| "You have rights antecedent to all earthly governments; rights that cannot be repealed or restrained by human laws; rights derived from the Great Legislator of the Universe." -- John Adams |
"Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like spirits at the dawn of day." -- Thomas Jefferson |
| "If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy" -- James Madison |
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." -- Ben Franklin |
| "The means of defense against foreign danger historically have become the instruments of tyranny at home." -- James Madison |
"...it does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people's minds..." -- Samual Adams |
| "Since the general civilization of mankind, I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpation" -- James Madison |
"The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny." -- James Madison |
"All men having power ought to be mistrusted." -- James Madison"Remember all Men would be tyrants if they could," wrote Abigail Adams to her husband John. |
"Do not separate text from historical background. If you do, you will have perverted and subverted the Constitution, which can only end in a distorted, bastardized form of illegitimate government. -- James Madison |
"It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood. " -- James Madison |
"What is government itself but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. " -- James Madison, Federalist no. 51 |
"The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground. " -- Thomas Jefferson, letter to E. Carrington, May 27, 1788 |
"The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbour to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg. " -- Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, Query 17, 1782 |
| "Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness..." "Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil in its worst state an intolerable one; for when we suffer, or are exposed to the same miseries by a government, which we might expect in a country without government, our calamities are heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer!" -- Thomas Pain, Common Sense. | "Was the government to prescribe to us our medicine and diet, our bodies would be in such keeping as our souls are now [i.e., under the established church]. Thus in France the emetic [an agent that causes vomiting] was once forbidden as a medicine, and the potatoe as an article of food." — Thomas Jefferson |
| Plutarch warned, "The real destroyer of the liberties of the people is he who spreads among them bounties, donations and benefits." | "The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it to be always kept alive." - Thomas Jefferson |
"You may call us rebels and say we deserve no better treatment, but remember, my lord, supposing us rebels we still have feelings equally as keen and sensible as loyalists, and will, if forced to it, most assuredly retaliate upon those whom we look as the unjust invaders of our rights, liberties, and properties." (Letter from Washington to Lord Howe, January 18, 1777) |
"Ever since I arrived at the state of manhood, and acquainted myself with the general history of mankind, I have felt a sincere passion for liberty. The history of nations, doomed to perpetual slavery in consequence of yielding up to tyrants their natural-born liberties..." -- Ethan Allan |
| "If ever this vast country is brought under a single government, it will be one of extensive corruption...and will become as venal and oppressive as the government from which we separated." -- Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) | "Taxes are not raised to carry on wars; wars are raised to carry on taxes." - Thomas Paine |
The framers of the Constitution were absolute realists about the dark nature of man, when the Spirit of Christ was not operative within him.
Anticipating the worst possibilities in civil government, they built in all manner of checks and balances. As one of them, James Madison (born on [March 16th] in 1751),
explained in the Federalist Papers, the Constitution was based on the assumption that:
"the primary political motive of man was self-interest, and that men, whether acting individually or collectively, were selfish and only imperfectly rational."Marshall & Manuel, TLTG, 344. [The Glory of America] |
"I would say to the House, as I said to those who have joined this government: 'I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.' We have before us an ordeal of the most grevious kind. We have before us many, many long months of struggle and of suffering. You ask, what is our policy? I can say: It is to wage war, by sea, land and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us; to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark, lamentable catalogue of human crime. That is our policy. You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word: It is victory, 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 |
" ... But the state of mankind is not so miserable that they are not capable of using this remedy till it be too late to look for any. To tell people they may provide for themselves, by erecting a new legislative, when by oppression, artifice, or being delivered over to a foreign power, their old one is gone, is only to tell them, they may expect relief when it is too late, and the evil is past cure. This is in effect no more than to bid them first be slaves, and then to take care of their liberty; and when their chains are on, tell them, they may act like freemen. This, if barely so, is rather mockery than relief; and men can never be secure from tyranny, if there be no means to escape it till they are perfectly under it: and therefore it is, that they have not only a right to get out of it, but to prevent it." -- John Locke (1632-1704) taken from: "Of the Dissolution of Government" Chapter XIX, ¶220 |
"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 |
"wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. ... the sum of good government." -- Thomas Jefferson from his first inaugural address. |
" " -- |
| "We shall have World Government, whether or not we like it. The only question is whether World Government will be achieved by conquest or consent." -- James Paul Warburg | "The one incontrovertible lesson I learned over those hard, disillusionary years: Unless you work for it, sell to it, or receive financial assistance from it, the government is not your friend." -- Judge Andrew P. Napolitano, Constitutional Chaos, pg. 129. |
| "The few who understand the system, will either be so interested in its profits, or so dependent on its favors that there will be no opposition from that class, while on the other hand, the great body of people, mentally incapable of comprehending the tremendous advantages...will bear its burden without complaint, and perhaps without complaint, and perhaps without suspecting that the system is inimical ["Injurous or harmful in effect; adverse"] to their best interests." -- Rothschild Brothers of London communique' to associates in New York June 25, 1863. | "We are the Borg. Lower your shields and surrender your ships. We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own. Your culture will adapt to service us. Resistance is futile." -- The Borg, from Star Trek: First Contact. "Assimilate this!" -- A defiant Worf, from Star Trek: First Contact. |
Your laws ignore our deepest needs, |
