No piece of parchment can preserve our rights. It was up to us to do so and we failed.
It’s not over.
Thanks for the ping.
A few of my favotire quotes:
“Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites—in proportion as their love of justice is above their rapacity;—in proportion as their soundness and sobriety of understanding is above their vanity and presumption;—in proportion as they are more disposed to listen to the counsels of the wise and good, in preference to the flattery of knaves. Society cannot exist, unless a controlling power upon the will and appetite is placed somewhere: and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds can not be free. Their passions forge their fetters.”
— Edmund Burke
“Reading, reflection and time have convinced me that the interests of society require the observation of those moral precepts ... in which all religions agree.”
—Thomas Jefferson
“Religion and good morals are the only solid foundation of publicliberty and happiness.”
— Samuel Adams (letter to John Trumbull, 16 October 1778)
Of all the dispositions and habits which least to political
prosperity, Religion and morality are indespensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of Patriotism who should labor to subvert these great Pilliars of human happiness.
— George Washington (Farewell Address, 19 September 1796)
“[O]ur ancestors established their system of government on morality and religious sentiment. Moral habits, they believed, cannot safely be trusted on any other foundation than religious principle, nor any government be secure which is not supported by moral habits.”
— Daniel Webster, American Jurist and Senator
“[N]either the wisest constitution nor the wisest laws will
secure the liberty and happiness of a people whose manners are universally corrupt.”
—Samuel Adams
In some people I see great liberty indeed; in many, if not in the most, an oppressive, degrading servitude. But what is liberty without wisdom, and without virtue? It is the greatest of all possible evils; for it is folly, vice, and madness, without tuition or restraint. Those who know what virtuous liberty is, cannot bear to see it disgraced by incapable heads, on account of their having high-sounding words in their mouths.
- Edmund Burke
“History fails to record a single precedent in which nations subject to moral decay have not passed into political and economic decline. There has been either a spiritual awakening to overcome the moral lapse, or a progressive deterioration leading to ultimate national disaster.”
— General Douglas MacArthur
Guess that’s enough for now. ;-)