following, ‘And all say it was yourself more than any other individual, that planned and established it (Constitution).’ I was in Europe when the CONSTITUTION was planned, and never saw it till after it was established.” He further stated, “On receiving it, I wrote strongly to Mr. Madison urging the want of provision (Bill of Rights) for the freedom of religion, freedom of the press, trial by jury, habeas corpus, the substitution of militia for standing army, and an express reservation to the states of all rights not specifically granted to the union (10th. Amendment)….This is all the hand I had in what related to the CONSTITUTION.” As evidenced by this, Thomas Jefferson had character, integrity and honesty. Incidentally, at the Constitutional Convention, James Madison was against a bill of rights, and this will be discussed in detail in the text of the 9th. & 10th. Amendments.
In 1886, George Bancroft, an eminent nineteenth century historian, declared that
Roger Sherman, George Washington, Charles Cotesworth Pickney, James Madison and Alexander Hamilton were master builders of the CONSTITUTION. One historical account referred to Pickney as the father of the CONSTITUTION as 40 of Madison’s 71 proposals failed, and James Monroe stated that without the leadership of George Washington, the convention would have adjourned unsuccessfully. Madison even stated that, “It ought to be regarded as a work of many heads and many hands.”
The statement about a wall between church & state, made by Thomas Jefferson in 1802, was during an address to the Danbury Baptists, and it appears he intentionally referred to the words of an earlier Baptists leader, Roger Williams (1603-1684): “When they have opened a gap in the hedge or wall of separation between the garden of the church and the wilderness of the world, God hath ever broke down the wall itself, removed the candlestick, and made his garden a wilderness, as at this day. And that therefore if he will eer please to restore His garden and paradise again, it must of necessity be walled in peculiarly unto Himself from the world.” According to Williams himself, the “wall of separation” was to protect the garden of the church from the “wilderness of the world.” Jefferson’s statement was, “I contemplate with solemn reference that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature make no law respecting an act of religion (sect or establishment), or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, thus building a wall of separation between church and state.” Our present Supreme Court Chief Justice, William Rehnquist, described the “separation of church and state” statement as “a misleading metaphor!” From THOMAS JEFFERSON’S WRITINGS, Monticello Edition, in 1808, he wrote to a clergyman and stated, “I consider the government of the United States as interdicted by The Constitution from intermeddling with religious institutions, their doctrines, discipline and 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 (10th. Amendment). Clearly, no power to prescribe any religious exercise, or to assume authority in religious discipline, has been delegated the general government.” Religious institutions and establishment are synonyms and the wall statement has been turned on its head! Chief Justice Rehnquist further states, “There is simply no historical foundation for the proposition that the Framers intended to build the ‘wall of separation’ that was constitutionalized in Everson v. Board of Education, 1947,…But the greatest injury of the wall notion is its mischievous diversion of judges from the actual intentions of the drafters of the Bill of Rights. No amount of repetition of historical errors in judicial opinions can make the error true. The wall of separation between church and state is a metaphor based on bad history…It should be frankly and explicitly abandoned…Our perception has been clouded not by The Constitution but by the mists of an unnecessary metaphor.”
In reading these quotations, I think it would be safe to say the Founding Fathers wanted government out of religion; but what about religion in government? That’s not to say that churches should be involved in lawmaking or running the country as “an establishment” of a particular religion. It is to say that religion should be possibly promoted for the general welfare and morality of the country instead of ruling that we cannot have prayer at the appropriate time and place. Well, let’s see what has been said over the past two plus centuries, beginning with another thought by Chief Justice Rehnquist. He was not a proponent of removing prayer from public places and schools and applauded George Washington’s proclamation and a Congressional Resolution on October 3, 1789, to have a day of thanksgiving and prayer, and as Washington said at the end of his proclamation, “...to promote the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue!” John Jay, who was one of three authors of the FEDERALIST PAPERS, a President of Congress, New York Supreme Court Justice, the first Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court (appointed by President Washington), Governor of New York and President of The American Bible Society stated, “It is the duty of all wise, free, and virtuous governments to countenance and encourage virtue and religion.” Just why would Chief Justice Jay say governments should encourage religion? Very simply said, without religion, any society, people and leaders more than likely will be absent of morality, integrity and character as we have witnessed in the last eight years of the Clinton/Gore administration! As morality declines, the abuse of rights increases, more government is necessary, and as domestic animals need herdsmen, an immoral citizenry needs a police state! If we ever abandon our morality and adopt instead the law of the jungle, we will lose our freedom; therefore, we must not only be moral but informed. If we are not informed, we will tend to vote for the politician who promises the