Re: "Good idea. ...You get the idea. The dishonest ones who are against America."
I would include among the ranks of 'those who are against America', ANY and ALL who work to *remove* the Constitutional freedoms of our people that were left to us by our forefathers.
Those who work to INCREASE the POWER and INTRUSIVENESS of government at the expense of individual liberty are commonly found on *both* sides of the 'aisle'.
There are, unfortunately, many, many methods used by pols to eliminate freedom and grasp power to themselves and to the bureaucracy --- one, is the common appeal to Authoritarianism (an appeal that has been around since long *before* the founding of our nation). 'Cling to me, your fearless leader! I will protect you from evil (while usurping your liberties and amassing power to myself)' is an oft seen ploy.
It is always the natural tendency of politicians and bureaucrats to seek to exploit temporary crisis, to expand permanently their powers over the public.
Three quotations from President Madison help to illustrate:
"Perhaps it is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to provisions against danger, real or pretended, from abroad...." --- James Madison to Thomas Jefferson, May 13, 1798.
"Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes... known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few... No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare." --- James Madison, 4th U.S. President, Political Observations, 1795
"Of all the enemies of public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, and the executive is the branch most favored by it of all the branches..." --- James Madison
Another common ploy is "The future will take care of itself... allow me to run up massive debt in yours, and your children's names, so I can enrich some sector of society (some of my supporters :-) or 'solve' some temporary 'problem' that is properly none of the government's business anyway." That path leads to destruction and loss of freedom also....
"The true danger is when liberty is nibbled away, for expedience, and by parts." --- Edmund Burke
"The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion." --- Edmund Burke (1784)
"The greatest threats to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding." --- Justice Louis Brandeis, 1928
Re: "apalled"... "happens to be the President of the United States of America."...
I doubt it.... AMERICA, and the freedom of it's peoples, is what matters. Not the temporary occupants of some political office. Politicians are supposed to serve the people... not the other way around. Obsequience to some politician holding temporary office is NOT the same as fealty to America.
Exactly like my selected quotations said:
"When the people fear the government, you have TYRANNY, when the government fears the people, you have FREEDOM" --- Thomas Jefferson
"Resistance to tyranny is obedience to God" --– Susan B. Anthony
"The liberties of our country, the freedom of our civil constitution, are worth defending at all hazards; and it is our duty to defend them against all attacks. We have received them as a fair inheritance from our worthy ancestors; they purchased them for us with toil and danger and expense of treasure and blood. It will bring an everlasting mark of infamy on the present generation, enlightened as it is, if we should suffer them to be wrested from us without a struggle, or be cheated out of them by the artifices of false and designing men." --- Samuel Adams
"Freedom is a fragile thing and is never more than one generation away from extinction." --- Ronald Reagan
To those I would add:
“I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it.” --- Thomas Jefferson
"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace in a continual state of alarm (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing them with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." --- H. L. Mencken
"There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible to live without breaking laws." --- Ayn Rand
"They that give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." --- Benjamin Franklin
"Timid men... prefer the calm of despotism to the boisterous seas of liberty." --- Thomas Jefferson |
