Thanks. The following excerpt from Jackson's speech, like Washington's "Farewell" warning, sounded a warning which might be worth repeating today:
"You have no longer any cause to fear danger from abroad; your strength and power are well known throughout the civilized world, as well as the high and gallant bearing of your sons. It is from within, among yourselves, from cupidity, from corruption, from disappointed ambition, and inordinate thirst for power, that factions will be formed and liberty endangered. It is against such designs, whatever disguise the actors may assume, that you have especially to guard yourselves. You have the highest of human trusts committed to your care. Providence has showered on this favored land blessings without number, and has chosen you, as the guardians of freedom, to preserve it for the benefit of the human race. May he who holds in his hands the destinies of nations make you worthy of the favors he has bestowed, and enable you, with pure hearts, and pure hands, and sleepless vigilance, to guard and defend to the end of time the great charge he has committed to your keeping."
From now, until the election of 2012, those who love liberty and wish to "preserve it for the benefit of the human race," and for their posterity, must rediscover the enduring ideas and principles which are essential to its survival, and then articulate those ideas in their homes, communities, and through every means possible.
Technology has made it possible for the Founders' own powerful words to penetrate the censorship of the ideas of freedom imposed over the past few decades by the so-called "progressives."
Books could be removed from libraries, and textbooks could be revised to promote "other" ideas, but perhaps Divine Providence has allowed technology to override the censors and expose current generations to the ideas of liberty upon which their Republic was founded.
True, but I think this has also created a massive danger of an Owellian "editor" who can with a single program re-write virtually all the material on the web pertaining to, say, the Constitution. You can always produce a physical book. You'd be surprised how many times I go to the web to check a source that has mysteriously disappeared or is no longer available.