most and we will have bigger government, and finally, total government. Keeping this in mind, think about what penman and signer of The CONSTITUTION, Gouverneur Morris proclaimed, “There must be religion. When that ligament is torn, society is disjointed and its members perish. The nation is exposed to foreign violence and domestic convulsion. Vicious rulers, chosen by vicious people, turn back the current of corruption to its source. Placed in a situation where they can exercise authority over their own emolument, they betray their trust. They take bribes. They sell statutes and decrees. They sell honor and office. They sell their conscience. They sell their country. By this vile traffic they become odious and contemptible….But the most important of all lessons is the denunciation of ruin to every state that rejects the precepts of religion.” Does this remind you of anything? I’m not going to get into the immorality of the Clinton administration, and its continuing saga, because we all know them and some will be put on paper as a reminder when preparing and giving a speech
Consider these statements made by some of our Founding Fathers: James Otis, arguing against the Writs of Assistance (1761), was considered to have begun the movement for American independence stated, “The sum of my argument is that civil government is of God.” Samuel Adams said, “The only true basis of all government is the laws of God and nature. For government is an ordinance of heaven, designed by the all benevolent creator.” George Washington also stated, “Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle. Purity of morals is the only sure foundation of public happiness in any country. The federal government can never be in danger of degenerating…so long as there shall remain any virtue in the body of people. True religion affords to government its surest support. Religion and morality are the essential pillars of civil society.” John Adams said, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” He was not the only prominent Founder who stated a moral republic was what our constitutional government designed. The Continental Congress itself stated in 1778, “Whereas true religion and good morals are the only solid foundations of public liberty and happiness…it is hereby earnestly recommended to the several States to take the most effectual measures for the encouragement thereof.”
Now tell me, does all this sound like our Founding Fathers intended a wall between church and state??? I think it means prayer in all public schools and all public events where appropriate! It means crime and punishment! It means the government should stay out of religion but religion should influence government on moral issues! For 170 years after the ratification of The CONSTITUTION and BILL OF RIGHTS, no court had ever struck down any prayer, in any form, in any location! Also, one might consider the reason public schools were created in the 1820s. It was for the sole purpose of asuring that children would be able to read the Bible. Let me say that again! The sole purpose for creating public schools was to be sure children could read, and the purpose for their reading was to read the Bible!
So why all the dissension about the First Amendment, prayer and separation of church and state? First, what’s been going on the last fifty plus years is not what the Founders intended in their great wisdom. Secondly, if an amendment can be changed, or abolished, or laws made and distorted by the courts, then others can be done likewise, and most of the time it is not for the good of the country or its citizenry. The “enlightened liberal revisionists,” mentioned earlier, have also said some interesting things. Another belief they have is that their judgment and lawmaking ability is better than a Divine source, as their direction to lawmaking is toward man instead of natural and Divine law. The onslaught on our Constitution really began in a very subtle manner as the country moved into the 20th. Century, intensified in the 1950’s, and really began to steamroll in the early 1960’s. Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes (1930-1941) declared, “We are under a Constitution, but the Constitution is what the judges say it is.” Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. was appointed to the Supreme Court in 1902, stated, “The felt necessities of the time, the prevalent moral and political theories…(for) the prejudices which judges share with their fellowmen have a good deal more to do than the syllogism (legal reasoning process) in determining the rules by which men should be governed.” Benjamin Cardoza, appointed to the Supreme Court in 1932, encouraged the court to eliminate the use of its foundational precedents by stating, “I take judge-made law as one of the existing realities of life.” George Washington warned of these types of individuals in his farewell address, “If, in the opinion of the people, the distribution or the 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.” Thomas Jefferson had some doubts about the judiciary as he stated, “Our Constitution….intending to establish three departments, co-ordinate and independent that they might check & balance one another, it has given---according to this opinion---to one of them along the right to prescribe rules for the government of the others; and to that one, too, which is unelected by and independent of the nation….The Constitution, on this hypothesis, is a mere thing of wax in the hands of the judiciary which they may twist and shape into any form they please.” This is the big dissension, that our Constitution has been turned into wax by the courts and revisionists, mostly by a Democrat controlled congress giving in to the courts on critical issues, and doing their own damage by legislation. They shape a statute, or reshape an existing one, to their liking, and declare it to be the law of the land and very firm in its meaning, although it may violate Constitutional principles altogether.