"Beginning with the traumatic experience of the Great Depression, we the people have turned more and more to government for answers that government has neither the right nor the capacity to provide. Unfortunately, government as an institution always tends to increase in size and power, and so government attempted to provide the answers. The result is a fourth branch of government added to the traditional three of executive, legislative and judicial: a vast federal bureaucracy that's now being imitated in too many states and too many cities, a bureaucracy of enormous power which determines policy to a greater extent than any of us realize, very possibly to a greater extent than our own elected representatives. And it can't be removed from office by our votes...." -- Ronald Reagan, 1978. |
| "Bush administration Attorney General John Ashcroft doesn't seem to have much use for the First Amendment. As he testified to the Senate, ' To those who pit Americans against immigrants, citizens against non-citizens, to those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty, my message is this: Your tactics only aid terrorists for they erode our national unity and diminish our resolve.' And by April 2004, Attorney General Ashcroft's "phantoms" had led us to a point where free speech almost does not exist." -- Judge A.P. Napalitano, Constitutional Chaos, pg. 92. | "As you gain more experience, you find police not only lying under oath, but using forced confessions and prosecutors withholding evidence helpful to a defendant, all in an effort to bring about convictions." -- Judge A.P. Napalitano, Constitutional Chaos, pg. 128. |
| "... government may curtail the content of expressive liberties only when the interests that the government seeks to serve must be served at the peril of the demise of government itself if they go unserved and only where the government's interest in self-preservation can be served by no other means." -- Judge A.P. Napalitano, Constitutional Chaos, pg. 93. | "Even many of us who believe in free enterprise have fallen into the habit of saying when something goes wrong: 'There ought to be a law.' Sometimes I think there out to be a law against saying there ought to be a law..." -- Ronald Reagan, as quoted in Imprimis Dec.2002 issue. |
| "In The Federalist, No. 83, Hamilton added that since congressional powers are enumerated, "This specification of particulars evidently excludes all pretension to a general legislative authority, because an affirmative grant of special powers would be absurd as well as useless if a general authority was intended." " -- "Congress and the Constitution" by Gary Benoit | "Condemning this broad interpretation [of the preamble] in The Federalist, No. 41, Madison asked: "For what purpose could the enumeration of particular powers be inserted, if these and all others were meant to be included in the preceding general power? Nothing is more natural nor common that first to use a general phrase, and then to explain and qulaify it by a recital of particulars. But the idea of an enumeration of particulars which neither explain nor qualify the general meaning, and can have no other effect than to confound and mislead, is an absurdity...." " -- "Congress and the Constitution" by Gary Benoit |
| "Addressing this subject during congressional debate on February 7, 1792, Madison warned that 'if Congress can employ money indefinitely to the general welfare, and are the sole and supreme judges of the general welfare, they may take the care of religion into their own hands; they may appoint teachers in every state, county, and parish, and pay them out of their public treasury; they may take into their hands the education of children establishing in like manner schools throughout the Union; they may assume the provision for the poor; they may undertake the regulation of all roads other than post-roads; in short, every thing, from the highest object of state legislation down to the most minute object of police, would be thrown under the power of Congress....'" -- "Congress and the Constitution" by Gary Benoit | "On May 3, 1854, President Franklin Pierce vetoed a bill that (in his words) concerned 'the constitutionality and propriety of the Federal Government assuming to enter into a novel and vast field of legislation, namely, that of providing for the care and support of all those ... who by any form of calamity become fit objects of public philanthropy.' Continued Pierce: 'I cannot find any authority in the Constitution for making the Federal Government the great almoner of public charity throughout the United States. To do so would, in my judgment, be contrary to the letter and spirit of the Constitution and subversive of the whole theory upon which the Union of these States is founded.'" -- "Congress and the Constitution" by Gary Benoit |
| "Did you really think that we want those laws to be observed?" said Dr. Ferris. We want them broken. You'd better get it straight that it's not a bunch of boy scouts you're up against - then you'll know that this is not the age for beautiful gestures. We're after power and we mean it. You fellows were pikers, but we know the real trick, and you'd better get wise to it. 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 for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What's there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced nor objectively interpreted- and you create a nation of law-breakers - and then you cash in on guilt. Now, that's the system, Mr. Rearden, that's the game, and once you understand it, you'll be much easier to deal with." -- “Atlas Shrugged” by Ayn Rand, 1957. | |
"There is no crueler tyranny than that which is exercised under cover of law, and with the colors of justice ..." - U.S. v. Jannotti , 673 F.2d 578, 614 (3d Cir. 1982) |
"The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment of men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding." -- U.S. Supreme Court Justice, Louis Brandeis. |
| Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. -- C.S. Lewis | "So long as the people do not care to exercise their freedom, those who wish to tyrannize will do so; for tyrants are active and ardent, and will devote themselves in the name of any number of gods, religious and otherwise, to put shackles upon sleeping men." --Voltarine de Cleyre |
| "There is no worse tyranny than to force a man to pay for what he does not want merely because you think it would be good for him."-- Robert Heinlein | "A tyrant...is always stirring up some war or other, in order that the people may require a leader." --Plato |
| "[I]t is ... immaterial that the intrusion was in aid of law enforcement. 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 ..." -- Id. at 479. Brandeis' quote in Olmstead v. United States, 277 U.S. 438, 485, 48 S.Ct. 564, 575, 72 L.Ed 944 (1928), it was dissent against intrusive acts of government against people, to wit: | As former President Harry S. Truman stated on August 8, 1950, "Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasing repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens, and creates a country where everyone lives in fear." |
"My question to you is this... How bad do things have to get before you do something? Do they have to take away all your property?
Do they have to license every activity you want to engage in? Do they have to be throwing you on cattle cars? ...
How long is it going to be before you finally resist and say "No, I will not comply"? ... That is what liberty is all about." |
"What options are available to get criminal charges filed, prosecuted AND to trial when I am in a Catch 22 situation
- if I file against a Bad Cop, the prosecutor grabs the complaint(s) and squashes it(them). If I file against the prosecutor,
either the state attorney general or the courts squash them. If I file against the Judge(s) (which I plan on doing),
then another judge or the prosecutor squashes them. I want to break up the crime ring but can't when the crime ring IS the legal system I am forced to work with."
-- Dale M. Baranoski |
"Experience teaches us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficent." -- Brandeis (Olmstead v. U.S. 1928) |
"I think we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious. "-- Jefferson (letter to William Ludlow) |
"The individual may stand upon his constitutional rights as a Citizen. He is entitled to carry on his private business in his own way. His power to contract is unlimited. He owes no duty to the State or to his neighbors to divulge his business, or to open his door to an investigation.. He owes no such duty to the State, since he receives nothing therefrom, beyond the protection of his life and property. His rights are such as existed by the law of the land long antecedent to the organization of the State.. He owes nothing to the public so long as he does not trespass upon their rights." (Hale v. Henkle, 201 U.S. 43) |
"..Included in the right of personal liberty and the right of private property - partaking of the nature of each - is the right to make contracts for the acquisition of property. Chief among such contracts is that of personal employment, by which labor and other services are exchanged for money or other forms of property. If this right be struck down or arbitrarily be interfered with, there is a substantial impairment of liberty in the long-established constitutional sense. The right is as essential to the laborer as to the capitalist, to the poor as to the rich; for the vast majority of persons have no other honest way to begin to acquire property, save by working for money." (Coppage v. State of Kansas, 236 U.S. 1) |
"The individual, unlike the corporation, cannot be taxed for the mere privilege of existing. The corporation is an artificial entity which owes its existence and charter powers to the state; but the individuals' rights to live and own property are natural rights for the enjoyment of which an excise cannot be imposed." (Redfield v. Fisher, 292 P. 813, at 819) |
"That these are our grievances which we have thus laid before his majesty, with that freedom of language and sentiment which becomes a free people claiming their rights as derived from the laws of nature, and not as the gift of their chief magistrate." -- Thomas Jefferson, 1774 |
| "I own myself the friend to a very free system of commerce, and hold it as a truth, that commercial shackles are generally unjust, oppressive and impolitic — it is also a truth, that if industry and labour are left to take their own course, they will generally be directed to those objects which are the most productive, and this in a more certain and direct manner than the wisdom of the most enlightened legislature could point out. " -- James Madison, speech to the Congress, April 9, 1789 |
“It is settled by a long line of recent decisions of this Court that an ordinance which, like this one, makes the peaceful enjoyment of freedoms which the Constitution guarantees contingent upon the uncontrolled will of an official - as by requiring a permit or license which may be granted or withheld in the discretion of such official - is an unconstitutional censorship or prior restraint upon the enjoyment of those freedoms.” Staub v. Baxley, 355 U.S. 313, 322 . And our decisions have made clear that a person faced with such an unconstitutional licensing law may ignore it and engage with impunity in the exercise of the right of free expression for which the law purports to require a license.” -- Shuttlesworth v Birmingham (Alabama), 394 U.S. 147 (1969). |
“A State [or the United States] may not impose a charge for the enjoyment of a right granted by the federal Constitution.” -- Murdock v Pennsylvania, 319 U.S. 105 at 113 (1943). |
" The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the laws of God, and there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence. Property must be sacred or liberty cannot exist." -- John Adams |
"We are a nation that has a government -- not the other way around. And this makes us special among the nations of the Earth. Our government has no power except that granted it by the people. It is time to check and reverse the growth of government, which shows signs of having grown beyond the consent of the governed." -- Ronald Reagan (Imprimis, March 2007) |
"If we look to the answer as to why for so many years we achieved so much, prospered as no other people on Earth, it was because here in this land we unleashed the energy and individual genius of man to a greater extent than has ever been done before. Freedom and the dignity of the individual have been more available and assured here than in any other place on Earth." -- Ronald Reagan |
"... it doesn't require expropriation or confiscation of private property or business to impose socialism on a people. What does it mean whether you hold the deed or the title to your business or property if the government holds the power of life and death over that business or property? Such machinery already exists. The government can find some charge to bring against any concern it chooses to prosecute. Every businessman has his own tale of harassment. Somewhere a perversion has taken place. Our natural, inalienable rights are now considered to be a dispensation of government, and freedom has never been so fragile, so close to slipping from our grasp as it is at this moment." -- Ronald Reagan |
"... "the full power of centralized government" was the very thing the Founding Fathers sought to minimize. They knew that governments don't control things. A government can't control the economy without controlling people. And they knew when a government sets out to do that, it must use force and coercion to achieve its purpose. They also knew, those Founding Fathers, that outside of its legitimate functions, government does nothing as well or as economically as the private sector of the economy." -- Ronald Reagan |
"... we've been tempted to believe that society has become too complex to be managed by self-rule, that government by an elite group is superior to government for, by, and of the people. Well, if no one among us is capable of governing himself, then who among us has the capacity to govern someone else?" -- Ronald Reagan |
"... the most exciting revolution ever known to humankind began with three simple words: 'We the People,' the revolutionary notion that the people grant government its rights, and not the other way around." -- Ronald Reagan |
| In one of the most eloquent opinions ever delivered by the Court, Butchers' Union Co. v. Crescent City Co., 111 U.S. 746 (1883): "Among these unalienable rights, as proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence is the right of men to pursue their happiness, by which is meant, the right any lawful business or vocation, in any manner not inconsistent with the equal rights of others, which may increase their prosperity or develop their faculties, so as to give them their highest enjoyment...It has been well said that, THE PROPERTY WHICH EVERY MAN HAS IS HIS OWN LABOR, AS IT IS THE ORIGINAL FOUNDATION OF ALL OTHER PROPERTY SO IT IS THE MOST SACRED AND INVIOLABLE..." |
| "The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." -- Federic Bastiat (1801-1850), The Law, pg. 1. | "Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place." -- Bastiat, The Law, pg. 2. |
| "The law perverted! And the police powers of the state perverted along with it! The law, I say, not only turned from its proper purpose but made to follow an entirely contrary purpose! The law become the weapon of every kind of greed! Instead of checking crime, the law itself guilty of evils it is supposed to punish! If this is true, it is a serious fact, and moral duty requires me to call attention of my fellow-citizens to it. -- Federic Bastiat, The Law, pg. 2. | "Force has been given to us to defend our own individual rights. Who will dare to say that force has been given to us to destroy the equal rights of our brothers?
Since no individual acting separately can lawfully use force to destroy the rights of others, does it not logically follow that the same principle also applies to the common
force that is nothing more than the organized combination of the individual forces? If this is true, then nothing can be more evident than this: The law is the organization of the natural right of lawful defense. It is the substitution of a common force for individual forces. And this common force is to do only what the individual forces have a natural and lawful right to do: to protect persons, liberties, and properties; to maintain the right of each, and to cause justice to reign over us all." ... "Under such an administration, everyone would understand that he possessed all the privileges as well as all the responsibilites of his existence." -- Bastiat, The Law, pg. 3. |
| "The law has been perverted by the influence of two entirely different causes: stupid greed and false philantropy." -- Bastiat, The Law, pg. 5. | "It is impossible to introduce into society a greater change and a greater evil than this: the conversion of the law into an instrument of plunder." -- Bastiat, The Law, pg. 8. |
| "Self-preservation and self-development are common aspirations among all people. And if everyone enjoyed the unrestricted use of his faculties and the free disposition of the fruits of his labor, social progress would be ceaseless, uninterrupted and unfailing." -- Bastiat, The Law, pg. 5. | "Men naturally rebel against the injustices of which they are victims. Thus, when plunder is organized by law for the profit of those who make the law,
all plundered classes try somehow to enter -- by peaceful or revolutionary means -- into the making of laws. According to their degree of enlightenment,
these plundered classes may propose one of two entirely different purposes when they attempt to attain political power: Either they may wish to stop lawful plunder,
or they may wish to share in it. Woe to the nation when this latter purpose prevails among the mass victims of lawful plunder when they, in turn, seize the power to make laws!" -- Bastiat, The Law, pg. 7 |
| "Slavery and Tariffs Are Plunder ... These are the only two issues where, contrary to the general spirit of the republic of the United States, law has assumed the character of a plunderer. Slavery is a violation, by law, of liberty. The protective tariff is a violation, by law, of property." (pg. 15) |
"There is in all of us a strong disposition to believe that anything lawful is also legitimate. This belief is so widespread that many persons have erroneously held that things are ‘just’ because law makes them so. -- Bastiat, The Law, pg.9. |
But how is this legal plunder to be identified? Quite simply. See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them, and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime. Then abolish this law without delay, for it is not only an evil itself, but also it is a fertile source for further evils because it invites reprisals [the forcible seizure of an enemy's goods or subjects in retaliation for injuries inflicted]. If such a law -- which may be isolated case -- is not abolished immediately, it will spread, multiply, and develop into a system. The person who profits from this law will complain bitterly, defending his acquired rights. He will claim that the state is obligated to protect and encourage his particular industry; that this procedure enriches the state because the protected industry is thus able to spend more and to pay higher wages to the poor workingmen. Do not listen to this sophistry by vested interests. The acceptance of these arguments will build legal plunder into a whole system." (pg. 17) |
|
| "The Proper Function of the Law ...Can the law -- which necessarily requires the use of force -- rationally be used for anything except protecting the rights of everyone? ...Law is organized justice." |
"Law Is Force Since the law organizes justice, the socialists ask why the law should not also organize labor, education, and religion. Why should not the law be used for these purposes? Because it could not organize labor, education, and religion without destroying justice. We must remember that law is force, and that, consequently, the proper functions of the law cannot lawfully extend beyond the proper functions of force." (pg. 24) |
| "But when the law, by means of its necessary agent, force, imposes upon men a regulation of labor, a method or a subject of education, a religious faith or creed--then the law is no longer negative; it acts positively upon people. It substitutes the will of the legislator for their own wills; the initiative of the legislator for their own initiatives. When this happens, the people no longer need to discuss, to compare, to plan ahead; the law does all this for them. Intelligence becomes a useless prop for the people; they cease to be men; they lose their personality, their liberty, their property." (pg. 25) | "In fact, these writers on public affairs begin by supposing that people have within themselves no means of discernment; no motivation to action.
The writers assume that people are inert matter, passive particles, motionless atoms, at best a kind of vegetation indifferent to its own matter of existence.
They assume that people are susceptible to being shaped--by the will and hand of another person-- into an infinite variety of forms,
more or less symmetrical, artistic, and perfected. ... These socialist writers look upon people in the same manner that the gardener views his trees. ... The Socialists Want to Play God" (page 31) |
| "The Doctrine of the Democrats The strange phenomenon of our times--one which will probably astound our descendents--is the doctrine based on this triple hypothesis: the total inertness of mankind, the omnipotence of the law, and the infallibility of the legislator. These three ideas form the sacred symbol of those who proclaim themselves totally democratic." (pg. 59) |
"In creating a monopoly of education, the government must answer to the hopes of the fathers of families who have been deprived of their liberty;
and if these hopes are shattered, whose fault is it? In regulating industry, the government has contracted to make it prosper; otherwise it is absurd to deprive industry of its liberty. And if industry now suffers, whose fault is it? ... Thus there is not a grievance in the nation for which the goverment does not voluntarily make itself responsible. Is it surprising, then, that every failure increases the threat of another revolution ...?" (pg. 66-67) |
| "When a politician views society from the seclusion of his office, he is struck by the spectacle of the inequality that he sees.
He deplores the depravations which are the lot of so many of our brothers, deprivations which appear to be even sadder when contrasted with luxury and wealth. ... ... His mind turns to organizations, combinations, and arrangements--legal or apparently legal. He attempts to remedy the evil by increasing and perpetuating the very thing that caused the evil in the first place: legal plunder." (pg. 27) |
The Law and CharityYou say: ‘There are persons who have no money,’ and you turn to the law. But the law is not a breast that fills itself with milk." (pg. 27) |
Let Us Now Try Liberty... And now that the legislatures and do-gooders have so futilely inflicted so many systems upon society, may they finally end where they should have begun: May they reject all systems, and try liberty; for liberty is an acknowledgment of faith in God and His works." (pg. 76) |
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"Dissent is the highest form of patriotism." -- Thomas Jefferson |
"It is the duty of the patriot to protect his country from the government." -- Thomas Paine |
"A President is impeachable if he attempts to subvert the Constitution." -- James Madison |
"If ever time should come, when vain and aspiring men shall possess the highest seats in government, our country will stand in need of its experienced patriots to prevent its ruin." -- Samual Adams |
James Madison said, "We base all our experiments on the capacity of mankind for self government." |
"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." -- Edmund Burke |
"A strict observance of the written laws is doubtless one of the high duties of a good citizen, but it is not the highest. The laws of necessity, of self- preservation, of saving our country when in danger, are of higher obligation. To lose our country by a scrupulous adherence to written law would be to lose the law itself, with life, liberty, property, and all those who are enjoying them with us; thus absurdly sacrificing the end to the means." --Thomas Jefferson to John Colvin, 1810 |
"This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or exercise their revolutionary right to overthrow it." -- Abraham Lincoln |
| "The cause of freedom is the cause of God." -- Samuel Bowles |
On Limited GovernmentThe one unavoidable objection to the Constitution propounded by Henry and Mason was the absence of a Bill of Rights. Most of the problems they outlined would be alleviated if the Constitution only had such a guarantee. Madison countered that such a declaration was of no consequence, as federal government would have limited power. Madison stated that "the powers granted by the proposed Constitution are the gift of the people, and may resumed by them when perverted to their oppression, and every power not granted thereby to their oppression, and every power not granted thereby remains with the people." -- from Virginia's Great Dissenters, a publication of the NRA Institute for Legislative Action. |
Our forefathers understood that our freedoms come from God"Let the pulpit resound with the doctrines and sentiments of religious liberty. Let us hear the danger of thraldom [kingdom of slavery] to our consciences from ignorance, extreme poverty, and dependence; in short, from civil and political slavery. Let us see delineated [laid out] before us the true map of man. Let us hear the dignity of his nature, and the noble rank he holds among the works of God -- that consenting to slavery is a sacrilegious breach of trust, as offensive in the sight of God as it is derogatory from our own honor or interest or happiness -- and that God Almighty has promulgated [decreed] from heaven liberty, peace, and goodwill to man!" -- John Adams |
Our forefathers were bigots?"I. Whereas Almighty God hath created the mind free; that all attempts to influence it by temporal punishments or burthens, or by civil incapacitations, tend only to beget habits of hypocrisy and meanness, and are a departure from the plan of the Holy author of our religion, who being Lord both of body and mind, yet chose not to propagate it by coercions on either, as was in his almighty power to do..." -- Thomas Jefferson, An Act for Establishing Religious Freedom |
On public schools"...that to compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves, is sinful and tryannical; that even the forcing him to support this or that teacher of his own religious persuasion, is depriving him of the comfortable liberty of giving his contributions to the particular pastor, whose morals he would make his pattern..." -- Thomas Jefferson, An Act for Establishing Religious Freedom |
The antidote to the separation of church and state myth"...that our civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions, any more than our opinions in physics or geometry; that therefore the proscribing of any citizen as unworthy the public confidence by laying upon him an incapacity of being called to offices of trust and emolument, unless he profess or renounce this or that religious opinion, is depriving him injurously of those privileges and advantages to which in common with his fellow citizens he has a natural right;..." -- Thomas Jefferson, An Act for Establishing Religious Freedom The complete "An Act for Establishing Religious Freedom" |
| "I have lived, Sir, a long time, and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth: that God governs in the affairs of man. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without his notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without His aid? We have been assured, Sir, in the Sacred Writings that ‘except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it (Psalm 127:1).’ I firmly believe this, and I also believe that without His concurring aid we shall succeed in this political building no better than the builders of Babel. We shall be divided by our little partial local interests; our projects will be confounded and ourselves shall become a reproach and bye word down to future ages."" - Ben Franklin |
| "Government is a theological issue. It is impossible to have a separation between government and religion. You can and you must have a separation between government and church, but you cannot have a separation between government and religion. Since government deals with justice, since government deals with right and wrong, since government deals with good and evil, since government deals with moral values, it has to be religious. It may be the Christian religion or it may be a humanistic religion, but all government is religious. Every law that is passed is a religious law." -- Pastor John Weaver of Georgia |
| "It is a principle of Scripture that when any authority transgresses and leaves its lawful sphere of authority, it loses its jurisdiction and authority. Whenever governments leave their lawful spheres of jurisdiction, they have absolutely no authority to bind the conscience of any man. ... Likewise, when the state comes into the church and says it must be licensed, it must pay taxes, it must be incorporated, and it must not preach against public policy, the state has left its proper sphere of authority. It has absolutely no jurisdiction; it has no authority!"" -- Pastor John Weaver |
"Those people who will not be governed by God will be ruled by tyrants." -- William Penn |
| The "fact that the Founding Fathers believed devotedly that there was a God and that the unalienable rights of man were rooted in Him is clearly evidenced in their writings, from the Mayflower Compact to the Constitution itself." -- School Dist. of Abington Township v. Schempp, 374 U.S. 203,213 (1963). |
| "Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, Religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of Patriotism, who should labour to subvert these great Pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of Men and citizens.... And let us with caution indulge the supposition, that morality can be maintained without religion ... [R]eason and experience both forbid us to expect that National morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle." -- George Washington, Farewell Address, 1796. |
| "No people can be bound to acknowledge and adore the invisible hand which conducts the affairs of men more than the people of the United States. Every step by which they have advanced to the character of an independent nation seems to have been distinguished by some token of providential agency.... We ought to be no less persuaded that the propitious smiles of Heaven can never be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and right, which Heaven itself has ordained." -- George Washington, first Inaugural Address |
| "... we have not government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. ... Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." -- John Adams |
"15. That no free government, or the blessing of liberty, can be preserved to any people but by a firm adherence to justice, moderation, temperance, frugality, and virtue, and by frequent recurrence to fundamental principles. 16. That religion, or the duty which we owe to our CREATOR, and the manner of discharging it, can be directed only be [sic] reason and conviction, not by force or violence; and therefore all men are equally entitled to the free exercise of religion, according to the dictates of conscience; and that is the mutual duty of all to practice Christian forbearance, love, and charity, towards each other." -- from The Virginia Declaration of Rights, June 12, 1776. |
| "This is a religious nation." -- Church of the Holy Trinity v. United States, 1892. |
| "He who shall introduce into public affairs the principles of primitive Christianity will change the face of the world." -- Ben Franklin while ambassador to France. |
| "There is an unbroken history of official acknowledgement by all three branches of government of the role of religion in American life from at least 1789." -- Lynch v. Donnelly, 1984. |
Charles Hodge, professor and theologian of Princeton Seminary, died on [June 19th] in 1878. Two years before, he had declared: "No man is molested for his religion or for his want of religion. No man is required to profess any form of faith, or to join any religious association. More than this cannot reasonably be demanded. More, however, is demanded. The infidel demands that the government should be conducted on the principle that Christianity is false. The atheist demands that it should be conducted on the assumption that there is no God.... The sufficient answer to all this is that it cannot possibly be done."Hall, Revolution, 156. [The Glory of America Calendar] |
Concerned about the private behavior of a few of the Colonies' Patriots, Abigail Adams wrote to her friend Mercy Warren:
"A patriot without religion, in my estimation, is as great a paradox as an honest man without the fear of God. Is it possible that he whom no moral obligations bind, can have any real Good Will towards Men? Can he be a patriot who, by an openly vicious conduct, is undermining the very bonds of Society?... The Scriptures tell us that righteousness exalteth a Nation."Warren-Adams Letters, I, 72. [The Glory of America, Peter Marshall & David Manuel] |
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"The known propensity of a democracy is to licentiousness which the ambitious call, and ignorant believe to be liberty. -- Fisher Ames, speech in the Massachusetts Ratifying Convention, January 15, 1788 |
"Every denunciation of existing law tends in some measure to increase the probability that there will be violation of it." "Those who won our independence by revolution were not cowards. They did not fear political change. They did not exalt order at the cost of liberty. To courageous, self-reliant men, with confidence in the power of free and fearless reasoning applied through the processes of popular government, no danger flowing from speech can be deemed clear and present... the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence." -- Justice Louis Brandeis, Whitney v. California, 274 U.S. 357+. |
"Decency, security, and liberty alike demand that government officials shall be subjected to the same rules of conduct that are commands to the citizen. In a government of laws, existence of the government will be imperiled if it fails to observe the law scrupulously.... Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by its example. Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for the law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy. To declare that in the administation of the criminal law the end justifies the means - to declare that the Government may commit crimes in order to secure the conviction of a private criminal - would bring terrible retribution. Against that pernicious doctrine this Court should resolutely set its face." -- Justice Louis Brandeis in Olmstead v. U.S., 277 U.S. 438, 485 (1928) |
| "No judicial process... can have any lawful authority outside of the limits of... jurisdiction... issued; and an attempt to enforce it beyond these boundaries is... lawless violence." Ableman v. Booth, 62 U.S. 506, 523. |
Statutes "which are ignored and ridiculed by the populace and which are enforced with discriminatory selectivity can only breed contempt and foster disdain for the law. ..." -- Georgia State Supreme Court Justice Carol W. Hunstein, 1996 |
| "To embarrass justice by a multiplicity of laws, or to hazard it by confidence in judges, are the opposite rocks upon which all civil institutions have been wrecked." -- M. Johnson, Minn. Sup. Ct. Justice "Congress cannot by any definition it may adopt, conclude the matter, since it cannot by legislation alter the Constitution, from which alone it derives its power to legislate, and within whose limitations alone that power can be lawfully exercised" -- Eisner v. Macomber 252 US 189, 405Cr 189 [1920]). Your Right of Defense Against Unlawful Arrest |
"Heavenly Father, we come before you today to ask your forgiveness and to seek your direction and guidance.
We know Your Word says, 'Woe to those who call evil good,' but that is exactly what we have done. We have lost our spiritual equilibrium and reversed our values. We have exploited the poor and called it the lottery. We have rewarded laziness and called it welfare. We have killed our unborn and called it choice. We have shot abortionists and called it justifiable. We have neglected to discipline our children and called it building self esteem. We have abused power and called it politics. We have coveted our neighbor's possessions and called it ambition. We have polluted the air with profanity and pornography and called it freedom of expression. We have ridiculed the time-honored values of our forefathers and called it enlightenment. Search us, Oh, God, and know our hearts today; cleanse us from Every sin and set us free. Amen!" -- Minister Joe Wright, Kansas Senate |
| "Public officers are the trustees and servants of the people and are at all times amenable to them." -- Constitution of Georgia of 1983, Art. I, Sec. II, Par. I. |
Can Juries Judge the Law?"The year was 1800 and one of our U.S. Supreme Court Justices was presiding over a jury trial. Samuel Chase was the Judge and he instructed the jury saying, "he would decide the law and the jury would decide the facts. In other words, the Judge would explain the law to the jury and then the jury would decide if the defendant had violated the law as the Judge interpreted it. Samual Chase found himself in a heap of trouble. The U.S. House of Representatives passed a Bill of Impeachment against Judge Chase and the U.S. Senate had an impeachment trial." "Samual Chase was a signer of the Declaration of Independence and had served his country well, except for this one great error." -- Red Beckman, Walls in Our Minds, pg 17. |
Can Juries Judge the Law?"It may not be amiss, here, Gentlemen, to remind you of the good old rule, that on questions of fact, it is the province of the jury, on questions of law, it is the province of the court to decide. But it must be observed that by the same law, which recognizes this reasonable distribution of jurisdiction, you have nevertheless a right to take upon yourselves to judge of both, and to determine the law as well as the fact in controversy. On this, and on every other occasion, however, we have no doubt, you will pay that respect, which is due to the opinion of the court: For, as on the one hand, it is presummed, that juries are the best judges of facts; it is, on the other hand, presumable, that the court are the best judges of the law. But still both objects are lawfully, within your power of decision." -- The State of Georgia, versus Brailsford, et al., [U.S. Supreme Court Decision, 1794] |
Can Juries Judge the Law?"The pages of history shine on instances of the jury's exercise of its prerogative to disregard instructions of the judge..." -- U.S. v. Dougherty, 1972. |
More Quotes on the Rights and Responsibilities of Juries |
"I have always thought, from my earliest youth 'til now, that the greatest scourge an angry Heaven ever inflicted upon an ungrateful and a sinning people was an ignorant, a corrupt, or a dependent judiciary. " -- Chief Justice John Marshall (quoted from Irwin Schiff's book, "How Anyone Can Stop Paying Income Taxes") |
"Judge Kelly noted that 'one of the very oldest principles of our legal heritage is that the king is subject to the law' tracing the principle from the Magna Carta in 1215 to Supreme Court precedent over the last two hundred years." -- Judge A.P. Napolitano, Constitutional Chaos, pg. 129. |
The Independence of the Grand Jury"Under the practice in this country the examination of witnesses by a Federal grand jury need not be preceded by a presentment or formal indictment, but the grand jury may proceed, either upon their own knowledge or upon examination of witnesses, to inquire whether a crime cognizable by the court has been committed, and if so they may indict upon such evidence. In summoning witnesses it is sufficient to apprise them of the names of the parties with respect to whom they will be called to testify without indicating the nature of the charge against them, or laying a basis by a formal indictment." -- Hale v. Henkel [201 U.S. 43] |
The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals held that the Circuit Court of Cooks County is a criminal enterprise.[emphasis added] U.S. Vs. Murphy, 768 F.2d 1518, 1531 (7th. Cir. 1985), 31 Judges were removed from the bench after a Federal Court Ordered an investigation, it was confirmed aiding and abetting from the inferior Courts to the Federal Court, violations at every level with no one reporting the crimes! The United States Supreme Court Acknowledged the judicial corruption in Cooks County, when it stated that Judge Maloney was one of many dishonest judges exposed and convicted through "Operation Greylord", a labyrinthine federal Investigation of judicial corruption in Chicago, Bracey Vs. Gramley, case No. 96-6133 (June 9, 1997)! |
"A judiciary independent of a king or executive alone is a good thing; but independence of the will of the nation is solecism, at least in a republican government." -- Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Ritchie, 1820. |
"It is a misnomer to call a government republican in which a branch of the supreme power is independent of the nation." -- Thomas Jefferson to James Pleasants, 1821. |
"The Constitution... meant that its coordinate branches should be checks on each other. But the opinion which gives to the judges the right to decide what laws are constitutional and what not, not only for themselves in their own sphere of action but for the Legislature and Executive also in their spheres, would make the Judiciary a despotic branch." -- Thomas Jefferson to Abigail Adams, 1804. |
"[A]kin to the maxim of the English law that the King can do no wrong. It places officials above the law. It is the very doctrine out of which the rebellion [the Civil War] was hatched." -- Cong. Globe, 39th Cong., 1st Sess., 1758 (1866) (Sen. Trumbull). |
| The Court in Yates Vs. Village of Hoffman Estates, Illinois, 209 F.Supp. 757 (N.D. Ill. 1962) held that, "Not every action by any judge is in exercise of his judicial function. It is not a judicial function for a Judge to commit an intentional tort even though the tort occurs in the Courthouse. When a judge acts as a Trespasser of the Law, when a judge does not follow the law, the judge loses subject matter jurisdiction and The Judge's orders are void, of no legal force or effect"! | "Not all federal judges are judges in name only .... As covered in my reply brief, [Judge Karlton] threw out a $500 penalty that the government had levied on an innocent taxpayer, and in doing so, explained why he was not going to follow the logic of a dozen courts that went the other way! That took real judicial courage and integrity, qualities often hard to find on the federal bench. ... Unfortunately, America no longer has appellate courts like that today! -- Irwin Schiff, The Federal Mafia, pg. 204-205. |
