Some Words Of Wisdom From Ben Franklin During These Troubled Times

The means of defense against foreign danger historically have become the instruments of tyranny at home. -James Madison

The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted.
- James Madison

Deep down they are wondering, now how can we Swiftboat Benjamin Franklin?

in my sig line

I found it fitting then, but I find it prophetic now.

The will of the people is the only legitimate foundation of any government, and to protect its free expression should be our first object.

Thomas Jefferson

"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 increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear." - Harry S. Truman, Aug. 8, 1950

The Lincoln quote was: "Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration."


"Men by their constitutions are naturally divided into two parties: 1. Those who fear and distrust the people, and wish to draw all powers from them into the hands of the higher classes. 2. Those who identify themselves with the people, have confidence in them, cherish and consider them as the most honest and safe, although not the most wise depositary of the public interests. In every country these two parties exist, and in every one where they are free to think, speak, and write, they will declare themselves. Call them, therefore, Liberals and Serviles, Jacobins and Ultras, Whigs and Tories, Republicans and Federalists, Aristocrats and Democrats, or by whatever name you please, they are the same parties still and pursue the same object. The last one of Aristocrats and Democrats is the true one expressing the essence of all." --Thomas Jefferson to Henry Lee, 1824.


"... if by a liberal they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind,
someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions,
someone who cares about the welfare of the people-
their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs,
their civil rights, their civil liberties..
if that is what they mean
then I am proud to be a liberal."

John F. Kennedy




"History affords us many instances of the ruin of states...the ordaining of laws in favor of one part of the nation to the prejudice and oppression of another, is certainly the most erroneous and mistaken policy...An equal dispensation of protection, rights, privileges, and advantages, is what every part is entitled to, and ought to enjoy."
B Franklin

No people ever recognize their dictator in advance. He never stands for election on the platform of dictatorship. He always represents himself as the instrument the Incorporated National Will. ... When our dictator turns up you can depend on it that he will be one of the boys, and he will stand for everything traditionally American. And nobody will ever say 'Heil' to him, nor will they call him 'Fuhrer' or 'Duce.' But they will greet him with one great big, universal, democratic, sheeplike bleat of 'O.K., Chief! Fix it like you wanna, Chief! Oh Kaaaay!'"
-- Dorothy Thompson, 1935

"What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if the people could understand it, it could not be released because of national security...".
-- They Thought They Were Free, Milton Mayer, 1955


Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron.

Dwight Eisenhower, April 16, 1953

"There is no way in which a country can satisfy the craving for absolute security, but it can bankrupt itself morally and economically in attempting to reach that illusory goal through arms alone."
Dwight Eisenhower

"Conquest is not in our principles. It is inconsistent with our government."
-- Thomas Jefferson, Instructions to William Carmichael

"We know that freedom cannot be served by the devices of the tyrant. As it is an ancient truth that freedom cannot be legislated into existence...... And any who act as if freedom's defenses are to found in suppression and suspicion and fear confess a doctrine that is alien to America."
Dwight Eisenhower

especially about JFK being a liberal and proud of it.

:hi:

With the cooperation of W and his supporters.

slapping down the chimperor, fer chrissakes!

"To announce that there should be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American people." - Theodore Roosevelt

"As Mankind becomes more liberal, they will be more apt to allow that all those who conduct themselves as worthy members of the community are equally entitled to the protections of civil government. I hope ever to see America among the foremost nations of justice and liberality."
- George Washington

"They may introduce the practice of France, Spain, and Germany--of torturing, to extort a confession of the crime. They will say that they might as well draw examples from those countries as from Great Britain, and they will tell you that there is such a necessity of strengthening the arm of government, that they must have a criminal equity, and extort confession by torture, in order to punish with still more relentless severity. We are then lost and undone." - Patrick Henry

Never saw those before. Thanks and welcome.

“Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both.” - Benjamin Franklin

"The basis of a democratic state is Liberty." Aristotle

"The object and practice of Liberty lies in the limitation of Governmental power." General Douglas MacArthur

"The main political problem is how to prevent police powers from becoming tyrannical. This is the meaning of all struggles for Liberty." Ludwig Von Mises

"It is seldom that any Liberty is lost all at once." David Hugh

"The true danger is when Liberty is nibbled away, for expedients and by parts.... The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men do nothing." Edmund Burke

"I would rather be exposed to the inconvenience attending too much Liberty than those attending too small degree of it." Thomas Jefferson

"If we do not believe in freedom of speech for those we despise we do not believe in it at all." - Noam Chomsky

“When liberty comes with hands dabbled in blood it is hard to shake hands with her.” Oscar Wilde

“America was established not to create wealth but to realize a vision, to realize an ideal - to discover and maintain liberty among men.” Woodrow Wilson

“As long as I have any choice, I will stay only in a country where political liberty, toleration, and equality of all citizens before the law are the rule.” Albert Einstein

“Once we roared like lions for liberty; now we bleat like sheep for security! The solution for America's problem is not in terms of big government, but it is in big men over whom nobody stands in control but God.” Norman Vincent Peale

“I believe in only one thing: liberty; but I do not believe in liberty enough to want to force it upon anyone.” H.L Mencken