Now, let us assume some of you out there are complete and unashamedly atheists. It is in your best interest, and so everyone else’s, to have a very stable government, just laws, a free society and a citizenry not violent and contemptible. Consider these thoughts. William Patterson, signer of The CONSTITUTION and U.S. Supreme Court Justice stated, “Religion and morality…are necessary to good government, good order and good laws.” Another signer, Charles Carroll said, “Without morals, a republic cannot subsist any length of time; they therefore who are decrying the Christian religion, whose morality is so sublime and pure…are undermining the solid foundation of morals, the best security for the duration of free governments.”
Religion is consistent and does not change, except in the minds of those enlightened ones spoken of earlier. Generally speaking, and demonstrated over the centuries, the precepts of mankind do change, and often many times not for good. Since 1963, religion has been under very intense attack in the U.S. and western world. Immorality, violent crimes & behavior, low educational achievement, family instability and a loss of character, dishonesty and lack of integrity in government officials are the fruits of revisionism and much has gone the wrong way. Once again, the vast majority of this has come under the guardianship of the Democrat Party while in power. Benjamin Franklin stated, “History will also afford frequent opportunities of showing the necessity of public religion…and the excellency of the Christian religion above all others, ancient or modern.” It has been showing for decades!
One last thing to contemplate is the Supreme Court Building itself, completed in 1935. As one walks through the columns and looks up, one can see the Ten Commandments inscribed into the building. This is further evidence of the role religion has played in the establishment, maturation and longevity of our country. Many moral principles and laws have simply been ignored, bringing us to the degenerative state we are in today.
Part two, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, means just what it says. There is a right to exercise one’s religion as a Christian, Muslim, Hindu or whatever. There are limitations and responsibilities to such as so-called religions that require a live sacrifice.
Part three and four, or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press. These have many restrictions imposed by our Founding Fathers. Contemporary laws on profanity, obscenity, immoral behavior and political correctness have also altered these freedoms.
Here is what some of the Founders thought about these sections of the First Amendment. James Wilson stated that, “What is meant by the liberty of the press is that there should be no antecedent restraint upon it; but that every author is responsible when he attacks the security or welfare of the government, or of the safety, character and property of the individual.” Wilson was one of six signers of both the DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE and CONSTITUTION, an original Supreme Court Justice appointed by President Washington, and a law professor. Another original Supreme Court Justice and a father of American jurisprudence, Joseph Story, stated, “Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press. That this Amendment was intended to secure to every citizen an absolute right to speak, or write, or print whatever he might please without any responsibility, public or private, therefore, is a supposition too wild to be indulged by any rational man. This would allow every citizen a right to destroy at his pleasure the reputation, the peace, the property, and even the personal safety of every other citizen.” And James Kent, New York Supreme Court Chief Justice, First Professor of Law at Columbia, wrote the celebrated COMMENTARIES ON AMERICAN LAW, 1826-1830, and along with Justice Story, is known as the father of American Jurisprudence, wrote, “Every citizen might speak, write and print, on any subject, but is responsible for the abuse of liberty.…Without such a check, the press, in the hands of evil and designing men, would become a most formidable engine (instrument) as mighty for mischief as for good.” In an 1811, N.Y. court case, The People v. Ruggles, the defendant made vile, profane and disparaging remarks about Jesus Christ and The Virgin Mary. He was sentenced to 90 days and a $500 fine. Chief Justice Kent stated, “Nothing could be more offensive to the virtuous part of the community, or more injurious to the tender morals of the young, than to declare such profanity lawful.”
In an 1815, Pennsylvania Supreme Court case, Commonwealth v. Sharpless, the defendant showed, in private, an “obscene painting representing a man in an obscene…and indecent posture with a woman, to the manifest corruption and subversion of youth and other citizens of this commonwealth.” The defense claimed this was a private viewing and was not an indictable offense. Part of the court ruling stated, “Crimes are public offenses not because they are perpetrated publicly, but because their effect is to injure the public. Burglary, though done in secret, is a public offense; and secretly destroying fences is indictable…hence, it follows, that an offense may be punishable if in its nature and by its example it tends to the corruption of morals; although it be not committed in public. …The corruption of the public mind, in general and debauching the manners of youth, in particular, by lewd and obscene pictures exhibited to view, must necessarily be attended with the most injurious consequences…. No man is permitted to corrupt the morals of the people; secret poison cannot be thus disseminated.”
Well, is it this way today? Hardly!!! All this nonsense began in a court case in 1947, Everson v. Board of Education, and has regressed into what we have today. People wear obscene T-shirts, profanity & lewdness bombard us over the airways and on the screen, and on & on & on, all of which undermines the moral fiber of the nation and make us weak as a country. Again, most of this has happened under Democrat Party watch.
"A well-regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed." The Second Amendment of the United States Constitution
"The constitutions of most of our States assert that all power is inherent in the people; that... it is their right and duty to be at all times armed;..." Thomas Jefferson letter to Justice John Cartwright, June 5, 1824. 1824. ME 16:45.
"No Free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms." Thomas Jefferson, Proposed Virginia Constitution, 1 T. Jefferson Papers, 334 (Julian P. Boyd, Ed., 1950).
"The people are not to be disarmed of their weapons. They are left in full possession of them." Zachariah Johnson, 3 Elliot, Debates at 646 (June 25, 1788).
"To disarm the people [is] the best and most effectual way to enslave them …" George Mason, 3 Elliot, Debates at 380 (June 14, 1788).
"Besides the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation,... in the several kingdoms of Europe,... the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms." James Madison, The Federalist Papers # 46.
"The great object is that every man be armed ... Everyone who is able may have a gun." Patrick Henry, 3 Elliot, Debates at 386
"Little more can reasonably be aimed at, with respect to the people at large, than to have them properly armed and equipped;…" Alexander Hamilton, The Federalist Papers # 29.
"Arms in the hands of citizens [may] be used at individual discretion… in private self-defense …" John Adams, A Defense of the Constitutions of the Government of the USA, 471 (1788)
Fathers. Richard Henry Lee, member of the Virginia House of Burgesses (1758-1775), Congress (1774-1779, 1784-1785), where he made a resolution which led to the DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE, served as President of Congress in 1777, member of the State Ratification Convention for the Federal Constitution (1788), U.S. Senator 1789-1792, where he helped frame the BILL OF RIGHTS and many other distinguishing achievements. What a list of credentials! I think Lee might know something about the original intent of the 2nd. Amendment. Well, he did! He stated, “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….” This statement was from ADDITIONAL LETTERS FROM THE FEDERAL FARMER 53, 1788. George Mason, another member of the Virginia House of Burgesses (1759), drafted Virginia’s first constitution which contained the famous DECLARATION OF RIGHTS from which Thomas Jefferson drew for the DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE, member of the Virginia House of Delegates 1776-1788, delegate to the Constitutional Convention but refused to sign the document because it neither abolished slavery nor adequately protected states rights (1787), led opposition to Virginia’s ratification convention, and as a result, was largely responsible for the first ten amendments to the CONSTITUTION, called the “Father of the BILL OF RIGHTS” and refused to be one of Virginia’s first two senators in order to pursue private life. Another great list of credentials! At the Virginia Ratification Convention (1788), Mason stated, “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.” Case closed---or it should be!!! By the CONSTITUTION, the states have power of everything not mentioned, as stated in the 10th. Amendment, “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.” The 2nd. Amendment is delegated to the United States and must come under federal protection; yet, unscrupulous office holders use every excuse to rip and tear at the amendment in order to impress liberal constituents who really don’t know the issue and that issue is in the hearts of people and not in a firearm. I challenge anyone to place a firearm in the corner of a room and watch it. One will find the only things that will move that firearm are forces of nature and mankind, or possibly it should be said the hearts and minds of mankind! Remember, a firearm does not and cannot pull its own trigger!!!
The following statements are from other Founding Fathers and are quite clear as to their intent. At the Massachusetts U.S. Constitutional Ratification Convention (1788), Samuel Adams exclaimed, “The Constitution shall never be construed to prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms.” During Virginia’s ratification convention (1788), Patrick Henry exclaimed, “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 ruined.” In the HISTORICAL REVIEW OF PENNSYLVANIA (1759, and before the move for independence was afoot), Benjamin Franklin prophetically stated, “They that give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” In the Virginia State Constitution, Thomas Jefferson stated that “no free man shall be debarred the use of arms in his own hands.” He had earlier copied into his COMMONPLACE BOOK (the source of his ideas on government) these sentiments from ON CRIMES AND PUNISHMENTS (1764) by criminologist Cesare Beccaria: “False is the idea of utility that sacrifices a thousand real advantages for one imaginary or trifling inconvenience; that would take fire from men because it burns, and water because one may drown in it; that has no remedy for evils, except destruction. The laws that forbid the carrying of arms are laws of such a nature. They disarm those only 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.” And finally, St. George Tucker, who held the highest judgeship in Virginia, was a distinguished Revolutionary War officer wounded at Yorktown and wrote his five-volume essay, VIEW OF THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES, to republicanize (republic) Sir William Blackstone’s COMMENTARIES ON THE LAWS OF ENGLAND, graphically stated, after repeating the 2nd. Amendment, “This may be considered as the true palladium of liberty….The right of self defense is the first law of nature: in most governments it has been the study of rulers to confine this right within the narrowest limits possible. Wherever standing armies are kept up, and the right of the people to keep and bear arms is, under any color or pretext whatsoever, prohibited, liberty, if not already annihilated, is on the brink of destruction.” Kind of scary, isn’t it!