| The United States Supreme Court has stated that "No State legislator or executive or judicial officer can war against the Constitution without violating his Undertaking to support it". | If a judge does not fully Comply with the Constitution, then his orders are void, in re Sawyer, 124 U.S. 200 (1888), he/she is Without jurisdiction, and he/she has engaged in an act or acts TREASON! -- Cooper Vs. Aaron. 358 U.S. 1 78 S.Ct. 1401 (1958). |
For, as this Court has always recognized, "No right is held more sacred, or is more carefully guarded, by the common law, than the right of every individual to the possession and control of his own person, free from all restraint or interference of others, unless by clear and unquestionable authority of law." Union Pac. R. Co. v. Botsford, 141 U.S. 250, 251 (1891).We have recently held that "the Fourth Amendment protects people, not places," Katz v. United States,389 U.S. 347, 351 (1967), and wherever an individual may harbor a reasonable "expectation of privacy," id.,at 361 ... he is entitled to be free from unreasonable government intrusion. -- Terry v. Ohio, Opinion of the Court, pg. 9. |
[FRCP] Rule 26. General Provisions Governing Discovery; Duty of disclosure(a) Required Disclosures; Methods to Discover Additional Matter. (1) Initial Disclosures. Except in categories of proceedings specified in Rule 26(a)(1)(E) or to the extent otherwise stipulated or directed by order, a party must, without awaiting discovery request, provide to the other parties:“If discovery could uncover one or more substantial factual issues, plaintiff was entitled to reasonable discovery to do so prior to district court's granting of motion for summary judgment. Fed. Rules Civ. Proc. Rule 56 (e), 28 U.S.C.A.” Williamson v.U.S. Dept. of Agriculture, 815F. 368 (5th Cir. 1987).... |
| “Where rights secured by the constitution are involved, there can be no rule making or legislation which would abrogate them.” Miranda, 384 US 436, at 491. | “Fraud vitiates the most solemn contracts, documents, and even judgments ” U.S. V. Throckmorton, 98 U.S. 61 |
"The Federal Constitution does not affect the right of the State;..." |
"The Confederate flag represents constitutional limited federal government, states rights, resistance to government tyranny, and Christian values and principles," wrote James W. King, commander of the Sons of Confederate Veterans Camp 141 Albany, Ga. "To say that it represents racism and bigotry is a negative and shallow interpretation comparable to saying the U.S. flag represents the genocide of the American Indians and abortion." |
"But ambitious encroachments of the federal government, on the authority of the State governments, would not excite the opposition of a single State, or of a few States only. They would be signals of general alarm... But what degree of madness could ever drive the federal government to such an extremity. -- James Madison, Federalist No. 46, January 29, 1788 |
| "The people of the South have rejected the Constitutional [14th] amendment and therefore we will march upon them and force them to adopt it [Reconstruction], at the point of the bayonet, and establish military power over them until they do adopt it." -- Senator Doolittle of Wisconsin, 39th Congress, Congressional Globe, 2nd session, 1644(1867) |
| "I cannot believe that any court, in full possession of its faculties, could honestly hold that the 14th amendment was properly approved and adopted." -- State v. Phillips, 540 P.2d 936, 941, Supreme Court of Utah (Sept. 15, 1975) |
| The U.S. Supreme Court has found, "the authority of States to exercise" its sovereign right to adopt in its own Constitution individual liberties more expansive than those conferred by the Federal Constitution." -- 447 US 74,81 (1980) |
| "Repeal that [welfare] law, and you will soon see a change in their manners. St. Monday and St. Tuesday, will soon cease to be holidays. Six days shalt thou labor, though one of the old commandments long treated as out of date, will again be looked upon as a respectable precept; industry will increase, and with it plenty among the lower people; their circumstances will mend, and more will be done for their happiness by inuring them to provide for themselves, than could be done by dividing all your estates among them. " -- Benjamin Franklin, letter to Collinson, 1753 | "I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion of the means. I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it. In my youth I travelled much, and I observed in different countries, that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer. " -- Benjamin Franklin, On the Price of Corn and Management of the Poor, 1766 |
| Yet any time you and I question the schemes of the do-gooders, we're denounced as being opposed to their humanitarian goals. It seems impossible to legitimately debate their solutions with the assumption that all of us share the desire to help the less fortunate. They tell us we're always "against," never "for" anything. -- adapted from one of Mr. Goldwater's 1964 campaign speeches | -- |
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| In the beginning of a change the patriot is a scarce man, and brave, and hated and scorned. When his cause succeeds, the timid join him, for then it costs nothing to be a patriot. -- Mark Twain, Notebook, 1904 | "Be on your guard. There are fowler things than orcs in the deep places of the world!" -- Gandalf the Grey |
| We're the Government -- and You're Not | The Government Can! on youtube.com |
| When a man's ways are pleasing to the Lord, he makes even his enemies live at peace with him. [Prov 16:7, NIV] | "For God has not given us a spirit of timidity, but of power and love and discipline." -- II Timothy 1:7 |
| When the righteous thrive, the people rejoice; when the wicked rule, the people groan. [Prov. 29] | Many seek an audience with a ruler, but it is from the LORD that man gets justice. [Prov. 29] |
| "Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter." -- Isaiah 5:20 | "At that time I will search Jeruselum with lamps and punish those who are complacent, who are like wine left on its dregs, who think, ‘The Lord will do nothing, either good or bad.’" -- Zephaniah 1:12 |
| "If religious books are not widely circulated among the masses in this country, I do not know what is going to become of us as a nation. If truth be not diffused, error will be; If God and His Word are not known and received, the devil and his works will gain the ascendancy; If evangelical volume does not reach every hamlet, the pages of a corrupt and licentious literature will; If the power of the Gospel is not felt throughout the length and breadth of the land, anarchy and misrule, degradation and misery, corruption and darkness will reign without mitigation or end." -- Daniel Webster | "Muslim rage arises from the evils it sees in American culture as much as from inflammatory passages in the Koran. In his May 2006 letter to President Bush, Iranian President Ahmadinejad faulted America not for being Christian, but for 'not being Christian enough.'" -- Kenn Gangel, "Atheism has become its own religion", The Toccoa Record, March 29, 2007 |