“If the events of September 11, 2001, have proven anything, it's that the terrorists can attack us, but they can't take away what makes us American - our freedom, our liberty, our civil rights. No, only Attorney General John Ashcroft can do that.” Jon Stewart

Because religious belief, or non-belief, is such an important part of every person's life, freedom of religion affects every individual. State churches that use government power to support themselves and force their views on persons of other faiths undermine all our civil rights. Moreover, state support of the church tends to make the clergy unresponsive to the people and leads to corruption within religion. Erecting the "wall of separation between church and state," therefore, is absolutely essential in a free society.
Thomas Jefferson

Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God; that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship; that the legislative powers of the government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should 'make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' thus building a wall of separation between church and State. Adhering to this expression of the supreme will of the nation in behalf of the rights of conscience, I shall see with sincere satisfaction the progress of those sentiments which tend to restore man to all of his natural rights, convinced he has no natural right in opposition to his social duties.

Thomas Jefferson

Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law.
-Thomas Jefferson, letter to Dr. Thomas Cooper, February 10, 1814


History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance of which their civil as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purposes.
-Thomas Jefferson to Alexander von Humboldt, Dec. 6, 1813.

"I have examined all the known superstitions of the Word, and I do not find in our particular superstition of Christianity one redeeming feature. They are all alike, founded on fables and mythology. Millions of innocent men, women and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined and imprisoned. What has been the effect of this coercion? To make one half the world fools and the other half hypocrites; to support roguery and error all over the world ...

The clergy converted the simple teachings of Jesus into an engine for enslaving mankind ... to filch wealth and power to themselves. , in fact, constitute the real Anti-Christ."
Thomas Jefferson


"The Christian god can easily be pictured as virtually the same god as the many ancient gods of past civilizations. The Christian god is a three headed monster; cruel, vengeful and capricious. If one wishes to know more of this raging, three headed beast-like god, one only needs to look at the caliber of people who say they serve him. They are always of two classes; fools and hypocrites. To compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors, is sinful and tyrannical."
Thomas Jefferson


"Accustom a people to believe that priests and clergy can forgive sins ... and you will have sins in abundance. I would not dare to dishonor my Creator's name by it to this filthy book ."
Thomas Paine


"For here we are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead, nor to tolerate error so long as reason is free to combat it."
Thomas Jefferson


"It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no God."
Thomas Jefferson


"Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blind-folded fear."
Thomas Jefferson


"Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and torturous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness, with which more than half the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent that we called it the word of a demon than the Word of God. It is a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind."
Thomas Paine


"I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish Church, by the Roman Church, by the Greek Church, by the Turkish Church, by the Protestant Church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church."
Thomas Paine


"My country is the world, and my religion is to do good."
Thomas Paine


"Let us with caution indulge the supposition, that morality can be maintained without religions."
George Washington


"Of all the animosities which have existed among mankind, those which are caused by difference of sentiments in religion appear to be the most inveterate and distressing, and ought most to be deprecated. I was in hopes that the enlightened and liberal policy, which has marked the present age, would at least have reconciled Christians of every denomination so far that we should never again see the religious disputes carried to such a pitch as to endanger the peace of society."
George Washington, letter to Edward Newenham, October 20, 1792; from George Seldes, ed., The Great Quotations, Secaucus, New Jersey: Citadel Press, 1983, p. 726]


"There is nothing which can better deserve our patronage than the promotion of science and literature. Knowledge is in every country the surest basis of public happiness."
George Washington, address to Congress, 8 January, 1790


"Religious controversies are always productive of more acrimony and irreconcilable hatreds than those which spring from any other cause."
George Washington, letter to Sir Edward Newenham, June 22, 1792


"...the path of true piety is so plain as to require but little political direction."
George Washington, 1789, responding to clergy complaints that the Constitution lacked mention of Jesus Christ, from The Godless Constitution: The Case Against Religious Correctness, Isacc Kramnick and R. Laurence Moore W.W. Norton and Company 101-102


"If they are good workmen, they may be from Asia, Africa or Europe; they may be Mahometans, Jews, Christians of any sect, or they may be Atheists...."
George Washington, to Tench Tighman, March 24, 1784, when asked what type of workman to get for Mount Vernon, from The Washington papers edited by Saul Padover


"To give opinions unsupported by reasons might appear dogmatical."
George Washington, to Alexander Spotswood, November 22, 1798, from The Washington papers edited by Saul Padover


"...I beg you be persuaded that no one would be more zealous than myself to establish effectual barriers against the horrors of spiritual tyranny, and every species of religious persecution."
George Washington, to United Baptists Churches of Virginia, May, 1789 from The Washington papers edited by Saul Padover

A knave, a rascal, an eater of broken meats; a base, proud, shallow, beggarly, three-suited, hundred-pound, filthy worsted-stocking knave; a lily-livered, action-faking, whoreson, glass-gazing, superserviceable, finical rogue; one-trunk-inheriting slave; one that wouldst be a bawd in way of good service, and art nothing but the composition of a knave, beggar, coward, pander, and the son and heir of a mongrel bitch; one whom I will beat into clamorous whining if thou deny'st the least syllable of thy addition.

Or something.

"I have sworn upon the altar of god, eternal hostility against any form of tyrrany over the mind of man."

-Hoot

:applause:

and that letter by the way was published...

Resist Much, Obey Little. Edward Abbey(I think)
:smoke: