Bill Whittle has a great article on our Founding Fathers. I’m highlighting a few quotes that really struck me as timely.
George Washington:
“Government is not reason; it is not eloquence. It is force. And force, like fire, is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.”
To those who say, well, the Government has to force you to buy something you don’t want. It’s for the greater good! Here’s William Pitt, 1783:
“Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is argument of tyrants. It is the creed of slaves.”
Thomas Jefferson, the most intellectually brilliant man to ever hold the office of President – Barack Obama excepted, of course – had this to say in his First Inaugural, accepting the reins of that power:
Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Taylor, May 28, 1816:
“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, 1824:
“I think we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious.”
Bill has lots more: REASONABLE MEN