A favorite Quote from John Adams and Thomas Jefferson
Posted by XenokRoy 8 years, 10 months ago to Philosophy
"Government is instituted for the common good; for the protection, safety, prosperity, and happiness of the people; and not for the profit, honor, or private interest of any one man, family, or class of men.
"I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them."
For the day these two men were opposite. Adams was a big government man of the day, and Jefferson the small government side. yet both made sense more often than not. They could work with each other, find common ground and make it work. They combined with Franklin are the three who created the declaration of independence.
Where are the people like these of our generations?
"I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them."
For the day these two men were opposite. Adams was a big government man of the day, and Jefferson the small government side. yet both made sense more often than not. They could work with each other, find common ground and make it work. They combined with Franklin are the three who created the declaration of independence.
Where are the people like these of our generations?
A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largess from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been 200 years.
Great nations rise and fall. The people go from bondage to spiritual truth, to great courage, from courage to liberty, from liberty to abundance, from abundance to selfishness, from selfishness to complacency
Alexander Tyler. Scottish historian quoting from others.
How prophetic.
It bring up the question what can we do to help people understand that eventually we will get to where it is freedom or death, in a very uncomfortable way; really how do we help them understand we are all ready there. Only its not death of body that is faced if freedom is not taken its death of mind.
people. Not only politically, but, I think, in the way
they have been teaching children to (mis)use their
minds. But one thing that could help is the growing
home-schooling movement. Notwithstanding that a
lot of parents are also doing it for religion's sake,
still there may be a lot more of teaching true
history of the United States, the Constitution,
and more rationality than is being taught in the
public school system.
The common goal to solve a problem.
The worst and least qualified in society create a problem, get you to scream: JUST FIX IT and Wamo! the fix is in and it's just what they wanted in the beginning.
These men also had an innate understanding of what was right: how people should be able to run their own lives. And that understanding and conviction ran so deep they were willing to pledge their "lives, fortunes, and sacred honor" on making it happen.
That is primarily what we are missing in today's America: those with the internal drive to hold the course no matter what. Until we can rekindle that kind of fire in our progeny, this nation will continue to be run by the lazy and indolent who are too busy being entertained to study, learn, and educate themselves in the principles of freedom.
Just over half of the signers of the declaration of independence had ancestor that had gone through the experience of "Communal living" in James Town. Two years of group think that killed more than 10,000 people followed by the first year of property rights which produced food for everyone, and kept the deaths down under 30 during that third winter.
I think the stories from ancestors of that experience likely influenced the colonies, the love of individual and self governance and the culture that permeated the colonies of a study of government.
100 years of preparation for the culture needed to have the government that came about, come about. :)
James Town
2. The whole world was involved in slavery at that time. It was introduced to America through a black who enslaved another black, and it was backed by the courts. In fact, the Africans and Arabs were the initiators and maintainers of that system until TODAY.
3. Slavery is a perverse incentive.
Now, let's drop the slavery issue. The first countries who outlawed slavery were England and the US. It's time to pillory the others who were involved. If you don't want to do that, then drop the whole thing. It's being used to denigrate the greatest political economy ever created, and even worse, it's making the ignorant turn from the one thing that will improve their lives.
The whole world is involved in government-controlled education, so I guess we should drop that issue.
The whole world is involved in socialized medicine, so I guess we should drop that issue.
The whole world is involved in the “war on drugs”, so I guess we should drop that issue.
The whole world is involved in economic cronyism, so I guess we should drop that issue.
The whole world is involved in fighting “climate change,” so I guess we should drop that issue.
The fact that many of our founding fathers proclaimed liberty and human rights while owning slaves is not going to go away. Even if we were to drop the issue, our opponents most certainly won’t. Slavery was as wrong then as it is now, and many of the founding fathers recognized this fact even as others actively participated in the practice and gave moral cover to several succeeding generations of slaveholders. The effects of this moral contradiction are with us to this day.
The Treaty Between the United States of America and the French Republic was signed in Paris, on the 30th of April 1803. The truth is it was for the purchase and sale of Louisiana, not a treaty. The document itself reads more as what it was, a land sale contract, than the treaty it is touted to be — to the lasting shame of both nations.
From that moment, the Union was no longer a federated government of delegated powers. True, Jefferson held the majority support of his party. But the nation was a republic, not a democracy. A nation intended to be run under law not aristocratic power.
The Constitution of the United States of America does not provide for the government to purchase territories from other sovereign nations.
His Catholic Majesty of France did not have the legal power to sell for two reasons. First, the sale was not approved by the Chamber of Deputies. Second, France acquired the territory from Spain and held the territory subject to a covenant not to transfer it. In the event France transferred the land, ownership returned automatically to Spain. Three weeks after the transfer to France, France sold it to the US.
Spain objected at the time, but had no power to enforce its objection. Take a look at the Third Treaty of San Ildefonso between France and Spain, verifying my words.
Of course one has to recognize that today's laws don't necessarily apply to those times. Laws had no international basis of enforcement except a declaration of war or trade embargo. That France violated its agreement may be held to be true. In the end, however, a law or legal agreement is only as good as its enforcement when broken.
That's one of the problems even with current international law: the enforcement mechanism is usually through combined trade sanctions (Iran, Libya, Cuba, North Korea) and only rarely through military action (Gulf War). What is the real penalty in these cases? Loss of monetary wealth and trade opportunities. But as we've seen with the US, its pretty hard to use trade sanctions against a more powerful nation. One is essentially relying on the integrity of that other nation to hold to its word.
Thanks.
An excerpt: James Thomson Callender, a Scottish citizen, had been expelled from Great Britain for his political writings. Living first in Philadelphia, then seeking refuge close in Virginia, he wrote a book entitled The Prospect Before Us (read and approved by Vice President Jefferson before publication) in which he called the Adams administration a "continual tempest of malignant passions" and the President a "repulsive pedant, a gross hypocrite and an unprincipled oppressor". Callender, already residing in Virginia and writing for the Richmond Examiner, was indicted in mid-1800 under the Sedition Act and convicted, fined $200 and sentenced to nine months in jail.
They're, like Galt, hiding out, until they're needed.
(BTW, I was joking about hearing Ted;^)
Whoever gets the nod to run for the GOP with be co-opted and only trustworthy to the party's mostly hidden agenda. If Ted was running independent I'd consider him because of his stand on the constitution, but has he come out with a plan to save the Republic yet or is he still playing lets make a deal, too?
I would not be surprised if he had a deadly accident should he actually win a few primaries. I think it unlikely because the GOP turned up the support for trump to high levels of advertising.
IMHO they simply do not exist in America, or if they do they are swept aside by the entire corrupt system in DC.
Now, all but the most unconventional of politicians are jointly owned by n separate corporations. Hillary Monsanto Clinton, to name just one example.
Combined with today's era of growing mass apathy and fatigue, it has never been so straightforward for corporations to buy elections. Democracy these days is just a pantomime to lull the muppet voters into thinking they have some kind of choice.