TERRORISM AND SEPTEMBER 11, 2001
"Security against foreign danger is one of the primitive objects of civil society. It is an avowed and essential object for the American Union." --Federalist No. 41
"You have to let the mission determine the coalition; you don't let the coalition determine the mission." --U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld
"Victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival." --Winston Churchill
"When under attack, no country is obligated to collect permission slips from allies before striking back." --Charles Krauthammer
"Amid the smoking ruins of the twin towers, you could see the silhouette of the Statue of Liberty holding that torch of liberty very proudly and very high. It's that flame of liberty that these people want to extinguish. But it is the United States holding that torch with its allies who can wipe out these terrorists. And we must do nothing short of it. We must wipe them out, or they will wipe us out." -–Benjamin Netanyahu, former Prime Minister of Israel
"Denying the existence of evil is so convenient for the cowardly, so effortless for the lazy, and so uninvolving for the indifferent." --David C. Stolinsky
"Anti-Semitism is always the calling card of a new despotism." --Alan Caruba
"Poverty doesn't cause crime; people do. To commit acts as heinous as those of September 11th requires a profound depravity and utter lack of conscience." --Joel Mowbray
"We cannot play the innocents abroad in a world that is not innocent." --Ronald Reagan
"The president has over 80% approval, largely due to the support from America's veterans, from World War II, Korea, and Vietnam, who love this president." --Rush Limbaugh
"We are not going to tolerate these attacks from outlaw states, run by the strangest collection of misfits, looney tunes, and squalid criminals since the advent of the Third Reich." --Ronald Reagan, July 1985, on terrorist attacks that month by Shi'ite Muslims
"Since we know that, in fact, exactly 100 percent of the 19 hijackers on 9-11 were of Middle Eastern descent, why don't we focus on them ducks? Since we know that explicitly zero percent of 75-year-old women in tennis shoes have hijacked an airplane, why don't we let the little ladies move along? To do otherwise is wasteful and ... defies common sense." --Kathleen Parker
"We've already lost enough Americans; we're not going to lose any more by hesitating." --Deputy U.S. Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz
"Iron rusts from disuse, stagnant water loses its purity and in cold weather becomes frozen; even so does inaction sap the vigors of the mind." --Leonardo DaVinci
"When did a lack of money and accomplishment become a mark of virtue?" --Ann Coulter
"Duty, Honor, Country. Those three hallowed words reverently dictate what you ought to be, what you can be, what you will be." --General Douglas MacArthur
"Adversity has the effect of eliciting talents which in times of prosperity would have lain dormant." --Horace
"Great men can't be ruled." --Ayn Rand
"Far and away the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing." --Theodore Roosevelt
"The left doesn't love success; it loves victimhood. You can never do enough...for victims." --Bill Murchison
"Self-government means self-support." --Calvin Coolidge
"I place economy among the first and most important of republican virtues, and public debt as the greatest of the dangers to be feared." --Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to Samuel Kercheval, July 12, 1816
"If you would know the value of money, go and try to borrow some." --Dr. Benjamin Franklin
"I still believe there is not a man in this country that can't make a living for himself and his family. But he can't make a living for them and his government, too. Not the way this government is living. What the government has got to do is live as cheaply as the people do." --Will Rogers
"Tax cuts aren't something you pay for. It's less money for the government to spend." --Ann Coulter
"Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion." --Murray N. Rothbard
"One definition of an economist is somebody who sees something happen in practice and wonders if it will work in theory." --Ronald Reagan
"Economic power is exercised by means of a positive, by offering men a reward, an incentive, a payment, a value; political power is exercised by means of a negative, by the threat of punishment, injury, imprisonment, and destruction. The businessman's tool is values; the bureaucrat's tool is fear." --Ayn Rand
"The income tax has made liars out of more Americans than golf." --Will Rogers
"Most economic fallacies derive...from the tendency to assume that there is a fixed pie, that one party can gain only at the expense of another." --Milton Friedman, Economic Freedom and Representative Democracy, 1973
"The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax." --Albert Einstein
“If we were directed from Washington when to sow and when to reap, we would soon want for bread.” --Thomas Jefferson
"The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and, if they can´t find them, make them." --George Bernard Shaw
"No nation has ever taxed itself into prosperity." --Rush Limbaugh