Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Comment on this quoteShare via Email Print this Page Daily Quotes Archives2011-12-08 Dec 8, 2011If Congress can determine what constitutes the general welfare and can appropriate money for its advancement, where is the limitation to carrying into execution whatever can be effected by money?~ William DraytonI have said I do not dread industrial corporations as instruments of power to destroy this country, because there are a thousand agencies which can regulate, restrain and control them; but there is a corporation we may all dread. That corporation is the federal government. From the aggressions of this corporation, there can be no safety, if it is allowed to go beyond the well defined limits of its powers. I dread nothing so much as the exercise of ungranted and doubtful powers by the government. It is, in my opinion, the danger of dangers to the future of this country. Let us be sure to keep it always within its limits. If this great, ambitious, ever growing corporation becomes oppressive, who shall check it? If it becomes too wayward who shall control it? If it becomes unjust, who shall trust it? As sentinels of the country’s watchtower, Senators, I beseech you to watch and guard with sleepless dread, that corporation which can make all property and rights, all states and people, all liberty and hope its plaything in an hour, and its victims forever.~ Benjamin H. HillArticle I, Section 8, of the Constitution, of course, lays out the delegated, enumerated, and therefore limited powers of Congress. Only through a deliberate misreading of the general welfare and commerce clauses of the Constitution has the federal government been allowed to overreach its authority and extend its tendrils into every corner of civil society.~ Edward H. Crane Dec 7, 2011[W]henever the Legislators endeavor to take away, and destroy the Property of the People, or to reduce them to Slavery under Arbitrary Power, they put themselves into a state of War with the People, who are thereupon absolved from any farther Obedience, and are left to the common Refuge, which God hath provided for all Men, against Force and Violence. Whensoever therefore the Legislative shall transgress this fundamental Rule of Society; and either by Ambition, Fear, Folly or Corruption, endeavor to grasp themselves, or put into the hands of any other an Absolute Power over the Lives, Liberties, and Estates of the People; By this breach of Trust they forfeit the Power, the People had put into their hands, for quite contrary ends, and it devolves to the people, who have a Right to resume their original Liberty.~ John LockeThe right to privacy is one of the most cherished rights an American citizen has; the right to privacy sets America apart from totalitarian states in which the interests of the state prevail over individual rights. A fundamental part of our concept of ordered liberty is the right to protect one’s home and family against dangerous intrusions subject to the criminal law.~ John Louis Coffey Dec 6, 2011... as all history informs us, there has been in every State & Kingdom a constant kind of warfare between the governing & governed: the one striving to obtain more for its support, and the other to pay less. And this has alone occasioned great convulsions, actual civil wars, ending either in dethroning of the Princes, or enslaving of the people. Generally indeed the ruling power carries its point, the revenues of princes constantly increasing, and we see that they are never satisfied, but always in want of more. The more the people are discontented with the oppression of taxes; the greater 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. There is scarce a king in a hundred who would not, if he could, follow the example of Pharaoh, get first all the peoples money, then all their lands, and then make them and their children servants for ever ...~ Benjamin FranklinThere never did, there never will, and there never can exist a parliament, or any description of men, or any generation of men, in any country, possessed of the right or the power of binding and controlling posterity to the `end of time,’ or of commanding for ever how the world shall be governed, or who shall govern it. ... Every age and generation must be as free to act for itself, in all cases, as the ages and generations which preceded it.~ Thomas PaineNo man has ever ruled other men for their own good.~ George D. Herron Dec 5, 2011It is unreasonable ... to oblige a man not to attempt the defense of his own life.~ Charles de MontesquieuThere is no crueler tyranny than that which is perpetrated under the shield of law and in the name of justice.~ Charles de MontesquieuWhere are we then? The religionists are the enemies of liberty, and the friends of liberty attack religion; the high-minded and the noble advocate subjection, and the meanest and most servile minds preach independence; honest and enlightened citizens are opposed to all progress, whilst men without patriotism and without principles are the apostles of civilization and intelligence. Has such been the fate of the centuries which have preceded our own? and has man always inhabited a world like the present, where nothing is linked together, where virtue is without genius, and genius without honor; where the love of order is confounded with a taste for oppression, and the holy rites of freedom with a taste for law; where the light thrown by conscience on human actions is dim, and where nothing seems to be any longer forbidden or allowed, honorable or shameful, false or true?~ Alexis de TocquevilleEach must for himself alone decide what is right and what is wrong, and which course is patriotic and which isn’t. You cannot shirk this and be a man. To decide against your convictions is to be an unqualified and inexcusable traitor, both to yourself and to your country, let man label you as they may. If you alone of all the nation shall decide one way, and that way be the right way according to your convictions of the right, you have done your duty by yourself and by your country- hold up your head! You have nothing to be ashamed of.~ Mark Twain Dec 2, 2011War is the tool through which the remaining Constitutional restraints on government and rights of the people will be destroyed. War will be the gateway through which total statism in any of its forms (fascism, socialism, communism) will be imposed upon the United States. They will rally the people’s patriotism, and give the laws Orwellian sounding names like the “Patriot Acts”, and “Freedom Laws” and cries of “America First,” but these acts will be anti-patriotic, anti-freedom, and anti-American. At the core of all these activities will be one purpose -- to impose ever increasing control over the citizens, marching toward total statism. They will suspend due process and Constitutional restrictions proclaiming “extraordinary times” require extraordinary measures. At first they will only be used against a few select atrocious and most heinous individuals with unfamiliar appearance, customs and beliefs. Initially, it will simply be a matter of degree, but the precedent is now set. Extraordinary measures solely for extraordinary individuals, but slowly and then more rapidly the extraordinary will become the ordinary until such measures can apply to anyone. They will deride anyone who opposes these Orwellian acts as dangerously naïve, as pacifists, as isolationists, as unpatriotic, as sympathizing with “the enemy” whoever “the enemy” may be at the time, and as un-American. They will make war with vague, ever changing goals and objectives. They will make war on elusive, obscure enemies by proclaiming wars against “subversives” or “guerillas” or “militias” or “revolutionaries” or “aggressors” or “terrorists” or whatever ambiguous name they can imagine so that the “enemies” will always be elusive, never eliminated or fully defeated. There will always be more “enemies.” War will be perpetual, lasting years or even decades. War will be the final mechanism that destroys America from within; and the people will proudly cheer and defend and support the dismantling of their rights and destruction of their Constitutional Republic, all out of supposed “necessity” to support “the war.”~ Unknown Previous week's quotes Next week's quotes Share on Facebook Tweet Email Print