It offends me when speaking about our Founding Fathers to hear someone say, "But that was over two centuries ago, they had no idea what the world would become."
Is that so true?
One of the most insightful of our early visionaries of freedom was Thomas Jefferson.
Below are a few quotes from Jefferson that are even more appropriate to today's world than they were in his own time (all emphasis added):
"I place economy among the first and most important virtues, and public debt as the greatest of dangers to be feared. To preserve our independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. If we run into such debts, we must be taxed in our meat and drink, in our necessities and in our comforts, in our labor and in our amusements. If we can prevent the government from wasting the labor of the people, under the pretense of caring for them, they will be happy."
"The principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale."
"It is incumbent on every generation to pay its own debts as it goes."
"I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. Already they have raised up a monied aristocracy that has set the government at defiance. The issuing power (of money) should be taken away from the banks and restored to the people to whom it properly belongs."
"A wise and frugal government, which shall leave men free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned - this is the sum of good government."
"The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not."
"I think we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious."
"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."
"To compel a man to furnish funds for the propagation of ideas he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical."
It is rather remarkable that words from a man more than 200 years ago could resonate so loudly and so true today.
The Founding Fathers did know exactly of what they spoke.
Over For Now.
Main Street One
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