Ping!
Posted on 04/26/2020 6:29:03 AM PDT by Albion Wilde
When you abandon freedom to achieve security, you lose both and deserve neither. —Thomas Jefferson
There is no justification for taking away individuals' freedom in the guise of public safety. —Thomas Jefferson
The greatest calamity which could befall us would be submission to a government of unlimited powers. —Thomas Jefferson
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(Excerpt) Read more at azquotes.com ...
Fifty-eight years ago this week, on April 29, 1962, when President John F. Kennedy invited a group of Nobel Prize winners to dinner, he remarked, “This is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered together at the White House—with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone.”
Ping!
I love quotes! I fill my profile with the best I come across, several from Jefferson.
We don’t have to wonder what Jefferson would think of the sorry spectacle we are today.
Today’s democrats and lamestream media only want you to stay inside and die inside. Kind of reminds one of an unborn child’s fate when aborted.
That ship has sailed.
Long ago.The people now elect those who will steal the most from their fellow citizens to give to them.
The American Republic will endure, until politicians realize they can bribe the people with their own money. -- Alexis de Tocqueville
“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse 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. These nations have progressed through this sequence: From bondage to spiritual faith; From spiritual faith to great courage; From courage to liberty; From liberty to abundance; From abundance to selfishness; From selfishness to apathy; From apathy to dependence; From dependence back into bondage.”
~ Alexander Fraser Tytler
He also said this, which is quite true as demonstrated so aptly by the Clintons, Al Gore, Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, Gavin Newsome and similar corrupt Governors of states, and others who promise people one thing, but live another:
"All government is essentially of the nature of a monarchy".
~ Alexander Fraser Tytler
Tytler is forgotten, but said it quite well.
It's worth remembering that in 1801, when Jefferson became president, the US national debt was around $100 million, about 10 times annual federal revenues. This was literally "the cost of freedom," and would correspond today to a national debt around $30 trillion. Since our actual national debt is $13+ trillion, the government is in better financial shape today than it was in Jefferson's time. And at the time, Jefferson's number one priority was paying down the national debt. So, how did he do it? How does ANY wise government ever increase its revenues? Yes, that's right! JEFFERSON REDUCED GOVERNMENT SPENDING AND CUT TAXES.-- BroJoeKThank BroJoeK, and for that matter, thanks President Jefferson, and thanks AW for the topic and ping.
Excellent examples. TJ was an amazing man among so many amazing men.
God bless and protect our republic.
Thank you for the ping.
“Good intentions will always be pleaded for every assumption of authority. It is hardly too strong to say that the Constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intentions. There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters.” ~Daniel Webster
From C.S. Lewis:
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would 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. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth.
This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be “cured” against one’s will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.”
A pandemic that has the potential to kill millions if left unchecked is an extraordinary circumstance.
There are definite nuances here. For any measure restricting our movement, we have to ask, does it really interrupt transmission of a disease? Or is it a leftist power grab? Wearing a mask, keeping crowds small so no one has to be within 6 feet of another, etc., are methods that stop disease. Preventing people from buying gardening supplies is a highly questionable action (I believe that was an edict of the governor of WI).
And the clincher, a quote from Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
“And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family?
Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?...
The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin’s thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If...if...We didn’t love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation.... We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.”
Based on this quote, I’ve coined the phrase, ‘The Solzhenitsyn Line’.
It is an imaginary line that a government authority crosses, after which the situation becomes life or death for everyone, and self-defense becomes the imperative.
Some cities and counties got awful close. A former LEO was arrested playing ball in the park with her daughter. That ended with an apology, luckily.
I’ve been saying this has been an Op from the get-go. Will people give up their freedom in exchange for safety? Will they allow themselves to be deprived of their incomes, even volunteer their incomes, in exchange for safety?
The answer is a big, resounding, yes. Worse, there were no courts open to even review any of these actions in any kind of timely way. There were no forums where people could petition. There were no judges available to here petitions from citizens to consider these actions and rule on them.
There was zero check on regional authority of any kind.
Let’s face it . . .the average younger person can’t even begin to understand any of the quotes. . . .so sad.
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